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Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 Episode 12 Review – Species 10-C

The Discovery crew finally (!) makes first contact with the 10-C in the latest episode of Star Trek: Discovery.

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The following contains Star Trek: Discovery spoilers.

Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 Episode 12

After what feels like at least half a dozen episodes of spinning its wheels on this particular plot point, Star Trek: Discovery finally introduces us all to the mysterious Unknown Species 10-C. And the end result is an episode that manages to (also, finally) find something close to the right balance between pushing the plot forward and indulging in the sort of extremely nerdy, deeply philosophical discussions that are a big piece of why we all fell in love with Star Trek in the first place. 

Your mileage may vary, of course, on whether you think the way the show chooses to illustrate the 10-C as a concept—as beings whose very existence is framed as so advanced it’s something we can’t understand and whose physical forms we never even fully see—is effective from a visual or a storytelling point of view. But, for me, the decision to shroud these creatures in mystery effectively conveys just how far removed they are from our expectations and understanding. And how small we, for all our own hubris about our importance in the wider universe, truly are. (Sidebar: I can’t be the only person who definitely made several “All Hail the Glow Cloud” jokes in my head, can I?)

Even though we’ve yet to get a good look at them, these have to be some of the downright weirdest creatures that have ever existed in this franchise, beings whose language the universal translator has no idea how to handle, who have defaulted to mathematical equations to find a common way to speak with us, whose technology is so beyond anything that the Federation and Starfleet has access to, even in the super-advanced 32nd century. Do the 10-C look a little terrifying and godlike? Maybe to us, they should! Aliens are (and probably should be!) really weird and unknowable. 

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(Plus, given budget and technological constraints, it’s probably better if we don’t see these creatures, since they would most likely have to be completely CGI.)

Much like last week , this episode shines brightest when it’s at its absolute nerdiest. Did I expect most of this long-awaited first contact to take place opposite a screen that looks like glowing cotton candy? Or that it would largely consist of a half dozen characters animatedly discussing mathematical equations and light patterns together? Not really, but this kind of thing is exactly what Star Trek does best. ( Discovery Season 5 request: Can we just watch this crew go around making first contact with increasingly bizarre aliens and learning about their cultures? I’m here for it.) The unique tension of trying to find a way to linearly convey with numbers both the peaceful intentions of the Discovery and her crew and the threat that the 10-C’s DMA poses to Earth and Ni’Var—it’s so incredibly dorky and so fascinating to watch unfold. 

Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 Episode 11 Review: Rosetta

Star Trek: Discovery Needs More of Saru and T’Rina’s Sweet Flirtations

Elsewhere, let’s take a second and pretend to be shocked that Ruon Tarka, a man who has repeatedly lied, misled, and betrayed Book and the Discovery crew has once again lied, misled, and betrayed the Discovery crew! At this point, it’s honestly getting difficult to feel a lot of sympathy for Book, who just keeps making the dumbest possible choice at every turn and trusting the wrong people. Honey, we get it, trust is a big part of both your formative culture or whatever, but there is placing your faith in concepts like trust or an honor system and then there’s straight-up idiocy. 

Perhaps a more nuanced character than Tarka might have made this second betrayal more emotionally impactful than it actually is. Discovery tries, giving poor kidnapped Jett Reno a heartfelt speech about her dead wife and the things grief can make us hold on to without realizing it, but it’s hard to square her very personal story (or even Book’s larger cultural loss) with Tarka’s incredible and utterly unapologetic selfishness. Because at the end of the day, he’s willing to commit genocide, kill everyone on the Discovery, possibly destroy both Earth and Ni’Var and cause untold collateral damage all for a chance to jump to a universe he isn’t sure exists to find his former bestie that he’s not even sure is still alive. Men really will do literally anything to avoid therapy. 

(Sorry, truly, but that one sad backstory episode just does not justify any of this. Yet I feel as though Discovery really wants me to feel bad for Tarka in some way. Thank you, next.) 

Speaking of things that probably could have used some more nuance, it would have been nice if General Ndoye were allowed to be anything beyond a belligerent plot device. Obviously, as a leader of Earth, protecting the planet is her ultimate (and absolutely correct) priority but the fact that her default state is “welp diplomacy doesn’t work better destroy something” is tiresome. Maybe she could have at least waffled a bit before helping Tarka light a plasma fire?

On the plus side, the possibility of impending death does offer us a handful of really great character moments in this installment. Michael’s decision to ask the rest of her bridge crew to help solve the mystery of the 10-C’s light puzzle has big teamwork makes the dream work energy. Her heart-to-heart with Saru—where the pair literally scream out their stress and fear together—is one of the best moments they’ve shared onscreen to date and a real testament to the bond that Sonequa Martin-Green and Doug Jones have built together. How far they’ve come since Season 1. And Michael giving Saru advice on how to be in a close personal relationship with a Vulcan is so incredibly perfect. (For those who are playing along at home, T’Rina confesses she has “personal fondness” for Saru so that’s practically a declaration of love , right? If only literally everyone on this ship could stop interrupting them!)

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As we barrel toward the Season 4 finale, Tarka is in command of Book’s ship, the 10-C are basically convinced the Discovery crew has betrayed them, that new interspecies friendship between them seems out the window now, and everyone might die. So, you know, no pressure, show. Let’s fly.

3.5 out of 5

Lacy Baugher

Lacy Baugher is a digital producer by day, but a television enthusiast pretty much all the time. Her writing has been featured in Paste Magazine, Collider,…

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Discovery's Burnham Gets No Credit For A Huge Star Trek First

Patrick stewart & star trek legends bring discovery’s sonequa martin-green to tears with touching tributes, star trek: discovery’s captain burnham opening starfleet academy is ironic.

Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 Finale - "Coming Home"

The USS Discovery finally came face-to-face with Species 10-C in Star Trek: Discovery season 4's finale, which resolved the major storylines and set Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) on a path towards exploring the future. As the Dark Matter Anomaly nearly destroyed Earth and Ni'Var, Burnham and her Starfleet crew had to stop Dr. Ruon Tarka (Shawn Doyle) from attacking Species 10-C and complete their First Contact mission in order to save their homeworld and the galaxy at large.

The first half of Star Trek: Discovery' s spectacular season 4 finale, "Coming Home," dealt with two major problems: stopping Dr. Tarka, who held Cleveland Booker (David Ajala) and Commander Jett Reno (Tig Notaro) prisoner aboard Book's ship, and discovering who aboard Discovery helped Tarka and Booker to sabotage the First Contact mission. The latter was easy since General Ndoye (Phumzile Sitole) confessed to being Tarka's conspirator but she acted out of her desire to save her homeworld, United Earth. Ndoye then volunteered to pilot a shuttle to stop Book's ship from destroying Species 10-C's powerful hyperfield . Ndoye rammed Book's ship, which led to its destruction. Ndyoye was beamed back aboard Discovery but Book's signal was lost mid-transport. As for Tarka, he met his demise along with Book's ship. Thankfully, Book's cat, Grudge, was safely aboard Discovery all along.

Related: Discovery's 10-C First Contact Struggles With New & Classic Star Trek

Meanwhile, United Federation of Planets headquarters warped to Earth with Admiral Charles Vance (Oded Fehr) and Lt. Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman), who left Discovery to teach at Starfleet Academy, leading the evacuation. Tragically, only 400,000+ could be evacuated by Starfleet from Earth. Regardless of the impossible odds, Vance and Tilly continued the evacuation and bonded thanks to their impending doom. But they and Earth were spared when Discovery's heroes successfully talked Species 10-C into withdrawing the DMA. Unlike the prior season finales of Star Trek: Discovery , season 4's climax did not rely on action or Captain Burnham saving the day with risk-taking heroics. Instead, the pivotal First Contact between the Federation and Species 10-C relied on the exchange of emotions and each sides' best ideals to find a common solution. "Coming Home" crystallized a new direction for Star Trek: Discovery that embraces the highest ideals of Star Trek.

Star Trek Makes Real-Life Stacey Abrams The President Of Earth

Stacey Abrams was revealed as the President of United Earth in a shocking, climactic cameo at the end of Star Trek: Discovery 's season 4 finale. Abrams is a diehard Star Trek fan who even hosted an online Star Trek event in 2020 to help the elections of Reverend Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. Star Trek: Discovery 's director, Olatunde Osunsanmi told Screen Rant in an interview that Abrams was friends with Wilson Cruz, who plays Discovery's Chief Medical Officer and Counselor Dr. Hugh Culber . Though Cruz, Abrams met Star Trek: Discovery 's showrunner, Michelle Paradise and executive producer Alex Kurtzman, and they arranged to have the Georgia politician cameo in the show, eventually deciding to make Abrams United Earth's previously unseen President.

Abrams' appearance as the President gave her the opportunity to act alongside Sonequa Martin-Green's Captain Burnham, and she also formally announced that United Earth is rejoining the Federation. Earth broke away from the Federation after The Burn happened and remained an isolated world for over a century, redesignating itself as United Earth. The fact that Discovery's homeworld was missing from the Federation was a painful reminder of how broken the 32nd century was, but United Earth returning to the fold marks a bright new beginning for the Federation and Earth. It's unclear if Stacey Abrams will reprise her role as United Earth's President in Star Trek: Discovery season 5 but it was a jaw-dropping cameo nonetheless.

Star Trek: Discovery's Species 10-C Explained (Fully)

Species 10-C is a Star Trek alien race unlike any other in the franchise. Star Trek: Discover y wisely took the opportunity to create a thoroughly alien species that would test Starfleet's heroes patience, understanding, and their commitment to seeking out new life and new civilizations. Because they reside in another galaxy beyond the Galactic Barrier, the intriguing Species 10-C wasn't bound by Star Trek's tradition where most aliens are humanoid in appearance. Instead, Species 10-C is the size of skyscrapers and, because of their completely alien brain patterns, universal translators are useless. This required Burnham and her team to find a new way to communicate with them. But Species 10-C has a complex system of emotions as the basis for their language, and this gave Discovery the building blocks to begin First Contact.

Related: Discovery's DMA Plan Means Earth Is Being Attacked For The 9th Time

Crucially, Species 10-C isn't a villainous or malevolent race. They are a lifeform that has achieved a higher state of evolution and technological superiority to the point where they were unaware of and didn't consider the denizens of the Milky Way Galaxy to be higher life forms. While they were confused by Discovery's appearance and by Book and Tarka's attempt to attack them, Species 10-C was patient and curious about Discovery's peaceful overtures. Species 10-C also didn't use the DMA as a weapon intentionally; the anomaly was simply a device they employed to harvest the boronite they needed to power their protective hyperfield. Curiously, despite reaching an understanding with Species 10-C, the Federation delegates didn't attempt to ask them what they prefer to be called. They remain "Species 10-C" and it remains to be seen if the Federation will maintain contact with the extragalactic race or if Species 10-C will even join the Federation.

How Book And Discovery Saved Earth At The End Of Season 4

The USS Discovery faced a ticking clock as the DMA neared Earth, with Species 10-C, again, unaware of the damage their device could cause. But Species 10-C also rescued Book because they intercepted his transporter signal when Discovery tried to beam him aboard . Thus, Species 10-C was able to return Book safely, so the former courier was never dead. However, the same cannot be said of Dr. Tarka. Tarka was presumably killed when Book's ship exploded and he was unable to use his device to harness the hyperfield's energy to send him into the Multiverse, which was his goal all along and why Ruon was willing to risk a war between the Federation and Species 10-C. While anything can happen in Star Trek, Tarka is probably dead.

Once back with Michael and the Federation delegates, it was Book who successfully pleaded with Species 10-C to deactivate the DMA. Of course, the DMA destroyed Book's homeworld of Kwejian . As the person who lost the most because of the DMA, it was fitting that Book was able to make Species 10-C realize the devastation their Anomaly sowed in the Federation's galaxy. As a Kwejian, Book has powers that attune him to the emotions of living beings, and this allowed him to reach Species 10-C and convince them that their DMA was dangerous and hurt living beings. Species 10-C agreed not to use the DMA any longer and safely sent the USS Discovery through a wormhole back to their own galaxy.

Saru And President T'Rina Are Officially Star Trek's Newest Couple

Captain Saru (Doug Jones) and Ni'Var President T'Rina (Tara Rosling) were attracted to each other from their first meeting in Star Trek: Discovery season 3, but their slow-burn romance has finally become official and it was Saru's primary Discovery season 4 storyline . Although they shared several intimate moments in Star Trek: Discovery seasons 3 and 4, Saru was confused and disheartened when the Vulcan behaved cooly toward him during their First Contact mission with Species 10-C. However, Saru came to understand that T'Rina had to focus on her duties and responsibilities as President and diplomat during the crisis. After their First Contact with Species 10-C was a success, T'Rina and Saru finally decided to pursue romance. On a show with many love stories like Burnham and Book and Dr. Culber and Commander Paul Stamets (Anthony Rapp), the Kelpien and the Vulcan are, at last, Star Trek: Discovery 's newest couple.

Related: Discovery Season 4 Finally Pays Off Burnham's Biggest Klingon War Lesson

Book's Punishment Compared To Burnham's From Discovery Season 1

Although Book was able to make Species 10-C stop using the DMA, the fact remained he went rogue and nearly plunged the Federation into a war with the extragalactic aliens. However, Book was only doing what he thought was right. In this way, Book echoes Michael, who also acted unilaterally to do what she thought was right but ended up sparking the Klingon War in Star Trek: Discovery season 1. However, as President Laira Rillak (Chelah Horsdal) said, "reasons do matter," and Book was spared a prison sentence. Instead, he was assigned to help refugees who were displaced by the DMA, although this separates him from Michael for the foreseeable future. Still, compared to the prison sentence Michael served in 2256, Book's lenient punishment is a sign that the 32nd century Federation has learned the vital lesson that "reasons do matter," compared to the 23rd century Federation . The similarities between Book and Michael are another powerful sign that they were made for each other.

Discovery Season 5 Will Explore Star Trek's 32nd Century Future

After facing down the back-to-back intergalactic crises of The Burn and the DMA and emerging victorious, the USS Discovery's crew finally earned rest and they disembarked for vacations. Discovery's heroes get to spend quality time on Earth for the first time in 930 years. However, Captain Burnham and Star Trek: Discovery will definitely return for season 5. While Star Trek: Discovery 's season 4 finale didn't end with a cliffhanger or an explicit setup for the next season, clues can glean what's next for Burnham and her crew.

Thanks to Ni'Var and United Earth rejoining, the Federation is growing stronger. When Captain Burnham spoke to United Earth's President, she noted how much is left of the galaxy there is to explore. Star Trek: Discovery 's 32nd-century setting allows it to write all-new canon but, thus far, the past two seasons have been focused on season-long threats. After the success with Species 10-C, Burnham's desire to explore could signal that the USS Discovery will finally spend more time seeking out new life and new civilizations. Star Trek: Discovery season 4 was noticeably less action-oriented and featured a greater focus on moral and ethical dilemmas in the classic style of Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation . Star Trek: Discovery season 5 may let Captain Burnham and the USS Discovery boldly explore to see who and what's out there in the 32nd century.

Next: Discovery's 10C Plan Uses Star Trek's Original Message

Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 is available to stream on Paramount+.

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• Star Trek: Discovery

'Star Trek: Discovery': Everything We Know About Species Ten-C (So Far)

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'The Rings of Power' Season 2's Doors of Durin, Explained

'married at first sight’ season 18 needs to focus on this for success, after 'the perfect couple,' watch the director's psychological thriller with nicole kidman.

Star Trek: Discovery 's venture into the future has opened up a multitude of opportunities for new stories with familiar settings and world-building — a fan's dream. With only the final episode of the season yet to air, there are still many unanswered questions lingering in our minds. This season highlights one of Discovery 's go-to themes, characterized by harsh circumstances creating unforeseen consequences that rattle the galaxy. Usually, there's a lesson to be learned and this season's is still elusive, although there has been character development abound.

The mysterious alien species known as "Unknown Species Ten-C" drove crisis forward and the galaxy together with their creation, simply known as the "Dark Matter Anomaly" aka the DMA. This gravitational anomaly, massive and highly destructive, destroyed planets, such as Cleveland Booker's ( David Ajala ) homeworld of Kwejian. But what exactly do we know of this species rocking the Milky Way galaxy?

RELATED: 'Star Trek: Discovery’s Mary Wiseman and David Ajala on Season 4 and Why Grudge the Cat Won’t Be Doing Many Conventions

The Ten-C are located about outside the galaxy, past the galactic barrier in extragalactic space. They live in a megastructure, a hyperfield big enough to contain a small star system with a radius of 228 million kilometers. The unknown species created it about 1000 years prior. The hyperfield blocks signals coming in or leaving, making the interior of the structure a mystery to lifeforms outside it and also has the ability to pull nearby objects into it, including starships.

Inside the hyperfield exists three gas giants. The aliens (or the hyperfield) are able to transport objects in orb-like structures that are inside the megastructure. They can also create and transport other structures inside these orbs that they can control in a way that feels similar to a holo-deck.

A megastructure like the Ten-C's hyperfield requires a massive amount of energy creating their need for boronite, an energy source. To fulfill this need, they created the DMA to harvest the boronite for their hyperfield. Their gravitational anomaly measures 5 lightyears in diameter and exhibits gravitational characteristics similar to that of a wormhole. It's gravitational distortions can destroy any object within 12 AUs (an AU is the distance between Sol and Earth) from it. This destruction is how The Federation became alerted to its existence. In addition to this immense power, the DMA can also move and transport to different locations in the galaxy. The Ten-C even have the ability to recreate this device after the rogue agent, Ruon Tarka ( Shawn Doyle ) manages to destroy the DMA.

The Ten-C are large in size, compared to humans and other similar alien species. They have visual receptors and pheromone glands, but it's unclear if they have auditory receptors or electrical sensors due to their "unusual" brain structure. The Milky Way's universal translator doesn't help communication with these beings.

There are also many revelations that come to fruition in the episode, "Rosetta." This episode features Burnham ( Sonequa Martin-Green ) and crew visiting a dead planet once home to the Ten-C, a gas giant that was hit by asteroids until the gas burned away. This planet's star is surrounded by a Dyson sphere made of DMA material, showing that the Ten-C are a Type II on the Kardashev scale.

Even a species with the capabilities of a Type-II civilization couldn't avoid losing individuals in an extinction event. When Burnham's away team explores the planet, they not only run into a structure that they determine is a nursery, but they also find the bone remains of the species. The aging of the remains shows that Ten-C are not only flexible creatures (their bones are more similar to cartilage) but the fact that they found infant remains in the only remaining structure indicates that the Ten-C value their young.

The Ten-C communicate with complex hydrocarbons, using them in a way similar to pheromones. At least sixteen different ones were discovered by The Federation, and each one corresponds to a different universal emotion, such as love, terror, and curiosity. When combined with a light pattern, it is possible to decode the messages that the Ten-C convey. Through their interactions with the Discovery, you can tell they also know how to initiate contact with new people, introducing simple messages using mathematics before increasing the complexity of their language. Even with basic terms, they are able to communicate with Burnham and the other leaders, eventually revealing they also have empathy upon learning the harm their DMA caused to the Milky Way's people.

There's still so much unknown to predict how the Ten-C will react to Tarka's pursuit of them, but if the clues predict anything, it's that they've known a similar plight to many civilizations in the Star Trek universe. With Discovery 's past in consideration, hopefully, they'll come to an understanding with Burnham and co and leave room for a universe to find hope in once again.

• TV Features
• Star Trek: Discovery (2017)

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Species Ten-C

• Episode aired Mar 10, 2022

As the DMA approaches Earth and Ni'Var, Captain Burnham and the crew of the U.S.S. Discovery attempt to make First Contact with the powerful species responsible before it's too late. As the DMA approaches Earth and Ni'Var, Captain Burnham and the crew of the U.S.S. Discovery attempt to make First Contact with the powerful species responsible before it's too late. As the DMA approaches Earth and Ni'Var, Captain Burnham and the crew of the U.S.S. Discovery attempt to make First Contact with the powerful species responsible before it's too late.

• Olatunde Osunsanmi
• Gene Roddenberry
• Bryan Fuller
• Alex Kurtzman
• Sonequa Martin-Green
• Anthony Rapp
• 47 User reviews
• 6 Critic reviews

Top cast 22

• Michael Burnham

• Lt. Cmdr. Paul Stamets

• Dr. Hugh Culber

• Commander Jett Reno

• Cleveland Booker

• Federation President Laira Rillak

• President T'Rina

• Capt. Ndoye

• Lt. Cmdr. Keyla Detmer

• Lt. Cmdr. Gen Rhys

• Lt. Cmdr. Joann Owosekun

• Lt. Cmdr. Nilsson

• Lt. Christopher
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

Did you know

• Trivia Dr Hirai makes a reference to the Kardashev scale in theorising how technologically advanced Species Ten-C is. The Kardashev scale was suggested by Soviet astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev in 1964 as a way of classifying, into three types (or levels), an alien civilisation's level of technological capability by the amount of energy it can harness and use.
• Goofs All entries contain spoilers

Cmdr. Saru : [referring to Species Ten-C] It is possible they do not yet see us as sentient beings.

Federation President Laira Rillak : We have a spaceship. We warped here. Clearly, we are sentient.

Dr. Hirai : Compared to them, our technology's primitive. They've achieved Level 2 on the Kardashev scale, maybe beyond. It's like comparing a human to a monkey with a rock.

User reviews 47

• nedim-13753
• Mar 10, 2022
• March 10, 2022 (United States)
• United States
• Official Site
• Pinewood Toronto Studios, Port Lands, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (Studio)
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

• Runtime 51 minutes

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The aforementioned Plan B, which is sending a group of DOTs out to the hyperfield to spray it with “peaceful” hydrocarbons, succeeds a little too well as Discovery is quickly sucked up by what can really only be described as the “Russian water tentacle” from The Abyss . Species 10-C remains cautious even after bringing the ship into the hyperfield, however, and keeps Discovery encased in a ball of, well, something that holds it in place and neutralizes the ship’s defensive systems.

Eventually, Species 10-C makes direct contact and the delegation heads down to the cargo bay to stand face-to-face with the enormous alien floating off the stern. The alien emits a complex pheromone that translates roughly to “cautious, but intrigued,” and displays a pattern of flashing bioluminescence that is assumed at first to be the bulk of the message.

It must be, right? Because language has semantic structure and the light has a pattern. Well, not quite. It turns out that the pheromones themselves — both the molecular structure and their emotional meaning — are the message and the light pattern provides the order in which the molecule should be “read,” and that precise meaning and emotional inflection exist simultaneously.

While the solution to this puzzle is reached a little too easily, it’s impressive that the writers approached the communication challenge with such nuance and consideration.

Mentions of METI (a counterpart to SETI that’s concerned with sending messaging out to any extraterrestrial intelligence that might be listening, whereas SETI searches for messages sent to us ), the hypothetical Kardashev Scale (which categorizes a civilization’s level of technological advancement), and examples of human communication systems such as music that contain both emotional abstraction and mathematical precision show that the writers have given careful thought to just how difficult communication with an entirely unknown entity would be.

It’s an intellectually rewarding solution to one of the season’s primary mysteries, and one that is satisfying enough to excuse the lengthy journey to get here even if it’s still not fully justified.

Meanwhile — and in unfortunate contrast to how good the linguistic A-story is — Zora  (Annabelle Wallace) informs Stamets (Anthony Rapp) with frustrating vagueness that she is feeling “off,” and requests help in identifying what exactly she’s experiencing. With the help of Culber (Wilson Cruz) and the return of Gray’s Trill meditation game, she eventually leads him and Adira (Blu del Barrio) to Engineering where they discover the source of Zora’s strange sensations — and also that Reno has disappeared.

Of course, we know from the start that what Zora is sensing is the result of Tarka’s system patch, and that it’s important that she find and remove it. That said, it’s still asking a lot of us to believe that the characters would drop everything during the most important few hours of their lives to give Zora a therapy session.

One of the great enduring lessons of Star Trek is that everyone’s experiences and instincts are important and worth hearing out, but even so the timing and presentation of this was difficult to take seriously. And as with other similar storylines this season, it relies too much on the audience’s external knowledge to accept the internal actions of the characters.

And speaking of Jett Reno (Tig Notaro), she remains captive aboard the tagalong ship, listening in as Book (David Ajala) and Tarka (Shawn Doyle) openly discuss their plans as if Reno isn’t sitting, you know, right there . (I know Book’s ship isn’t very large so there isn’t really anywhere to put Reno, but we also know that forcefields can be set up to at least block sound, so…)

At one point Tarka pulls up a flow diagram of what should theoretically happen when he pulls the DMA’s power source and Reno is alarmed by what she sees — and I’m alarmed that Microsoft Visio appears to still be alive and well in the 32nd century!

It becomes evident to Reno that not only will pulling the power source collapse the hyperfield, destroying everyone inside it, it will also leave an enormous sector-wide subspace rift in the DMA’s wake… a rift that will destroy Earth and Ni’Var just as completely as the DMA itself. That the rift will travel slowly enough to provide a month of evacuation time is hardly a comfort.

Aboard Discovery and after a few more back-and-forths between the delegates and 10-C in which the two groups establish a basic communication system, 10-C sends a pod over in a (likely) invitation to continue communicating. Captain Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), Saru (Doug Jones), Ni’Var’s president T’Rina (Tara Rosling), and Federation president Rillak (Chelah Horsdal) take part in the venture, while Earth’s General Ndoye (Phumzile Sitole) declines to join the rest of the group out of distrust.

While I understand that Ndoye’s perspective is a product of Earth’s current isolationist stance, I so wanted her to put her skepticism aside and give first contact with 10-C more of a chance. Being frustrated that the first attempt doesn’t immediately work, but also not wanting to try something else seems like setting yourself up for failure and denying the opportunity for any other outcome than one of disappointment.

It’s difficult as a viewer, because I like Ndoye and wanted to think that she could become a better version of herself, but at the same time the consistency of her stance seems recognizably realistic. Star Trek can at times be a bit heavy-handed with its real-world analogues, but at least in this respect Captain Ndoye seems like someone we could all know.

Back aboard Book’s ship, Reno quietly shares her concerns about Tarka’s plan with the Kwejian. She’s been whittling away at him for a while trying to get him to see the folly of continuing with his vendetta — even sharing a moving story of her own experiences with grief after the death of her wife and the crash of the Hiawatha —  but it’s the revelation that Tarka’s plan is as destructive as the DMA itself that finally gets his attention.

The news that Tarka has been deceiving Book isn’t particularly surprising, nor is the fact that, once Book does confront him, Tarka has some tech trickery up his sleeve that renders him literally untouchable.

After his fruitless attempts to physically stop Tarka, Book is locked in the makeshift brig with Reno. On Discovery , Ndoye continues to feed info to Tarka and eventually even goes so far as to use her override code on the ship’s systems so Tarka can escape. She really doesn’t trust 10-C. (Why the leader of a non-Federation world would have override codes for a Starfleet ship is beyond me.)

Just as communication between the diplomatic team and 10-C progresses to the point that it’s possible to express that the is harmful — and it’s possible that 10-C understands them — things go sideways. Tarka puts his plan into DMA action, punching through the strange barrier that’s been holding both ships in an act that certainly seems like aggression; 10-C immediately ceases communication efforts and retreats away from Discovery .

With a timely message from Reno explaining Tarka’s plan and the horrible consequences should he succeed, Discovery is left with a madman to pursue and an all-powerful alien species to placate — and not a lot of time to do it.

OBSERVATION LOUNGE

• If anyone is interested in learning more about the linguistic and anthropological challenges of communicating with an entirely unknown species, NASA and SETI published an excellent book on the topic called Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communications, which is available on the NASA website as a free download.  
• Since this is an episode about cross-species communication, it seems appropriate to air some grievances about the bizarre choice of cat noises that are dubbed in for Grudge. The low yowling sound that they often have her making is a territorial warning sound made between two cats who are about an inch away from fighting, not one that a calm solitary cat would ever make, and the fact that she keeps making it has me worried about her stress level. Is Grudge okay?  
• Jeno disassembles a tricombadge, allowing us to see the inner construction for the first time.

• We’ve known for a while that Cleveland Booker isn’t Book’s birth name, but in “Species Ten-C” we finally learn the story behind it: he’s the fifth in a line of couriers to be given the name, passed from generation to generation between mentors and mentees. I wonder who the original Cleveland Booker was and what his story is.  
• Twice in this episode, Burnham and Saru stop to have little asides to discuss what seem like frivolous topics in the middle of a serious, intellectually taxing situation. The first time Saru asks for relationship advice, and the second Burnham confides that she’s feeling insecure and the whole thing culminates with the two of them doing yelling exercises.   Discovery has always been tonally and thematically interested in exploring the emotions of its characters, but given their context, these scenes felt like a stretch… even for this show.

If not for Tig Notaro — who is always a breath of fresh air but gives an especially good performance here — the portion of the episode dedicated to Tarka’s intrigue would be frustrating in that it takes runtime away from the much more interesting A-story. Even Tarka, who I genuinely liked longer than I probably should have after learning that yes he is the bad guy, is starting to feel one-note.

There is one person though who might be able to get through to Species 10-C, and he just happens to be on his way to the DMA’s power source: Book. With his empathic abilities that work across vastly different species of plant, animal, and person, I suspect Book will be key to all of this.

With just one more episode left in the season, for the first time we can say with certainty that we won’t have to wait to find out.

Star Trek: Discovery closes out its fourth season on March 17 on Paramount+ in the United States, and on CTV Sci Fi Channel and Crave in Canada. Outside of North America, the series is available on Paramount+ and on Pluto TV in select international locations.

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After a quick stop at a nearby planet to help learn the context for communicating with Unknown Species 10-C, Discovery finally arrives at the hypershield, where the crew exercises keen intelligence and fascinating problem-solving to start communicating with the alien race.

In the last episode, Michael Burnham ( Sonequa Martin-Green ) and her away team discover that 10-C communicate emotion via chemical compounds, an important discovery as this is the cultural context for which the Milky Way residents can approach 10-C. In “Species Ten-C,” Discovery reaches the hypershield, the massive construct in space that houses 10-C following their escape from their nearby doomed homeworld. Immediately, the hyperfield flexes our imagination, as we are told it is the size of Mars’ distance from the Sun, and that it holds three gas giants. Unfortunately, we are only told this information, not shown it, so we’ll hope the visual spectacle comes later. Or perhaps the show’s producers plan to purposefully hide the hyperfield’s interior for some dramatic reason?

Discovery first tries to send a few DOT robots, loaded with the “peaceful” pheromone, to the hyperfield to help convey the crew’s intentions, but the hyperfield swallows the DOTS in a plume of what looks like water, and Discovery is next. Despite their attempt to flee, the ship and its crew are pulled into the hyperfield and encased in an orb that blocks their view of… well, anything, and the orb is reportedly bringing them to one of the planets. How, then, are the crew supposed to initiate contact?

The crew knows that 10-C values boronite, the material the Dark Matter Anomley is harvesting back in the Milky Way. So, Burnham suggests launching a bit of boronite out of the ship as a gift, hoping that 10-C takes that as a communication request. It works, and soon a member of the 10-C shows itself (kind of) right outside the shuttle bay doors. Being able to finally see 10-C is what we have been looking forward to for a long time, but since we actually don’t see much of the alien at all in this episode thanks to the gas planet’s atmosphere around Discovery , we bet the true, actual reveal – the one where we’ll get a good sense of what 10-C looks like – is still coming.

We won’t detail in its entirety the intricate process through which Burnham, President Rillak ( Chelah Horsdal) , Dr. Hirai ( Hiro Kanagawa ), and the rest of the first contact delegation learn how to communicate with the 10-C, but it involves quite a few elements, such as mimicking light patterns to establish fundamental comprehension, matching 10-C’s light shows with a three-dimensional representation of their hydrocarbons, and assigning symbols to the various hydrocarbons to form mathematical equations. Rest assured the process is really fascinating and, importantly, grounded in real-world math and science; for example, Burnham likens the math-based language the delegation decodes to the real-world Lincos , a type of constructed language posited in 1960.

Star Trek , especially Berman-era Star Trek , established its own framework for understanding its science. Thanks to the amazing imaginations of the various production crews, Star Trek ‘s futuristic science feels like it makes sense, even if all these characters say is technobabble nonsense. Part of this futuristic science is the universal translator, which magically takes care of language barriers. In “Species Ten-C,” there are numerous methods of pattern-recognition, language interpretation, and math-based solutions that Burnham and her crew use to explain to the 10-C that they are, in fact, sentient and intelligent; this is a welcome change from every other first contact scenario we’ve seen in this franchise. Suffice to say, it’s smart writing by writer Kyle Jarrow , and watching the crew solve this communication barrier is definitely a highlight of not just this episode, but season four thus far.

Also commendable is the diverse number of viewpoints Burnham enlists to ultimately solve the language barrier. There is a scene where we have Burnham, Saru ( Doug Jones ), Zora ( Annabelle Wallis ), President Rillak, Doctor Hirai, President T’Rina ( Tara Rosling ), and bridge officers Lieutenant Commander Kayla Detmer ( Emily Coutts ), Lieutenant Commander Nilsson ( Sara Mitich ), and Lieutenant Christopher ( Orville Cummings ), all offering their own input that ultimately helps the crew arrive at a communication solution. Burnham said to Detmer in the last episode that they will complete this journey “together,” and it’s turning out she was right. It’s a wonderful display of teamwork.

10-C is apparently also impressed with how the Discovery crew is able to prove their intelligence, as it sends a shuttle to the delegation. The away team President Rillak ultimately decides on is herself, Burnham, Saru, and President T’Rina – all people who offer a particular skillset to first contact, or represent those worlds that are in immediate danger thanks to the DMA.

One person does leave the group during their communication efforts, however: General Ndoye ( Phumzile Sitole ), as she has a different mission: keeping Cleveland Booker ( David Ajala ) and Ruon Tarka (Shawn Doyle) informed about what Discovery ‘s crew is doing. Book had contacted the general earlier because he was looking for her to enact a plan to allow Book’s ship to launch off its hiding place on Discovery ‘s hull and travel to the other side of the hyperfield. On the other side is what Tarka is looking for: the DMA power source. Unbeknownst to Book, Tarka knows more about the consequences of pulling the plug on the DMA’s power source than he lets on.

Thanks to incredulous eyesight and incredible comprehension by the captive Jett Reno ( Tig Notaro ), the Discovery engineer tells Book that he is being played; Tarka is actually well aware that removing the DMA’s power source will collapse the entire hyperfield, dooming anything and anyone inside it. Tarka does not share this information with Book, as such a discovery would surely trigger Book to not allow the plan to move forward, and how else, then, would Tarka reunite with his friend, Oros? Having Reno observes Tarka’s calculations from her holding area is pretty convenient , we must say, but alas it leads to Book confronting Tarka about this new information. Not that we actually see Book confront Tarka.

Which leads us to a major critique of this episode: why didn’t we see Book approach Tarka about the destructive nature of removing the DMA’s power source? Let’s consider the situation: Tarka and Book have teamed up as two people who are suffering from their own respective pain. They are bonded in a deep way, and by Tarka not sharing the true ramifications of his plan, this counts as a major betrayal of the friendship and partnership the two men have formed. Book would be understandably hurt by Tarka’s secrecy, but we don’t see that exchange play out. This storyline jumps from Reno telling Book that Tarka is hiding something, to Book reacting with anger toward Tarka for keeping this information from him. What a missed opportunity! This would have been a great moment for Doyle, who has so ably played Tarka, and it would have been a watershed moment for the relationship Book and Tarka have built across this entire season.

“Tell him to show you the math. His equations won’t make any sense, but the look on his face will. Like I said, pain makes people blind. You need to make this right.” Reno to Book about Tarka’s secret plan to collapse the hyperfield.

In any case, the confrontation between the two men ends up with Tarka taking control of their ship and Book being held in the same holding area as Reno. With the help of Ndoye, Tarka launches Book’s ship off Discovery and further into the hyperfield, which seriously messes up Burnham and company’s first contact efforts. When Tarka launches the ship, the small first contact delegation had already boarded the 10-C shuttle and transported to a replica Discovery bridge, where more communication exchanges were playing out. The away team was able to successfully invoke a “fear” emotion regarding Milky Way residents and the DMA, and 10-C was able to express the “sadness” emotion at that revelation – indicating that they understand the destructive nature of the DMA. It’s a huge development that is sabotaged by Tarka’s sudden action. The away team is transported back to the real Discovery bridge, leading Burnham to tackle the unexpected threat Tarka presents.

Taken together, “Species Ten-C” presents the most substantial development in the 10-C storyline yet, as Discovery ‘s crew finally are able to communicate, albeit simplistically, with the extra-galactic civilization. We want to express major kudos to this show for taking such a deep dive in the fine details of first contact; most times, first contact between different cultures in Star Trek is a standard affair accomplished with the magic universal translator. Here, Discovery is completely shaking up the concept, and uses intelligent science and mathematics to accomplish this. With this in mind, “Species Ten-C” feels like a fresh take on what this franchise can offer, even after hundreds and hundreds of episodes.

There is only one episode left in this season, and there are many questions to be answered. What will happen now that 10-C knows its DMA incites terror in Milky Way residents? Will Tarka’s plan to destroy the DMA power source, and therefore destroy the hyperfield itself, be successful? Doesn’t this kind of qualify him as a madman, someone who is okay with sacrificing countless lives in pursuit of his goal? Will Book and Burnham eventually reconcile their relationship, especially now that Book will fight to stop Tarka? And as always, we’re wondering how Discovery ended up crewless in space as seen in “ Calypso “; will that be answered this season?

Stray Thoughts:

• While most communication in Star Trek takes place on the bridge in front of the viewscreen, Discovery’s producers were wise to move the 10-C encounter to the shuttle bay. The expansive view granted by the wide bay entrance is appropriately dramatic for communicating with a species as big as the 10-C.
• Why didn’t anybody recognize or acknowledge that General Ndoye had wandered off in the middle of a vital first contact situation ?
• Why didn’t Zora recognize the warp nacelle sabotage General Ndoye conducted?
• Zora asserts that she doesn’t feel right, and ultimately, it’s because of Book’s ship attached to her hull and the numbing device used to hide it. The ship was attached for 25 hours or so; why didn’t she bring this up earlier?
• Book reveals in this episode that he took his mentor’s name, Cleveland Booker, as per the courier tradition of carrying the trust associated with a name. Our Book is the fifth person to bear this name.
• President T’Rina rudely shuts down Saru when he speculates about what 10-C’s motivations are for entrapping Discovery , but everybody else in this episode, including the president herself, speculates at one point or another.
• Doctor Hirai references 10-C being on level two (or greater) on the Kardashev scale , the real-world method of estimating technological advancement, first proposed by a Soviet astronomer.
• There’s a continuity error around 30:47 in this episode, for those who enjoy such things, where the position of Saru’s hand changes from shot to shot.
• Is there some wonky editing going on around 34:09 when Book and Tarka are fighting? The scene begins with Book smashing through a display that is seemingly on the bridge, but then the next shot is him walking toward the bridge via that short little hallway.
• Why doesn’t Rillak question why General Ndoye asserts she would be better off not traveling on the 10-C shuttle? We know Ndoye wants to stay behind to help Book and Tarka, but of course no one else knows that.
• While it’s never a bad thing to express your emotions, as this show is apt to emphasize, Burnham’s conversation with Saru before they depart on the 10-C’s shuttle seems a bit out of place. She asserts that she feels like everything is “slipping through my fingers,” but why exactly does she feel that way? She and her crew just broke a major barrier in communicating with the 10-C, and the promise of further communication is nigh; shouldn’t she feel elated?
• 25 or so hours go by from when Reno is kidnapped to when Culber takes a cursory look at the engineering floor grate and discovers her combadge. No one noticed the badge before? And Zora didn’t realize a Discovery crew member was staying in the same place for more than a day?
• The camera fully orbiting Burnham in the last shot of the episode is a great touch by director Olatunde Osunsanmi , as a major wrench was just thrown in Burnham and company’s efforts to communicate with 10-C, and that’s not even counting the emotional investment Burnham still has in Book.

The fourth season of Star Trek: Discovery stars Sonequa Martin-Green (Captain Michael Burnham), David Ajala (Cleveland “Book” Booker), Doug Jones (Commander Saru), Anthony Rapp (Lt. Commander Paul Stamets), Wilson Cruz (Dr. Hugh Culber), Mary Wiseman (Sylvia Tilly), Blu Del Barrio (Adira), and Ian Alexander (Grey).

Star Trek: Discovery streams on Paramount+ in the U.S. and on Bell Media’s CTV Sci-Fi Channel and streams on Crave in Canada. Internationally, the series is available on Paramount+ and on Pluto TV in select markets .

Stay tuned to TrekNews.net for all the latest news on Star Trek: Discovery , Star Trek: Strange New Worlds , Star Trek: Picard , Star Trek: Lower Decks , Star Trek: Prodigy , and more.

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Kyle Hadyniak has been a lifelong Star Trek fan, and isn't ashamed to admit that Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and Star Trek: Nemesis are his favorite Star Trek movies. You can follow Kyle on Twitter @khady93 .

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Species Ten-C (episode)

As the DMA approaches Earth and Ni'Var, Captain Burnham and the crew of the USS Discovery attempt to make first contact with the powerful species responsible before it's too late.

• 1.2 Act One
• 1.3 Act Two
• 1.4 Act Three
• 1.5 Act Four
• 2.1 Production
• 3.1 Starring
• 3.2 Guest starring
• 3.3 Co-starring
• 3.4 Uncredited co-stars
• 3.5 References
• 3.6 External links

Summary [ ]

The USS Discovery approaches Species 10-C 's hyperfield as the crew stares in awe at the sheer size. Lieutenant Commander Detmer reports that they are at 250,000 kilometers distance; Captain Burnham orders her to hold position at two hundred thousand. President Rillak notes that the size is estimated to be the distance from Sol to Mars , and Lieutenant Commander Owosekun confirms this, saying it has a radius of 1.5 AUs , with a gravitational presence of 1.3 solar units. Burnham asks Lieutenant Christopher if the 10-C have responded to hails , and he reports there is still nothing. Burnham orders him to keep hailing on all frequencies. Lieutenant Commander Rhys wonders if they should raise shields , but Burnham feels this would signal threat or aggression. She then asks Owosekun if there are any weapons detected, but is informed there are none, in fact no changes to the hyperfield at all; it was like the 10-C didn't even know they were there. Burnham then turns to Rillak, saying the first contact team should implement their contingency plan. Rillak points out that the message being sent was vetted by all the delegates, but Burnham counters that, logically speaking, if the 10-C wanted to acknowledge them, they would have already. She then reminds the President that they have fifteen hours before United Earth and Ni'Var begin to feel the effects of the DMA . If hailing wasn't working, they needed to try something new. Rillak finally concurs.

Dr. Culber reports to the first contact team that they had collected sixteen complex hydrocarbon compounds from the dead 10-C homeworld , each corresponding to a different emotional state: terror, love, sadness, curiosity, peacefulness. Dr. Hirai points out the last as being the one that concerned them now; their contingency plan involved using that particular hydrocarbon to start communication – " basically, 'we come in peace', in chemical form, " as he puts it – and asks if someone from Science is putting it together. Saru confirms that Commander Stamets has replicated the hydrocarbon and is deploying it in a fleet of DOT-23s to distribute it on the surface of the hyperfield. General Ndoye is concerned, as this would mean moving closer to the hyperfield to deploy the DOTs, and the radiation of the hyperfield would affect the warp core , which would make it harder to retreat if the 10-C attack. Saru concedes that the power drain, while small, will be "statistically significant". Ndoye questions the prudence of such a risk, but Hirai points out that they wouldn't get a different response without a different input, and given the 10-C's technological capabilities, there was no guarantee they would be able to evade any attack even at full warp.

Saru then asks Stamets if he is ready to proceed; he and Ensign Adira Tal are loading the hydrocarbons into the DOTs, and he reports eleven more to go. As they work, Zora voices concern that something has felt "off" for the past several hours, but she has been able to find any irregularities in her systems. When Adira asks if this wasn't a good thing, Zora agrees it would be, but she remains convinced something is unaccounted for in some part of her system, and wants to make sure that nothing will impact the mission, given its importance. Adira thinks talking to Culber would help, and Stamets agrees – once they were done working. The last of the DOTs are deployed.

Meanwhile, aboard Booker's ship , attached under the port nacelle pylon, Commander Reno comments on how she never knew being kidnapped would be so boring. Tarka corrects her by saying she was just temporarily detained, but Reno dismisses the semantics; " Potato, po-tah-to, " as she puts it. Booker is apologetic, for both of them. Tarka has reviewed the intel Ndoye provided from the 10-C homeworld. The 10-C know what it's like to lose their world, and yet they created the DMA, something Booker is unsure what to feel about. Tarka points out that it only mattered what Discovery would do with the data, and how to get them inside the hyperfield, preferably before they were detected. Reno, deadpan as always, comments that her blood sugar was getting low and asks for black licorice . Booker asks Tarka how long he needed to stop the DMA, and the scientist replies it depended on the location of the power source and what defenses it had. As Booker is at the replicator, pointing out that they had fifteen hours to stop it before it destroyed Earth and Ni'Var, Reno slips a spare commbadge out from under her uniform, slipping it back in before Booker returns, offering her the licorice.

Discovery closes to within one thousand meters of the hyperfield, and Lieutenant Commander Nilsson reports the hydrocarbons are loaded and the DOTs are ready. " Okay then, let 'em rip, " Burnham orders. The DOTs are deployed, spraying the surface of the hyperfield with the hydrocarbons. At first there seems to be no response. Then, as both Discovery 's crew and Booker and Tarka watch, the hyperfield surface begins to ripple like a stone dropped into a pond. Owosekun reports an energy spike from the hyperfield's surface… and something begins to approach the DOTs. Burnham orders Nilsson to pull them back, but the hyperfield effect is too fast, and pulls all of the DOTs inside. Rillak notes that they now seem to have the 10-C's attention; Burnham orders red alert . Owosekun reports another energy spike, a massive one, and Burnham orders Detmer to get them away at maximum warp. But the hyperfield effect catches them before they can escape, disabling engines, weapons, and shields… then Discovery (with Booker's ship along for the ride) is pulled inside the hyperfield.

Act One [ ]

Burnham asks for a status report. Lieutenant jg Linus reports the ship is encased in an unknown membrane, some kind of orb. Rhys reports basic life support is working, but all engines and defensive systems are disabled. Owosekun reports there was a solar system with three gas giants of identical mass and composition, and that the orb they were encased in was taking them to one of those planets, " like a bug in a jar, " as Nilsson puts it. Burnham orders Christopher to get Stamets and his team to work on finding a way to restore their systems.

Alone in one of the corridors, Ndoye contacts Booker. His ship's engines and defenses are offline as well. Ndoye explains what happened, and Booker asks if Zora has detected them yet; the general is unaware, but will look into it. Tarka has detected the DMA's power source on the far edge of the hyperfield, encased in a silicon - ellanium alloy; if they could breach that, they could just pull it out. Booker asks Ndoye to keep them posted, and also asks about Burnham. Ndoye replies she is scared, same as the rest, but is better at hiding it. Tarka begins to prep the transporter for obtaining the power source, but Booker puts him to work on figuring out how to get out of the orb they were first, while Booker tries to bring up the ship's systems. As the two work, Reno pulls her commbadge from her sleeve, and tries to use the licorice she has been chewing on to get the device to work.

Detmer reports the orb has stopped moving in the upper layers of the planet's atmosphere, and Owosekun's scanners show hundreds of life signs all around them. Rhys also reports that they were being scanned, every millimeter of the bridge. Burnham asks for an update on restoring systems, and Nilsson relays from engineering that everything they've tried has failed; the orb is keeping their systems powered down. Just then, Saru calls Burnham for a first contact discussion. Burnham gives the conn over to Rhys, and instructs him to report any changes.

Meanwhile, Stamets explains Zora's concerns to Culber, but even after his checking the logs and Zora running diagnostics, they can't find the issue. Culber thinks that getting to the root cause of a feeling might be helped by focusing on the feeling itself, and promises to talk to her. Stamets sees Culber has something on his mind, and the doctor admits he keeps thinking about what he felt on the 10-C homeworld, the feelings of peace, calm, comfort, something he had not felt in a long time. Stamets has to get back to work with Adira and the team, but promises when it was all over, they were taking a vacation, just the two of them. As Stamets transports back to engineering, Culber gets started with Zora, suggesting the Trill board game she had played with Gray , as it had helped her before .

In the conference room, Rillak wonders why the 10-C would bring them in, scan them extensively, and then not communicate with them. Saru speculates that perhaps the 10-C were trying to understand their technology before proceeding. However, T'Rina curtly dismisses speculation as being of little use, and that they required answers. Burnham theorizes that perhaps the 10-C were using a communication frequency they couldn't detect, but Hirai thinks that perhaps the 10-C is waiting for them to communicate a sense of purpose; their initial attempts conveyed only their lack of threat, not their intent. Ndoye does not see diplomacy as an option while they were held prisoner; while Rillak sees communication as their only option, the general counters by pointing out that they had no idea how to get the 10-C to speak to them. Burnham has an idea, falling back on Federation tradition of offering gifts during first contact, and recalls that Stamets had collected some boronite from the site where the first DMA imploded . Hirai warns that gift-giving was culturally complex, and that the 10-C might not perceive it as how they intended. However, it's the only thing they know the 10-C are after, and Burnham sees it as their only option. T'Rina asks how it could be offered, and Burnham suggests beaming it directly onto the orb membrane, which had been sized to fit their ship; she believes it had to have sensor capabilities. The team agrees.

Aboard his ship, Booker is unable to bring systems back online. Tarka assures him not to worry, as the systems would come back once he broke them out of the orb; " when a nightsprey 's done nesting, there's only one way to leave the jajtspat , " as he puts it. Reno quietly asks Booker why he's teaming with Tarka, who she thinks is " a couple cherries short of a sundae ". Booker replies that Tarka had made a promise to return to someone , something Booker could respect. He mentions his mentor, the original Booker , who believed the measure of someone was in how they honored their promises. When Reno points out the confusing nature of sharing a name, Booker replies that trust meant everything in the courier world, and that the name had a reputation for trust as it was passed down through the generations. His mentor had been the fourth in the line, and passed the name and clients to the current Booker when he retired, making him the fifth. Reno asks if the previous Booker would have approved of a man like Tarka, and Booker replies that he would have understood him. Reno tells him that when her wife died during the Klingon war , she needed a focus, so she joined the USS Hiawatha . When they crashed, there was an ensign who had been horribly burned, and begged Reno to let him go, but Reno felt it was her duty to keep him alive, and kept replicating skin grafts. It took eleven days for the ensign to die, and when he finally did, Reno saw his eyes were the same shade of green as those of her late wife, and that was why she couldn't let him go – not because of him, but because of herself. She points out that Booker and Tarka have made dubious choices, because they were both in pain and couldn't see it. Booker can see that she is trying to play on his emotions, but Reno counters that even if so, it didn't mean she was wrong. Booker turns away from her and asks Tarka when they would be free of the orb; "soon" is his only answer.

Saru reports the boronite was away, but still no response. Ndoye tells Burnham she respects her ability to adapt to the situation, but believes a soldier had to accept when they've hit a wall, because that was when the real hard choices had to be made. Burnham concedes that she had once believed there was no wall, but her experience as a starship captain has shown her otherwise; however, she does not believe they've hit that wall yet. Zora then reports a change in the orb membrane near the shuttlebay . Burnham, Saru, Rillak, T'Rina, Ndoye, and Hirai make their way to the shuttlebay, where Saru can see a lifeform approaching. From their vantage point, Booker and Tarka can see it as well. As the first contact team waits, a massive form can be seen within the cloud layer. " Seems they've decided to say hello, " Burnham concludes.

Act Two [ ]

Hirai's scans show that the 10-C has visual receptors and pheromone glands, but can't tell whether it has auditory receptors or electrical sensors; its brain structure was "wildly unusual", which means the universal translator will not be helpful. Zora reports the being was excreting a mist of large organic molecule clusters, and her scans indicate it matches the hydrocarbons found on their homeworld. When Saru asks which ones, Zora reports that it was a mixture of twenty-five percent joy, twenty-two percent sadness, seventeen percent peacefulness, fourteen percent irritation, twelve percent surprise, and ten percent fear – six of the emotional states they know the 10-C to have expressed. Ndoye thinks it nonsensical, while T'Rina believes they were trying to convey each feeling at once. Just then, the 10-C begins emitting a pattern of lights along its form, which Burnham believes to be a form of communication. As it flashes again, Zora agrees, as the light pattern was identical the second time. Hirai thinks that the hydrocarbons provide emotional context to the light patterns, and suggests mirroring the lights back to them. It would show that Discovery understood this as a means of communication, and from there, they would have to find a way to convey simple, then more complex thoughts. Ndoye thinks this will be a long process, and Hirai concedes it can be. As Burnham instructs Zora to relay the pattern back to the 10-C, Ndoye leaves to make contact with Booker.

Booker observes what was going on at the shuttlebay, but Tarka believes it doesn't matter. Ndoye contacts Booker and tells him the situation: the translators don't work, communication has to start from scratch, and they have twelve hours before the DMA reaches Earth. Tarka thinks it will not take that long, but warns that they would need "help" pushing away from Discovery : he would ignite a plasma stream to burn a hole in the 10-C's orb, and use a reverse tractor beam to repel them through, no engines required. However, to do so, Ndoye had to hack Discovery 's systems to project the plasma stream from the starboard nacelle . Ndoye protests, saying that feeding information was one thing, but this was essentially a betrayal. Booker assures her they will stand down if diplomacy works, but at the moment, they can't even say "hello". He is confident (and Tarka silently confirms) that this will stop the DMA, and no one else needs to die, but they could not do it without Ndoye's help. The general finally caves, and tells Booker to inform her when Tarka is ready. Booker transmits the override codes.

In the shuttlebay, Burnham believes once the light pattern is reflected, the 10-C will send a new signal, and asks Saru to stand by for analysis. Zora reports she is ready, and begins transmitting the pattern. The 10-C makes the same pattern again, and then retreats. Hirai theorizes that the 10-C may want them to actually answer back, not mimic, and Saru adds that the 10-C may not see them as sentient beings. Rillak points out that they warped there with a starship, but Hirai counters that their technology was primitive compared to the 10-C, comparing the difference between a Human and a monkey with a rock. Burnham asks Zora to compare the pattern to Federation and non-Federation linguistic databases; Zora had in fact been doing so already, but had found no match. The pattern did not seem to match any kind of linguistic analysis Hirai was aware of either. Saru then suggests that since the hydrocarbon analysis had helped them reach this point, perhaps they try using it again. Burnham calls Detmer, Nilsson, and Christopher to the shuttlebay.

In sickbay , Culber sees that Zora's sine wave has stabilized, and Zora agrees the game has helped. She admits she can't understand why she felt so distracted, but notes it happened around the same time as an apparent replicator malfunction Reno had fixed. Culber tries to contact Reno, but is unable to contact her. Zora reports Reno is in engineering, and Culber thinks she is helping Stamets try to break them out of the orb; he leaves to go check.

Back in the shuttlebay, Christopher remembers something he learned from one of his professors at Starfleet Academy : " If a problem stumps you, examine your assumptions. " They've assumed up to this point that the hydrocarbons were only about emotions, but what if they were also language of some kind? T'Rina wonders how, and Nilsson compares it to music , how a piano piece can evoke emotion, but it also has structure. Saru has Zora bring up a holo of one of the molecules they received. Christopher thinks it an encryption that requires a key, and Detmer thinks the light pattern might be that key, comparing it to a star map, a 2D rendering to help navigate 3D space, so perhaps the light pattern was a map to read the hydrocarbons in a specific order. As they speak, Ndoye quietly steps back into the mix. Burnham asks Zora to bring up the light pattern, then has her create a 3D model. With a little manipulation, Burnham is able to fit the light pattern to the hydrocarbons. Hirai asks to see the light pattern flashing again, and the lights correspond to certain areas of the molecule. Burnham has Zora begin the analysis.

Aboard his ship, Booker brings down the force field to hand Reno more black licorice; Reno suggests he be a "gentleman" and hand it over. As he steps forward, Reno grasps his arm and pulls him closer, saying that Tarka was going to get them killed. She had seen his calculations; if he pulls the DMA power source while the DMA was still active, the hyperfield would implode, destroying everything and everyone in it. Not only that, the subspace rift it will leave near Earth will kill everyone there almost as fast as the DMA. Booker thinks it a ploy to get him to release her, but Reno challenges him to ask Tarka to show him the math. The equations would not make sense to him, but the look on Tarka's face would, again pointing out that pain blinded people, and that Booker had to make it right. She sits back down, leaving Booker lost in thought.

Act Three [ ]

In the shuttlebay, Zora believes she has decoded the molecule, assigning a letter to each individual hydrocarbon and putting them in an order designated by the lights. The result appears to be a series of mathematical equations, which gets Hirai's attention: He sees that the initial order of the "A" hydrocarbons is larger than the next. Saru explains for T'Rina that the 10-C are teaching them a "bridge language", similar to Lincos , a mathematics-based language developed on Earth that the 21st century organization METI predicted would be helpful in extraplanetary communication. The 10-C believe their language too complicated to understand, so they are teaching a similar one. Hirai needs Zora to give him access to the replicators so he can build a molecule of his own, and then they can project the lights so the 10-C can read it. Zora is happy to assist the doctor, and Burnham puts them both to work. Ndoye takes T'Rina aside, asking if they should find a way to escape the orb. Meanwhile, Burnham asks Saru if all was well, and Saru thought back to how T'Rina had been so "strident" in the meeting earlier. Burnham assures him that it was a matter of "logic above all", that Vulcans tended to overcompensate in public… especially when close relationships were involved. She knows this because Sarek had done it all the time, and she admits it drove her crazy. Saru appreciates the context, and Burnham jokes she is willing to serve as a translator when needed. Hirai reports the message is ready.

Aboard his ship, Booker confronts Tarka about Reno's revelation, and that Tarka had said no one else would get hurt. Tarka tries to explain that he did not want to make it harder for Booker, given how much he had already given up, but Booker shouts at him that he lied. Booker is adamant that he will not do to the 10-C what they did to Kwejian , and most certainly would not put Discovery at risk. Tarka, coldly analytical, dismisses the certainty that the hyperfield would implode, and even if it did, total collapse would take three minutes, so they and Discovery could escape safely; Earth would have a month before the void impacted, plenty of time for their scientists to figure out a solution. Booker insists Tarka should have told him, and that their plan was a last resort. Tarka insists that within forty minutes, they would break out, but Booker intends to tell Ndoye to stand down before they start something they can't stop, and demands Tarka stay away from the consoles. Tarka replies that he can't, not when he was so close to his goal. Booker reminds him that it was his ship and draws his phaser , but suddenly a security field comes up around Tarka, knocking Booker back into the viewscreen.

Back in the shuttlebay, the 10-C return, and send a new pattern that Zora sends to Hirai's holoPADD. Hirai sees it as more equations, all equaling to nine. They have made their first contact. Just then, a metallic egg-shaped object enters the shuttlebay. Saru detects no radiation, but detects the hydrocarbon for peacefulness on its surface… and the interior contains a breathable atmosphere. The surface of the object ripples and creates doors not unlike those of Discovery , and Burnham realizes the 10-C want to continue communicating by having someone go inside.

Booker continues to be knocked back by Tarka's latest "defense upgrades", before finally collapsing to the deck. Tarka takes Booker's commbadge and puts him into the force field with Reno, apologizing that he had never wanted any of this. He felt he had only two real friends in his life, and Booker had been one of them; Reno tells him he had a funny way of showing it, and that what he was doing was wrong. Tarka says only that in thirty minutes, they would be out of the orb and on their way.

Ndoye is skeptical about the risks involved in going inside, but Burnham points out if the 10-C meant harm, they would have done it already, and Rillak agrees; a failure of diplomacy would mean far greater consequences than any personal risk to them. Rillak volunteers to enter, and asks Burnham and Saru to join her, as their skills as a xenoanthropologist and a linguist would help. She asks Hirai to stay, and to continue diplomacy without them should something happen. Rillak also turns to Ndoye and T'Rina to join them as well, as their planets were under direct threat. T'Rina agrees without hesitation, but Ndoye elects to remain behind, choosing to have faith they would convey the proper message. Given the unknowns, Burnham and Rillak both agree that Zora should remain behind as well. Saru will assemble a portable transporter unit and some samples of the hydrocarbons, and thinks Stamets can suggest something to project a light map. Burnham tells him to have Stamets do all of that, as she needed a private word.

In her quarters, with Grudge lounging on her bed, Burnham admits her fears: the 10-C hold all the cards, and everything was slipping through her fingers. Saru agrees that he also struggles when he has a lack of control, but they had to make peace with the idea. He adds that Tarka, interestingly enough, had shown him a method of dealing with it, however unorthodox: yelling. They both start wordlessly screaming, before breaking down into laughter. Burnham confesses that she needed that, while Grudge apparently did not, as she wanders off. Burnham tells Saru that there was no one else she would rather go into the situation with, and Saru replies that it was an honor to be at her side, today and always, before they hug.

In engineering, Culber asks if Zora is sure Reno is there, and her sensors confirm she is. Adira has been there all day, and they have not seen her once. Culber looks around, and spots Reno's commbadge beneath a floor grille. Zora reports it was showing full biometric readings, even though Reno herself was not present. Culber suggests paging her, as she had to be on the ship somewhere.

As Zora pages for Reno to report to engineering, Saru approaches T'Rina in the shuttlebay, expressing his belief that there was no cause to fear. T'Rina wishes she could say the same, and admits she is uncertain about how to step into danger with someone for whom she has "personal fondness", speculating that this is why she avoids closeness with others. He is interrupted by a science officer, bringing him the materials he requested from Stamets. Burnham leads the team through the doors; as the doors close, the object abruptly vanishes from the shuttlebay, leaving Hirai and Ndoye staring in concern.

Act Four [ ]

The team steps onto a recreation of Discovery 's bridge , which Burnham believes was created for their benefit. Rillak sees they have lost contact with the ship, and are on their own. " Not entirely, " Burnham replies, as something appears before them: an isolytic weapon . Burnham's tricorder shows it to not be armed, thinking they must have built it based on data from the one Tarka detonated in the DMA. T'Rina wonders if it was a threat, while Saru thinks it might be a gift in return for the boronite. Saru's scanners show the 10-C have released a mist of molecules onto the viewscreen, which is then followed by a light pattern. Saru translates the message: 178 plus a mathematical equation equaled a curiosity hydrocarbon. Rillak asks if the message was about the weapon, and Burnham thinks it might be, as 178 was the atomic number for isolynium . Saru thinks the equation was an expression of volume for a convex lens-like shape: the DMA. Burnham realizes it was a question: why was the weapon used against the DMA? Saru theorizes that the 10-C are unaware of the damage the DMA caused, and Rillak replies the response needs to make them understand.

Meanwhile, Ndoye contacts Booker, telling him what has happened to Burnham. Booker tells Tarka, holding Booker's commbadge, to have her stand down, but Tarka thinks they could be dead. Booker points out that if the 10-C wanted them dead, they would be already, but Tarka retorts that they had no idea when Burnham and her people would come back, and that there were only hours before the DMA hit Earth. Tarka sends a text message to Ndoye, telling her to proceed. Ndoye inputs the override, and begins projecting the plasma.

Within the replica bridge, they agree on their response: the DMA equation plus the hydrocarbon for terror. But Rillak is unsure how to convey the concept of "us", then thinks perhaps the number four, as there were four of them. T'Rina suggests six, the atomic number for carbon. Saru fears such numbers may have other meaning to the 10-C, leading to misunderstanding. Burnham realizes T'Rina was on the right track: biology. The 10-C created an atmosphere they needed to breathe – seventy-eight percent nitrogen , twenty-one percent oxygen , .93 percent argon , and .04 percent carbon dioxide – which they would recognize as "us". Saru inputs the message: DMA plus "us" equals terror. The 10-C reply with a "greater than" symbol and the hydrocarbon for sadness, or "great sadness" as T'Rina interprets it. This means they understand, and have empathy, which meant diplomacy would work.

In engineering, Culber explains to Stamets that Zora found evidence Reno's badge had been tampered with. If it didn't sound "completely insane", Culber would think someone took Reno off the ship. Stamets admits he should have realized something was wrong when he couldn't find her. Culber assures him it was not his fault. Zora thinks she has found an answer: access Panel 4351 was briefly opened, but the maintenance check was not scheduled until the next day. Adira goes to check, and finds Tarka's patch. Zora confirms this was the source of her feeling… and then detects Booker's ship attached to the hull. The ship suddenly shakes, with plasma venting from one of the nacelles. On the bridge, Owosekun reports the plasma was burning a hole in the orb, and Stamets reports Booker's ship attached; Rhys, at the conn, is aware, seeing them on scans. The hole is burned through the orb, and Booker's ship uses the reverse tractor beam to escape the orb.

Back in the replica bridge, Saru prepares the message to ask the 10-C to withdraw the DMA, when the lights flicker a moment… and then the four are sent back to the real Discovery . Hirai reports that Booker's ship was attached and had escaped the orb. Meanwhile, Tarka tries to fly the ship to the power source, though weapons and warp drive were still disabled. Booker admits to Reno he should have listened to her, but Reno assures him that even when all seemed lost (and at this point, it seemed like it was), she had a way out: she had a communicator chip, which she stashed on her when she realized Tarka was going to stun her. When Booker asks about the licorice, Reno explains the glycyrrhizic acid in licorice, when it dissolves, conducted electricity. She's tried to call Discovery , but can't get past the ship's security without Booker's access codes.

Returning to the bridge, Burnham asks if they can get out the same way Booker's ship did, but Rhys reports they had nothing to repel against, and the hole was already sealed. Christopher reports an urgent message from Booker's ship. Reno explains that Tarka has her and Booker trapped, and if he takes out the DMA's power source, it would destroy the hyperfield, the 10-C, and probably Discovery along with it, and would also leave a "toxic waste dump" headed right for Earth. " You have to stop us, whatever it takes, " Reno urges.

Background information [ ]

Production [ ].

• 7 March 2022 : Title publicly revealed [1]

Links and references [ ]

Starring [ ].

• Sonequa Martin-Green as Michael Burnham
• Doug Jones as Saru
• Anthony Rapp as Paul Stamets
• Wilson Cruz as Hugh Culber
• Blu del Barrio as Adira Tal
• Tig Notaro as Jett Reno
• David Ajala as Cleveland Booker

Guest starring [ ]

• Shawn Doyle as Dr. Ruon Tarka
• Chelah Horsdal as Laira Rillak
• Tara Rosling as President T'Rina
• Annabelle Wallis as Zora (voice)
• Hiro Kanagawa as Dr. Hirai
• Phumzile Sitole as General Ndoye

Co-starring [ ]

• Emily Coutts as Lt. Cmdr. Keyla Detmer
• Patrick Kwok-Choon as Lt. Cmdr. Gen Rhys
• Oyin Oladejo as Lt. Cmdr. Joann Owosekun
• Sara Mitich as Lt. Cmdr. Nilsson
• Orville Cummings as Lt. Christopher
• David Benjamin Tomlinson as Lt. jg Linus
• Jahkeil Goldson as Discovery science officer
• Fabio Tassone as Book's Ship Computer

Uncredited co-stars [ ]

• Jayne Dineo as Discovery sciences crewmember
• Andrea Gallo as Discovery sciences crewmember
• Leeu as Grudge
• Pamela Mars as Discovery bridge crewmember
• Shelley Owens as Discovery medical crewmember

References [ ]

21st century ; access code ; access panel 4351 ; alloy ; analysis ; analysis subroutine ; argon ; atomic number ; atmosphere ; AU ; auditory receptor ; Bajoran ; biology ; black licorice ; blood sugar ; Booker, Cleveland : Booker's ship ; boronite ; brain ; bridge language ; bug ; captain ; carbon ; carbon dioxide ; Cardassian ; cat ; century ; cherry ; client ; color ; commander ; communication frequency ; communicator chip ; console ; courier ; culture ; curiosity ; day ; delegate ; diplomacy ; distance ; DMA ; DOT-23 ; Earth ; electrical sensor ; electricity ; ellanium ; emergency shutoff ; emotion ; empathy ; ensign ; equation ; eye ; face ; Federation ; feeling ; first contact ; first contact team ; friend ; full warp (aka maximum warp ); gas ; gas giant ; generation ; gift ; glycyrrhizic acid ; green ; hail ; Hiawatha , USS ; hour ; Human ; hybrid ; hydrocarbon ; hyperfield ; idea ; impulse engine ; isolynium ; isolytic weapon ; jajtspat ; Kardashev scale ; Kelpien ; kidnapping ; kilometer ; Kowolian nightsprey ; Kwejian (planet); Kwejian (species); language ; laughter ; light map ; life sign ; life support ; Lincos ; linguist ; linguistic database ; logic ; love ; Mars ; mass ; math ; meow ; meter ; METI ; millimeter ; minute ; mission ; monkey ; month ; music ; nacelle ; name ; Ni'Var ; nitrogen ; Non-Federation ; override code ; oxygen ; pain ; percent ; pheromone gland ; piano ; plasma ; plasma stream ; portable transporter unit ; President of the United Federation of Planets ; prisoner ; propulsion ; radiation ; radius ; red alert ; Reno's wife ; replicator ; retirement ; Risian ; rock ; Sarek ; Saurian ; scientist ; second ; sensor ; sentience ; shield ; shuttlebay ; silicon ; sine wave ; skin graft ; Sol ; solar unit ; space ; Species 10-C (aka 10-C ); soldier ; spaceship ; star map ; starboard ; Starfleet Academy ; Starfleet uniform ; status report ; subspace rift ; sundae ; supramolecule ; thought ; toxin ; tractor beam ; tradition ; transporter ; Trill game ; UFP-02 type ( unnamed ); United Earth ; universal translator ; vacation ; viewscreen ; visual receptor ; volume ; Vulcan ; wall ; warp core ; warp drive ; weapon system ; worker bee ; xenoanthropologist ; year

External links [ ]

• " Species Ten-C " at the Internet Movie Database
• " Discovering "Species Ten-C" and "Penance" " at MissionLogPodcast.com
• 1 USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-G)
• 3 Daniels (Crewman)

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Was Species 10-C From ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Inspired By Carl Sagan’s ‘Cosmos’?

| March 6, 2022 | By: TrekMovie Editors 51 comments so far

The big mystery behind the fourth season of Star Trek: Discovery is unknown species 10-C, the extra-galactic makers of the dangerous Dark Matter Anomaly (DMA). We got our first hints about the nature of 10-C in the latest episode, “ Rosetta, ” and we see indications that 10-C may be inspired by an idea from famed scientist Carl Sagan.

The 10-C are giants

In “Rosetta,” Captain Burnham leads a landing party to an unknown alien planet, believed to be the original homeworld of Species 10-C. The dead planet was described as the solid core of a former gas giant, which had been destroyed by a series of massive asteroids, burning away the atmosphere a millennia before. They only find ruins along with some massive bones.

The crew inspects 10-C bones

Of the bones, Dr. Culber says:

It looks like the bone structure is of unusually low density. Before it was fossilized, it would’ve been flexible, almost like cartilage. Their physiology was perfectly adapted for floating in gas layers.

Exploring the planet revealed that 10-C had an unusual form of communication using a variety of hydrocarbon gasses, also known as “organic molecules.” The Discovery crew found a total of 16 different unique hydrocarbons that conveyed different emotional states.

The sole remaining structure on the surface was a nursery, and within that were husks of a number of floating objects. These are possibly the fossilized remains of more of the 10-C.

Inside the 10-C ruin

Something new in Star Trek

All indications from “Rosetta” is that Species 10-C is not tied to previous canon. Gas giant creatures that communicate via organic molecules is something different for Star Trek, which is what executive producer Michelle Paradise said was their goal in a Twitter Spaces discussion last month:

It was very interesting for us in the [writers’] room to create a species somewhat unlike any we’d seen and to build mystery around the species… It’s unlike anything we’ve done on the show before. And it’s unlike a species we’ve seen before.

Today Paramount+ posted about the mysterious nature of 10-C in a new social media post, emphasizing the floating objects.

A mysterious new planet beyond the reaches of our very galaxy! Would you be brave enough to set foot on it? #StarTrekDiscovery pic.twitter.com/dBvbXyE5qr — Star Trek on Paramount+ (@StarTrekOnPPlus) March 6, 2022

Sagan’s floaters

While new to Star Trek, the concept of creatures that could live in gas giant planets like Jupiter has been proposed before. In 1976, three years after Pioneer 10 did a flyby of Jupiter revealing details of the gas giant’s atmosphere, astrophysicist and astrobiologist Carl Sagan and physicist Edwin Salpeter published a paper titled “Particles, Environments and Possible Ecologies in the Jovian Atmosphere,” which proposed a scientific basis for the possibility of life on Jupiter.

The paper outlined three types of life, dubbed hunters, floaters, and sinkers. The floaters resembled massive jellyfish described as “living balloons” that could grow to be the size of cities, which sounds a bit like what Dr. Culber described after assessing the fossils on the 10-C homeworld. In 1978, as Sagan was preparing his landmark series Cosmos, he commissioned artist Adolph Schaller to paint some of these concepts.

“Hunters, Floaters, and Seekers” by Adolph Schaller

In 1980 Sagan outlined the potential gas giant ecosystem in the second episode of Cosmos, “One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue.” Here he lays out what life can be like, which includes his concept of floaters:

Vast living balloons could stay buoyant by pumping heavy gases from their interiors or by keeping their insides warm. They might eat the organic molecules in the air or make their own with sunlight. We call these creatures floaters. We imagine floaters kilometers across enormously larger than the greatest whale that ever was…beings the size of cities.

You can watch the segment below.

Clarke’s Medusans

Actually, before Cosmos , legendary science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke explored the idea of life in the clouds of Jupiter in his Nebula Award-winning novella A Meeting with Medusa , which first appeared in Playboy Magazine in 1971. Clark returned to the idea in his 1982 novel 2010: Odyssey Two with primitive balloon creatures called Jovians who lived in Jupiter’s atmosphere and could communicate instinctually via radio.

Illustrations from “A Meeting with Medusa” from Playboy Magazine

Say hello to 10-C?

While the Discovery team has strived to come up with something new for mysterious species at the heart of season four, it’s possible they were at least inspired by the great scientific visionary Carl Sagan, and possibly Arthur C Clarke as well. However, there is much more to the mystery of 10-C, like their motivation and their history. Communicating with these floating creatures will likely prove to be a challenge, but the crew of the USS Discovery still has two more episodes in which to figure that out.

A “floater” from Cosmos

If Discovery was inspired by Sagan, it wouldn’t be the first time; in fact, there was another connection on the other Star Trek episode that debuted the same day as “Rosetta.” The USS Stargazer from Star Trek: Picard’s “The Star Gazer” is a Sagan-class ship . And two decades ago, the Enterprise episode “Terra Prime” featured a monument to Sagan on Mars.

From Enterprise “Terra Prime”

Keep up with the  Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com .

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I suspect Book may somehow prove pivotal to communicating with 10-C. Perhaps they’ll pick up on the pain from the loss of his people and planet and stop the DMA. However, I hope the solution isn’t as simple as that.

They did play up his Doctor Doolittle-like ability to communicate with non-humanoid creatures in the season 3 opener that introduced Book. They have never really followed that up, so what you speculate could make narrative sense.

Or Grudge escapes from Burnham’s quarters, runs into the 10-C who we see are giant mice that are absolutely terrified of cats, and 10-C flees, saving Earth and Nivar.

That would be a lot closer to the “boy crying for his Mommy” explanation we got for The Burn.

If so, that’s pretty cool. I’ve always wanted Trek to show some wild aliens and environments like that, but (apart from TAS and TMP) there’s never really been the budgetary means to do so. That’s not true anymore, though, so hopefully we’ll get to see some imaginative stuff like that in these shows going forward.

the movies have just lacked interest in doing that, despite healthy budgets.

Because, doing things like that Giant Alien Creatures, En Masse, can sometimes negatively affect the health of those budgets!

The thing is that you can easily put an actot in Klingon makeup and sell things like “he is angry” “he is amused”… It is a tougher challenge to make a Sagan’s Floater look angry because we have little to no common ground. Daleks are of the few non human aliens on regular TV, and it is a miracle their puppeteers manage to put so much emotion on them.

As Spock might say, fascinating! I never heard of these theoretical beings until now. It would be great to see something truly exotic in Star Trek. We gets lots of strange new worlds and civilizations in Star Trek but it’s rarely beyond humanoid or aliens with mostly cosmetic differences but they still look and act mostly human. I know its done for practical and budget reasons but that’s always disappointed me, especially with the films. That’s the time Star Trek can go bigger and get a bit more ‘alien’ in the extreme sense of the word. But it usually comes down to another story about a psycho or group trying to wipe out the Federation or get their hands on a weapon. Season 4 of Discovery has been a very mixed bag for me but it would at least be nice we got something truly cosmic and otherworldly for a change.

Always loved that memorial of Sagan on Enterprise!

First non humanoid alien on Star Trek… The Horta. Close seconds Gomtuu and the crystaline entity.

Are these the same creatures from Picard in that vortex?

We’ll see…

Those creatures in Picard were mechanical

In Picard those species were machines living in a faraway galaxy. That’s why they needed the Synths to open a wormhole. 10c lives just outside our galaxy and they obviously have no problem entering if they want.

Every season people constantly come up with theories to directly connect the two shows and always wrong. It seems like they don’t want people to feel they have to watch one show to understand what’s happening in the other.

We already know they’re not.

Clearly not.

Hopefully 10-C will turn out to be something cool and not another crying Kelpian or Tarka’s friend having a bad dream in an amplifying Nebula or something of that nature.

Taking Sagan’s exobiology hypotheses and storytelling with them could be quite cool.

Does anyone even care at this juncture?

I kind of still care?

I’ve given up on Discovery, but invested enough time this season that I want to know the payoff to the mystery.

I feel the same way.

I haven’t given up but I’m not exactly on the edge of my seat either and the season is almost over. At this point, the build up should be pretty high. I think most still want to see the mystery revealed but it feels more like ‘just show us already!!!’ and not real anticipation. The show had a really intriguing concept this season but I think they overplayed it as well.

They overplayed the Tarka/Book storyline but maybe Reno can save it now.

I’m a little bit worried about that silly screaming nonsense between Michael and Saru in the trailer… that could take me out of this storyline if it isn’t properly contextualized. If they are learning a language, I’m fine, if it’s just weird psychotherapy, that would be so totally out of place at this point…

Yes, actually. So stop trolling.

I’m not trolling. I’m asking if anyone cares, because I don’t. And if I don’t, then it stands to reason that others may feel the same way.

You’re correct.

You don’t get to decide what people can post here. People’s opinions don’t need to be positive. If you can’t handle people not agreeing with you, go back to your sand box and move to the next post.

Really? How would I be abe not to care about new Trek? I like DSC S4 so far but even if I didn’t like it (as with PIC S1 for example), I would care nonetheless, especially then! Not even the end of the world could prevent me from caring about Trek more than anything else… Next question…

Emm ladies and gentleman Trek actually had Jellyfish like aliens before. Why is everyone forgetting the aliens from Encounter At Farpoint? As I was reading this article and watching the bit from Cosmos this was the first thing that jumped on my mind. Could these 10C be a variation of the Jellyfish aliens from Encounter at Farpoint? Remember those aliens were huge as big as a station, I can see some similarities. I thought more people would associate them but I guess many people just forget Encounter at Farpoint.

Michelle Paradise said they are a species we never seen before.

True but there have been jellyfish like species before in Trek. That was kind of the point I was trying to make. I just think Encounter At Farpoint deserves a bit more respect than it usually gets.

Agreed. And emotion was pretty dang important to that story; I don’t think that’s what they’re doing here, but it would be cool.

That’s fine, but that’s now what the species Burnham encountered is. Those ‘jellyfish’ were pure energy, and the Discovery aliens are corporeal.

Again, not my point, my point is that this is not the first jellyfish aliens we see in Trek and the article makes it seem like so. I’d at least have expected a little reference to Encounter at Farpoint and the jellyfish aliens in the article itself.

OK, I understand you now!

How do giant floating jellyfish create technology…

What might have been, if we only had thumbs….

Hey Zero created an entire suit for itself on Prodigy and it doesn’t have hands lol.

My only wish is they come up with better name than 10-C… good Lord is that an awful name.

It’s weird. German classes are given that way… Number for the year and letter for the individual class. I always have to think of class 10C… I even told those weirdos to stop melding with dark matter… They obviously didn’t listen…

Yeah, of all the unknown alien races encountered in the 800 years of the Federation, they’ve only gotten up to No.10?

That actually sounds kind of interesting. Too bad it’s in the last two or three episodes in the fourth season of show I stopped caring about by the end of season 2 and stopped watching by the middle of season three :-D

But its nice to see, they started trying to live up to their name after five years of being on the air :-D

biillllllllllions!!!!!!

As the article (but not the headline) says Carl Sagan was not first.

Arthur C. Clarke’s Meeting with Medusa (1971) first invented the idea of Jovian gasbag ETs

Ben Bova’s Grand Tour series had huge sentient creatures living in the cloud layers of Jupiter. Makes sense for the rather hackish writers if Discovery to swipe an idea from an established and better writer.

Did you consider that Ben Bova stole it from Sagan?

I had this very same inkling when I saw some of the imagery in the episode. I remember Clarke’s Jovians form reading Odyssey Two as a kid. I also remember a book by National Geographic, I think, called ‘The Universe’ (maybe?) that had depicted the three species Sagan described in a painting. Accompanied text explained it all. I’m assuming that was probably from Sagan himself. Interesting and cool idea to explore… it’s funny, I didn’t think of this species would be 10-C, just some part of the ancient ecosystem they encountered. This could be cool.

Not the Metrons….

Species 10C looks very similar to the Third Space Aliens from Babylon 5. Both are extremely technolocally advanced giant jellyfish looking monsters. Both are also highly telepathic. TBH it would be great if JMS would allow Trek to do this. Connect the two universes. Here’s what I’m referring to: https://images.app.goo.gl/4WoSnf6JUgBBpYXM6

Who remembers the Jawandas from Alan Dean Foster’s Log Eight? They were large thin floating creatures that lived between planets and galaxies.

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Star Trek: Discovery

“Species Ten-C”

Air date: 3/10/2022 Written by Kyle Jarrow Directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi

Review by Jamahl Epsicokhan

Review Text

It took a while to get here, and it got a bit tiresome with the padded pace in recent weeks, but we've finally reached the destination — the home of unknown Species 10-C. And even though the destination alone can't make all the stops in the journey along the way worthwhile, this on its own proves to be an effective (partial) payoff that serves as a standout example of well-envisioned Star Trek in its most cerebral science-fiction mode.

We've reached Species 10-C's massive protective hyperfield. What awaits inside is anyone's guess. The crew sends in some of the DOT drones up to the field. Liquid tentacles pull them in, then pull in the Discovery . We are truly entering the unknown. The crew sends hails. They even attempt to use the chemicals that align with the different types of dust and corresponding emotional states discovered in last week's " Rosetta ." No reply. Either the 10-Cs are ignoring the message or they aren't receiving it. The crew has no way of knowing which.

At last, something happens. 10-C appears to be trying to communicate. They flash bright lights at the Discovery , which Burnham, Saru, and the delegates view from the shuttle bay. The crew attempts to formulate a response, but is the response enough to convey a sense of intelligence when the 10-Cs are so different they may regard humans as no more sentient than ants? Finally, a breakthrough: Using the light patterns like a decryption key, the crew figures out how to decode the molecules emitted from the 10-Cs into a pattern that reveals ... math, the universal language.

I'm not going to summarize the complexities of the translation scenes any more than I already have. But I will say the procedure plays as top-notch sci-fi, in both how it's written and how it's visually conveyed. The writing staff has created something that feels solid and smart, while the production staff implements it in a way that's visually stunning and conveys what's happening.

Is this original? I suppose not, but it feels pretty unique for Star Trek , give or take a V'Ger. "Species Ten-C" owes a lot to Arrival , which had a similarly framed communication scene that attempted to break down visual patterns into meaning. There's also some of the sense of amazement of Close Encounters , where for once we're truly dealing with a truly alien unknown, as opposed to most Trekkian species, who are humanoid — and where a universal translator allows everyone to communicate verbally without missing a beat.

We don't actually see Species 10-C yet, and I might be okay not seeing them at all. Watching how they communicate is probably way more interesting than finding out what they look like. After initial communications are successful, the 10-Cs send an egg-like pod to Discovery for our crew to board, where communications continue. I was reminded of the spherical metallic enclosure in Contact , although inside this one the 10-Cs have created a replica of Discovery's bridge. There are little moments of excitement as messages are sent, received, interpreted, and understood. Communication is happening, and negotiation may be possible.

Having this heady effort transpire while the DMA is mere hours away from hitting our home planets is still an unnecessary distraction, but the ticking clock does provide the B-plot (Book and Tarka) with its motivation, and the B-plot adds some visceral juice alongside the A-plot's thoughtful exploration — because you just know that this is where the other shoe is going to drop. The episode does a good job of turning the screws in the final act to ratchet up the suspense, with everything going right in an A-plot that's on a blind collision course with a B-plot where everything will go wrong.

Book and Tarka have Reno as a prisoner, and she does her best to talk them down from what looks increasingly likely to unleash a disaster just as the Discovery crew is making slow but steady progress. Book you can talk sense into, but Tarka remains the wild card, and Reno summarizes it aptly when she tells Book that Tarka has been "blinded" by his own pain and personal needs. (I was reminded of how Matt Damon in Interstellar could not let go of his own self-interests, despite what catastrophic consequences that might have for all of humanity. At the end of the day, can we see beyond ourselves when the bigger picture might seem more distant and abstract?)

When Book realizes it's time to stop and let the communication effort move forward, Tarka isn't having it. He had already long committed to this action, and he has locked Book from control of his own ship. Tarka untethers from Discovery , which prompts the 10-Cs to instantly stop communications and to return the away team to the ship.

Can Discovery end this season on a high note? I feel like the process of communication was the real point here, and now that we've seen that, I'm not sure what else would happen next week except to re-establish negotiations and wrap up. We'll see, but the initial encounter was a memorable one that goes down as possibly the best example of pure sci-fi on this series. I've named-dropped a number of great sci-fi movies here. If you're going to borrow, borrow from the best.

"Despite knowing the journey, and where it leads, I embrace it, and welcome every moment":

• Tig Notaro has a narrow range of direct delivery on this series, but Reno's tale of the person she tried to save against his will because the victim's eyes subconsciously reminded her of her wife's did a good job of conveying a sincere and emotional moment while staying within her typically stoic parameters.
• Speaking of Reno, I said she would snark her way through being a prisoner, but she's mostly sincere in what she says and does here.
• One more on Reno: She has a MacGyver moment when she uses black licorice to jury-rig the enablement of a device she has that can get a message to Discovery .
• Zora being the self-aware starship computer seems to function at the needs of the plot. If she has internal sensors, she should know what's going on everywhere, but apparently you can smuggle a device into engineering and kidnap an officer from the ship and she's none the wiser. (The same goes for Ndoye's back-corridor plotting with Book.) The plot does its best to explain these things away, but it would be better if the writers just separated Zora from a lot of the ship's day-to-day operations altogether.
• The writers manage to work in the story of Cleveland Booker's name, which was passed to him through tradition not from his father, but from his courier mentor. He's the fifth to carry the name.
• The Saru/Burnham yelling scene did nothing for me. You win some, you lose some.
• Saru is having trouble figuring out if T'Rina has any interest in him. While I think they have drawn this out far too long for me to care, I did appreciate Michael's Vulcan insight into the matter to help Saru out.
• I still think it's going to be a tough sell to explain away that the 10-Cs simply didn't know their DMA was doing any damage. They come from a (devastated) planet that orbits a star, and that should be similar enough to life within the galaxy to know the gravitational effects are going to destroy whatever it comes near.

Previous episode: Rosetta Next episode: Coming Home

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Comment Section

45 comments on this post, jeffrey's tube.

Almost a great episode. Very "Arrival," and that's high praise. Subtract that ludicrous yelling scene . . . Saru needing to talk with Michael about his feelings for T'Rina . . . Stamets and Culber needing to talk about their relationship . . . and this WOULD have been a great episode. All those scenes broke the wonderful sense of tension the episode was building. You actually felt the clock, as a viewer, in this episode . . . until the characters lazily and lethargically taking ample time to do THOSE things at those moments just absolutely ruined it. Sometimes, Discovery, an episode needs to be about just one thing. You can call that a "concept" episode, I don't care. But the entire focus of this episode should have been on the characters trying to make contact with the 10-C, and the tension of the ticking clock as it counted down. As some of our characters get more harried and frantic and Michael and Saru try to keep their cool. Ya know? Did anyone even seem to hurry through the corridors in this episode? Also, you have these absolutely god-like scale things happening outside the ship--where no one has gone before, indeed!--with a first contact the likes of which no one has ever attempted before. And in the scenes dealing with those things, the tension builds, and it's good television. It even REALLY felt like Star Trek (humans wrestling with momentous things and prevailing through ingenuity, co-ooperation, and the better angels of their nature). But in the rest of the scenes, it's like it's just another Tuesday on Discovery. I found the disconnect very . . . strange. Was it just me? And the scenes on Book's ship were all very "well we know this is going to happen." We know Tarka is going to betray Book (there's zero question that the show wants to preserve Book as a "good guy"). We know the ship is going to go after the controller and threaten everything. There's no tension over if their plan to sabotage Discovery and use warp plasma to break away is going to work. Because obviously. I won't talk about Reno using licorice to fix 32nd century tech. You can have that one, Discovery, because I like Reno that much. Speaking of, Reno's speech to Book about Tarka--another emotional appeal--was actually appropriate to the moment and to the plot. And you know what? Because of that, it worked! See, Discovery? Earn your moments. Like this. There're so many good ideas in an episode like this. But . . . do the writers just not understand the elementary principles of what makes for good drama? Is this maybe on the director? I just . . . Man. Why can't it be better?

It occurs to me that we, the viewers, know why the Federation chose to send Discovery to make contact with the 10-C. But to the 10-C, Discovery, when it presents itself, has a lot of things about it that could needlessly complicate and confuse their attempts to understand what has just arrived on their doorstep. For example, it surely has a displaced temporal signature that says it's from a thousand years in the past and has traveled through time. A species as advanced as the 10-C would notice that. What would they make of it? They also surely have noted it has some sort of propulsion technology that lets it slide along mushrooms, or whatever. The mushrooms don't exist outside the galaxy. But surely they're advanced enough to understand the principles, even if they never had any idea anything like "mushrooms" even existed! They might know the ship has an intelligence governing it. Might they think the ship itself is what wants to communicate? Certainly a reasonable assumption. Oh, also the ship has another ship attached to it that it thinks it's hiding. Clearly the 10-C know it's there, with technology like they have. But why are they seemingly trying to hide it? Isn't that strange? What does it say about the visitors? I like that this episode engaged my brain enough to have me asking these questions.

@Jeffrey's tube " until the characters lazily and lethargically taking ample time to do THOSE things at those moments just absolutely ruined it." Here, watch that video from 2:50. Discovery has always done this. No matter what there is always time for chat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cn4fW0EInqw This stuff is really part of Discovery's DNA.

A great episode indeed. Hard to dislike an episode of Star Trek that tells an effective story about meeting new life and their civilization. Greatly enjoyed the extended sequence of the delegation and crew working opening lines of communication. And there even were some Next Generation vibes, with not one but two staff meeting scenes. Of course, as aforementioned, Discovery had to Discovery when it comes to emotion, but at least the related scene or two did not take too greatly away from the central story and the remainder of the episode. Unlike with the first three seasons of the series, I'm cautiously optimistic, and think the finale will nicely tie up the preceding arc.

Karl Zimmerman

Wow...I was not expecting to enjoy this episode as much as I did. I liked it better than Picard this week...and I really liked that as well! This is pretty clearly the most science fiction episode of Discovery we've yet seen, and the most in-depth meditation regarding traversing the communication barriers of first contact since Darmok - and a much smarter episode than that as well. As others have pointed out, it had some real parallels to Arrival, though I think it feels that way in part because that movie was a faithful adaptation of an excellent written SF novella. This felt like part of a prestige SF book which was adapted for screen. The technobabble regarding the language was a bit dodgy at times, but I'm willing to overlook that, because they managed to pull off the difficult feat of making 10-C very alien/inscrutable while still moving the story forward at a fast enough pace that they got to real communication by the story's end. As for the remainder of the episode, it was fine. I appreciated the fact that there was finally (in the penultimate episode) forward movement regarding whatever Tarka's real plan is, that Book finally wised up to the fact that he was being used for the last 5 or so episodes, and that Reno was utilized well within the story. She has a...different tone...than most of the remainder of the crew at this point, which is refreshing. Therapy-talk was kept to a minimum - or at least, was less noticeable here than elsewhere. If only they kept out a few completely unneeded scenes (like Saru being emo about a girl maybe not liking him) this could have been an all-time classic episode. 3.5 stars.

One follow-up...while I think this was a very, very strong episode for Discovery, it has an aspect of "too little too late" doesn't it? I mean, yes, this is a classic tale of first contact told in a smart manner. BUT WHY DID IT TAKE 12 EPISODES TO GET HERE! This season's arc could have been done in maybe 4 episodes: Episode 1: DMA unveiled, Book's planet destroyed. Episode 2: Conference to come up with response to the DMA. Book and Tarka sod off. Episode 3: This episode. Episode 4: Season conclusion. That means there's been basically 8 episodes of wheel spinning...stretching out this basic plot structure like too little butter across too much toast. Some of it has been entertaining in the moment, but most of it was narratively unnecessary, didn't serve to understand the characters better, and wasn't particularly entertaining.

Discovery has been a drag since the back half kof season 3, but this might be the best episode of Discovery ever? I like how it gave us flavors of Arrival and The Three Body Problem. I also feel heavily invested in this endgame. I’m really looking forward to where this is going! (Finally.) I think it will really help the show’s storytelling when they drop to 10 episodes next season. 13 is too much.

Season 4 of Discovery has been like that Family Guy gag about the 70s sitcom Maude and it's incredibly long opening credits sequence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWUD7MBdDuo&ab_channel=ShawnaLiane The season rambled on and on and on... And now that we finally get to the action, I wanted to yell: "AAAAAH! There we go! That was an ordeal!" It took well over 10 episodes to get there, but here's the 10-C and we finally got some action. And math. Tilly would have loved it. But speaking of action... Or inaction, rather. I know Jett Reno's whole shtick is being all cool, laid back and low energy, but just sitting back to watch Tarka lower the forcefield to drag Booker in and not even trying to escape? C'mon Jett, do something! Don't get me wrong, this is most definitely one of Discovery's better outings this season. I didn't even mind the usual unnecessary veneration of Michael Burnham: "We're all afraid, but Michael hides it better than others" and Zora complimenting the captain's smarts with "Great minds think alike". Fine, I'll go yell to Saru about it.

Jeffrey's Tube: "Might they think the ship itself is what wants to communicate?" That is a great idea, but they seem not to have thought of that, because the critical point in the symbol exchange is when they send the "air" symbol to 10C. Joseph, I do think this is the best episode of Disco certainly for this season, and in the running for best ever. And I was thinking the same thing about 10 episodes working better for them. It seemed so obvious this year that they were just filling time a lot. Director Osunsamni loves to nauseate me with camera swooshes, but at least there wasn't TOOO much of it. And this is one time when I noticed and appreciated the special effects, specifically the "printed" looking gray swirls-on-a-gray background of the barrier (if that's what it was supposed to be). I mean, it didn't look plausible at all, but it still was interesting. The best thing about the yelling scene was Grudge. I know that was just one of the unnecessary emo scenes, but that particular one I liked. Not just for Grudge, either - it's nice to know that Burnham actually has a normal voice. Wish she'd use it more. Tarka seems to have forgotten about getting into paradise to look for his friend in favor of just blowing everything up. Or am I missing something? General Ndoye is in big trouble; I predict a bad ending for her next ep. And for Tarka, of course. I assume Booker V will be pardoned or something, but he ought to go to prison. He could make some interesting/useful contacts there. Honestly, he needs a better purpose than captain's toy boy.

P.S. This was the first episode written by Kyle Jarrow. I hope he writes more!

Eric Jensen

//Very "Arrival"// I knew it

Timmy The Tribble

"Arrival" had far better acting. ;-) My volume button is so worn out from having to work around SM-G's whisper-acting that I'm gonna need to buy a new remote.

However, Tig Notaro ruled this episode. How nice to see her back in the mix!

It is still very good. Despite the "Arrival"-esque episode, it had good elements of Trek - finding ways to communicate with a new species, helping each other, conflict from Tarka, mathematics is the foundation of how communication is conveyed. TenC is technologically advanced, how could Ndoye be do impatient, considering how technologically advanced 10C is. Reno definitely stole the show with minimum effort but good work all around. All that yelling must have some benefits, except Grudge. Best episode so far this season

Wow, Discovery has taken the emotional pixie dust and made one hell of a Star Trek episode! I was locked in here, almost completely. The breaks to Book not seeing what's really happening knocks this down just a bit. IMO they are really killing this character. That and I wanted to punch the general... good lord. Why didn't someone notice when she just walked off for no good reason? what... three times? RENO!!!!! ... and not just in some comedic short snippet. She was AWESOME in this episode. The story she told Book was moving and delivered just perfectly. Why oh why has she been absent all this season?!?!?!!? 'Arrival' came to mind. Carl Sagan came to mind. Too bad Tilly doubled in size because she would have loved the math communication here. One of Discovery's best episodes and IMO by far the best episode of this season. This was AWESOME, quintessential Trek! 3.5 stars from me.

Timmy Tribble, do you have closed captions available? I have them on throughout almost the whole of every episode. You get used to it after a while.

It's kinda hard to buy any urgency exists when they still have time to dick around, navel gaze, smile, pat each other on the back etc. They keep mentioning how much time they have left. I stopped paying attention. A bit better than previous episodes by virtue of the fact the plot was finally given the green light to move forward. The Arrival ripoff is fine. Good thing they somehow knew the Universal Translators wouldn't work in advance. So, perhaps 10-C didn't realise the people in the faster-than-light spaceship were sentient because they're higher up on the Kardashev scale? Thanks science guy. Oh - and the moment I've been waiting for. The most obvious out: 10-C might not have been aware of the damage the DMA has caused. Great sadness indeed - FFS. Of course they didn't. They only lived on a planet that was destroyed and presently appear to still live on planets within the Hyperfield. How were they to know that all those stars within the galaxy they're parked up to potentially had lifeforms living in the path of the five - friggin - light year wide mining rig they deployed? Now, I might be jumping the gun given we only have one episode left. But given Discovery's tendency to go pedal to the metal in the season finale - with Tarka shenanigans left to deal with and only a rudimentary ability to communicate with 10-C so far established - I am concerned those throwaway lines were it.

I’ll give this one three stars. It had a focused narrative, sense of alien encounter awe, and decent pace. Not perfect, but certainly the first episode of Discovery that I can remember holding my attention in a very long time. I enjoyed it. The scene where Reno said Book and Tarka were acting out of their pain was a nice insight. Generally the character moments flowed well here, serving the plot rather than feeling forced or disjointed as in past episodes. Eliminating Grey and Tilly, plus minimizing the transgender/gay family subplot of Stamets et al, really allows for a leaner narrative here. I still don’t know why the Federation and Nivar leaders are on the ship. Are they really so irrelevant to things back home that they can go away on a months-long deep space mission? It’s just weird. I like how one character said “that doesn’t make sense” when there encountered a computer readout on the aliens’ molecular emotions. My thought exactly and kudos to the writers for being self aware. The episode makes an actual effort to walk us through the mystery of the alien species step by step. It still doesn’t make much sense, but it felt comfortable in comparison to Discovery’s narrative disjointedness in earlier seasons. It’s too little, too late, as I still wish this series a mercifully swift cancellation. Nevertheless I appreciate the effort to go out on a high note, not unlike Enterprise’s effort to kick things up in its 4th season.

Very impressive episode in many respects -- good plot, intriguing sci-fi, interesting motivations for the various characters. DSC is on the right track after a couple of decent but unspectacular outings. I actually appreciated the time and care taken with approaching the hyperfield, figuring out how to communicate with the 10-C, the problem solving. Felt like good Trek. But I also liked watching Gen. Ndoye grow increasingly impatient and know that she might have to do something naughty, which she finally does. Reno had probably her best role in DSC yet in trying to make Book understand Tarka. There were a couple of drawbacks here -- Tarka's now a cardboard bad-guy. Quite predictable that he'd doublecross Book as he did in "Rubicon". And the Burnham/Saru screaming scene made me want to puke. But we know DSC will try to throw in some overly emotional garbage to varying degrees in episodes. This one's about feeling a lack of control. And T'Rina shares something similar with Saru, which is why she avoids closeness with others. 3 stars for "Species Ten-C" -- Nearly 3.5 stars. Overall, a pretty good story is told here about how first contact takes place with a species that is so far above humans. And it should be that the Ten-C are curious and make attempts to communicate as best they can. Really enjoyed this one and am looking forward to the season finale.

two stars. thats a high rating for a DSC episode. nice scifi concept with the language barrier. this felt nicely alien. but thats where it ends. its simply breathtaking how they jump from "ooooh, this is all so urgent" to "lets play a game of chess in sickbay and talk about the ship computers feelings". it completely, utterly destroys any momentum. ok, thats gonna be one hiccup, right? enter the screaming and hugging scene. even in a supposed climax episode, you still feel like the show is trying to kill time. again and again and again. what a contrast to the picard episode. that one is only episode 2 of the season, and it had me hooked the entire time. with this, honest to god, i fell asleep several times and had to rewind, only to realize that the reason i fell asleep was because the plot came to a screeching halt with yet another amateur therapy session. some climax, that. oh and of course, we have some of the leaders of the alpha quadrant as well as some super bright mind on board. guess who they need to have the deciding idea? michael burnam. excuse me for a moment, i have to throw up. shes done it. i never thought i could be annoyed by a character more than by jonathan archer. but i herewith declare this episode where she crossed that threshold that i thought noone would ever be able to pass. can she also turn into a lizard now please?

I agree Mosley. But I can’t throw any praise at this at all. Michael is a super computer now? Why do we need anyone else on board? She’s amazing! Culber was chosen for the away mission but here, he is playing a game with the ship computer? Then, he is the one, finally (oh god thank you), to ask ‘where is Reno’? Stamets: oh yeah, I’ve been looking for her all day to help with schmuffle glibber gumph??? I should of been in the shuttle bay assisting with my great intellect but Michael is ever more brilliant! Atrocious. And forget Arrival! Close Encounters has only been around for 40 years or so. Also, our watery tentacle was straight out of The Abyss. Boldly going backwards more like. So many more things wrong with this that I could just take 10 minutes out when I don’t have 10 minutes and fucking SCREAM!!!

Sean Doyle now holds the distinction of playing a sarcastic, toxic asshole in TWO iconic genre franchises. Well done, sir. I salute you with an unironic golf clap. (clap clap) @Jammer - I hope one day you review The Expanse.

While we can safely call this the strongest episode of the season, this is largely the payoff moment that we've all been waiting for, so it'd BETTER be worth all the wheels spinning and stalling in many of the previous episodes. For many, it may be too little too late. I generally liked the first contact problem-solving, it felt very classically Trekkian even if some of the science and logic is questionable. Such as isolytic weapons being made from the element "isolynnium" which is atomic number 178, even though another element already has that atomic number. It's the kind of thing that even a fifth grader might scratch their head at. Also, why did they assign their dumbest and most useless people to problem-solve the first contact situation that the fate of the galaxy depends upon? Because all the smart innovative engineering people are on a wild goose chase trying to find Reno? Therefore they need to resort to Detmer and commander whats-his-face contributing their uneducated guesses. That whole C-plot was so pointless and silly. In any other Trek series, it would have taken only a few minutes to figure out that someone was not on the ship. And it's all because Zora has a feeling that something isn't quite right: "I can't quite put a finger on it but it feels a bit less snarky in here..." - Speaking of Reno, did anyone else wonder if she was going to slit Book's throat with her comm badge when he opened that gap in the force field? - Maybe the 10C aliens were just being sarcastic when they gifted Burnham and co. an isolytic weapon in exchange for the generous gift of boronite residue leftover from when Tarka blew up 10C's entire bononite mining operation with that very same weapon? - LOL@ Book explaining how he comes from a long line of empaths who prioritize TRUST and he couldn't have gotten to where he is now without that trust. Meanwhile, at that very moment, Tarka is literally tinkering away against everyone's interests right behind his back... - And why does Tarka's pain only just NOW make him a clueless idiot? In the past, I never got the impression that Tarka's pain and his genius were mutually exclusive. It only made him more reckless. As in.. he'd take on a little extra risk. It never got to the point of "let's almost certainly destroy everything!" - Hee~ Saru is soft-spoken and erudite but he can still scream like a banshee out of hell. Burham gives him a run for his money though. It's all so Discovery....

@Jammer @Everyone I would love to know dod you want to see THE FULL PHYSICAL FORM OFNTHE 10 C AND MORE KF THEIR HOMEWORLDS na dotber lofe forms that might love innthe hyoerfield wktjbthem..YES please we MUST SEE MORE NEXT WEEK..I want to see their FULL GLORIOUS NAKED GAS GIANT FLOATING BODIES and more of their hyperhabitat ..Wasnt amyone elae disappointed that we only saw a glimpse?? And doesnt anyone else want to see other life forms thatcmust live in such an advanced habitat with them?? Hope to hear some feedback..but thank you Disco writers for such a wondrous new alien life form and a unique story up there with the best of TNG.

@Starman @Jeffrey'sTube @Alienatbar wasn't this episode mostly ORIGINAL though and the similarities to how thebaliens communicated in Arrival only somewhat and superficial? I don't remember loghts or chemicals or pheromones being secreted by those aliens to communicate just like a mist or ink wasn't it or using tentacles to move gas in the air..the 10C don't have tentacles that we've seen..

Am Inthe only one who had never heard pf the Kardashev scale before this episode..or is it a fixtional concoction of the writers too?

I'm uncertain whether Leif's youthful exuberance keeps getting the better of him and his keyboard or it's more apt to picture him as rabidly angry fan whose sarcastic frustration with NuTrek has boiled over to the point of pummeling the keys and just giving a crap about how it looks. Putting aside my amusement for the moment, I did neglect to acknowledge that it hasn't been a complete payoff just yet because we still don't know how 10C looks like. Indeed, the mystery box hasn't fully unraveled just yet. Though oddly enough, I find myself not being as eager to find out exactly how they physically appear compared to how and why they function the way they do. I think I'd be satisfied if they remained as mysterious and unseen Elder God-like beings. Because sometimes the unknowns that the mind must fill in with its imagination is far more impressive than anything that can be decisively rendered in CGI.

This was a really good episode, but at this point it really does feel like too little, too late - and having now been burned by *three* botched season finales, I have zero faith the upcoming one will be any better. I really did appreciate the shades of TMP, as well as the obvious influence from Arrival. It's the kind of heavy sci-fi stuff Trek rarely takes the time to do and it's much appreciated to have this cool new addition to the canon. (I mean, as a point of comparison, the best that the PIC writers could come up with for their super-powerful synthetic intelligence at the end of season one was some evil metal tentacles coming out of a portal). As @Rahul noted, Tarka's betrayal was *far* too predictable, and it makes Book look stupid to have not anticipated it and found a way to keep control of his own ship should the need arise. But that's really my only major sticking point with this one.

Captain_Porthos

Up until I found the comments section of this site, I was convinced that Australia was the worlds' largest collection of poisonous things.

Porthos - I grew up with a beagle so I know that they're usually friendly, optimistic beings. For such a being, a community of jaded nitpickers is not the best environment. Personally, I deal with it by relying heavily on Jammer's thoughtful reviews and doing my best to ignore the more poisonous remarks. Discovery certainly has its weaknesses, but at this point I wonder if they're really any worse than those of Voyager or Enterprise or even (gasp) TOS. And I'm starting to wonder myself if I might enjoy the whole thing more without the commentary. There's always that option.

Saru deciding that the middle of tense, species-impacting negotiations with a vastly superior intelligence is the perfect moment to talk about his romantic foibles is peak Discovery. Also not big on the weekly obligatory scene of Culber telling a random character that he's Not Okay. I think Culber is one of the most compelling characters (and I love the performances Cruz brings to the show in this role), but I sure wish they'd give him another note to play this season.

Great episode. 4/4 for me. This season and this episode specifically have gone above and beyond to embrace diplomacy and exploration which feels right in line with the original Trek vision even when it stumbles or gets a little ham-fisted. Nits to pick remain for sure, but no longer questioning the overall creative arc choices being made. Losing Tilly has been addition by subtraction with more time for characters who have spent years on the fringe, who are frankly a lot more interesting.

No, not great, but it got exciting at the end. I sort of like watching discovery. I like to like the good parts. Unfortunately the lesser good tends to irrittes me more than it used to. After 12 episodes of waiting we now got to the cliffhanger and can wait for the last episode. Some episodes ok but n one that I could think of to just lazily rewatch with a beer and something to nibble. The higlight of this episode was seing Tig Notaro's very understated acting. Very good charactarisation.

Up until I found the comments submitted about the opinions expressed in the comments, I was convinced that Australia was the worlds largest collection of poisonous things. I guess all of our unsupportive selves would not find our way on to the Discovery. And Australia is a lovely place. Come visit. I had two beagles growing up. They used to fart and shit a lot from all the household items they used to destroy and eat. They would sniff at anything and used to drag me down rabbit holes. In the end I’d just let them go. :) (Hope my tongue in cheek molecule is conveyed correctly) I believe Saru is such a great character and is fantastically rounded by Doug Jones. The fact that he shines through the make up each week is testimony. The fact they also placed him in a helmet on the away team would have pressed my claustrophobic buttons.

I support you in your comment @Marc that Culber needs assistance here. He is not being heard. Again he recedes, and his concern for Reno overshadows his own issues and in my experience people who do this just pop eventually. I would suspect Discovery has an Assistant to the CMO who can take over duties?

@Jammer Don't you think we should and deserve to see the 10 C Jammer? I want tonsee their Entire CIVILZATION and other species in tbeir hyper solar system, not just their ful glorious bodies? I hope and expect we see that tomorrow night.

It was better than 'Arrival', In that movie, The communication sence was horrible. Using tablet PC drwaing some random symbol. A few seconds later they understand langauge. WTF? Compared to that this episode was a real sci-fi

That's not what happened in Arrival.

Gorn With the Wind

kth, you may want to give that movie another watch. Even better, read the short story it was adapted from: “Story of Your Life”.

Matt Damon wasn't in Interstellar, it was Matthew McConaghey.

Matt Damon was absolutely in Interstellar, and his character's actions in the movie are what I was talking about.

Jammer in retrospect would agree thus episode is not serious Interstellar at all or even that similar since here it's hydrocarbons and kight patterns and there it's ink or writings from tentacles so it's a very different kind of pattern?

Wouldn't most ppl.saybthisnepospde is very original and only superficially thematically similar to Arrival..the.aliens a and their methods of communication are very different in Arrival from 10 C here as is their appearance and type of nonhumanoid life form they are..

I would give this episode 3.5 stars. Yes, the yelling scene was superfluous, but at this point I expect Discovery to take a detour from whatever epic threat at hand to make sure they talk about their feewings. But overall, I haven’t seen a communication episode this good since Darmok. Even the Booker/Reno stuff was compelling. It’s almost sad seeing what this series is capable of, and then seeing the rest of it. I had a relative suffering from Alzheimer’s who would have moments of lucidity before going back into a confused state, and it was so sad when things went back that way. That’s kind of what this series reminds me of, the high points only serve to show how aggravating the low points really are. Ah well, I’ll enjoy it for now! Finally an episode worthy of the Trek name.

Gary Twinem

The 10-C's are bound to be a super evolved race of Michael Burnhams 🙂

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Star Trek: Discovery - The 10-C

"It seems they've decided to say hello."

Spoilers for season four, episode twelve of Star Trek: Discovery to follow!

Burnham, Saru, and other Federation dignitaries come face to face with Species 10-C.

Star Trek: Discovery currently streams exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S. Internationally, the series is available on Paramount+ in Australia, Latin America and the Nordics, and on Pluto TV in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom on the Pluto TV Sci-Fi channel. In Canada, it airs on Bell Media’s CTV Sci-Fi Channel and streams on Crave. Star Trek: Discovery is distributed by ViacomCBS Global Distribution Group.

13 Things To Do In Saint Petersburg | Russia’s Most Beautiful City

By Author Christian L.

Posted on Published: January 17, 2021  - Last updated: September 11, 2021

Categories Europe , Destinations , Russia

Once known as Leningrad and before that Petrograd, Saint Petersburg, Russia, is the country’s second-largest city. Set next to the Neva River, close to the Baltic Sea, this city is home to over 5 million people.

It’s the world’s northernmost city, founded by Peter the Great and named after Saint Peter the apostle. Once home to the Tsars of Russia, it is today known as the country’s cultural capital.

With iconic sights such as Hermitage Museum, Nevsky Prospect, Peterhof Palace, and so much more, it has a fascinating heritage ripe for exploration. Without further ado, let’s dive into the 13 best things to do in St. Petersburg. 

Top Things to do in St. Petersburg, Russia

St. Petersburg, Europe, has grown into one of the top tourist destinations on the continent. Although it might get very cold in winter, there are still plenty of things to do – and the summers are absolutely perfect! Saint Petersburg is one of the prettiest cities in all of Europe .

Keep reading for some of my favorite choices. 

1. Visit The World Famous Hermitage Museum

One of the city’s most popular attractions (with over 3 million items in its esteemed collection), State Hermitage Museum showcases everything from fine art to ancient artifacts. 

Even if you don’t plan on entering inside, the exterior is an architectural gem in itself. The columns are all in white with green/gold facades that can be viewed from the river or Palace Square.

If you’re visiting St. Petersburg, Russia, your trip would not be complete without stopping past this world-famous landmark. It’s also a great activity to do no matter what time of year you are visiting – and a perfect way to escape those cold Russian winter days. 

There are six buildings in the museum complex in total. Five of which – Winter Palace, Small Hermitage, Old Hermitage, New Hermitage, and Hermitage Theatre – can be accessed by the public.

Within, you’ll be treated to Egyptian collections, artifacts dating from ancient Mesopotamia, and classical Greek jewelry, pottery, and sculptures. This is any historical culture lover’s dream. 

Keep exploring, and you will find collections of prehistoric relics from the Palaeolithic era to the Iron Ages, European fine arts, Impressionist works, Catherine the Great’s personal collections, and so much more.

In fact, you’ll need an entire day or possibly longer to explore this incredible museum complex. If you only have limited time in St. Petersburg, be sure to add this museum to your itinerary! There are also guided tours available if you want a more educational experience. 

Did you know? The Hermitage Museum is the world’s second-largest art museum.

2. Take in a Performance at Mariinsky Theatre

The Neoclassical Mariinsky Theatre is home to Russia’s revered opera and ballet companies.

The theatre – named after the wife of Tsar Alexandra II, Empress Maria Alexandrovna – has been here since 1860 when it was known as the Kirov Theatre.

This magnificent building, since it opened, has hosted stage performances and premieres from Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky and famous ballets such as Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake and The Nutcracker. 

Today, in addition to hosting live performances, the theatre has its own record label, which focuses on releasing music by Russian composers Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, and Rachmaninov.

If you enjoy the arts and are going to be in St. Petersburg for several days, book tickets to see a world-class performance – you won’t be disappointed.

3. See Jewelled Eggs at the Faberge Museum

The House of Faberge was founded in St. Petersburg in 1842 by Gustav Faberge. Originally a jeweler, he became famous for designing jewel-encrusted eggs for the Tsars of Russia and is arguably the most famous goldsmith of the modern era. 

Today, you can view these iconic collection pieces in the Faberge Museum. It showcases 4,000 items in total, including Faberge Easter eggs, jewelry, silverware, home decor, and fantasy-themed objects.

The incredible jeweled eggs are famous all over the world, and there are several museums dedicated to them. But if you want to learn about Gustav Faberge, his family, and how it all began, this is the museum to visit. You can purchase a ticket in person or online. 

4. Spend an Hour Canal Cruising

St. Petersburg is built on 42 islands, and once upon a time (before bridges were constructed), cruising was the only way to navigate the city.

On a Golden Ring boat tour, you’ll see some of St. Petersburg’s iconic sights along the Kryukov Canal, including St. Nicholas Cathedral, Saint Isaac’s Cathedral, and the Mariinsky theatre.

You’ll dip beneath the famous colored bridges on Neva River whilst enjoying views of Peter and Paul Fortress, Vasilyevsky Island, and the Summer Garden. This is truly one of the most breathtaking ways to take in all the beauty that St. Petersburg has to offer. 

This tour also only takes around an hour, so you’ll have plenty of time to revisit your favorite spots throughout the day!

5. Discover Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood

One of St. Petersburg’s architectural masterpieces is the Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood.

This former Russian Orthodox Church was completed in 1907 and is built in Baroque, Neoclassical, and Russian Revival design. It is one of the city’s main attractions, with ornate domes, intricate frescoes, and 7,500 square meters of mosaics inside. 

If you don’t wish to enter, you can gain incredible views from Griboedov Canal. But if you do venture inside, you’ll be rewarded with interior frescoes and mosaic works depicting biblical scenes and figures created by celebrated Russian artists of the time.

The Church of the Saviour of Blood is built on the spot where Emperor Alexander 2 was assassinated in 1881 – hence the name. So, not only will you be able to appreciate the fine architectural designs, but also explore an important part of Russian history. 

6. Take a Rooftop Walk-in St. Petersburg

If you have viewed the city from canals and rivers, try it from the rooftops! You can take a guided rooftop walk in the city, seeing streets and skylines from an elevated perspective.

One particular tour to highlight is the Official Rooftops Excursion of St. Petersburg. Just a few minutes from Nevsky Prospect, these sites offer vistas of Fontanka River and Trinity Cathedral – and that’s just the first roof.

The second roof boasts views of St. Petersburg’s old center, St. Isaac’s Cathedral, Kazan Cathedral, and the Church on Spilled Blood.

This is a truly incredible way to see the city in all its glory, plus the tour provides you with binoculars so you can see everything in great detail.

7. Admire Nevsky Prospect’s Magnificent Architecture

The main street of St. Petersburg is Nevsky Prospect. Begin at the intersection at Stroganov Palace before venturing to Kazan Cathedral. While you walk, take in the monuments dedicated to Catherine the Great and browse goods at The Passage – Nevsky Avenue’s premier department store.

This store was quite the trailblazer. It opened its doors in the late 1840s and was one of the first buildings in Russia to use gas for lighting. Then, in 1900, an electric station was installed on an underground floor.

Once you’ve finished shopping and enjoyed a fresh cup of coffee, continue to the Russian National Library – the oldest public library in Russia – and Alexandrinsky Theatre (which was built for the Imperial troupe of Petersburg).

8. Visit the Island of Peter and Paul Fortress

Set on an island connected by bridges, Peter and Paul Fortress is instantly recognizable from its needle spire, which dominates the skyline. The fortress was originally built to defend the maritime city from Swedish invaders.

However, Peter the Great defeated the opposition before it was even completed! It has since served as a military center and prison for political dissenters and, latterly, as a museum.

Inside the vast complex, you can see Peter and Paul Cathedral, visit the resting place of the Romanovs, and watch military processions or the firing of the noon-day gun.

It’s a great day trip for anyone interested in Russian, maritime or military history. There are also plenty of group walking tours available. 

9. Sample Russian Vodka in a Ryumochnye

A visit to Russia wouldn’t be complete without sampling the local drink – vodka, and the best place to do this is in a Ryumochnye. This is a specific style of 19th-century Russian drinking house that not only offers some of Russia’s best vodka but also a short history lesson.

You could call it a bar, but it’s more than that – most mainstream Ryumochnye have a definite Soviet vibe and are places for working men to kick back and enjoy vodka with their buddies.

Beverages come in bottles or shot form, and some places offer self-service and snacks.

If that sounds too hardcore for your taste, there are updated versions of Ryumochnye in the city, like Mayak in St. Petersburg, where you can gain a similar experience. 

10. Enjoy local Saint Petersburg Craft Beer

Although most people think of vodka when visiting Russia, you can also enjoy some of the best craft beer in Saint Petersburg . Russia’s second-largest city has an exciting, rapidly growing craft beer scene, in part due to its history and geography.

Historically, the Russian empire was influenced by Northern Europe, and the Dutch & English beer-drinking culture eventually made its way here. Today, Saint Petersburg is home to a growing number of modern microbreweries, cool taprooms, and stylish bars.

Saint Petersburg is also home to Stepan Razin Brewery, the oldest brewery in Russia (now, of course, owned by Heiniken). It opened in 1795, but today the building is known as the Saint Petersburg Beer Museum, showcasing the history of beer in Russia and the Soviet Union.

Russia’s largest and most popular brewery, Baltika, is also located in Saint Petersburg, and it’s possible to take a tour of their huge brewery.

11. See the Majestic Catherine Palace

A stately palace of blue and gold, Catherine’s Palace is located 26 kilometers south of St. Petersburg. Named after the wife of Peter the Great, this place was originally a two-story modest building commissioned in 1717.

The exterior, which stretches for one kilometer in circumference, is surrounded by woodlands, lawns, gilded balconies, and reliefs. However, the interiors are even more impressive.

With great halls, a white dining room, an amber room, and more. It’s the perfect place to step back into history and discover what life was like as a Russian aristocracy.

12. Explore Peterhof Palace

If you’re going to visit Catherine Palace, you should tour Peterhof too. It’s a 40-minute drive away, but you can even take a hydrofoil speed boat from right behind the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg center.

Sitting close to the Baltic Sea, Peterhof Palace was constructed by Peter the Great to be Russia’s version of Versailles. The opulent residence surrounded by sculptures, fountains, and tiered staircases leading to the grand entrance evokes mystery and the history of a bygone era.

Inside it is lavishly decorated with dazzling chandeliers, one-of-a-kind artworks and beautiful ceiling frescoes.

On a guided tour, you can learn more about the palace’s history. Discover the Throne Room, Portrait Hall and Peter the Great’s Oak Study. You’ll see dining rooms set for dinner, grand ballrooms where dancing and gatherings would take place, and décor which defies time.

The palace offers great insight into his life and legacy, and if you are interested in history, art and interior design, you’ll love it.

Want to know more about Peterhof?

13. Spend a Day by the Finnish Border at Vyborg

Just over an hour from central Saint Petersburg by train is the city of Vyborg. It sits on the Gulf of Finland and was first settled back in the 12th century. The city has been occupied by Finnish and German forces and suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. However, it has since been rebuilt. 

It’s a charming center to wander around, with narrow cobbled streets, a medieval castle, and Finnish art nouveau structures sprinkled throughout. An easy day trip from St. Petersburg, it can also serve as a stop-off point if you’re crossing into Finland to continue your adventure.

Want to know more about Saint Petersburg?

Where is St. Petersburg | Is St. Petersburg in Europe?

If you want to know “Where is Saint Petersburg?”, you’ve come to the right place. Beautiful St. Petersburg is located in northern Russia. Russia is a massive country, so it is no surprise that many people want to know “Is Saint Petersburg in Europe?”. The answer is yes. 

How to Get to Saint Petersburg

The maritime city is well linked to Europe by air, sea, rail and road. Depending on where you’re traveling from and the rest of your itinerary, you can use one of the following ways to arrive at St. Petersburg.

You can fly into Saint Petersburg through Pulkovo International Airport. There are around 1,100 international flights a week and 1,200 domestic flights operating in and out of the local airport.

Although many flights from European cities to Saint Petersburg are direct, you may have to change flights if flying from further afield.

It’s also possible to travel to St. Petersburg by train. The most popular (and most frequent) routes operate from Moscow, Helsinki, and Tallinn. However, there are options to travel from other areas in central Europe, central Asia, and eastern Europe by rail.

There is a central bus station in Saint Petersburg, with services to and from Moscow, Pskov, Novgorod, Vilnius, Riga , Tallinn and Helsinki. Some of these journeys can be long and arduous.

Therefore, thorough research and choosing the right bus company is important.

Baltic Sea Cruises also operate to St. Petersburg as part of a larger itinerary, and St. Peter Line Ferry sails from Helsinki in Finland and Tallinn in Estonia.

Exploring Saint Petersburg, Russia

Saint Petersburg is the 5th most populous city in Europe and also a leading tourist destination. Although people sometimes forget about Russia, this city is breathtakingly beautiful and provides plenty of cultural and historical attractions.

Now that you know where to go, I hope you have an amazing time in Russia’s most beautiful city.

Friday 19th of January 2018

Thank you! So great review about our St. Petersburg!

What to do in St. Petersburg in 1 day - Probe around the Globe

Thursday 11th of May 2017

[…] more about the beauty of St. Petersburg from the Unusual […]

Friday 17th of June 2016

Which hostel did you stay at? I am potentially thinking of going to Russia for World Cup 2018 after my World Cup trip to Brazil two years ago. Saint Petersburg is one of the host cities, and so I am very interested in learning more about this city and recommendations from fellow travellers who have been.

Christian L.

I stayed at Soul Kitchen Junior, and I will go so far and say its by far the best hostel I have ever stayed at!! Anywhere in the world, no other hostels even get close to it:)