Star Trek: Discovery season 1 episode 3 'Context is for Kings' review: What is the mysterious Captain Lorca up to?

Even though we last saw Michael Burnham clapped in irons and on her way to what she was told would be a lifetime in the big house, Star Trek: Discovery was never likely to turn into The Dilithium Redemption.

Sure enough, this third episode never even makes it to the prison, with Burnham and her fellow lags picked up by a mysterious ship after a mid-flight accident takes out the pilot of the shuttle taking them to jail. And which ship is it? None other than the USS Discovery, finally making its bow in the third episode of the show named after it.

It doesn’t seem a happy place, either, and after last week’s trigger-happy pilot, this incarnation of Trek might feel too Battlestar Galactica for purists – it even shares a key cast member, with Rekha Sharma (President Roslin’s aide in BG) showing up as the Discovery’s head of security.

They’d be missing out on a lot, though; this episode has to do a lot of heavy lifting in establishing a whole new ship and crew, and the writing is such that you can barely feel the strain – not a small achievement, since as well as introducing us to our new Starfleet buddies, this episode takes in mysterious scientific research, an irritatingly chatty roommate, incomprehensible echnobabble about organic propulsion methods, some John Carpenter-esque twisted corpses, and a monster seemingly cobbled together from what was left of that thing on Han Solo’s ship in The Force Awakens.

That’s a lot to get through in 48 or so minutes, so it’s to the writers’ credit that ‘Context is for Kings’ remains even half as coherent as it is. Keeping the focus on Burnham is clever, and Sonequa Martin-Green steps up, maintaining her steeliness and detachment but ably conveying the guilt she feels for the 8000 deaths in last week’s battle that she was largely responsible for. Saru, Doug Jones’s lanky fish-man who was last week’s comic relief, is on the Discovery as its first officer and chief knife-twister, casually telling Burnham he plans to protect his captain better than Burnham did poor Captain Geogiou.

Ah yes, the captain. Jason Isaacs is as dependable a pro as they come, and his Captain Lorca looks like being this show’s central mystery. What is he up to? It’s pretty clear from his first meeting with Burnham – where he is introduced in darkness, gazing out into space – that her presence on the ship isn’t an accident, and it turns out the kind of decision-making that got Burnham into trouble is exactly why he wants her on his crew.

The legality of this isn’t exactly clear – even in wartime, can a convicted mutineer be busted out of custody just because a passing officer likes the cut of her jib? Unless Starfleet has the internal discipline of the Keystone Kops, it’d seem unlikely – but no matter.

The question is, is this Lorca character a straight shooter or not? After sneaking into science officer Lt Stamets’s secret fungus farm, Burnham becomes convinced that he’s researching a biological weapon to attack the Klingons with.

She becomes even more convinced after a boarding mission to the Discovery’s sister ship that’s involved in the same research. It’s gone dark, and Burnham, Stamets and a hilariously expendable red shirt discover a succession of gruesomely twisted bodies. Whatever happened there wasn’t good, and this is surprisingly gruesome stuff if you’re not used to melted faces and rib cages sticking through backs. As if that wasn’t enough, the team discover a massive monster that helps itself to the red shirt, but Burnham uses some quick thinking to save the team in a sequence that’s more reminiscent of Aliens than pretty much anything in Trek history.

Convinced that Lorca is working on a weapon, Burnham confronts him, and this is where the acronymically-challenged STD goes into some unexpected territory. Lorca claims that they’re working on (yes) a spore-based propulsion system that allows almost instantaneous travel to anywhere in the galaxy, or 90 light years in 1.3 seconds, to be precise. He demonstrates this by putting Burnham in what looks like Hannibal Lecter’s cell refurbished by Apple, only to whisk her to a succession of planets and back to the Discovery.

It’s not clear how all this works – does Burnham really travel to these places, or is it a form of astral projection? If we’re still a decade before Kirk and Spock, how come Scotty wasn’t howling about the spores rather than the warp drive? How exactly does plant life let you jump around the universe – and what happened on the other ship? Where did the monster come from?

We may not know where it came from, but we know where it ends up. Just as Lorca convinces Burnham that all his research is above-board (ish) we close up the episode with the reveal that he’s transported this monster from the destroyed ship to his very own personal menagerie. We’ve had iffy captains on Trek many times before, but I’m pretty sure this is the first time we’ve seen one build a sinister bond with a slavering beast the size of a jeep.

Whatever else we find out about Lorca, he’s not told Burnham everything – although does have a pet tribble in his office, so he can’t be all bad.