Saints of Imperfection (S02E05)

In this week’s episode “Saints of Imperfection” the Discovery crew launch a mission to rescue Tilly from the mycelial network and pursue Spock’s shuttle craft. This episode is heavy with entities existing where they shouldn’t – Phillipa Georgiou on Spock’s shuttle, Pike’s old friend Leland running Section 31, and in the season’s first (expected) whoa moment, the highly problematic return of Hugh. Team re:Discovery discuss the history of the theoretical tachyon particle, body diversity in the crew, the queer significance of Discovery and the technology of transporters. Like everything in this episode, it doesn’t work how you think it does!

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• TV Tropes covers “Bury Your Gays” in detail; basically it’s when LGBT characters are killed off in a way that makes them feel more expendable than the non-queer cast. The TV Tropes entry for Discovery notes that the producers – and Wilson Cruz! – talked about the trope immediately after Culber’s death went to air, promising this wasn’t like that. Time will tell.
• Spock’s death and resurrection traverses the films Star Trek II – The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek III – The Search for Spock and Star Trek IV – The Voyage Home. They’re all great!
• Mycelium Running is a book written by real mycologist Paul Stamets, and was a huge influence on Discovery’s spore technology. You can read more about it in this article, published soon after season one, which has a few guesses about the future of the show…
• Psychotropic drug enthusiast and artist Alex Gray makes art that encapsulates the feeling and experience of being on mushrooms. See some his art works here.
• The CIA has a long, documented history of murdering political leaders, killing civilians, interfering with foreign elections and performing highly unethical and illegal drug experiments on vulnerable and unknowing civilians.
• As well as Spock Must Die!, James Blish also wrote novelisations of several Star Trek episodes. This article by Colin Milburn goes into more detail about tachyons, Blish’s 1954 short story “Beep” and Gerald Feinberg’s writing on the subject.
• RENT is a rock musical loosely based on the opera La Boheme surrounding the AIDS epidemic in New York in the 1990s. It debuted in 1996.
• Wilson Cruz was the first openly gay person to play a gay character on TV: Enrique “Rickie” Vasquez in My So Called Life, a high school drama which also starred Claire Danes and Jared Leto. Carla was close with 1996, but the show actually debuted in 1994.
• Jenny Schecter of The L Word, played by Mia Kirshner, is possibly the most hated queer TV character of all time.
• Anthony Rapp was the first person to accuse Kevin Spacey of sexual misconduct, claiming Spacey was sexually inappropriate with him when was 14 years old. (He had first voiced his allegations many years earlier, but not named the actor involved.) This created the first cascade of accusations and was the first gay #metoo moment.
• Jane Lynch is a national treasure.
• Portia de Rossi is also a national treasure, but in this case, it’s the nation where Carla and Ben live.
• The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Outcast” featured Commander Riker having a romantic liaison with a member of the “genderless” J’naii species. Jonathan Frakes thought the episode “wasn’t “gutsy” enough” and should have cast a man as his J’naii counterpart, but producer Rick Berman shied away from doing so because he felt that Frakes kissing a male actor “might have been a little unpalatable to viewers”.