See Discovery, you can have a Klingon without trying to make them ridiculous/a caricature that stands on the edge of boot polish and other questionable things. Working on several series you might have heard of, Jeff W Byrd is most notably known for directing the new Charmed, The Flash (TV, not movie), 1 episode of Discovery, and Seventeen Again. No, not that one, the other one. As well as some music stuff like Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. I don’t have to say much about the writer this week, as Davy Perez has shown his chops with “All Those Who Wander” and “Among the Lotus Eaters”.

After watching “Under the Cloak of War” this morning, I’ve found myself uncontrollably whistling “Suicide is Painless.” This is an episode in which Klingon ambassador Dak’Rah is supposed to be reformed and speaking on behalf of the Fed, though if you’ve been paying attention to any of the episodes thus far, you’ll know that this isn’t the TNG era of Klingon. Dak’Rah is closer to that than the Al Jolson Klingon impersonators of Discovery’s first season. However, this is only a couple of years after the Klingon War, just under 100 years since the Romulan War ended, and bouncing back to 2256 on the moon of J’Gal.

The same J’gal where M’Benga and Chapel first met: A M.A.S.H. unit in the shadow of the bombs dropping, with depleted supplies and no way to save everyone. Meanwhile, the higher-ups at Starfleet want Dak’Rah on their flagship, the same ship M’Benga, Chapel, and Ortegas are serving.

Those are all people who were actively in that war, two directly on the planet Dak’Rah was on. The planet where he supposedly commanded the Klingons to kill everyone that wasn’t their own warriors. I say supposedly because it is later made vague that he’s using the blood of others to fuel his reformed image, “the ‘Butcher of J’Gal’.”

This isn’t an action-heavy episode, even if we’re treated to some space martial arts which is more exciting than it sounds. It is an out-and-out drama focused on our guest played by Robert Wisdom. We hardly (if ever) see him on J’Gal himself, as we’re grounded in the horrific gore that is war from the perspective of a field-promoted chief nurse and her Hawkeye Pierce. There are a lot fewer come-ons in this dark retelling, but it is filled with drama, the actual trauma of war, and just a whole lot of “What genuinely got you there?”

Split into two, we’ve got the reason why M’Benga is who he is, and in the other half, we’ve got the person we know now trying to deal with that weight and horror pressing on him. Not simply the weight itself, but the pressure as he has to look Dak’Rah in the eyes and (under orders from Pike) make polite conversation. It almost feels cheap to say it, but “Under the Cloak of War” isn’t an easy episode to watch for obvious reasons. The difficulty lies more in the depths it is willing to go to highlight just how far down M’Benga has gone during the Klingon War.

While there is ambiguity over the ending, and there is no question that Dak’Rah certainly wasn’t helping himself, I think it is the pattern buffer that’s the biggest “Oh!” moment. Akin to Hawkeye and B.J. doing triage by the helicopter or Jeeps in the compound, you have M’Benga and Chapel directing traffic as people are transported in with injuries. One young lad has injuries he can’t survive due to the lack of supplies that this M.A.S.H. unit has. Under M’Benga’s orders, they load him into the pattern buffer to sustain him as they wait for supplies and the ability to save him.

We’ve seen that’s possible and we have seen M’Benga do it before. We have seen the drain on power that it is and we know all too well from that fantastic episode (that apparently no one likes) that it is difficult for him to let go of someone stored like that. However, being the realist, being the doctor that has four incoming patients and not enough power to transport them all, he presses the button to “delete” him before Chapel has time to process. She hardly gets the sentence out as he’s pressing the button and quite literally “solves” the trolly problem that seemingly everyone has been obsessed about these last couple of years.

I’m not one for saying we need to explore every detail of every character that has appeared in a franchise, but we’ve only seen glimpses of M’Benga and little bits of Chapel before this. We haven’t had this depth of these characters in the franchise until Strange New Worlds, and we’re not sitting around to give them the best of time forever and ever. M’Benga’s decision there is the right one, it was a question of killing five people in the attempt to save one or save four because they have a serious chance of survival.

It is difficult to say you’d be as “cold” as that. In fact, I don’t think many Vulcans would be so quick to do it either, but it was the right choice. The question then becomes “What got you there?” and we somewhat get what that is. The doctor himself isn’t a saint, and when talking to the Black Ops Andorian (slightly trying to recruit him), we see that he has killed a lot with the sort of efficiency Spec Ops units only dream of. He’s trying to get away from that, live his life, and be it Black Ops recruitment or Dak’Rah coming on his ship, it just won’t leave him.

The Klingon War won’t leave him, Chapel, or Ortegas. This is what I said about Perez’s first episode, “Memento Mori.” Those who’ve lost someone don’t need a badge or a day to remember them because we remember those we care about every day. Wearing a pin or (as I mentioned there) a piece of plastic doesn’t change anything and if you want to argue that it is to benefit those who’ve been to war, here is an idea: stop killing each other over stupid ideological things that don’t matter. If you’re funding a war, you better be just as quick putting your hand in your pocket for the results too.

Believe it or not, one of the most important things to be done is to talk and empathize. That’s what “Under the Cloak of War” is about, the distance those three have from the rest of the crew. There is a tension between them all, a piece of Discovery-based lore that (surprisingly) I don’t mind, as it was said that Pike and the Enterprise during the war weren’t in it “because if we’d lost to the Klingons, we wanted the best of Starfleet to survive.” It is slightly broken when you think of the active crew in the war with another spin-off, but it gets the point across.

Is it the best episode? Maybe not the best, but possibly the best episode we’ve seen on or around the Klingon War which has a brilliant villain that actually has a shade of gray. It gave complexity and question marks to our doctor, who has thus far been the bloke who wanted to save his daughter from a disease. Beyond that, we saw the rift between Chapel and Spock with Spock understanding and giving her space. This is the first time I haven’t wanted to hit him during this relationship thing that is going on. I’d also be remiss to say that I want to see Erica get her own ship.

Ultimately, “Under the Cloak of War” plays off of everything we’ve seen so far from “The Elysian Kingdom” to “The Broken Circle.” In even more recent episodes, it plays off of everyone’s experiences. Importantly, it doesn’t shy away from them. There is no “he might have been bad,” the only vagueness comes from that final scene with Dak’Rah, and it is important to leave it that way. It is a great episode with only minor issues like the scenes on J’Gal being quite dark. It is very Discovery, which makes sense but is still difficult to watch.

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SNW "Under the Cloak of War"

8.5

Score

8.5/10

Pros

• Dealing with the truama without shame.
• The "Who did what" at the end.
• The best thing to come from the Klingon War.

Cons

• Dark uniforms, dark set, very little on J'Gal popped aside from Chapel's hair.