![]() (Translation: “By all means, please give me better evidence and a better plan to sign off on.”) Michael concedes, “Yes, sir,” but even as she says it, her face does the real talking: Look what you’re making me do, sir. “The admiral would not be convinced by a cat in a ship,” he explains as he gently tells Michael to stay put. But as captain - a role she herself all but handed him - he now also has to think about the consequences of abandoning the Federation citizens he and his crew are imminently responsible for protecting in favor of a sexier, more heroic mission. ![]() Poor Saru is in a position not dissimilar to that one time Captain America keeps a helicopter from taking off: Of course he feels the same way Michael does about saving lives and solving the mystery of the Burn. (By now, 50 Trekkie scientists watching this have probably rattled off as many reasons why both facts could be true, but let’s go with Occam’s razor on this.) Finding a third box would give her enough data points to triangulate a possible point of origin for the Burn.Īnd now, with Book apparently in danger (the message was recorded three weeks ago), she has two reasons to flounce from the boring work of waiting patiently to save lives. She’s been tracking these down for the past year, hoping to prove that the Burn was not, in fact, a simultaneous freak event if it had been, each box would have stopped recording at the exact same microsecond, but the two boxes she’s found ended at slightly different times. That mission: He’s found a lead on a third Starfleet black box. The rogue courier has left a holo-message for Michael, explaining that the ship was programmed to take off without him and find her if he didn’t return from his mission within 24 hours. Yet within minutes of receiving orders - be on standby to intervene at the planet Argeth, in case the Emerald Chain spurns diplomatic talks there in favor of violence - Book’s ship appears at the Federation bubble’s gates, with only Grudge in the captain’s chair. Between the 900-year learning curve and the top-secret, super-powered spore drive, Discovery may still seem to the rest of Starfleet like the homeschooled genius who just transferred to their public school, but they’ve finally earned their place among their endangered brethren. The ship has been repaired and retrofitted, bringing its systems and crew into the 32nd century with programmable matter, detached nacelles, and multifunctional badges. These are not thoughts Michael has when she is presented with her first dilemma as Discovery’s first officer. Is it really better to ask for forgiveness if your plan - the first plan you thought up, the one that features exactly zero compromise and allows you to do exactly what you want - involves knowingly hanging the people you love out to dry? ![]() Because it’s not just direct orders that she violates it’s the trust that holds her friendships together, the faith that she put in a friend when she conceded a leadership position to him. But this forgiveness-over-permission philosophy starts to fall apart when it’s applied to a situation like the one Michael Burnham puts herself and her friends in this week. Who wants to have to ask permission to have fun? Or worse, to do the right thing? We can all agree that red tape is bad. The idea makes sense in the context of questioning authority, of speaking truth to power, at least. As a culture, we tend to accept “it’s better to ask for forgiveness than for permission” as a fairly unassailable axiom. ![]()
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