Recap/Review: ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Finds The Right Balance In “Lagrange Point” (2024)

“Lagrange Point”

Star Trek: Discovery Season 5, Episode 9 – Debuted Thursday, May 23, 2024
Written by Sean Cochran & Ari Friedman
Directed by Jonathan Frakes

The penultimate episode of the season sets up the finale with a great mix of action, heart, and even some fun.

WARNING: Spoilers below!

RECAP

“What do we do now?”

We begin with Ambassador Saru returning to HQ, flowers in hand (aww), only to have his romantic moment with T’Rina diverted to a crisis meeting with the Prez. Rillak briefs the group on the last episode: Moll killed Ruhn, now Primarch Tahal’s fleet is heading to claim his dreadnaught, and it would be really bad news if she found out about the Progenitor Tech. On the Disco, they are still fixing the ship but risk using the spore drive to beat Moll to the coordinates. Upon arrival, they’re immediately pulled into a black hole—right next to another one. “That’s interesting.” Not now, Tilly! She rallies and sciences a way out of them being spaghettified, and the crew battles their way to safety, quickly spotting a curious cylinder in the Lagrange Point (title alert!) point between the holes, which must be what the 24^th-century scientists built to hide the Progenitor tech. They take in the moment to be dazzled by the awesome majesty of these binary primordial black holes as the secret home to the power of creation. This why they went into the final frontier, to find strange new… Oh sh*t, the Breen show up and tractor the cylinder into their shuttle bay. Zoink! You snooze you lose, space nerds.

“I think they can do it.”

The Breen use the map as a key to open the container, revealing an extra-dimensional portal, so Moll starts sending Breen red shirts scientists in to figure it out. She doesn’t have the cryptic clue Michael got from Avatar Book, so the good guys have time if they can figure out how to beam the cylinder to the Disco. Adira suggests attaching transport locks, but how to get close enough? Cue the heist movie montage! The plan is to sneak a shuttle through a shield weak point to insert two teams dressed as Breen: Alpha to go to bridge and shut off shields, Beta to attach the transport lock. After some protective dad objections, Adira (with Rhys as security backup) are Alpha and Michael leads Beta, bringing Book along as pilot. Cleveland assesses the plan as “insane,” proven right as they fly into the dreadnaught’s exhaust with only seconds before they are “deep fried.” Both teams beam in at the last moment… right next to some soldiers demanding answers. Banking on strict Breen hierarchy, Burnham chastises the soldiers and evokes the Scion, using the old fake it till you make it strategy of infiltration. Alpha team heads to the bridge, where they order a lowly officer away from his station with Adira sympathizing, “Everyone always picks on the ensign.” Beta heads to the shuttle bay with their usual banter, but take a quick sidebar so Michael can tell Book about the emotional epiphany she had in the mindscape last episode. Nice, but do you need to do this now?

“This is getting weird.”

Back at HQ, Rillak is getting ghosted by Tahal so they debate dispatching the USS Mitchell to waylay the Breen Primarch, then settle on sending a less provocative shuttle with the same cool new Pathway Drive. Before T’Rina can provide a list of who could head up the mission, Saru volunteers. Later, they finally get their nice romantic moment and come to an understanding of how in their line of work they will always be faced with balancing their love with the logic required to choose duty over emotion. Speaking of duty, Rayner continues to pace the Disco bridge as he readies the crew for action and he isn’t about to sit in the captain’s chair, making it clear to acting first officer Tilly that he has no need for her “warm and fuzzy encouragement.” Stay gruff, my friend. On the dreadnaught, Michael and Book bluff their way through a checkpoint, knocking out the guards to get into the shuttle bay to see another Breen scientist sacrificed to the mysterious glowing cylinder. They need to shut off a quarantine field, so Book is tasked with distracting a guard and he goes with… flirting. No helmet and refrigeration suit can hide the sexy. As he agrees to a group hook-up at the oil baths, Michael gets to work on that field, but on the bridge, Captain Moll gets wind of the missing shuttle bay guards. She orders a total lockdown as more soldiers head towards the precious cylinder… too many even for Book to seduce.

“I always knew my crew would come for me.”

Beta Team needs a distraction, so Rayner hails Moll, revealing the Disco wasn’t destroyed last week but fibbing that Captain Burnham was killed. He warns Tahal is coming for Ruhn’s dreadnaught, but Moll rejects the offer of protection from the Federation. The former courier soon finds Alpha Team, unmasks them, and grabs the transporter lock before it can be used. Michael and Moll trade barbs, but Rayner is listening closely and understands the coded message from his captain. The crazy plan is to fly the Disco through the Breen shuttle bay containment field and beam Michael, Book, and the cylinder over when they get flung into space. Sure, no problem. Alpha Team drops the shields, but that gets unwanted attention, so Rhys jumps into action and even Adira gets in some hits before they’re beamed away to safety. Moll sorts out what the Starfleeters are doing and decides her best hope is to go through the interdimensional gate herself (with L’ak’s body safely stored in a portable pattern buffer). Burnham can’t let her get the tech, so she decides to follow, sharing one last poignant look with Book before being zapped away. Discovery dives through the energy barrier and all hell breaks as the cylinder floats out into space and disintegrates, revealing the pulsating glowing portal from within. Book’s now on the bridge (having found the time to change back into his cool leather coat, perhaps due to some transporter tech?) and reveals the captain is inside the portal. Scanners find nothing, so Tilly sums up: “She’s just gone.” Not on Rayner’s watch. The commander rallies the crew with a fine “failure… not an option” speech. They are going to get her and the tech back, period. To make his point, he (finally) sits in the captain’s chair with, “Let’s do this”… next week.

ANALYSIS

That was exciting

What an exciting episode, nicely setting things up as a first part of the two-part finale while still being a complete package on its own. Time flies by with good pacing from director Jonathan “two-takes” Frakes. He leans into the season’s pivot in tone with a sense of adventure and even some fun with heist movie motifs. Sneaking on board alien ships in disguise is classic Trek going back to “The Enterprise Incident,” but this time with a Breen twist, evoking Kira Breening up in DS9’s “Indiscretion.” The stakes are huge as the season plot comes to a head with Moll and now a looming new Breen threat potentially taking the Progenitor tech, and these bring along the VFX moments and dramatic bridge scenes we should expect from big-budget Star Trek. But this is also Discovery, and so what is woven throughout are key character moments driving home the season’s theme of connection. This may be exemplified best by the very welcome return of Doug Jones, who is giving us the perspective from Starfleet HQ as Saru and T’Rina find love in between moments of high-tension statecraft and diplomacy.

“Lagrange Point” pays off several character arcs that have been playing out this season, leaving Saru and T’Rina’s big day (presumably) for the season finale. Here there were more quick and even subtle moments that were still quite satisfying, especially seeing Adira come into their own by going on an away mission based on their own crazy idea, with the nervous but proud space dads sending them off like it was the first day of school. Adorable, yes, but it was also great to see Blu del Barrio show more range, with bits of humor—and it was really them doing the action scenes (check back later for Blu’s TrekMovie interview about this episode and more). The episode did make a big deal out of Rayner taking the chair, but it built up to this by picking up on threads from the season as he has earned the trust of the crew as expressed by Tilly, even as they hung a lantern on the show’s penchant for being all touchy-feely. The biggest payoff was for Michael and Book, broken up at the start of the season, now clearly realizing they are still in love. However, Discovery can’t help itself by having an inappropriately timed feelings discussion with Michael and Book on the Breen ship. This kind of thing isn’t really necessary and could have played better if she’d tried to have the conversation but was cut off, leaving everything that needed to be said in that brief beautiful moment they share only with looks before she goes into the portal.

Breen to be wild

It looks like they are saving all the big reveals about the Progenitors and their tech for the rest of the finale, but the ability to put their portal into the Lagrange Point of two primordial black holes is literally awesome, and Tilly seemed to imply the Progenitors may have even created those black holes, once again telegraphing this god-level tech probably shouldn’t end up in anyone’s hands. Season 5 also adds more to the lore when it comes to the Breen, although they do remain mysterious. It’s hard to grasp how Moll is now in command instead of Arisar, Ruhn’s top lieutenant who backed her coup. But there does seem to be a cult-like worship of the Scion and her association is the source of that power. More importantly, Moll seems to remain singularly focused on L’ak, but Eve Harlow’s over-the-top performance risks what we can assume is a coming redemption with Book in the finale. They were careful to show that even though she had little regard for Breen scientists, she had not gone full evil, saying she planned to drop Michael and Book off at some planet instead of killing them. We also learn that the Breen are polyamorous, like Denobulans, and they relax with oil baths, like Star Wars droids. Like with other little beats in the episode, they pick up on things established earlier in the season, like using the “anchworm” insult to good effect on the ship. This, as well as the nod to the Kellerun Ballad of Krul and “osikod” code from Burnham to Rayner, are little examples sthat show how this season is tied together more effectively than previous ones.

For the setup to a season finale, there was a surprising amount of action, and not just with the spectacular space effects of the two black holes and battle with the Breen. The fight scenes on board the Breen ship with accompanying bluff-the-bad-guys moments were a bit familiar, but perhaps that was intentional as the episode had no time to waste. That said, there were moments that felt like they were skipping a step; after the Discovery crashes into the shuttle bay, the next moment Book is on the bridge wearing a new outfit. If you rewind and look VERY closely, you will see in the chaos of flying debris a tiny beam-out effect, but it felt like we missed something there. And if they could easily nab Book while he was in the shuttle bay, why not the cylinder as well? But it was still effective when the episode slowed down for some moments, including those back at Starfleet HQ, which added emotional beats and more context to the larger plot.

Final thoughts

In the end (and little nitpicks aside), “Lagrange Point” is a taut episode that stands on its own, but will likely be seen later as just part of the larger season finale as it ends on a cliffhanger. The balanced mix of action and emotion sprinkled with humor is the sweet spot for this series that we’ve been seeing throughout the season.

BITS

• This is Jonathan Frakes’ 31st Star Trek directing credit and 8th episode of Discovery.
• At 46:57, it is the shortest episode of the season.
• A Lagrange Point is a real thing in celestial mechanics.
• Primarch Tahal leads the “3rd Flight” of the Breen factions.
• Once again Michael showed off her expertise in xenoanthropology (revealed in the series premiere) by knowing “Sarkaress” was a Breen festival, although it’s not clear why the universal translator didn’t know that as well.
• The vulnerability of an unshielded exhaust port is likely a reference to the Death Star from Star Wars.

More to come

Every Friday, the TrekMovie.com All Access Star Trek Podcastcovers the latest news in the Star Trek Universe and discusses the latest episode. The podcast is available on Apple Podcasts,Spotify,Pocket Casts,Stitcher and is part of the TrekMovie Podcast Network.

The fifth and final season ofDiscovery debuted with two episodes on Thursday, April 4 exclusively on Paramount+in the U.S., the UK, Switzerland, South Korea, Latin America, Germany, France, Italy, Australia, and Austria.Discoverywill also premiere on April 4 on Paramount+ in Canada and will be broadcast on Bell Media’s CTV Sci-Fi Channel in Canada. The rest of the 10-episode final season will be available to stream weekly on Thursdays. Season 5 debuts on SkyShowtime in select European countries on April 5.

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