WiC Watches—Star Trek: Discovery season 2
Episode 209: “Project Daedalus”
“Project Daedalus” starts to bring several storylines from season together, as Burnham continues to try and get her brother Spock to open up to her, and in doing so, she hopes to find the reason the Red Angel visited Spock and showed him the end of all life in the galaxy. We also find out who…or actually what hacked Airiam, while the Discovery visits the headquarters for Section 31.
It would be easy to call this episode Airiam’s farewell tour, but the family drama between Spock and Burnham steals some of the spotlight. The siblings can’t seem to get along, and in typical Vulcan fashion, keep all that repressed anger and resentment towards each other tamped down until one of the explodes.
This time, it’s Spock who loses his cool, as Burnham gets him to play chess, hoping the game will jog a memory or reset his logic. Only, Spock is half-human, and Burnham is a full-blooded human raised on Vulcan by Spock’s Vulcan father, Sarek. So, as you can see, when either one gets mad, their human emotions kick in and shit hits the fan. In this instance, Spock knocks over the chess board when Burnham’s questions start to hit a little to close to home. And, taking it a step further, he makes her relive her parent’s death.
I’ve said this before, but Ethan Peck as Spock really steals every scene he’s in. While Sonequa Martin-Green (Burnham) is a powerhouse actress in her own right, Peck commands the focus of every interaction he has with her…and that’s saying something, folks. He’s doing something different in his performance as Spock, while still somehow paying respect to Leonard Nimoy’s original portrayal of the much-beloved character.
Okay, enough about that, let’s get into Airiam’s story. Last week I theorized that she had been hacked by Section 31 in order to keep tabs on the Discovery, but I was only half right. Apparently, Section 31’s supercomputer is called Control, and it has been gathering any and all data it can in order to become sentient. Basically, Control is Skynet.
Anyway, a few episodes ago, the Discovery found itself in contact with a huge red planet-like orb that was thousands of years old but was dying. All it wanted to do before it died, was to upload all of its memories into Discovery’s memory banks, and when it did, a Section 31 ship was in the same area, which is how Control found out the red orb had thousands of years of data on artificial intelligence.
Since Airiam was a cybernetically enhanced human, Control was able to upload a virus into her CPU and effectively hack her system to make her do her bidding. So, each time Airiam’s eyes blinked red, that was Control taking over and making her sabotage different parts of the ship. It’s why the Discovery couldn’t use the spore drive last week, and it was why Section 31 was able to track the Discovery to Talos IV.
Episode 209 did shed some light into Airiam’s past, which was nice. Before she became an almost fully cybernetically enhanced human, she was a woman with no enhancements at all, enjoying her honeymoon with her husband. Tragically, the shuttle the newlyweds used crashed and Airiam’s husband was killed, and she was only saved by the full-body cybernetics that was attached to her. And now you’re all caught up.
So, something at Starfleet smells fishy to Captain Pike, and when Admiral Cornwell shows up unannounced in a shuttle, it confirms his suspicions that Section 31 is actively meddling in the Discovery’s mission, but for what reason he didn’t know. Also, Admiral Cornwell reveals that the reason Captain Pike and the crew of the Enterprise was kept out of the Klingon war, was basically a contingency plan: if Starfleet lost the war, they wanted the best and brightest Captain to be as far away as possible, so that he could continue to carry on Starfleet’s mission.
With that touching moment out of the way, Cornwell tells Pike the secret location of Section 31’s headquarters and says they need to go there and arrest one the Admirals in charge because she’s a Vulcan terrorist who is likely the one who framed Spock for the murders of the Starfleet medical staff.
When the Discovery jumps out of warp near the Section 31 HQ, Cornwell tells them the space around the base is surrounded by mines that are attracted to ships with shields engaged. So, she maps a course through the minefield, tells Pike to drop the shields, and away they go…
…only, Airiam is under the control of Control, and every time Pike calls for evasive maneuvers, she counteracts that by sending the crazy buzzsaw mines that slice through ship hulls like swiss cheese, directly at the Discovery. The only reason they make it close enough to beam into the base is that Airiam has been fighting Control…for control of her own body, and she periodically wakes up and tries to correct the damage Control has done.
Airiam, Burnham, and security chief Nhan beam aboard Section 31’s base and find the power has been out for a while. Burnham sends Nhan to go and try to turn it back on so the gravity stabilizers will kick in, and then she and Airiam begin investigating.
The pair enter a room with floating bodies above them, just as Nhan gets the power back on. When the bodies hit the floor, Burnham realizes they are all the Starfleet Admirals who have been leading the charge to arrest both her and Spock for treason. Uh oh, something’s wrong.
Back on Discovery, Tilly figures out Airiam has been hacked by Control, and it was the supercomputer that has been using holograms of the dead Admirals to run half of Starfleet as well as all of Section 31. Pike sends a warning to Burnham and Nhan, but it’s too late, as Airiam knows she’s been found out and instantly goes on the attack.
As you can imagine, neither Burnham or Nhan have much luck punching a person with a metal, cybernetically enhanced body, but Burnham does figure out a way to trap Airiam in an airlock so she can have some to figure out how to get Control out of her brain’s CPU.
And this is where the pieces start to fall into place. Last week, Spock shared a memory of the Red Angel showing him how all life ends in the universe: by ships firing planet killing weapons at planets throughout the galaxy. Airiam regains control long enough…from Control, and confirms to Burnham that the future Spock saw is exactly what Control’s plans were — total annihilation of all life.
The Red Angel didn’t even make an appearance in this episode, and still, they had a huge impact on events. I can’t wait to find out who they are.
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Anyway, Airiam tells Burnham the only way to stop Control from killing her and downloading all the Red Orb’s information, is to open the airlock, which would suck her out into space where she would die. Burnham can’t do it because they are friends, and she frantically tries other methods before Nhan pulls the lever for her.
Before that happens, however, Airiam tells Burnham that everything has been about her, which is confusing a bit, because up until now, we thought it was all about Spock. Then she tells her to look for Project Daedalus. The airlock gets opened, and the last memory Airiam has before dying, is of her and her husband walking on a beach on their honeymoon.
I can’t say this enough, but Star Trek: Discovery just keeps getting better and better with each amazing episode. The writing is superb, and the acting is unequaled by most of what passes for television shows today. I will admit, this show has surprised me at every turn, and it leaves me wanting more at the end of each episode.