It took a long time for me to come to a conclusion as to how to rate "Lethe." On the one hand, there is a lot going on here and this is a very important episode. But on the other hand, it's just not that entertaining. Sarek is on his way to a secret meeting to discuss peace with the Klingons, when his companion reveals himself to be a suicide bomber in protest of Sarek's ways of always cavorting around with humans. Sarek is seriously injured, and needs a rescue. At the same moment, Burnham is knocked down, as she shares katra with Sarek ever since he saved her life. This katra can be used via technobabble to find Sarak. While inside his head, Burnham discovers that he has been hiding a secret truth from her for a very long time. While he had told her that she wasn't accepted into the Vulcan science academy, in truth he was told that only one of his human offspring could be accepted, and he chose Spock. As she's trying to connect with him in order to locate him, he is fighting her off because he's stuck in this memory and doesn't want her to find out. Which....I don't get what the big deal is. First off, he could have just told her. It was a tough decision, and adult Burnham can appreciate his choice. Secondly, both the offspring ended up serving on a Star Fleet ship anyway, so really what's the difference? Anyway, they rescue him, and then he denies that anything meaningful was shared because he is a horrible emotionless Vulcan ass.
Meanwhile Admiral Cornwell shows up to scold Lorca for acting on his own in saving Sarek, and to sleep with him. But it doesn't end well when Lorca freaks in the middle of the night and pulls a phaser on her in a fit of PTSD. She realizes that Lorca is still deeply disturbed by recent events in his life such as watching his entire crew die on his previous ship and being tortured in a Klingon prison. She tells him that she's going to strip him of command, and 30 seconds later he comes up with the idea of sending her to meet the Klingons in place of Sarek. Surprise, surprise, it's a trap and the Klingons take Cornwell captive after killing the rest of her envoy. Saru assumes that Lorca will order them to rush in and save her, and is surprised when Lorca suddenly becomes mister by-the-book and says that they should wait for orders from Star Fleet.There's also a holographic training session with Lorca and Tyler that sure feels like a holodeck to me. This technology is way too early for this timeframe. I guess I could buy that it has limited function and is simply an early predecessor to the holodeck first introduced in TNG, but the question is why they would include it at all, knowing that fans will pick it apart. But this line of thinking all goes back to why in the world they made this series pre-TOS in the first place, knowing that it would box them in as far as what they could do without breaking continuity. I personally would have loved to have seen a series based on the time-ships of the future that were introduced in Voyager. But, that's not what we got, and here I am being pedantic about a training simulator. Sigh.
Next, we need to talk about Lorca. My theory is that this season is building towards a big twist centered around our Discovery captain. For one, we are still running off the assumption that Burnham will somehow ascend to the captain's chair, right? I mean, they made such a big deal about her being the first black female captain, so...we know that moment is coming. Plus, Lorca just has some very bad vibes about him. Rather than going down with his ship, this captain decided to bail and be the only survivor. He regularly bucks orders from Star Fleet. He just sent his lover off to her death to avoid losing his ship. Also, he has a crazy fascination with the mutineer Burnham, even telling Tyler not to return if he loses her. This guy is hiding something.I suppose this is as good a place as any to talk about CBS All Access. Some have complained about streaming problems. I have experienced none of this. I don't care for the ROKU app, it just feels a bit clunky, but I love the web browser version. Particularly, I have never seen such variety in choices of subtitles. As you can see here, I've chosen Helvitica New, Normal style, outlined edge, in black, with 75% opacity, 125% size, on a blue/green background with 50 opacity. Nice! Also, I ordered a DISCO shirt.
Despite all this compelling story-telling going on, this episode is only Meh to me. I watched it three times trying to decide if my melancholy analysis was misguided, and while I will say that each time I watched it the broader story took on more meaning for me, I was still bored to tears.
Published December 22, 2017
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