Review

Before getting into the story itself, it's worth noting that in season 2, Star Trek: Discovery is now being filmed in a 2.39:1 "true cinematic" aspect ratio, which is even more annoying than the first season's almost as bad choice of 2:1. Like before, this leaves black bars on the top and bottom of 16:9 screens which are the most common screens this series will be viewed on. Again, the producers have said this aspect ratio was chosen to make Discovery "feel more cinematic," which is truly bizarre. Game of Thrones is 16:9 and definitely feels more cinematic than Discovery. A perfect example of how the producers have repeatedly focused on style over substance. Wasting more than a quarter of the screen is not how you make something "feel cinematic." Producing good content is.

As for the story—such as it is—following in the infamous tradition of the horrible Battlestar Galactica "webisodes," this new between-seasons "Short Trek" format delivers what might end up being Star Trek Discovery's first true filler episode, annoyingly sandwiched between the first season finale and the first "real" episode of season 2 that will eventually get the plot back on track and resolve season 1's cliffhanger. This thankfully short chronicling of Ensign Tilly's mysterious encounter with an awkward alien teenager doubles down on Discovery's preoccupation with targeting the short attention span crowd, delivering story depth roughly on par with a typical episode of The Animated Series.

The narrative's only apparent purpose appears to be celebrating immature anxiety as an identity group. All that happens here is a therapy session between Tilly and her alien counterpart in which the sole moral of the story is that it's okay to feel nervous about things sometimes, especially when you're young because it's harder to control your emotions when you're young or something. While it would certainly be nice to see a Star Trek episode that explores anxiety disorders in some depth in an effort to portray mental health problems on TV in a better, more sympathetic light to help erode generations of stigma surrounding mental health issues, this episode misses that mark by far. And in so doing, presents a largely incoherent plot.

How did the alien hitch a ride on a shuttle to Discovery? Why target that specific shuttle or Discovery in particular? Why didn't Tilly call for help when the alien appeared in the mess hall? How could Tilly have possibly gotten away with keeping all this a secret after multiple people witnessed the mess in the mess hall, complete with alien blood? Why didn't the internal sensors detect the intrusion and set off alarms? How did Tilly get away with beaming a living creature off the ship without setting off alarms? Why is it possible for anyone—especially an ensign—to operate the transporter alone without setting off alarms? Where exactly did Tilly even beam the alien to? Where was the ship at this time? When was the ship at this time? Since Tilly was talking about joining the Starfleet Command training program, it had to be after at least some of the events of the previous episode Will You Take My Hand, but it seems hard to believe Tilly would have this entire alien adventure during the cliffhanger between Will You Take My Hand and whatever the next "real" episode of season 2 is which will presumably resolve the cliffhanger. So then the events of this episode take place during the middle of the previous episode somehow...?

Much of that litany of plotting issues seriously strains credibility to rationalize, which is clearly why the episode didn't bother trying. As usual with an episode of Star Trek: Discovery, the writers are hoping to activate your feelings here, not your mind. And as usual with an episode of Star Trek: Discovery, this episode is kind of entertaining, so long as you don't think about it too much. Instead of thinking about totally boring things like plot coherence, you're supposed to feel super moved by such inspiring lines like, "Evolution is about soul," man! Like whoa. Super deep. Almost as deep as Kirk's similarly profound line, "What of Lazarus?" from TOS: The Alternative Factor, an episode that is apparently this show's role model for writing quality.

Review

Like General Chang from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country hitting you over the head constantly with overwrought Shakespeare references, this entire episode hits you over the head over and over again with overwrought references to Homer's Odyssey, an invocation of Greek mythology that is about as lazy as TOS: Who Mourns for Adonais.

Zora is meant to represent Calypso, for whom the episode is named. In Homer's Odyssey, Calypso rescues a marooned Odysseus and keeps him on her island for some time due to loneliness. In this episode, Zora rescues a marooned Quarrel/Craft and keeps him on her ship for some time due to loneliness.

Quarrel's/Craft's two names also mirror Odysseus, whose name is traditionally defined as "to be wroth against," or "to hate." Synonymous with quarreling. As for Craft, Odysseus was traditionally defined as "skilled in all ways." Synonymous with being crafty.

In Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus was apart from his wife for many years due to war, missed her, and wanted to escape Calypso to be with his wife again. In this episode Craft was apart from his wife for many years due to war, missed her, and wanted to escape Zora to be with his wife again.

In Homer's Odyssey, Calypso was sad that Odysseus wanted to leave, but instead of holding him further, she gave him everything he needed for his journey back. In this episode Zora was sad that Craft wanted to leave, but instead of holding him further, she gave him everything he needed for his journey back.

And so on, and so on...

If shallow, heavy-handed Greek mythology references were the episode's only sin, it might be worth a few more points, but there are so many more cringeworthy details compounded atop this. Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the story is the setting. Here we have yet another irrelevant likely filler episode sandwiched between season 1's cliffhanger and its eventual resolution, but this time instead of being set ambiguously sometime during season 1—which was bad enough in the previous episode—we now have a story absurdly set a thousand years later aboard a somehow perfectly preserved Discovery that has been ordered to sit in space in stasis for no apparent reason.

Then—as if this episode hadn't imitated enough of Star Trek's worst episodes already—the ship's computer became an emergent AI like TNG: Emergence, one of TNG's worst episodes. Then like about a million other bad Star Trek episodes, the AI turns out to have serious emotional problems, exhibiting behavior also reminiscent of HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Meanwhile, rather than give us answers to basic questions like who the unseen enemy "V'draysh" is, how the Discovery was preserved perfectly for a thousand years but abandoned, or why so much of the Federation's history seems to have been forgotten by at least one human colony, the writers left all that intentionally vague out of an apparent desire to not "get hemmed in by canon" or some other similar platitude that is often trotted out to defend stories with this kind of reckless disregard for the long term health of the franchise's canon.

On the contrary, setting this story a thousand years into the future doesn't do a damn thing to prevent the writers from cornering themselves with canon. If anything, it's one of the worst settings imaginable for preventing future writers from being burdened by canon. Because of this episode, any Star Trek story set far enough into the future has to account for the apparent decline and possible fall of the Federation, or at least rationalize how Craft and his entire planet could be unaware of the Federation's existence.

Constraining future Star Trek stories with this kind of baggage almost never goes well. We've seen what happens with poorly thought through exposition that saddles the franchise with long-term plot implications before. The "warp speed" limit in TNG: Force of Nature was quietly forgotten. The absurd "warp 10" drive that turns you into giant newts from Voy: Threshold was intentionally forgotten with prejudice. There are many examples. This episode's ambiguous proclamations about the Milky Way's future are not impossible to work into future stories, but will require future writers to be at least as clever as this episode's writers were lazy.

And none of it was necessary. There's no reason the story had to be set a thousand years into Star Trek's future. It could've easily been set during a known future era, such as during one of the Federation's many wars from previous shows. Craft could've been a Federation soldier escaping a battle that didn't go well. The idea of the Discovery floating in space perfectly preserved would still be absurd and tough to rationalize, but less so a hundred years into the future than a thousand years into the future. What's important here is this same basic story could've been told in another century that would've actually leveraged canon instead of wasting Star Trek's distant future in such a gratuitously lazy way.

All this just to do an awkward mashup of 2001: A Space Odyssey with Greek mythology, both of which are referenced by science fiction works so often that it is quite cliched to do it yet again unless it is truly earned. It wasn't earned here. A story filled with tired, overused references and no substance of its own is just smoke and mirrors, not real depth. But what else should we expect from a story that rocks a "DISCO" shirt, expecting us to find it, like, real punny, man?

Review

This charming story that embarks on the worthy of endeavor of unpacking Saru's backstory could've been even better were it not confined to this asinine "Short Trek" format. Similar to how we got a lot of exposition about Burnham's backstory early in the series, this exposition about Saru's formative experiences and how he met Georgiou is content that should've aired much earlier in the series. There's no good excuse to have waited this long to give us this exposition and it's even more inexcusable to air it irrelevantly between season 1's finale cliffhanger and season 2's pickup.

And it certainly deserved more screen time than this. Who are the Ba'ul? Why do they take Kelpiens? How did it come to be that the Kelpiens know the Ba'ul are a civilization of people but have internalized a permanent inferior status to them and a lack of intellectual curiosity about them? Why does the Federation allow a more advanced civilization to exploit a pre-warp civilization in this manner? These are all questions the story could've gotten into if it had been longer than a TAS episode.

Plus while it turns out Saru's backstory is considerably more intriguing than he let on during season 1, it also verges on a retcon. The previous description of Kelpiens as a hunted species with the absurd beyond all reason concept of "threat ganglia" to help them avoid predation is now bent to near the breaking point in this revised portrayal of Kaminar as a society confined to a terrifying status quo of sleepwalking to presumed death TOS: Return of the Archons-style. If Kelpiens are required to submit to sacrifice blindly, it's not at all clear what purpose if any the threat ganglia serve anymore.

This episode does offer a lot of nice stuff though. The story is compellingly presented, Saru's family is endearing and sympathetic, and the subjugation of Kaminar explains why we've never seen a Kelpien before on another series, resolving a minor continuity nitpick common to Star Trek prequel episodes. Most importantly it was nice to see exactly how Saru and Georgiou became so close and it's nice to see that the bond between them is truer to the spirit of Star Trek than perhaps most on-screen friendships on Star Trek. This story despite its bad timing and inadequate length is a great concept and it would be nice to see it unpacked more in future episodes.

While it would perhaps be best if the previous two Short Treks are quickly forgotten, this is the first one to be well worthy of a sequel.

Review

Perhaps the biggest piece of filler yet on Discovery—still awkwardly sandwiched between season 1's cliffhanger and season 2's pickup—is nevertheless kind of amusing. A mix of humor that ranges between juvenile, bland, stiff, and sometimes effective, Mudd's scheme to make money off of scams is largely inoffensive if not particularly profound. The reference to the "space whale" places this story chronologically after Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad, but when specifically beyond that is unknown.

This episode is notable for being some of the most explicit references to capitalism on Star Trek so far. As we've seen many times on Star Trek, while the Federation appears to be a considerably more socialist democracy than most present day governments, it is clear that there is still something resembling the various styles of "mixed" economies we have in the real world that mix some elements of capitalism with some elements of socialism. As such, the various Star Trek series (rightfully) continually undermine Captain Picard's famous "money doesn't exist" quotes depicting characters across centuries of Federation history variously engaged in the pursuit of money. This makes sense. Even in a world with replicators, there would still be scarcity of land, services, and other things the replicator can't replicate.

We can chalk this up to Picard oversimplifying it a bit for effect given that it's clear that nobody in the Federation has to work to attain basic needs. It's clear the Federation has something resembling a government guarantee of free healthcare, free education, free food, free housing, etc. In such a society, working and having money would be totally optional. There would be no "wage slavery." But for the "insatiably greedy" like Mudd, the hustle is irresistable.

Review

"Sometimes it's wise to keep our expectations low, that way we're never disappointed," Pike warns us, as though he is speaking through the fourth wall; as though he is speaking for the Discovery writers to the audience. After the canon-wrecking disaster that was the first season, that is indeed good advice. This episode of Star Trek Discovery: The Search for Spock sidelines the more interesting questions about why Burnham and Sarek are estranged from Spock to focus on yet another galaxy-wide emergency that occurs only moments after the Klingon war has ended. While building up Burnham's, Sarek's, and even the audience's expectations to see Spock materialize on the transporter pad only to end up with an obnoxious letdown of an understudy in Connolly is a reasonable dramatic move for the plot to build up tension, it is much less reasonable for the narrative to decline to let the audience in on just what drove Spock from his family. The mystery surrounding this is entirely manufactured and could be resolved quickly if the characters ever bother to ask or answer obvious questions about it, but nobody ever does.

As usual with Discovery, rather than establishing a dramatic hook, the narrative just dangles the possibility of eventual reveals and maintains a constant state of galactic emergency. A generally accepted guideline for writing good fiction is that suspense is better than mystery. You can hook an audience by disorienting them with endless mysteries that focus attention on piecing together clues, but better stories lay out all the players and their motives early, captivating audiences based on dramatic hooks alone. Good suspense is of course a lot harder to write and it appears to be beyond the capabilities of Discovery's writers so far. Perhaps they were hoping we wouldn't notice because we'd be too distracted by the nostalgic glee of seeing Pike and the Enterprise again like dangling keys in front of a toddler.

As for the all-consuming emergency of the season, we're not off to a great start. The justification for Pike to take command of Discovery doesn't meet the criteria Saru cites, as there does not appear to be any imminent danger posed by these mysterious signals. This is more like a scientific curiosity than a threat. But everyone seems to be constantly trigger happy on Discovery. Like with mysterious signals immediately being interpreted as a threat, so too were Jett Reno's drones when Burnham said, "I have an incoming target," and everyone whipped out phasers in response to the unknown like a spaghetti western rather than whipping out tricorders like an episode of Star Trek. Even the changes to the title sequence reflect this attitude: the communicator was removed, but they kept the phaser in. This jumpy behavior accords with an overall shift in tone on Discovery from previous Star Trek series that has become more evident over time. These characters are not the professional, disciplined crew of previous Star Treks. Instead we're shown a cadre of largely shrill, undisciplined, seemingly emotionally unbalanced (or at least immature) people whose hyperactive vicissitudes are continuously validated by a narrative that acts as though their behavior is something to celebrate when it so often is anything but admirable. They're constantly either sneering or manic as though none of them ever matured beyond adolescence.

A particularly noteworthy example (though there are so many that could be cited) is a scene when Pike chastises Burnham for not offering a constructive solution to rescue the downed Federation ship and she gets offended, replying that she was getting to that. For some reason Burnham didn't seem to understand that in an emergency situation, you have to get to the point quickly. Pike cut her off after a lengthy debate had already begun and Burnham began her supposedly constructive remark with, "Landing on an asteroid traveling at 5000km/s with spotty telemetry and no transp—" and she wonders why Pike cut her off? He cut her off because he was "thinking of all the syllables that gave their lives" in Burnham's completely unnecessary preamble. Repeating a bunch of facts Pike already knew presumably for dramatic effect is the opposite of constructive.

She could've just said, "We have a third option most Starfleet vessels don't have, captain: dope space motorcycles." Then Pike could've replied, "Sweet, saddle up," or "Hit it," or "The power of math, yippee!" or whatever overly contemporary shorthand the writers see fit to dump on us, cementing the scriptwriting as 2019 in space. Such heavy reliance on slang is not the shortcut to authenticity the writers seem to be hoping for, but instead evokes some of Star Trek's worst eras. Like the times when TOS couldn't escape the 60s, Discovery is dating itself as a late 2010s / early 2020s show with its stylistic choices constantly and it will not age well. While TNG, DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise were not immune to being overly contemporary at times (especially in their earlier seasons), Discovery is amping that up considerably and seems to be worryingly openly celebrating it.

This worrying tone shift of course extends well beyond unprofessional characterization and overly contemporary scriptwriting though. As alluded to in previous reviews, this episode appears to be doubling down on Discovery's slow drift towards just making Star Trek a cheap knockoff of a Marvel Avengers film. By now all the pieces are in place: a lot of manufactured excuses for action sequences like the space motorcycles, excessive CG clutter like the holographic candles in Burnham's quarters, and they even have Iron Man-style spacesuits which appear from mallet space and expand all around you. Perhaps the reason we never see this tech again in chronologically later Star Treks is due to idiotic design flaws, like inability to manually seal the helmet leading to Starfleet to collectively hang their heads in shame and toss this junk out the nearest airlock. Also, why not put on spacesuits before climbing into the space motorcycles to begin with, you know, to avoid the chance of the helmet not sealing properly in an emergency?

Thinking these things through just didn't seem to be a priority for the writers here. They were preoccupied with writing scenes that dump exposition on us at as rapid a clip as possible while the main focus of the camera is on a random alien dumping bodily fluids on someone for comedic effect because haha body humor is funny; Star Trek is a comic book franchise now, isn't that great? What's next, butt jokes?

It's certainly true that not all of Star Trek needs to be humanist philosophy all the time. The best Star Trek episodes are sometimes thoughtful, cerebral affairs like TNG: Tapestry, but Voy: Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy was also a hilarious and welcome addition to the canon. Discovery's ambitions are clearly leaning more towards the latter, and that's not necessarily a bad thing in principle if done skillfully and tastefully. What's so sad about this is Marvel films actually do a much better job of executing on this goofy, immature genre of storytelling, whereas Discovery comes off more as a cheap imitation. More importantly though, everyone knows what they're getting with a Marvel film. It's either your cup of tea or it isn't. If you like that stuff, great. But taking the pre-existing Star Trek franchise with all its history and depth and shoehorning it completely into the butt joke genre seriously undermines what makes the prior art so great. It's as though somebody said let's make Star Trek into the MCU while possessing no understanding of what makes either Marvel films nor Star Trek appealing to people, so it ends up being good at neither.

Lastly on this list of notably distasteful things, while Discovery's disastrous attitude towards visual canon has been discussed at length already here many times, the redesign of the Enterprise's interior offers another unique angle from which to explore this sad state of affairs. Recall the following exchange from TNG: Yesterday's Enterprise:

Guinan: "I look at things, I look at people, and they just don't feel right." Picard: "What things? What people?" Guinan: "You. Your uniform. The bridge." Picard: "What's the matter with the bridge?" Guinan: "It's not right." Picard: "It's the same bridge. Nothing has changed." Guinan: "I know that. I also know it's wrong."

Then, later on, Garett says: "This sickbay, I've never seen anything like it, even on a starbase. And your uniform. What ship is this, captain?"

What those characters are describing is a sense of disorientation due to constantly shifting visual continuity. A similar point is made in TNG: Parallels where Worf complains of being disoriented because sets and uniforms keep subtly changing and creating a sense of—and I quote directly here—"discontinuity." This is exactly what audiences are feeling when they see the redesigned sets of the Enterprise in a show that is allegedly part of the main canon, unlike the Kelvinverse films which deliberately set themselves apart from canon to avoid these problems. Discovery has trapped Star Trek inside something not unlike this Bob's Burgers episode, except nobody's laughing. Every week is a stressful exercise in, "What canon will they crush next?" The best option available to us is to take Captain Pike's advice: "Keep our expectations low, that way we're never disappointed."

While it's mainly quite a letdown to have a season premiere that draws so heavily on beloved canon like Pike, Spock, and The Enterprise fall so flat, there are some good things in here. This episode resolves the lingering question from the first season about why Burnham was absent in TAS: Yesteryear. And Pike's on-the-nose reference to Nhan being a "red shirt" only to subvert the trope and see Connolly die in his blue shirt instead may have been a somewhat obvious move, but still a well-executed and strangely satisfying one. Plus it's hard not to appreciate the roll call scene which feels like it was as much for the audience's benefit as it was for Pike's. It would be nice to add some more depth to Random Communications Officer Man and the other bridge crew. Broadly speaking though, it would be nice to add considerably more depth and care to the writing of Discovery in general. Let's hope we get it sooner than later.

Review

This is a surprisingly strong concept for an episode despite a range of flaws in its premise and plot logic. It's fun to see Discovery doing some exploration for once instead of constantly careening from crisis to crisis. It's also nice to see minor characters like Detmer and especially Owosekun get some real character development. It's also nice that the mystery of the red signals is appearing more and more to be like a scientific curiosity rather than the threat it was implied to be in the premiere. We've now had two red signals lead the crew to people who needed rescuing. And Pike is of course right to point out that a lot of coincidences are piling up. Notwithstanding Spock appearing to have had visions of the red angel, other especially notable coincidences include the Enterprise appearing to be intentionally(?) shut down to force Pike to take command of Discovery, which happens to be the only ship with a spore drive. The spore drive then turns out to be the only way to reach Terralysium to rescue the colonists.

It does remain irritating however how the show just keeps busting out the spore drive whenever they feel like it without regard for how we're supposed to believe it would be infeasible for this technology to ever be used again, particularly with Tilly working on a way to pilot it without causing damage to Stamets; damage that once again doesn't seem to be at all medically consequential. Once again using the spore drive seems to be completely free of consequences despite hyperbolic warnings last season that draining the mycelial network of its energy will destroy all life in the universe—no wait—all life in all universes. With that heavy-handed nonsense apparently forgotten, we're back to wondering why a particularly industrious Harry Kim didn't dust off the spore drive plans from the Federation scientific history database to teleport Voyager home in a single episode. After all, Discovery traveled more than 70% as much distance in a single episode as Voyager did in seven seasons, but somehow all knowledge of this mission was lost by the time of Voyager. It would be nice if they would explain how that is possible at some point.

Another perhaps less frustrating but still striking omission from the story is the missed opportunity to contrast Saru's origin story with Jacob's. Both men wanted to fly away from their homes to explore space. Both men managed to use found technology to contact someone from another world. Starfleet allowed Saru to leave Kaminar and join Starfleet. They even clearly allowed Nhan—a Barzan—a person from a pre-warp society that is not a member of the Federation to join Starfleet as well. It would make all the sense in the galaxy for Saru to make a spirited argument in favor of doing the same for Jacob, but it never came up.

Perhaps the most irritating detail of the episode though is one that's very easy to miss. Tilly is said to have attended a "Musk Junior High School." This is the series' second sycophantic reference to Elon Musk, who last season is mentioned alongside the Wright brothers and Zefram Cochrane as though Musk's accomplishments, impressive as they may be, are even remotely comparable to inventing airplanes or inventing warp drive. Again, they aren't. But since they keep doing this, maybe we should dig a little deeper into why Musk is such a problematic person for Star Trek to celebrate. Musk is scandal-ridden union busting billionaire; a person who personally embodies better than most the excesses and abuses of capitalism. Someone like this should not be celebrated on Star Trek of all things, a TV show with a long tradition of depicting a socialist utopia free of greed and mostly free of class.

Consider the contrast between how Star Trek VIII: First Contact portrayed Zefram Cochrane vs. how it is now portraying Elon Musk. Zefram Cochrane was a crass, drunken, greedy man who invented warp drive so he could in his own words "retire to some tropical island filled with naked women." Cochrane was portrayed by the narrative as a flawed historical figure who people tended to irrationally glorify because they wanted a hero to worship, not an actual person to assess. A cult of personality emerged around Cochrane because the myth mattered more than the man.

It is curious how so many of us have a tendency to do that not just with historical figures we are willfully blind to the flaws of which Star Trek VIII: First Contact was warning us about via allegory, but also with contemporary celebrities. The cult of personality around Musk is very real and it has become a clear signpost of foggy thinking. Much as people who unequivocally praise Musk display poor critical thinking skills, the writing of Discovery doing so reveals the vacuousness of the writers. Such vacuousness is at best politically clueless and at worst a betrayal of Star Trek's utopian vision. Indeed, others have noticed how Discovery more generally has drifted away from the socialist roots that Gene Roddenberry planted, and it's a shame.

One could be forgiven for thinking for a moment why should we obsess over such a small detail? Normally we shouldn't. After all, plenty of Star Trek's hundreds of other episodes have dropped cringeworthy throwaway lines and even similarly doubled down on them at times. But in this case that small detail is such a perfect encapsulation of a much broader problem with Discovery's writing: superficiality. A recurring theme for more than a season now has been a constant strain of either pseudo-intellectualism or sometimes even anti-intellectualism in Discovery's writing. When the series isn't wading into puerile immaturity dropping lines like, "Doing donuts in a starship, yippee!" it instead delivers overwrought speeches about not taking "shortcuts on the path to righteousness" without earning the moment at all. The writers take intellectual shortcuts on the path to profundity constantly, so it's no wonder the writers and therefore the writing on this show would be vulnerable to the cult of personality surrounding Musk despite ample evidence that it is devoid of substance.

The biggest flaw of the episode though is how the Prime Directive is handled. It actually started off pretty good, with Pike and Burnham having a quite compelling debate about how to handle the situation. But once they beamed away in front of the colonists, the whole debate ought to have been moot. In previous Star Treks, an incident like that has always been regarded as cultural contamination. Instead the narrative here acted like the colonists observing the transporter wasn't a big deal at all. For that matter, it's quite astonishing that Saru didn't even bother to scan the planet's surface to see if they were standing near any colonists when they beamed them out given that they had already averted the climactic disaster that would've necessitated the urgent beam out.

Instead, Pike and Burnham continue to debate whether or not to enlighten Jacob. After he saw them beam out. Like, really? Just frigging do it. Your cover is already blown. Then when they finally do tell Jacob everything, Pike says they cannot intervene in his society because it "has to evolve in its own way." Really? Even though they're human? Even though they know everything now? Then Pike hands over a piece of society-altering technology to Jacob, which last I checked is a form of intervening, and they fly away to impossible distances with the impossible spore drive that will soon be decommissioned, putting Terralysium out of range of the Federation for centuries. Possibly forever.

It's quite a shame too, because this episode was quite charming otherwise. Without these compounding flaws, it could've easily been one of Discovery's (badly needed) above average offerings.

Review

This is the strongest episode of the season so far, delivering interesting stuff on a few fronts. The red angel and Spock developments are proceeding apace without any real issues and Tilly's imaginary friend ended up being a fun diversion rather than the dumb distraction it risked being. It was used well for both comedic and dramatic effect, which is nice to see given Tilly's character so often falls flat. Though it would've been nice if she had asked May what she actually wanted at some point instead of immediately treating her as a threat. Another unfortunate but small detail was that there were so many shots beginning at weird angles and then rotating to level, a stylistic choice that needs to go away as soon as possible. Also Amanda not hailing Discovery on approach leading Discovery to declare a yellow alert was pretty dumb. When she boards Discovery, it turns out there was absolutely no reason for all this dramatic tension at all. She apparently nearly got fired upon because she was an idiot. Or more accurately because Discovery's writers wanted to create artificial tension in an idiotic way.

But for once these flaws don't really dominate the story. There is a lot to like here. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this story was the effort the writers went to to fix mistakes of previous episodes. The elephant in the room of course is Klingons have hair again. This plus the faithful depiction of a Klingon D7 battle cruiser and even pink Klingon blood (not seen since Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country!) does much to stitch together visual continuity between Discovery and the rest of Star Trek. Though of course that ship sailed long ago, so making the situation somewhat less awful is of questionable value. Nevertheless we should still appreciate the effort even if it's not nearly enough and even though it has some internal problems of its own. For instance, one curiosity is the Klingons are said to be regrowing hair because the war is over. Okay, well if that is so, then why did they not have hair before the war started in the pilot then? Another appeal to canon repair is in the amusing remark about Pike disliking holo-communicators, which validates a common fan rationalization that the technology came in and out of fashion over the next century, guided mainly by personal tastes of individuals. Another curiosity is one wonders if L'Rell's and Tyler's baby will turn out to grow up to be "the albino" from DS9: Blood Oath. The timeframes would roughly line up for that.

The best piece of repair work this episode does for previous episodes though is how it handles Klingon politics. The end of the last season was a frustrating way to end the war with the Klingons. L'Rell's plan was stupid and it failed. This episode finally acknowledged that on-screen instead of continuing to pretend that it was a coherent plan. L'Rell only became chancellor through dumb luck. This episode makes that undeniable by having Section 31 directly intervene on her behalf to prevent a coup instead of continuing to pretend that L'Rell seized power through charisma and intimidation from a position of strength. It was manipulation from a position of weakness the whole time. It seemed inevitable that someone would mount a coup almost immediately since it seemed obvious that L'Rell was installed by a Federation-initiated regime change. This episode deals with that directly.

Not all of it works. It's unclear how it makes sense for L'Rell to build a new, fiercer Klingon warship to "remain Klingon" but it also made sense for her to call off the war. The two actions seem at odds. The depiction of Section 31 is also a problem. The last thing we want is for Emperor Georgiou, a former genocidal dictator, to be rebranded as some kind of badass secret agent antihero. The introduction of black badges, their own ships, whole crews, etc runs counter to the previous depiction of an organization that operates much more in the shadows than this. It calls into question how anyone could possibly be unaware of Section 31 a hundred years later if they were literally flying around with ships with crews. But we'll see how that plays out. The ship has a cloaking device after all. Maybe they manage to keep a whole ship and a whole crew from ever becoming public knowledge somehow.

Perhaps the most fun detail in the episode is Kol-Sha using a dishonorable weapon to seize power, paralyzing his opponent and forcing her to sign a contract as though he were a Ferengi only to get whacked by an assassin moments later, like some kind cosmic karmic repercussions for acting distinctly un-Klingon in that moment. Perhaps part of what made that moment along with much of the rest of the episode so satisfying is Discovery really needed someone to get in there and give the Klingons a good thwack to make them start acting Klingon again along with giving the rest of the storytelling a good thwack to make it start seeming like Star Trek again. This newfound attention to detail bodes well for the rest of the season. Let's hope it lasts and they build upon it.

Review

This is an episode that tries to do too much at once and would've benefited from fewer plot threads that were fleshed out more. The weakest links are May and the sphere. The May story could've been delayed for another episode. The sphere story could've been cut entirely. A better version of this episode would've cut those plot threads and instead constructed a simpler, more reflective story centering on Saru's sudden illness (which really didn't need a sci-fi plot device in order to present itself) while they're en route catching up to Spock. They could've used the content from the Short Trek episode The Brightest Star here instead making a story that intercuts between the crew trying to save Saru and Saru telling his friends the whole story about what Kaminar was like and how he escaped. This would've given the narrative a useful reason to show us Saru's backstory instead of just lazily having Saru hint at the details in dialog. It also would've eliminated the need for the Short Trek episode, creating a tighter, more focused narrative.

A still better episode would also have dispensed with this nonsense about Saru nearly outright refusing medical treatment, which seemed quite out of character. Saru is a person who left an anti-intellectual planet to live with people for whom—as Burnham put it in New Eden—science is their religion. Someone like that wouldn't just uncritically accept the inevitability of death. He would fight it as long as possible. He would rely on Federation medical science to deliver him from the fate the rest of his people so blindly accept. The contradictions in his characterization are made even more apparent by his newfound resolve at the end of the episode as aired to return to Kaminar to go tell his people their religion is wrong. And as for Saru's fear being "gone" now, didn't we do that already? What ever happened to him losing his fear in Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum? Maybe all this incoherence was inevitable given the idiotic premise of having a species whose superpower is somehow having the ability to "sense the coming of death" to begin with.

Another strikingly weak piece of plotting was the numerous logical leaps that Saru and Burnham engage in to assign motivations to the sphere at various times. Almost every conclusion they draw is based on zero evidence amounting to little more than wild guesses. The narrative then validating their unscientific hunches as somehow in the spirit of Star Trek is frankly offensive. Yes, it's a nice message that not all alien life is necessarily a threat or at least not everything that causes damage is outright malicious in intent, but that message has to be earned, not sledgehammered through the plot.

There are some endearing things in this story though. Pike's further remarks about holo-communicators do further canon repair validating a common fan rationalization that the technology came in and out of fashion over the next century, guided mainly by personal tastes of individuals. The universal translator malfunction scene is a highlight not just of the episode, but of the entire series so far. And the earlier universal translator failure with Linus was a nice touch too, though it would be nice if they would stop making frankly racist jokes about him for comedic effect. Using Linus as a way to do body humor jokes is really not that different from making fun of Worf's forehead ridges or Dax's spots. They gotta cut this stuff out.

Reno's and Stamets' interplay was also surprisingly good. Their sniping and sneering at each other was actually effective for once. Though their debate about whether the spore drive is a clean source of propulsion while warp drive is dirty was pretty incoherent too. We already knew that the spore drive risked destroying whole universes or something, so Stamets' forceful defense of it seemed odd. Then only a little bit later May reminds us that the spore drive damages the entire mycelial network. Also, gee it sure would've been nice if she had just come out said "hey you're hurting my people" a couple episodes ago so they could work together on a mutually agreed upon solution, huh? Anyway maybe we'll finally be rid of the spore drive forever soon since everyone is super duper sure finally that it has unacceptable tradeoffs now. Maybe this time. Maybe. Just in time for May to abduct Tilly into a Stranger Things-style cliffhanger, dragging Star Trek down into the muddy waters of cheesy paranormal science fiction storytelling. Though perhaps that fits with their emphasis on body humor and pulpy comic book tones.

Review

Quoth Michael Burnham: "And if there is a greater hand leading us into an uncertain future, I can only hope it guides us well." It's as though she's begging the writers for fewer cringeworthy lines like, "Words define us," (like, whoa man!) and more coherent storytelling, because this episode is a bit of a clunker. What we have here is a story about some mushrooms kidnapping Tilly into their mushroom space via a mushroom transporter, but it turns out the mushrooms just need help defending themselves from a dead guy made of mushrooms who is then reborn using the mushroom transporter; meanwhile after a full search of the Mushroom Kingdom, it turns out your Spock is in another castle.

All joking aside, Stamets' reunion with Culber was legitimately touching and well-acted. This even aired on Valentine's Day. Aww! But the plotting is ridiculous even by Discovery's standards. The magic powers of the mycelial network approach Voy: Threshold levels of voodoo. The story is vague at best about precisely how Culber's "soul" was transported to mycelial network to begin with. We can maybe help the writers out here by cooking up some absurd rationalization that the story didn't give us: Let's assume that Stamets' connection to the network was the conduit by which he arrived there. Perhaps Stamets and Culber had a connection between them through some sort of special mycelial infection Stamets shared with Culber through intimate contact, such that Culber's consciousness was copied to the network before he died. But even so, there are still so many problems. Why did the jahSepp recreate Culber just to break him down again? Why would the jahSepp want to eat something that was made from their own matter when it was established that they only break down foreign matter? And for that matter why didn't Tilly ask May to stop the jahSepp from eating the ship once they forged an alliance to defeat the "monster?"

The writers simply weren't interested in rigorously sketching any of that out. They just wanted to turn up the urgency of everything to eleven and hope you wouldn't notice that these things don't make sense. Except of course when they painfully interrupted a countdown to have an emotional scene. This happens frequently on Discovery, but this episode was a particular offender. It felt like people were constantly warning the away team that they need to hurry because everyone's about to die, only to see the away team turn around and talk about their feelings for an excruciatingly long amount of time.

The most painful thing about the episode though is the retconning of Section 31. In the 22nd century Section 31 exists as a shadowy organization nobody knows about. They do super shady things and the very few people exposed to them react with horror and work to root them out. Now in the 23rd century Section 31 is basically the CIA, everyone knows who and what they are, not many people think what they're doing is particularly shady, and nobody wants to see the organization rooted out. Then in the 24th century Section 31 is somehow back to being a shadowy organization nobody knows about. They do super shady things and the very few people exposed to them react with horror and work to root them out.

Yeah, sure, we can concoct some tortured rationalizations for why Section 31 was widely known and fairly popular in the 23rd century but not in the 22nd or 24th, but—say—driving them underground after some incident during the events of Discovery doesn't erase the apparently widespread knowledge that they previously existed. What are we supposed to believe, that after they are driven underground they make everyone forget they ever existed, Men in Black style with a flashing amnesia device? Though that would be fitting given Discovery's track record of transforming Star Trek into a goofy comic booky MCU-tone story. As usual, Discovery is playing it fast and loose with canon and hoping we don't think about it too hard.

And that's exactly the problem: it takes extremely tortured rationalizations to make any of this Section 31 stuff make sense. And beyond that, the whole idea of the narrative itself treating Section 31 as a necessary evil rather than the total perversion of what the Federation stands for that it is is precisely the opposite of the spirit of Star Trek. The whole concept behind Section 31 has always been to depict them as monstrously evil. Such evil should not be glorified by Star Trek. We especially shouldn't glorify it by simultaneously glorifying a mirror universe character as some sort of antihero.

Bad mushroom science is one thing, but Star Trek has seriously lost its way with this Section 31 plot thread. It's an insult to Star Trek and everything it stands for.

Review

In the classic tradition of bad Star Trek episodes, our heroes swoop in and force massive societal change on an entire planet this time by forcing precocious puberty on the Kelpiens causing their danger noodles to "evolve" into danger needles to cure them of their Irritable Ba'ul Syndrome. They don't give a second thought to what side effects there might be to forcing this medical intervention on a whole society of people. They just toss a whole civilization a laxative to force them to have a Ba'ul movement against their will, then give them a nice pat on the ass, wish them well, and fly off into the sunset, leaving the Kelpiens and the Ba'ul to sort out their own isuses, clean up their own messes, and flush their own toilets.

Meanwhile it's completely unknown why the Ba'ul didn't just exterminate the Kelpiens ages ago if they were so willing to do it now if the "Great Balance" were ever even mildly disrupted like what happened here. Or if they're so afraid of the Kelpiens, why didn't they just leave the planet with the warp drive they recently invented? But you see, in comic bookish stories such as this we're not meant to consider such questions. We're supposed to react with shock and horror at the menacing black alien goo that looks and sounds scary rather than think of them as a society of people. Besides, scary black alien goo killed Tasha Yar in (a particularly awful episode of) TNG, so it's automatically bad, right?

And like any good comic book story, our heroes need ever escalating superpowers. In this episode Saru implausibly dismantles a machine of oppression by getting angry, becoming The Incredible Hulk, and doing some Hulk Smash. Who knows if that's even his Final Form? Will Saru go Super Saiyan someday? There was some potential for real personal growth for his character in this story that was totally wasted here. Instead of showing us a new Saru that is more confident and outspoken, he just starts fights with Pike. Instead of showing us a Saru who has to work hard to prove to his people that Kelpien puberty need not automatically mean death, the deus ex machina of the red angel just magic wands away their entire religion in one fell swoop. Handy.

Speaking of superpowers, Airiam is starting to get annoying. She appears to be able to absorb information quickly in the same way that Data was able to do a century later, an ability which during Data's time was regarded as novel and impressive. But a hundred years before Dr. Soong created Data, we've got something that strongly resembles an android with apparently all of Data's abilities. They'd better clear this up soon.

On a positive note, what's going on with Culber is incredibly touching and very well-acted. His posttraumatic stress disorder is well earned by the plot and convincingly portrayed. Stamets' denial about it is too. It's quite unfortunate that more of the episode wasn't that good. This much-anticipated sequel to the prior much classier Short Trek episode The Brightest Star ended up being a real stinker.

Review

With the search for Spock finally over, the story advances a bit. The various plots driving it forward are fairly effective. Some Vulcan family drama that is reasonably compelling. Some Section 31 intrigue that works surprisingly well. A fight with a time traveling giant squid robot straight out of The Matrix. Leland is apparently somehow responsible for the Klingons killing Burnham's parents, a curiosity to be followed up on later. Airiam is infected with a virus that might hopefully lead to the irritating questions about her backstory and capabilities finally getting reconciled with canon. None of this is terribly impressive, nor particularly problematic.

A notably unfortunate oversight in the story is the total lack of epilogue regarding the previous episode's events on Kaminar despite Discovery being ordered to remain in orbit of Kaminar. Apparently Starfleet isn't even remotely concerned about Discovery upending an entire society of two sentient species. They're only sticking around because of the red signals. The planet of Kaminar serves only as a pretty backdrop for dealing with the space anomaly. The writers seem to have forgotten about it so much that when the space anomaly explodes into a "time tsunami" at the end of the episode, Discovery just warps away without the slightest regard for how such a terrifying phenomenon might affect the scores of people on the planet below. Whatever. Screw them. They were last episode's problem.

Review

The long awaited moment when Spock finally joins the story in earnest is a pretty satisfying payoff. With only a few relatively minor flaws, this episode delivers a tasteful tie-in to the beloved TOS episode The Cage and its sequel TOS: The Menagerie which adds lovely texture to those stories without creating any problems with the story canon in the process, finally delivers some details about precisely what the stakes are with the red angel, and sets up a story that is finally more about suspense than mystery; though the precise motivations of the red angel are still annoyingly a dangling mystery.

The most irritating thing about the episode is the opening montage of TOS: The Cage using stock footage. Discovery lost all rights to use stock footage the minute they decided to do a visual reboot. It frankly would've been far more appropriate (and impressive!) if they had simply reshot those scenes using Discovery's aesthetics and put those in the recap instead. Gone are the days of TNG: Relics, DS9: Trials and Tribble-ations, Voy: Flashback, Ent: In a Mirror, Darkly, and others when old footage or classic aesthetics were painstakingly integrated into modern Trek aesthetics in a loving and tasteful way. Instead, Discovery has fallen for the absolute worst kind of selective nostalgia: rebooting visual canon, except for when they're feeling sappy and nostalgic and want to literally reuse old shots in a stupid and jarring way. The climax of absurdity here is the cut at the end of the recap from Pike in the old footage to the new Pike which is clearly meant to be seen as an impressive transition, but it's totally disorienting and only serves to highlight just how problematic Discovery's attitude towards visual canon has always been.

What's strange is they actually got at least one notable visual continuity transition right: the transition to a new actor for Spock. Starting off with just his voice so we can get used to that change first was a nice touch. Then the detail of Spock having a beard implicitly grapples with the problem of switching actors (like all visual continuity breaks) being disorienting. If it is absolutely necessary to break visual continuity in this way, which is certainly the case here with the necessity of recasting actors, then changing the character's hairstyle or something and making that change notable in the dialog itself to lampshade things looking different is a good strategy to minimize this disorientation. The disorientation shifts from the actor changing to the hair changing and lets the audience suspend disbelief more easily on the visual changes by rationalizing it as, "Well time passed, so people look different." It's a cheap trick, but better than putting in no effort at all. And putting in no effort at all is what Discovery usually does with visual canon, so this bit of effort is appreciated.

Another wrinkle in the story is the fact that they're still so willing to jump at the chance to use the spore drive again despite compounding evidence that every time they use it they're possibly killing sentient beings or risking destroying whole universes or something. But hey, gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette. Getting to Talos IV is an emergency or something. We can still use the spore drive in the case of emergency right? Break glass and maybe kill a few sentient lifeforms to complete your mission a little faster like Captain Ransom in Voy: Equinox? No biggie.

Beyond that though, there is so much to love about this episode. The Talosians demanding Burnham finally spill the beans on what the details are of her family drama with Spock felt like they were speaking through the fourth wall as the audience to the characters. Like really, Burnham. Out with it. Now. Or we won't let the plot advance. Thank goodness! The acting for the new Spock was also truly excellent, as was the writing. His recklessness was perfectly in character. He encounters the red angel and doesn't understand it. So why not mind meld with it? That'll surely—crap now I have space madness. His exasperated sigh at Burnham making another Alice in Wonderland reference also felt like the audience speaking to Burnham through the characters. Very cathartic.

Speaking of catharsis, Saru letting that fight happen in the mess hall was fascinating. The way he rationalized it to Pike made more sense than it might be comfortable for us to admit. Likewise Pike taking a hard line against that sort of conduct in the future was exactly the right response. A very well-conceived progression of scenes. And of course the interplay between Culber and Stamets in this episode is heartbreaking and once again beautifully acted and written. That Discovery is taking its time with the two of them processing their trauma is quite worthwhile and appreciated. Overall this adds up to one of Discovery's finest episodes.

Review

Another fairly banal offering, but not too bad. The increasingly annoying mystery of just what Airiam is and whether or not she is a continuity error is resolved satisfactorily. She's not an android, but a person who suffered a traumatic injury and had extensive implants installed in order to survive; sort of like a more extreme version of what happened to Detmer. A compelling concept for a character. But this satisfactory resolution to the potential continuity error comes just in time to kill her off and waste all of this character development, in the classic Star Trek tradition of bad episodes conspicuously shining a lot of attention on a minor character only to swiftly kill them off a short time later.

The main plot driving the story involving Control spinning out of control is less effective. It is curious why Starfleet would allow Patar—a logic extremist; a member of or at the very least a sympathizer of a terrorist group—to be an admiral and wield such extraordinary power over critical decision-making. It's also remarkable how sloppy a job Cornwell did in her supposedly extensive checking into the validity of the video depicting Spock committing murder when all Saru had to do to prove it was fake was check the non-visible light sensors to show that it was made using holograms. It's also astonishing that after Airiam was trapped in the airlock, Nhan—who was literally suffocating on the floor—was totally forgotten for several minutes, left to retrieve her breathing apparatus on her own. Burnham didn't spare a single moment to help her. Nobody else noticed either.

What worked better was the several scenes depicting Burnham and Spock banter. They continue to be credibly presented as siblings with believable sibling rivalry tinged with Vulcan cultural quirks. Watching them snipe at each other out of both frustration and love simultaneously is good fun. So was the space battle with the mines. But that's about it.

Review

We finally have the identity of the red angel: it's BurnhamBurnham's mom. We finally have an answer as to what precisely the red angel is: it's a time travel suit that Section 31 invented as part of an arms race with the Klingons 20 years ago. It was also developed to investigate the question as to whether a series of technological leaps in various civilizations' past were the result of contamination of the timeline, akin to what occurred in Voy: Future's End or Enterprise's Temporal Cold War. Though ironically, the technology developed to investigate this question could itself be the cause of that contamination. What precisely Burnham's mom is doing in the suit and how she survived the Klingon attack is a question for the next episode.

It continues to be a concern for canon that so much ultra advanced technology is being invented in the 23rd century. The existence of a personal time travel suit—even a classified one—presents serious problems for canon that are perhaps even worse than the spore drive. Like with the spore drive, we must ask what happens to this suit? Why is it never used again after the events of Discovery? It's unclear if the writers are much interested in that question as their track record of bothering to think these things through is mixed at best. Another wrinkle in canon worth thinking about that the writers probably aren't thinking about is how can Spock spend so much time with Mirror Georgiou now but know nothing of the mirror universe ten years later in TOS: Mirror, Mirror? Hopefully we get satisfactory answers eventually. One more murky detail is why exactly is Michael getting angry at Leland for the death of her parents? This is basically shooting the messenger territory. It seems her parents were lost in the line of duty on a mission they signed up for.

Aside from that stuff though this is a pretty engaging episode. We continue to see the narrative transition from mystery to suspense. It's nice to see Culber back at work while continuing to sort out his feelings. It's nice to see Cornwell's past as a counselor leveraged here. And the closing scenes involving setting the trap for the red angel are classic incoherent (in a good way) time travel logic that deliver solid dramatic tension, a satisfying payoff, and a compelling cliffhanger.

Review

This episode is a mixed bag. On one hand, the presence of Gabrielle Burnham giving a firsthand account of developing the red angel suit, being forced to use it, getting stranded in the 32nd century, and using time travel to prevent a galactic calamity is welcome exposition. It was also fantastic to finally see direct flashbacks to the moment when Burnham's parents were lost, which was a notable oversight in the first season's finale. Now they are finally adhering to the principle of, "Show, don't tell." All of that was great payoff, but it could've been worth a lot more points if there weren't so many terrible details dragging things down.

For starters, Leland's story eerily resembles having been assimilated by the Borg. We must pray that it's only a superficial similarity and that there is no actual connection between Control and the Borg, or that would likely be yet another continuity error that the series would have to clean up. Also the debate in the episode about whether to delete the sphere data is idiotic. Saru was right. Burnham, Gabrielle, and Pike were wrong. Knowledge is good. Deleting knowledge is bad. Destroying Control should've been their goal.

But even so, suppose for whatever godawful reason that destroying the data truly was their only option... okay, what's so hard about that? Sure, some kind of firewall or DRM prevents itself from being deleted. Whatever. It's unclear how that could possibly work, but let's go with it for now. Did anyone think to physically smash the computer it's stored on? Or blow up Discovery? It turns out they can transfer the data to the red angel suit (move it, not copy it; which itself implies deleting the copy from the computer it started on, but we digress), so instead of the bizarre plan of "send the suit to the future with the data" why not just transfer the data to the suit and then destroy the suit?

Speaking of the suit, its incredible superpowers are well beyond reasonable suspension of disbelief by this point. Gabrielle and Section 31 appear to have built it without too much difficulty beyond locating a "time crystal." Once constructed it possessed the power of time travel, flying through vast distances in space despite having no apparent means of propulsion, the ability to emit powerful signals that can be detected from across the galaxy, a "heal beam" that brought Burnham back to life, weapons that could effortlessly neutralize the Ba'ul in The Sound of Thunder, and "literally infinite" computer storage capacity. And who knows what else?

Perhaps its best superpower though is it provides the series a way to carve out Star Trek: Discovery as taking place in a multiverse, similar to the Kelvin films, which is a possibility we should not only start taking seriously now, but begin assuming is the case immediately for the long term health of the franchise's canon. We should now assume that 20 years prior to the start of Discovery when Gabrielle Burnham began traveling through time to escape the Klingon attack and began altering historical events, she contaminated the timeline which spun off the prime universe into a multiverse that now exists separate and apart from the main canon, just as Nero spun off the prime universe into a multiverse in Star Trek XI (2009).

Unless and until a future episode contradicts this conclusion, it will be official editorial stance of this publication that Discovery exists in a multiverse apart from the main canon for this reason. Hopefully the writers either 1. validate this on-screen at some point, or 2. at least do nothing to contradict it in a future episode. If so, this can fix all of Discovery's breaks with canon. Even visual canon. So perhaps this otherwise mixed bag of an episode is the greatest gift Star Trek: Discovery has given us so far. It gave us the tools to strike all of this from the main canon to undo all the damage that has been done to canon by this series. Hooray?

Review

Another clunker in a season full of clunkers. After spending some time with L'Rell's and Voq's/Tyler's son (so much for those theories that he might grow up to be "the albino" from DS9: Blood Oath), Pike becomes convinced that the vision he saw of ending up confined to a wheelchair is inevitable for no clear reason other than being told that it is inevitable. It's entirely unclear how taking a time crystal and having a conversation with a time monk deprives him of all free will for the rest of his life, but that appears to be what the writers expect us to believe. Gone is Pike's agency to resign from Starfleet, change careers, or simply kill himself before the impending accident. Foreknowledge of it as a possible outcome doesn't render it merely a possible outcome, but somehow a certainty.

Bad takes on the philosophy of free will aside, the whole notion that the Klingons are sitting on rich deposits of natural resources that can be used to build powerful time travel technology that they simply refuse to use because it wouldn't be honorable or something is utterly stupid. Countless Klingons would have no such scruples, yet for some completely asinine reason we're supposed to believe that this power is never exploited across centuries of Star Trek stories. The tendency for this series to grant superpowers in a prequel that history never recorded and not think through the implications of how they would ripple across canon is an endless source of frustration and one of the principal reasons why this whole show ought to be struck from canon with prejudice.

And somehow, overwrought time crystals are not even the stupidest detail of this story. That honor goes to the cliffhanger. They're being chased by a fleet of 30 ships, can't outrun them with warp drive, and need to buy time to figure out how to use the time crystals to defeat Control. So rather than do the overwhelmingly obvious thing of using the spore drive to jump across the galaxy—say—to Terralysium where it would take the enemy 150 years to catch up to them, they just suddenly forget that option for no coherent reason and decide blowing up the ship is all they can do, which is especially incoherent given that they used the spore drive earlier in the episode to travel to Boreth. But hey, at least we finally had a scene with Linus where he wasn't used to make a body humor joke.

Review

Discovery won't let itself be (easily) destroyed, so they decide to fight Control instead. It's pretty hard to take anything in this episode seriously given the absolutely absurd premise that it's impossible to run from Control even though they've got the spore drive which can teleport them instantaneously anywhere in the galaxy. Given that, the excessive number of tearful goodbyes in this episode is doubly annoying. They didn't earn them at all and even if they did it would still have been excessive to spend this much time on it.

Speaking of excessive, the return of Po is regrettable. She is so obnoxious. A child prodigy inventor queen exuding constant arrogance and snark which the narrative is clearly expecting us to find charming for some reason. Doubly annoying is Tilly and Po reveling in their little secret the whole time making in-jokes about Runaway while everyone else looks either confused or annoyed. Because puerile giggling is totally the proper way to prepare for war. Can you imagine Commander Adama and Admiral Cain acting this way preparing to attack the Cylons on Battlestar Galactica? Or Sisko and Dax acting this way preparing for battle with the Dominion on DS9? Even notoriously goofy Farscape reined it in more than this when the stakes got this serious. But not so on Star Trek: AvengersDiscovery.

Then once their preparations for battle are made, a completely ridiculous number of shuttlecraft appear from mallet space. People used to criticize Voyager for having a seemingly endless supply of shuttles, but at least you could explain that away as the crew rebuilding them. They're even shown to build a shuttle from scratch with the Delta Flyer. But here the Enterprise and Discovery somehow house a massive fleet of shuttles in their tiny little shuttle bays.

A few highlights: Sarek choosing not talk to Spock when he is aboard the ship preserves continuity with TOS: Journey to Babel, since that episode establishes that they have not spoken "as father and son" since before the events of Discovery. It also looks like the battle that will occur in the next episode will be pretty fun, for all that the setup is idiotic. Lastly the idea that Discovery may end up permanently in the future might give this show a place to go where it can do something new and original instead of constantly stumbling through canon making a mess as though it were in a drunken stupor.

Review

Well the surprisingly lengthy space battle was indeed fun as expected, but as usual with Discovery they put exponentially more effort into production quality than writing quality. As usual there are so many layers of incoherence and bad plotting to work through. For starters the absurd number of shuttles and "pods" (whatever those are, and who knows why they're never seen again...) hinted at in the previous episode is much greater than it seemed. They number at over 200! Seriously? Then we have super genius teenager Po who knows military tactics better than every trained Starfleet officer. Then there's the surprise allies arriving to save the day trope executed more sloppily than usual. Tyler somehow organizes and teleports everyone to the battle in the space of what, an hour? How does Tyler organize all that? When did he really start preparing it all? How did those ships get there so fast? Why couldn't Tyler have contacted Starfleet for help if he was able to reach the Klingons and the Kelpiens? There are no good answers to these questions. An even more awkward question is why didn't the Klingons look surprised that Tyler is even alive? Remember earlier in the season when L'Rell faked his death to keep her hold on power? The writers apparently didn't remember that.

Then there's that indestructible blast door on the Enterprise. That torpedo blows off a third or so of the saucer section but somehow leaves Pike untouched when he's standing just on the other side of a door. And why didn't Cornwell get one of those repair robots to pull the lever for her? A similarly embarrassing oversight has to do with the motivation behind transporting Discovery to the future to begin with. Set aside for the moment that they could've avoided this whole mess by using the spore drive to get out of range of Control to begin with. That was covered in the earlier reviews. What we need to talk about now is they've actually made it worse: Georgiou destroyed Control and nobody took a step back and realized, "Hey, wait, we won. We don't need to send Discovery to the future anymore. Control can't weaponize the sphere database if Control is dead. Hooray! No need to maroon a whole crew of people!"

But the writers didn't notice that either because they were utterly committed to sending the ship and her crew to the future at all costs because that was supposed to reconcile Discovery with canon. Except it doesn't. Not even close. It's an insult to expect the audience to believe that all the numerous tough things to reconcile that happened across these two seasons can be satisfactorily reset buttoned by making it classified. Too many people already know too many things. And making Discovery or the spore drive classified doesn't fix the numerous outright continuity errors, or the visual reboot. The only real solution is to dump Discovery into a multiverse like the Kelvinverse from Star Trek XI (2009) where it always should've been to begin with. It's quite remarkable that the writers saw the problem clearly enough that they were willing to almost totally retcon Discovery out of existence, but they didn't take it all the way. Thankfully they haven't yet precluded the conclusion that Discovery is in a multiverse. So we must continue to presume that it is and hope they never contradict it. Indeed, we should further hope they endorse Discovery being in a multiverse on-screen some day like was done with Star Trek XI (2009) for the long term health of the franchise's canon.

Looking to the future, Discovery's third season will have have some interesting plotting problems to solve internally. Setting aside canon concerns, the other half of Discovery's overall awfulness is its unwillingness to think through its innumerable comic bookish superpowers or the implications of the corners they write themselves into. They're going to be in the far future with an unknown political geography in an obsolete starship that has suffered from massive battle damage. Assuming they somehow survive, what do they do? This finale makes it seem like they're stuck there forever, but they still have the time travel suit. It just needs a new time crystal. And there sure seemed to be a lot of those on Boreth, so... yeah. Even if Discovery somehow delivers us the perfect fix to its canon-wrecking two seasons by endorsing the multiverse solution, it seems pretty clear we shouldn't trust them to tell a coherent story on its own terms any more than we should trust them to play nice in the sandbox of Star Trek's epic canon.

Overall, Discovery continues to be a massive disappointment and at times even a disgrace to the Star Trek franchise on many levels. Let's hope the writers start paying closer attention to the damage they're doing to the franchise and work to make repairs before it's too late.

Review

This coda to Discovery's second season chronicles Spock's first day on the Enterprise, as portrayed by Discovery's visual reboot of the Enterprise. It is notable that this episode takes place prior to TOS: The Cage, making it even more inexcusable for Discovery to have not recreated the recap to TOS: The Cage in its new aesthetics during If Memory Serves. If they have budget to do random codas featuring Spock, Number One, and Pike, then they had budget for that too. Indeed, the issue was never budgetary most likely, but as noted in the review for If Memory Serves, the writers were most likely taken in by the absolute worst kind of selective nostalgia: rebooting visual canon, except for when they're feeling sappy and nostalgic and want to literally reuse old shots in a stupid and jarring way. As for this story, it is mostly unremarkable. It isn't bad. But it isn't that good either. This feels more like the sort of thing you'd find perusing the deleted scenes of a film only to say, "Yeah, I can see why they cut this."

Review

While it was nice to see a brand new crew on a brand new ship, this is easily the worst Star Trek "episode" in many years, so much so that it deserves to be struck from canon and ignored forever. Aside from the fact that the details regarding tribble biology and history are hard to reconcile with the rest of canon, the "post-credits" scene (a newer fad in TV/film that we should hope dies a swift death) is obviously pure parody and clearly not intended to even be part of canon to begin with. The rest of the episode isn't much better though. It's basically an episode of Bob's Burgers set in the Star Trek universe, except Edward isn't even remotely as likable as Bob. Edward is awkward, antisocial, reckless, immoral, and vindictive. The narrative expects us to hate him and celebrate his needless death in the end, as though watching obnoxious people win Darwin Awards is somehow in the spirit of Star Trek. It isn't.

Review

Another Discoveryverse Enterprise coda. Again fairly unremarkable. Again not bad, but not necessarily good either. Again feels more like the sort of thing you'd find perusing the deleted scenes of a film only to say, "Yeah, I can see why they cut this."

Review

Unlike the previous season 2 codas, this one adds real if marginal value to a significant character by visualizing the fable Burnham told in Brother in a unique and stylized way. A charming little story.

Review

Like The Girl Who Made the Stars, this is a reasonably charming little story, making better use of the animated medium than TAS. Unfortunately the framing device makes it impossible to reconcile with canon. There is no reason Starfleet would make an educational film about a technology that has been classified in order to be buried and forgotten.