Star Trek: Discovery -The Butcher’s Knife Cares Not for the Lamb’s Cry review

Star Trek: Discovery’s fourth episode sheds light on the dark motivations of the ominous Captain Lorca and the workings of the organic drive.

In this fourth episode of Star Trek: Discovery, we start to really get a peek into what the motivations of the creepy Captain Lorca played by Jason Isaacs are. Lorca has convinced Michael Burnham to remain on the ship, but now he surprises her by not having her work on the organic drive. Instead, Lorca tasks Burnham with examining the tardigrade monster. Lorca wants to know how the monster survived the fight with the Klingons and wants Burnham to weaponize its unique physiology. Obviously, the monster is a metaphor for Burnham herself and Lorca is using her just as he is using the monster.

It’s not just Burnham that Lorca deceives and puts pressure on, though. Lorca gets a call from Starfleet that a mining colony is under attack. When the Admiral asks if the Discovery is ready to make a jump and get to the colony, Lorca says yes, despite the Discovery not having jumped that far before. Lorca is willing to risk it all and end up like the Glen, the destroyed sister ship to the Discovery. Is Lorca’s ambition fueled by wanting to help the Federation, or is there something else?

We also get some good looks into the Klingons in “The Butcher’s Knife Cares Not for the Lamb’s Cry.” We haven’t seen much out of the Klingon house that started this war, and that’s because they have been stranded back at the Battle of the Binary Stars. It seems the other Klingon houses are now happy to let T’Kuvma’s house starve in their wounded ship. The Klingons even ate what was left of Captain Georgiou, it seems.

Kol is not the good Klingon he acts at the start of the episode, though, as it turns out Kol is probably the Star Trek: Discovery version of the Duras sisters. Some things never change, and the Klingons are still fighting among themselves. So much for the unity of T’Kuvma.Then Kol, the Klingon who argued with T’Kuvma, shows up, and we learn that T’Kuvma’s clan is the only clan who has ships with cloaking technology. The birth of the Klingon’s ability to cloak; this is a cool story to find for a Trekkie.

The coolest part of the episode is of course the usage of the spore drive or organic drive or whatever we are calling it. The saucer section of the Discovery being in two pieces suddenly makes sense as the section rotates to activate the organic drive. The solution to the drive’s problems end up being in the tardigrade monster itself. The monster is the computer needed to communicate with the spores, but at a cost to the monster. Burnham, of course, feels for the monster because it is like her, serving a purpose on Discovery and misunderstood.

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It was cool to see the crew of the Discovery have to come up with a science based solution to the problem of the drive. This is a Star Trek set in the midst of war, but it’s still holding to the traditions of Star Trek. Now that the organic drive of Discovery is operational, Star Trek: Discovery can really take us where no man has gone before.