God what a dumb episode. Saru's backstory is the worst. Also, everyone makes really dumb decisions in this episode - and it turns out that the Bau'ls have warp travel so the prime directive doesn't even apply and the federation was still just letting slavery and genocide go on unopposed.
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| I'm not sure how effective that disguise is. |
The only reason they even go to Saru's planet in this episode is because the stupid red angel leads them there. Obviously Saru's really emotional about it and Pike makes the objectively correct decision to not let him go down to the planet to investigate. But then Michael talks him into it, which leads to literally everything else that happens in the episode.
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| I like how Saru has those weird shoes. |
Of course the Ba'uls see Saru and demand that the Federation hand him over. There was a bit of exposition about how no Kelpien has ever seen a Ba'ul and no one knows what they look like, so I was 100% expecting the Ba'uls to turn out to be also Kelpiens, but nope, they were just being mysterious for literally no reason. Anyway, the Ba'uls threaten to kill Saru's sister so Saru turns himself in.
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| We didn't end up getting a good look at a Ba'ul, but they're not Kelpiens. |
Then there's this whole thing where they find out that the Kelpiens once almost wiped out the Ba'uls because, in a shocking twist, Kelpiens are actually the predators. But the Ba'uls had better technology and somehow managed to come back from the brink of extinction and conquer the entire planet. And now they prevent the Kelpiens from taking over again by killing them before they reach their "evolved" form.
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| 271 does not seem like a large enough number to come back from. |
Saru and his sister have a chat with a Ba'ul and then Saru shoots spikes out of his head and escapes, and then the Disco crew come up with the absolute dumbest plan possible: they decide to "evolve" every Kelpien on the planet all at once. Saru's been aggressive and unstable since he went through it and they think an entire planet full of people suddenly finding themselves fearless, angry, and with no idea what's going on isn't going to result in disaster. And that's overlooking the possibility that the Ba'uls have some kind of failsafe - which they do.
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| He's Spider-Man. Except spikes instead of web. |
The Ba'uls' fallback plan is just to kill all the Kelpiens. And it was really obvious that that would be how they'd react. Pike tells them that if they do, they'll be enemies of the Federation - which I don't think is even true. The Federation never gave two shits about the Kelpien genocide before now. The Ba'uls ignore them anyway, and there's nothing Disco can do about it. Then suddenly the red angel appears and saves everyone.
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| If you're looking for a textbook case of deus ex machina, here it is. |
And then they kind of just leave? They didn't negotiate any kind of truce between the Kelpiens and Ba'uls, they just disabled the Ba'ul superweapon and then pissed off. Realistically they just slowed them down. And they didn't do anything to help the Kelpiens prepare for or deal with their new situation either, other than leaving Saru's sister behind so she can share the very small amount of info she has. Oh, and Saru saw that the red angel was a humanoid in some kind of super-advanced space suit. So there's that.
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| Dr. Boyfriend status: still alive. |
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