WiC Watches—Star Trek: Discovery season 2
Episode 207: “Light and Shadows”
The crew of the Discovery deals with time travel as it must rescue Captain Pike and Ash Tyler from a time anomaly the pair pilots a shuttle into in hopes of uncovering clues to what the red signals are, while Burnham returns home to Vulcan in order to search for her brother Spock, and what she finds there isn’t what she expected. This was an interesting episode of Star Trek: Discovery, filled with fast-paced action and potentially huge reveals, all the while trying to deal with the mysteries of time travel…which is always fun.
“Light and Shadows” picks up where last week’s episode left off. The Discovery is hanging out above Saru’s home planet of Kaminar, investigating a time anomaly that is emitting tachyon radiation left behind from when the Red Angel swooped in and rescued the Kelpiens from genocide at the hands of the Ba’ul. Captain Pike obviously would like his favorite crew member Michael Burnham on hand to help him figure the situation out, but she convinces him to let her take a shuttle and go to Vulcan to look for clues to Spock’s whereabouts, instead.
So, leaving Saru in charge, Pike and Ash Tyler (the section 31 liaison) board their own shuttle and head into the anomaly. Pike is sure there are answers to be had inside, and he’s hoping this will lead the Discovery one step closer to solving the mystery of the red signals and the seemingly omnipotent Red Angel.
Of course, once the shuttle makes its way into the anomaly itself, the Discovery loses track of it, leaving Pike and Tyler stranded and needing to find a way to get out before the tachyon radiation kills them. Pike deploys a probe from the shuttle to hopefully get more readings as to what they’re dealing with, and it abruptly disappears. Welp, so much for everything going smoothly for once.
Anyway, Pike starts seeing time echos, or images from the past or future. It’s unclear to him what he’s seeing — because Tyler doesn’t notice anything unusual at all — but the echo shows him firing a phaser at Tyler. Also, he wants to burn the shuttle’s plasma-fuel, hoping that will send up a flare-like signal the Discovery can lock onto, so they can be rescued. There’s just one problem, Tyler reminds him, if they do that, they will be stranded for good, and if the Discovery doesn’t get the signal, they’ll die.
Pike, being the captain and all, overrides Tyler’s concerns and burns the fuel. And, as soon as he does, the probe they sent out returns with some…modifications. Apparently, the probe traveled 500 years into the future, got some major upgrades, and became hostile. It attaches itself to the shuttle like some kind of space-kraken, and begins using robotic tentacles to breach the shuttle’s hull.
One tentacle reaches in and grabs Tyler, choking the life from him, which forced Pike to take a carefully aimed phaser shot to free him. This is the echo Pike saw earlier, and he knows what to do. The shot hits the mark and the tentacle is severed, only, somehow its claw detaches itself and burrows into the shuttle’s onboard computer, downloading massive amounts of Starfleet data. This mission has really gone off the rails, you guys.
However, not all is lost, as the Discovery did see the plasma-fuel burn and was able to lock onto the shuttle and pull it out of the time anomaly. Before Pike and Tyler are beamed aboard the ship, Lieutenant Commander Airiam (a cyborg-like humanoid) notices the tentacle claw is downloading data and tries to remotely stop it, but in doing so, opened herself up to a virus that looked an awful lot like a red signal.
On Vulcan, Burnham returns home and talks to her mother Amanda, hoping to find something that will help her locate Spock. She isn’t the only one doing her all to find her brother, as Amanda reveals that her father Sarek has gone into a deep Vulcan meditative state to try and force a psychic link to Spock. Well, that’s one way to do it.
Burnham knows Amanda isn’t telling her the whole truth, when she asks her if she had any contact with Spock recently, and realizes her brother is actually on Vulcan, hiding in a cave, ranting and raving like a lunatic.
Burnham wants to take Spock to Section 31, which is what Pike ordered her to do, if she found him, but Amanda isn’t having it. She knows Section 31 is shady and not to be trusted, but when Sarek shows up at the cave (because he smartly followed them), he overrules Amanda’s wishes. But, before Burnham leaves with her brother, Amanda reveals that Spock had a learning disability when he was a child.
In fact, according to Amanda, Spock had dyslexia as a child, which was considered a weakness by the other Vulcans, which made him an outcast at the school he attended. While Amanda is revealing this huge character twist that no one saw coming (well, at least I didn’t know Spock had a learning disability), he keeps repeating a number over and over.
Later, as Burnham is taking her brother to Section 31, she realizes the numbers he’s reciting repeatedly, are backward, and she tells the computer to look them up. After a quick search, it turns out the numbers are coordinates to a planet called Talos IV.
Once she reaches Section 31 with her brother, Georgiou tells her not to trust Leland (the guy in charge of the Section 31 mission) and helps Burnham escape with Spock, as she heads for answers she hopes is on Talos IV. Before the episode ends, Leland tells Georgiou he knows she allowed Burnham to escape, to which she replies: “I know you killed Burnham’s parents.” Wow, that was a massive reveal. I can’t imagine what Burnham will do if she finds out what Leland did. For now, it’s just another great twist that will most likely have huge ramifications down the line, before season 2 ends.
Before we wrap this recap up, last week, I theorized the Red Angel could be Spock. However, as one of our readers pointed out, the angel has a woman’s shape. So, this week I did some comparisons to the angel’s shape, as well as Burnham’s, and I’m now convinced the Red Angel is a future version of Michael Burnham, somehow time traveling and fixing mistakes made in her past. Here’s some photo evidence.
This was a good episode of Star Trek: Discovery. It looks like things are really hurtling toward an explosive reveal of some sort before the season’s end. Good thing we have plenty more episodes to get through before that happens, however, because I am really enjoying the storytelling.