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

Remember TNG: The Perfect Mate? It's likely Kaitaama in this episode is one of those very rare empathic Kriosian females. But it seems Kaitaama was already married. It's interesting to see that while Trip finds her attractive, he doesn't at all fall for her immediately, like he would with an unbonded equivalent. Eventually, they start to hit it off though. Still, you've got to wonder why the Retellians stole her if she's already married. Not that they seemed very bright, though. Anyway, this episode is your rather generic abduction / hostage situation plot. It's rather annoying that there's a handy M class planet immediately available for Trip and Kaitaama to land on when they steal the escape pod. Other than that, the episode is another improvement over the not so good episodes season 2 has been serving up lately.

Review

This episode is an interesting story of deception and betrayal. True to its name, it also features several interesting maneuvers. The Kazon put a knife in Voyager's belly, steal a transporter, Chakotay steals a shuttle, Chakotay approaches the Kazon ship under stealth, and Voyager beams aboard all the Kazon leaders. There are some remarkable inconsistencies, noted in the problems section, but overall I'm pleased with this episode. In the end, the contention between Janeway and Chakotay is appropriate. It seems there's not one member of Voyager's crew Janeway won't have to chew out, which is humorous and amusing as well as a bit annoying all at the same time. The ending of this episode is the best part, Seska is such a twisted, sadistic, evil person that she impregnated herself with Chakotay's DNA just to further infuriate him. A nice if slightly flawed episode.

Review

This episode features an original plot and a charming concept for a character: an El-Aurian (Guinan's race) who uses his species' talents to make profit. The title is a reference to the rivalry between Martus Mazur and Quark, as well as the rivalry between Bashir and O'Brien playing Racketball. There are a great number of small details in this episode that make it a fun ride and the character-driven nature of the episode is entirely to its advantage. The science fiction regarding the luck changing devices is outright horrendous, but it's easy to overlook. They were quite literally plot devices, pun intended. Bashir and O'Brien have a developing friendship now, which is a step up from O'Brien's expressed irritation with spending any time with Bashir last season. But as the time passes, you can tell they're becoming more and more fond of one another.

Review

An episode which on the surface seems nearly identical to Errand of Mercy. Once again we have a proxy battle between the Federation and the Klingon Empire and once again the aliens of the week being manipulated by this proxy fight are a primitive race which oddly appear identical to humans. The trouble is Errand of Mercy was a good story and this episode sucked.

In Errand of Mercy we're treated to the delightful character of Kor whose well characterized personality really drives home the philosophy of the Klingon Empire and how it differs from that of the Federation. But in this episode, the Klingon antagonist lacks intrigue or personality of any kind. He falls completely flat. This contrast is even reflected by the events in orbit of both episodes. In Errand of Mercy there's an exciting space battle in orbit. In this episode there is no action in space at all. Instead the Enterprise follows up on fake distress signals and chases away a timid, fearful Klingon ship, lacking in any kind of dramatic appeal whatsoever much like its Klingon counterpart on the surface.

On top of that the diplomacy in this episode is terrible in a couple of places. First and foremost, the entire premise of this episode is a blatant violation of the Prime Directive, again much like Errand of Mercy. Second, even if we assume that the Federation had made an exception to the Prime Directive due to the importance of securing the resources on this planet, that by no means gave Kirk the authorization to interfere with local law by saving Eleen, thereby endangering the mining rights negotiations as well as the lives of the landing party.

But it wasn't just Kirk who was off his game today because the bridge crew of the Enterprise started to look mighty stupid too by the end of the story. I'm glad that the overwhelming obviousness of the distress call being fake eventually occurred to Scotty, but the time for that was well before he turned the ship around. The most annoying scene on the bridge was when Uhura questioned Scotty's rather solid reasoning about the distress call being fake with little more than "but what if it's real?" That challenge alone convinces Scotty to keep plugging away at the useless search for a while longer, further endangering the landing party unnecessarily.

Probably the only charming aspect of the story was McCoy's high degree of competence, which was a nice relief from an episode filled with incompetence by nearly every other character. For reasons not terribly well explained McCoy seems to be an expert on this planet's culture and while on the surface he takes charge of the medical situation effectively and in ways allowing for a bit of decent humor as well which too was a nice relief from the overabundance of fistfights and tribal ritualistic nonsense the episode seemed to focus on to excess. Overall though this episode is quite a disappointment.

Review

This is an exciting episode right from the beginning. Very short into the episode there is fear of a catastrophic design flaw which is milked for all its worth. Then we get an even bigger implication: Iconian technology is destroying the ship accidentally and at the same time must be kept away from the Romulans to keep them from getting a major tactical advantage. Despite heavy politics and heavy tension, the episode bears great archaeological and cultural tidbits. The revelation that the Iconians might not be conquerors and that they were slaughtered by those fearful of them is fascinating. The discussion about it between Picard, Data, and Worf is apt and interesting. This episode very easily could have scored a 10. I take one point off for no follow up and one point off for the "destroy it all now!" attitude. I understand why Picard made that decision, but that Iconian gateway is a wonderful bit of technology that could have been studied in great detail. Picard just blows it up over political fear. Seems reckless. Nevertheless, a wonderful episode.