We’ve had a month to take in Star Trek: Discovery’s epic third season finale, “That Hope is You, Part 2.” So it’s high time to revisit our favorite moments from the season’s premiere, “That Hope is You, Part 1.”
(Surely Discovery has set an industry record for time between parts one and two of a two-part episode!)
The Fall of the Federation Revealed
Michael Burnham’s exhilaration at safely arriving 930 years in her future quickly turns to alarm when she meets and fights courier Cleveland “Book” Booker in what is likely the franchise’s most violent “meet-cute.” It then becomes disbelief and dismay when Book tells her the United Federation of Planets is gone.
Learning the Federation is a “ghost” comes as much of a gut-punch to Trek fans as it does to Burnham. That blaster beam in composer Jeff Russo’s score drives the loss home.
This moment introduces the mystery of the Burn and sets up the season’s driving story arc. But it also reminds us a brighter tomorrow isn’t a given. “True believers” must keep the vision front and center to make and keep it a reality.
Burnham Tells Her “Super Cool,” “Completely Devastating” Story
Under the influence of a high-dosage puff of the regulators’ truth drug, Burnham talks—and talks, and talks!—about her trip from the past “for the sake of creation” and to “save all the things.”
Sonequa Martin-Green plays this scene to perfection. She shows off comic chops the intensely dramatic Discovery doesn’t often give her the opportunity to call on. Her rapid-fire, self-aware commentary is a delight, from her realization she’s “reflexively supportive” to her remark that Ensign Tilly, her “friend with red hair,” better not get any of this talk-triggering stuff.
My impression was season three gave us more happy moments with Burnham than we got in either of the previous seasons. Here’s hoping we’ll get more character-based comedic moments in season four.
Burnham and Book Jump Off a Cliff
The transporter has always been one of Star Trek’s coolest pieces of technology. But this season, Discovery found a way to make it even cooler. By the 32nd century, the transporter has gone portable and personal!
Personal transporters make it possible for Book and Burnham to lead Ithor and his fellow Mercantile regulators (our first glimpse, we’ll learn in a later episode, of the Emerald Chain) on a fast-paced chase across Hima, culminating in their leap off a sheer, soaring cliff face into the ocean below, where they can’t be tracked.
It’s an ambitious and exciting action sequence that brings action blockbuster thrills to “That Hope Is You, Part 1.” It also anticipates the personal transporter’s pivotal role in retaking Discovery from the Emerald Chain at season’s end.
Book Brings Molly to Sanctuary Four
Molly, the huge trance worm Book’s been carrying in his ship’s cargo hold, stands in the proud Star Trek tradition of “monsters” who turn out to be nothing of the sort.
The trance worms, we learn, were on an endangered species list. Without the Federation to enforce it, they neared extinction—apparently as victims of other species’ aggression and exploitation, if Ithor’s comment about it being “served fresh” is any indication.
Yes, Book “sics” Molly on the regulators. But his ultimate goal is getting Molly to the waters of Sanctuary Four, where she can breed to ensure her species’ future.
Not unlike “The Devil in the Dark” decades before, this episode sounds like the familiar Trek theme of respect and compassion for the galaxy’s infinite diversity of life.
Burnham Commissions Aditya Sahil
“That Hope Is You, Part 1” ends with a powerful reaffirmation of faith in the Federation.
Burnham formally swears in Aditya Sahil, the sole guardian of a long-abandoned relay station, as the station’s acting communications chief. In that capacity, he will continue to help her search for the Discovery.
Sahil’s promotion is more than a personal victory. Only a commissioned officer is able to raise the Federation’s flag, and he has “waited so long to see it on wall.”
The simple act of unfurling the Federation’s flag rekindles belief in the ideals for which it stands—and promises viewers we’ll see those ideals on full display throughout season three of Discovery.
What are your favorite moments from “That Hope Is You, Part 1”? Share them in the comments below!