“Far From Home” is the 2nd episode of the 3rd season of the TV show “Star Trek: Discovery” and follows “That Hope Is You, Part 1“.

Note. This article contains spoilers about “Far From Home”.

The USS Discovery exits the wormhole in the midst of asteroids suffering further damage and then crashing to a nearby planet. The on-board systems are barely able to maintain life support and need to be repaired as soon as possible. Saru (Doug Jones) and Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman) set out for an inhabited area hoping to find assistance.

After seeing what happened to Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) after coming out of the wormhole, the second episode of this season is about the USS Discovery and its crew. Saru, in command of the starship, must direct repairs and find help.

This episode has a decidedly western flavor in the part set in the city on the planet. Indeed, only the technological elements and the non-human characters make it clear to the audience that this is science fiction because only horses were missing to have a full-fledged western. Unfortunately this makes my impression of the episode worse than the first one, in the sense that once again I had a been-there-done-that feeling after the first episode was reminiscent of “Star Wars”.

The part of the episode set on the USS Discovery is no better in the sense that the starship looks like a wreck after crashing on the planet, but obviously the efforts of the surviving and able crew members manage to get it back at least partially up and running.

In the end, the most significant conflict is the one between Saru, who represents the Federation and its values, and Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh), who pursues her goals ruthlessly. Honestly, it’s very little for another episode written by showrunners Michelle Paradise and Alex Kurtzman together with Jenny Lumet.

“Far From Home” does its job in the sense that it shows what happened to the USS Discovery and its crew with a plot involving several characters. However, like the first episode, there are no surprises, not even in its ending, which seemed obvious, at least to me. The first two episodes of the first season complement each other in the sense that they introduced the new situation for Michael Burnham and the USS Discovery. I confess that this season start has left me cold, and I wonder if they couldn’t do better with these two episodes. Again, I hope there’s a little more fantasy in the next episodes’ storylines.