Star Trek: Discovery is back for a second season on CBS All Access. We continue the story of the U.S.S. Discovery, a ship with the ability to travel across the galaxy in the blink of an eye using an experimental spore drive.
Season 1 focused on a brutal war between the Klingon Empire and the United Federation of Planets, ending with an armistice. Before season’s end, the captain of the Discovery was revealed to be from an alternate universe ruled by an evil Empress who had designs on ruling other dimensions until the Discovery’s crew stopped her.
Just about every cast member from season 1 returns for season 2. Here’s the full cast list, old-timers and newcomers alike:
- Sonequa Martin-Green as Michael Burnham, Spock’s half-sister
- James Frain as Sarek
- Doug Jones as Saru
- Anthony Rapp as Paul Stamets
- Mary Wiseman as Sylvia Tilly
- Wilson Cruz as Hugh Culber
- Shazad Latif as Voq / Ash Tyler
- Michelle Yeoh as Philippa Georgiou/evil Empress
- Anson Mount as Christopher Pike
- Ethan Peck as Spock
- Rebecca Romijn as Number One
- Tig Notaro as Jet Reno
Season 2 has 14 episodes, and will focus on Captain Pike taking command of the Discovery as he and his crew search the galaxy for strange red glowing markers that have appeared out of nowhere. When seen up close, the red glowing orbs take on the form of a red angel. We’ll be reviewing every one of them week by week right here at WiC! Let’s get to it:
Episode 201: “Brother”
The season 2 premiere picks up right where season 1 left off, as the Discovery is receiving a distress call from the U.S.S. Enterprise while en route to the planet Vulcan to pick up its new captain. Knowing that her adoptive brother, Spock, is on the Enterprise, Michael Burnham is worried and anxious since they haven’t talked in a long while.
When they reach the ship, they find out the Enterprise has been severely damaged during a five-year mission to investigate seven mysterious red signals, meaning it missed the entire war with the Klingons. It’s clear that whatever these red orbs/signals are, the Federation wants them investigated quietly.
Anyway, Pike and two members of his crew beam aboard the Discovery, but Spock isn’t with them. When Burnham asks about her brother, Pike tells her to keep her expectations in check. Later, he reveals that Spock isn’t even on board the Enterprise. He’s taken extended leave and no one seems to know where he is.
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Pike quickly settles in and tells the crew that he is under orders from Starfleet Command to commandeer the Discovery to continue the Enterprise’s very important mission to investigate the seven signals. It’s at this point we get our first taste of how good season 2 is going to be. Pike and Burnham have instant chemistry; their back-and-forth crackles. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear Mount and Martin-Green had been acting together on the show for many years.
Pike gives the order to hit warp speed and head for the first of the seven signals, and as I wonder to myself (out loud) why they aren’t using the spore drive, lead science officer Paul Stamets (Anthony Rapp) gives me my answer. He’s watching a video of his recently deceased boyfriend, Hugh Culber (Wilson Cruz). Stamets is grieving and has decided to leave the Discovery when it reaches Vulcan, meaning the spore drive is offline, for the immediate future.
But don’t worry: according to SyFy Wire, Cruz has been promoted to series regular for season 2, so Culber should be coming back…although it may be an alternate universe version. Or maybe we just see new home videos of him every episode, although I doubt it.
Okay, back to the show, and to what I consider the best scene in any of the many Star Trek shows and half the films out there today: Once the Discovery reaches the source of the first signal, it comes out of warp in the middle of an asteroid field, but Burnham does some long-range scans and finds out there is a crashed Federation medical frigate on the surface of the largest asteroid.
Because of the interference, a rescue crew consisting of Burnham, Pike and two of Pike’s officers — a female officer wearing a red shirt, so you know she’s f*cked, and a male officer wearing a blue shirt, so he’s going to okay — have to take high-speed landing pods from Discovery to the surface of the asteroid while avoiding smaller pieces of giant space rock.
The scene seems like it was cut straight out of a big-budget J.J. Abrams Star Wars or Star Trek film. It’s an intense, heart-pounding chase that comes at a high cost, as the blue shirt guy gets smashed. A win for red shirts everywhere!
On the surface, the team finds the remains of the medical frigate, as well as an engineer named Jet Reno (comedian Tig Notaro) who has rigged up a triage unit where she’s kept several members of the ship alive for several months using her engineering skills and because she “can read” a medical book. Jet Reno might just be my favorite new character.
Pike, red shirt, and Burnham are able to rig up a way for the Discovery to beam the patients and everyone else aboard, but at the last minute something goes wrong and Burnham jumps off the platform. She gets left behind.
She quickly sends a communication to Discovery so the ship can get a lock on her location and begins running away from the crash site as fast as she can, as the asteroid it’s on is about to be sucked into a pulsar. But as she makes her way clear, a beam falls on her and she passes out. When she awakes, she has a vision of a red angelic-like figure before Pike beams back down to rescue her.
Finally, at the end of the episode, Burnham boards the Enterprise to investigate Spock’s living quarters, and realizes he’d been having nightmares of the seven signals, calling them red angels, and that he took leave to go search for them, alone.
“Brother” surpassed my expectations for the sophomore season premiere of a streaming service show. The chemistry between the actors was better than ever, the action was intense and exciting, and you could tell CBS threw some money at it. Let’s hope this keeps up.
Grade: A+
Episode 202: “New Eden”
“New Eden” features yet another visually stunning moment that lets you know CBS is pouring money into this show. Each episode feels like a mini-movie.
“New Eden” opens with Captain Pike and Michael Burnham listening to Spock’s voice recording about the red signals the Enterprise was sent to investigate. As it turns out, Spock has been having the same nightmares about a red angel since he was a child, and he drew a star map showing where each one could be found, using a red dot to indicate their locations.
He did this long before the Enterprise received its directive from Starfleet, meaning these red angles are connected to him in some mysterious way. Pike pulls up the Starfleet map of the seven red signals, and it matches perfectly with Spock’s drawings.
When Burnham suggests they find Spock, Pike reveals that he is in a mental hospital. Apparently, the seven signals and his need to find their source and invhas driven him a little insane.
Side note: Ethan Peck’s voice has the same perfectly smooth and baritone pitch Leonard Nimoy had in the original Star Trek series, and as a long-time fan of the franchise (don’t call me a Trekkie), I can appreciate that.
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Meanwhile, Tilly is trying to take a sample of the asteroid sitting in Discovery’s loading bay. She’s trying to find a sustainable source for the ship’s spore drive so Stamets will no longer have to interface with the drive using his own body. The last time he did that, he saw his dead boyfriend Dr. Culber, so he’s not eager for a repeat. It seems as if there is a way to bring Culber back using the spore drive, but they can’t quite connect the dots. Also, Tilly is seeing a stranger that no one else can see. She figures out it’s an old friend from her high school days, someone who’s been dead for a while. Something weird is clearly happening with the spore drive, you guys.
Speaking of Tilly, it’s refreshing to see a lead character that doesn’t fit Hollywood’s standard hero mold. Actor Mary Wiseman is vibrant and fun, and puts her personality into the character. Her hair is red and super-frizzy, her body slightly on the bigger side, and she’s neurotic about everything…and I am so into it. Without Tilly, Star Trek: Discovery wouldn’t be as fun to watch.
Back to the show: Saru calls Pike and Burnham to the bridge and tells them the ship is picking up a distress call that lines up with one of the seven signals. Using the spore drive, the Discovery jumps to the source and finds a planet on the verge of an extinction event; an asteroid field is heading directly for the planet’s surface.
Burnham finds out there are humans living in settlements all over the planet. They don’t have power. After further inspection, the crew finds out that the humans have been there for 200 years, meaning they settled the planet before the invention of the warp drive, making it impossible for them to be there. Pike, Burnham and crew member Joann Owosekun (Oyin Oladejo) go the planet’s surface to investigate.
Pike reminds Burnham and Owosekun they have to stay under cover and keep their advanced technology hidden, as the settlement doesn’t know about Starfleet. They cannot break the Federation’s General Order 1: “No starship may interfere with the normal development of any alien life or society.”
The team finds a church and discovers that it is from Earth, somehow. The people here combined several religions to create their own faith. Just as Pike is starting to learn how the people got to the planet, a local scientists pegs them as outsiders. They are taken to the leader of the settlement, who tells the story of Earth’s World War III and how a diverse group of people took shelter in the church as nuclear bombs began to fall. Just as it seemed they would be destroyed, a red angel appeared and transported the church to the planet they currently inhabit.
It’s now becoming clear that the seven signals and the red angels are connected, and they are meant to be calls for help. In the premiere, the first signal drew the Discovery to an asteroid where a medical ship had crashed. And this second signal called the ship to save the planet from a cataclysmic event.
Here’s where it gets fun: In order to stop the asteroids from colliding with the planet, the Discovery makes a doughnut maneuver and ejects the asteroid in its loading bay, pulling the falling asteroids away. The CGI is stunning. I say again, this is like watching a big-budget movie.
In the end, Pike reveals himself to the scientist and tells him he was right: the Earth survived World War III and is now part of an intergalactic federation of planets. He gives the scientist a renewable battery that will provide power for the settlement in exchange for a broken helmet camera from one of the soldiers who was in the church when it was transported.
Once on board the Discovery, Pike and Burnham repair the camera and see that just before the church was transported, an angel appeared, glowing red. Whatever these creatures are, it’s clear they aren’t human and have unknown powers they seem to be using for good. Two signals down, five to go.
“New Eden” was another brilliant episode of Star Trek: Discovery. The leads are fun and the effects are absolutely stunning. I can’t wait to see how the rest of the season unfolds.
Grade: A
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.
Grade: A
Episode 204: “An Obol For Charon”
Star Trek: Discovery takes a trip down memory lane with “An Obol For Charon.” A character from the original 1965 pilot episode “The Cage,” Number One, makes an appearance. Played by Rebecca Romijn, Number One gives Captain Pike some valuable intel on Spock’s location and the mysterious events surrounding his disappearance from Starbase 5.
The episode basically takes place in two rooms on the Discovery. We get some new info about the Red Angels and Red Signals, but “An Obol For Charon” is mostly an episode about the big questions: life, death, and Tig Notaro being hialirous.
First things first: The Discovery is hot on the warp trail of Spock’s shuttle and is violently jerked out of warp speed by a huge pulsating red orb of light. At first, the crew believes it to be a star or some type of meteor, but upon further investigation, Burnham and Saru realize it’s a sentient being over 100,000 years old, and on the verge of death.
Saru starts to get sick and reveals that this is how his species, the Kelpiens, begin to die. His body is shutting down and his eyes extremely sensitive to ultraviolet lights. Meanwhile, the red light orb is pulling the ship into its orbit. Pike is on the verge of firing torpedoes when Saru has a breakthrough; the orb isn’t trying to hurt the Discovery, it’s trying to impart its millennia of wisdom and experiences to another living being so it won’t die alone.
Burnham and Saru convince Pike to drop the shields and allow the orb to upload all of its memories into the ship’s databanks before it explodes. It’s final gift is a protective shield that allows the Discovery to remain unharmed during that catastrophic event.
In Engineering, Stamets and Tilly are just hanging out when Jet Reno (Tig Notaro) shows up to help them with a power outage caused by the red orb. While she’s there, Reno throws some hilarious zingers at the pair, calling them science nerds and threatening to duct tape their various holes shut and generally being a smartass.
Seriously though, bringing Tig Notaro on board for season 2 was the best decision the showrunners have made since having Rainn Wilson play Harry Mudd in season 1. These comedic moments in an otherwise serious episode help set Discovery apart from other Star Trek shows.
Anyway, due to the power outage, the gross-ass blob thing that inhabited Tilly last week and made her hallucinate her dead friend May is released from its cage (another callback to the 1965 pilot) It reattaches itself to Tilly. Reno freaks out and wants to use a laser torch to cut it off, but Stamets doesn’t want to harm it because it’s clearly a sentient being. They try different approaches and Reno makes more duct tape jokes.
Eventually, Stamets and Reno rig up a link to talk to the blob, who tells them they’ve been wrecking its home by using the spore drive. Stamets promises never to use it again, but the blob is angry and swallows Tilly whole. Yeah, it’s pretty much my worst nightmare. And that’s the last we see of Tilly, Stamets, and Reno’s duct tape in this episode.
Now for the big finish: after Saru and Burnham solve the red orb problem, he asks her to take him back to his room so he can die in peace. As she helps him walk off the Bridge, every member of the crew stands and salutes him as a sign of respect. Uh oh, I’m starting to get something in my eye.
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Once in his room, Saru explains how he’s pretty much the only Kelpien in Starfleet, and that his people have always been harvested as food for a much stronger race on his home planet. Burnham tells him he’s her only real family, and that she loves him, and now I’m straight up ugly crying. Saru asks her to use a ritualistic knife and sever his ganglia so he can die painlessly, but when she touches the knife to his head to perform the operation, the ganglia fall off by themselves.
Saru and Burnham are crying, I’m crying because I have no idea what’s going on, and now my wife is crying because she doesn’t understand why I’m crying. WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO ME, STAR TREK?
Apparently, Saru’s ganglia falling off is something new for his people, and he’s now regaining his strength. In fact, he’s got more power than ever before. For now, all is well aboard the Discovery…except that Tilly is encased in a giant blob. Check back next week.
This was a surprisingly great, character-driven episode of Star Trek: Discovery. This season just keeps getting better, and we haven’t even met Spock.
Grade: A+
Episode 205: “Saints of Imperfection”
Captain Georgiou and the mysterious Section 31 make an appearance in “Saints of Imperfection” while the crew of the Discovery risks all to save Tilly from the mycelial network. This was an exciting episode of Star Trek: Discovery, filled with emotional moments, heart-pounding action, and the return of some familiar faces.
“Saints of Imperfection” opens with Burnham racing to engineering, where Stamets is studying the mycelial cocoon that May placed Tilly in at the end of the last episode. The cocoon is empty, and Stamets believes Tilly has been transported by an alien posing as May into the mycelial network, a kind of doorway to an alternate dimension the Discovery jumps through whenever it engages its spore drive. Burnham concurs, because obviously that’s what’s happening, and they hatch a plan to bring Tilly home.
Speaking of alternate dimensions, the Discovery is still hot on the trail of Spock’s shuttle. After some nifty maneuvering, they use the tractor beam to bring it on board the loading bay. Captain Pike and Burnham, assisted by a security team, approach the shuttle as its door opens, but instead of Spock inside, it’s Phillipa Georgiou, the former evil Empress of the Terran Empire who crossed dimensions when the Discovery returned home at the end of last season.
You see, Empress Georgiou was recruited by Starfleet to join the black ops division called Section 31 because she looks just like the real Captain Georgiou who died at the start of the Klingon war. (It’s a lot of complications, I know.) The members of Section 31 wear all-black uniforms and rock shiny black Starfleet badges; they even have a ship that can camouflage itself as an asteroid. Damn, these guys are cool. Anyway, Section 31 has also been searching for Spock, and he’d already abandoned his shuttle by the time Georgiou found it.
Pike can tell something is off between Burnham and Georgiou. He asks Burnham for answers, and she asks him to trust her and promises to reveal everything when the time is right.
We also find out that Ash Tyler is now part of Section 31. He boards the Discovery to act as a liaison so Georgiou can get back to her ship and continue the search for Spock. You may remember that Tyler was the Chief of Security for the Discovery before it was revealed he had been scientifically modified with Klingon DNA to infiltrate the Federation. I don’t know why they all of the sudden trust him enough to recruit him for a top secret spy division of Starfleet, but they did, so…good for him?
Back to the reason we’re here: the mission to rescue Tilly. As it turns out, May is actually a tiny parasitic-like alien who can live inside the brains of other beings. She reveals that she brought Tilly to the mycelial network because there’s a “monster” destroying her home that appeared when the Discovery began jumping through space and time using the spore drive. She tells Tilly she needs help killing it; then she’ll return her to her ship.
Meanwhile, Stamets and Burnham figure out they can do a half-jump into the mycelial network and look around for Tilly. The catch is that they only have one hour before the parasites living in the network begin eating through the hull of the ship.
They make the jump, begin their search and finally run into Tilly and May, who convinces them to join her monster hunt. When they reach the source of what May calls the monster, they find Dr. Culber. Seeing his dead boyfriend alive in the mycelial network kind of freaks Stamets out, and he starts thinking back to how Culber came to be there.
If you’re remember, in season 1, Ash Tyler killed Culber when his Klingon DNA kicked in. Apparently, when Tyler broke Culber’s neck, Stamets found his body and held him in his arms as he died. A tear ran down Culber’s face, and Stamets kissed it. After that, he connected to the spore drive and made a jump, and since Culber’s DNA was on Stamets during the jump, he was re-created in the mycelial network and had been living there ever since.
Tilly tells May that Dr. Culber isn’t a monster and they want to take him back with them to the Discovery, but since he was created solely in the mycelial network, he can’t return the normal way. Luckily, the cocoon May used to nab Tilly is still in engineering, and they use to bring Dr. Culber to the other side. Dr. Culber and Stamets are back together again, and they all lived happily ever after…
…except that Georgiou is still searching for Spock, and it’s not clear she’s going to go easy on him when she finds him.
This was yet another fantastic episode of Star Trek: Discovery. The storylines are meshing together nicely. My only concern is that we just finished Episode 205 and we’ve yet to have any interaction with Spock. Hopefully that will change very soon.
Grade: A
Episode 206: “The Sound of Thunder”
The Discovery makes its way to Saru’s homeworld of Kaminar to investigate the sudden appearance of the mysterious red signals above the planet. Once there, Saru faces his worst fear: losing his family to the planet’s other inhabitants, the Ba’ul. This was a simple but very interesting episode of Star Trek: Discovery centering mainly on Saru and Starfleet’s decision to interfere with the evolution of his species, the Kelpiens.
We open with Saru learning to cope with the fact that his fear ganglia have now been replaced with quills that fire at incoming threats. This is something completely new for the Kelpien, who has lived his entire life fearing literally everything. On his homeworld, his people live in a symbiotic relationship with a predator species called the Ba’ul, who cull the Kelpien population for food.
Now that his fear ganglia are gone, Saru wants to return home and free his people from the lie of the “Great Balance” the technologically advanced Ba’ul have told them. It’s odd that the red signal appears above his planet just as his body is evolving, but we’ll talk about that in a bit.
Once the Discovery comes out of warp above the planet Kaminar, the Ba’ul immediately scan them for weapons. The Ba’ul are extremely reclusive and have a deal with Starfleet to leave their “Great Balance” intact. Pike hails the Ba’ul but they don’t respond, so he sends Saru and Burnham to Saru’s home village to investigate.
Once there, Saru learns that his sister has taken on the mantle of priestess and that both his parents died in a culling that took place after he left his homeworld. It’s also revealed that Saru is the only Kelpien in Starfleet, and that Captain Georgiou was the one who helped him off-world when he rigged a communicator to send messages to the stars.
Each village has a massive pylon that allows the Ba’ul to monitor the Kelpiens, and it notices Burnham and Saru have interacted with the locals. To avoid trouble, Burnham and Saru beam back aboard the Discovery, although Saru doesn’t want to run.
Back on board, Pike calls them to the bridge where they see the Ba’ul have sent 10 warships to intercept the Discovery. The Ba’ul hail Pike and demand the return of Saru to the planet’s surface. Realizing he no longer fears them, and knowing the Ba’ul will kill everyone in his village if he doesn’t return, Saru beams back down to the planet where he and his sister are taken to the underwater city of the Ba’ul.
While there, they gather all the information they can on the Ba’ul and realize the Kelpiens used to be the dominate species on Kaminar, but the Ba’ul eventually learned to use technology to subdue and enslave the evolved Kelpiens.
One of the Ba’ul reveals itself to Saru, who has never seen one. The Ba’ul looks like it’s covered in a black oily substance, with hair over its face. It’s tall and thin and has long taloned fingers. It really is the stuff of nightmares. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a scarier looking alien on any Star Trek series or movie.
Saru learns he has the strength to break free from the constraints the Ba’ul put him in. He contacts the Discovery crew, who realize they can cause all the Kelpiens on the planet to go through the same evolution Saru did by blasting a select frequency into the Ba’ul technology Saru hacks while trying to contact his shipmates.
The Ba’ul realize what’s happening and their city emerges from under the water to power up every pylon in every Kelpien village across the planet. They plan on wiping out the Kelpien race. Just as the lasers are warming up, the Red Angel appears in front of Saru and somehow disables the Ba’ul weapons before they can attack. Saru uses his enhanced eyesight and notices something odd about the angelic being.
Theory time: What Saru sees is actually a humanoid in what looks like a Starfleet spacesuit, and the red aura that surrounds it (giving it what looks like angelic wings) is actually some sort of energy that allows this being to travel through space and time. I believe the being we are seeing is somehow Spock using future technology to help right the wrongs of his past.
This entire season has been about the search for Spock, and how he’s gone temporarily insane as he searches for the Red Angel. What if he’s lost his marbles because he realizes the Red Angel is actually a future or alternate timeline version of himself, appearing at just the right time in the Discovery’s missions to help them rescue people, save entire planets from destruction, and help a member of the Discovery free his people from being subjugated by an evil species?
I don’t know if I’m right, but next week is looks like we’ll finally see Burnham return to Vulcan and somehow come face to face with her brother, Spock. I’m excited to see where this season takes us.
Grade: A
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.
Grade: B+
Episode 208: “If Memory Serves”
This episode of Star Trek: Discovery went super old school by connecting the show’s current timeline with the original unaired Star Trek pilot “The Cage” from 1965. In fact, “If Memory Serves” opened with a flashback highlight reel of “The Cage,” which, by the way, is the only episode in which Captain Christopher Pike was featured taking part in a mission. That original pilot was turned down by the network, and the next thing you know, we’ve got Captain Kirk sitting in the captain’s chair.
Anyway, episode 208 takes place three years after the events of “The Cage” happened. In that episode, Pike and Spock, along with some other officers came into contact with the mentally powerful Talosians of Talos IV. They responded to a distress call from an older ship, and as it turned out, the Talosians were attempting to repopulate their planet after a devastating war.
And that’s where we find Burnham and her brother Spock, fleeing Starfleet and Section 31, heading into an illusion of a wormhole, placed above Talos IV by its inhabitants, so their planet couldn’t be found and invaded. Burnham doesn’t want to fly the shuttle into the wormhole, but Spock knows it’s an illusion and forces the computer to head for it.
Once they arrive on the planet’s surface, Burnham takes a walkabout to check for life signs. There’s a cool moment where she finds blue flowers that make a humming sound, but stop and close when they’re touched. This is a direct callback to when Leonard Nimoy’s Spock did it in “The Cage,” and is one of the only times he has ever shown emotion; he smiled.
As she’s looking around, Burnham notices a human female board the shuttle, she creeps in behind her and tells her to back away from Spock. The female’s name is Vina and she says she not only knows Spock, but she also knows Captain Pike. This, of course, freaks Burnham out, but all of the sudden, Spock isn’t as docile as he was before, and Vina tells them the Talosians are awaiting their arrival beneath the planet’s surface.
It’s also clear that Vina knows Spock from multiple timelines, as she outright mentions Spock may remember her, but not that version of her. Okay Star Trek, we get it, you like messing with us by throwing all sorts of alternate universes and timelines at us, but we’re trying really hard to keep up, so cut us some slack, please. I mean, Ethan Peck is the third Spock in the Star Trek universe. Leonard Nimoy was the first, and Zachary Quinto was the second, so Vina could know any of them…or all three! My brain hurts. Okay, that’s out of the way now, so let’s try and keep up.
Anyway, the Talosians reveal that Spock’s mind is broken and he is dying, and the only way to fix him, is to give them a memory and then they will allow Burnham to see into his mind and find out what’s happening.
First off, Spock didn’t kill the doctors and security at the Starfleet mental facility. That much is made clear. What isn’t clear, however, is if someone from Section 31 (my money’s on not-Georgiou) killed them all and for some reason is placing the blame on Spock. We also learn that the Red Angel revealed itself to Spock when he was a boy, and told him where to find Burnham who had run away from home and was about to be killed by a creature in Vulcan’s forest.
Thanks to the Red Angel, Spock’s parents are able to chase the creature off and save her. Interesting; so if the Red Angel hadn’t intervened, then Burnham would have died as a young girl. I’m starting to really think the Red Angel is either Burnham — like I pointed out one of our readers theorized in the previous episode — or it is very closely connected to both Spock and Burnham.
Also, Spock shows a memory of the Red Angel visiting him and showing him the end of the universe…well, as he described it, the end of their timeline. See, there goes that timeline hopping stuff again. Anyway, Spock tries to mind-meld the Red Angel, revealing the person inside is wearing an exo-suit that allows for time and interdimensional travel, and also that the person behind the helmet is, in fact, human.
Later, Spock — who hasn’t been very nice to his adoptive sister — and Burnham, have a touching moment, where he sees a memory of the night she ran away from her perspective. She called him names and told him horrible things to make him stop following her. She was trying to leave because the Vulcan terrorists attacked their home, and she felt if she left, they would be safe. Until this memory share, Spock thought Burnham hated him for no real reason other than she was some sort of bully or racist.
And now for the other stuff…
Aboard the Discovery, Pike is having problems with Section 31 not being honest with him on why they are chasing Spock and now Burnham. He tries to talk to Captain Leland about it, but the Section 31 officer is being cagey. Then, Vina appears in Pike’s quarters and tells him his people are on Talos.
Pike doesn’t understand how the woman he fell in love with still looks as young as she did when they met, and better yet, just how in the f*ck she got on board his ship. Vina explains the Talosians are so mentally powerful that they can send illusions across vast distances of space, and that he needs to turn the Discovery around and come get Spock and Burnham.
Knowing Section 31 is tracking his ship through warp speed, Pike tries to throw them off before heading into the fake wormhole. They would have used the spore drive, but someone has tampered with it, so they gotta get to Talos the old fashioned way. As it turns out, the cyborg-looking officer, Airiam has been hacked by Section 31, and she’s the one who sabotaged the spore drive and has been giving coordinates to them as well.
Still, Tyler — as the Section 31 liaison — gets blamed and is relieved of command. Tyler isn’t having a very good day, because he also runs into Culber…who he killed last season when the Klingon DNA that was implanted in him was activated. Culber has a bad reaction and confronts Tyler in the lunchroom. They have a brief fight before realizing violence doesn’t solve anything, and it looks like Culber and Tyler might become friends. Poor Stamets; he can’t catch a break.
Back to the action at hand; Pike has to try and quickly beam Spock and Burnham on board the Discovery before Section 31 can beam them aboard their ship, but when he tries, he finds out both ships are attempting to beam them aboard, which would literally tear them apart. Pike gives in, hoping to fight another day.
Aboard the Section 31 ship, Leland and Georgiou are gloating a Spock and Burnham, when they realize they’ve been duped. Apparently, the Talosians used illusions of the pair to beam up to Section 31, while the real Spock and Burnham arrive on the docking bay of the Discovery.
Spock and Burnham are reunited with a very happy Pike, and the Discovery makes good its escape before Section 31 an catch up to them. Only…Airiam is still unwillingly acting as a Section 31 spy, which will cause problems next episode.
This was a fun callback to the original Star Trek and a touching episode in general. Spock and Burnham found a way back to each other and realized there was more than just one side to the story, and Culber faced the man who killed him, hopefully regaining part of the humanity he lost when he was reborn. Also, Ethan Peck plays a wonderful Spock. “You really think that beard is working for you?” Burnham with the hilarious zinger.
Grade: B
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.
Grade: A
Episode 410: “The Red Angel”
Burnham and Spock share a few tender brother-sister moments, Tyler and Burnham reignite their relationship, and Georgiou and Burnham put the past behind them. All this happens, and then Burnham dies. This was an emotional rollercoaster of an episode for Star Trek: Discovery, and it might just be the best one of the season.
“The Red Angel” opens with the crew of the Discovery saying goodbye to Airiam, who died last week. It was a heartwrenching moment as Airiam’s friends each said something touching about her before her casket was shot into space. It’s the opening moments and already I’ve got tears in my eyes. I should have known then, I should have known…
Later, in a meeting in Captain Pike’s quarters, Admiral Cornwell, Spock, and Burnham are discussing Airiam’s last words to Burnham: she said she needed to find Project Daedalus, which had everything to do with her. Just then, Tilly provides a bit of levity in an otherwise dark and serious episode by barging in and stammering through a bunch of facts about the automatic opening doors on the ship.
After she gets through her bit, she reveals that she found vital information in Airiam’s memory core while she was wiping it, checking for the virus that allowed Control to take over Section 31. According to the information, the Project Daedalus file in Airiam’s head had a biometric signature of the Red Angel in it, and it matches Burnham exactly.
Burnham is the Red Angel?
After several tests, it does appear as if a future version of Burnham gets her hands on a special suit with the ability to open wormholes in the very fabric of space and time and travel to certain points in her past to help where she’s needed. After much debate, Captain Leland of Section 31 reveals the suit the Red Angel uses was a prototype created by Section 31 that uses a time crystal stolen from the Klingon Empire which allows it to travel through time.
Burnham doesn’t believe Leland is telling the whole truth, so she confronts him when they’re alone and he reveals that he knew her parents. Apparently, Burnham’s parents were recruited by Section 31 to build the Red Angel suit, and when they died it was because Leland carelessly led the Klingons to the planet they were on.
Here’s where Sonequa Martin-Green really shines; we can see her anguish and grief slowly turn to resolve and rage on her face. Oh, and then she punches Leland in the face twice, once for her mother and once for her father. Martin-Green delivers these lines like a badass, drawing them out in a hoarse whisper. This really was a masterclass in acting, and I’m grateful I got to watch it.
Everyone decides the best thing to do is to capture the Red Angel. She revealed to Spock that the end of the universe was coming, and now that they know it’s a future version of Burnham, they need to trick her into showing up, trap her, then make her stop time traveling. If she doesn’t, then there’s a possibility that what remains of the Control artificial intelligence can track the Red Angel’s time jumps, piggyback through one, rebuild itself and threaten all life again. Man, time travel is tricky, you guys.
Anyway, the best way to trick and trap the Red Angel is to put Burnham in danger. The thought process behind this is, if current timeline Burnham dies, the future Burnham ceases to exist, so the Red Angel would be forced to show up if Burnham was somehow in peril and about to die. The plan is to go to a planet with an atmosphere that is toxic to humans and expose Burnham to the air. It’s a risky plan, but if it works, the team will be able to stop the impending apocalypse.
Burnham needs to let off steam, so she goes to the gym and kicks the crap out of a sparring dummy. Spock arrives to check on her and the two have a very nice brother-sister bonding moment. Finally, Spock and Burnham’s relationship has been healed. Later, Burnham and Tyler have a moment where he pleads with her not to die, they kiss, and all seems well.
On the planet’s surface, Georgiou and Burnham have a very nice moment where the former Terran Emperor and alternate reality Georgiou tells Burnham she doesn’t want her to die and that she will be there ready to save her if needed. I guess even an evil empress can take a turn for the good.
As Spock and Burnham walk to the chair where she’ll be strapped down and exposed to the toxic atmosphere, Burnham has a moment of weakness and asks Spock what would happen if the Red Angel didn’t show up and she died. “Then I’ll be charged with the murder of a Starfleet captain,” he replied. Aww, Spock is protective of his sister and now I’m all up in my feels about this.
The plan is put into motion. Burnham will only be able to withstand two minutes of the toxic atmosphere before she dies. The Red Angel should show up, and the magnetic arrays stationed around Burnham’s chair should trap her. Here we go…
Burnham starts to scream in pain, as the atmosphere is not only suffocating her but searing her face and lungs. Nearly two minutes in and Georgiou tells the team to stop and pull Burnham out, but Spock pulls a phaser on them and tells them all that it is Burnham’s wish to go all the way to death and back in she needs to, in order to get the Red Angel to appear. Burnham then takes her last breath and dies.
Just when all hope seems lost, a red wormhole opens up above the planet and the Red Angel appears to Burnham. She shoots her with a red laser and revives her. The away team sets the magnets in place and they trap the Red Angel. The magnets bring her down to the platform and she is drawn out of the suit. Burnham looks at the person in front of her with a look of shock on her face and utters one word: “Mom?”
Yep, the Red Angel is, in fact, Burnham’s long-thought-dead mother.
Side note: aboard the Section 31 ship, Tyler and Leland are trying to close the wormhole created by the Red Angel so Control can’t get through again. He runs to engineering to authorize more power, and when he does the retinal scan, he has to also give a voice command. For a split second, the ship’s computer goes offline, but when it comes back up, he gives the command and a voice repeats his words changing in tone to match his own. This shocks him, and just as he’s about to pull back, a needle shoots out of the retinal scanner and punctures his eye, killing him. It looks like Control is back.
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This was a phenomenal episode of Star Trek: Discovery. Sonequa Martin-Green really carried it, even though the other performances by her castmates were great, as well. The emotional highs and lows kept me riveted, and the reveal that the Red Angel is Burnham’s mother was a very nice twist that I did not see coming.
There are only four episodes left in season 2. Whatever happens, I’m very excited to see how it all shakes out.
Grade: A+
Episode 211: “Perpetual Infinity”
Burnham’s reunion with her long-thought-dead mother doesn’t go as planned, while Control — a Section 31 artificial intelligence that wants to destroy all life in the universe — has found the perfect human vessel to inhabit. This was another emotional roller coaster of an episode for Star Trek: Discovery.
Episode 211 picks up with Burnham waking up aboard the Discovery. Dr. Culber is giving her a full scan to make sure she’s got a clean bill of health. Momentarily disoriented, Burnham believes the fact that she saw her mother fall out of the Red Angel suit was a dream, but Captain Pike reassures her that she wasn’t dreaming and that her mother, Gabrielle (played by Sonja Sohn from The Wire) really is alive but unconscious on the planet below.
Burnham immediately wants to beam down to talk to her mother, but Dr. Culber informs her she has a bit more healing to do. Spock walks in with a datapad and reveals that as the Red Angel, Gabrielle Burnham has time jumped over 800 times. He hands the datapad — filled with all the mission logs Gabrielle kept — to Burnham, so she can sort through it to try and find a reason her mother has been traveling through space and time.
According to the mission logs, when the Klingons attacked Burnam’s mother and father — looking for the time crystal Captain Leland has Section 31 steal so it could power the Red Angel suit — Gabrielle thought she could travel back in time a day or so, so that she could warn her family of what was about to happen. Only when she came through the time jump, she realized she had jumped 950 years into the future, a future where all life in the universe had been wiped out.
Sidenote: Burnham’s father is played by Kenric Green, Sonequa Martin-Green’s husband, who was also part of The Walking Dead, where Martin-Green played Sasha. And now you know.
For some reason, that initial time jump tethered Gabrielle to a fixed point 950 years into the future, so no matter how many times she tried to travel back in time and stay there, she would always be pulled back to the future. At this point, if you want to take a break for some aspirin because the rules of time travel give you a headache, be my guest.
Anyway, aboard the Section 31 ship, we find that Leland was not killed by that needle Control used to puncture his eye last week; rather, Control kept him alive so he could inhabit his body and use him to further its plans to eradicate all life in the universe. Once again, shoutout to WiC reader Wyllis for nailing that one, because I for sure thought Leland was dead.
So, Control-Leland is very aggressive and wants to blow up the Red Angel suit and steal the data from that massive sphere that uploaded all its memory to Discovery earlier in the season. Apparently, Gabrielle put the sphere in the Discovery’s path so its valuable knowledge could be shared and Burnham and her crewmates could help find a way to sever the tether keeping Gabrielle stuck in the far future. Georgiou notices the difference in Leland’s demeanor, and you can tell she’s keeping her eye on him.
Gabrielle wants to talk to Captain Pike…and only Captain Pike. This upsets Burnham, who wants nothing more than to be reunited with her mother, but when she finally gets her chance, she learns why her mother is being distant: she had to cut emotional ties with her daughter long ago so she could focus on saving the universe. Everyone is a ghost to her, she says.
Meanwhile, Leland orders Georgiou to plant a remote memory core near the Red Angel suit, because Tyler tells him that Stamets, Burnham and Spock’s plan is to upload the Sphere’s data into the suit then send it 950 years into the future and set it to continually jump into perpetual infinity so that Control could never get the information it needs to commit genocide on…everything.
Discovery begins uploading the data, which is hijacked by Control’s remote memory core, which will then send all that pilfered data to the Section 31 ship and then detonate, killing Gabrielle and anyone else in range.
Georgiou finally figures out that Leland is Control. She opens a private line to Tyler and tells him to find Leland and stop him at all costs. She then disables the remote memory core (think thumb drive, only, much deadlier). Tyler finds Leland plugged into the computer system and draws his phaser so he can kill Control right then and there, but Leland has been enhanced, and he beats the hell out of Tyler before stabbing him in the gut.
Tyler gets an emergency message to the Discovery and utters one word before collapsing: “Leland.” Captain Pike immediately knows what’s going on. He alerts the away team on the planet below, but Control-Leland is already there and he’s killing everyone. Oh, and he also turned the remote memory core back on which allows Control to get about 50% of the Sphere’s data before Burnham and Georgiou help free Gabrielle from the containment platform, allowing the tether to snap her back to the future…
…only she doesn’t have her suit when she gets pulled back. The Red Angel suit gets snapped back to the future first. Burnham is worried she’ll never see her mother again, but my theory is that Gabrielle will either find the suit somehow, or she’ll have 950 years to build another one. Either way, I don’t believe we’ve seen the last of Gabrielle Burnham.
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Control takes its stolen data (only 50% of what it needed) and warps out of there. Pike wants the Discovery to give chase, but he’s informed that the Section 31 ship’s warp signature is masked and they can’t follow it. However, the crew does intercept a distress call from an escape pod; it’s Tyler and he’s in dire need of medical attention.
At this point into season 2, I feel like I’m repeating myself over and over, but this was another fantastic episode of Star Trek: Discovery. The action was intense, the acting superb, and the fact that Control has emerged as the big bad of season 2 a nice twist. Only three episodes are left until this season is over, and I’m looking forward to a big finish.
Grade: A
Episode 212: “Through the Valley of Shadows”
Episode 212 brought home the importance of rebuilding the Red Angel suit, and just how dangerous Control really is. Burnham and Spock track a missing Section 31 ship and fall into a trap, while Captain Pike beams down to a Klingon planet to harvest a time crystal. This was an exciting yet simple episode of Star Trek: Discovery; let’s dig in.
First, let’s talk about poor Commander Stamets and his broken heart. Every since Dr. Culber came back to life, the two have parted ways, and it’s clear from how Culber is going about his everyday life aboard the Discovery that he wants nothing to do with Stamets. The pain on Stamets face each time Culber passes by him without so much as a glance is genuinely heartbreaking.
Also, since Dr. Culber was resurrected from the Mycelial Network, the show has not made it clear whether he is still gay. There is mounting concern from fans that the show is going to change Culber’s sexuality now that he’s been reborn, but I can’t see that happening, not on a series that goes out of its way to show how all peoples — regardless of race (or species), sexual orientation, or religious preference — should be accepting of each other and work in harmony for universal peace.
In fact, those of you worried about Stamets and Culber’s relationship should take heart that Jet Reno (hilariously) gets involved in the couple’s fractured relationship, and it looks like there could be hope for team #Culmets yet. Yes, that’s my ship name for them; deal with it.
Anyway, “Through the Valley of Shadows” sees Captain Pike go to a revered Klingon planet where a sacred order of Klingon monks guards caves full of the extremely valuable time crystals. A red signal appears above the planet.
I theorize that Burnham’s mother has already repaired the Red Angel time suit and the red signals are messages from her guiding the ship to where it needs to go, all without jumping through a wormhole and allowing Control a free ride back to the future (hee) where it can eradicate all life in the universe.
Pike meets the head of the Klingon order of monks, who tells him he can harvest a crystal and keep it if he accepts the vision of what the crystal shows him as his true and unavoidable future. When Pike grabs the crystal, he sees an older version of himself on the bridge of a ship that is about to be destroyed. He’s trying to get his crew to evacuate, but the bridge explodes. He watches his crew die as he’s sucked into the safety zone.
Next, he sees a man with a melted face in an iron lung of sorts, mounted on a robotic wheelchair. Naturally, it’s his future self. In the original Star Trek series, Captian Pike was always in that apparatus. It seems that Discovery is telling us how it came to be.
Despite this horrifying vision, Pike takes the crystal anyway, accepting his fate as a trade-off for saving the entire universe from Control.
Meanwhile, Burnham and Spock take a shuttle and track down a Section 31 ship that has mysteriously gone offline. Once they come out of warp, they see that every crew member from that ship has been ejected into the vacuum of space. They detect one life sign and beam the barely living crewmember aboard the shuttle. Burnham realizes it’s Kamran Grant, her former crewmate from the U.S.S. Shenzhou, the ship she served on with the original Georgiou at the beginning of the Klingon war in season 1.
So to be clear, Spock and Burnham find the ship with all the crew members but Grant dead, and Grant just so happens to be someone from Burnham’s past? Yeah, I sniffed that trap out as soon as she hugged him. Anyway, Spock scans the ship and sees that Control has every section of it but one under its, um…control. The three board the ship and go to the bridge to see if they can restart the ship’s computer, thus trapping Control and hopefully stopping the threat right then and there.
Only Grant is actually a reanimated version of his original self. Control retrieved his body from space after it ejected the crew and injected the corpse with nanites that allows Control to use it. Man, I am getting major Borg vibes from this. Maybe Control is how the Borg where created?
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Anyway, Burnham and Spock realize they’ve been duped, and Control-Grant reveals he needed Burnham so he could assimilate (no, he didn’t actually use that Borg word, but you get the point) her into its system and use her as a trojan horse against the rest of Starfleet.
They’re able to destroy Control-Grant and magnetize the nanites to the floor of the ship, and then make their escape. Back on the Discovery, Pike tells the crew he has a time crystal and it’s about time they started rebuilding the Red Angel suit.
Burnham and Spock reveal that Control wants Burnham for its plan of universal domination. That seems like a good place to end the episode, but suddenly, 30+ Section 31 ships jump out of warp, surrounding the Discovery. They’re all under Control’s control (this is hard), and if they get close enough to Discovery, Control can finish downloading the Red Sphere’s data, and if that happens, it’s game over.
Burnham tells Pike the only way to ensure Control can’t get the information it wants is to destroy the Discovery. It looks like Discovery is about to go bye bye.
Like I said at the top, this was an exciting but straightforward episode, and made clear that Control is the real big bad of season 2. There don’t seem to be any ways out of this mess other than destroying the one ship in Starfleet that has a working Spore Drive. The stakes are sky-high, and there are only two episodes remaining. Buckle up!
Grade: A
Episode 213: “Such Sweet Sorrow”
Here’s what you need to know about the penultimate episode of Star Trek: Discovery season 2: there are a lot of goodbyes. Like, a metric f*ck ton of goodbyes. If you’ll remember last week’s episode, Control has literally taken control of every ship and crew member in Section 31, and now it’s following the Discovery around in order to upload the rest of the sphere data so that it can become fully conscious.
Since Pike retrieved a time crystal, all the engineering team needs to do is create a new Red Angel suit so someone can create a wormhole and take the Discovery to the distant future so Control can never get to it. That person is Burnham, who as it happens is the one creating red signals throughout the galaxy. I had wondered if we’d ever find out who was creating the red signals — especially since it was Burnham’s mother who was in the Red Angel suit — and now we finally know: a future version of Burnham has been guiding the Discovery all season long through the use of red signals.
The first thing Pike tries to do is evacuate the Discovery and engage the self-destruct sequence. However, the ship doesn’t explode when the timer runs down. Then, Pike orders the Enterprise to fire torpedoes at the Discovery, but its shields are up. It would appear that the sphere data is protecting itself and there’s no way to destroy it.
So Burnham comes up with the plan to wear the new Red Angel suit and open a wormhole in the hopes that the Discovery (on autopilot) will follow her through to the future where there is no technology because it’s a future where Control has eradicated all life in the universe. Man, time travel is confusing.
Anyway, Burnham has some tearful goodbyes with her crew, with her adoptive parents, with Tyler, and with Spock, then prepares to suit up and jump into an uncertain future from which she will likely never return. But as she approaches the bridge of the Discovery, all of her friends are there and have agreed to jump into the future with her.
It’s an emotional moment that reminds us just how far the character Michael Burnham has come since the first episode of season 1, where she was blamed for starting the Klingon war and was headed to a Starfleet prison for the rest of her life. Just before the episode ends, Control’s section 31 ships jump out of warp, surrounding both the Discovery and Enterprise.
As penultimate episodes go, this was excellent, ver y emotional. The sacrifice Burnham is willing to make sets her up as the real hero of the series. Next week is going to be crazy, and I hope all the loose ends are tied up.
Grade: B
Episode 214, Season Finale: “Such Sweet Sorrow Part 2”
The Star Trek: Discovery season 2 finale was an exhilarating thrill ride from beginning to end, filled with a spectacular space battle, edge of your seat fights, and surprising twists that lead to an ambiguous end for the crew of the Discovery, and the start of Pike and Spock’s new adventures aboard the Enterprise.
Episode 214 picks up right where Episode 213 left off: The Discovery and the Enterprise are surrounded by several Section 31 ships, weapons at the ready, awaiting the sphere data upload so Control can finally have what it needs to become fully sentient and wipe out the universe. Our heroes have a two-fold plan: send out as many shuttles armed and ready to battle and defend Burnham who will fly in the Red Angel suit to a point far enough away from the battle to open a wormhole where the Discovery will follow her through to a point in time that is over 900 years in the future.
The other part of the plan involved the shuttles and Enterprise clearing a path for Burnham and the Discovery while making sure Control didn’t follow either into the wormhole. If they can’t stop that from happening, then Control will upload the data from Discovery and, well, you know…it’s only the end of all life in the known universe; no big deal.
As the battle begins, Georgiou taunts Control (in the body of Captain Leland) to beam aboard the Discovery so she can end him once and for all. Saru thinks that’s a dumb plan, but Georgiou isn’t about to let someone tell her how to handle business, and she and Security Chief Nhan lay the trap, and once the Discovery drops its shields to let Burnham and Spock out of the docking bay, Leland beams over and goes for what he thinks is the data…only, it’s not where he thinks it is, and Georgiou and Nhan commence to kick his ass.
They fight for several minutes as Georgiou leads Leland to Engineering where the Spore Drive containment room is. She lures him in and steps out, locking him in, but they both know it won’t hold long. Georgiou quickly begins working through a pattern on the computer and turns to Leland with a devilish grin and lets him know she just magnetized the room, meaning all the millions of nanites that Control used to reanimate Leland’s body will be painfully drawn out and Control will die “screaming” as she gleefully watches.
Meanwhile, the space battle rages on, and the Enterprise’s dish is hit with a torpedo that doesn’t explode. Admiral Cornwall and Number One try to disarm it, but they can’t, so the brave admiral makes the ultimate sacrifice and closes the section off and arms the torpedo, killing herself, and only herself in the process. Everyone else aboard the ship is saved thanks to her bravery.
Section 31 has a ton of ships and tiny drone shuttles just putting the Discovery and Enterprise through the paces when a Klingon ship drops out of cloaking and starts destroying the Section 31 vessels. Saru’s people are there as well. It seems Tyler has been busy gathering friends and enough ships for the fight. Once they arrive, they quickly turn the tide of the battle in favor of our heroes.
With that done, all that’s left to do is for Burnham to open the wormhole so she and the Discovery can jump 900 years or so into the future…only, her suit won’t let her put in the coordinates. She and Spock try to work out the problem and realize they’ve only seen five of the seven red signals hat started the Enterprise on its mission during the Klingon war in the first place. Burnham then realizes that to go forward, she must first travel back in time and make the red signals appear.
Now, here’s where it gets fracking tricky: Burnham, in the new Red Angel suit, travels to all the places the crew of the Discovery visited over the course of this season. And, each time she lands at a location, she realizes it was her in the suit — and not her mom — leading the Discovery to make important decisions so they could save the universe. Yes, I’m fully aware that it was established that Burnham’s mother had a suit that she traveled in several times back and forth through time, but now, at this point, we see Michael Burnham as the Red Angel, making those same jumps. Good lord my head hurts. Time travel is confusing, y’all.
Anyway, with all the past points set, Burnham’s suit allows her to put in the time and coordinates for her jump to the future, so she and the Discovery head into the wormhole, as the Enterprise destroys any Section 31 ships and shuttles that try to follow. It is worth mentioning though, that once Leland was killed by Georgiou, the Section 31 ships all stopped in their tracks, so it was like shooting fish in a barrel for the Enterprise.
Once Burnham in her Red Angel suit and the Discovery (with its crew) went into the wormhole, that’s the last we see of them. Spock then narrates some cut scenes where he talks about Starfleet Command putting a gag order on anyone involved with the operation. To anyone who wasn’t there, the Discovery is considered destroyed; all souls lost. Tyler is made the new commander of an overhauled Section 31; one without a computer like Control.
Spock then shaves his beard, puts on his familiar blue Starfleet uniform, and walks onto the bridge of the Enterprise as Captain Pike gives the order to jump into warp.
So, as a finale episode goes, “Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2” was perfect. It had over-the-top action, a great storyline, and plenty of emotional moments like Spock and Burnham saying I love you to each other; Stamets and Culber getting back together; Admiral Cornwall’s sacrificial death; and Pike telling the crew of the Discovery goodbye, calling them “family.”
Season 2 of Star Trek: Discovery was better than its first season, and that’s not something that can be said by many shows out there today. I don’t know how season 3 will unfold, especially since Starfleet records now show the Discovery and its crew to be destroyed. But since the ship and Burnham are now 900+ years in the future, the possibilities for storylines are endless. I can’t wait to see what season 3 brings.
Episode Grade: A+
Season Grade: A
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