WiC Watches—Star Trek: Discovery season 2
Episode 203: “Point of Light”
“Point of Light” reintroduces some familiar faces from season 1 on a detour from the Discovery’s mission to investigate the mysterious red signals spread out across the stars. Unlike the last two episodes, “Point of Light” did not include a jaw-dropping big budget CGI scene. It did, however, sport plenty of great dialogue between characters, as well as some much-needed world-building and backstory that will surely come into play later.
We open with Saru preparing Tilly and several other Starfleet officers for the Command Training Program. Tilly’s having a rough go at it because her dead friend from junior high won’t leave her alone. It’s gotten so bad she’s now talking to the figment of her imagination out loud.
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The next step in the Command Training Program is to shadow a senior officer. Tilly gets paired with Captain Pike, and it’s even worse than it sounds. Ghost-friend doesn’t like Captain Pike, doesn’t believe he is even the captain, and starts yelling at Tilly about it. Unable to take it anymore, Tilly starts yelling back in front of everyone on the bridge. Saru steps in and orders her to sickbay, where they discover that Tilly was infected by some kind of gross space fungus that interacted with the ship’s spore drive. Using memories of Tilly’s childhood, it took on the visage of her dead friend. Mystery solved…
…except, now that they know the source of the problem, Saru uses the same gadget Tilly used to get a sample of the dark matter asteroid and sucks out a disgusting, floating, pulsating blob. He captures it. Crisis averted, for now, probably.
While all this is happening, a ship comes out of warp and into hailing distance of the Discovery. It’s a Vulcan ship that Burnham identifies as belonging to her adoptive father, Sarek. The ship requests permission to beam one of its crew members aboard, and both Pike and Burnham believe it’s going to be Sarek. Instead, it turns out to be Amanda Grayson, Sarek’s wife, Spock’s mother, and Burnham’s adoptive mother.
Amanda has just come from the planet where Spock was supposedly being held at a psychiatric hospital, but she was denied access to her son and his medical records…so she did what any human parent would do in that situation: she stole them.
Hoping Captain Pike would be able to help, Burnham and Amanda give him the encrypted files only to find out that Spock escaped the hospital and murdered a bunch of people on his way out. This is, as Spock himself would say, illogical. Pike agrees to help search for Spock, and Amanda confirms that her son saw the red angels in his nightmares as a child.
Meanwhile, on the Klingon homeworld of Kronos, Chancellor L’Rel is having trouble convincing the High Council that with her in charge, their race will be able to return to the glory days of power and prosperity. But she’s a woman, and therefore the very definition of weak. Plus, she’s got a “human pet” she keeps by her side at all times in Ash Tyler/Voq.
Let’s go back to the midway point of season 1 for a second, where it was revealed that L’Rel experimented with Tyler in order to see if she could put Voq’s mind and soul into his body, creating a fully-formed half-human/half-Klingon that she planned to use as a sleeper agent embedded in Starfleet command. However, Burnham figured it all out, and because she had feelings for Ash Tyler, allowed him to escape at the end of the season.
There, all caught up now. Trying to explain that Ash is actually Voq to a room full of angry old dudes isn’t going well, so L’Rel takes Ash/Voq to a secret temple where a half-human/half-Klingon infant is lying in a cradle.
L’Rel explains that Ash/Voq is the father, which makes him very happy, and that the child was conceived during the experiment that created him. But then those angry old Klingons show up and threaten to kill the child if L’Rel doesn’t step down, spoiling the mood. She does, but these guys are Klingons, and when have they ever honored a deal? And just as it seems as if L’Rel, Ash/Voq and the baby are about to be killed, a mysterious figure appears and saves the day by vaporizing the bad guys. When she pulls back her hood, it’s revealed that former Emperor Philippa Georgiou is now working for a black-ops division of Starfleet called Section 31.
These guys are badass-looking and even have their own obsidian Starfleet badges that set them apart from the rest of the Federation. Anyway, Georgiou agrees to back L’Rel in her bid for control of Kronos and the Klingon people, and to take her and Voq’s child to a secret monastery where it will be guarded day and night. The price? Ash/Voq has to join Section 31. He does.
I really enjoyed “Point of Light.” It proved that Discovery could thrive apart from the bright and shiny CGI moments. The backstories and world-building were rich and nourishing. Only three episodes in, and I am in love with Star Trek: Discovery season 2.
