Tarka is there to work with Paul Stamets ( Anthony Rapp) as the two men endeavor to learn how the DMA works, and particularly why it’s able to appear and disappear at will. While Book and Burnham attempt to rescue the colony’s prisoners, another guest star boards Discovery: Shawn Doyle, playing the brilliant Federation scientist Ruon Tarka. We’ve noted before how great it is Discovery is letting Book’s grief breathe over the course of multiple episodes, and “The Examples” is another… well, example, of the show’s writers doing just that. Book’s perspective here clearly shows he’s passing through the anger stage of grief he’s angry at the DMA, he’s angry at whoever made it, and he’s angry that someone would willingly let the anomaly destroy their life, as Felix did in his final moments. He strongly urges Burnham to make Felix leave the colony - which of course she can’t do. Book, still dealing with the emotional trauma of watching his homeworld die because of the DMA, thinks that no one should be left to suffer at the hands of the anomaly, and by extension, whoever made it. To her credit, Burnham breaks from her aforementioned need to save everyone and eventually realizes that only Felix can choose his destiny, and this actually leads to an interesting disagreement between her and Book. Oded Fehr as Admiral Vance, Doug Jones as Saru and Sonequa Martin-Green as Burnham There’s a pain behind Greyeyes’ eyes that is inescapable, and his performance makes it easy for the audience not to judge his character’s terrible actions, much like how Burnham doesn’t judge the man even after learning why he is in prison. It’s for that reason that he chooses to stay on the colony even in the face of likely death, despite Burnham’s concerns, and Book’s even stronger protestations. Felix’s history is a brutal one – he killed a man after robbing his house, thus leaving the man’s daughter fatherless – and he knows he must pay his debt to society. Star Trek: Discovery doesn’t often rely on guest stars - a characteristic of Star Trek of old - but “The Examples” grants us two excellent guest stars (more on the second one in a moment). On this note, we want to praise Michael Greyeyes for bringing Felix, a man who we’ll describe as an emotionally stoic character, to this show. That day doesn’t come in this episode, luckily, and the only prisoner who gets left behind – Felix – does so because he chooses to. We saw this characteristic of hers come to the forefront in the first episode of this season, where the Federation president laid into her and noted that at some point Burnham’s luck will run out. The prisoners are naturally distrustful of the Federation, as they think the Federation never cared about them during or after Emerald Chain control, but Burnham insists that they will be granted political asylum if that’s what it takes to get them away from the ill-fated colony.īurnham, ever the idealist, feels the need to get everybody away from the DMA, even if it means putting other lives in danger.
This is a practice born from Emerald Chain leadership back when that group was in power on this colony, and things never changed once the Chain left. The pair locate the prisoners only to find resistance from the captives they’ve been mistreated for years following relatively small-time crimes, only because they were examples to the rest of the colony of what happens when someone breaks the law. Tig Notaro as Jett Reno and Anthony Rapp as Stamets Luckily, Michael Burnham ( Sonequa Martin-Green) and Cleveland Booker ( David Ajala) are up for the job. It’s a task made all the more difficult because the colony contains a group of prisoners, referred to as “The Examples,” and this group can’t leave their entrapments without someone blasting them out. Hot on the heels of determining that the DMA must have been artificially made, Starfleet has a new mission: evacuating the Radvek Chain, an asteroid colony that faces possible imminent destruction. The “dark matter anomaly” once again throws the Federation a curveball, as it appears to disappear and reappear on its own, prompting new questions about its origin - all while the crew of Discovery tries to save a colony right in the path of its destruction. Review: Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 Episode 5 “The Examples”
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