We know Burnham made it through but what about the ship?Taking us back to the end of season two and focusing on the path of the USS Discovery, we rejoin the starship as it exits the wormhole with all onboard unconscious - and the ship plummeting towards a planet surrounded by asteroids.
It's a fairly spectacular landing with the Discovery skidding to a halt on the frozen wasteland of what we will come to know as The Colony. Of course the ship is battered to hell leaving Saru and Tilly to venture out into the wilds to locate rubidium for a replacement transtator while repairs on the Discovery continue.
But here's a thing. On the surface this episode is fantastic. There's character bonding, Detmer dealing with PTSD following a rather harrowing landing, Stamets and Culber reunited but if you start to think about it, Far From Home is almost the exact same story that we had last week...almost exactly.
Let me explain this one in a few steps - crashland, encounter a stranger, go to some form of alien bazaar and look to barter for required materials, set piece fight, escape. Now, apply that to episodes one and two and you'll discover how close they actually are. What this week does benefit from is the split in the story. While Saru, Tilly (and Georgiou tagging along "unexpectedly") deal with some nasty locals terrorising the locals, we have the second thread with Stamets still in recovery paired up with Jet Reno to complete repairs aboard the Discovery. This pairing sparks beautifully in Far From Home right from the moment we see Leland's remains being scooped off the floor of the spore drive chamber right to Reno's vocal support for Paul as he struggles through the confines of a Jefferies Tube to make necessary repairs at the expense of his fragile wound dressings.
What also makes this great is that no-one gets left out with every secondary cast member, even Nilsson, getting some screen time even if it's just to confirm they made it through the wormhole alive. Discovery doesn't feel like the Michael Burnham Show here and yes, she's not even on the scene but the cast feels like a more settled ensemble. I suspect that in coming weeks normal Burnham service will resume but for once there's a real sense of the crew on the deck working to restore systems as Discovery begins to get overcome by the crushing ice.
The landing party to secure resources is a good pairing allowing us to watch Saru settle into his command position as well as provide the supportive role to Tilly that would usually be filled by Michael. Tilly is much more human and less skittish this week. Ok, so they are 930 years into the future which means I would forgive a level of panic and anxiety but Detmer seems far more shaken with the landing than Sylvia does on trudging across the surface to a dirty great mining colony.
Replete with typical saloon doors, the bar wouldn't be out of place in a Star Wars movie especially when it's completed with a set of roguish individuals (in this case Zareh and his cronies) taking a cut of the action which, of course is where the Discovery crew come in to play the A-Team and take them down. Star Trek has perhaps never felt so Space Western and frontier town than this episode (ok, maybe North Star from Enterprise but that WAS a western) and you wouldn't be blamed for expecting Clint Eastwood to ride in at any time.
Far From Home doesn't do anything wrong so much as not really do anything strikingly right. Utilising that same format from That Hope Is You, it falls a little flat and by the end you're just hoping Burnham will turn up soon. Maybe Discovery could have stayed planetside for another week to add a sense of threat and suspense to the show but never for a second do you believe that the ice will overpower the starship; not one second.
Wow...just realised I've been a bit harsh on this week's story which is not what I fully intended because it's a decent effort hindered by the bartering story when the shipboard emergencies and repairs are possibly more interesting.
Michelle Yeoh's Mirror Universe Commander Georgiou chews through her scenes on the ship and at the bar with aplomb and reminding us all exactly why she's still in the show and has been in some form from day one. The dry wit, the disdain at the weaknesses she sees in the Prime Universe characters and her observations are well worth the subscription fee with the sense that the writers love to put words into her mouth more than many of the other characters in the show.
Far From Home certainly has some dirt under its nails with a notion that it's wandering precariously into either Star Wars or Firefly at times, especially thanks to a few Whedon-esque quips here and there from Tilly or Reno. The split of Burnham from the rest of the crew (SPOILER) does seem to be over incredibly quickly although it looks like episode three will be giving us a low down on what's been happening for the last year. What episode two does right is build on that strong opener even if a little repetitively and helps universe build for this very different season...
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