Star Trek’s legacy is constructed on heroes doing the sorts of issues that, actually, they shouldn’t: captains beaming down on missions that might get them killed, reckless, courageous officers who dare first and ask questions later. It’s all the time been an accepted a part of the narrative; Star Trek’s leads, commanders, engineers, scientists, are heroes, and the heroes win. Discovery is not any exception, however getting into its new season, it appears to wish to begin grappling with what that actually means.

It may be no extra express in the truth that season 4’s premiere is called for the iconic Starfleet Academy take a look at, “Kobayashi Maru”—the character of which sits on the coronary heart of the ethical dilemma Discovery’s newest season opens with. It’s primarily an episode of stage-setting for drama to return: we get to see how Starfleet and the Federation have dusted themselves off within the time since season three’s finish, and the way Captain Michael Burnham now leads the best way for a renewed sense of hope and connection throughout the galaxy, delivering dilithium and guarantees of reconciliation (to generally not all the time peaceable impact). While Saru is again on Kaminar establishing relations along with his individuals in an try to encourage them again into the galaxy at massive, Michael is, unequivocally, a hero in methods she hasn’t been capable of be with out query in prior collection.

After three seasons the place she has been the primary character and achieved the hero factor time and time once more, albeit usually to nice problem and frustration of the individuals round her, now she’s a hero in the Kirkian method, maybe applicable for somebody flung from the twenty third to thirty first centuries. Her authority as Discovery’s captain means she may be that form of swaggering, high-risk high-reward chief on the frontlines as he was, being chased by phaser hearth in a single second, confidently sauntering onto the bridge—her bridge—the following. She and the Discovery have the whole lot they’ve ever needed: individuals they love, associates and located households by their aspect, boldly going the place many have gone earlier than however maybe not with as a lot glee for the way cool the whole lot they do is.

So naturally, “Kobayashi Maru” has to return alongside and blunt that glee with all of the subtlety of a brick, and remind our heroes simply how hard-fought these cool adventures actually are (like they don’t know already, however hey, your sci-fi present wants a giant menace for the season!). On a macro scale, this comes within the arrival of the lethal, mysterious “anomaly,” a gravitational distortion that first strikes a long-range Federation outpost, after which extra cataclysmically Book’s homeworld of Kwejian. Unrelenting, faceless, and seemingly as incomprehensible as it’s unstoppable at this second, the anomaly is one thing of an interesting alternative of foe for Discovery, a Trek collection that has leaned closely on extra human threats, villains, and foes our heroes can speak to, negotiate and compromise with, and battle extra bodily. A spatial distortion doesn’t care who’s captain of what starship, it doesn’t care what planet you’re from, it simply exists and leaves chaos in its wake. No matter how arduous she tries time and time once more within the premiere because the stakes turn out to be identified to us, it’s an opponent Michael and the Discovery crew can’t hero their method out towards, a worth all of them pay dearly after they see Kwejian in ruins in its climax.

But it’s not the one method Michael’s heroism is challenged within the episode, neither is it the one that actually evokes that no-win situation take a look at the episode is called for. That comes within the type of one other new determine who just isn’t fairly so nebulous, and subsequently a lot simpler for Michael to butt heads with: the Federation’s president, Rillak (Chelah Horsdal), who finds herself tagging alongside when the Discovery is named by the misery beacon that leads them to the mysterious anomaly. Although Rillak’s obfuscation of whether or not she is there as pal or foe makes her much less of a transparent antagonist so far, she is nonetheless the episode’s major vessel for its critic of Michael’s management. This perspective is apparent once we meet her as we’re advised by Discovery that there have to be one thing up together with her, framed by the lens of Starfleet characters like Michael or the briefly returning Admiral Vance.

It is Rillak that invokes the Kobayashi Maru, after Michael decides to single-handedly become involved in a rescue mission aboard the broken relay station, placing herself at risk above the wants of her personal crew. The take a look at, Rillak reminds Michael, isn’t to offer a way of frustration in officers, that possibly they would be the hero, the daring Starfleet Academy graduate who will beat the notorious no-win situation. It’s to roll with the harmful punches that command brings, that there is not going to all the time be an opportunity to power the proper final result for each mission, and sure, generally there might be losses they may by no means have prevented. It’s an final result, regardless of what number of instances she has been unable to keep away from it, that Michael is all the time keen to place herself at risk to aim to stop, as she does a number of instances on this episode.

It’s an attention-grabbing moral core for Discovery to place entrance and middle this season as a result of it’s a query the present has tackled to various levels of energy earlier than. Michael has all the time been a personality, textually or in any other case, to be confronted with the critique that she is way too keen to place herself by reckless quantities of hazard. Many instances in previous seasons, she and different characters have grappled together with her have to be seen as the one one that can shoulder so lots of the Discovery crew’s burdens, whether or not or not they’re past her place aboard the ship or a single particular person to bear. Time and time once more, she’s sidestepped that critique by being a hero so arduous that the universe needed to yield to her will. It makes Michael an interesting Star Trek hero, a human of sheer will and endurance that usually places her at loggerheads with authority figures round her and drags the remainder of the crew alongside for the experience.

But it additionally signifies that, for all her factors effectively argued this episode, Rillak and this critique is debatable being set as much as fail, making it toothless the second it turns into the focus of “Kobayashi Maru.” Now Michael’s downside is that she is the authority determine. As Rillak continually reminds her on this episode, a captain’s obligation to their crew goes past private circumstance. Michael, greater than ever, has the lives of all of Discovery in her arms, as they put together to face a disaster that’s able to wiping out planets straight away.

Whether or not Discovery’s return to this query—if being a hero is as heroic because it actually appears—can have some chunk to it going ahead stays to be seen. But regardless, an unstoppable power tearing its method throughout the galaxy is about to fulfill an immovable object within the type of Michael Burnham—and the mess that’s going to go away behind will little question make for some attention-grabbing fallout for this season to sift by.

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