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Thursday 5 November 2020

Star Trek: Discovery Review - ‘Forget Me Not’

The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out Full spoilers follow for Star Trek: Discovery Season 3, Episode 4. Read our review of Discovery Season 3, Episode 3 for where we left off. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Star Trek: Discovery returns to a classic race -- and their homeworld -- this week, but with a new spin, as Adira’s (Blu del Barrio) story continues. Meanwhile, the crew of the Discovery grapples with the trauma of having lost everyone and everything they knew to a thousand-year time jump, and Captain Saru (Doug Jones) and Doctor Culber (Wilson Cruz) attempt to help their friends heal. It all adds up to an occasionally overwrought but emotionally affecting episode. “Forget Me Not” picks up where we left off last week, with the reveal that Adira is a human who has somehow become the host to a Trill symbiont. The thing is, as Han Solo might say, that’s not how the Force works! Trill hosts are only supposed to carry symbionts, and Adira, for some reason, has no memory of how they were joined with “the squid” (as they call it). [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=star-trek-discovery-season-3-photos-forget-me-not&captions=true"] I like del Barrio a lot already, with just two episodes under their belt, as Adira brings a mix of youthful fun to the sometimes heavy dramatics of Disco, but at the same time has a somewhat sad edge that hints at the character’s backstory -- which of course is revealed in this episode. That Adira’s memories are blocked due to the unorthodox bonding of human and Trill (as well, it seems, as the abrupt and less than ideal situation under which the bonding came about) has meant that we’ve only really known the Adira part of the character so far, but by the episode’s end, as the symbiont -- who we learn is named Tal -- re-emerges, del Barrio will now be required to adjust how they play Adira as the composite being now known as Adira Tal. Hopefully, some of that youthful fun stays in the mix. (Jadzia Dax sure had it on Deep Space Nine.) When Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) accompanies Adira to the Trill homeworld in order to unlock the secret of their past, the pair are met with resistance, and a degree of horror, at the prospect of a symbiont joining with a human. But Burnham, who remains less concerned with Starfleet protocol after her year of living without the Discovery, has no problem phasering a few guys (in a nice bit of business) in order to get Adira to the Caves of Mak'ala in order to take a dip in one of the psychedelic pools there. Their goal: Find a way to communicate with Tal. There we learn that Adira had been living on a generation ship (a lot of those on Star Trek lately!) with their boyfriend Gray (Ian Alexander), a Trill who would be the new host for the symbiont Tal. But a catastrophe occurred, Gray was killed, and Adira took on Tal in order to save the symbiont. There’s a lot crammed into a little bit of time here, but the romance between the two plays well even if it lurches into tragedy so quickly. [ignvideo width=610 height=374 url=https://ift.tt/2I9hQ3c] Of course, Admiral Senna Tal (Kenneth Welsh) was the host prior to Gray, and is also the key to Burnham and the Disco team finding the location of the Federation. With Adira’s memories now unlocked, so is that information, but we also realize that they are seeing the image of Gray in a sort of Battlestar Galactica/Number Six kind of way (only Gray is way nicer than Six). It does seem awfully weird to take on an aspect of your ex’s personality and inherit all their memories in the way that Adira has done. And now Adira will also have that ex following them around all the time, even though no one else can see Gray. Is Gray really there? Is Adira losing it? They’re staying onboard the Discovery for now, so this story will continue. Meanwhile, Saru hosts a dinner for the bridge crew as he and Culber try to ease the group’s transition into the 32nd century, but it all goes horribly wrong (a.k.a. Tuesday night at the Tilly house) as tensions rise to the surface. This scene plays as a little too intense for a group of almost perfect Starfleeters. I don’t mind Discovery’s characters fighting and acting human, despite the Roddenberry edict that emerged in the TNG era that characters like this would be above such behavior (it doesn’t really jibe with The Original Series’ approach, for one thing). But I’m not sure the behavior here is totally believable, especially for Stamets (Anthony Rapp) and Detmer (Emily Coutts) who really tear into each other. That said, we do now have an answer to what’s been bothering Detmer, and it’s not that she has been taken over by Control or whatever. She’s just totally f#@ked up over what she’s been through recently, and she finally admits as much to Culber, who is being set up to be the new Counselor Troi of Star Trek, if you will. The good doctor also gets a nice moment with Burnham where he rightfully calls her a “responsibility hoarder.” She can’t disagree. It all culminates in a great scene in the shuttle bay where Saru is screening a Buster Keaton holo-movie for the crew… which is going over amazingly well. As Detmer and then Stamets arrive, they hug, and then Detmer and Owosekun (Oyin Oladejo) give each other a playful best-friends embrace. You’d be permitted to wipe a tear from your eye at this point; must be the holo-projector kicking up dust or something… [caption id="attachment_243459" align="aligncenter" width="1200"]Forget Me Not Blu del Barrio as Adira and Ian Alexander as Gray[/caption] Questions and Notes from the Q Continuum:
  • The last time I can remember a human bonding with a Trill was when Riker did so in the TNG episode “The Host,” and it didn’t go very well at all.
  • Tal has had at least six hosts prior to Adira, dating back as far as the era of Picard: Season 1, judging by the uniform one of them is wearing. That’s quite a lifespan for each host on average, let alone for Tal.
  • In the closing shot of the episode, as the Discovery flies away from the camera, you can see the movie playing from outside the shuttle bay.
  • So yes, the Sphere Data has now emerged as being part of the Discovery computer, and according to Saru, possibly protecting the Disco crew too. It will, someday, evolve further into Zora, the sentient computer from the Short Trek “Calypso.” In fact, it seems well on its way there already.


from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/38cOKuY
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