Star Trek Discovery Season 5 Eps 1-4 Review: Waltz of Jellico

Longtime fans of Star Trek may remember Captain Jellico, played by Ronny Cox, from decades ago on The Next Generation and more recently on Prodigy. A real hardass of a Captain who took over the Enterprise-D while Picard was on a covert mission, he liked more formality on the bridge and a tougher work schedule, all of which led to him butting heads with Riker. Ultimately, though, his hawkish tactics proved effective, and he forced the Cardassians to back down and release a now-captured Picard. He may have been mean to many of our favorite characters, but he was essential for the mission at hand.

Star Trek Discovery has needed a Jellico ever since it lost Michelle Yeoh’s Captain Georgiou and her Mirror Emperor double — season 4 proved particularly insufferable in its sentimentality, focusing on couples and their issues. Fun fact: it’s entirely possible to be down with the politics of showing all sorts of diverse couples as normal and still wish Star Trek would focus more on the business of trekking through the stars. The actual plot last season basically stretched the premise of The Motion Picture out to 13 grueling hours; meanwhile, characters endlessly talked, cried, and worked on romantic issues. For one season, it was almost exactly the show that chronically online, angry YouTubers pretend every new sci-fi or superhero movie and show is.

Ronny Redux

So the addition of Rayner (Callum Keith Rennie, in massive prosthetic ears that make Spock’s almost insignificant) as a Jellico type to season 5 is the most welcome change. He’s the Star Trek equivalent of a Cold Warrior, and the TV equivalent of an ’80s or ’90s lead out of retirement, unused to the resurgent touchy-feely peaceful Federation after years of the disaster known as the Burn. Though he inevitably butts heads with Captain Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and all the touchy-feely types on her crew, she soon sees the value of having an actual badass on her crew. Especially since the story contrives to bring her lover Booker (David Ajala) back aboard yet again, because indeed, there will still be couples issues on this show.

Incidentally, Burnham’s way less hardass about the whole sleeping-with-coworkers thing than Sisko, who was willing to have his fiancé followed and bugged, or Picard, who knew his wild archaeologist lover was not to be trusted. Discovery has become the show where love interests die tragically only to be resurrected almost immediately by handwaving magic technobabble, which makes it harder to worry too much about the latest romance for Saru (Doug Jones).

Co-Counseling

Wouldn’t you know it, even the villains are a couple this time. Shin Hati lookalike Moll (Eve Harlow) and her reptilian boyfriend L’ak (Elias Toufexis) are thrill-seekers in search of the same MacGuffin as Discovery this time out. It’s an object in multiple pieces, not unlike Doctor Who’s Key to Time, and allows for a lot of scenery changes and new environments on an intergalactic scavenger hunt.

Clearly, the Discovery brain trust realized something was amiss last season, as their use of several tried and true fixes may indicate. Ever since The Wrath of Khan, Trek has course-corrected by going back to a plot point from a classic episode — in this case, all we can say without spoiling is that there is a callback fans should recognize. There’s also much more of David Cronenberg, and even such playing-the-hits tropes as a time-loop story, a desert chase, a misunderstood monster, and a level of Tomb Raider for dummies. Screening it this early for reviewers indicates confidence, some of which is earned.

It’s Tough to Be First

Discovery still remains the least of the current Trek shows, though it had the hardest job of all of them by being first and single-handedly spawning the rest, while undergoing major creative resets almost every season. And it may not seem like much of a selling point that the final season’s slogan could be, “We’re 50% less insufferable this time.” Borrowing from Avengers Endgame just a touch, however, it uses the time-loop episode to revisit key moments and remind fans why they’ve liked at least some of the series to date. Every show has to have season-long overarching arcs these days, but the fact that Discovery is searching for a multi-part item spread all across space allows for episode-long mini-stories within the bigger one this time.

Discovery’s end comes none too soon, now that the Trek franchise overall has embraced the immediate post-Picard period once again and can move the story we know forward. It wouldn’t be altogether shocking if season 5 somehow ended with a chronological reset that ends everyone back to the “present,” leaving the slate free for other shows not to be bound by a canonical future. Really, though, most of this crew needs to spend time at home working on their issues and not in high-pressure, galaxy-saving situations.

What Would Kirk Do?

Star Trek primarily succeeds as a workplace drama, but with a few exceptions, the Discovery team aren’t the coworkers you’d want. Rather than the squad you need at your back in a foxhole, they’re the cubicle-mates who always insist you sign birthday cards and have cake and look at endless pictures of their adopted kids while you’re trying to actually get stuff done. There are signs of hope so far this season, enough to merit a passing grade — Rayner is practically a show-saver, and the return of Mary Wiseman’s mildly irreverent Tilly was a good call — but consider it highly conditional.

Grade: 3/5

Star Trek Discovery Season 5 debuts April 4th on Paramount+.