Review: Star Trek Discovery – The Sanctuary s03e08

We’re two thirds of the way through the third season and episode eight, ‘The Sanctuary’ isn’t helping Star Trek Discovery’s cause much.  *Warning: Spoilers Lie Ahead!*

After last week’s disappointing episode, we appear to be in a continued slump in quality this week, treading water in a very so-so plot.  The overall aim is clearly to introduce the Emerald Chain, and  Osyraa (Janet Kidder – Continuum, Aftermath, Arrow) as the big bad for this season.  The problem is that it was as effective as TNG trying to do the same with the Ferengi, as there was no real feeling of threat and it was hamfisted.  The Kazon were more effective, and that’s saying something.

Ostensibly, this episode followed Book (David Ajala) needing to return to his homeworld as it was under threat from the Emerald Chain, and therefore roping Michael (Sonequa Martin Green) into the escapade.  Sadly, it wasn’t quite so clear cut and ‘The Sanctuary’ just tended to throw a bit of everything at the wall hoping it would work.

If there a bit of a glimmer of hope it’s that they didn’t travel down the well worn path of Michael racing off against orders again, and actually went through proper channels to allow Saru (Doug Jones) to fight their corner.  This made it an official mission and inserted the Discovery firmly into the Emerald Chain narrative, as well as actually making it a crew based show again.

The threat against Book’s homeworld was fairly simplistic, with Osyraa wanting the return of Ryn (Noah Averbach-Katz), the prisoner that Book escaped with a couple of episodes ago.  It’s not initially clear why he is so important, but she is willing to wreak havoc on the planet to get him.  Into this mix they throw a contentious relationship between Book and his ‘brother’ Kyheem (Ache Hernandez) which traverses the expected ‘conflict to allies’ path we’ve seen a million times.

This is in part the biggest problem with ‘The Sanctuary’.  Nothing feels innovative, and there isn’t a sense of peril or overarching menace you would want with either the specific story here, or the bigger picture with a big bad.  It’s all so predictable and messy.  Book and Osyraa could disappear from the series tomorrow and it would make no difference, as they’re just not interesting enough.  Book looked like he’d be potentially interesting, but that hasn’t played out since the initial episodes.

Away from what is the A plot, with the rest of the crew, they’ve tried to shuffle everyone’s stories along a bit.  From Saru working on what his Captain’s catchphrase will be, to Tilly (Mary Wiseman) and Saru establishing their dynamic, Detmer (Emily Coutts) getting some flying action, and Adira (Blu Del Barrio) working on their issues with Stamets (Anthony Rapp), everyone gets a little nudge along their paths.

They also spend some time on the tedious Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) plot, with Culber (Wilson Cruz) having to fight her every inch of the way while trying to figure out what is going on with her.  If this storyline doesn’t turn out to be the greatest and most interesting tale of all time, the scenes they’ve put in for several episodes will have been a colossal waste of time.  Georgiou has long been a dull and uninteresting character, with no real nuance.  If they’d brought mirror universe Intendant Kira back into DS9 you can imagine what a disaster that would have been, and we’re seeing a version of that now.

Like Georgiou, Osyraa is a pantomime villain, with a comically bad presence on proceedings.  The show needs to try to find a way to make it seem like the Emerald Chain is a serious opposition and not just an easily defeated adversary of the week.  To a degree, ‘The Sanctuary’ hasn’t helped the overarching plot much, and could almost be forgotten about.  The key movements within the show dynamics could be written into a new 5 minute section next episode, and we could go from there.

It’s a shame as this episode did have some nice character moments in it, such as the friendship between Adira and Stamets, and the continuing excellence of Detmer, but they can’t save ‘The Sanctuary’ from being an annoying and disappoint watch.  Let’s hope next week we’re back on track.