Star Trek: Discovery’s Best Fight Nearly A Catastrophe

If you haven’t seen this Discovery episode in a while (or ever), you might be wondering what would cause this father and daughter to fight in the first place. Weirdly enough, it all starts when Sarek is onboard a shuttle and his assistant reveals he is a Vulcan separatist who intends to blow both of them up in order to protest the Federation and Sarek’s involvement with them. Sarek saves himself by throwing up a quick force field, leaving him with two problems: he’s injured and his ship is now stranded in the middle of nowhere.

Any other Discovery character in this situation would likely just die, but Sarek’s relationship with Burnham allows him to fight for his life in a very special way. Vulcans are partially telepathic, and Sarek’s previous mind-meld with Burnham left a part of his mind in hers. This allows her to feel his pain and she convinces Lorca to help track her father down, but their psychic link keeps trying to show Burnham a deep secret that Sarek wanted to keep from her.

In true Discovery fashion, Burnham tries to get to the bottom of Sarek’s hidden memory, but he literally fights her to protect the memory, with the two having a showdown using Suus Mahna, a Vulcan form of martial arts. The onscreen combat has great choreography and feels very visceral, and this is a miracle because the two actors never had a chance to rehearse together before filming the scene. Burnham actor Sonequa Martin-Green was comfortable winging it because she had extensive stage combat experience, but she and the crew were surprised to discover that Sarek actor James Frain had no such experience.

All of this could have made for Discovery’s worst fight, but the two actors “found it together” and “sort of dove in,” according to Martin Green. In addition to looking thrilling onscreen, their battle also helped prove that Vulcans were perfectly capable of kicking butt and taking names if they have to. You could also consider this battle a payoff to a moment from the earlier episode “Context is For Kings” where the now-deceased Security Chief Landry commented on the Vulcan martial arts moves Burnham used against some fellow convicts by saying “Vulcans should stick to logic.”

One of the reasons we love this Discovery fight scene so much is that it calls back to The Original Series and Kirk using those goofy, two-handed chops against his enemies. Fortunately, Trek has come a long way since the days of “Kirk-fu,” and the mental showdown between Burnham and Sarek is anything but goofy. And the reveal that Sarek was guarding a memory of choosing Spock over his daughter only for Spock to reject the opportunity to join the Vulcan Expeditionary Group makes this one of the most important fights in Star Trek history because it further reveals what caused the estrangement between these two Vulcans.