Star Trek Discovery Hides Its Best Romance

In case the revelation of this hidden Star Trek: Discovery romance has you asking “who?”, we need to do a quick refresher on the character of Landry. She was the extremely paranoid security officer inSeason 1, and she eventually suffered the fate of countless other security personnel in the franchise. Specifically, she was killed by a weird space creature…in this case, the very same tardigrade who helps Stamets and the crew figure out how to make Discovery’s spore drive work.

With that out of the way, let’s activate our own spore drive and jump right into the big question: why do we think Star Trek: Discovery would have been better if the romance between Lorca and Landry had been spelled out on the show? The main reason is that it would have provided context for some of Landry’s stranger words and actions. In her brief time on the show, it became abundantly clear that she wasn’t the kind of officer that Starfleet typically recruits.

Early on in Star Trek: Discovery, we don’t see any outward signs of Landry’s romance with Lorca, but we do see plenty of her outright antagonism toward others, especially Burnham. We meet Landry when Burnham does, and that’s when the security officer refers to the other woman and her fellow prisoners as “garbage.” Landry obviously hates Starfleet’s first mutineer on sight, but it’s notable that she sees these prisoners as garbage to be processed rather than lives to be rehabilitated.

Her antipathy towards Burnham continues later on as she critiques the other woman’s Vulcan martial arts techniques. Most interestingly, Landry mentions how she and Burnham need to find “poison sacs, pain inducers, rage glands” on their captured tardigrade. When an understandably concerned Burnham talks about how weird it is to look at a new life-form like this, Landry lectures her on how Captain Lorca is only “interested in what you can do for him…And if he needs us to make that thing useful in his war effort, that’s what we’re gonna do.”

Later, Star Trek: Discovery revealed that Lorca was secretly from the Mirror Universe, but never revealed that he and Landry were secretly having a romance together. That’s a shame because she appears borderline evil in her limited time on the show, so much so that fans kept waiting for a reveal that she was also from the Mirror Universe. Instead, she was apparently just a veteran Starfleet officer that Lorca corrupted, and we can’t help but feel a secret relationship would explain why she would do anything for her captain (including dying while messing with the tardigrade).

Such a Star Trek: Discovery revelation would have been completely in character for Lorca, someone who once used romance to try to foster trust with Admiral Cornwall. Sadly, the plot point that Lorca and Landry were making the Targ with two backs was removed from the “Context Is For Kings” as quickly and brutally as Landry was removed from the series. She ultimately died as she lived: doing shady stuff for a shadier captain.