The play’s the thing as the cadets continue to struggle with the trauma of the USS Miyazaki incident. So Star Trek: Discovery‘s LT Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman) has come to Starfleet Academy to help with expressive arts therapy, while one member of our cast might be beyond saving.
We already knew from the marketing that Tilly was going to show up on the series, but thankfully, the writers found a great use for her in “The Life of the Stars,” easily the most emotional story of the season. In Discovery, Mary Wiseman always brought a wonderful balance of exuberance and hopeful optimism to Tilly without dipping into naivete.
Seeing this character now adapt to a new role, that of teacher, provides Tilly with a real sense of evolution. In front of the classroom, we see her oscillate between her sillier tendencies and a more commanding persona to maintain discipline. Her assignment is a daunting one. Ake, sensing the cadets are in need of covert trauma counseling, calls upon Tilly to “bring them to port.”
To coax the cadets into confronting their fears, the kids find themselves suddenly enrolled in theatre class. “What if I told you that theatre is one of the most powerful tools for social and political change?” Tilly answers the cadets’ skepticism of theatre’s usefulness for a career in Starfleet. “Theatre is statecraft; statecraft is theatre.”
Of the various plays suggested by the students to perform, it’s SAM’s choice of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town that’s selected, and it makes an effective vehicle for delving into the internal lives of our young series regulars. Of the cadets, SAM is again the one given the largest focus here, but it also proves to be a significant story for the Doctor (Robert Picardo).
I noted in my review of “Series Acclimation Mil” the Doctor’s cold response to SAM that you just learn to get over loss. At the time, I thought about how he must have experienced the deaths of the rest of Voyager’s crew as well as many other such groups he’d grown close to over his 800 year existence, but here we learn he’s also experienced the loss of a child of his own. This also explains his clinical detachment to SAM since day one.
Writers Gaia Violo and Jane Maggs have found a way to force the Doctor to confront these demons in a clever way that now also essentially retcons SAM into, for all intents and purposes, the Doctor’s child, resetting their relationship and opening the door to a richer dynamic between them. Though we only glimpse the new SAM 2.0 momentarily, so it remains to be seen how similar and how different the young cadet will be moving forward. It’s a potentially dangerous move to so dramatically transform one of the lead characters this late into the season.
Photo: Michael Gibson/Paramount+
Tarima Sadal is the other cadet given center stage, so to speak, this week. She’s finally returned from Betazed after having made a full recovery, but she’s had her choices taken from her. Others have decided for her that the focus of her academic studies will be in science and research.
In addition to being transferred from The War College to Starfleet Academy, she now has a new inhibitor designed to better tamp down her enhanced abilities for harm prevention. If the metaphor they’re going with is bipolar disorder then it’s like she’s been prescribed a new, stronger medication that emotionally numbs her. And everyone is also treating her like she’s fragile, which only furthers her isolation.
But it’s SAM who’s in the more fragile state. The glitches we briefly glimpsed before SAM left for vacation in the previous episode have worsened because the patch the holo-engineers made have been failing for weeks since the Miyazaki incident. As a result, she’s dying. Ake and the Doctor decide to escort SAM home to Kasq to get her help while hopefully making it harder for her people to deny her request to return to the Academy.
But every three days on Kasq equals five years outside. The Doctor recalls his experience in the Voyager episode “Blink of an Eye,” where the Doctor spent years on a planet with a similar kind of time differential while only a few minutes past when he returned to the ship.
But before leaving for Kasq, SAM gives over the role of Emily in Our Town to Tarima. Most of the cadets find elements of the play they can identify with. Director Andi Armaganian discovers interesting opportunities to blend scene directions from the play into the episode.
Moments after the Doctor references Our Town‘s unique stage directions that emphasize minimalism such as muting the lighting and color, Ake, the Doctor, and SAM find themselves on a mostly black and white Kasq with selective elements rendered in starkly contrasting bright color. And the closing moments of the episode similarly attempt to mirror the minimalism of Our Town‘s final stage directions.
“The Life of the Stars” explores the inner lives of numerous cadets and reveals a new, compelling aspect of the Doctor’s post-Voyager history. It makes Mary Wiseman’s return to the franchise count.
Much like the Cirroc Lofton appearance a few weeks earlier, Tilly’s appearance here does more than shallow fan service but rather functions — like the use of Our Town — as a vehicle to serve the journeys of this show’s cast. The writers succeed in telling the most emotional story of the season and further develop the bonds between the characters in an episode that gives the entire cast an opportunity to shine.
New episodes of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy release Thursdays on Paramount+.
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