Star Trek Discovery season 1 episode 10 'Despite Yourself' review: Darkness and light-heartedness in equal measure

(CBS)

The acronymically-challenged STD returns from its break with a busy episode that moves the story along while simultaneously balancing its tone between fun references to Trek lore, the show’s funniest moments yet, and the new, prestige-TV era darkness that’s been infused into the show. That’s a tall order, and that these agendas don’t torpedo each other shows the confidence STD now has. It’s good to have it back.

We open right where we left the Discovery – floating in the wreckage of a battle and clueless where they are after Stamets was put through the ringer by 133 jumps on the spore drive in a row. Saru’s threat ganglia are twinging, which can’t be good, and he’s soon proved right when the gang works out where they are... in a parallel universe!

And not just any parallel universe – they’re in the mirror universe, first seen in the classic original series episode, ‘Mirror Mirror’. Back then, it was a fun way for the show to goofily give Mirror Spock an evil twin goatee and have one of its periodic explorations of fascism; now, unexpectedly, it seems set to become a major element of this second half of the season.

First up, and thanks to our crew finding a hard drive that conveniently seemingly has the Mirror universe’s entire version of Wikipedia, Lorca, Burnham and friends work out that they have to pretend to be the Mirror universe’s version of the Discovery crew, in this reality loyal agents of the Terran Empire, a tyrannical army of Earthlings battling a rebellion of united alien races.

Yes, in short, they’ve gone from Star Trek to Star Wars, and they have to pretend to be the baddies. In a nice touch, the captain of the Mirror Discovery is Tilly, a harmlessly chatty cadet on Discovery Prime. Her efforts to play the part of a fascist space warrior over the radio to an aggressive fellow Terran, and Jason Isaacs hamming up a Scottish accent as her ‘chief engineer’ are the episode’s highlight.

That’s not the only fun we have with the Mirror universe, from the ludicrous space-fascist uniforms the crew must don to the passing gags about the fearsome Mirror Tilly’s various nicknames (one of them is just ‘Killy’) to the Darwinian contests for any position of authority in this reality.

This pays off brilliantly when the Mirror Shenzhou – Burnham’s old haunt in her reality, long destroyed now – shows up, and Burnham has to pretend to be her own evil twin to infiltrate the ship to get the navigation data that could get Discovery Prime home. She’s shocked to see an old crew pal who she watched die in the pilot episode alive and well, and even more shocked when he attacks her in an effort to take her position. Mad parallel universe concepts with goofy art design combined with moral complexity? Oh, STD, you are in gear finally.

Meanwhile, after much speculation and fan theorising last year, the Tyler plotline proceeds apace. The big revelation — he a Klingon, because of course he is — comes sooner than could be expected, given modern TV’s inclination to wheel-spinning.

It’s handled well, as well, for such a crazy idea: Tyler’s flashbacks to his valmorphanization are properly disturbing, and there’s at least an effort at quasi-plausibilty with his highly revealing trip to see Dr Culber.

Ah, about Dr Culber: after seemingly being a principal for the first half of the season, once he works out Tyler’s secret, Tyler’s buried Klingon personality surfaces and he snaps Culber’s neck. How’s about that for dark?

Not since Tasha Yar died in an episode of TNG broadcast when the Berlin Wall was still up has there been a Trek death quite as shocking. It was unexpected and brutal by Game of Thrones standards, let alone Star Trek, but there could yet be hope.

The show has been very careful to make clear that everybody in our universe has their counterparts in the Mirror universe (Lorca’s, meanwhile, is a fugitive after mounting an attempted coup; Burnham is on his tale), so let’s not write off Culber and Wilson Cruz’s winning performance just yet. If you’re a betting person, get someone to open a book on Culber coming back as his evil twin and coming back to our own universe.

Speaking of shifting universe, and having placed all its surprise chips on Tyler/Culber this episode, there was still time to tease the mystery of what’s going on with Lorca.

He had a long and weighty scene talking about destiny and what brought he and Burnham together; if you can find that Trek-inclined bookie again, be sure to get some odds on Lorca being a fugitive from the Mirror universe.

A twist too far? Maybe, but this incarnation has in its bones a commentary on whether the hope encoded in original Trek can still persist today. We may find STD dark compared to what’s gone before: the mirror universe offers a valuable commentary on just how much darker things could be, making Discovery prime utopian in comparison. This, friends, is interesting science fiction, created on a generous budget, and delivered by a talented and increasingly comfortable cast.

So, welcome back STD: this show is getting good.