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Star Trek Discovery’s tone is darker than most Roddenberry properties but one episode of the fourth season is absolutely terrifying.
WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 Episode Six “Stormy Weather” available now on Paramount+.
Crews of Starfleet must often contend with incomprehensible danger and risk their lives for the greater galactic good in the pursuit of exploration or diplomacy and oftentimes during the trials of combat. The vastness of space presents an infinite number of variables that can make these already fraught encounters even moreso, dissolving the margin for error to absolute zero and making the difficult seem impossible.
In certain rare instances that dimming boundary for success is permeated with dread so palpable that the circumstances of the screen are experienced vicariously by the audience. Before the mid season break Star Trek: Discovery honed in on the human fear of oblivion masterfully and crafted an episode that was truly terrifying.
Discovery was tasked with investigating a sub space rift left behind by the DMA to collect and analyze any particles that it may have left behind or environmental behavior that might provide a clue as to the nature of the phenomena and where it originated. Using the experiences of other vessels who have encountered similar tatters of subspace the crew believed they had some idea of what to expect once they crossed the threshold of the barrier, but what they encounter is in direct opposition to what their intelligence suggests. Instead of turbulent fractured space they are adrift in the stillness of a perfect void. The unbroken darkness extended in all directions implying that something was wrong with the sensors because the vacuum of space is muted but not truly silent, especially to the vast array of technology at the crew’s disposal. The quiet is used as a mechanism to convey data, or the lack thereof, but more importantly it taps into a visceral experience of desolation. The crew’s assertion that there must be something out there despite what their sensors are communicating to them comes across as the coldest of comforts.
Each subsequent reveal ratchets up the impending dread of isolation, the immersion in the idea of true nothingness, a concept so terrifying to humanity that the notion of it borders on the blasphemous for those who hold to ancient and persisting faiths that diametrically oppose the existence of non-existence. Every scan reinforces the dizzying sensation of claustrophobia occurring in a space that seems effectively infinite. Early on the crew realizes that there is no escape available to them because the lack of navigational reference points makes even going in reverse a scientific crap shoot. Eventually the crew sends out a DOT, a vaguely anthropomorphic probe, to discern what is truly out there beyond their own ability to sense and as it propels itself away from the ship it begins to lose cohesion. As its comms and cameras become distorted, the DOT’s screaming as it disintegrates is clear through the ship’s audio channels, so much so that Captain Michael Burnham has the communication severed so as not to be subjected to the robot’s wailing death throes.
In the third season the sphere consciousness that integrated with the ship’s computer and would come to be known as Zora, hid itself in a trio of DOTs so the audience has a prior experience of seeing them exhibit earnestness, aid and devotion. Those emotional connections are intact when the child like robot is dismembered in agony by some invisible force. At a distance of about 6,000 meters is where the DOT began to dissipate and a follow up flare that mimicked the DOT’s trajectory disincorporated at roughly 5,000 meters so the crew has some important information. They come to understand that the DMA may have rendered sub space toxic in the places where they interact with one another, creating an oblivion wake with a shrinking corrosive membrane.
There are even ghosts present in form of Book’s dead father bullying him into taking rash actions, though he proves stronger than the hallucinogenic influences. The appearance of his father doesn’t come across as frightening but it does lend itself to the general unease that the show is masterfully manipulating whether or not the specter is an apparition, neural synapses firing from residual contact with something foreign or the preamble to incoming madness. Ultimately the crew devises a plan to launch themselves from the void and return to normal space that depends upon allowing the transporter to dematerialize them and hold them in stasis while the ship has to try and penetrate the consuming energy threatening to eat the ship that would render life support functions useless. Only the captain remains in her physical form while the others relinquish their bodies to this plan, a strategy for survival that abuts primal fears revolving around the separation of self.
While the ship was being consumed by the ravenous encroaching emptiness itself, as if annihilation were a caustic acid that eats away at the threads of being, Zora describes in detail that she can feel parts of herself dying as they pushes through a plasma barrier and serenades the captain with a bluesy ballad while chunks of the hull crumble into nothingness and hellish flames consume the bridge. The manifestation of malevolent entropy, the skillful use of tomblike silence, the embodiments of hostile wraithlike ancestors and the distillation of subconscious fears carved out of the destruction or pain of familiar characters brings about a wholly unique Star Trek experience.
To see Star Trek at its horrific best, you can stream Discovery on Paramount+ before the fourth season resumes on February 10th.
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