#49 It’s Life, Jim, But Not as We Know It
27/01/21 17:38
There are all sorts of things I could be watching at the moment – The Serpent and Lupin and Industry and The Trump Show and RuPaul’s Drag Race. Hell, I could just watch the Inauguration on repeat, glory in Michelle Obama’s pant suit, Amanda Gorman’s poem, and Amy Kobluchar’s glee, over and over again.
But what I’m actually doing is watching the second series of Star Trek: Discovery. I can’t quite explain why this is what hits the spot right now, but for some reason its combination of mind-boggling sci and deranged fi is just what I need. It’s a while since I watched Series 1, so I can’t remember much about it – I also can’t remember because it was more complicated than the Brexit fisheries agreement. As such, I’ve approached the second series with the dottiness of an old lady in a Richard Curtis sitcom, and can regularly be heard querulously asking my husband ‘which Spock is this?’ Many of the instalments have passed me by like warp speed around a starship; kind of blurry, no idea where it’s going, far too fast for me to keep up, but enjoying the journey all the same.
So, what I thought I’d do this week is outline the most recent episode I’ve watched, to see if I’ve got it down. That’s it. I won’t be taking questions; just get from it what you can. To set you up very briefly, all this takes place before the first ever Star Trek – the one with Spock and Captain Kirk – and centres around Commander Michael Burnham who is a woman, human, Spock’s adopted sister, raised Vulcan. The Discovery’s Captain is Christopher Pike, who is essentially Kirk Mk1 – decent, but visually and psychologically dull. His XO is Saru, a Kelpien – they’re very long and thin and scared of stuff, like Nicole Kidman in The Undoing. Then there’s Paul Stamets*, a mega-engineer, and finally, Sylvia Tilly who has Nicole Kidman’s hair, works with Stamets and provides comic respite alongside the earnest science explaining.
In previous episodes, the crew discovered an experimental organic propulsion system called the mycelial network – basically, they use a labyrinthian fungal web to jump around space, propelled by particles injected into Stamet’s wrists. Not warp drive; more like spore thrust – a seriously giant leap for mankind. Obviously, it’s useful to be able to skedaddle anywhere in the universe at a moment’s notice, but it turns out there’s something wrong with doing that, a bit like when Will opens different worlds in Phillip Pullman’s The Subtle Knife, unwittingly releasing spectres and Dust. They realise something’s amiss when a cocoon-like space blob appears on the ship, takes control of Tilly’s mind, and then eats her. Still with me? Let’s do this - here’s Episode 5:
Stamets and Burnham learn that Tilly has been consumed by the parasitic cocoon and transported to a limbo mycelial world. Most people would digest that news and conclude not much could be done, but this is Star Trek, not Star Give Up, so they decide to put the Discovery ship in a half-jump into the network, so that Burnham and Stamets can go in and rescue her. Think of the Titanic sinking, which is pretty much what it looks like – in this analogy, the top half is safe in the normal universe, but the bit in the sea provides an entrance to wherever Tilly is. The danger is the whole ship might get sucked in, but they’re Starfleet so they don’t give it a second thought. Meanwhile, Tilly is trapped with her old schoolfriend May, in a very strange place that looks a bit like the Upside Down in Stranger Things. May is a physical manifestation of the ephemeral mycelial native species, assuming a reassuring human form to explain to Tilly that they can’t keep using these handy mushroom-passages through space willy-nilly. In doing so, they’ve created a ‘monster’ that is attacking her world, and she needs Tilly to kill it so she and her kind can go back to their carefree sprite-existence. The monster turns out to be Stamet’s husband Hugh, who was murdered in a previous episode. Now, he looks like Tom Hanks in Castaway, which is understandable given that he’s been stuck in loopy mushroom limbo for months, and is also dead. Tilly explains to May that she can’t kill the monster because he’s actually their friend, and has already been killed. What they do instead is put him in one of the parasite space blobs, allowing the magical spores to recreate his energy, replicate his DNA, rebuild his body and deliver him back to the Discovery alive, but very puzzled.
Everyone’s a winner – the Upside Down firefly-beings have got rid of their monster, Tilly is released from her parasitic mycelium cocoon, and Stamets has his husband back. I am assuming, though, that the spore-thrusters will be have to be put on pause, because they seem to upset a very delicate eco-system. Luckily, they still have the old warp drive to fall back on, and in fact, it’s better this way, because the mycelial network wasn’t really a trek at all, and Star Jump doesn’t work so well as a title.
I haven’t even bothered with the sub-plot, which is that the crew are also chasing young Spock across various galaxies because he’s a murderous fugitive who’s escaped a psychiatric unit, and he knows something about a Red Angel that keeps appearing across the Universe, who possibly travelled from the future, and is either holy or evil.
Why am I so obsessed with this space-freakery? I suppose, as ever, it’s because sci-fi offers the ultimate escape route – in this case, a universe-spanning fungal one. The dense, confounding nature of the challenges they face make my worries, petty or otherwise, fade into the background. I may be stuck in the house, drearily home-schooling my feral children, battling domestic chaos, caring for an old deaf dog, and trying to keep alcohol dependency to manageable levels, but at least I’m not trapped in a parasitic cocoo- Hang on.
Anyway, it helps me see the bigger picture, which is that one day we might have even bigger problems. Better the Devil (or Red Angel) you know, I guess.
*Fun fact for any 80s film fans – Anthony Rapp, who plays Stamets, was Daryl in Adventures in Babysitting.
But what I’m actually doing is watching the second series of Star Trek: Discovery. I can’t quite explain why this is what hits the spot right now, but for some reason its combination of mind-boggling sci and deranged fi is just what I need. It’s a while since I watched Series 1, so I can’t remember much about it – I also can’t remember because it was more complicated than the Brexit fisheries agreement. As such, I’ve approached the second series with the dottiness of an old lady in a Richard Curtis sitcom, and can regularly be heard querulously asking my husband ‘which Spock is this?’ Many of the instalments have passed me by like warp speed around a starship; kind of blurry, no idea where it’s going, far too fast for me to keep up, but enjoying the journey all the same.
So, what I thought I’d do this week is outline the most recent episode I’ve watched, to see if I’ve got it down. That’s it. I won’t be taking questions; just get from it what you can. To set you up very briefly, all this takes place before the first ever Star Trek – the one with Spock and Captain Kirk – and centres around Commander Michael Burnham who is a woman, human, Spock’s adopted sister, raised Vulcan. The Discovery’s Captain is Christopher Pike, who is essentially Kirk Mk1 – decent, but visually and psychologically dull. His XO is Saru, a Kelpien – they’re very long and thin and scared of stuff, like Nicole Kidman in The Undoing. Then there’s Paul Stamets*, a mega-engineer, and finally, Sylvia Tilly who has Nicole Kidman’s hair, works with Stamets and provides comic respite alongside the earnest science explaining.
In previous episodes, the crew discovered an experimental organic propulsion system called the mycelial network – basically, they use a labyrinthian fungal web to jump around space, propelled by particles injected into Stamet’s wrists. Not warp drive; more like spore thrust – a seriously giant leap for mankind. Obviously, it’s useful to be able to skedaddle anywhere in the universe at a moment’s notice, but it turns out there’s something wrong with doing that, a bit like when Will opens different worlds in Phillip Pullman’s The Subtle Knife, unwittingly releasing spectres and Dust. They realise something’s amiss when a cocoon-like space blob appears on the ship, takes control of Tilly’s mind, and then eats her. Still with me? Let’s do this - here’s Episode 5:
Stamets and Burnham learn that Tilly has been consumed by the parasitic cocoon and transported to a limbo mycelial world. Most people would digest that news and conclude not much could be done, but this is Star Trek, not Star Give Up, so they decide to put the Discovery ship in a half-jump into the network, so that Burnham and Stamets can go in and rescue her. Think of the Titanic sinking, which is pretty much what it looks like – in this analogy, the top half is safe in the normal universe, but the bit in the sea provides an entrance to wherever Tilly is. The danger is the whole ship might get sucked in, but they’re Starfleet so they don’t give it a second thought. Meanwhile, Tilly is trapped with her old schoolfriend May, in a very strange place that looks a bit like the Upside Down in Stranger Things. May is a physical manifestation of the ephemeral mycelial native species, assuming a reassuring human form to explain to Tilly that they can’t keep using these handy mushroom-passages through space willy-nilly. In doing so, they’ve created a ‘monster’ that is attacking her world, and she needs Tilly to kill it so she and her kind can go back to their carefree sprite-existence. The monster turns out to be Stamet’s husband Hugh, who was murdered in a previous episode. Now, he looks like Tom Hanks in Castaway, which is understandable given that he’s been stuck in loopy mushroom limbo for months, and is also dead. Tilly explains to May that she can’t kill the monster because he’s actually their friend, and has already been killed. What they do instead is put him in one of the parasite space blobs, allowing the magical spores to recreate his energy, replicate his DNA, rebuild his body and deliver him back to the Discovery alive, but very puzzled.
Everyone’s a winner – the Upside Down firefly-beings have got rid of their monster, Tilly is released from her parasitic mycelium cocoon, and Stamets has his husband back. I am assuming, though, that the spore-thrusters will be have to be put on pause, because they seem to upset a very delicate eco-system. Luckily, they still have the old warp drive to fall back on, and in fact, it’s better this way, because the mycelial network wasn’t really a trek at all, and Star Jump doesn’t work so well as a title.
I haven’t even bothered with the sub-plot, which is that the crew are also chasing young Spock across various galaxies because he’s a murderous fugitive who’s escaped a psychiatric unit, and he knows something about a Red Angel that keeps appearing across the Universe, who possibly travelled from the future, and is either holy or evil.
Why am I so obsessed with this space-freakery? I suppose, as ever, it’s because sci-fi offers the ultimate escape route – in this case, a universe-spanning fungal one. The dense, confounding nature of the challenges they face make my worries, petty or otherwise, fade into the background. I may be stuck in the house, drearily home-schooling my feral children, battling domestic chaos, caring for an old deaf dog, and trying to keep alcohol dependency to manageable levels, but at least I’m not trapped in a parasitic cocoo- Hang on.
Anyway, it helps me see the bigger picture, which is that one day we might have even bigger problems. Better the Devil (or Red Angel) you know, I guess.
- Star Trek Discovery, Season 2, episode 5 – Netflix
*Fun fact for any 80s film fans – Anthony Rapp, who plays Stamets, was Daryl in Adventures in Babysitting.
