Star Trek: Discovery - Punching, Drug-Induced Burnham Is the BEST Burnham
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Star Trek: Discovery Season 3, Episode 1, "That Hope Is You, Part One" now streaming on CBS All Access.
The premiere episode of Season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery found Burnham farther into the future than Star Trek has ever gone before. Unfortunately, her first few hours in this new era don't go particularly well. A series of betrayals and mishaps led to Burnham being interrogated and exposed to a drug that turned her into an inappropriately honest, insightful and impulsive -- which was a complete marvel to watch.
After coming through the wormhole, colliding into Booker's ship and subsequently crashing on the remote planet of Hima, Burnham found herself stranded with only a standard-issue field kit to get by. Unable to contact Discovery, she tracked down Booker's crashed ship and came to a tense truce with him, bartering her tricorder for access to the comms system at the nearest settlement, the smuggler outpost of Requiem.
Click the button below to start this article in quick view. Start nowOnce at Requiem, she was promptly betrayed. Booker steals her entire kit, saying he needs to trade it for all the fuel he can. He leaves her with Requiems' cartel of Orions and Andorians, and they take her aside for interrogation, accusing her of being a thief attempting to rob Requiems vault. When her answers failed to satisfy the guards, she was sprayed with a dose of a powerful drug.
The drug is a sort of truth serum, one that works by removing inhibitions. This winds up turning normally reserved and controlled Burnham into a laughing, truth-telling, fist-swinging ball of fun. When they explain to her its use for truth-telling, Burnham agrees with its effectiveness and quickly blurts out that they shouldn't give this drug to her chatterbox protege, Ensign Tilly.
She then begins to self-analyze, ignoring their questions and wondering aloud in a whip-fast rant why she is so reflexively over-supportive of everyone around her. She also proudly describes Discovery's sacrifice and declares that she has "saved all the things." After finally explaining her situation to the guards, they take her to find Booker who is having some trouble of his own. He stole cargo from another courier, and now they have him at gunpoint. As they decide on which human to kill, Burnham lets out a laugh and launches into a fight with Booker at her side.
As she and Booker make their escape in a raucous firefight, she seems to enjoy their dire straights. As phaser beams fly, she asks Booker if he thinks she's overcompensating. Burnham gleefully watches on as Booker uses a device that sends a wave of force over, knocking down all of their pursuers.
Burnham then boldly moves to steal some nearby Dilithium crystals, and as she and Booker point phasers at each other, he says if she gives him the crystals, she can come with him. But drugged up Burnham was having none of it, declaring, "I'm done being reflexively supportive!"
This drug allowed for a peek at the flood of emotions Burnham has suppressed growing up with the Vulcans. Whether she realizes it or not, that drug wound up being a somewhat cathartic release for her. In the end, it was an opportunity to inject some humor into the show and see what Burnham is like, uninhibited.
Streaming on CBS All Access, Star Trek: Discovery stars Sonequa Martin-Green as Commander Michael Burnham, Doug Jones as Commander Saru, Anthony Rapp as Lt. Commander Paul Stamets, Mary Wiseman as Ensign Sylvia Tilly, Wilson Cruz as Dr. Hugh Culber, David Ajala as Cleveland "Book" Booker, Blu del Barrio as Adira, Ian Alexander as Grey, Tig Notaro as Chief Engineer Reno, Ethan Peck as Spock and Michelle Yeoh as Philippa Georgiou. New episodes of Season 3 air on Thursdays.
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