Star Trek: Discovery season 5, episode 3, “Jinaal,” is a filler episode, and it’s amazingly fun. They do a lot of things to keep this roller coaster going. Burnham is still hot on the trail of Moll and L’ak, and she stays ahead of the game by visiting Trill to dig up more secrets about the hidden Progenitor technology that may or may not be out there. Rayner is doing his best to make friends and play nice. Gray and Adira have to work out what’s going on in their relationship. And Saru, who’s only just beginning to be an ambassador, has to navigate his new engagement and what it could mean for his future wife’s political career.
The episode is actually really dense, and I do mean it when I call it filler. For those of you playing at home, some people like to think a filler episode is just filler, that it doesn’t matter. No. What it means is the overarching plot isn’t addressed in any great exciting detail. There’s no fast pace taking us there quicker. We’ve got to navigate slowly through the plot threads, and we’ll get somewhere. These episodes tend to be the connective tissue between the major events.
There are four plots happening, and some are more important than others, so I’m going to get the smaller ones out of the way quickly.
Adira and Gray: It’s Complicated
The D plot is Adira and Gray, and they’re facing a relationship status shift. Back in the day, when people were using Facebook, this is where you’d say “it’s complicated.”
The end result is that they’re going to break up, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t still going to be friends and care for one another. Gray is a synthetic now, much like Picard ended up over on Star Trek: Picard, so what does this mean for the two characters? I’m assuming Gray becomes less of a recurring character and more of a cameo that happens every now and again. They might do stuff over video and whatnot, but their relationship has for the most part run its course, at least in the way it is now.
That’s literally the sum total of the D plot. We do come back to Adira at the end of the episode.
Saru, T’Rina, and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
The C plot is Saru. He’s engaged, and his future wife T’Rina, the president of Ni’Var, is as excited as Vulcans can be to get their announcement out. You see it immediately from her assistant, who’s like, you’re going to put it out today? Right now? Okay. And he goes off, and you’re thinking, that’s a weird way to behave, but I guess I get it.
So he goes and sees Saru, and he says, look, logic dictates, when I do the math, I’ve got to come to you. You two really should postpone. Not even just the announcement. The engagement in general. It could have really harsh effects on T’Rina’s political aspirations and her career moving forward, mainly because there’s a faction of Vulcan purists, which is an idea I’ve always loved. They’re against all of this involvement with the Federation happening again, but mostly they’re concerned that there are so many other cultures influencing them. And now their president is literally going to get engaged to an outsider. That feels way too extreme for them.
Think about that for a second. Sarek had a hard time. He was given all kinds of nonsense over his wife. I can’t imagine what the president of Ni’Var is going to have to deal with when she brings home her new husband. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.
There’s a little scuffle where Saru tries to say something and she gets upset about it, and then finally it’s, look, I should have done this and that. It’s a plot thread that comes and goes almost as fast as it can, and it’s there so we don’t forget these characters exist and are still here dealing with their things.
Rayner Meets the Crew, Twenty Words at a Time
The B plot is Rayner. At the very beginning he tells Burnham there are better ways to use him, that connection isn’t exactly where his skill set lies. “Connection isn’t a skill. It’s a choice.”
To him it’s busy work, because quite frankly their wonderful computer has every ability to handle it herself, so why in the world are they going to sit here and waste resources? And what does the captain do? She says no. You’re not going down to Trill with me. You stay here, and I want you to get to know everybody.
So Rayner is being set up to understand a little better what’s going on with this crew. Tilly has been picked to take him around the ship, introduce him to everybody and get him his face time, his one on ones. He, however, is in the science lab, essentially doing Zora’s job. Finally he puts his foot down, God love her, and agrees: all right, fine, they can come to me, five minute intervals, let’s go. For the first couple he literally says, in twenty words or less, tell me something about you I can’t find in your file. That’s really the extent of it.
At some point Tilly bursts out at him: you can’t do this. What sets her off is Stamets. He comes in excited. He’s excited for what the Progenitor technology can mean, for that kind of scientific advancement. Remember, the spore drive program is shut down. That’s not happening. So he’s trying to find a new purpose, and this technology could very well end up being it, because in the right hands it could do anything. It could potentially bring people back to life. It could create life from scratch. It’s unbelievable.
Rayner points out, “It sounds like it’d be very dangerous in the wrong hands.” “Well, yes, but think of all the good it could do in the right ones.”
I think we’re going to find out later on that it most likely ends up being Stamets with his hands on it. I’m seeing some foreshadowing about things to come.
Anyway, Rayner pooh-poohs him and kicks him out, and Tilly’s like, what is wrong with you? I haven’t seen him that excited about anything in a while, and you’re just a jerk.
She leaves. A little later Rayner comes to her in the lounge and gives her his evaluations of some of the crew they’ve met, and she tells him that analyzing their files is not the same thing as knowing them. You have to understand these people, especially if you want to command them, if you want to be part of their leadership. He explains that on his ship there was a shorthand, and everyone understood it. And she says they’ll get there, but you have to make the effort to show them that you care about them as people.
That’s where they leave it. They don’t resolve it, which tells me it’s going to be part of that character’s ongoing development.
One Chapter in a Novel They Didn’t Know Was the Last
Remember, every season of Discovery is essentially one adventure. In the old series it would have been a two-parter or something. It would have been a big story and they’d have had to break it up. Here, every episode is a chapter in the novel that is this season’s adventure. With that in mind, I think we’re going to see more development of Rayner over time, and potentially some lead up to something.
Remember too that they filmed this season with no knowledge that the show was going to be cancelled. So there are probably a lot of interconnected plot threads that were designed to be dangling participles, things that would have led to something else in the future. When the announcement did come through that the show was cancelled, the showrunners, Kurtzman and them, asked Paramount: can you at least give us the opportunity to wrap up these threads and film a coda? I think that’s what we end up getting toward the end of the season, more wrapped up stuff that puts a nice bow on not only Discovery but the season itself.
The Riddle, the Trill, and a Borrowed Doctor
The big adventure is Burnham’s, and it continues from last week. They set up sensors back on Lyrek, the planet they were at before, and as they’re heading to Trill those sensors get tripped. Moll and L’ak have gone back to Lyrek. That means they’ve realized what they’re looking for wasn’t on Betazed.
When Discovery arrives at Trill, they’re met with a riddle. “There’s a question you must answer.” “I’m not sure you understand the stakes here. This is not a matter for debate.” “You must answer the question.”
They answer it, they go down, and they meet Jinaal Bix, a Trill who 800 years ago was a scientist. He’s been waiting for this encounter, waiting for this question. There’s a process they can go through that gives that one personality the opportunity to come out, and with no other options Dr. Culber decides, you know what, I’m going to take one for the team. Dr. Culber takes on the personality.
Wilson Cruz does an amazing job with this. It really is fun seeing a new personality come out. Any time Star Trek does this I’ve enjoyed it, because getting to see actors play characters other than their own is always fun.
He’s asking them questions, they’re asking questions back, and we get the full backstory. Shortly after the Progenitors’ technology came to light, the president of the Federation at the time called together these six scientists, some of them from non-Federation worlds, a Romulan scientist among them, and said go forth, seek, and find this thing out. They did. They tracked it down and found the Progenitor technology, and it was unbelievable and awesome. The scientists also knew it would be dangerous in the hands of the wrong people.
The Dominion War, Said in Passing
Burnham asks him why they hid it, and the answer is that it was the height of the Dominion War. They didn’t know who they could trust.
It’s such a great callback. I’ve said on more than one occasion that this show does amazing work when it remembers it’s part of the greater canon, part of the bigger legacy. What I really loved about this moment is how little they made of it. They didn’t show a graphic. They didn’t sit on it too long. It was something said in passing: “The Dominion War was raging. Everyone saw an enemy in everyone else, and we knew that technology could be used for great destruction.”
That makes the world feel more lived in. For those of us who’ve been fans of Star Trek forever and ever, that’s a joy, because we finally get to see what came next. We get to see a culture where the Dominion War is as far back as World War III has been for those of us who’ve watched TOS and TNG all this time. I love that lived-in feel.
The Test on the Surface, and the Tracker on the Sleeve
Jinaal leads them out to a place where there are these big giant creatures that can cloak themselves. Book and Burnham have to hide, and they work out that this is a breeding ground. They find the creature’s eggs. Book gets injured. And finally she says, look, xenoanthropology 101, you’ve got to make peace with the creature you’re observing. So she does her best, palms out, no weapon, and she tells Book to use his Kwejian empathic abilities to communicate with it. He does, and he tells her they’re going to let us leave.
They find Culber, Bix rather, not too far away, and she’s like, really? You knew this was a trap? He says he had to know what they’d do when it came to something vastly more dangerous. Would you try to communicate? What would you do? They’ve earned the next piece, and he gives it to them.
Meanwhile they already know Moll and L’ak have to be on the way, so they wrap everything up, go back, and take the personality out of Culber.
Here’s where we come back to Adira. As they’re leaving, everybody’s hugging and shaking hands, and Moll, hiding in disguise as a Trill, puts something on Adira’s sleeve that blends right into it. Probably programmable matter, a tracking device of some sort. So now those two are going to have the ability to get ahead and catch what’s actually happening.
The Verdict
Star Trek: Discovery’s “Jinaal” is a solid 8 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.
I’m excited about this episode. It wasn’t huge, but I see the threads. The one thing I’ve learned to really appreciate doing this job is how some filler episodes have tremendous value, and this is one of those. I saw the groundwork they’re laying.
Is this an episode I’ll watch again in the future? I don’t know. I might skip it, only because now I know these things. But the first time you watch it, it’s pretty darn exciting. It isn’t like the last two episodes. It isn’t a super exciting episode. But it’s on the journey and it’s taking us there, and I’m here for it.
I don’t know how I feel about Rayner yet. I feel like they don’t know whether to make him a full jerk or give him that big of an arc. I know this actor plays some prickly characters like this, so I’m used to it, especially if you’ve seen Battlestar Galactica.
Did you enjoy where they’re going with this, and do you like what happened with some of the other characters? Tell me what you thought in the comments on the video above. If you’re a big Star Trek fan, the channel has playlists for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Star Trek: Picard too.
