Star Trek: Discovery - Su'Kal Review

DIS "Su'Kal"

Doug Jones has always been primarily known as "the monster guy". From the Faun in Pan's Labyrinth to the Amphibian Man in The Shape of Water, he brings a beguiling choreography to his characters. He even played an FBI agent turned into a human carrot in The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle! Saru has been a plum role for Jones, as he's developed a cohesive physical and emotional characterization for the character, who's even risen to the rank of Captain. Through a quirk of storytelling, "Su'Kal" offers Jones the chance to play Saru without Kelpien makeup. It's an unexpected move on the part of an episode that offers surrealism on the one hand and a sense of real peril on the other, as Discovery enters the season's endgame.

Saru, Burnham, and Culber beam down to the source of the Burn-related Kelpien distress call, and are immediately wrong-footed. The landing party has inexplicably seemed to switch species; Culber is Bajoran (complete with spiritually significant earring), Burnham is Trill, and Saru is human. The episode takes on the contours of a fairy tale, Burnham as a Trill red riding hood in a wintery forest - and beware the grim, unchained monster.

The episode's surreal touches, such as an Escher-esque maze of stairs, depict a large-scale holographic environment tailored to an emotionally immature Kelpien, alone on a planet made of dilithium for over a century. Given the Kelpien Su'Kal's culture, the program takes on tropes of Kelpien folklore meant to scare and educate children, a scenario that Saru ironically faces with the unvarnished face of Doug Jones.

It also comes out that when Su'Kal was a child, his emotional distress caused the Burn. In a way it's a twist on past Trek storytelling featuring childlike god-beings whose tantrums have galactic consequences (such as Trelane in the original series).

On Discovery, Tilly is in command. Burnham gives her a nice speech about an imperfection in the metal on an arm of the captain's chair that Tilly can use to ground herself, and Tilly certainly comes to need it. While she adapts to the responsibility of the chair with a commanding, competent affect close to monotone, Osyraa and her big spiky ship arrive and after a stand-off, board Discovery and claim the ship, along with its spore drive. Meanwhile, Book rescues Burnham, but stowaway Adira joins the remaining Saru and Culber to deal with radiation poisoning, and the emotional state of the orphaned Su'Kal.

So a sense of peril raises the stakes, going into the final stretch of the season. The episode is, as Book would say, a "game changer" (apparently a phrase that survives to the 32nd Century). It's also animated by its manufactured children's picture book setting, finding the show getting agreeably weird. 7/10.