Ni'Var Ninjas

Story: Choose to Live
Written By: Terri Hughes Burton
Series: Star Trek: Discovery
Year: 2021

A Romulan from Ni'Var is stealing dilithium from several ships, and in her latest venture has killed a Starfleet captain.  The Romulan happens to be apart of the same nun group as Burnham's mother, so Burnham and Tilly are joined by Burnham's mom and another Romulan nun on a mission to find and arrest her.  Turns out she was doing some super secret mission to try and save an alien race that was in stasis trying to find a new home world and were being raided for latinum.  

Meanwhile, Stamets and Book head to Ni"Var to try and figure out the anomaly, which is now being called the Dark Matter Anomaly, or the DMA for short.  The science effort proves not to be super successful, as the DMA fits all the criteria for a priomordial wormhole but one...and no one can find evidence of that last one so it must be something else.  This story really about Book finding something that helps him begin his healing process. 

There is also a C-plot about Gray getting a robot body but will it work.  I found this to be pretty uninteresting. I think the whole Gray/Adira storyline feels like it is missing something.  I think that at least Adira seems like a solid character with room to grow...but Gray feels like such a non-character to me.  I am for representation in Trek, the more the better, but these characters feel less like "representation" to me, and a little more like "tokenism".  I think that sucks, because the communities that want inclusion deserve something more than what Gray is.  I mean Adira has their moments...but so far they get saddled with everything they do being about Gray.  And Gray's a flat character!

The A-story with Burnham and Tilly is decent, and despite the overly choreographed ninja fight sequences with swordplay...it at least has a flavor of Star Trek to it.  It may be overly melodramatic for my tastes, but it is better than a good chunk of this show. 

NEXT TIME: New Paths