Discovery Season 4 Episode 10 “The Galactic Barrier” Review

Discovery Season 4 Episode 10 "The Galactic Barrier" Review

When Paramount announced last month that Star Trek: Discovery would be picked up for a fifth season, they were explicit that this next batch would consist of ten episodes, rather than thirteen or fourteen. Fans have speculated that this is due to Discovery no longer being co-financed and distributed by Netflix overseas, who may have insisted on the longer running time. (Why is it that Netflix originals are nearly always two or three episodes too long, no matter how many episodes they have?) Discovery has a surplus of characters to explore and a massive legacy to mine for ideas so it’s rare for an episode to feel like total filler, but this week’s chapter is clearly the victim of story decompression. In “The Galactic Barrier,” Discovery both literally and figuratively slams into a big wall.

Star Trek: Discovery

The Bryce of Doing Business

The crew of the USS Discovery is preparing to embark on a desperate diplomatic mission to an area of space outside of the Milky Way, beyond the galactic barrier that no known vessel has ever successfully penetrated. Discovery is to play host to a diplomatic envoy that includes Starfleet’s Dr. Hirai (Hiro Kanagawa, See) and two familiar faces: United Earth General Ndoye (Phumzile Sitole), and Vulcan President T’Rina (Tara Rosling), who hope to find some way of communicating with Unknown Species 10-C. The Federation has been operating based on the data that Stamets and Zora assembled in the previous episode, estimating that the 10-C’s destructive Dark Matter Anomaly would stay put for another week while it gobbles up the area’s supply of boromite. Now, thanks to the rash actions of scientist Ruon Tarka, the DMA is much more intense and is likely to finish its work in under twelve hours. With no telling where it might appear next or how many lives it might put in jeopardy, Discovery’s mission has now become even more desperate, urgent enough that Federation President Rillak (Chelah Horsdal) decides she must come along and brave the danger herself.

Our characters take one last deep breath before plunging into the depths of space for what they imagine might be a suicide mission. On advice from Dr. Culber, Saru approaches T’Rina and confesses that he’s interested in exploring their relationship beyond friendship, but before she can either affirm or rebuff his advance, she’s pulled away by an aide. Minutes later, Saru learns that T’Rina will be joining Discovery’s mission, and he fears that the journey to 10-C space will be not only dangerous, but awkward. And, speaking of awkwardness, Ensign Adira Tal is back on board after visiting their boyfriend Grey on Trill. Adira is adjusting well to their separation and to their Starfleet responsibilities, and their surrogate dad Stamets embarrasses them a bit in front of Captain Burnham with his effusive praise. Later, during the mission, Stamets apologizes for gushing but warns that he is always going to be an enthusiastic parent. After a few weeks apart, it’s a cute moment to reestablish the family dynamic that’s developed between Stamets, Culber, and their 32nd century kids, even if Jeff Russo’s playful “family chat” music is a little over the top.

Saru bids farewell to Lt. Commander Bryce (Ronnie Rowe), who remains at Federation HQ to help Dr. Kovich (David Cronenberg) and his team with their efforts to communicate beyond the galactic barrier. (Ronnie Rowe has a new gig on the CBC/BET+ series The Porter.) Once again, Discovery loses a crew member just as it seems we’re getting to know him, which is one of the show’s most tiresome trends. His successor on the bridge will be his protégé, Lt. Christopher (Orville Cummings), who has manned the communications station on and off throughout the season. I would be excited to see what this change means for the dynamic on the bridge, if the storytellers showed much interest in exploring it. I like the idea of a younger, less seasoned officer who isn’t a cartoonish ball of nervous energy (see: early Adira), particularly if Christopher is another 32nd century native who is new to Discovery and brings a different set of ideas and experiences with him. But, there’s a strong implication later in the episode that he’s a known quantity to the Discovery crew who likely started his life on 23rd century Earth like everyone else, which feels like a missed opportunity. Given that we may never actually learn anything significant about Lt. Christopher anyway, I suppose it doesn’t matter.

Star Trek: Discovery

Show and Tell

Meanwhile, Cleveland Booker and Ruon Tarka (Shawn Doyle) determine their next move. Book’s first instinct is to maroon Tarka with a pre-industrial civilization and head off on his own, but Tarka convinces him that they’ll need each other if they still plan to confront the 10-C. Their individual goals are unchanged —Tarka wants to harness the 10-C’s power source to help him escape to a paradise dimension, Book wants to stop the DMA by any means necessary, and both missions will take them to 10-C space, beyond the galactic barrier. Since the mycelial network only extends to the edge of the galaxy (a retcon I’ll address later), Book will need to jump near to the barrier and then fly through it, which can only be done after augmenting his hull with programmable antimatter. This resource is readily available to Discovery, but Book hasn’t got any. Naturally Tarka has a supply stashed away somewhere, and he’s willing to share it so long as they continue working together. Book has little choice but to agree, and they set a course for the abandoned Emerald Chain facility where Tarka was once enslaved.

While visiting this planet, Tarka tells Book the story of his imprisonment, and his friendship with Oros (Osric Chau, The Flash), the lab partner with whom he was forced to work. In flashback, we see their first meeting and the growth of their relationship as they plan to escape to an idyllic paradise by means of a multi-dimensional transporter. I enjoy Shawn Doyle and Osric Chau’s scenes together and the warm familiarity that they develop, but since we’ve already heard Tarka tell this story to Book in a previous episode, seeing it played out in front of us doesn’t actually add much. Shawn Doyle has effectively conveyed his love for his friend and his regret over their parting in his performance each time his character has recalled the experience, and there’s not enough that’s new in the flashback to enhance the picture he’s already painted in our heads. There’s a single additional twist in this version of the story — that Tarka is initially planted in Oros’ lab to spy on him and chooses friendship instead — but this reveal happens so fast and is forgiven so quickly that it has no impact.

The aim of this attention to Tarka is clear: to recontextualize him as a sympathetic antihero in the aftermath of his betrayal in last week’s episode. This might have worked if we didn’t already know most of this story and hadn’t already been weighing Tarka’s actions against his motivations. Yes, there’s a difference between being told about a character’s experiences and seeing it for ourselves (and of course seeing it is better) but a wiser move would have been to withhold Tarka’s backstory until this point in the season, when he would benefit most from playing at our sympathies.

Star Trek: Discovery

Break the Wall Down

Discovery spore jumps to the edge of the map and attempts to penetrate the galactic barrier, which seems to function like a cellular membrane around the Milky Way. For the record, there is no such real phenomenon around our galaxy, but the deadly wall of energy around Star Trek’s Milky Way was established way back in “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” the second pilot to The Original Series. (A really good one! Check it out if you haven’t.) Discovery has run into a Jurassic Park problem where, in order to avoid fan backlash, the internal history of the franchise takes priority over modern scientific understanding. On the plus side, since it’s totally made up to begin with, this frees the writers of Discovery to imagine it however they please, and they choose to depict it here like an energy membrane made up of both stable and unstable cells. Lt. Commander Detmer (Emily Coutts) is charged with piloting the vessel through the deadly unstable cells and then finding relative safety through the stable ones until they find a current that can carry them to the other side of the barrier. This is a little silly and involves a lot of clunky technobabble, but it gives the crew a puzzle to navigate, which is more interesting than a plain wall to punch through.

Just before they enter the barrier and leave communications range, Captain Burnham and President Rillak receive a message from Admiral Vance (Oded Fehr) with some grave news: the DMA has moved, and its debris field will spread and destroy both Earth and Ni’Var in a matter of days. Burnham wants to inform the delegates and crew, but Rillak is concerned that this will distract them from the mission and erode their hopes, so she orders Burnham’s silence. Next comes the most clumsily heavy-handed scene Discovery has served us in ages: While struggling through the deadly home stretch of the galactic barrier, the bridge crew comforts themselves by spouting off the vacation spots they’re each going to visit after they complete their mission, and of course they’re all on Earth. It’s not that this scene would be awful in a vacuum, it’s that it would 100% not happen if not for a previous scene that these characters did not witness. The crew never talks like this. Outside of bad war movies, no one talks like this. We just happened to need a scene that stresses how important Earth is to the crew of Discovery, so here it is.

After this ray of hope helps the Discovery crew work through the danger, Burnham and Rillak agree that everyone should hear the hard truth from their President anyway. This subplot demonstrates how much their working relationship has matured since the season premiere, but otherwise feels like a shoddy, forced conflict designed to make Discovery’s journey across the barrier fill a full 50 minute episode. Discovery continues on to the next leg of their journey towards 10-C space, which will hopefully be more eventful than this one.

While “The Galactic Barrier” itself is a disappointing episode, it does tease an interesting development that could benefit future episodes of this season, as well as future seasons or even spin-offs. In contrast to other Star Trek series, the 32nd century galaxy of Discovery feels small, fully explored and instantly traversable thanks to the spore drive. As Bryce so excitedly explains on his way out the door, the ability to communicate or travel beyond the galactic barrier expands the world of the show significantly. Since this episode retcons the size of the mycelial network so that it extends only to the edge of the galaxy (as opposed to connecting the entire universe and all possible universes, as we were told in Season One), extragalactic exploration would have to be done the old-fashioned way, by warp, and therefore retain its sense of scale and mystery. I like that this opens up the 32nd century to more old-school Boldly Going without putting a torch to what makes this era unique.

Not that “moving too fast” was a problem for Discovery this week!

Author: Deann Hawkins