TV Review: ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Season 3, Episode 9 Delivers A Fun Heist
by Frank Martin
One of the great things about Star Trek is just how versatile its episodes can be. Across the franchise’s long history, it has taken up many storytelling tropes and formats. Star Trek: Discovery, even with all of its futuristic tech and science fiction jargon, still tries to honor this legacy. This week’s episode did so by creating a straight-up heist story. The beginning of the episode was a little rough as it had to create a plausible setup for the heist to happen. But after that rocky start, it made for a pretty fun adventure that challenged the characters while also moving the plot forward.
After escaping the Breen attack last week, Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and the Discovery crew are forced to fix the ship before jumping to the final location of their treasure hunt. Unfortunately, the ship’s spore drive wasn’t completely ready and sent the crew dangerously close to a black hole. After the ship survived that crisis, the Breen arrived and stole the tech first. But Discovery was hidden and Moll (Eve Harlow) thought they were dead. This left them with an opportunity to sneak inside and steal the tech. Getting caught, Burnham came up with a daring plan to jettison everyone into space along with the tech. The episode ends on a cliffhanger as Discovery gets ready for combat.
It felt very strange to have Discovery admire the two black holes and the tech they were after from a distance, seemingly giving the Breen an opportunity to show up and take it first. But that could be overlooked because it set up a very fun heist. The Discovery crew disguised themselves as Breen soldiers, and watching them infiltrate the ship was a cool Star Trek twist on a classic storytelling style. In addition, the episode also set up Saru (Doug Jones) for a confrontation with more Breen that will happen next episode. All in all, the season is moving along nicely towards its finale.
Star Trek: Discovery streams Thursdays on Paramount+.
