“Choose Your Pain” is episode five of season one of Star Trek: Discovery.
In the previous episode, “The Butcher’s Knife Cares Not for the Lamb’s Cry”, Burnham worked out that the monster found on the Glenn, the Tardigrade, was how the ship navigated and Discovery was able to use the same method, travelling anywhere instantly.
This episode opens on the Discovery‘s empty bridge. Empty everywhere in fact. Except for engineering, where Burnham is. She is at a control station, looking at another version of herself held where the Tardigrade would be. She initiates the spore drive and both selves scream. Then she wakes.
Burnham speaks to Dr Culber about the Tardigrade; despite its increased regenerative abilities, she believes that using the drive hurts it. In the last 48 hours it has become sluggish and depressed. Culber suggests Burnham may be anthropomorphising the creature.
Captain Lorca is on a starbase, briefing several officers on what Discovery has achieved in the last three weeks. He’s told that it’s imperative the technology is duplicated and rolled out on as many Starfleet vessels as possible. Stamets has released his tech specs and the technology is being fitted, but they need more Tardigrade. Until that happens, the Discovery will have to dial back on what it’s doing. They may be out their winning battles but the Klingons may well have identified their secret weapon. Lorca is to hold back unless authorised. The rest of the fleet will pick up the slack.
Tilly arrives in the mess hall and tells Burnham she looks awful. Tilly wants to know what’s going on. Burnham tells her nothing; it isn’t Tilly, it’s her. Not in Tilly’s experience. So, Burnham explains that she is concerned about the Tardigrade. And she barely has a job; she’s never been less busy.
Lorca is treating his eyes in the briefing room when Admiral Cornwell enters and turns up the lights. Which hurts him. She doesn’t know why he doesn’t get them treated by the doctors. Lorca doesn’t trust doctors. Should the admiral take that personally? Consider it punishment for blindsiding him in the briefing. Cornwell says there was something she didn’t bring up. Michael Burnham. Lorca may have the authority to conscript almost anyone at a time of war, but Starfleet’s only convicted mutineer who is viewed by many, rightly or wrongly, as the person who caused the war, is perhaps a bit much. Lorca will fight the war as he sees fit.
Lorca is heading back on a shuttle when a Klingon battlecruiser warps in and tractors the vessel aboard. The shuttle’s pilot is killed and Lorca is captured.
Admiral Cornwell briefs Saru on the Discovery; they believe it was a targeted abduction. The Klingons may have taken Lorca to get details on the spore drive, so he needs to be rescued. Burnham arrives on the bridge, asking to speak to Lorca, and Saru explains that isn’t possible. He orders multiple jumps and Burnham, when asked if there’s a problem with this, explains her concerns about the Tardigrade privately. There isn’t definite proof, though, so the mission will proceed.
After Burnham leaves, Saru asks for a list of the most decorated Starfleet captains. The list is Robert April, Jonathan Archer, Matthew Decker, Phillipa Georgiou and Christopher Pike. Familiar names. Saru wants the computer to identify the qualities most essential to their success and compare them to his own actions as acting captain. There’s an element causing him to second-guess his decisions. Eliminating the destructive element is not an option.
Lorca comes around on the Klingon ship to find himself locked up with another man. Harcourt Fenton Mudd. Harry Mudd. Yes, that Harry Mudd, from “Mudd’s Women” and “I, Mudd”. Mudd explains he wanted to marry a woman named Stella (yes, the Stella he later hated), and bought her father’s respect with a moon. But he couldn’t keep payments up on it, was chased into Klingon space and captured. There’s another Starfleet officer with them and, when some Klingons enter and demand they choose their pain, Mudd indicates him. And the other man is beaten to death. According to Mudd, prisoners can either take a beating themselves or pass it on to their cellmates.
Burnham is approaching Stamets, accompanied by Culber, in order to express her concerns about the Tardigrade. Stamets agrees that he never intended to use it with a living creature. She can either be right or help fix this.
There’s another Starfleet officer in Lorca’s cell, Ash Tyler, who has been a prisoner since the Battle of the Binaries. Lorca tells him that no-one survives Klingon torture for 7 months. It seems the captain of the ship has taken a liking to Tyler.
Burnham, Tilly and Stamets are trying to create an alternative to the Tardigrade. They do come up with one, using Tardigrade DNA with another person. There’s a problem with that; genetic engineering is forbidden for humans. The whole Eugenics Wars and Khan Noonien Singh thing. The battlecruiser’s captain – L’Rell, somehow – plans to torture Lorca, and knows that his eyes are vulnerable. Some of Lorca’s history gets revealed to, and by, his fellow prisoners. Saru and Burnham are still clashing.