Review - "Unification III" The Powerful Conclusion Of A Trek Classic...

Review – “Unification III” The Powerful Conclusion Of A Trek Classic…

I sound like a broken record at this point, but Star Trek: Discovery this season seem to be more than ever on a mission to reflect stories that we all face in real life, by giving us catharsis and a solution through its narratives and themes. I don’t know if the showrunners and writers had a crystal ball gazing into the future when they wrote this season, but the way they have continuously and perfectly nailed so many prescient topics is just astounding.

Amid a still raging pandemic, we come face to face with a story about addressing the struggles of separating science from the cultural and political context. And in a nation still dealing with division, trauma, and the feelings of disconnectedness and lack of belonging, we see a character forced to confront those issues in order to move forward and reach recovery and happiness.

I feel almost sad that the naysayers of the show are missing out on such rich and honest storytelling about life, about stories that matter and have consequences.

Speaking of consequences, the fallout from Saru’s decision last week to relieve Michael (Sonequa Martin-Green) as his first officer continues in small and big ways. Saru (Doug Jones) finds himself having to walk quite a tightrope between dealing with his weariness over Michael’s decision-making and the fact that as Spock’s sister she is the only choice to establish a dialogue with the former world of Vulcan. Numerous times this episode, he is quick to point out Michael’s demotion and feels somewhat unsettled when she makes decisions at the moment that he does not know what it could mean. This shows what a serious breach of trust Michael’s decision last week meant to Saru who had thought he could entirely rely on Michael to have his back and now feeling unsettled and in many ways at a loss for how to renew that sense of trust again. And really, this whole issue of trust is what I think drove Saru to make the decision to give acting first officer position to Tilly (Mary Wiseman).

(CBS) Tilly & Burnham Analyse The Black Box Data

Before the episode aired, when people suggested who might take over, I was entirely against Tilly being given the job because she is young and inexperienced, and not to mention how many more people higher in rank that should have the position, namely Lt. Nilsson (Sara Mitich) or Lt. Rhys (Patrick Kwok-Choon). But when the episode aired and we heard Saru’s reasons, it made sense to me. Saru never doubted Michael’s intentions but what hurt the most was that she went behind his back after agreeing with him. He trusted her and she did not return that trust. Saru knows that Tilly will speak her mind and not be compliant, but he also can trust her to do what she agrees to once the decision has been made. He’s watched others struggle to try to find their place, but he’s seen Tilly rise to the occasion. He’s hoping that some of her steadiness might rub off on others who are still struggling. Also, he made a point of saying this is only an acting position until he could find someone permanent, meaning that he is learning to take his time. He rushed into things with Michael in a desire to get back to normalcy, but Saru is learning and adapting to the reality that they can’t go back and have to move forward. And really, Tilly has no Command Training Program anymore so in a way, this is a new way for Saru to mentor Tilly more closely on hand.

Tilly is, of course, shocked and surprised, as likely many viewers were. And I do want to note that there is a valid concern that the show might have played into a trope of a highly experienced and qualified Black woman getting replaced by an unqualified and inexperienced White woman. This is an issue that Black people and other minority groups often face in the workplace. However, I like to believe that the show is aware of that concern, which is why Tilly voices many of the concerns about her qualifications and rank that we all have, and why we see her conversation with Stamets about how this is weird and disturbing. I do think though that this story was done in service of greater character arcs. Tilly’s story this season seems to be finding her confidence and assertiveness, losing some of her innocence and nervousness to being more seasoned and experienced. We have seen some of that in the past few episodes, and even this episode we see Tilly reminding Michael that she had put Tilly in a tough position running off on her own and not saying anything, that it should be Tilly’s choice to lie to Saru or not, and what if Michael had died. Gaining this temporary position allows Tilly to stretch herself and be tested in ways that she had not been before. And in a way, this allows a level of burden and restriction to be removed from Michael who as the lead character needs a degree of mobility in this narrative to be out and about and in the middle of all the action, which as the first officer in a still weary Starfleet, would be hard for her to do.

(CBS) President T’Rina (Tara Rosling)

Ultimately, I think Michael will return to the first officer position permanently. The reason I think that is at the end of this episode, we see Saru looking at Michael in a changed way after witnessing her baring her heart out about her fears and doubts. I think that honesty from Michael allowed Saru to see what she was truly dealing with and why she did what she did. Saru and Michael never truly talked about the struggles of her one year away from everyone, sure he might have been aware of her struggles, but they never had a heart to heart talk. I don’t think Saru realized the depth of what Michael was enduring or how much she felt she didn’t belong with this family. Not only that, but I think Saru’s talks with President T’Rina (Tara Rosling) of Ni’Var has opened his eyes to the wisdom of letting go of maxims and proverbs, and perhaps not hold so rigidly to only what the Federation wants or needs, but that sometimes the needs of the few can be just as important as the needs of the many.

Speaking of that sentiment, the person who once uttered the iconic proverbs plays a central part in the main story of this episode, even if he is there in spirit only. What has been one of the unique strengths of Star Trek: Discovery is its ability to expand upon past canon and allow us to experience those old stories in new ways, recontextualized with new information. Last season, the show had expertly and brilliantly given us an unexpected sequel to that original unaired pilot “The Cage” and a story arc for Captain Pike (Jeffery Hunter/Anson Mount) that culminated in the glimpse of his future that completely changes how we view the TOS two-parter “The Menagerie”. In this episode, the show took the threads of TNG’s “Unification Part 1 and Part 2” and give it lasting impact not just to the episode but to the make-up of this new future. Spock’s efforts to push the Romulans and Vulcans into reunification did succeed. It was once a dream but now it has become a reality. But that reality doesn’t mean everything is happily ever after and has its own shares of struggles that could still tip one way or the other.

And in comes Michael Burnham, daughter of Sarek, sister of Spock. I still remember when people would question why to make Michael the sister of Spock, I remember people saying that her place in the story had to be justified (as if all characters had to be justified before they could be considered to have belonged in a story). This episode, I imagine, is the writers and showrunners’ way of giving those people the middle finger, because this story can only happen in this way because she is Spock’s sister. The show has taken what naysayers had used to complain about and proudly declared that yes, Michael is Spock’s sister and this matters to her, to Spock, and to both of their place in this story and in this universe. And in a beautiful moment of linking past to present, Michael watches a recording of Spock from the TNG episodes, taking in the man that her brother became, and realizing that he had indeed taken her last advice to heart about reaching out to those different from him and let them guide him. Book jokingly comments that both Michael and Spock are chronic overachievers, which is accurate.

(CBS) Burnham Listens To Her Brother Talk About Unification and We Get To See Nimoy In Trek One Last Time

While the story is sure of Michael’s place, Michael herself at the start of this episode is still lost. We hear her personal logs speak of trying to fit back into the uniform, back onto the ship, but not sure how she can still fit in because she is someone new. Still committed to the values of the Federation but Michael now feels like there is a distance, a disconnectedness, a lack of peace especially for the mystery that remains unsolved. She doesn’t know if she can do that from the Discovery anymore, and it terrifies her that her home no longer feels like home. Michael’s feelings of loss echoes so many of us in the middle of the pandemic, feeling like we have been disconnected from our families and friends, feeling distance eating away at us and not sure where we belong anymore in this new world. And sometimes, the response to that is trying to cope by taking on more than perhaps we can or should handle, something that Book points out that Michael has a tendency of doing, and something that Michael herself even notes that Spock had called her out on about how she takes responsibility for everything.

The scenario we are presented within this episode is a complex one. With three ships’ data confirming that the explosions happened at different times, they’ve found a point of origin for The Burn. But with a still too large area, they need extra information that only an experiment called SB-19 has. Problem is, SB-19 is an experiment from the planet of Ni’Var, formerly Vulcan before the reunification of Romulans and Vulcans. And Ni’Var believes that the Federation forced Ni’Var to cause The Burn by ordering them to continue with the dangerous experiment. Having left the Federation and uninterested in regaining contact, Ni’Var is unlikely to hand over the data. Admiral Vance, however, realizes the unique opportunity that Michael as Spock’s sister presents and orders Michael to speak on the Federation’s behalf. While Michael tentatively accepts, she is ready to defend her hypothesis, and even invokes the ancient tradition of T’Kal-in-ket, a philosophical process to unearth deep truth, to diplomatically force Ni’Var into a conversation. But Ni’Var struggles with that, the planet on a delicate balance and fearing what even mere scientific inquiry could mean for the future of their world and distrusting of the Federation and their intentions. The issues of trauma, trust, and honesty weave through all the narratives of this season, and in this episode, in particular, many characters deal with those same issues on a micro-level as Ni’Var and the Federation deal with that on a macro-level.

Michael does have a surprising advocate in defending her hypothesis in the T’Kal-in-ket. Her mother, Gabrielle Burnham (Sonja Sohn) arrives as a sister of the Qowat Milat, a sect of Romulan warrior nuns trained in the ways of absolute candour and binds themselves to lost causes, which we saw in Star Trek: Picard. But a warm reunion doesn’t seem to last as Gabrielle points out that Michael is walking in with a lot of blind spots and speaking to people who will all only see what they wish to see. Everyone has their own truths, facts, and logic. But when has Michael ever back down from a challenge? In many ways, her stubbornness is both her strength and her weakness, something that this episode also relentlessly questions in a rather thorough examination of her character and feelings.

(CBS) Gabrielle Burnham Mother Is Now A Qowat Milat Sister

As much as the T’Kal-in-ket is about proving Michael’s hypothesis so she can get the data for the Federation, it also becomes one giant therapy session that Michael, her mother, Saru, and all the representatives from Ni’Var seemingly really needed. The Ni’Var representatives bicker amongst each other, each with their own beliefs vying for air, while Michael’s own doubts and fears are pulled into plain view by her mother. How can she stand up for the Federation and speak to their intentions if Michael herself is unsure if she is not even honest about herself? How can she get the others to trust that the Federation will not use the SB-19 data unwisely if she seems unsure about the Federation through her own actions? One might call what Gabrielle Burnham doing to be harsh, and perhaps she did pick a hell of a time to really get involved in parenting. But there is also logic to her strategy, as she kept telling Michael, there was more than just the three representatives as the audience in that room. Maybe she might not convince the quorum, but she could convince others.  

More than that though, this episode also deeply analyzes Michael as a person and allows for Michael to redefine herself and find her footing. Because as her mother assails her with numerous accusations, even stating that she is vulnerable to manipulation at the hands of the Federation, Michael has to defend the Federation and herself in a way that she’s never had to verbally do. In defending those things, Michael finds the reason that she made those choices in the first place, and why she loves the Federation. It gave her a mission and purpose, it gave her a place and a family to belong, and it gave her and the crew the resources and mandate to not only solve the biggest problems in the galaxy but also save all sentient life in the future. She might question and she might fear but she and her crew and the Federation have always risen to meet the challenges. Michael also admits that she is struggling now with where she belongs perhaps because the stakes are so much higher in this different world and she fears doing anything wrong can destroy everything that she cares about after all the sacrifices that everyone has made. And this all comes back to Michael’s tendency to take on everything herself. She hoards responsibility because from the time that she was a child, she has carried with it the scars of trauma and blame. Her parents died and she believed it was because she wanted to stay to watch the stars that they were still on the planet when the Klingons attacked. She hurt Spock and pushed him away and she again blamed herself. She couldn’t save Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) and so she punished herself by taking the blame of starting the war even though it wasn’t her fault. Michael takes on so much burden and blame, not letting herself admit those fears, but for the first time in three seasons, she’s had to verbally admit those fears, to really be honest with herself, especially the parts she never wanted to confront. But the only way we can move forward through trauma is to confront the parts that we do not wish to face, and because Michael has finally become honest with herself, she is able to move forward and find another way.

(CBS) Lt. Nilsson (Sara Mitich) or Lt. Rhys (Patrick Kwok-Choon)

She might not have proved her hypothesis, but by withdrawing her request so that she can keep Ni’Var’s peace, Michael learns a lesson that sometimes not being stubborn and running in guns blazing is a good thing. And it could lead to greater results as President T’Rina after hearing Michael speak honestly was willing to take the risk in trusting Michael with the data. And just as Michael once gave a great piece of advice to Spock, her mother reminds her of something important that we could all learn, “duty and joy go hand in hand, duty is there so you can continue to pursue your happiness, and joy is there so that you have something real to fight for.” And in one of my favourite moments of the whole show, Gabrielle Burnham tells Michael that she cannot be bound to her daughter anymore because Michael is not lost, and she will always know where to find her mother as well. For Michael, who had lost her mother for so long, that must have meant everything.

Honestly, the script of this episode is just filled to the brim with amazing lines of dialogue and such powerful affirmations about our collective humanity, flawed and imperfect as we are. And it should be no surprise to that this was penned by Kirsten Beyer, an expert Trek novelist who knows this universe inside and out that she perfectly pulled together the pieces of so many parts of the old and new canon to make a new future. Because of the way this episode was structured, so much of it hinges on the writing that I must commend it. So many little moments that just warm my heart like the mother and daughter moments between Gabrielle and Michael, and Tilly being told to say yes from everyone gathered to support and encourage her. And Jeff Russo is still killing it with his score that I can’t wait to buy the season 3 soundtrack when it comes out!

This deep and powerful character and universe exploration is the perfect ending to the Unification Trilogy. And with Michael settled and half the season finished, we’re heading into the endgame very soon and I am so excited to see what new surprises and twists this new brave world will show us!

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