Star Trek: Discovery - People of Earth Review

DIS "People of Earth"

"Dialogue is an effective strategy." - Saru

"People of Earth" finds Star Trek: Discovery flexing its muscles, balancing heart and humor as it takes a standard Trek plot pattern and elevates it with movie-quality production values and elegant enough plotting. After the slightly poky drama of last week's installment, this is a solid register for the show to play in.

The first order of business in "People of Earth" is reuniting Burnham with the Discovery crew. Hugs all around, except for Georgiou, who's not the hugging type. And in another example of the poignant value of standing on Starfleet ceremony, Burnham slowly turns the big chair to offer the captainship to Saru, like she's Jaime Lannister knighting Brienne. Mirror Gabriel Lorca and Christopher Pike were Captains of the year. Saru is here to stay.

Next it's off to 32nd Century Earth, which doesn't exactly roll out the welcome mat and is no longer part of a Federation, notional or otherwise. (I smell a bit of a Brexit allegory.) The Earth Defense Force boards Discovery and insists the vintage ship leave the isolationist planet to its own devices. To prepare for the official "inspection", non-Starfleet personnel have to suit up to avoid questions, so cue Book chafing at wearing the form-fitting uniform. And after a couple years, it's good to see Georgiou back in a Starfleet uniform, although I suppose we've never seen the Mirror version in one before. It makes her unvarnished advice feel more authoritative, like Discovery has its own resident eccentric Admiral.

Earth Defense has been tangling with raiders led by someone called Wen, who intimidates folk with his Black Manta from Aquaman mask and grumbly vocoder. But Discovery being Starfleet, they get the two sides talking face to face, and it turns out the scary bug dude is really just Stargate Atlantis' Christopher Heyerdahl underneath.

Meanwhile, Discovery gains a new crewmember: Earth Defense whiz kid Adira (Blu del Barrio), who's actually a human host to a Trill symbiont. That big physiological development aside, one of the episode's rare missteps comes during their big scene with Stamets, as Jeff Russo's score goes over the line yelling, "This scene is light-hearted!" (The actor is non-binary, hence the pronoun at this point.)

In the end, Tilly and the rest of the bridge crew visit a favorite studying tree at what was Starfleet Academy. For a post-apocalyptic universe, Earth still looks pretty good. "People of Earth" is the show firing on all cylinders when it comes to doing TV Trek in the 21st Century, so the space chess and themes of negotiation over violence get a nice modern sheen. 7/10.

Stray observation:

- We see Discovery repair drones outside the ship, familiar from the animated Short Trek "Ephraim and Dot".