Burnham is assigned to investigating the creature found on Discovery’s sister ship, as the unusual Starfleet vessel’s help is needed…

There’s a lot of good material in this fourth episode, but also certain elements that are really starting to hold this show back from maintaining a consistent pace across the episodes. To start with the negative, whoever it was that decided that the Klingon scenes should all be in Klingon probably thought that it would be adding a verisimilitude in the same way that series use Spanish, Russian and other languages for scenes featuring characters for whom those are their native language in other shows. The difference here is that – bar a very, very small clique of people proportionally – there aren’t natural Klingon speakers in the world (and those who are playing Klingon clearly aren’t among them!) who would be able to follow without the subtitles. It’s been pointed out that the new showrunners are having to work within certain parameters that were established in the pilot (with the unspoken inference that some of them are constraining) and you have to suspect that this insistence on Klingon is one of them. Yes, it makes them more alien, but I’m afraid I’m getting increasingly disconnected from those scenes, and of course once you lose concentration you look away and miss the subtitles!

However, back on the Discovery, things are improving each episode as we’re learning more about the crew who are around Michael Burnham. There’s more time spent with Captain Lorca, whose people management skills are clearly not why he was put in charge of the ship, and some strong scenes between Burnham and Stamets (who’s fast becoming my favourite character on the show). The relationships between Burnham and Tilly, and her and Saru also move forward, although I’m hoping that’s the last we see of Michelle Yeoh’s Georgiou – unlike some others, I don’t have a problem with the way she played the part, but we’ve already established that Burnham has a way of interacting with a holographic Sarek, and we don’t need yet more Jor-El type figures.

The scenes with the Tardigrade feel very much in keeping with other Star Trek series, although I wonder if we’re going to get a “Beast Below” situation (the second episode of Matt Smith’s Doctor Who) in the not too distant future, given how unhappy the creature seems with being put in the navigation harness. Sonequa Martin-Green handles the scenes with the CGI creature credibly.

Verdict: It still feels as if the show is trying to find its feet (which, given its production history, may well be the case), but the Discovery thread of the show is becoming more intriguing. 7/10

Paul Simpson