In Review: Star Trek: Discovery (S5 – EP4) Face the Strange

Synopsis: As the race between Discovery and the bounty hunters L’ak and Moll intensifies, an unexpected weapon forces Burnham and Rayner to work past their differences to save the rest of the crew.

The Story

Having had a time bug planted on them in last week’s episode Adira beams back to Discovery and the bug proceeds to journey to Engineering. Now situated in a sector of space where they hope to find the next clue to the whereabouts of the progenitor technology. Captain Burnham and Commander Rayner set about organising the crew with their assigned tasks, but when Rayner makes an offhand remark to a member of the crew. Burnham calls him into the ready room in order to reprimand him. However, the conversation gets cut short when both Burnham and Rayner find themselves bouncing through time.

Pretty soon it becomes apparent that there is a definite pattern to their time traveling and knowing that Lt. Cmdr. Paul Stamets is a fixed point in time due to the tardigrade technology inside him. Burnham and Rayner work with him to figure out how to stop the Time Bug from continuing to do its thing. 

The Acting

Sonequa Martin-Green and Callum Keith Rennie both put in brilliant performances in this episode as we see Burnham and Rayner begin to bond and figure out how to work together. In the previous episodes, Rayner has reiterated his belief in discipline and the hierarchy and has tended to want to do things his way. This episode sees Rayner learn the value of Burnham’s more open approach with the crew. We also get a solid performance from Anthony Rapp, which gives us a fun moment between Rayner and Stamets as the two men find some common ground with each other.

Overall

This episode of Discovery has lots of fun with time travel and provides a new spin on the subject via a time bug. This allows for some brilliant moments as well as a few nods to Discovery’s storied past. We see a return for Discovery’s lost Android crew member Airiam who sacrificed herself to save Burnham and the crew in season two. We also get to see a fun action sequence in which Captain Burnham must fight against the younger version of herself in order to convince the crew of season one’s Discovery to help her in her mission to destroy the time bug.

Overall. A fun episode that gives a few nods to the shows past.