Lorca assigns Burnham to study the creature from the Glenn, a giant Tardigrade which destroyed a dozen Klingons, and find a way to use its biology as a weapon.
Lorca threatens Stamets and forces him to continue the journey to Corvan, playing the distress call from the colony over the ship's internal communication system for the entire crew to hear.
The series stars Sonequa Martin-Green as Burnham, Doug Jones as Saru,[1] Shazad Latif as Ash Tyler,[2][3] Anthony Rapp as Paul Stamets,[1][4] Mary Wiseman as Tilly,[5][6] and Jason Isaacs as Gabriel Lorca.
[7] Additionally, guest star Rekha Sharma was cast as Discovery's security officer Commander Landry at the end of April 2017.
[2] In November 2016, series' writer and consulting producer Nicholas Meyer mentioned that Michelle Yeoh had been cast in Discovery,[8] and she was soon confirmed to be portraying Captain Georgiou of the USS Shenzhou.
The website's critical consensus reads, "With 'The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry,' Star Trek: Discovery plays to its strengths, advancing major plots and further refining core characters.
"[13] Michael Ahr of Den of Geek expressed concern about Discovery's ongoing departures from the traditional moral foundations of the Star Trek franchise, as well as viewers' advance knowledge that the spore drive would fail to supplant ordinary warp drive as Star Trek's timeline continued.
She noted that Burnham was "beginning to feel a little overshadowed by the characters around her" and was less impressed by the Klingon subplot than by the rest of the episode, but concluded that "the show hasn't let this war-torn universe detract from the human elements that help ground bold, sci-fi stories like this one is shaping up to be.
"[16] Writing for Tor.com, science fiction and fantasy writer Keith DeCandido called "The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry" "a damn fine episode that tells a very good—and a very Star Trek—story in its hour while continuing the seasonal arc along", but criticized the slow pace of the Klingon scenes due to the use of the Klingon language in dialogue.
Handlen described Landry's demise as "an ugly, stupid death with no dramatic weight that only serves to make the Discovery's crew seem that much smaller.
"[18] Reviewing for The New York Times, Sopan Deb compared the Klingons' viewpoints to those expressed at the August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, commenting, "Politics permeate every part of our lives now.
Deb also praised the burgeoning friendship between Burnham and Tilly, describing them as "two characters that actually tolerate each other's presence, which is more than can be said of every other crew member on the Discovery.