I first heard about STD from Youtubers ripping into it for lazy plots and contrived character arcs. When I saw Red Letter Media's satirical video titled "Star Trek Discovery Season 2 in a Nutshell", I simply had to see for myself how much of it was satire. The answer is that it's pretty much all satire played straight.
Klingon narration. We hear about a looming threat and the need to unite all 24 Klingon houses to defend against the threat. We see the Klingon narrator, who looks tarred. Later we find out his name is T'Kuvma. The narrator looks straight at the camera and says: "To lock arms against those whose fatal greeting is 'We come in peace'."
"We come in peace, that's why we're here. Isn't that the whole idea of Starfleet?" says a woman to another woman as they're trekking across a desert. Couldn't be more on the nose. We hear an estimate of 1h17m22s before the CGI storm in the background comes crashing on them.
The two women enter a crevasse with sacs hanging above them. One woman calls the other "Michael" (!), without mentioning the rank. The sacs are in danger because the ambient radiation from a nearby meteorologic accident (?) dried out their water table. They are searching for a well and find it. The captain fires a couple shots down the well. Nothing happens but then water bursts out. They can't get beamed out because of the storm. So, if the storm is approaching them, why did they get beamed next to the storm instead of right next to the well? Also, why not send an away team with the captain?
We can already direct missiles down chimneys in the 21st century, so why didn't they send down a drone or a missile or something instead of their captain? They don't receive a response from the ship and decide to take a walk until the storm passes them. Something slithers out of the well. By the way, these creatures don't get mentioned later at all, nor do we get the explanation why the two went on this mission with a massive storm brewing instead of waiting for the storm to blow over.
The two women bicker about finding their bearings as they go across dunes. We find out that Michael is Number One that's served under the captain for 7 years. They encounter their own footprints and Michael whines about going in a circle. The captain wryly says: "Not exactly a circle". I see where this is going – she was drawing a massive shape, which turns out to be a communicator signal, so the ship can see them. It lowers and they are beamed out.
Michael narrates. USS Shenzhou is called to investigate damage done to one of Federation's interstellar relays. Who did the damage and why? We hear Commander Michael giving snarky comments to the rest of the crew. We hear more sarcasm from the captain. Wow, the atmosphere is so noisy and the audio is messy, and the dialog is just awful. Listen to 40 seconds of audio from a random Star Trek Voyager episode (651.27 KB, MP3) and 40 seconds of audio from Star Trek Discovery (636.17 KB, MP3) and notice the difference. Voyager's audio has people actually talking to each other about plot relevant points and there's an appropriate amount of noise in the background; Discovery is just random chatter and bickering with so much background noise. Anyway, something is happening. We are looking at something. Saru says the object is of unknown origin, but Michael says it's 2,000 kilometers away. Saru interjects with his analysis but says the optical processors are scrambled due to the object emitting a scattering field.
Michael uses a 20th century telescope (!) to see it is alive. Saru is Kelpien, he thinks everything is malicious and lurking. He will ultimately turn out to be the most interesting character in the show, and his scenes are actually worth watching. Michael says that whatever it is, is lost. The captain slurs her sentences. Michael says she can go alone there with a thruster pack. Saru objects. Captain tells they should both go. Michael is happy.
We hear a mock airplane announcement from the Shenzhou crew as Commander Michael Burnham exits the ship. The captain's name is Georgiou (?). Michael detaches from the ship's hull and floats out as her HEV voice reads out the parameters. Time counts down and she is launched towards the object. The crew chatters as Michael navigates the debris field. The suit HUD shows 8,043 meters to target. Communication breaks off. Michael panics but comes to a halt 3,079 meters away from the target. She is breathless and wants to take a peek. One of Shenzhou's crew says Michael is "less than 10 meters from the outermost edge of the scattering field", the same one that disabled their sensors.
Michael says:
Sculptures are crystallized spirituality.
as she describes the object. It's massive, with intricate design. She narrates the object's appearance. She has 10 minutes left before dying from radiation exposure. She lands on the object's surface and the object reacts, shifting around her. HEV suit tells her something is approaching. We see a Klingon standing there. He attacks Michael, who launches her thrusters and kills the Klingon with his Bat'leth, flying into space. Shouldn't Saru have come with her?? What was the Klingon doing there? We never get answers to either of these questions.
The captain is panicking. The crew notices Michael's signal but can't lock on to it to bring her back. Michael's suit is damaged. She can't respond. Klingons are gathered around the corpse of the dead Klingon, who was a Torchbearer and the object is their "sacred beacon". A sarcophagus closes around the dead Klingon and rises to the ceiling. Everyone looks up and starts roaring. The sarcophagus flies to the hull. We see countless sarcophaguses assembled and the one we just saw joins them.
Michael is in a coma. She remembers her exam. She seized up. She apologizes to Sarek, who says only logic can root us in the present. He says it's her human heart that's the problem. Michael wakes up. She is being scanned. The doctor tells her she isn't healed. She is scarred but runs out to warn the captain. She enters the bridge and tells there's Klingons out there. Why not tell her this over a communicator? The captain says there haven't been Klingons in a 100 years and the HEV footage is corrupted. Saru says she's got a concussion. Michael addresses the captain by her first name, Phillipa, and the captain believes her. Saru advises a withdrawal. Phillipa says retreat is not an option.
Michael says to target phase cannons on the object. They do and a massive ship uncloaks right in front of them. Saru's ear flaps extend. Shenzhou tries hailing the ship, where Klingons discuss attacking. We hear about the prophecy. Other Klingons doubt if all houses will respond to the prophecy. One Klingon named Voq says he will light the beacon. Voq has no family blade. He cannot assume the birthright of a noble house. He says he's worthy and puts his hand into a brazier to prove it. His hand burns.
The Klingon leader acknowledges his effort and says his skin color lets him see himself in it. Alarm sounds. Voq is given the leader's blade and told he now has the Torchbearer's honor. They all chant. Shenzhou is still hailing the Klingon ship. Michael walks in the bridge. Saru says their hull is covered in pods that form an armor, the purpose being symbolic. Some of these bones are thousands of years old. Saru pleads with Michael to ask the captain to withdraw. Michael says it's impossible. Saru says his people were hunted, bred and farmed, and that gives him the ability to sense death.
Phillipa talks to Europa admiral's hologram. Michael enters. The hologram scolds her for disturbing the property of another race. Michael interjects and says it's in their nature to battle. The hologram says she presumed their motivation and accuses her of racism (!). The hologram tells the captain to hold fire absent provocation; in 2 hours all Federation vessels in range will arrive. Michael says Saru is worried. Captain says Shenzhou is the only line of defense if Klingons attack. Michael says "when they attack". A blinding flash of light is seen.
It seems to be a signal. All filters are at a maximum. A buzzing noise is heard, disorienting the crew. Captain says Klingons are on their way. Michael asks to leave, captain asks if she's kidding but grants. Michael enters her chambers and contacts Sarek. He responds and scolds her emotional side. He already knows there's a new star in the sky. She says they met Klingons. He says they killed her parents. Sarek says the Klingon empire has been in disarray and there could be a great unifier between them. Michael asks how the Vulcans achieved their peace with Klingons.
Michael enters the bridge and commands the captain to attack the ship. She says violence brings respect with Klingons, retelling what Sarek told her. Michael says it's logical to execute her plan. The captain ends the conversation and Michael shouts. Everyone turns. The captain summons Michael to her ready room and scolds her for challenging her authority. The captain says Starfleet doesn't attack first.
Michael says she is worried for Phillipa's life. The captain orders her to stand down. This isn't working for me, their relationship is so strained. Michael grabs the captain's neck and she drops. Michael relieves Saru and lies about the captain talking to the admiral, ordering weapons to be charged. Saru correctly asks if she's acting on captain's orders. Michael doesn't answer the question. This is something a Starfleet officer gets court martialed for.
Saru says he noticed she is sweating and steps away from his console. Michael says this is mutiny and orders the weapons to fire. The captain walks in and interrupts it. The captain aims a phaser at Michael. The light is subdued. Warp signatures incoming! It's not Starfleet. We see massive Klingon signs on the screen. They warp in - pew, pew, pewpewpew - and Shenzhou is surrounded.
We see a flashback. 7 years earlier. Sarek and Michael beamed in and met Phillipa. She greets them nicely and offers a handshake. Michael is cold and doesn't accept it. Sarek scolds her. Phillipa ignores the awkwardness. Sarek whispers, "Behave" and beams out. Michael starts nitpicking as Phillipa tries to make small talk. They enter the turbo lift. Phillipa tries to make her relax but Michael insists on making it awkward. They enter the bridge. Finally some background music. Michael sees Saru.
We flash back to the present. Michael says 24 ships represent 24 Klingon houses. Phillipa ignores it all and slurs, "You are relieved of duty". Security takes Michael away. Klingons assembled at the beacon talk with holograms of other Klingons. The tarred Klingon enters and scolds them for being so selfish. They bicker over who deserves to claim honor. The tarred priest exposits about his history and destiny. He was bullied in youth. The holograms scold the priest for accepting Voq. A lot of talking in Klingon with veiled insults. T'Kuvma talks about the battle plan. The Starship fleet warps in.
Klingons open comm channels. Phillipa talks to them. She says Klingons can leave or talk, neither of which they are known to do. She says, "We come in peace" and T'Kuvma loses his shit. He orders the fleet to fire and they do. Pew, pew pew. Consoles explode. Shields are holding. Michael asks the computer what's going on. The computer refuses to answer. One of the pilots, Connor, enters and sounds disoriented. He isn't going to set her free, is he? Connor says they shouldn't be fighting. BOOM! Shit explodes and Michael is tossed to the ground. Flashback.
Michael is on the ground. Sarek mind melds with her as they're being attacked. She wakes up in the present. Major hull breach. She is staring at the dead of space, with the forcefield protecting her from death. Phillipa asks for status. Saru says it's bad. Computer that said it won't reveal information to prisoners tells Michael the containment field is failing. Another flashback. Again Sarek. It's a mind meld across a thousand light years (?). Sarek handwaves it. She explains what happened. Sarek winces and says it pains him to communicate with her in this way. He bolsters her self-esteem. She is surprised. He taps out.
Michael stands up and has a determined look on her face. On the bridge, stuff is blowing up. Phillipa is lost. The ship is dead in space. Klingons won't even finish them off. The gravity is pulling them towards the binary star. Phillipa tells the crew to evacuate. Something happens. A tractor beam. It's from Europa, the admiral's ship. Phillipa talks to the admiral's hologram, who opens a channel to T'Kuvma.
Klingons are listening to their message. T'Kuvma says he's pleased the admiral has arrived and accepts the cease fire. T'Kuvma says he can go invisible. The tractor beam is interrupted. An unknown energy source. The Europa is being ripped apart by the invisible Klingon ship. Europa is going to self-destruct. KABLAM! A blinding flash of light. T'Kuvma is happy with the outcome of the battle. Klingon vessels warp out, but the Klingon flagship is there and says they're left alive to witness Klingon supremacy.
Michael asks the computer to let her to evacuate. The computer refuses. They argue. Michael hypothesizes. The computer agrees and engages the ethical protocol, saying she has 43% chance to survive. Michael jumps through open space. Phillipa quotes Sun Tzu and Saru says he recognizes the quote (?). Saru suggests loading torpedoes on a transporter and launching it at the Klingon flagship. Phillipa says she will be driving one of them. Saru says it's a suicide mission. He's the only sensible character.
Michael enters the bridge and stops Phillipa. T'Kuvma mustn't be killed but captured. Phillipa ignores her and exposits about their first meeting. Michael tries to justify her mutiny and then volunteers for the suicide mission. Tractor beams outside gather Klingon corpses, which should have been atomized by all the explosions. Phillipa has a plan.
T'Kuvma talks about Klingon rituals. We learn the Shenzhou crew has coordinates on a slain Klingon officer (!). Wow, how did they detect the rank of a dead Klingon floating in space? Whatever, let's move along. They beam a torpedo warhead on the corpse. KABOOM! Phillipa and Michael raise their phasers and get beamed aboard the Klingon flagship. Pew, pew. Two Klingons fall.
Phillipa says they can find and capture T'Kuvma but she's never seen what he looks like. When the admiral talked to T'Kuvma before his ship being ripped apart, Phillipa stood near the hologram but the admiral's transmission presumably went from Europa, not Shenzhou. She shouldn't be able to know what T'Kuvma looks like.
Well, T'Kuvma appears and attacks them, so we got that plot hole filled up neatly. Voq grabs Michael and T'Kuvma stabs Phillipa, at which point Michael fires a phaser through him. T'Kuvma falls over. Saru beams her out and she cries. T'Kuvma is dying and says to Voq to follow their wovs.
Michael is being court martialed. Thank you! She pleads guilty. The court martial tells her to speak up and she confirms it. She sounds dejected. The court strips her of rank and gives her a life sentence. Thank you! She is shipped on a prison shuttle to a ship. She is welcomed by the captain Gabriel Lorca, who says this is Discovery. Oh, so it's only now that the show begins.
On the prison shuttle, 6 months later. We hear three prisoners banter while Michael is apathetic. They exposit and chuckle. One prisoner tells Michael is guilty for Europa's destruction and 8,000 deaths. What the hell, it was not her fault, she was in the brig. Michael corrects her and says "8,186". Is she bragging about it? What the hell. Some bugs appear on the shuttle's window. Michael says these bugs feed on electricity and will leave them dead in the space. The guard leaves the shuttle, presumably to clear the bugs off the window.
The ship is flying itself and the prisoners are just sitting there. One of the prisoners is nervous. A helmet flies outside. The guard is dead, I guess. They try ripping their shackles. Michael is sitting still and looks to her left. A blue flash of light. It's a Federation starship. It pulls them in. Did the ship kill the guard? This raises so many questions.
The four of them are welcomed by Commander Landry, who calls them "all kinds of garbage". She gets into Michael's face, calling her "Starfleet's first mutineer". That can't be right. It's a science vessel. Guards are wearing black badges. Landry tells them to shut up and offers them food. Michael sees Kayla from Shenzhou but she looks down and walks away with her tray. Dead silence.
Michael sits down and a prisoner leans into her face to whisper, "How about we make it 8,187?" That sentence makes negative zero sense. Michael does Kingsman church scene. Landry aims a phaser at her and they go to meet the captain. They enter the bridge.
Saru swivels to look at Michael, who is nearly catatonic. She enters the captain's room. He apologizes for the dark room; he had an eye injury and can't tolerate light. He eats fortune cookies and offers her one. He says it was his family business. Don't they have those devices that materialize food, replicators? She asks why she's here. He avoids answering. She refuses helping. Gabriel says she can't choose and will have to earn her keep.
Michael enters her quarters and lays down. She can finally relax... but no, a special needs girls enters and starts blabbering. She literally says for herself she is "special needs". Michael is catatonic. The girl says she is Sylvia Tilly. She is allergic to blah blah blah. Michael changes beds. Tilly nervously chuckles and asks if she's THE Michael Burnham. Black alert sounds. Lights go out. Something is happening. Tinkly music. Michael is scared. It's no longer Tilly in the bed! Now that's interesting.
Michael meets Saru, who is now a First Officer. They discuss their shared past. Saru offers blueberries. Michael accepts. They discuss their taste. She is assigned to engineering. Lieutenant Stamets will task her. She tries to apologize. Saru isn't accepting it and calls her dangerous. Michael wants to serve her sentence. Saru says he will protect his captain better than she protected hers.
Michael can't go on without a breath print. She is surprised but curious. She approaches Tilly, who tells her to move on. A guy walks in and brushes some particles off his shoulder. She tries to explain herself. The guy makes a Beatles reference. Michael is asked to solve a code puzzle to prove her worth. She goes next to Tilly and plugs it in. Hours pass by. Stamets talks about something via a video panel. Michael approaches and says she would like to know more about the code puzzle, pointing out a mistake. Paul Stamets breathes into a scanner and walks out.
Michael takes Tilly's breath sample (?) with a cloth and enters the restricted area. She sees a wondrous, luminous garden of Christmas lights. Gabriel Lorca gets a top secret message. He informs the engineering that during the last black alert maneuver there was an "incident" and the sister ship USS Glenn lost all its crew. Stamets asks if it was a bloom failure. We never get to know what a bloom failure is. Gabriel sends Stamets and Landry over. Stamets asks why not transfer the entire room over, but Saru says it is "shielded", which confuses Stamets, who calls it "curious".
Stamets questions Lorca's decisions. Lorca says to take Burnham. Stamets objects. Uh-oh. Saru is asked to assess Michael and he says she's the smartest Starfleet officer he has ever known. Tilly is on a shuttle with them boarding party. Tilly apologizes for shooing her away the day before. Tilly says she cares too much but Michael is so cool that she doesn't care about what people think. They approach Glenn and enter the shuttle bay.
Pitch black. They scan the corridors with their flashlights. I can barely see anything, I feel my glaucoma acting up (just kidding, I don't have a glaucoma). They find a horribly mangled body. Tilly scans the body. Michael hears a snarl and flashes at some sort of monster. More mangled bodies. Sparks fly. It's nothing. Klingon weapons. Tilly asks if they know about "the device" and Stamets says then it's all over. More sparks and a malfunctioning door. Ripped off leg.
They find more corpses, even more horribly mangled. Something tore through the hull. Tilly asks the creature in the shadows to step out and it does. It's a Klingon and it gets eaten by something. The crew runs to the engineering. I can barely see anything, my depression is acting up due to all the flashing (just kidding, I don't have depression). They run inside and close the door. Michael asks what that was but still no answer. Stamets assigns them tasks and finds his friend he talked to earlier all mangled up, with his face contorted in a horrible expression. Wow, that's nightmare fuel right there.
Tilly finds some kind of device. Stamets asks them to take it with. Michael asks for a phaser and gets one. The monster breaks through. Michael goes up a ladder and the monster is right behind her. How? She tells herself about Alice down the rabbit hole for some reason. She is on all fours and somehow stays in front of the monster. She drops down and right into the shuttle, and they fly out.
Michael enters the bridge and asks for permission. Saru grants it. He says other prisoners are outbound and says he's pleased to hear about her performance on the away mission. Saru nearly tears up. Michael thanks him. Gabriel invites her to join Discovery. She gives an excuse but he says he doesn't care about Starfleet. She won't accept it. He asks why but she asks why too. Gabriel has been testing her. She reveals that she knows there's some forbidden weapon being developed here and she is the perfect officer for waging a dirty war against Klingons.
Michael exposits about her code of honor. Gabriel says he knows her and beams the two of them to engineering. He opens the test area door and shows her in. She enters. He shows a mycelium spore container and loads it. Her test area gets filled with spores. She asks how it works. Gabriel basically says it's magic:
Imagine a microscopic web that spans the entire cosmos. Nanogalactic ecosystem with an infinite number of roads leading everywhere.
Gabriel says they must win the war and that she should imagine the possibilities. He warps her to a couple locations and she snaps back. He says her thinking in the battle with the Klingon flagship is what wins wars. He offers her a fortune cookie. She takes it. Saru drinks tea. Prison colony shuttle warps out. Saru feels his flaps rising again.
Tilly is in her quarters as Michael walks in. Tilly says she will be a captain one day and mentions Phillipa. Michael corrects her with "captain Georgiou", when we saw in the very first scene of the show that they were on first name bases. Michael shows "Alice's adventures in Wonderland" book to Tilly, who is fascinated with the fact it's a book.
Glenn goes KABOOM! No trace left. Landry and Gabriel discuss spending time together. Are they? He dismisses her and walks towards a chamber of some sort, summoning some kind of a creature. It's the monster from Glenn, behind a forcefield. They warp out and the episode ends.
Storms. Monoliths moving. Aargh, my stroke is acting up. It's actually the process of replicating an uniform close up. Michael is hesitant to wear it but eventually does. My God, these uniforms look terrible. Tilly enters and commends her look. She is anxious but has a bag for Michael, which turns out to be the last will and testament of Phillipa Georgiou. Michael slides it under her bed and heads to the bridge, meeting Saru. He says she should have left. She calls his ear flaps "threat ganglia".
Gabriel is wrangling the crew. They die. It was a drill a-la Ender's Game. He says Discovery is the only ship with the displacement-activated sporehub drive and can teleport anywhere. Gabriel exits and calls Michael with. They need to survive. He shows her his trophy room, filled with weapons. She approaches the forcefield and the monster charges at it, giving us a jumpscare. The monster has a natural aversion to light.
He says the monster might be their trump card, but only if Michael can weaponize it. Voq is drawing a diagram. He is summoning T'Kuvma (?) and asking him for guidance. They are apparently dead in space and need a dilithium processing unit. Shenzhou has it. They ate Phillipa and Voq ate meat from her skull, WHAT THE FUCK. The Klingon girl talks to Voq and they are about to kiss, I guess.
Michael is told about the monster by Twitch's text-to-speech voice. Landry enters and calls it Ripper. It is similar to tardigrades. Nobody knows how it entered the ship. Logs were corrupted but one earlier log says there was a stowaway. There was no hull breach and transporter buffers had no microbiota. Landry asks to find some way to control the creature. Michael says the creature is an unknown alien and it is what it is. Landry says that Gabriel is interested in what Michael can do for him.
Gabriel is eating and receives a call from admiral Cornwell (?). Corvan 2, a dilithium mining colony, sent out a distress call. Klingons have attacked. Gabriel talks to Stamets, who says there's no way to make that jump because Glenn "crashed into an undetectable Hawking radiation firewall when it exited the mycelial plane". The two argue. Stamets found something on Glenn but it requires a supercomputer of some sort. They have Michael, don't they? They retrieved a device from the Glenn but it won't work either.
Klingons talk on the flagship. 6 months after the fight, the flagship is still dead in space. Klingons shout together. Back on Discovery, the spore drive is on. So, the spore drive is the equivalent of getting high? Flying on shrooms? Not a fan of this, but it's all we've got so far. Black alert. Destination: Corvan 2. They jump near a star and immediately there's a deadly danger of flying into the star. They cleared the gravitational well.
The Ripper reacted before the jump, and Michael tells Landry the spore drive activated its nervous system. Stamets slammed his skull. The gay doctor jokes with him. They chatter and Gabriel says Discovery is now a war vessel. Stamets disagrees and says he's not a soldier. Gabriel tells him to get off his ship then (?) and namedrops Elon Musk (!). Stamets storms out. Gabriel plays the Corvan 2 audio to the entire ship. The crew is listening to the wails of kids etc. Landry says: "We're doing this" and orders the computer sedate the Ripper, opening the forcefield and letting the monster loose. She fires at the Ripper. Michael orders lights to maximum and the Ripper skulks into the pen. Landry is wounded and the two beam to sickbay.
Landry is dead. Wow, what a useless character. Gabriel says, "Find a use for that creature". No emotion AT ALL from Gabriel about her death, I bet she was thrown out with the trash. We see some sort of a shipyard or something. Filled with debris. Green container with steam. Now it's orange. Klingon language. Voq. He is on Shenzhou? Voq and his love, L'Rell, bond a bit. Still no kiss. They are about to uncouple the part. Good thing they are experts at Federation technology. Blah, blah, blah. Devotion to the cause etc. They pull out the part. No KABOOM.
Michael and Saru talk. She apologizes for being unfair on Shenzhou. The Ripper roars. What are they feeding it with? Saru's ear flaps don't trigger аnd she says that's proof the Ripper isn't a predator. Saru is offended but then praises her as fitting in perfectly with captain Gabriel. Is the Ripper the supercomputer? Tilly brought a container of spores to Michael. Let's see what happens.
She opens the forcefield and enters the pen holding a spore container. She places it down and opens it. This is tense. The Ripper seems to feed on them. It bonds with Michael. She says "hello". Tilly smiles. Michael talks to Stamets. She says what I said — the Ripper is a supercomputer, which appears able to hunt down spores. Stamets transports the Ripper into their mycelial garden. Finally some science. The Ripper is talking to them. Stamets says, "I always wanted to talk to my mushrooms". Come on guys, you're not even hiding the shroom analogy.
Voq and L'Rell come back to the flagship. The Klingon visitor brought food and took over the flagship. Voq namedrops T'Kuvma. Not helping. L'Rell gives the part to the visitor and betrays Voq. He's about to die. L'Rell says to dump him there. Back on Discovery, black alert. Let's see this. The Ripper interacts with the Glenn device and they are ready to jump. They go. Corvan 2 miners are being rekt.
Kids scream etc. when Discovery warps in right in front of the Klingon ships and destroy them. They get shot at. They will jump again? Go. They left bombs behind and Klingon ships explode. The kid asks, "Who saved us?" They warp back in and shake their heads, patting each other on the back. The Ripper seems... sad?
Voq is reading Shenzhou logs. He is angry. He was left to die but feels it's not the end. Well, he is a named character. Someone beams in. It's L'Rell. She tried to save his life. So, how does Shenzhou have life support? She wanted to have some alone time with him? Voq is skeptical. She has stolen a ship. They will go to matriarchs (?)
Michael brings a spore container to the Ripper, which is wailing in pain. She opens it and apologizes. In her chambers, she's thinking when Tilly walks in and starts an awkward conversation. The Phillipa bag is still unopened. Tilly walks out. Michael opens the bag. Hologram appears. Phillipa says she hopes Michael is a captain of her own ship. The bag holds.................... this is still going on................ Phillipa isn't done talking................................ the bag opens and............................ something is inside........ it's her telescope! Wow, that's it? What a downer. It's all banged up and stuff.
Vaseline-smeared fish eye lens. Michael in engineering. Hopefully not a dream. Her doppelganger appears in the chamber. It screams. She screams in pain too. She wakes up. It was a dream. Tilly is snoring. She said that wouldn't be happening. She calls the gay doctor to investigate the Ripper. It's not eating. He says that he wants to run some tests. Spoken like a true doctor.
Gabriel is bragging about his spore drive. Admiral Cornwell says they need more Rippers and the one they have must be preserved. Gabriel is sad. He wants to do more. Tilly tries to socialize with Michael. It's really cringe. Wow, not working for me. They talk about their emotions. Michael doesn't like it.
Gabriel stabs his eye with some medicine. Admiral Katrina Cornwell enters and activates the lights to the maximum. Wow, what a jerk. They talk about Michael. Gabriel defends her. Katrina says, "I'm your friend". Gabriel says it's his ship. Gabriel is shuttling back when a Klingon ship appears and tractor beams them inside.
Gabriel and pilot take phaser rifles. A Klingon jumps in through the sun roof (???????). Why do shuttles have a sun roof? No idea what's the purpose of it there. They fight. The pilot is killed. The Klingons know his name? How? Admiral Katrina says the Klingons know about the spore drive. How???? Saru's ear flaps are raised. Michael enters. Saru is in charge now. She asks to speak with the captain. Saru says that won't be possible and mentions an abduction. Michael is unfazed and does not pursue the topic further.
The two talk in the captain's ready room. Michael says the tardigrade is hurting. He asks for concrete proof. She can't offer any. He's the best character so far. His advice would have prevented the war. They just gloss over her reaction to captain's abduction. Saru dismisses her and looks through the list of Starfleet's most decorated captains. The computer lists their attributes. Saru says he's being distracted and made to doubt himself by someone. Computer suggests eliminating the distraction. Saru refuses.
Woken up by a prisoner. Captain chokes him. The guy is flamboyant AF. This is going to be a "single room" episode, isn't it? The guy exposits. Yadda, yadda, blah, blah, trip trap, frizzle frazzle. Guards enter. The guy points at the third one, who gets punched and tossed about. Gabriel watches. The third guy is dragged out. This reminds me of Soviet gulags and how the prisoners were treated. The flamboyant guy says the guards give the prisoners an option to be beaten or pass it on to someone else.
Michael and the doctor enter the engineering. The doctor isn't working for me. Please bring EMH back, I want its humor. The doctor says the Ripper is hurting. Stamets tries to dismiss him and the doctor runs away. Good job leaving her to hang dry. Stamets says, "You say 'portibella', I say 'portibello'" (???). I have no idea what that means. She wants to punch him. Wow. The flamboyant prisoner is snoring. Another guy is there. What's happening? They talk. The guy brings him a biscuit to eat. Gabriel refuses. The guy says he's been captured at the initial battle. Gabriel accuses him of lying. I agree. They talk. A scorpion skitters away with that biscuit to the flamboyant guy.
The flamboyant guy accuses the two of arrogance. Yadda yadda. Oh my God, this isn't working for me. The guy pulls the "you are the 1%, and the little people are suffering". A guard walks in and chokes Gabriel. Thank God, physical torture comes as a welcome relief after this. Stamets recaps the mycelial network idea for mouthbreathing viewers. Michael and Tilly latch on and recap it further. Stamets is enthused. Tilly says, "This is so fucking cool". She apologizes but Stamets says, "It is fucking cool". <facepalm>facepalm</facepalm>.
Gabriel is strapped to a chair, wearing a Saw-like mask. The lady Klingon enters and speaks perfect English. Thank God, no more subtitles. She tries to torture him but he hits on her. She slaps him. What a Chad. She puts on eye-openers on him and turns on the flood lights. Wow, so sophisticated.
Back on Discovery, Stamets is trying to find a compatible species that would substitute the Ripper to spare it. He and Michael found a substitute – humans. Saru is outraged: this is unethical. Michael says she's not an enemy. Saru says she's a proven predator and brings up Georgiou. Saru orders the spore drive back online and orders Michael to her quarters.
Gabriel is back to the cell and pushes the flamboyant guy, who is a snitch feeding information to the Klingons with his scorpion, who is named "Stewart" (?). Gabriel throws Stewart at the wall. The flamboyant guy taunts Gabriel and reveals some background info about him. Gabriel escaped an ambush and let his crew die. Or did he? Dun dun duuuun. He says he blew up his crew to stop them from suffering in torture. Then why not kill himself to not suffer torture? Makes no sense.
Saru is trying to be a real captain. Black alert goes up. The Ripper is wailing. The spore drive activates. The Ripper faints. Stamets and Tilly enter the chamber in time to watch the Ripper dry out, curl up and go into hibernation. Saru orders hydration. The doctor protests but Saru insists. The doctor says the Ripper is sentient, Saru insists again, doctor refuses but Stamets is willing.
Klingons again want to torture. The third prisoner volunteers. The Klingon guard says something. The flamboyant guy is thankful. They fight back. The Klingon guards are dead. I don't like how much this show is focused on fisticuffs, murder and war. The flamboyant guy tries to leave. Gabriel hits him and leaves with the third prisoner. Should have killed him. A Klingon walks at them, they shoot him and he is vaporized. No gore? This repeats a few times. Gabriel's companion is wounded and can't walk. He took one hit and is already down. Seems faked. Now he can walk. The Klingon torturer walks in. The guy attacks her. They struggle. He punches her. Another Klingon walks in. Gabriel came back. He shoots him and burns the torturer's face.
Gabriel and the prisoner are escaping in a shuttle. This seems rigged so the companion enters Discovery. Saru is talking to himself, analyzing the flight patterns of all the ships. He orders the fleeing one hailed. Gabriel replies. Discovery beams the two of them out just as their ship goes KABOOM. The guy is a traitor, I guarantee it. Stamets has the Ripper ready. They engage the spore drive and jump. Cool jump animation, I'll give them that. Stamets isn't responding. He saved the Ripper and tried navigating the spore drive himself.
Listening back to the flamboyant guy's exposition, Gabriel asked him straight away how a civilian like him ended up on a Klingon prison ship and the guy provided him with some contrived story about loving too much, falling for a woman, taking a loan, buying a moon for the lady but he couldn't pay the loan back, so Klingons captured him. Fake AF. The companion's story was that he served on Jaeger. Gabriel immediately calls him a liar, since nobody survives Klingon torture for 7 months. The companion said that he was being healed up so the torture lasted longer. We also heard fake screams through the walls, which was another Soviet tactic of scaring the prisoners written about by Solzhenitsyn.
Stamets is alive but in distress. He injected himself with a DNA compound. He wakes up and nervously guffaws. Michael is visited by Saru, who tells her about Gabriel. She asks to speak freely and if he's afraid of her. He says he's not afraid but is angry and deeply jealous because Georgiou was taken away from him. He says he expected becoming Number One. She says he did well. She opens the bag and gifts him the telescope. He goes soft and tells her to save the Ripper's life.
Tilly asks if Michael knows what will restore Ripper. Michael waxes about freedom and spills a container of spores on the Ripper. My God, what a cool name. The Ripper is ejected into space, opens up and warps away. The two smile. Saru knows what he did. Stamets tells the doctor to stop worrying. Wait, he is scanning him in the bathroom. They brush their teeth together. Stamets says he saw the entire universe of possibilities and that it was unspeakably beautiful. We get it, it's an analogy for getting high on mushroom. The doctor caresses his forehead. My God, they won't kiss, will they? Thank goodness, he walked away. Stamets walks away but his reflection sticks around in the mirror, stares at nothing, smiles and walks away as well.
Wait, so the doppelganger had to mimic all his movements in the mirror? The doppelganger is physical or exists only inside the mirror? I have no idea how it works but it's cool to finally be intrigued by something in show called "Discovery", I guess. Oh well, on to the next episode.
Sarek meets up with an ambassador. They flash gang signs and fly away. Aboard Discovery, Tilly and Michael jog, who pushes her to reach her limits. Tilly blathers about her personality being more important but then starts running faster. Gabriel and the spy are training in what is obviously a holodeck. They bond. OK, the guy's name is Ash Tyler.
Sarek's friend injects himself with something and starts glowing. He says Sarek is mistaken yadda yadda and is about to go Allahu Akbar when Sarek raises a forcefield around him and drops out of warp. Tilly and Michael are eating. Tilly is about to pig out. They eye Ash. Tilly is slobbering and sits next to him. This should be good. They chat for a bit. Tilly says, "Crazy kids" and snorts (!). Michael feels intense pain and keels over.
She's feeling Sarek's pain. She's running and astral projecting. She's in Sarek's memories, as evidenced by the yellow tint. He notices her and The Ancient Ones her out of his mind. She wakes up in the sickbay and tries to convince the others about the mind meld. Nobody believes her. She tells them about the Logic Extremists, who tried to kill her. Why not call them "The Irrationals"? So much exposition in 30 seconds.
Not even the doctor believes her. She's whispering, my God, I can barely understand anything she's saying. Basically, there's a Vulcan "soul graft" that Sarek used to heal her when she was wounded and now they're permanently mind melded.
We hear Michael was right about Sarek's assassination attempt from a hologram. Plenty of exposition dialog that's barely whispered. Gabriel says he'll save him and cracks a fortune cookie. Am I going deaf? They warped at the nebula where Sarek is lost. Michael enters the bridge and says he's getting worse. Black flickering light makes my aneurysm act up, arghhhh. Michael suggests making a synthetic mind meld. Stamets is intrigued.
Stamets techbabbles a lot. Gabriel interrupts. Stamets literally says "a shot of speed", punching me on the nose with the metaphor. I get it, the mycelial network represents drugs that connect all consciousness. Stamets does a "BURGHSSSSH". What a joke of a show, it all fell apart within this episode. Michael, Tilly and Ash fly out in a shuttle into the nebula. Gabriel threatens Ash to return Michael without a scratch or not come back at all. Wow, what a jerk captain that would rather lose two officers than one.
Admiral Cornwell gives Gabriel a tongue lashing. They argue and sound like a couple than Starfleet officers. In the shuttle, Tilly is babbling again. Black flickering again, it's making my ingrown toenail act up. Ash interrupts. Michael puts on the mind meld interface and lies down. Tilly starts up the machine and sees more of his memories.
She is back inside his memories. Plenty of wasted potential. We could have been exploring and hunting for details in his memories but we're only replaying the same event, of Michael being rejected by Vulcans. Sarek notices her and they fight. She begs for him to let her in. Ash orders Tilly to wake Michael up. She does.
Admiral Cornwell and Gabriel drink. She says she's worried for him. He says that's what he needs to do. How is he fit for service? Makes no sense, he's clearly suicidal. He handwaves it and seduces her. OK, boomer. Ash wants to return to Discovery. Michael talks about Sarek's memories. Could have been made so amazing if there was a sense of mystery but everything was revealed straight away. Imagine if the episode was written in reverse, with Sarek disappearing and then Michael mind melding with him to get clues on his whereabouts.
Michael dives back in his memories again. He argues with her and they fight AGAIN. He refuses AGAIN. Sarek apparently said for Michael that she has "exquisite logic" when she has showed none of it so far in the show. What a tragic waste of my time, all the fake story lines and gaping plot holes. Sarek's son, Spock, is namedropped. We learn Sarek had to choose between Spock and Michael. He chooses... DUN DUN DUUUNNN Spock. Michael mind melds with Sarek in his memories while they are mind melded already. She acts through him or wakes him up in his shuttle. He presses the console and activates the transponder.
Admiral Cornwell almost got herself phasered after being phasered by Gabriel's little Discovery. They argue. She storms off. Gabriel tries to apologize. Saru says Ash has returned. Sarek will live. Gabriel recommends sending Admiral Cornwell to the Klingon peace meeting. Yeah, it's a plot point too. Gabriel promotes Michael. She accepts. That was easy.
Michael bonds with Sarek. She confronts him about his memories. He feigns amnesia. She won't push him and calls him "father". He is lost in his thoughts. Admiral Cornwell says Gabriel must step down. Tilly is jogging. Michael tells her to find her own way. Michael is drinking tea. She sits with Ash. They bond.
On Cancri IV, neutral territory, Admiral Cornwell is meeting with Klingons, who go apeshit, kill her guards and capture her. Saru informs Gabriel, who tells him to tell Starfleet it's a trap. Saru is confused; this isn't what Gabriel would do. Gabriel walks to a mirror and we see a phaser in his belt (???).
Michael wakes up. We hear her personal log. She seems to have found her place aboard Discovery. She's made friends. She takes comfort in her work. She finds Ash intriguing. Tonight, she is going to a party. Wow, typical millennial party. Tilly is buzzed and points to Ash. Michael makes cringe excuses. Why is this in a Star Trek show?
Ash holds a speech. People clap and drink. Tilly is horny. Ash comes. Tilly runs off. Michael and Ash get summoned to the bridge. They can be drinking while on duty? People jog by them. They bump into Stamets, who hugs Michael. He is so jolly and says Ash is a tall man. Stamets says Ash is grounded for a man who's been under torture for seven months. Stamets is high as a kite. They have found some strange object floating about. Michael talks about these objects being endangered and not reproducing. She suggests beaming it in and she does it.
The creature is like a massive moth. Abnormal readings inside the creature. It opens its mouth and an alien gets out, zapping people. Is that the flamboyant guy? Looks like it. Michael reports the intruder, who kills four crew members. Michael is trapped. Gabriel threatens the alien, who pulls off his mask. Yep, it's the flamboyant guy. He threatens Gabriel with selling his ship to Klingons and killing him as many times as possible. He pushes a button and something happens. BOOM! Everything is exploding.
They are at a party. They are repeating the same dialog and movements as before. They are approached by Stamets, who tells them about a deja vu he's had. He tells them what's going to happen. Doctor drags him away. Ash and Michael try to convince Gabriel to not beam it aboard but Saru says they must. This time, Ash follows along and has his hand on the phaser as Michael approaches the bug.
Black alert triggers. Solar drive has activated. Gabriel is denied access to engineering. Critical drive overload in 3 minutes. Flamboyant guy is there. He says Stewart, his bug, helped him escape. The flamboyant guy keeps yapping. Ash shoots, but his shots are stopped by a forcefield. Michael tells him, "You are mad" but he says, "I am Mudd!" Stamets shows up behind him and shoots him.
He's not concerned with the overload and says he couldn't find a way to stop the overload. BOOM! It's the party again. They are summoned to the bridge. Stamets is at the party too. He's turning into a fun character. He approaches Michael and says about the time loop. She doesn't believe. He repeats her exact words and drags her away. Gabriel is summoned to sickbay. Mudd appears and takes Gabriel hostage. Really unpredictable episode, I like it. He wants to figure out the spore drive.
Michael talks with Stamets about the spore drive and Mudd's time loop. Stamets says Ash spent time with Mudd and asks Michael to say a secret so he can use it as a passphrase when they talk next time. She whispers it to him. He seems stunned and says he's sorry. Gabriel takes Mudd to his quarters, where he's got all those weapons. We see a montage of Mudd killing Gabriel 53 times, no gore any of those times. Mudd says he's got all the time in the world.
Party again. Stamets approaches Michael and says she's never been in love. He sums up the happenings in this episode. She believes him. Stamets asks her to talk to Ash and discover something about Mudd. They are summoned to the bridge but she doesn't go. Stamets tries to encourage her and they dance. This is so sweet, I'm actually amused by this episode. Fun. They chat while dancing.
Stamets tells her to never hide who she is, that's how relationships work. Stamets says she'll do better the next time around. BOOM! Another time loop. Party. Michael and Ash dance. She asks his about Mudd. He becomes cautious. She says Mudd will take over the ship. He's confused and says the night has gotten wierd but also interesting. He kisses her. She says it was nice. They are summoned to the bridge but she stops him. Ash says Mudd robbed a bank by memorizing security patterns.
Ash says it has to do with a non-equilibrium matter state. Michael says she learned about these time crystals at the Vulcan technology school but they were never stable enough to be used this predictably. Mudd is wearing a bracer that's helping him control time. Captain Mudd enters the bridge and beams Gabriel to brig. Saru tries to argue with him. He pulls out a weaponized dark matter pellet. Ash, Michael and Stamets enter. Mudd throws the pellet at Ash, who disintegrates. Michael is angry. Mudd asks how the drive works or Saru is next.
Stamets admits the drive needs him to work. Mudd beams himself and him to engineering. She's talking to Tilly, who's scanning the bug. The creature seems to be the hangar for Mudd's ship and the crystal. Mudd is gloating and records a log. Michael walks into his ready room and chats with him, asking him about Stella. Michael admits she's the one who killed T'Kuvma and would pay even more for her. Mudd is slobbering over it. Michael swallows a dark matter pellet and dies.
Mudd resets the loop. It's the party again. Michael talks to Ash. Mudd is entering the turbolift. Gabriel, Ash and Stamets do something and we see a panel showing that security protocols are now active. Mudd enters the bridge and Gabriel greets him without looking. Everyone important is already waiting for him there. Mudd is confused. Gabriel shows him to the captain's chair. He says Stamets has been cheating and he can find a workaround to whatever he's thought of. Michael says he's won. Mudd chuckles. He's suspecting a double cross.
Gabriel says he'll give the ship, Michael and the drive for Mudd's word that he'll spare the crew. He offers his hand and they shake hands. Mudd is overjoyed and taunts the crew to try and stop him. The bracer that allowed him to loop time disappears from his forearm. The chair says Klingons are en route. Stamets tries to talk to him about Stella. They actually found that Mudd was hiding from Stella, who beams in with her father, who Mudd ripped off. What is this? Stella squeezes Mudd to explain where he's been.
He says he wanted to become a better man. She says she never cared about his problems. Her father says the two can now get married and they all beam out. Mudd gets a happy ending? That's incredible! Michael and Ash talk about their dance and that she liked it. She says her feelings are complicated. Can two Starfleet officers have a romantic relationship?
Another simulation fight. Or is it? Discovery is trying to save another ship but fails. Black alert. Spore drive is on and they flip away from the fight. Cool animation. Gabriel leaves. Stamets is wobbly. His head hurts. He says, "What are you doing down here, captain?" Tilly argues with him and he snaps at her. Gabriel argues with a hologram. All 6 Klingon ships had stealth technology. Eventually, every Klingon ship will have cloak. His team is on a mission to detect cloaked ships.
Michael is on an away mission with Saru and Ash. The planet is called Pahvo. The planet sings and broadcasts the song through a massive obelisk crystal to space (?). The idea is to harness the crystal and use it as a sonar. Saru is setting a brisk pace. Michael says Saru's species can run at up to 89 km/h (!) and can sense predators. He says he's being tortured by this planet's noise. A blue mist gathers in front of them. A show called Discovery finally discovers something! Saru greets the wisp. Michael says it's basically the soul of the forest. More wisps surround them.
General Kol is T'Kuvma's successor. L'Rell, the torturer, strokes his ego. Kol says he only wants Klingon supremacy. L'Rell wants the cloaking technology for her house. She offers to make a prisoner speak. It is Admiral Cornwell, isn't it? I bet it is her.
Blue wisps lead them to a hut of some sort. Saru says they aren't a threat and enters the hut. He talks to a wisp. They chirp and engulf him. He is jolted and feels their intentions. Michael says now they have to follow First Contact protocol: the away team needs the wisps' permission before touching the obelisk.
L'Rell and Admiral Cornwell scream at one another. A Klingon is heard laughing outside the door. Now that's funny. L'Rell says that now they can talk. Back on the surface, Ash tells Michael about his fishing plans when the war ends. She says it sounds perfect. Michael thinks about going back to prison and any freedom she has is temporary. Will they kiss? We had that already in the last episode with the time loop. They kiss.
Back on board, Tilly talks to Stamets about his behavior. He handwaves her concerns and dismisses her. She stays. He says something has been happening to him. His memories and knowledge get jumbled. She asks if the doctor knows about it. He says he can't reveal his DNA changes. Tilly is anxious. L'Rell asks Admiral Cornwell about how Starfleet interrogates prisoners and says she wishes to defect because nobody understands her any longer. This is interesting.
L'Rell says there's no honor in what's happening, says T'Kuvma was chased away and that everyone is gone. She wants safe passage to Discovery. Admiral Cornwell is suspicious and rightfully so. Back on the planet, Saru tells Michael and Ash the wisps are the planet and they thrive here. Saru says these wisps have been trying to communicate themselves to the others. Saru is exhausted because of the noise.
The away team sleeps. Saru is overwhelmed by the noise. He gets outside the tent and sees a wisp. He asks for the noise to stop and the wisp digs into his memories. We see flashbacks of preivous episodes. The wisp disappears. Saru is finally relieved. The next morning, Saru talks to Ash and Michael about wisps and asks for their communicators. He then crushes them. He says the wisps asked them to stay. Saru says the planet is theirs for the taking.
Saru goes out to say to the wisps their offer has been accepted. Michael and Ash argue about communicating to the ship. Ash is for; Michael is against. Ash invokes his rank. L'Rell and Admiral Cornwell walk and talk as Klingon guards spot them. They start beating one another. L'Rell headbutts her and zaps her using a wall conduit. L'Rell says she will dispose of the body and the guards walk away. Saru brings in food for Ash. Michael is gone. Ash asks why is the sound no longer bothering him. Saru says he's now in harmony. They talk about internal conflict. Saru offers him a piece of rock. Ash touches it but pulls back. Saru knows his intentions were to delay him.
Michael reached the obelisk. She opens a Macbook and hooks it up to the obelisk. Saru is running towards her. She boots up the Macbook and sees Saru. L'Rell enters the mortuary and sees her crew. She swears revenge. Saru attacks Michael and smashes the Macbook. She hits him with a stick and phasers him. Twice. He falls down. She says staying here won't solve anything and that they need him. He stands up and is about to attack when wisps teleport Ash in. Wisps surround Saru, who apologizes.
Michael asks for their help to end the war. Saru begs them not to. The obelisk pulses. The look on in awe. Discovery beams them aboard. Saru begs to stay. In the sickbay, Michael lectures Saru, who says that on the planet he finally stopped feeling fear, which he was bred to feel.
L'Rell tells about the spore drive to Kol, but says Admiral Cornwell escaped (??). She kneels and Kol anoints her face with red paint. She is honored to serve him. Kol punishes her and calls her a liar. The Klingons hear the obelisk's signal. Gabriel accuses Michael of inviting the Klingons here to mediate their conflict. Michael says they have to protect Pahvo from Klingons.
Gabriel is ordered by a hologram to let Pahvo be destroyed. He wants to refuse it but can't. He tells his crew to find him a solution within 3 hours; they will start going back home and spore drive back to Pahvo if they find it. Michael says she found some glitches in Klingon ships' cloak. The only trick is that they need to beam over to Klingon ships and install sensors (???).
Doctor says Stamets' DNA is being reorganized. Gabriel thanks the doctor and goes out. Stamets is being asked to make 133 spore drive micro-jumps to make a 3D snapshot of cloaked Klingon ship's frequency (???). Gabriel says Klingons will destroy everything. Gabriel gives a pep talk to Stamets and shows him the spore drive jump data. It appears the spore drive could provide them access to the parallel universe. After the war is won, the journey is continued.
Ash recommends Michael. Gabriel refuses. Michael insists and invokes "logic". Wow, woman's logic. Gabriel caves in. What a weak captain. Tilly has 3 chins. The doctor rages at Stamets for not telling him about the side effects sooner. Pahvo's been approached by the Klingons. Black alert. They spore drive back to Pahvo.
Klingons uncloak and are about to attack Discovery. Ash and Michael beam away. Their life signs are masked as Klingon. They plant the sensors. They somehow have the schematics of the Klingon ship (!!!). The sensor is a huge cylinder that glows and does BEEP-BEEP-BEEP. Yeah, so stealthy. Michael detects a human sign on board. Ash opposes her but caves in. Michael wants to be a hero, jeopardizing the entire mission. Michael hacks but it won't work, Ash pulls out a knife and rips open the panel, cutting some cords and the doors open. Such security.
Wait, how is Admiral Cornwell alive? I don't get this. In her cell is L'Rell. Michael wakes up Admiral Cornwell using some injection she has. Ash is being triggered after seeing L'Rell. Admiral Cornwell can't feel her legs. Ash is frozen but Michael shoots L'Rell before she approached him. Michael states her mission. Admiral Cornwell says Ash has PTSD and won't be of any help anytime soon. So, it's the Super Michael to the rescue. Michael says to Ash that everybody comes home. Yeah, not likely if any Klingon guard sees the cut off cords or comes in to check on the prisoners.
Discovery is outmaneuvering the Klingon ship. Klingons are losing their minds. Michael snuck in and plants the other sensor. My God, it is huge and plays a voice message. So smart. Discovery goes on black alert. It jumps. Michael has her tricorder translate what the Klingons are saying. Discovery warps in a couple times, shooting the torpedos and the Klingon ship cloaks. So, what's the plan right now? Stamets says to the doctor that he loves him. Not a good time for coming out of the closet. Stamets is being torn apart.
Admiral Cornwell tries to console Ash, helping him breathe normally. Stamets is losing his mind. We see a closeup of his eye. Tilly is counting down the jumps. The doctor is worried for his butt buddy. Stamets says something and doctor says to Gabriel to do whatever it takes. Stamets is stabilized. Jump 66. Stamets won't be able to make it.
Michael is spying in on the Klingons. Kol says to engage warp. Michael fires twice and asks to negotiate. They will do melee fighting. Michael has a tricorder that is translating. Kol flips out. Michael accuses him of taking T'Kuvma's place. He is speechless. Michael says he isn't honorable. Kol is being triggered. Michael says she's the one who killed T'Kuvma. Admiral Cornwell and Ash are being cornered and she shoots. He is spaced out but then snaps out of the daze and saves them both
Kol thanks Michael for assassinating T'Kuvma and orders Michael locked up. Michael asks for a duel. Kol laughs and tosses her a blade before taking one himself. They will dance around, won't they? Michael is now an expert hand-to-hand fighter? Discovery finished the jumps. They need 5 minutes to finish the analysis. Kol grabs Michael by the neck and lets her go (???). He slashes her. So many cuts. She stabs his leg and he screams. Ash and Admiral Cornwell are beamed away with L'Rell.
Michael jumps from the balcony and gets beamed out in the air. Gabriel orders all photon torpedoes fired on the Klingon ship. Why did the Klingons stop firing while Discovery was doing jumps? Oh, well, it's a big BOOM, so I already forgot about that plot hole. Michael snatched Georgiou Philippa's communicator off of Kol. Pahvo is safe. Admiral Cornwell is going to make a full recovery.
We hear Gabriel almost complimented by the black Admiral. Gabriel will be awarded the Legion of Honor. Is that a Steam achievement? Michael visits Ash in his chambers. Pahvo is safe. Ash tells her, "You did that." Cool, she should be the only character in this show. Michael asks why Ash reacted that way to L'Rell. He says, "I think you already know." Nice way to dodge the question, dude.
I like how the show is discussing PTSD, that's a very cool angle I haven't seen in any Star Trek show. Kudos for that, guys. Ash pours his heart out and says he saw his way out. He's welling up and his voice is cracking. Michael hugs him. This is without any irony the most touching moment in the show. This is so, so cute and wonderful and beautiful. Michael says that he needs to find peace and he says that he found peace and it's right here. They kiss. Unbelievable, my cynical heart is melting.
Gabriel says to Stamets that he will get the medal. Stamets humbly refuses. Gabriel says they will warp to Starbase 46 but Stamets offers navigating another spore jump. Gabriel thanks him and says the spore drive will allow them to open a whole new universe. Stamets says he'll do one more jump and that's it. He says he needs doctors to examine his condition. Gabriel doesn't push him, which is out of his character.
We see someone having a nightmare, I guess. Extreme closeups of someone sweating and having sex with someone. Ash is being raped? He wakes up panting and sees Michael sleeping next to him. How can they sleep with all those lights. Ash enters the brig, where he sees L'Rell. He falls in front of her and asks, "What did you do to me?" She says she'll never let them hurt him and then "soon". He runs out due to a black alert. Doctor and Stamets kiss on the lips. How is that allowed in the Starfleet? No hierarchy at all. Stamets suggests to the doctor to go on a date when they reach a base. Stamets activates the spore drive, screams and Discovery does... something... (???)
The navigation sequence was incomplete. Stamets falls out of his box. He's crashing. Stamets says he can see them all (??). Gabriel asks what he's looking at and Saru says he isn't sure. Sensors are going haywire. Their starbase isn't where it should be. Saru says he doesn't know where they are. Yeah, it was quite clear that they won't have that date.
Gabriel activates yellow alert. Nobody knows what's happened. Saru says their location is confirmed but nothing else is where it's meant to be. Ash enters the bridge. A Vulcan cruiser is approaching them. Discovery hails them. The Vulcan ship powers up its weapons and fires at them. They shoot but someone else shoots at the Vulcan ship and destroys the Vulcan ship. Those were the rebels. Tilly is cracking. Stamets is offline and so is the drive. Saru says there are inconsistencies in their signatures and Michael says "all matter in our universe has the same consistent signature". Gabriel makes a dramatic pause and says, "This is not our universe." Again the show blows its load waaaaaaaay too quickly, how unsatisfying.
Gabriel introduces the parallel worlds theory. They babble a bit. Those 133 jumps somehow brought them here. Saru says, "Extraordinarily fortunate coincidence." Smart guy. They can't send the frequency of Klingon ship cloak back. Stamets is alive but zoned out. Tilly is soothing him and trying to jog his memory. Wow, this woman is a wreck. How could Starfleet ever recruit such a mentally weak woman? Stamets pushes the doctor away. Yeah, physical abuse in gay relationships is astounding. Tilly blames herself for what's been happening.
Stamets is in a coma, sort of. Gabriel says that he's responsible for his well-being. Doctor says he now handles Stamets's case. Gabriel says his personal bias would compromise his recovery. The doctor is angry but won't do anything. Please give me EMH... The doctor accuses Gabriel of doing this to Stamets on purpose. Gabriel is unphased by it and walks out.
Ash is flying out with a drone. Can't they do this remotely? Michael says they are going for the data core in the Klingon wreckage. Ash is triggered again. My God, these torture scenes are too much. Ash sees bodies in there and almost crashes into debris. Why did they send him out there? He finds a Vulcan and an Andorian corpse in there. He cuts open a hole in the debris and takes out the data core. Gabriel says to Michael to relax. He knows she and Ash are a couple but won't break it up like he did with the doctor and Stamets? That's racist. ding
Ash visits L'Rell. They talk. How can they understand one another without a translator? Ash opens her cell. She is about to kiss him???????? He grabs her by the neck. She triggers him with Klingon words. This is Winter Soldier all over again. So, the brig is not guarded at all? Ash threatens to kill her. L'Rell says something is wrong. He is confused, pushes her inside her cell, closes the forcefield and runs out. What the hell happened?
Ash is sitting in the cantina, staring at his drink. Michael says, "Issak for your thoughts". He says, what's that, and she says it's an old Vulcan saying. She asks him about his driving of the worker bee. He says he's been having flashes and thanks her for covering him. She says he has to tell the captain. He says he can handle it but chokes up and is about to burst into tears. A vulnerable man on TV?! Nani?! Of course, Michael is unbreakable and shows zero signs of any anguish or distress after battling the Klingon warlord. Ash has blanked out and broke a glass with his hands
Tilly examined the data core. Parts are Vulcan but the core is Klingon. Michael will try to figure this out. Tilly tries to console Michael with regards to Stamets. Michael isn't buying it. The data shows they are in a parallel universe where a fascistic Terran Empire rules, while Vulcans and Klingons work together. They could meet a different version of themselves. These Terrans are an oppressive, racist, xenophobic culture ruled by a faceless emperor.
Wow, this is so on the nose. Cooper is incoming. Saru says they switched places with their Discovery. Gabriel gives an order to speak to the Cooper but Michael cuts him off and shows off the new Discovery's captain — Tilly?! What?! Tilly is even more confused than usual. Gabriel tells her to talk to the Cooper pretending to be the captain. She cosplays as the captain and blabbers. So cute. She puts Gabriel on the audio. He sounds like Scotty. Wow, what a cringe. How they didn't burst out laughing is beyond me.
The crew tries to cosplay as this universe's Discovery. Tilly gets an armor and they now rely on her to maintain the cover. This is not going to work, is it? Michael and Gabriel are not aboard this universe's Discovery: Michael is presumed dead and Gabriel is wanted for her murder. It appears they had immense prestige, captaining their ships. Gabriel attempted a coup against the emperor. They recap the show so far.
They are trying to discover who this emperor is. They know it's a savage. Michael might end up saving them all. The data suggests they are not the first ship to end up in this parallel universe. Saru asks how is that possible? Michael says that the Defiant ended up here in some way in the past, so they want to find out how and replicate it. Michael will take Gabriel as a bounty to the Defiant and try to take it. So many plot contrivances here. No way would that data core have all this info. Ash is going to be Burnham's guard.
I don't like this. The show's plot has rapidly disintegrated in the past 2 episodes. They not only jumped into an alternate universe but now have the chance to meet up with alternate timeline versions of themselves, seeing how there might be a temporal anomaly at play. No other Star Trek show made the plot this contrived. I feel my IQ dropping.
Ash asks the doctor about Klingons doing something to him. The doctor says he went through a full set of scans when he came back, including random memory sampling, and how the Manchurian test is highly effective in detecting brainwashing. So, it's magic? He's been enchanted. Dude, Ash is telling you something is wrong, why not trust him? Ash says he wants to know what's happening to him.
Stamets yells, "Stay out of the palace". The doctor approaches him and tries to caress his temple, kissing him on the mouth. Ugh, why am I seeing this? Is the doctor violating him when nobody's looking? I bet he is. Now you're imagining it. Welcome to Star Trek: Discovery. Stamets says that the enemy is here. Tilly is terrified and excited. She gets to cosplay as her evil self. It's literally a cosplay, with armor and all. Wow, what a beautiful girl-power fantasy, but not fit for a Star Trek show. Michael is dressed up too and tells her not to apologize.
Michael teaches Tilly how to project strength. She says Terrans' strength is only a facade. Inspiring music swells up. Gabriel enters, dressed up as Mad Max. The three of them exit. Tilly shouts orders. They hail the Shenzhou and the captain of it is a guy that died at the start of the show. Michael walks in with Gabriel and asks to command Shenzhou once again. The guy, captain Connor, refuses because there are rebels. Tilly says she would cut off his tongue and use it to lick her boots. My God, this is just an awful character arc.
Doctor examines Ash, who tells him there are masses of scar tissue around all his organs. The doctor says all his bones were "crushed" and this is just now found. It appears the Klingons have transformed Ash into something. Ash freaks out. The doctor refuses and Ash breaks his neck. Well, I just started connecting with that character. Nah, just kidding. Stamets says that the enemy is here. Gabriel and Michael get ready to beam over to Shenzhou. Saru is now in charge.
Ash walks in. He says he isn't sure how he's feeling but recovers, apologizes and gets ready to get beamed over with the two. Gabriel tells him decency is a sign of weakness with Terrans. They beam over and are greeted. Shenzhou crew wants to grab Gabriel but Michael says he's all hers. They enter the brig and see people being tortured in go-go booths. Michael won't allow it and goes to her ready room. Michael and Connor ride the turbolift. He opens up to her, pulls out a dagger and attacks her. She pulls off a Captain America, kicks a panel and turns off the turbolift for a moment, which launches them both in the air, grabbing his dagger and stabbing him in the gut.
Such an interesting character. Now he's dead. Oh joy, just when I started connecting to him. Michael enters the bridge and the crew claps. The chair is hers. She is addressed as "Sir" and the crew chants: "Long live Captain Burnham". She takes off her armor in the ready room. Ash is already there and scares the hell out of her. He says the access codes are the same as on Discovery (???????). She couldn't get access to the files. He heard about what happened and needs to tell her something: "I am here to protect you". She hugs him and they kiss. Poor Gabriel. He's being tortured in the go-go chamber while Michael chills.
Flickering lights. Someone is welding something aboard a ship. No, it's sparks. Aaargh, my leukemia is acting up. Some voice is heard. "Forest"? Stamets is hugging the dead doctor and saying "trees". Michael can't rest and her eyes open. It's like waking from the worst nightmare she can imagine. She flinches when someone enters, it's Saru who says he's a slave and has no name. She takes a bath while Saru is washing and massaging her, doing a pretty poor job of it. She gets dressed while thinking about pretending. She enters the transport room, where three people are beamed to space to die because of wrongthink against the Emperor.
She is continuing her internal monologue with Ash, who's hugging her. He shares his experience with flying in space. He says, "You are my tether". They kiss. Someone enters. It's Saru with a plate of food. She sends Ash to check on Gabriel. She calls him Saru, in honor of a respected friend. Discovery is hailing her. It's Tilly, who says, "They have mister Saru" (??). Discovery's Saru asks her about the data, which she has but we have no idea how she got. She can't transmit the data. He says she has to find a way. She says she will. He asks if she has found any Kelpiens on board. She lies and says no.
Saru and Tilly talk. They discuss telling Michael the truth. They think Stamets killed the doctor. Tilly says Stamets didn't kill anyone and that his brain shows he tried to reach beyond the cloud of confusion. She says she is qualified to treat him. Her lower lip quivers. This girl is a nervous wreck. Michael is hailed by Captain Maddox of the Imperial flagship. He is pleased she is alive. FIre Wolf has been located on Harlac. He is the Klingon leader of resistance. Michael is ordered to kill them all.
Michael shouts at her crew and calls them soft. She wants to have a landing party and get the intel needed to bury the resistance. 14 minutes in the episode, the title sequence???!!! Gabriel talks to her and tells her to wipe out the resistance. Sometimes the end justifies terrible means. She says the suffering has influenced his judgment and refuses. The resistance is the closest thing to a Federation this universe has. The first time Starfleet's standards were mentioned, and it's when Gabriel's commands were questioned. He tells her to hurry back, "please".
Tilly says Stamets called her captain before she became it (this was in Episode 8). This means he's psychic, obviously. It couldn't be ramblings of a brain-damaged man who navigated the mycelial network 134 times in one day. Stamets's neurons mimic the mycelial network. "Internal transdimensional portal". They need to balance his brain, basically expose him to spores. She does so. Stamets is... twitching... bobbing his head. Ash and Michael talk. She tells him to follow her lead. So, the two of them will beam down. I bet she will do everything alone. Again they hold phasers at the ready as they're being beamed.
They are beamed right in front of the base. Smart choice. BOOM! Stuff blows up. They are in a quarry. Someone is shooting at them from high ground and misses a couple times. Michael stops Ash from shooting and takes his phaser. She puts both their phasers on the ground and seeks an audience with the Fire Wolf. She says, "We come in peace". They are captured and led across some ponds. Everything is bluish. The base uncloaks in front of them, because they have infinite power for it, of course. The base has braziers with burning fire in them at the gate.
They meet Fire Wolf, who says he's Voq. Ash gets triggered. Voq accuses her of being a butcher and goes at her. She stops him through words. Again no guards around them. Michael offers a safe evacuation of his people and bombarding the base. They will bring out the prophet now. It is Sarek. He will do something to Michael. Let's see. He reads her mind. We see flashbacks. Sarek sees a world bursting with potential. "She means us no harm". Well, that settles it. Voq orders evacuation. Michael says Voq and Sarek working together is amazing. She needs to know how they managed to embrace each other.
Voq mentions the light of Kahless and Ash gets triggered again. He hyperventilates. He hears T'Kuvma's words. Voq explains his reasons for fighting. Ash keeps getting triggered. Michael keeps questioning Voq as Ash keeps getting triggered. Ash attacks Voq as Michael says "No". Voq throws him down and is about to kill him. Sarek stops Voq and says Michael's motives are pure and she is an outsider. Michael says they have one hour to flee but she needs a proof her mission was successful. She is given intel on the locations of rebel listening stations with the note that, "By the time the crew has deciphered the code, we will render the intel inactionable." HOW????????????????? Ash and Michael leave.
Michael and Ash beam to Shenzhou. Michael gives the data to the crew and moves to her quarters, Ash alongside her. Tilly babbles about spores restoring Stamets's brain. His heart accelerates. Tilly says it's expected. It's working. Saru says that her comprehension of "astral mycology" is impressive. What the hell. Stamets is dying but the treatment is nearly done. Tilly says they can't stop the treatment. Saru lets the doctors try to revive Stamets. It's failing. Tilly weeps.
Michael asks Ash for the truth. She is devastated. Just kill him. Ash gets triggered again. He has rape flashbacks. He says he's forced to listen to L'Rell. He starts shouting and remembers what they did to him. He is twitching. He says "they reduced the Klingon body to human". So Klingons are expert surgeons now? He babbles about something. This is like Pierce Brown's Red Rising book series where Darrow gets a surgery to become a member of the Gold caste, wow what a ripoff. He admits to being a turncoat. He says he is Voq. Wow, what a twist. Michael says he's going to be all right when they return. Ash admits to killing the doctor and remembers T'Kuvma's death.
Ash taunts Michael, who is about to bawl her eyes out. Ash remembers fighting her as Voq. He describes their fight. She realizes he's Voq. He grabs her by the neck and is about to kill her when Saru enters with two guards and they grab Ash, taking him away. How convenient. She is suggested to execute Ash and agrees. Stamets is still alive? Tilly says she's sorry. He twitches. The console rings. His brain is activating. Tilly is breathless. Wow, the guy got paid for doing nothing the past couple episodes but sitting still and twitching. Stamets is dreaming about being in a forest and meeting himself.
Michael attends Michael's beaming to space. She approaches him. No! Please no more stupid moves. He speaks Klingon. She punches him in the gut. It does nothing. She stays the execution and beams him to space personally. We don't see him die, though. She asks for Gabriel delivered to her ready room. Now we see Ash dying but then he is beamed back to Discovery. Ash wanted to die. Saru says, "We're still Starfleet". Yes! That's the spirit! Ash had a data disk stuck in his holster. That's why she punched him!
Wait, so Discovery was near Shenzhou all this time? Makes no sense but OK. Michael talks to Gabriel, who can barely cobble sentences due to torture. He says they will survive this together. Another ship is targeting the rebel base and bombards it. BOOM! So many explosions. The planet is exploding???????? Seems like it. The emperor did it. Philippa? She says she wants her orders respected and Michael bows in subservience.
Michael is taking Gabriel in a shuttle to the imperial flagship. They decrypted the data and found it's all been redacted except the phrase "interphasic space". She injects him with a painkiller. He encourages her and says he needs her. She says this feels like a reckoning. He says her Georgiouu is a ghost. They dock with the imperial flagship. Tilly is happy with Stamets's recovery. Saru admires her optimism. Saru is summoned to the sickbay. He says Tilly to fix Stamets, who is talking to himself in the mycelial forest.
Stamets's doppleganger is teasing him and tells him he's still alive. The doppleganger is him in another universe. They shake hands and teleport to a hallway. The doppleganger was conducting experiments on the imperial flagship and also ended in the mycelial limbo. This explains why the real Stamets saw Tilly as the captain. Something is corrupting the network and coming down the hallway. Looks like a red cloud of bees. How unimaginative They run to the engineering.
Michael and Gabriel approach the Emperor Philippa. Looks very Chinese, with all the gilded armors. Oh no, I can barely hear what she's saying. Michael is asked to choose one. It's three Kelpiens, all looking like Saru. Gabriel is shown to the Emperor. He won't bow. She hits him with a stick and promises torture. He is taken to brig C, so Michael knows where he is. The Emperor says she's happy and caresses her face, saying "dear daughter". Everyone claps. All we need is Joffrey.
Ash is having a meltdown and shouting in Klingon. Saru is confused. The doctor is also confused. Ash calls Saru and asks for Michael. He asks for help but then starts struggling again. He is sedated. Gabriel is taken to the go-go cage and zapped. He screams. Michael eats a bit of soup. The Emperor says, "no one prepares Kelpien like the imperial chef". Michael chokes. The Emperor offers her a ganglia. Funny. Michael barely swallows and calls her generous. They chat for a while. Tense situation, I guess. The Emperor puts a knife under her throat. Michael begs. The Emperor calls the guards and wants to execute her for treason.
In the astral world engineering, the two Pauls are brainstorming the solution. The mirror Stamets has a disease because of being inside the network too long. The gay doctor is there too and the real Paul chases after him. The Emperor shiiings her sword. Michael is silent. The Emperor says she loves her. How is she her mother??????? Michael admits to being from another universe and having proof in her pocket. The Emperor orders a guard to get this proof. It's Philippa's communicator. Will this work? The Emperor throws a disc that kills all her advisors except one. Wow, it worked... Who would have thought it?
Saru feeds L'Rell. He wants to know how to cure Ash. She says he has awoken and there is no way to help him. Saru tells her they are in an parallel universe and she should ease his pain. She says they harvested Ash's DNA and his consciousness (????????) and then molded Voq, grafting his psyche (????). Stamets is out cold, chasing the gay doctor in the astral plane. He leads him to a room. The doors open. Stamets enters. Water drips. Jumpscare? The doors close. The doctor is there and greets him. Stamets asks if he's caught in the network too but he says he's gone.
Michael tries getting the Emperor's help. They do some chit-chat about what's going on. The Emperor says the redacted files won't help them. The interphasic space crossing meant the Defiant's crew went insane. The Emperor asks how they got there and Michael says "spore drive". The Emperor demands the schematics in exchange for Michael's freedom. Saru shows L'Rell how Ash struggles and wounds himself. Saru beams Ash into her cell. She embraces him and says it can be undone. Wait, undoing it will turn him to Voq, right?
Gabriel is being zapped. A captain makes it personal and shows some poison. A guy is brought in. Gabriel has no idea what's being asked of him. He has to say some woman's name and the other prisoner will be spared but he had no idea who it is. He doesn't know what to say and the prisoner gets his head splattered all over the interrogation cube's wall.
L'Rell has tech fingers that glow. She touches Ash's head and he yells in pain. They speak in Klingon. We see his brain is doing something from the panel behind them. Flashback. The couple of scenes with Voq are shown. Stamets and the doctor talk in the astral plane. Another flashback, but it contains scenes from both of them. The doctor says he made him feel safe. The doppelganger Stamets bangs on the door and tries to rush the original Stamets. Wow, can they introduce more copies of Stamets? We see the two of them brushing teeth. Again!
Their environment changed but they're still in their quarters. They're talking about how they feel. The doctor tries to instill confidence in Stamets. The doctor also has a decaying arm and says Stamets can save the network. Stamets is told to "open his eyes". Opera is playing in the background. Will they kiss again? They kiss. Wow, thanks STD. The alternate universe Stamets opens his eyes and gets up. He is on a Terran ship He says, "He did it". All right, now the REAL-REAL Stamets wakes up in the spore drive navigation chamber and walks. That's it, he just wills his eyes open and gets up. Tilly gets all giddy. Stamets enters the spore forest and realizes the trees have died. He says they're too late and sickness has already spread. How come nobody checked up on the trees at all?
Michael and Saru talk. They are arranging an extraction. Philippa mocks her devotion. Gabriel is still being tortured and he still has to say the woman's name. Michael and Philippa are still talking about something. I'm not feeling it. Philippa says Gabriel led her here and that his treachery crosses universes. Michael is told that humans from this universe are sensitive to light, which wasn't established at all when they crossed over.
So, the Gabriel we met in Episode 3 was actually the alternate Gabriel, who crossed to the Federation universe how exactly? Gabriel pretends he's dead, is let out of the go-go cage and he breaks free, killing his guard. What a gambit, not even Batman could pull this off. Gabriel says the woman's name: "Eva".
Nearly every episode has a different director. We see Gabriel's flashback and hear his narration. He wants to reclaim his Empire. He releases alternate Landry from a go-go cage. They enter engineering and find alternate Stamets missing. Gabriel reaches in and finds him inside an illusionary wall, which is a technology we probably won't see again, just like that disc or the breath print. They talk. We hear Gabriel's story on how he switched universes. Gabriel says that, check this out, his ship got hit with a torpedo and he flew into an ion storm, which must have swapped his transporter signatures (?????????????).
Dust is blowing through vents. Dead crew. Philippa's flagship is being taken over by Gabriel. Michael tries to help Philippa and wants to contact Discovery but is taken to the brig. Again?? She kicks the guards, shoots at a vent grate and slides through it. One-in-a-million move. There were 20 guards in the room and none could hit her. Saru is moving to the flagship. Spore drive is active but the mycelial crop is destroyed. They see the alternate Stamets has somehow figured out to draw power from the mycelial network, which is corrupting it. We hear that Terrans are so egotistical that they think they can draw resources infinitely, which destroys the environment. Get it?
The two talk. He trash talks her. Gabriel offers the crew to join him. Why is the Empress letting her crew hear this?! Philippa finds his location and sends her guards. She is leading the battalion. Why are they hailing her with "Long live the Emperor"? The battalion enters a mega dark room, all armed. They meet an officer, who was spared to send a message and then gets disintegrated. A bunch of rifles get powered up and start shooting but a forcefield stops the shots. Philippa touches a button on her bracer and turrets appears on columns, shooting at Gabriels troops. Arrgh, all this flashing is making my ingrown toenail act up.
Philippa's troops shoot back. Gabriel throws in a flash grenade and Philippa's troops get decimated. She gets beamed away. Landry wants to kill alternate Stamets. Michael is hailing Discovery. One guard entered the vent after her but we have no idea where he is. Discovery responds. Michael updates everyone. Saru says that's impossible because he didn't sense anything. Stamets figures out the 133 jumps were fake and says about the exploitation of the mycelial network by Terrans. Somehow, that will destroy all life in all universes. How???
Tilly says the containment field is keeping the Terran flagship orb safe. Michael says she will take care of it. Gabriel enters the throne room. Where is that flying disc now? Gabriel grabs the Empress's sword and holds a speech about fate yet he previously babbled on about destiny. Don't STD writers know fate and destiny aren't the same? Fate is predetermined and destiny has to be actively fulfilled. Alternate Stamets is about to be executed by being thrown into the core of mycelial network but then Landry shoots him and he disappears. Just like that. Landry says she noticed someone contacting another ship.
Gabriel addresses Michael. Why doesn't he release a sleeping gas or something? Michael responds to him by... doing something. Whatever, let's just finish this shitty season. They talk. Gabriel says the Federation is a social experiment doomed to failure, "childish idealism". He tries to win her over. Wow, we see dozens of video screens all over the place transmitting the video. Landry goes to her location and figures out she's not there. So, hacker, Messiah, fighter.
I hate how these phasers make a rising, buzzing noise when being powered up, which ruins any element of surprise. Philippa says her bracelets make her life sign undetectable but Michael found her. I guess Michael is psychic too, why not? They talk. They relate. Michael has a plan. Stamets lays out his plan. They don't have the firepower to breach the orb, so they would have to load up the torpedos with all their spores. Tilly says Discovery will be destroyed too.
Saru says he doesn't sense the coming of death. We heard this before. He says he trusts them. Shaky cam. Landry reports killing officers but gets an alert. I bet it's Michael leading Philippa. Correct. She offers herself and Philippa. She says she's offering him her mind, no more. What? Philippa says she's destined to kill him. Gabriel laughs. His crew laughs. He says, "Welcome home, Michael". Tilly is giddy. She analyzed the simulation. Stamets joins in. He could navigate Discovery home. He basically wants to coordinate the spore and warp drives by riding the flagship orb shockwave.
Discovery reaches the flagship. Gabriel hails them. Saru receives his call. Gabriel says goodbye to the crew and says he admired them. He offers them to join his crew and shows Michael has joined him. Michael does a couple kicks and Discovery fires. Saru becomes bossy. Michael and Philippa awkwardly wrestle with Gabriel's crew. Michael takes a stick and hits a couple guards, then starts fighting with Landry. Shaky caaaaaaaam. Quick cuts. Uh-ah-hnggh-aiyaaaah-pew-pew-pew-aaaaaa-ktching-tink-paf-bam-toom-tap-taff-hegh-tek. Michael and Gabriel exchange one-liners and she finally grabs a phaser.
She says she would have helped Gabriel go back home. Wait, this is his home. She lowers her phaser. Philippa stabs Gabriel through the chest. Where did she come from? Gabriel falls into the spore drive orb, which is massive. He disintegrates, like all other people who died in this show, which is meant to minimize gore. Discovery can't beam Michael off the flagship. Philippa will buy Michael some time as Gabriel's crew tries to enter the throne room. Philippa one-shots guards as they enter. Discovery finally gets a lock on Michael and she beams away as she grabbed Philippa. Both are safe.
Black alert goes on. Let's see this. Landry tries to target Discovery, which starts... doing... something. Discovery is ramming the spore orb and fires at it as it goes through it. BOOM! Discovery enters warp. This has exactly zero chance of working. They turn on the spore drive and zoom away. They're going through some tunnel of light. Stamets is shaking in his navigation chair. The ship feels like falling apart. "The pathways are bifurcating too quickly." Stamets doesn't know where to go. They still haven't exited the tunnel. Stamets remembers the opera astral projection dream and hears the opera. They exit.
The entire ship is filled with spores. Philippa says, "What have you done to me?" Stamets reports to Saru and says they overshot by nine months. The crew is bedazzled. There is no Federation response. They turn on the warmap and see an animation. Saru says that the Klingons have won the war. So, the Federation couldn't resist for nine months?
So, what happened to Ash Tyler? Saru sees Philippa, who tells him to get on his knees and aims a phaser rifle at him. Saru orders Philippa beamed to guest quarters and accuses Michael of lying about there being no Kelpiens in this universe. He says the crewmember mustn't speak to anyone or he will be charged with treason. He is summoned to the sick bay. Saru updates her on the situation. Michael learns about Ash. So, how will she react to Ash? She doesn't want to see him, turns around and walks away. Wow, nice resolution to the buildup. The doctor says Ash is neither or both human and Klingon.
Saru enters the sickbay and talks to Ash. He seems present and says he can access Voq's memories. The procedure he underwent is called "special reassignment protocol", Voq was the test case (!!!!) and it went like this:
They flayed his [Voq's] skin, cracked his bones open, sawed his heart into pieces. You think that would be the worst of it, then they start shaving the tips of your fingers.
Voq and L'Rell were in love. Ash promises to share everything he knows. Saru says Michael has returned. Ash is stricken with grief. He is given a tracking bracelet. A vessel is approaching them. A transporter is approaching. Several people beam over and aim their phaser rifles at them. Admiral Cornwell and Sarek beam over. Admiral Cornwell initiates the control override and Sarek starts with the mind meld on Saru. Sarek says Gabriel is dead.
Admiral Cornwell destroys a bowl of perfectly fine fortune cookies. She is angry. Michael looks at Saru as in, "Uh-oh". Funny. Sarek says they were all deceived. We learn the Terran Discovery was destroyed. Now they have the cloak-breaking frequency they got at Pahvo. Klingons killed 11,000 civilians. They did suicide missions, destroying 1/3 of Starfleet. Children were made orphans. There's no pattern to their attacks. They are divided without a leader.
Sarek says their aim seems clear and they are competing for domination. Wow. Nearly 20% of former Federation space has been occupied. All evidence of their journey will be classified and destroyed. Nice retcon. People who knew about alternate universes would want to retrieve their loved ones who died. Admiral Cornwell asks if the spore drive is usable but Stamets says they've exhausted all the spores. Michael shows her the Empress.
Admiral Cornwell is not intimidated. Sarek asks about her knowledge of Philippa. The Empress is coy and self-confident, asking to be sent home. Michael says she can be given asylum. Admiral Cornwell says she doesn't know how to send her back to her universe. Stamets meets Ash, who says he's sorry. Stamets enjoys verbally abusing Ash for what he did. Ash enters the cantina, where his bracelet magically disappears and reappears. The murmur stops. He sits alone. Tilly sits with him and acts as a true friend. Other crewmembers join.
Saru reports to Admiral Cornwell. They reached the starbase but can't reach it. Saru's flaps activate. They see debris. Klingon crest on the starbase. How did they paint it there????? Michael knows which Klingon house it is. 274 Klingons on board. No humans. There were 80,000 souls on that base. Just let Michael loose on them and GG. They escape. Saru talks to the Admiral, who goes to the brig. She talks to L'Rell and tries to relate to her. Admiral Cornwell says the Klingons are not united. L'Rell says this is war and there are no rules. Admiral Cornwell asks how to end the war. L'Rell says it doesn't and Klingons will not negotiate.
Michael informs Philippa that she has to stay on Discovery. Philippa says she must have a connection with Sarek. Michael asks how she defeated the Klingons. She says the Klingons are like cancer cells and they have to destroy the source. Michael visits Admiral Cornwell with a proposal – attack their home planet, Qo'noS. Admiral Cornwell consults with holograms; she suggests attacking Qo'noS but others suggest defending Earth because they have no info.
Qo'noS has a network of caves and they can go inside one of those caves. Stamets says he can feel the mycelial network and detect caves. All right, whatever. They don't have the spores. Stamets has a plan and sets the course. It's an uninhabited moon where Stamets plans to plant his original spore mushroom. Sarek and the Empress talk. They banter. She wants to help him end this war. In her world, Qo'noS is a blackened mass of dust. Sarek doesn't want to embrace her methods. She plays the logic card and wants freedom in return.
They talk. He teases her about falling in love with a Klingon. She admits to making foolish choices. He says logic dictates that each farewell may be their last and flashes a gang sign. She flashes one back. He beams away. Michael talks to Tilly. Sarek is Michael's father??? Just learned that. They talk about the effects of war. Tilly talks about fighting with the darkness inside and brings Ash. Michael won't hear about him. Tilly tries to mend broken bonds. It's not super effective.
Admiral Cornwell is in charge. They reached the moon. Stamets initiates the "mycelial injection protocol". Discovery drops a few dozen pods. What are they meant to do? What if the atmosphere isn't good enough? Whatever, let's do this. The pods spread their wings and softly land. They fire down the plants. Pods start firing EM darts at the ground (???). The roots grow. Cool animation. In a few seconds, an entire forest has grown. It starts releasing spores. The crew smiles.
She enters his room. Awkward silence. He says he's sorry and is about to cry. She asks if he ever loved her. He starts arguing. She is taken aback. Soap opera drama. She is falling apart. OMG, let's do some discovering already. She can't forgive him. He can't forgive himself. She says they created something beautiful today (referring to the moon). She walks out. He is crying. Sad moment, I guess.
Admiral Cornwell reports to Sarek's hologram. He says the rest of the Federation council has agreed to go to Qo'noS. Admiral Cornwell speaks to the entire crew. She says they will jump to Qo'noS and that they brave. Nobody ever visited Qo'noS? She does say the last one was Captain Archer nearly 100 years ago, referring to Star Trek: Enterprise. There is only one person that knows the way to Qo'noS – Philippa. Everyone is stunned as she walks in and Admiral Cornwell explains her appearance as her being rescued. Philippa addresses Michael and tells her to take her station. She says, "Yes, captain".
Qo'noS. We hear Michael narrating. It's a story about a general and a novice soldier trying to recognize fear. Philippa warns the crew to stop being so lax with how they address Qo'noS; for her, Klingons are animals. Michael continues the narration. Saru asks for her help and says Philippa doesn't embody Federation ideals. Philippa lashes out at Michael leaving her station and licks her lips while taunting Saru. What the hell is going on? Michael again challenges Philippa's authority. What the hell are these people doing? Michael asks about the birth place of Philippa and she answers.
The two go for a walk. Philippa knows about Michael's actions and says she has no follow-through – she should have killed the original Philippa instead of disabling her, attacked the Klingons and become a hero. Michael grabs Philippa by the arm, who warns her to never do that again.
Michael and Philippa go to visit L'Rell in the brig, who is shocked at seeing a woman the Klingons killed and ate. L'Rell is shown Qo'noS's surface but won't cooperate. Philippa enters the cell and starts hitting L'Rell. Michael can't look. L'Rell is bleeding but laughs, saying, "You have already lost". Michael shouts and says there's another way. Mind meld? Michael and Philippa visit Ash, who is tying a knot (??). Oh, he's trying to remember who he is. He says Voq's memories are there but he will share them only for Starfleet, not Philippa.
They will use a drone in preparation of a full-scale attack. They depend on black market surveys acquired by Vulcans. Ash points at the 3D map and says which of dormant vulcanoes lead to caves. He says they have to land. Philippa says Ash will come with them to Qo'noS and also summons Tilly, who is nervous and babbling. Why is she coming? Philippa reminisces. Tilly figures out she's the Terran Empress. Philippa touches her frizzy hair and says it's hideous. Tilly says she knows. Her duty will be to carry the mapping drone.
Black alert triggers. Discovery enters the underground. This should be causing massive earthquakes. Stamets congratulates himself. The away party beams away: Ash, Michael, Philippa and Tilly. We see the Klingon slums. They beam right in the middle of it. They see the Klingon bums. They have two urethras? Strippers dancing etc. They bring a couple pistols to the black market. The smuggler is humanoid and isn't impressed. Tilly is hungry and calls Michael away. They talk while eating skewered meat. Tilly says she's got her back.
Philippa and Ash approach. The meat was the space whale, the same one from the time loop episode. Tilly nearly vomits. Philippa leads them to a circus (??). Seems like a brothel. Strippers again. Humanoids galore. They watch the show. Philipps hands the money over to Ash and tells him to buy information. Two barely clothed people approach them. Philippa is excited. Tilly is neurotic again. Philippa says they are both for her and that she should guard the drone.
Ash enters a room where Klingons gamble by throwing massive dice. Ash says Voq knows the game. A Klingon approaches and calls them spies. Ash says he's here to win and starts pushing the Klingons around. Michael is dazed. Ash is laughing and the Klingons are too. Humanoids are getting high. One of them invites Tilly and offers her drugs. She refuses and the humanoid threatens to kick her out. She inhales the drug and is feeling dizzy. She will lose the drone, won't she? Wow, why did they split up?
Michael is at a tattoo parlor. Ash says nobody knows anything. The two have an awkward conversation. Why were they splitting up?? Michael talks about her parents. This is completely out of place. They are in hostile territory. Whatever, let's finish this. Michael talks about hiding while her parents were being killed. Klingons ate dinner, talked and laughed. She's got serious issues. Ash can see both sides, literally. He sees Klingons setting a drink on fire, which somehow shows they are the followers of a shrine that is in a volcano they're after.
She grabs a girl she slept with and tries to extract information. Tilly wakes up and sees the humanoid who gave her drugs toying with her drone. She opens the case and figures out it is a bomb. She gets knocked out by Philippa. Tilly says to Ash and Michael that the bomb will make Qo'noS uninhabitable. Why is that a problem? They wanted to do it, right? Michael contacts Discovery, who tells her they've found Philippa at a shrine but the shrine's shields make it impossible to beam her out and the bomb has been tossed into the volcano already. My God, this is so stupid.
Qo'noS is blowing up. BOOM! Actually, it was a simulation. Michael is back on Discovery trying to shame Admiral Cornwell. She is undeterred. Michael threatens mutiny. Saru says that they are Starfleet. The rest of the crew joins him. Philippa is at the shrine. Michael is there too. How convenient. Philippa is smiling, points the phaser at and asks Michael to join her. Michael tries to negotiate and then grabs Philippa's phaser, pushing it into her chest. What a stupid bluff. Philippa stupidly falls for it and graciously offers the detonator (!!!!!!!!!). My God, what a dumb plot resolution.
L'Rell enters with Ash into the shrine. Michael tells the bomb has been planted. Why is Michael negotiating with L'Rell, who has no leverage? Oh, she gave the detonator to L'Rell and told her to bring Klingons to her heel. Ash talks to her using Voq's memories and words. He says Voq has always believed in her. Philippa walks away free. Please, make this end. Just blow it all up.
Back in the black market, Ash says, "Issak for your thoughts". So clever. How can they trust L'Rell? Ash says he is going with her. They both choke. Ash says he's no good for either side but might be good for both. Ash says her capacity for love literally saved his life. Kiss? She leans in but they only hug. They then kiss. It's 5-6 time they've kissed so far in the show? Wow, so Star Trek. Ash says "thank you" and walks away, giving her the knot. She cries. Ash and L'Rell beam out. Michael beams out to Discovery too.
L'Rell speaks about T'Kuvma and his beliefs. She says Klingons have lost their way and the war has consumed them. She says she's the leader and all the Klingons laugh. She shows the detonator. How does she plan to fulfill her threat? She says they will be one again. Sure, give a woman total control over the Klingon empire. How empowered, progressive, smart and sci-fi. We see ships zooming out. Michael narrates. The war is over.
Michael meets someone who says, "Issak for your thoughts". None of them know what an "issak" is. Wow. Michael reminisces. The person is her mother aka Sarek's wife. Sarek approaches too. He and Michael walk. Sarek says that she was able another way and how her commitment to Starfleet ideals was commendable. Her record is expunged and she is pardoned, being given the rank of Commander. SHE ASSAULTED HER CAPTAIN AND TRIED TO DO A MUTINY! Sarek will travel to Vulcan in Discovery. Michael holds a speech in front of Discovery crew and an amphitheater of people (?) and finishes her story about the general and fear. The moral of the story is to say "no" to fear. Tilly is accepted into Starfleet training program. Stamets too. Saru is given the Medal of Honor.
Back on Discovery, Saru enters the bridge. They set the course for Vulcan and engage maximum warp. Something is happening, a transmission is incoming. Federation ID code. They drop out of warp. The other ship is the USS Enterprise and Captain Pike is there. We hear the original Star Trek theme.
Let's get this shitshow on the road. So far, Saru is the only who showed some gut and brain. Hopefully, he gets some more screen time. We see the same Enterprise introduction as from episode 15. Narration. The final frontier. Michael. A story about an African tribe and their creation myths. Some sort of message was written in the stars. Flashback of Sarek and his wife, Amanda, adopting Michael. Why not just name her Michaela? Nope, it has to be a man's name.
The flashback is still going. Sarek introduces Michael to Spock. Star Trek theme is in the background. Spock summons a hologram monster and shuts the doors to his room. The flashback ends. Enterprise is in distress. Tilly shouts they should use the Morse code just as all the alerts die down. Aw-kward cringe fiesta. Captain Pike requests permission to board Discovery.
Michael joins Saru in welcoming the guests. Saru tries to put her at ease but she's not admitting to being anxious. Saru has a sister, Siranna, but there's terrain between them they can't navigate. The guests beam in. They have those old school Star Trek uniforms. Captain Pike offers to shake Saru's hand and says he's here to take over Discovery. There's a threat. Saru and Michael compliment the guests' uniforms.
Seven red bursts appeared across 30,000 light years in precise coordination. I don't think writers know what a light year is – it's the distance light travels in a year. If they appeared right now, it means they were there up to 30,000 years ago!!!!!!!! Only one is active now. Michael shows her intellectual superiority and condescends. Captain Pike mentions Spock. The show has finally got some pep in its step. They discuss the signal in the turbolift. Pike asks for command codes but Saru says he'll need the DNA authorization. Tilly is the one verifying it.
Tilly flirts with Captain Pike. Is she high or drunk? His file pops up on the view. He humblebrags about his achievements and says he knows about how Gabriel betrayed his crew. He mentions how the Klingon war started and says this signal could also be a big deal. They move at warp 5 to the remaining signal. Captain Pike takes the chair and says, "Hit it." Enterprise stays behind, critically damaged.
Discovery is traveling through a spore drive channel. Stamets is watching the doctor on the big screen but it's actually an AR display (?). Tilly interrupts and babbles on about her assignment but Stamets interrupts her with Hugh's words on opera. She calls Discovery "Disco". She says she's drunk on power and got him extra space. He is indifferent and says the Vulcan Science Academy offered him a teaching position? He again trails off on opera divas. He is burned out and can't stop thinking about Hugh.
Tilly says Discovery might be "good haunted" for him. He says she's incandescent and will be a magnificent captain. He tells her to say fewer things. She doesn't want him to go. He walks out without saying a word. Michael reads Alice in Wonderland and is having a flashback about Amanda doing the same for her. So many candles, fog and a vaseline layer on the lens. Sarek interrupts and enters. He says he was listening to Amanda reading to her. He says he will be leaving.
Sarek will work on deciphering the signals. He mentions "High Chancellor" L'Rell and how the Klingons have no idea what they are. They discuss Spock's involvement. She reminisces. Sarek wanted Spock to learn empathy from her. This goes on for way too long. Michael enters the bridge. Pike does a roll call. They drop out of warp in the middle of a debris field. Something's happening. There's no red signal anywhere.
Something hits the ship. Pike orders following it. It's an asteroid. They get pushed apart. Asteriod gets pushed to a pulsar. They have five hours. Michael suggests using cameras on the hull to observe the asteroid. Pike agree. She says there's a Starfleet vessel on the asteroid. They don't respond to hails. Michael tells Saru to zoom in with his eyes and he does. It's the USS Hiawatha, a medical frigate thought destroyed by the Klingons 10 months ago. They will prep a landing party. They can't beam to it due to a cloud of charged particles. A shuttle can't land.
Pike wants to go down there and rescue people. They can't scan the vessel and don't know if there's anyone down there at all. Saru suggests that it's suicide to land there. Michael challenges Pike. He shouts at her and says they have to come with solutions. Michael stands up to Pike and tries shaming him. She suggests pattern enhancers to beam back. Tilly asks Michael to bring back a sample because the mushrooms are going crazy. The four of them (Michael, Connolly, Pike and Nhan) suit up in gaudy suits and enter the shuttle bay and board the four pods. Pike orders Michael to take the lead, which she gladly accepts. This woman is black Jesus. We learn she's an amazing pilot. Of course.
They barely evade the debris. Saru's flaps extend. The pod pilot in the red suit is panicking. Michael warns Connolly to be more careful. While he's mansplaining to her, a piece of debris destroys his pod. Serves him right for standing up to Michael. Pike's pod is also hit. He tries to eject but can't. His helmet won't close all the way. Michael wants to save him. Pike orders her to stay on the mission. Michael will eject and try to catch Pike. Discovery has to remotely eject Pike and does it. So quick editing, very hard to follow.
Michael catches Pike. They are about to smash into the asteroid. Discovery activates Pike's thrusters and they stop a couple meters above the asteroid. After a few seconds of strained silence, Michael responds to hails and says they touched down. The three of them enter the Hiawatha. Something is incoming. They point their phasers at it. It's a.................. ................ ........... drone. Splits into three and scans them. A woman's voice addresses them and tells them to follow the drones.
The three of them enter a tunnel. They lower their helmets and stop. There is a laser decapitation trap. They step over it. They enter a lab of some sort. Corpses, bodies and skeletons in chambers. The woman talks, says she's Commander Jett Reno. She's doing a surgery on a Tellarite. She is completely composed. She jokes. She says 10 months and 11 days passed since she got stranded. Pike says the war is over.
Reno asks if they won. Michael says no. Reno explains how she kept the people alive. They were on their way to Starbase 36. She stayed behind. The ground shakes. Reno asks Michael if she can save them. Of course! She is the black Jesus after all. Michael orders everyone to set up pattern enhancers. Reno knows nothing about the signals. They can't beam people in with shields. A lot of quick cuts. They beam a couple patients to Discovery. Something happens. Michael reroutes power and a power surge tosses her back. She didn't beam to Discovery. She runs back through the tunnel, this time there's no laser trap (!). She will pull off the impossible, won't she?
The asteroid is falling apart. BOOMs all over the place. Michael is outrunning them all, of course. What a strong woman who don't need no captain. Something hits her and she is out cold. She wakes up. Her suit is beeping. She is stuck. Pierced through her leg. She screams full volume. What? Michael is wounded? She sees something red. It's a red angel? It's Pike. He grabs her and they beam out. Michael grabs a piece of the asteroid but it falls away from her grasp as they beam out.
Tilly talks to Michael, who got a femoral shaft fracture and will be up on her feet in 2 hours. Michael says the transporter didn't get a lock, which means the asteroid is comprised of something impossible. It could be a new branch of science. Michael plots trajectories (????) of samples from the asteroid and gives them to Tilly. Stamets sees Tilly excited and asks what she's doing. They assemble a gravity simulator. Pike gives the bridge to Saru. Discovery gets in front of the piece of asteroid and they capture it in the shuttle bay, which is rekt, on the gravity simulator. Tilly shouts: "This is the power of math, people!" Stamets says she's correct and high-fives her. Cringe to the max.
Pike is in his ready room. He picks up a fortune cookie message from the floor. What a lie, we never saw Gabriel with any of them, let alone got anything worthwhile out of the whole "my family ran a fortune cookie business" shtick. Also, that message was destroyed by Admiral Cornwell in Episode 14, so it must have lain there for weeks? Months? Clown fiesta show. Michael walks in. Pike references the Tower of Pisa. It's still up? He says Enterprise was severely damaged.
Pike wears Discovery suit. Pike wants to enlarge the ready room. He tosses the message on the table. It reads: "Not every cage is a prison, nor every loss eternal". The two of them walk out and talk about Spock. Michael wants to see him. Pike says he took leave. Enterprise was told to stay away from the war for a reason. Pike quotes someone. It's Spock. He praises his logicalness. Pike says he felt something shift in him, that's why he asked for leave. Michael still wants to go aboard Enterprise. Pike is summoned to the bridge. He asks Michael to make some noise with him. Did he just offer her sex?
Michael enters a room. It's a dream. She sees memorabilia and touches bells, which tinkle. She activates a console and hears Spock's personal logs. It's not a dream! She went to Enterprise and is snooping around his logs!!!! How?????? The audio file says Spock has nightmares and a vision within them. The vision is encoded within that audio file. Michael regrets not saying something to him sooner. She repeats his movements from childhood and constellations appear. She is too late.
Spock's narration from the same audio log from Episode 16. Michael is playing it to Pike. She says she took this tablet. Spock drew the red signals 2 months before they appeared. Michael says they need to contact him. Why would Starfleet concern itself with red signals? Pike says Spock is in a psychiatric unit on Starbase 5. Nobody was told about it because Spock didn't want it heard. But now, since he drew the signals, they can contact him. Of course, it has to be Michael.
She is concerned it won't work. Pike smirks. Michael is about to mention seeing the red angel but stops herself. How did he go back for her? She thanks him for coming back. How???? They are called to the bridge. Another signal has appeared. Tilly closes out the Captain training material she had open. She modulated Discovery's deflector dish to act like a sonar. Michael says they need to come in closer, go into warp and drop out while scanning it to detect the gravitational red shift.
It's in the Beta Quadrant, 51,450 light years away. It will take them 150 years to get there. Hello? The signal was traveling 51,450 Earth years to get to you! Don't you understand that light isn't instant? My God, what idiots wrote this show? Saru suggests the spore drive. You have no idea what's there! They explain how Stamets used the spore drive. Pike says red signals are just as important as the war, so it's OK to use the genetically manipulated man to navigate them there. Tilly says she needs 20 minutes to prep Stamets.
Stamets is lost in his mind. He says he saw Hugh in the network. That was the second toothbrushing scene. Stamets says Hugh saved them all. Tilly's voice is quaking. Stamets says mushrooms are universe's recyclers. Pike interrupts his rambling. The spore drive is ready. Pike activates black alert. They jump. Cool animation, I'll give them that. Pike is breathless. Saru teases him. Stamets rushes out. There is no sign of the signal. Wow, a surprise.
Human life signs. Saru says there's a transmission from the surface. People are under attack. They go to red alert. The transmission is coming from a settlement, there are churches and barracks. Nothing is going on. Michael can't detect anything. Saru says the message has been looping for 200 years, before the Federation even invented warp. Pike is confused.
They theorize it's World War III that somehow has to do with their arrival here, a nuclear cataclysm that left 600 million dead. Saru says the frequency is obsolete and only of local range. Pike says it's a church. Saru says they had to have had a starship. Michael says there's 11,000 people there but no electricity. Pike says Prime Directive applies, so no interference. Pike quotes Hamlet. Pike then references Arthur Clarke.
The planet is surprisingly Earth-like. The orbital debris are radioactive. Lieutenant Owosekun will come to the surface with Pike and Michael. Tilly is analyzing the asteroid fragment they've captured. She's wearing augmented reality goggles. Her voice trembles. She's coring out a piece of it. One cubic centimeter weighs 1.5 tons. One particle floats off and lands on a cart, crushing it. The computer advises project termination. Tilly got the sample. Intense. She's looking at the sample when it explodes and launches her across the shuttle bay.
At the surface, Earth. The away team beams in. Why did they bring in black women? Maybe these people are racist mysogynists. They set phasers to stun and enter the church. What about the Prime Directive? The glass represents all religions. The distress call is coming from under the floor. Pike leafs the sacred texts. "For those who live the old way burn. Those who sin against us shall be cut down by our gods." Michael says they cobbled a religion together. Michael scans the book. Pike looks at the window. It's the red angel. The doors open. Someone enters and asks why aren't they in fields. Pike says he's Christopher, Michael and Joanne. The man asks if it's their first time in New Eden. Pike says yes.
The man says the All-Mother will want to see them. They are accepted to New Eden, planet Terralysium. In 2053, the First Saved, soldiers and civilians took cover in the church from World War III and they were whisked away by an angel to this planet. Who should they thank? Which God? So, they combined all religions into one. Michael says her religion is science. The man says they only have the decaying relics. Since the battery units died, the pilgrimages have dwindled. Luckily, a camera exists from that time.
The All-Mother says they need no proof. Pike asks to stay in the church and gets it. Tilly wakes up in the sickbay. Another nervous girl??????? Wow. Tilly barely gets up. She is confused. Saru gives her a tongue lashing. Dr. Pollard says she will be OK. Tilly looks so destroyed. Saru sighs and admonishes her for not caring enough. She is the youngest candidate for a Captain position. Saru relates to it. He expects her to take better care and that she is important. Saru is called to the bridge.
The planet's ring is becoming unstable. Bad, "really bad" levels of radiation. In 64 minutes, the radiation will cause an extinction of life on the planet. They can't contact the captain or beam him. Stamets says sending a shuttle down there will accelerate the process. They can't see the outer ring from the surface. It's nuclear winter. Saru says this is why for saving people from the planet. Saru says they can't allow a catastrophe.
In the church, Pike says they need to turn the beacon off and get out. Michael again opposes Pike, who says they don't need rescuing. Pike says the Prime Directive is active. Michael tries to convince him. Owosekun managed to do something. The distress call was a trap. The man appears. For generations, they maintained the signal. Pike lies about the tricorder. The man saw the light in the sky. Pike says he's mistaken. The man is convinced that this is true salvation. The man throws a grenade at them!!! They wake up locked in the basement. Their utility bags are gone.
Owosekun cleverly unlocks the hatch. Tilly is losing her mind in the sickbay. She wants Michael back. The nervous girl enters. Tilly is losing her mind. Her headspace is compromised. The nervous girl is May. Tilly drank espressos (!!). She is thinking aloud. A tractor beam could dismantle the ring. The asteroid could work! Tilly runs out and then runs the other way. They have 4 minutes. Nothing would work. Tilly enters the bridge. She's breaking the protocol.
Tilly explains her idea. They should launch the asteroid and it will pick up the debris like a magnet. Stamets says he could jump inside the ring and launch the asteroid. The All-Mother is shown the away team's gadgets. Pike says the man attacked them. The man says they came on a starship. The All-Mother says Jacob is living by the corrupt way of the old Earth. A girl takes a phaser, activates it and looks at it, Pike runs towards her, takes it and lays on it. Michael says "NO". Pike is dying. Wow. They will take him to the church.
On Discovery, black alert. They jump and start doing a donut maneuver. They drop the asteroid and pull it behind the ship. Wow, this would never work in real life. The debris collects behind the asteroid. Saru tells them to get the landing party. The away team enters the church and beams away just as Jacob enters. The All-Mother is happy. The crew claps. Saru says Tilly should disobey him more often. Wow, this is horrible. Tilly is about to pass out. She walks into the turbolift when the nervous girl calls her "Stilly".
Pike comes to. He's in the sickbay. He made it but his ribs are rekt. Tilly looks at the nervous girl's record. Her name is May Ahearn but there's nobody with that name on the ship. She died in 2252. Whaaaaaa.... Finally a mystery. Michael enters Pike's ready room. He offers her a seat and thanks her for being better than him. She is the black Jesus. She confesses to the angelic Terralysium being appearing to her. He says that must mean something.
Michael describes her experience and says the angel didn't appear divine. Pike says this information creates new context, which can change their perspective. Michael mentions Jacob and how he deserves knowing the truth. Pike invokes the Prime Directive. Hello?? You violated it by showing them the technology! Michael mentions the helmet camera and cajoles Pike into doing what? Going back? Pike is in the basement again. Jacob enters and Pike tells him what's going on.
Jacob asks how he got there. So, the Prime Directive means nothing now? Jacob asks about Pike's ship and if it flies above the stars. He's excited. Pike says he can't intervene. Jacob said his family spent their whole lives wanting to get an answer. He takes the distress beacon, shuts it down and thanks Pike. Pike offers a power cell for the helmet camera. Jacob trades it. They shake hands. Pike says he hopes they meet again. Jacob says they will. Pike beams out. Jacob is confused.
Jacob attaches the power cell to the church lights and the shine bright. Everyone near the church is excited. Discovery is still in orbit. Pike is looking at the helmet camera. He rewinds the video feed. They see the inside of the church as the red angel appears. The video feed cuts. Pike is baffled.
Michael's narration. She still can't understand the seven signals. That's the first time she can't do something. She thinks she needs to understand the signals. Tilly is running a half-marathon when May appears and Tilly runs through her. May is aware of being dead and says only Tilly can see her. Tilly is not running but then starts running again. She caught up to the rest. How??! She actually took the lead and got there first. Saru congratulates Tilly for winning. May appears again.
Michael gives a drink to Tilly. Yellow alert. A ship is closing in. Two lifeforms. Diplomatic vessel. Vulcan. Michael says she recognizes Sarek's vessel. Of course she does. One of the two lifeforms asks permission to beam aboard. Pike says he reported Spock's whereabouts to the Command, which probably told Sarek. Michael asks if he talked to Spock's doctors and Pike says he hasn't. Hello, that's confidential information you're sharing!
Pike says Michael should welcome Sarek. The crew is all of a sudden saying "Aye, Commander". It's Amanda that beams in. She hugs Michael and whispers that Spock needs their help. L'Rell is seen giving a speech. Ash Tyler is next to her. They are presenting a ship to Klingon nobles. The ship bears the banner of no single house. It has the insignia of the Klingon empire. They all shout "REMAIN KLINGON". One Klingon nags if they should start talking in Standard tongue too.
L'Rell defends Ash and says he is Voq, who was anointed by T'Kuvma. The nagging Klingon says Voq was, not Ash. The nagging Klingon resembles the old school Klingons. Finally something interesting. His face is painted blue and red. He offends Ash. L'Rell defends him. Typical for this show. L'Rell says Kol-Sha, Kol's daddy, needs to remove the paint from his face. Kol-Sha is offended. Klingons grunt in agreement with him. Kol-Sha talks about the red signals being seven drops of blood. Ash attacks Kol-Sha and removes paint from his face.
Michael talks to Amanda and says Spock is connected to the red signals. Michael says she is lost. Amanda says she couldn't find Spock at Starbase 5 so she stole his medical file. Michael takes it but it's encrypted. Now where are we? It's Klingons again. Ujilli shoos away two Klingons as Ash approaches her and complains about not having support. Ujilli says her uncle and the rest of House Mo'Kai believe in him. Klingons are racist? Ash asks why she talks to him in English. She kisses him. Aw-kward. She says he has to want her back if he's really Voq.
Ash feels the intimacy with her is like a violation. Wow, that should be a compliment but she storms off. Amanda talks to Pike with Michael by her side. Pike says he can't open the medical file because it would be a violation of the rules. As you might expect, Michael says there's a precedent in Starfleet case law. Pike asks if she was this bossy as a kid but Amanda corrects him and says she's "persistent". Pike smirks and then caves in.
Pike contacts Captain Vela on Starbase Five. Vela says Spock's case is classified. Vela says Spock is wanted for murder for killing three doctors and escaping. Pike taps out. Amanda denies it. Michael agrees. Pike of course agrees and orders the medical file opened. Amanda is barely containing her grin. The file shows Spock has emotional problems and empathy deficits.
Michael suggests a few theories, all of which exonerate Spock. Amanda says empathy deficit is jargon for psychopathy. She blames Sarek for it but admits she wasn't a real mother. She pours her heart out to Michael, who sees the red angel flashing in Spock's medical file. He drew them while in treatment. Amanda says she saw them before; Spock called it Red Angel. Michael is called and walks out. She talks to Ash's hologram. Ash says L'Rell is about to be overthrown. She stutters and says his beard is likable. Ash asks for Amanda to be shipped to him to help him out with Klingons.
Ash is worried about L'Rell. He admires her. Michael notes as much. Ash taps out. Michael awkwardly smiles. Saru starts Shadow Exercises: candidates follow their superiors around. May is pestering Tilly as she is about to take on the captain's duties. May again comes back and Tilly angrily whispers at her to calm down. Pike is worried. May wants a captain but we don't know which one. Tilly shouts down May and the crew looks at her.
May accuses Pike of lying and that he is an imposter. I had to pause here because the cringe was off the charts. Tilly apologizes. Aliens on the bridge gossip about her in their tongue. Tilly quits. So many lens flares. We see Ash with an Orc manbun. He's still trying to wash off the face paint. Something is behind him. He gets up. It's someone strolling by. He follows that someone.
Ash enters a room, where three Klingons talk about something. Ash asks them why they're spying on him. He confronts the Klingon, who says he can't keep this from him any longer. He shows Ash something..... it is a........ a something..... a child! A babby. It's his baby swaddled. Ash is peering into a fire. He's squatting. L'Rell says her side of the story. She says her gestation occurred ex-utero. Ash protests. L'Rell says the child is a vulnerability. Ash accuses her of being apathetic but she pulls the "women hurt" card. She asks him why he called Michael. She is jealous.
Ash talks about Voq's memories. Why are we still referencing this mega-weak character? Ash talks about emotions and how the baby is an outsider like him. Please move along with the plot. Michael and Amanda talk about Spock's visions. They first appeared to Spock way back when they were kids and Michael ran away from home. Spock was the one who found her because the Red Angel helped him.
Amanda says she believed Spock used logic to determine where Michael was but he was adamant about the Red Angel helping him. Michael admits to seeing the Red Angel. She can't believe she is talking like this. Amanda encourages her to believe herself. Anyway, Spock was traumatized. Michael says she was the cause of Spock's problems. Amanda realizes that trauma was caused by Michael. Whaaaaa??? She is at fault for something?
Amanda kisses her on the cheek and says she will find Spock. She grabs the file and walks out. Back on Qo'noS, Ash and his lover see her uncle hung and the baby missing. Kol-Sha's hologram appears holding the baby. The paint was a listening device? OK. Kol-Sha gloats and asks to control the empire. Tilly is worried. Michael is crying. The two talk. Imagine a starship staffed with bawling women. May shows up and talks to Tilly, who is frozen. Michael is trying to talk to her.
Tilly confesses to seeing a ghost after the dark matter event. I like the horror vibes, we just needed more of them in the first season. Tilly says she's losing it and that she's been avoiding sickbay. After today, she will never make captain. May doesn't know what tears are. Michael says that every teenage girl has cried. That also means May isn't a ghost or a delusion.
Michael says she had a piece of it in her hand but didn't feel a thing. The asteroid did react to spores, meaning they need Stamets rather than the doctor. Kol-Sha offers Ujilli to sign but she refuses. A fight breaks out. Aarrgh, I can't see anything. My ingrown hairs are acting up. seriously, the fights are Jason Bourne meets Sleepy Hollow. Ash slays a bunch of them. Kol-Sha is left standing. Mano-a-Klingono. More of them run in. Kol-Sha activates his stick and it paralyzes both of them. Kol-Sha stabs Ash and makes Ujilli sign.
Something happens. It's the Hiawatha engineer? A creature beams in and its drones kill Kol-Sha's guards. The creature bubble wraps Kol-Sha and unparalyzes Ash and Ujilli (????), who stabs Kol-Sha and kills him. The creature unmasks and it's PHILIPPA!!!! She pretends she's never been an Empress. She calls babies parasites, ungrateful and inconvenient. Ujilli cautiously thanks Philippa for her advice. Philippa talks to Ujilli and dismisses Ash. Philippa says Ash and the baby are liabilities.
Ujilli is furious and wants to kill Philippa. Tense music. Tilly talks to Saru and apologizes for not being honest. Saru is understanding. Stamets injects Tilly and May shows up, saying Stamets is the captain. Stamets says it's a fungus but how come Tilly hosts it? Tilly recalls Terran spores raining down on the engineering section after they flipped universes; if one landed on her, than that's the explanation.
May tries to turn Tilly against the crew. I wish this could develop a bit over time, now it really feels rushed. It's a multidimensional fungal parasite. Stamets will pull it out of Tilly using the asteroid fragment. Stamets is sucking the blueness out of her when a small brainlike blob appears, floats away and starts screeching (????). A quarantine bubble appears around it before Saru can order the computer to quarantine it.
L'Rell talks about Ash and brands him a traitor. She raises Ash's head. He apparently killed the baby, so she raises the baby's head. She throws Ash's head into a volcano that's right beneath her feet (???). L'Rell says the Klingons are her children and she wants to be called Mother instead of Chancellor. The heads were fake, weren't they?
A ship uncloaks. It's an ugly one but a Federation one. Aboard it, people are chattering and walking. Ash is there, holding a baby. Philippa approaches him. Of course, the heads were fake. Philippa shows the black communicator badge. Ash says it's Section 31. They are approaching a planet where the kid can become a monk. Ash says his son will be raised by the monks of Kahless and that "no one who doesn't belong ever gets in" (????). I look forward to the kid showing up with superpowers in Season 3. The kid is beamed away (!!!!!). The hell, how do they know the baby landed safely? Leland tries to scorn Philippa but she won't hear it.
Someone is beaming in to Discovery. It's Pike's Number One. Pike says he doesn't like holograms and prefers viewscreens. They talk. Enterprise crew doesn't know about Spock. Number One says Spock's case has been classified but something isn't adding up. Pike is summoned to his ready room. Number One pushes a data pad across the table to Pike as he gets up. The alien blob is contained. Stamets admires its sophistication. It has grown considerably. Stamets says the mycelial network is an incubator. Tilly wonders why it appeared to her as May. More Tilly cringe.
Tilly gets carried away talking and the blod freaks her out. Saru is drinking when an alien, Linus the Saurian, groans. They are discussing the Red Angel. Saru seems disturbed. Commander Nhan from the Enterprise is there. Saru is drinking something with salt and says he has the cold. Pike orders Saru to get some rest. Pike says her Number One discovered the warp signature of Spock's shuttle. Michael trepidates. She wants to excuse herself from seeing Spock.
Pike needs Michael's help and won't let her back down. Something BOOMs. They drop out of warp. Something is holding them in place. It's a huge red ball. The balls melds matter and is 100,000 years old. Pike hates spiders. Michael says it's too soon to conclude. The ball is vibrating. Michael speaks Klingon. They all start speaking in different tongues. They mimic. Michael calls Saru. He knows more languages than anyone else.
So, Michael says that the translator has been infected with a virus and that's why everyone is talking in a different language. The ball actually answered them. So many subtitles. I am used to them but good luck everyone else. Even the onboard computer is talking in a different language. They can understand one another but their controls are messed up.
Michael is sent to fix the problems. Saru comes with. Engineering isn't affected. They will jump if they have to. A crewmember is singing, it's the Jett Reno engineer from. She was sent to firewall the engineering. Stamets is sarcastic. She can't be insulted and insults his mushrooms. He is offended by the idea of dilithium mining. She asks Tilly for gum. She offers to fix stuff with duct tape.
Michael and Saru have fixed the universal translator. Saru is collapsing. This is not just a cold. He is aware of it. BOOM! The engineering explodes and lightning shoots everywhere. They are locked inside. They brainstorm. Stamets says the spore canisters contain argon/xenon mixture that could be ionized and discharge the lightning so they get out.
Reno aims the hose at the door and Tilly flicks the switch. Reno is knocked back. She babbles but is fine. Uh-oh. The blob exits and latches on to Tilly's arm. Michael is taking Saru to the sickbay. Pike helps her. Why is he outside the bridge? Saru is in huge pain. His ear flaps raise. He keeps seeing flashes of ultraviolet light. Saru thinks this is wasting time.
Pike soothes Saru, who says his condition is terminal. Michael asks if he's certain and he says yes. He is beginning to think the ball is triggering Vahar'ai, the genetic process that signals the Kelpien is ready to be killed. I am so sad for Saru, such a wonderful character. He says he will either die or be driven to madness, either way, death is inevitable. Not while Michael is around! Tilly is in quarantine. She feels a little weird but isn't terrified.
Tilly says May has a plan. Stamets says the blob is causing Tilly a bad trip. Reno discusses what's going on in front of Tilly. Saru is dying. The ball wants to take something from them. Everything on the ship is malfunctioning. Saru suggests developing digital antibodies (???). He must mean an antivirus? Michael is going to the science lab. Anyway, the antibodies are slowing the virus progress. Saru and Michael relate. Why are Kelpiens allowed to join the Starfleet with such a critical flaw in their genetic code?
Saru says he's kept detailed personal logs and asks Michael to catalog and send them to his people. Saru is sniveling. He yearns to feel and love more. He joined to help those who needed help. Michael calls him the most empathic soul she knows. Saru says he could never return home after signing up. The ship is still stuck. They don't have comms to order a spore jump and lack energy to warp away or raise shields. Michael goes to the engineering.
It's an impasse. Tilly is being devoured by the blob and feels really tired. Stamets gets the idea to ask the blob. They can connect May to Tilly's mouth. The ball could be contacted using the same idea, with the virus being a language. After all, he does know languages. Saru agrees. He is seeing letters everywhere. This isn't first contact – it's last contact. The ball wants to die. Jett suggests drilling a hole in Tilly's skull. This is going to be done old school, with a drill bit.
Life support is failing. The ball is raising its temperature and energy. Pike orders firing torpedoes at the ball. Saru stops him and says Vahar'ai is triggered because the ball is dying. Michael trusts Saru's feelings. Spock's shuttle is exiting their range in 6 minutes. The confused languages were an attempt to share its memories, if I got it right. Saru asks the viewscreen to show ultraviolet light and run it through the translator. A pattern emerges.
Michael convinces Pike this is what Discovery is meant to do. Tilly is being prepped. Stamets and Jett figured out an implant. Stamets asks Tilly to sing a song for him. She does and Stamets joins in. He's going to surprise her now? Yep.... This is scary. Tilly shivers as her skull is drilled into and the implant inserted. How cold and cruel. May talks through Tilly. Stamets asks about her, she says she's JahSepp and that they were disturbed by random incursions. Stamets realizes his spore jumps were the cause.
Stamets asks for forgiveness and asks Tilly let go. Tilly breaks free, Jett burns her and the blob consumes her. The ball is heating up. Saru says they should let the information in so the ball can die. Pike lowers shields and orders warp core ejected at the ball to destroy it if it acts up. Why????? All right, let's do this. All power goes to comms. Nothing happens.
They are receiving the transmission. Energy levels are off the charts. Pike wants the warp core ejected but it can't be done. The ball explodes. Saru is relieved and says the light is almost like music. Pike says he wonders how they're still alive. The ball pushed them clear before detonating. In the engineering, Tilly is wrapped in a cocoon. She barely gets out, all slimy. Wow, this is so wrong.
Stamets hugs her. She is gasping. Saru is stumbling and wants to be taken to his quarters. Why not beam him there? They've done that already in the show, as in when Mudd took over. Saru left home with a handful of seeds. Michael is chatting him up with a pep talk. Saru is the best character. Why can't all others be like him? Saru asks Michael to take a Kelpien knife from the first drawer.
Saru asks his ear flaps cut off so he can die peacefully before the madness consumes him. The best character, so poetic and such a nice send-off. Remember how Gabriel died? Stabbed and simply vaporized. Anyway, Michael can't do it and weeps. Finally some emotion. Saru is sorry and empathizes but he is too weak to do it himself. Michael swallows her tears and says that Saru is her family. He feels the same and takes her hand. Wow... I am tearing up. That knife was Saru's sister's. He asks her to promise she will mend her relationship with Spock. She promises.
Saru says his goodbye and Michael goes to cut off his ear flaps but they fall out on their own. Saru doesn't understand. He should be... Doctor Pollard says his vital signs are stable. Saru says he feels no fear at all. More than that, he feels powerful, his own power. Wow, what a character! Almost redeems the entire show. Saru says words are not enough. Michael says they have recorded all that the ball has seen and experienced the last 100,000 years. The Kelpien society must know about Saru's experience but that will implode it.
Saru is intent to change his species for the better. The computer is relaying some history from the ball. Michael walks in. Pike thanks her. Michael says the ball saw Spock's shuttle and tracked it beyond their sensor range. Pike orders the course plotted and no horses spared. Oh-kay. Michael says she can't abandon Spock. Stamets wants to close the door to the mycelial network forever. The cocoon is acting up. Something is not right but the two don't believe her. Stamets calls Reno a superior being. He can see her aura and she sees her too. The cocoon dosed them. Stamets asks to get slapped. Tilly is gone. She is inside? The hell is going on. Stamets looks inside but there is no Tilly. She is trapped inside.
Michael is running in slo-mo. It's a dream? She enters the engineering. Not a dream. Stamets is over the cocoon. He has no words for her. Michael says words define us but there's no word for the unique agony of uncertainty. Anguish? Stamets believes Tilly survived. Michael wants to believe it too. She enters the bridge. The slo-mo continues but then ends. Spock's shuttle is there. One life sign detected. He raised shields.
Saru suggests Spock might think Discovery is there to hunt them. Spock is entering the nebula. Pike gives him his word. He's here to help. Spock fires into the nebula. BOOM! Their sensors are disrupted and is trying to hide inside the nebula. Pike orders a torpedo fired and detonated next to the shuttle, which gets disabled. They tractor the shuttle.
Pike and Michael enter the shuttle bay. A security team aims their phasers. Shuttle's doors open and........... Philippa!!??!?!?!?!? Pike is confused. They all lower phasers except Michael, which ultimately does it. Philippa walks towards Michael. Pike says: "We met at the Academy. it's been a couple thousand light years since then". LIGHT YEARS ARE NOT A MEASURE OF TIME! Philippa says: "Indeed". My God.
Pike asks Philippa but she evades all questions. They enter the turbolift. Philippa pulls out the Section 31 badge. Philippa says she is authorized to find a Starfleet officer accused of multiple murders. She asks Michael, who says she will reveal all information. Leland is there already. His hologram, actually. Looks like transparent urine. Philippa eats an apple. Leland orders Philippa returned to her shuttle. Michael is about to act smart but Pike stops her and talks to Leland.
Pike and Leland exchange veiled threats. Pike is not happy. He dismisses Philippa, who gnashes on an apple. Wow. Philippa and Michael walk out. A guy in a wheelchair passes by. Wow! Philippa says Leland knows who she is and drops the apple. Michael threatens her if she hurts Spock. Wow... Philippa returns to the shuttle bay.
Stamets talks to Michael. He says mass is neither created nor destroyed. There is no trace of Tilly inside the cocoon, which is according to him an organic transporter. Michael says this is Nydus network from Starcraft basically. Stamets says he can scan the mycelial network and find the exit to find Tilly, who is waking up inside something. Poor girl. This isn't nice. She is in a neon forest. May is there with her jarring accent. She says that the cocoon is basically an organic transporter. The neon forest is really neon. May says it used to be a paradise. Spores float all over the place, grab Tilly's hand and burn it.
May explains that the spores recycle stuff. Tilly is angry. She says she will let her anger fester. May asks for Tilly's help because her entire species will die. Tilly calms down. May says she needs to kill the monster. Leland's liaison arrived. Who is it? Michael is stunned. Ash????????? The hell. Pike says Philippa doesn't act like her former self and questions Michael about the truth. She avoids answering.
Michael sits with Ash. They exchange greetings. Michael asks how he ended in Section 31. He says it's classified......... Convenient. He says he will never return to Qo'noS. She tells him about rescuing Tilly, who is looking at the creature's path of rampage. Tilly hears it entered when Stamets opened the door. The Ripper Finally some cool stuff! May says she has no tools or weapons. Tilly wants to see the monster.
Stamets explains the plan to Pike. Ash enters the bridge. The crew looks at him. Stamets proposes a half-jump (???). Stamets says he will then leave the cube and find Tilly. Michael wants to go with. Stamets says the mushrooms will eat through the hull in an hour. Stamets says the crew should avoid touching the places on the ship where the network intersects with the real world or they'll end up twisted like the bodies on the Glenn. Pike addresses the ship's crew.
He says Starfleet is a promise: nobody gets left behind. The crew is moving to one side of the ship. Saru modified their something to communicate. Michael and Stamets enters the reaction cube. Pike says his plan is deeply insane. Black alert goes up. They spore jump. Tilly and May feel the ground quake. The ship penetrated the neon forest. May is unhappy. The JahSepp are unsure of this. Tilly tries to reassure her and offers a pinky swear. May is lost. Cringe fiesta. Everything is quaking. They enter the ship. Stamets is ready. Wow. Nice visuals. Stamets says: "Wow" too, but Michael is cool as ice.
Stamets and Michael join hands and exit the reaction cube. Tilly and May enter the ship. Nobody is there. They walk further down the corridor. They see the mark of the monster, looks like dripping oil. Tilly has a weapon now. Stamets and Michael realize Tilly has armed herself. Michael and Stamets show up. Finally a nice episode. Tilly says about the monster. They hear a thud. It's the Ripper, I bet! Something echoes through the corridors. The JahSepp can't eat the monster, they die when trying. It is........... HUGH! The gay doctor!
He is weeping. Stamets is confused. May says he's real and they should kill him. May freaks out and asks Hugh be killed. Michael says to Pike they found Tilly and that they found something resembling Dr. Culber. Their connection breaks up. Michael is confused. She sees the tracks of the monster. It's the bark from the yeel tree, deadly to JahSepp. He is using it as an armor, meaning he is alive. The ship is slowly decaying and its hull is being eaten away. Sparks fly.
They are running out of time. The bridge is penetrated by a blue wall of whatever. The ship is creaking. The hull is compromised. Ash contacts Leland and asks for assistance. Leland's ship warps in and stabilizes them with a set of tractor beams (???). Leland says they have 5 minutes. Pike defies him. What a dumb idea to risk it all for one engineer. No sane captain would do this.
Stamets enters a room and finds Hugh cowering in the corner. Oh my God, Stamets is talking about their third date........ it's still going on............. still going on........... Stamets is gushing............. he holds out his hand.................. Hugh takes it and they hug. Spores attack Tilly and she drops her rifle. May grabs the rifle and aims at Hugh. Tilly tries to calm May down and says it will ruin her if she kills him. Come on, girls!
Michael is confused. Stamets flashes back to when Hugh molested him when he was in a coma. So, how did Hugh enter the mycelial network? Magic, I guess. Stamets says he brought him to the network. Whatever..... Tilly says: "Like a lightning rod". Please move on, we have to go, not reminisce. Leland is about to quit. Philippa blackmails Leland and intervenes to buy Discovery 3 minutes. Things blow up.
The away team enters the reaction cube. Hugh is anxious but can't enter the reaction cube. His hand falls apart when he tries moving it through the veil. So, he is dead. Hugh says he can't go with. Just kill him and move on. May says everything in the network comes from their world, so it can't leave. How did the Ripper exit then? Hugh says the JahSepp can reclaim his matter and that Stamets has to let him go. They are out of time. Just kill him and move on. Stamets has to leave him twice.
This isn't fitting. They hug. Thank God, no kissing. Come on, guys! Tilly stops them. Michael realizes they need Culber's DNA to add to the cocoon. May protests. It appears using the cocoon would cut off May and Tilly's connection. May offers a pinky swear. They have to move. May takes Hugh away. The away team enters the reaction cube. Black alert goes up. They are activating the spore drive. Leland disengages the tractor beam. Discovery activates the spore drive. What's happening? I have no idea. Discovery enters the regular world.
Ash will stay on the bridge. Pike goes to meet Michael. The cocoon is still pulsing. Stamets shakes his head. Will he? The cocoon falls apart and Hugh is there, naked. Thank you, STD. I got an STD right there by just watching it. So, will Ash kill him again? That would be the bomb. Pike beams to Leland's ship. Admiral Cornwell is there too. She says they had unexpected findings that imply time travel: tachyons.
Admiral Cornwell asks the two to cooperate. She says nation building is never pretty (???). Leland is the first to offer an apology. Pike accepts. They share information. Michael might know where Spock is. Ash will stay on Discovery. Philippa is messaging Michael. A hologram. Philippa expects to be paid back. Michael wants to know her intentions. Philippa says she could have killed Michael a dozen times over. Michael refers to the scorpion and frog story.
Michael narrates. Hugh is being scanned in the sickbay. Michael sits next to Tilly, who sniffles. She is sad for losing May? Why? Michael still narrates. She says we are all searching for a path, and by choosing to walk forward together, we can find it.
Saru narrates. He says we all come from somewhere and how we carry that place with us. So, why is a Kelpien, an officer with a literal genetic timebomb, a part of the Starfleet? Another massive plot hole. If it were established that the Federation was in a war against the Klingons raging for centuries, it would make sense to recruit nervous wrecks such as Tilly and genetic freaks like Saru, but that's not what happened in the show. In Voyager, Captain Janeway recruited Seven of Nine because her ship was stranded in the Delta Quadrant and the crew was dwindling, but in Discovery there's no explanation or reasoning given. Fine, let's move on.
Michael talks to Tilly. Airiam, a metallic head woman, is helping her. They are dealing with glitches caused by the ball from Episode 19. Saru and Hugh are in the sickbay. So, all back to normal? Saru is the only character with a character arc. Saru says it's inconceivable to see Hugh back. His voice is quivering. Saru touches his shoulder and tries to comfort him. The doctor says Saru's ear flaps falling off caused keratin tissue to form; it looks like spikes or teeth. Saru is baffled. The doctor says something in Saru changed and his fear responses are no longer there.
Saru now has to find purpose. Ash mentions the Red Angel can travel through time. So far, the red signal has led Discovery to two rescue missions. Pike sums up what they know about the Red Angel. Leland has dedicated a lot of resources to finding Spock. Ash asks Michael to think of his hiding spots. A new signal appears! Pike and Saru have a funny misunderstanding. The signal is near Kaminar, Saru's homeworld. Swelling music.
Saru explains that Kelpiens and the Ba'ul live on Kaminar. Ba'ul had warp capability and Saru was the one who snatched their technology and sent a signal to Philippa, who was serving on the Archimedes at that point. Pike says how unlikely it is the signal appeared near Kaminar. Saru talks about the Great Balance, which mustn't be upset and of which the Ba'ul are guardians. He says: "No Kelpien has even seen a Ba'ul in living memory". Pike says they shouldn't expect a warm welcome and a few seconds later says they should just knock on the front door. What a failed show.
Saru sees his home planet. The signal disappeared when they arrived. Pike orders scans. The Ba'ul are scanning Discovery's weapons. Ash questions Pike but he won't listen to it. Saru is angered about contacting Ba'ul. Pike politely tells him that, if he has an idea, he should put it forward. Saru does have an idea and says there is a Kelpien priest in every village. Ash mentions this would break the Prime Directive. Pike sends Michael down instead of Saru????? Saru rightfully objects. Pike dismisses his objections. Saru gets into Pike's face. Michael stands between them.
Michael says Saru would be invaluable to have by her side. Pike warns Saru not to mention the Vahar'ai. Saru says he will obey Pike's commands. Hugh was scanned. The new doctor says it's all normal. Stamets is happy. Hugh's body is "pristine". His scar is gone. We hear the story of Hugh's scar. It's as irrelevant and boring as you might imagine: he was hiking the cliffs of Cabo Rojo alone at 16 and fell 15 meters. That accident formed Hugh. Whatever. Stamets is grinning. They didn't kiss, thank God.
Michael and Saru beam down. They see a massive pylon. It is erected in each village to observe the people and they call it the Watchful Eye. Saru says they are integrated. There is nobody out since the nightfall is near. Michael says she'd think Kaminar is paradise. Saru says there's no hunger or poverty. There is only the culling. Priests sustain this belief, one of which was Saru's father. What a deep character, I think he should be the protagonist instead of Michael.
Michael takes his hand. Saru says that now he sees the village quite differently, though he wanted to come back for 18 years. The pylon stirs and an eye on it opens. They see fredalia flowers and someone filling a flower basket. So, nobody will notice Michael? Saru approaches the priest and removes his hoodie. She drops her basket and says: "Brother?" They embrace each other and touch foreheads.
Saru says that 18 years ago he thought he could find his future in the stars. Michael approaches. Saru explains Starfleet. He says he found a new life. Michael removes her hoodie and introduces herself. Siranna asks how they can understand one another. Michael shows the universal translator. Siranna approaches and takes Michael's hand. She gently caresses it. Inspiring music swells. I like this scene, finally something new. Siranna asks if Michael drinks tea?
Saru says he missed the fredalia tea. Saru asks for his father. Siranna says he joined the Great Balance after he left. Siranna says why he never contacted them. Saru thought it was safer. Again the woman shames the man. Michael, would you mind joining in? She does! She says they're on the look for the Red Angel. Siranna says she saw the fiery sign and then again accuses Saru of being a coward. The ground shakes.
Siranna accuses Saru of disturbing the Watchful Eye. Saru says they might never see one another but Siranna says there is no place for him here. The eye flashes a beam of light and something approaches over the hills. The away team gets beamed out and Siranna freaks out. Back on Discovery, Saru is panting. Yellow alert. The two of them report to the bridge.
Pike says Ba'ul are hailing them. Audio only. Nice way to save on alien design. I bet it's robotic. It is. The voice accuses Pike of stealing and says the Starfleet promised never to interfere in their dealings. Pike asks for help in discovering Red Angel's identity. The voice says Saru should be returned to them. Saru rips out his console and shouts at the voice, which dismisses him.
The voice tries to intimidate Saru, who lashes out. The voice says Saru doesn't even know what he is. Ten intercept ships are approaching. Wow, how did they come in so quickly? Pike threatens the voice, which says that one Kelpien isn't worth it. The pylon in Saru's village is being powered up. Saru freaks out but Pike removes him from the bridge. All crew is fast walking as Saru exits the turbolift, waits for a moment and goes towards the transporter room. He punches in the coordinates and a timer counts down. Michael comes in. How did she know?
Saru stands up to Michael, who aims a phaser at him. He says this is the only way. He brings Spock in the discussion. She lowers her phaser. He beams away. Pike learns someone beamed down. Saru is going to surrender himself. The sentry ships power down and fly away. Saru is taken to a Ba'ul location that goes off the radar. The ball data is still being analyzed. Michael talks to Tilly about why Saru's life is so valuable to the Ba'ul. Airiam says she found something. Michael remembers what the voice said. On Kaminar, Saru wakes up in a room with dotted lights.
It all appears so glossy. Someone beams in. It's Siranna. A different transporter effect, I appreciate that. Siranna accuses him of disturbing the status quo. She says she became priest to discover the flash of light. Drones enter their room. Saru tries to defend Siranna. A drone scans their faces and pushes Saru onto the wall, where he is collared and tied. The floor turns to water and something emerges out of it. It's........ some kind of a slime monster. Finally some good horror. The monster's eyes flash red. A lot of flickering lights.
Back on Discovery, Michael examines biological signs from Kaminar. Michael says a bunch of technobabble. Tilly goes back 2,300 years, when we see the Ba'ul narrowly escaped extinction. This means Ba'ul were originally the prey species but they switched sides at some point. Saru's head teeth shoot out at the Ba'ul but a forcefield stops them. The monster says Kelpiens don't deserve a second chance. Saru accuses the monster of being frail. So much camera shaking and moving all over the place.
The monster says the truth will be contained and the two of them neutralized. A drone comes in and its blades whir at Saru's face. Another pins Siranna to the wall. Saru breaks free and destroys the drone and then punches the other two. He frees Siranna, who is astonished he survived Vahar'ai. Saru says the Great Balance must end. He pores over the drone remains and assembles something.
Michael explains the situation to Pike. They receive a hail from the Ba'ul. Pike looks at Michael, who says they should accept it. Saru comes in. How?? Discovery can't find out their location. Michael tells him that Kelpiens were once Ba'ul predators. Siranna says people still believe the Great Balance is true. Tilly jumps in and says the ball could help. Of course, Michael knows what to do. The idea is to evolve all Kelpiens.
Saru says their species will create a new balance. This is what the signal brought them here to do. They will hijack the pylons? Yep. Saru rips apart the Ba'ul technology and warns Siranna she will experience Vahar'ai. Saru triggers the signal. OK, whatever... Discovery sees 63% of Kelpiens are going through the Vahar'ai. The floor in Saru's and Siranna's room shakes. A structure beneath the lake rises up. It's 50 kilometers in diameter.
Looks like it's powering up. I hate that sound of a rising pitch that's meant to be menacing but ultimately means nothing. The structure is protected by a forcefield. Pike orders it destroyed. Siranna's ear flaps fall out. She and Saru hear a roar and see lasers powering up. Discovery sees it too. The stronghold is powering up pylons to destroy all Kelpien villages. Pike hails them and says Starfleet can help them negotiate but if they destroy Kelpiens, they will become Federation enemies. Thre are 4,056 pylons. Pike orders photon torpedoes armed.
The lasers send out pulses. Discovery shoots. Saru sees the Red Angel. The lasers power down. Discovery sees a pulse in the stronghold, which deactivated all the pylons. The Red Angel did that? It disappears. Siranna says the Red Angel was a savior. We see other Kelpiens gathering and Siranna telling them what happened. She calls it "true balance" and looks at Saru. He nods. She smiles. He smiles too.
On Discovery, Ash is drinking all alone when Pike offers him a data pad. It's Saru's report. He got a better look at the Red Angel. It's a humanoid wearing a mechanical suit. Pike says it's "someone". Ash says this person controls the fates of entire species. We learn about Control, Section 31's threat assessment program, and that it is alarmed about the Red Angel. Pike says the Red Angel exploited the weakness of Ba'ul when they emerged from under the lake.
Ash says that the war took a toll on many people and that they are torn apart. He drinks and storms out. Siranna is staring at Kaminar. She is breathless. Saru says he felt the same way when he first saw it. He took seeds and made a little garden in his quarters. I think that's against regulations, bro. Saru invites Siranna to come with, even for a little while. She wants to stay for her people.
She says she is happy. Now she knows Saru left Kaminar in hope and now he brought it back. Siranna is happy. She says Saru is welcome home whenever he feels like it. She beams out. Saru tears up but composes himself and thanks Michael. For doing what? She namedrops Aeschylus and of course Saru knows about him. They finish each other's sentence. Saru says he feels like he can endure anything. He caresses her shoulder and reminds her of Spock. She says that she needs to go home as well, to Vulcan.
Michael's narration. She says the greatest mysteries come in threes. "Birth, life, death. The past, the present and future. That's where Red Angel is from." Thanks to Saru, they know the Red Angel is wearing an exosuit and is from the future. Only Spock can answer who that is. Michael talks to Pike. Spock was broken in some way because of the Red Angel. Pike says maybe he saw a future he couldn't process. One question – they actually caught up to his shuttle and found Philippa in it. Did everyone forget that?
Michael says they need to find Spock before Section 31. She needs to go to Vulcan. Pike isn't so sure about it. Michael already packed her bags. Why is she even asking for permission? Pike says the Red Angel left traces that Discovery needs to analyze. Saru tells Pike their readings show the same tachyon readings as from the asteroid. Tilly rushes in and says these readings can't be accurate. "It's freaking amazing". Tilly apologizes and says that's how she talks around "violations of causality".
Tilly says the power source hasn't been invented yet. Saru says he wants to launch a probe but the tachyons interfere with the targeting. Pike orders Discovery moved closer. Ash confronts Pike over Michael. He wants to know why he wasn't informed. Ash wants an explanation. Ash takes off his badge and throws it to Pike, who catches it and says, "The chair outranks the badge".
Discovery is glitching. The computers are not doing well. Tilly points to the chair. We see the same scene of Ash throwing a badge to Pike replaying but with their muddied images. The pilot alerts them to a rift in space-time. They reverse. The ship shakes. Systems back online. Pike will pilot a shuttle and launch the probe. Saru says he's vital personnel. Correct again. Pike says he's the most qualified. Ash and Pike talk in the turbolift. Ash says Pike has to trust him. Pike says he killed a member of this crew. Ash says there's no way to get rid of Voq.
Michael is in a shuttle on Vulcan. She wants to land at Sarek's place. She is granted permission. She enters her childhood home and reminisces. We see her and Spock's childhood. Spock is shown as a severely autistic child. Amanda welcomes her. Sarek is meditating, sorry, doing tok'mar. Amanda is worried. What about the soul graft Sarek did before? The mind meld that can be done over vast space? Whatever. Michael accuses Amanda of hiding something.
Amanda says that she would never turn Spock in for murders he didn't do. Michael insists and says she knows Amanda's lying. Amanda says Spock is not how Michael remembers him. Pike is approaching the anomaly. Ash is in the shuttle too. Of course. Tilly warns Pike about the time bends and acts all cute. Saru shakes his head. Me too, my friend. Saru suggests avoiding the aperture. Pike responds and his message repeats three times. Saru says he shouldn't move closer. Pike sees something. He's shooting someone in the shuttle.
They launch it and a temporal shockwave appears. This anomaly is HUGE. The shuttle disappears. No debris. Sensors aren't working. Saru says their mission is now rescue and puts the crew to task. Tilly says the radiation will be lethal in five hours. Of course. So far, every episode has had some sort of artifical countdown. Saru says time isn't linear. Tilly says it moves like a blender. Saru says Stamets's DNA protects him from temporal distortions due to the tardigrade infuelnce.
Michael and Amanda enter a structure. Closed captions says it's Spock mumbling to himself. The music swells. He is repeating the same sentence to himself. Don't worry, buddy, the black Jesus is here. Michael calls him. Spock is still in his own world. He is panting. He is a nervous wreck. Michael gets to him. He gets up and walks away. Amanda says he was acting like that for 2 days. He says "8-4-1-9-4-7".
Michael says his emotions would have drive him insane by now. God damn, what a stupid show. Michael insists. Of course, she will get her way. Sarek enters the structure too. I officially hate this show, ugh. The shuttle is zooming into the anomaly. They see the red signal. They are traveling through time. Pike orders plasma released from the nacelles in bursts to ignite it. I guess he wants to leave a trail? Ash objects. Pike pulls his rank. Ash says he doesn't have to prove himself. Pike threatens a court martial. Ash obeys.
On Discovery, Stamets learns about Pike and Ash. My God, what's going on? Stamets isn't convinced. He says finding them is like using a pair of tweezers to catch a grain of sand in the hurricane. Sarek says the sacred crypt Spock's in contains katra stones, which blocked the telepathic link. I bet we'll never hear about these stones again. Amanda talks to Sarek about reading to Spock. He had learning, reading and writing difficulties, which Vulcans call "L'tak Terai". Sarek is unmoved and says her obsession with the book did damage to the kids.
Amanda asks Sarek would he have left Vulcan for her. She immediately answers "no". He says that she harbored a fugitive. She says she's his wife and partner. Spock is still mumbling to himself. He is regressing. Michael says this is connected to the Red Angel. Sarek says Spock can be healed by Section 31. Amanda is not convinced. Michael must do this. OF COURSE! Pike and Ash are still in the anomaly. Ash says some witty remark including "dire straits". Something hits into them, their probe. Somehow it is upgraded and looks like an octopus. It attaches to the shuttle.
Michael approaches the Section 31 ship with Spock on a shuttle. Philippa praises her for exploiting her mother. Spock is given a sedative. Michael is present during the surgery? Why? They ask for everyone to leave, including Philippa. Michael can stay, of course. Leland says he hopes Spock is innocent. He promises her that he will find the answers. Leland asks if Michael can tell him something about Spock's psychological makeup. She says Spock is brilliant and curious.
Leland hears about the "L'tak Terai" and says it's much like dyslexia. They are less than four hours away from Starbase 23. Michael should go get some rest. Leland walks out (???). Michael talks to Spock, hugs him and relates to him. She remembers the code. She figures out the numbers are backwards. Discovery notices the plasma burn trail. Stamets is trying to calculate the shuttle's trajectory. Tilly is confused. Stamets agrees but then says the shuttle is moving towards the aperture, like "circling the drain". Then he figures out that him having the Ripper's DNA makes him impervious to the time travel shenanigan and runs out.
The shuttle is shaking. Ash says the metal on the probe isn't even on the periodic chart. How does he know? He says the probe has aged 500 years. Pike doesn't believe him. The probe's tentacles enter the shuttle and grab Ash. Pike aims at one tentacle and shoots it off. We hear the dying sound of a helicopter engine (????????????). The tentacle head suddenly launches itself from the floor (????????), latches onto the shuttle's console and starts doing something. Stamets is running to the shuttle bay.
When in doubt, just run, talk quickly and risk your life. What a stupid show. Stamets says, "Trust the math". Tilly finally shuts up. Anyway, he is beamed away to???? We don't know, I guess the shuttle. He does appear there. He takes the controls. Discovery sees the shuttle exiting the anomaly. Saru is stunned. Stamets says it's a probe and it's accessing the ship's core. Airiam tries to lock it out.
Stamets does something with a crowbar, I guess. Plasma is gone and the time anomaly is pulling them back in. Philippa approaches Michael and says her instincts are right (???) and that the cameras are disabled for 60 seconds. Philippa says Leland is just a puppet and that he wants to destroy Spock's mind by extracting his memories. Philippa says she knows much more about Michael and that she has to attack her. Michael punches her in the gut. Philippa wants more. They fight. Cameras see it. Michael knocks her out and grabs her phaser.
Pike activates self-destruct. Of course he does. He set it at 5 seconds. WHY????? They get beamed out and the shuttle explodes. Airiam's eyes blink red. She drifts away for a moment. Michael wakes Spock up and drags him out. Philippa hits Michael with a non-damaging phaser blast and then nods at her. Michael boards a shuttle with Spock and escapes. WHAT WAS THE POINT OF IT ALL?????
Tilly says they will be hit by a "time tsunami". Whatever. Discovery warps out. So, how did Stamets help with his mycelial network? Pike thanks Ash for saving him. Ash is humble. Pike admits to being a kamikaze. Ash acknowledges his expertise and praises his idea to release the plasma bursts. Saru says they didn't manage to analyze the probe's mission. Pike says that the Red Angel is from the future and the probe is also. Pike says Ash might be right. Ash says they are in the middle of a fight for the future.
Leland questions Philippa. She is coy and says he needs her so that Michael doesn't find out the truth. Philippa says he is responsible for the death of her parents. She tells him to mind his manners. Of course she does. Debris of some sort. Michael in the shuttle. She tries to talk to Spock. He is still catatonic. Michael searches the database for the numbers in a reverse order. Michael cites "Alice in Wonderland". The computer spits out a location, it's a planet Talos Four. Michael heads for Talos Four.
Nostalgia trip at the start. We see and hear some trivia about Talos Four from the original Star Trek series. It was a flashback! Pike is back to reality. Narration. Pike says he got no word from Michael. He hopes she locates Spock before Section 31. On the Section 31 ship, a hologram conference. Holograms chew out Leland and say Michael has committed a mutiny for the SECOND TIME. BAHAHAHAHAHA. Michael's shuttle was tracked for a couple minutes. Philippa praises her and asks for possible locations. Leland tries to say something but holograms shut him down and address Philippa directly.
Blah, blah. Philippa says something. Holograms agree with her idea. Ash is brought up. Philippa says relying on the AI bothers her. Leland is snarky. Philippa talks to Pike and orders him combing through probe debris to discover what it wanted to do. They talk about what Discovery should do. For now, the value of Discovery is in investigating the probe remains. Philippa says: "OK? I'm really busy" as she drinks from a coffee mug. Pike asks Ash about his relationship with Michael. He lies and says it was 100% professional but then confesses to loving her.
Pike says he's responsible for a lot of lives and that Ash's emotions could impact their mission. Ash excuses himself and enters the turbolift. Michael is moving to Talos Four. We hear the computer narrating about the planet and how a nuclear war wiped out its population. Michael injects Spock with something and he comes to. Space travel is prohibited. Michael approaches what appears like fire rings around the sun. It's a black hole. The computer warns about imminent destruction. Spock jumps up and pushes the throttle to the max. They approach more and the illusion disappears. It's a planet.
How was the illusion maintained????? God damn. Stamets is walking with Hugh. He is anxious. Hugh is cold and distant. They see Ash. Stamets takes Hugh's hand. They move on but Hugh intentionally meets Ash's gaze. Pike talks to Airiam, who says the probe used multiple SQL injections (?????) but there were no compromised files (??????). Saru brings in a list of Vulcan facilities. Tilly is there too. She exposits to Ash.
Tilly calls the probe a "very unpleasant and time-traversing cephalopod". Then she adds "like a squid". So far, there are no probe parts. Pike is fuming that he was ordered to stay put and analyze the probe. Michael lands. Atmosphere is breathable. 24 decgrees Celsius. Michael asks Spock if he's going to be all right. She goes out with a phaser. The scenery is like some hot ponds. Scant flowers. Some humming in the background. Everything is bluish. The flowers are humming? Michael touches one and it retracts. Some woman is approaching the shuttle and enters it.
Michael aims her phaser at the woman. She is not Talosian, she is human and a permanent resident. The woman knows Spock's name and says she's Vina. Michael doesn't know who she is. Vina asks about Pike coming back. Vina was a crewmember on a survey ship that crashed here a long time ago. Michael lowers her phaser. Vina says they welcome her and she should beam with Spock beneath the ground so he can be healed. I love how Spock is catatonic for about 7 episodes now. Michael beams down with Spock.
Vina is already there. A couple men beam in or uncloak. They apologize for the illusion. They will converse in the ancient way if Michael so prefers. So, this is a throwback? One Talosian woman says Spock is experiencing time as a fluid rather than a linear construct and that logic didn't help him cope with that experience. The Talosian man says he will soon lose his mind permanently. The man says he wants to see the entire conflict between her and Spock. Michael asks why. The man says that's how they survive (???).
This is finally some Star Trek. Vina says Michael shouldn't resist. Vina shows her true face, all mangled up and says she is now young and pretty thanks to Talosians. Vina says her appearance is an illusion but it feels real. Michael must pay the price so that Spock may be healed. Michael must now relive the memory. Michael wants to see Spock's memory first.
Spock narrates. Michael ran away from home. Flashing images. That's when the Red Angel first appeared to Spock. More flashing images. Michael is being eaten by some massive bug. Spock wakes up gasping. He says to Amanda and Sarek where he saw Michael. They stop her from dying. The hell was that massive bug?????????????????????????????????????????????? More flashing images!! God damn. More flashbacks, this time to Michael listening to Spock's logs. We see Spock on a distant planet, where the Red Angel appeared to him and showed him the end. He mind melded with the Red Angel.
A vision. We see squid-like ships launching missiles on every planet in the Solar system, I guess, and destroying them. Michael comes to. She falls down and looks at Spock, who finally speaks: "Now you see". Stamets is trying to seduce Hugh. This is cringe on so many levels. It's obvious Hugh isn't into you any longer, man. Dinner is served and a pleasant music is playing. Stamets is still trying hard. They sit down to eat asopao. Hugh tries it and says it's unfamiliar. He has the memory of liking it but his senses aren't connecting to it.
Stamets says: "We know who you are". Hugh is freaking out and says Stamets never put a dinner in their quarters before. Hugh tosses the meal across the room. Stamets is tearing up and tries apologizing. My God, this is so stupid. Stamets asks why Hugh is so angry with him. Hugh says: "You know, Paul, that's a good question" and walks out (?????). Pike talks to Ash and says he won't call off the search for Michael and Spock. Ash says that Section 31 believes Spock is a killer. Ash is trying to warn Pike and says to trust Michael to find her way through the trouble. Pike is interested in why Ash is working for Section 31. He says he can be of service there after what he's become.
Saru talks to Pike and says someone sent out unauthorized petabytes of data to an unknown location from Discovery. How did that happen? Michael wakes up. Spock finally talks. She is talking and asks a barrage of questions Spock dismisses as irrelevant. She finally says: "Do you think the beard is working?" He looks away and touches his beard. Michael asks if the Red Angel is a time traveler and Spock says the vision would suggest so.
Michael says she brought Spock here to help him but he reverses it and says he actually brought her here to see what he has seen. He says he noticed a quantum field around the Red Angel but the person inside was human. He says Michael will need to see more. Vina and the Talosians are still there. Vina approaches Michael and caresses Michael's shoulders. Michael insists on being shown everything right away. Flashback. We see Spock carving illustrations on the floor of his holding cell in the mental asylum. Michael is witnessing it.
An orderly enters with two guards and says signals have appeared, matching what Spock has previously described. Spock says they're real and his vision wasn't a hallucination. Spock says the red signals are an attempt to communicate. The orderly babbles on. Spock says: "How is it I can remember tomorrow?" He says it was a mistake to come here and tries to leave. The orderly says the Section 31 officers are coming to transfer him to a more secure facility. He disables the three people by merely grazing them but he didn't kill themm. Michael asks if he murdered them. Spock says that she is in his mind but still asks for confirmation.
Hugh enters the mess hall and confronts Ash. The crew watches on in stunned silence. Hugh tosses Ash's tray. Ash says he's sorry and that it wasn't really him. Hugh says to bring Voq out. Ash can't do it. Hugh says he can find him. Saru stops Tilly from intervening and says this must play out. The two fight a bit. No bruises or cuts on any of them. They are already exhausted. Hugh says he doesn't even know who he is anymore. Ash knows exactly how he feels. They disengage and Hugh sits down. Ash walks away.
Pike and Saru talk about the fight. Saru says the fight was a catharsis and that: "The Starfleet manual offers no regulatory guidelines for interactions between humans with Klingons grafted to their bones and a ship's doctor returned from the dead." What an amazing character, I love him. Pike says that they have to make it up as they go along. Pike says this can't happen again and differences can't be settled with violence. Pike enters his ready room and sees Vina. He is afraid. She is sad for that.
Vina talks about how Pike leaving her on Talos pained her so much. Pike says he thought about them a lot. So, she can intrude on his privacy? She talks about the part of him that still lives inside of her. OK... He says he's glad she's not alone. She babbles on about her emotions. He touches her hair. She is real. He touches her face and says this is real. She says the Talosians' ability to project illusions across space is limited. I guess that's because their illusion around their planet is sapping their mental power? Vina says there's someone he needs to see. Pike looks around and sees Michael.
They talk using some sort of see-through wall. She updates him with the story. She says Spock is innocent. Michael says Leland wanted to use Terran technology to rip Spock's mind apart. Spock shows up and talks to Pike. Spock says they must follow Angel's design. Spock says that Pike must come for them right now, if he can. Pike steps into the wall, which disappears. Hugh and Stamets are talking. Drones are cleaning up around them. Hugh says the old version of him is dead.
Hugh asks Stamets to just move forward and let him do the same. Thank you. Stamets is called to engineering. Black alert. They are jumping to Talos Four. Something happened. The spore drive failed. A corruption in the duotronics. There hasn't been anything like this before. Someone corrupted the system on purpose. Ash walks in the bridge. The crew accuses him of sending transmissions and sabotaging the spore drive. Saru says he authorized the transmissions. Pike says maybe he doesn't even know he's doing it. Ash is feebly denying it. Pike apologizes and confines him to his quarters. We see Airiam reacting and hear a "burrrp" sound.
Ash goes away. They move to Starbase 11. They'll pick a point midway and alter course. We see a closeup of Airiam's eyes and they again flash red. Back on Talos Four. Michael thanks Vina for saving Spock's life. We finally got some quirky costumes. Michael says she owes them but Vina says it's an awful experience. Yeah, why didn't Michael pay to Talosians for helping Spock? They again share a flashback. That's a new one. Michael wanted to flee as a kid. Spock tried to stop her.
Spock wanted to run away with Michael. She said she doesn't want him with her. He was so hurt by it. They talked about being capable for love. She accused him of being cold and distant. She called Spock a "weird little half-breed". What a bitch. She apologizes. Spock says her tactic was primitive. She says she's sorry. Spock says she was a catalyst. All right, please move on. So much filler in this episode. Spock says he is not ready. They argue even more. Spock says he regrets idolizing her. Vina says Discovery is nearing and there is another ship close behind.
Discovery says the Section 31 ship is hailing them. Pike talks to Leland, who orders him to stand down. They exit warp near Talos Four. Discovery tries to beam up Michael and Spock. Section 31 is trying to beam up Michael and Spock too. Leland bluffs that Michael and Spock will die if Pike doesn't disengage his beam. Vina shows up and says he should let them go. Pike says goodbye to Vina and orders the beam disengaged. Michael and Spock are beamed to the Section 31 ship. Leland says they will be disciplined at Starbase 11. Philippa says Leland should wonder why Pike gave up so easily.
A shuttle approaches Discovery. It's Michael and Spock on it. The illusionary Michael and Spock disappear. Pike asks if Spock is all right. Spock says they are riding in danger and smiles. Pike is surprised by it. Philippa says Talosians tried this with her once as well. Leland is fuming but Philippa does the cat walk away. Spock says their future is one in which all sentient life in their universe is eradicated by something unknown. Pike tries to give them the "I can't ask you to rebel" speech but one crewmember interrupts him and they move on. Wow, what a subversion of my expectations. They warp out and disappear.-
Another plot hole: why does Starfleet recruit cyborgs that can be corrupted or hijacked by computer viruses? A ship warps in. Lens flare. A shuttle is there too. It's approaching Discovery. Admiral Cornwell steps out of the shuttle and says she wasn't followed. Saru welcomes her. Pike asks her about Section 31. Pike updates Admiral Cornwell on the situation and says Section 31 can't be trusted. She demands to see Spock. Cerebral mapping. Admiral Cornwell gives him a quasi-polygraph. She asks if he left the facility without permission or if he murdered the personnel. He calmly denied it. The scans show it. Michael says Ash wouldn't sabotage the spore drive. Pike doesn't trust her.
Michael says she will prove Michael is innocent. Admiral Cornwell asks how Spock escaped and he says "Vulcan nerve pinch". She asks why he escaped and he says that, once he realized his visions weren't hallucinations, it made no sense to stay in the mental facility any longer. Spock tells her about someone or something trying to end all sentient life in the galaxy. Michael walks in and says she believes him. Spock says she's not his sister, "not by blood". Admiral Cornwell discusses Spock's results and shows the footage of Spock killing the personnel. Admiral Cornwell says she ran the source code (??????). Admiral Patar locked Admiral Cornwell out of the system in order to give Control the ultimate decision on everything
Admiral Cornwell says they need to visit the Control's base, arrest Admiral Patar and reset Control. Otherwise, the entire Federation is in danger. Tilly blathers to Admiral Cornwell. Pike cuts her off. She chuckles. Tilly says the transmission went to an abandoned penal colony, but Admiral Cornwell says that's the Section 31 base. They move towards it. Admiral Cornwell has to give her permission before they get moving. Wow, matriarchy much?
Man and a woman walk along the beach and coo about eloping. Someone is watching the video. They say they are coming home. That is Airiam's memory. She is deleting some memories and saving some others to the archive. Someone walks in. Tilly. Airiam says her memories with Tilly are always the first to go. They chat. Tilly sees something new, a flask of some sort. It's sand. A photo on the desk is a screenshot from the beach video and Airiam says: "Our last day together". Tilly is speechless. Airiam says their shuttle went down. Tilly asks for her help on decryption.
Stamets testing some tubes. Spock is there too, staring. Stamets asks them to speak. Michael says they're thinking. They discuss the appearance of signals. They can't figure out if the signals are using the Angel or the other way around. Michael asks again if his visions had anything else. Spock says his visions are a warning but their meaning is exhausted by now. He says a Vulcan proverb: "You are tending a plant that is dead." Finally someone who can put Michael down. Thank you.
Spock says he can't understand how he can solve the problem. Michael says they need some inspiration. Stamets asks them to move. Tilly and Airiam are cracking the code. The computer beeps. How did she do it? Airiam's eyes flash red again. Tilly talks to her but Airiam keeps quiet and then recovers. Pike calls the new location "shit storm". Admiral Cornwell explains the fortified area they're approaching. It's heavily covered in mines. Saru says the Federation forbids the use of mines.
Pike finally gets some praise from Admiral Cornwell. Michael and Spock enter her quarters. Spock calls her uniquely mundane, compared to Tilly. Ouch! She takes out a chess board. Spock mocks her. She says the best way to return to logic is via a game that requires logic. Spock calls her arrogant. She says he's afraid he'll lose. He finally caves in and they play chess. Airiam is downloading something. Someone enters. She stops. It's Nhan. Tilly is looking for Airiam. Nhan is Barzan. Airiam asks if her augmentation allows her to breathe in the human atmosphere. Airiam's eyes flash red and she walks to the bridge.
Tilly welcomes Airiam. Tilly says the system now resists their cracking efforts. Airiam asks Tilly to stand beside her until they've solved the problem. Nhan is watching the two. Discovery reaches the base. Sensors show all mines are fully armed. Admiral Cornwell can get them through the minefield. The shields will have to be down because the mines are attracted to them. Michael and Spock play some chess. All right. She taunts his logic. She takes his rook gambit. Spock is bitter about Sarek. Michael says Spock isn't even trying.
Michael suggests the next logical move for Spock. He refuses it and disrupts her expectations. He says he doesn't need her help. Finally someone who can resist this bossy girl! Thank you! Spock says his perception of reality was challenged by visions from a time-traveling entity and that Michael is so arrogant that she thinks only she can help him. OUCH! He accuses her of starting the Klingon war. Michael gasps. THANK YOU JESUS! He tells her her parents' death was her responsibility. She snaps and yells at him to shut up. He says she was trapped on the other side of the door. Spock says the Logic Extremists despised their family becuase of him, not her.
Spock says she can't face unimaginable grief. She tries to walk out but then turns around and says she thought they could make a new start. He says she can't be taking all the burdens. She shouts and says: "You need to identify why you're really angry!" OK. He says there is nothing to identify and that failure is liberating. He smashes the chess board. Autismo maximus. He walks out. She winces and is about to cry. She is called to the bridge. I hate how STD doesn't require the personnel to respond by tapping their badges; in this instance, Michael just spoke. The camera zooms in at the chees pieces and shows a red lens flare.
No life signs. Pike asks her to find a workaround. Saru asks if she's all right and she says she is. Something is coming in, it's blade mines, they will slice the hull like cheese. They do. Admiral Cornwell says that shouldn't be possible. They raise shields and mines start going at them. Airiam's eyes again flash red. She asks Tilly to leave and she does. The hell, how weak-willed is Tilly. The mines are still attacking Discovery. Airiam resumes the download. Nhan is watching her. Admiral Cornwell says someone reprogrammed the mines. Sensors are saying they are upside down. Blackout mines that interfere with the navigation.
Shields at 41%. Pike says this isn't a game but Michael says that maybe it is. She says they need to introduce chaos to the game so the computer can't anticipate their moves. Pike says to the pilot to trust her training. Airiam nearly downloaded whatever she was. So many lens flares, it feels like vaseline on the camera. The mines are still pounding them. They all take turns saying the evasive patterns. Airiam has sent the message. The mines desist. The crew is cautiously happy. Warp and impulse engines are inoperable. Admiral Patar is hailing them..
Admiral Patar says they are too dangerous and that her order to attack came directly from Starfleet COmmand. Pike tries to escalate. Admiral Patar says they will be boarded by a Section 31 vessel. Admiral Cornwell says they have to get a team on the station and reset Control. Saru says he'd like to investigate something. Stamets is talking to his equipment. Spock is sarcastic. Stamets says he needs help more than Spock. Spock tries fixing the part. Stamets asks about the Red Angel. Spock fixes the part and the power comes back on.
Stamets thinks the navigator might be corrupted. Spock says Stamets probably lacks faith in his abilities. Stamets says Michael loves Spock, who responds that Hugh was moving out of their shared quarters. Spock says Hugh is moving out because he no longer knows how to feel about himself. In the ready room, the officers are trying to assess how to access the base. They will use EV suits. Airiam volunteers.
Saru says every person has a change in heat signature when under stress. Admiral Patar showed no changes, meaning she was a hologram. Saru shows Spock's footage and again no heat change. Saru says Control created the entire thing and framed Spock. Tilly says Airiam downloaded her memories to Discovery. Pike opens a channel to Michael and Nhan, who hear heavy thuds from behind a door. It's Nhan. Careful! Where is Airiam? Airiam aims her phaser at Michael and Nhan but then approaches the latter and burns her on the face? She pulls out her augmentation that lets her breathe.
Tilly is breathless. Pike orders Airiam to stand down. Michael punches Airiam but hurts her hand. Nhan is choking. Again Starfleet recruits people with flaws. Michael and Airiam punch each other. Michael gets her ass whooped. Airiam chokes Michael, Thanos-style. Michael punches her like Austin Powers on the neck, grabs a phaser rifle and shoots her a couple times. Michael locks Airiam in an airlock. Tilly says the transmissions contained all the ball data and that's what Airiam downloaded.
Michael says Control wants to evolve using the ball data. Michael runs but doors close in front of her. She can't get in. So, no concern about Nhan???? Wow. Tilly says she can't access the system or hack Airiam. Tilly opens a channel to Airiam. Tilly tugs at her heart strings and sends her a message. It's a memory of Airiam watching her besties talk. Tilly pleads with Airiam, who says she can't stop herself. Airiam says Michael needs to open the airlock. Michael doesn't want to. Airiam threatens her.
Spock sees the scene and so does Stamets. Michael wants to break Control's link to Airiam. Pike orders Michael to open the airlock. Tilly sends Airiam her favorite memory. Pike repeats his orders. Airiam says she's sorry and "everything is because of you". Spock tells Michael to open the airlock. Airiam says to Michael to find Project Daedalus and launches herself out of the station. A somber moment for everyone. Nhan is back on her feet. She's alive?!!?!?!? Airiam dies in space as her beach memory plays.
Discovery recovered Airiam's corpse. Pike holds a speech. Ash is looking out of his window. Ash is released from his quarters. Tilly gives a speech too. The rest of the crew does too. Saru sings a song for her. Ash and Michael in the turbolift. He says he's sorry. Pike recaps the situation. Control was stopped. Saru says the future AI infected Airiam and Control. Pike says they shouldn't celebrate just yet. Tilly waltzes in and does her "um-uh-ah" routine. Tilly says she found a file titled Project Daedalus containing the Red Angel's bio-neural signature and that it's Michael. DUN DUN DUUUUN!
Hugh is reinstated. Wow, why? Hugh confirms Michael is the Red Angel. Admiral Cornwell says that might be a red herring. Spock says there is no logical reason for a false positive. Hugh says humans have a "few neural wild cards" that artificially generated signatures couldn't replicate. Pike is befuddled and says Michael is about to try to travel time and save the galaxy? Spock says that idea fits her emotional profile precisely. Michael is hurt by that zinger. Hugh smiles. Michael says that she would have told others about an apocalypse but Spock cuts her off and says she could have a penchant for the dramatic. Pike and Admiral Cornwell look at one another and smile.
Spock theorizes that the tetryonic radiation around the suit would limit its communication. There are four signals left to reveal themselves. Saru informs Pike and Admiral Cornwell that a section 31 vessel is coming. Leland and Philippa? Of course. Leland expresses his condolences for Airiam's death. Philippa says they are accumulating input, which only invites debate. Leland says to Admiral Cornwell they have a solution and she responds, "I'm cringing already". Oh, wow... Leland says the Red Angel is the only one with answers. The idea is to set a trap and capture Red Angel.
Saru says the time travel happens with a micro-wormhole, along with a possibility that a future AI will follow her. Michael says she needs to be stopped. Leland says Klingons were researching time travel 20 years ago. Leland says they developed the Daedalus Project. It's Section 31's time travel design. It was destroyed by Klingon spies. WHAT?????? They show the Red Angel shape. When the suit appeared, Leland tried to capture it. Michael says: "There are gaps in your story that I find disconcerting". I agree.
Philippa says the individual using the Red Angel suit won't be harmed. Spock says there is no consistency to Red Angel's appearance. Leland says graviton beams should be enough to capture the Red Angel. Michael is speechless. Michael talks to Philippa about Project Daedalus. Michael says this is the way to earn her trust. Philippa says our best intentions are what causes us the most harm and that she isn't the one who knows it all.
Stamets explains how the suit works. There is a membrane that travels with the suit, anchoring it to the wormhole. Tilly says her phase discriminators will interrupt the anchoring function of the membrane and then she will be lowered to the platform, shut down the time crystal powering her suit and hold her in a containment field. Philippa says that Stamets is neurotic. Hugh walks in and talks to Tilly, who is confused. Philippa says Tilly shouldn't be defusing the tension. Tilly again starts babbling and says she was raised by her mom.
Such an embarrassment of a character. Philippa tells her to stop talking and gets in Stamets' face. He says they will need 12 warp cores to generate that much power. Philippa says one testing site was on Essof Four, where there is so much deuterium. Philippa flirts with Stamets and Hugh says, "You do know he's gay, right?" and Philippa responds: "In my universe, he was pansexual". Oh, boy, OH KAY. Philippa says: "We had DEFCON-level fun together. And you too, Papi." Wow, a cat fight. What a stupid show, oh my God. Tilly can barely contain herself from laughing out loud. Good Lord, this is a shitshow of a shit show.
Philippa walks out. Tilly whispers: "What just happened?" Nhan talks to Michael and says it's hard to let go. Michael affirms Nhan, who shakes her hand. Saru says they need to find a way to ALT+F4 the wormhole or risk another AI incursion. Leland accuses Saru of being a monitor. Saru says he wanted to assess Leland himself and if he can be trusted. Saru says he still has strong instinctive reactions and can tell Leland will work to protect the crew but there are many things he isn't saying. Michael enters and asks to talk alone to Leland.
Michael accuses Leland of intricate moral gymnastics. She wants to know everything and is giving him one chance to explain everything. He says her parents worked on Project Daedalus. Michael refuses to believe his story. Leland says her parents were killed there because of him. Wow, who killed her parents? We heard 2-3 explanations so far. Michael can't believe it. Leland says her mom was an engineer, a brilliant one. Leland says certain cultural technological leaps across some cultures weren't an accident. Then he springs that they – built a suit. It was classified and very dangerous.
Leland says the suit was missing a time crystal. Leland says he thought he stole a time crystal was stolen from Qo'noS and he thought Klingons wouldn't be able to find it but they did. That's how they found her parents. Michael is speechless and tears up. She says that this whole time she thought... Leland apologizes but Michael punches him twice and he falls down with a bloody nose. She says this isn't over. Wow, nice going, he can kill you and you attack him? Smart girl. Michael confronts Ash about Leland being responsible for the death of her parents. He denies it. What a weak character, he just apologizes all the time.
Ash says Section 31 also does a lot of good. Hugh enters Admiral Cornwell's quarters and wants to talk with her. They sit down. He says, "You used to be a therapist". She says, "Yes, I'm aware". What a stupid dialog. They call each other "doctor". This thing, the fact Hugh came back from the dead, is so casually glossed over and the show just moves on instead of going into it. Hugh says he never felt more alone in his life. Admiral Cornwell says Stamets was the one who used to know him most profoundly.
Hugh says it feels like someone else's life and that he can't give Stamets what he needs and doesn't want to hurt him. Admiral Cornwell is cautious and says: "Love is a choice and one doesn't make that choice one. One makes it again and again." Someone hails Admiral Cornwell and Hugh walks out. He seems content with the wisdom and thanks her. Michael is punching and kicking a practice dummy. Spock taunts her about attacking Leland. Michael doesn't want to talk to him.
Spock says he wish he had been there when she hit Leland because the moment would have been satisfying. Michael takes off her gloves and sits down. Spock sits next to her and says emotion and logic failed her. He says this experience is uncomfortable. She talks about he was right that she always find a way to blame herself. She apologizes. What? Finally! Spock understands and says he accepts her apology. She thanks him for coming to talk to her. They have a pleasant moment together. He says he understands the variance and it's she.
Spock says there is a pattern to her appearances. It appeared to Michael when she was in danger. Michael has to be the bait. Essof Four has no breathable atmosphere and Michael needs to be left to suffocate. Pike and Philippa object violently. Michael says there is no choice. Spock calls it the "Grandfather Paradox" and that future Michael has to save this Michael. Temperatures fluctuate wildly on Essof Four and the carbon monoxide atmosphere is laced with perchlorate dust. The facility itself has oxygen though.
Philippa says she'd enjoy the irony of goign to hell to capture the Red Angel. Stamets will only have one shot. Pike says she will have two minutes. The roof will be opened when Michael is strapped in her chair. Hugh will be ready to revive her. Michael is catatonic. She enters Ash's quarters. He's glad she's here. She says what she said was not fair and apologizes. She doesn't want that to be their last conversation. He reaffirms her and says the entire crew will work to save her life.
They kiss. She is crying again. She says she's scared. He says he's scared too. The facility is prepped and ready. Some woman enters the bridge. I don't know who it is. It's Lieutenant Nilsson. The phase discriminators are brought online. Hugh talks to Stamets and says he's sorry. Stamets says this isn't the time and it might not ever be. Philippa watches and smirks. Philippa says they will monitor the exposure time and that the story of her parents wasn't hers to tell. Philippa grabs her shoulder and they lock eyes for a moment. Michael grabs her hand.
Everyone is ready. Leland and Ash will be closing the wormhole. What a morbid plot. Michael approaches the chair. Spock straps her in. He is wearing the suit. He nods and walks away. She says what if this doesn't work. He says he would then be charged with killing a Starfleet officer. Therefore, it would be ideal if she survived. He gets out and locks the doors. Michael gives the green light and they shut down life support. Let's see. The roof opens and dust rushes in. It's hellish indeed. Michael gasps for air.
Michael is struggling to escape. The crew is freaked out. Michael's face is burned by the atmosphere. Tilly sees no change in the tachyon radiation. Oxygen at 85%. 62%. Philippa says it's over. Michael says "variance". Spock stops Philippa with a phaser. How come Philippa is so sensitive? Michael is about to die. No change in tachyon levels. No sign of the Red Angel. Pike says to abort the mission. Spock won't stand down. Pike orders him to stand down but he won't Michael is burning up. Wow, the hell is this? Michael is flatlining. Ash is devastated. The crew is exasperated. They can't beam Michael to the sickbay because of interference. It's the Red Angel!
A red signal appears and sends out a shockwave. Massive flash of light next to Michael's body. Leland's ship can't do anything. The Red Angel lands and hits Michael with a laser, which revives her (???). They fire the beams and lock the Red Angel. Leland overrides the security buffers by peering in a set of binoculars and the computer repeats his words, stabbing him in the eye (?????????). THE HELL IS GOING ON?? He falls down.
Ash closes the wormhole. They turn on the atmosphere. Michael breathes. The Red Angel is captured? She is brought down. They fire an EMP and the suit flods. A person falls out of the suit. The containment field is up. It is not Michael! It is an Asian woman! Her.... mother?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
How did the Red Angel revive Michael? What were the spikes in the binoculars? Doctari Alpha research station. It's another flashback, I guess. We see Michael's mom. The entire Burnham family is eating a meal. Her mom is named Gabrielle, I know because of the closed captions. Such a quaint moment. Her dad's name is Mike. Michael says a new light in the sky, it looks like it's landing. The ground shakes. A Klingon spaceship. They run. Mike grabs a phaser. Gabrielle locks her in the closet. Michael wakes up.
Yep, it was a flashback. Hugh says she was dead for an hour. Michael says she saw her mother. Hugh says there are significant biological similarities between mothers and daughters. Come on!!! What a load of bull. Philippa confirms it was her mom. Michael is in denial and tears up. She wants to go down but Hugh won't let her. Spock walks in.
Spock says they found a data module with 841 mission logs and hands Michael the data pad. Michael's hologram. Leland is strapped to a chair. It is Control, who says it can emulate officers to transmit commands. Control wants to take over Leland's body and face. Leland refuses. Control says he managed to avoid the destructive power of human guilt. Control says struggle is pointless. Resistance is futile? A device appears behind Leland. Will it drill his head? Nope, his neck. He screams. Nanobots get injected in him and he starts changing. The origin of Borg?
Michael watches what happened to Gabrielle when they were attacked. She wore the suit and jumped back just an hour as the Klingons rushed in. Flashing lights. OMFG. So many flashing lights. So, Gabrielle jumped back an hour and found herself in space. She releases drones and checks her bracer. She jumped 950 years. So, what happened???? Gabrielle managed to get back to her family but can't stay anywhere permanently. No signs of life anywhere in the future. An antimatter explosion across the galaxy destroyed everything.
Something appears. Tilly babbles and Saru interrupts. The containment field can only hold Gabrielle for an hour, two at most. Wow, another forced countdown. The universe is pulling her back. Leland is back to Section 31's ship. He says that isn't Gabrielle. Philippa questions him. Ash also questions him. Leland says the ultimate mission is stopping Control. Ash says he has faith in Discovery. Leland says he created a secure area in his ship's storage and that they need to grab the ball's data. Ash is unsure of it but walks away.
Philippa says he's quite resolute today. Leland walks away. Gabriel built herself a home on a planet and the suit will always bring her back there. It's Terralysium. Gabrielle says she can't stop Control from getting the ball data. The only plan she could think of is to put the ball in Discovery's path so they can keep the data safe. Someone walks in. Spock.
Hugh reports Gabrielle is coming to. They all walk to the bridge. Gabrielle wants to speak with Pike but not Michael. She is angry and wants to talk to Gabrielle. Pike puts her down. Spock agrees with Pike. Hugh says that her mother isn't the same person. Pike says they need to establish a connection of trust to get any answers. Pike beams down. The facility shakes. The time is running out.
Gabrielle knows who he is and is confident. She could say more about his future but he won't like it. So why not delete the data? Gabrielle denies knowing what the signals mean. She says they should delete the ball data. Thank you! Gabrielle says time is a living thing. She calls Pike a ghost. Unless he is willing to do exactly as she says, this conversation is over. Saru objects to deleting the ball data. Ash activates something in his hand.
Michael supports her mom's opinion. Pike agrees with Michael. Saru says he will delete it. The system is not responding. The database is reorganizing itself using "xeno-encryption" to survive. The data will not allow itself to be destroyed. Wow. And what did Ash do? Spock is watching a mission log. Gabrielle says Spock has the psychological balance to comprehend her existence. He may be the only person who can help her. L'tak Terai aka. dyslexia. Spock says he was wrong to judge her. She says it was petty; he calls it unmerited.
Michael wants to see her mother. Spock says they should talk to Pike together. Leland reminds Ash that he is on a mission. Ash says this doesn't feel right to him. Leland apparently agrees with him. Michael theorizes the signals might have a distraction or there could be a third variable. Spock quotes Hamlet:
The time is out of joint: O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right!
Michael beams down to Gabrielle, who says: "No. No". Michael says this is like a dream. Her mom wants to know if they destroyed the data. Michael says it's been 20 years. Gabrielle says people think time is fragile, precious and beautiful but it's savage and always wins, so this is meaningless. Michael says this matters, now matters. Earth shakes. Gabrielle says they can have this conversation one day the right way and calls her stubborn. Michael is on the verge of tears but Gabrielle says she let her go a long time ago.
Gabrielle seems defeated and says she can't hope anymore. There's only the bigger picture now but MIchael doesn't believe it. Stamets says they have 43 minutes until the field fails. Spock quotes Lao Tze and that what appears immutable might not be. Instead of fighting time, they go with it. The idea is to send the data so far ahead in time that it can't harm them. The idea is to transfer the data to the Red Angel's suit and send it to future.
Stamets says they would need the equivalent of a supernova to sever Gabrielle from her time stream. But, they have dark matter particles. They could enhance their transporter with dark matter to pierce the timestream, lock onto Gabrielle and beam her back to their time. Spock says: "I like science" in a deadpan voice.
Leland says he's threatened by Gabrielle. Philippa questions him. Leland says Gabrielle is the definition of power. According to him, shooting that data to the future poses an unacceptable risk to the larger mission. Philippa says his phrasing is interesting. Leland says Gabrielle has supplanted Philippa and hands her a button. It can steal the data as it's being transferred and self-destruct to kill Gabrielle. I don't get this line of thought but OK.
Gabrielle is pacing to and fro. Her suit activates. She talks to Pike and asks Michael what they're trying to do. Philippa walks in and turns off the camera. Gabrielle knows Philippa is there with an agenda. Gabrielle isn't intimidated and thanks her for that. Philippa says she's Terran and wouldn't sacrifice her life for the galaxy. Philippa praises the suit, Gabrielle says it is DNA-encoded and won't work for others. They discuss child rearing. Philippa says she was taught to survive. 5% data downloaded. Leland's face is falling apart. He's clearly a hologram.
Philippa walks away. Why aren't her eyes hurting? I thought Terrans were sensitive to light. Gabrielle asks Philippa to promise taking care of Michael and says Control considers her an "unacceptable risk to the larger mission", the exact phrasing Leland used. Philippa connects the dots. Michael and Stamets beam in. Gabrielle praises their plan but then learns they want to fix her in their timestream and pans it.
Philippa contacts Ash on a secure channel. 22% of data was given to Leland's ship. Philippa says she will kill Ash if he betrays her now. He is unfazed by the threat. Stamets says they only have enough power for one attempt of fixing Gabrielle to their time-space. The suit will return to the future. What if Control finds it there??? Gabrielle reminisces and says she was watching her all the time, including when she read to yourself for her 11th birthday. An emotional moment for sure. They try touching hands but the containment field won't let them. Philippa turns off the transmitter and orders Ash to spy on Leland.
Ash enters the hallway and sees Leland attached to a machine and nanobots in his face. Ash pulls out his phaser but Leland stabs him with a piece of glass. Ash says he won't win. Ash contacts Pike gasping for air and says: "Leland". He beams down to the facility and starts blasting fools. Michael hits him but he is undeterred. He activates the data transfer again. Spock says the Section 31 ship is diverting their data transfer. Tilly says the field can't hold muhc longer. Gabrielle wants to stop him. Leland shoots his lightning gun and burns the containment field and the suit. Philippa grabs Leland and tosses him down. The data transfer can't be stopped. 45%. Transfer speed is increasing.
Gabrielle says they should drop the containment field and she will return to her time but Michael won't hear it. Nhan shoots Leland. Stamets suggests shooting the containment discs to release the field since Leland blew up the control station. Michael and her mom bawl their eyes out. Michael and Stamets shoots at the discs and the field drops. The ground shakes and a red portal opens above Gabrielle, who gets literally yanked into with her suit. How does that work??? Philippa is still fighting with Leland and getting beat up. The four of them beam up and Discovery fires torpedoes on the facility.
A transporter signal from the surface. Leland got away. One life sign, escape pod. Ash Tyler. Michael watches recorded messages from her mom. Spock enters her quarters. Leland got 54% of the ball data. Michael is silent and then says everything they try fails. Spock says Gabrielle was incorrect and what happened before no longer exists. "We have only now." He assembles the chess board. Spock is unyielding and says they can defeat Control. He sits down and invites her for a game of 4D chess.
Amanda contacts Michael, who says she feels like a failure and a loser. Amanda reaffirms her. Spock enters her quarters. He apologizes for the interruption and calls Michael with to Pike. Another signal has appeared over the Klingon planet Boreth. Ash flinches. Who created this signal? Michael cuts out the speculation. She asserts that waiting for signals is a waste of time. They should be looking for Leland. Saru objects and says chasing Leland puts the ball data in danger. Ash the planet is revered because of the Kahless' monastery. He offers contacting L'Rell to get safe passage.
Discovery warps in. So, did they fix the spore drive? No idea, haven't used it for a while. Michael comes to Ash and says she needs to know why he reacted to Boreth. He says that's where his son is. She is stunned. He explains the backstory of his son. She hugs him and wishes he told her before. Some alert. Ash says a Section 31 missed its check-in. Saru alerts Ash that L'Rell arrived. Ash asks her to be careful and walks out. L'Rell talks about the monastery and a rare mineral native to the planet – time crystals.
Pike tries to convince L'Rell to let him see his son. She forbids him. They argue in Klingon. Pike says he'll go. L'Rell warns him the monks are dangerous but she can arrange an audience. She says a time crystal can't be taken without a great sacrifice. Michael asks Saru to take a shuttle to investigate the alert. He just allows her. Hello? Control can hijack people. Wow.
Pike enters a monastery. He is alone. Klingons watch him. They know who he is. Old school costumes. They tell him L'Rell has no authority here. They are the Timekeepers. Pike wants to trade but the Klingon says they won't leave the sacred walls. Pike says the future of all sentient life is threatened. The Klingon says Pike isn't strong enough to accept it and that all leave with convinction but always leave broken and smirks. Pike is confident.
Saru ordered Spock go with Michael. He says Red Angel won't be there to save her this time. How does he know?????? How did Gabrielle know Michael needed saving? How did that red laser revive her?? We will never know, I guess. The crew on Discovery laughs. Stamets is gloomy. Jett Reno sits down opposite him and chats. He doesn't know how to bring Gabrielle back. Jett says they got new orders from Pike and that they could get their hands on a raw time crystal "so double down on espresso, kid". They play the autoantonym game, where they says a word that means two opposite things at the same time: oversight, Earthbound and sanction.
Hugh is seen in the background. Stamets looks at him. Jett pries in Stamets's life. He tells her off and storms out. Pike and Tenavik walk. They see monks digging up holes in the hallway. This is Ash's son??? Pike asks how could he be so old. Tenavik says time flows differently here. A shoot grows from the hole in a second. Michael and Spock are on the shuttle. He says she mustn't dismiss the importance of signals because she doesn't have the context for that. She is snarky and says she is enraged.
Spock chooses to believe these signals still hold the answer. An alert. They have arrived. Again they drop out of warp in the middle of the action. The entire crew is frozen solid around them in space. The ship seems undamaged. One of the bodies is still alive. Seems legit. Spock beams him in. Someone in a suit. A man. She saw him. Kamran Gant, from the Shenzhou. He comes to and seems fine. He says they were protecting against Control but the ship locked them all out. The entire ship was opened up to the vacuum of space. He managed to enter an EV suit and eject. Seems a weak story.
They decide to go over to the ship, which seems to be idle. Gant doesn't want to go back there. Oxygen is at 97% there and they might stop further deaths. He caves in. Took no convincing. They need to enter the bridge. L'Rell and Ash are all alone. She says she will ensure the safety of their son. He apologizes. She did not expect to see him ever again. She wants to talk and says he will always love Michael. She loved Voq but that's not him.
Pike and Tenavik walk over a lava bridge. The pillar of the past. Something stuck in it. The pillar of the present. It says: When the future becomes the past, the present will be unlocked". He puts a key inside and a door opens. A massive hall with pylons adorned with green crystals. They jingle. Pike asks what to do. Tenavik says he must see for himself and warns madness may follow if he lifts the veil between anticipation and horror. Pike touches a crystal and gets himself in the engineering exploding. He is locked inside and dying of burns.
He is at another place and touches his face. He hears something. It is........... wheezing of some sort............. he moves to it............ and sees himself in a wheelchair-like robot, his face all melted. Crippled him opens his mouth and screams. In the present, he falls back screaming. Tenavik says his fate will be sealed forever if he takes the crystal. Pike says to himself he is a Starfleet captain. Pike asks for the crystal to be given to him. Tenavik rips out one and gives it to Pike. Pike again sees the same scene.
Michael, Gant and Spock beam to the ship. They start recovering the ship. The ship starts powering and warps away. Jett comes to Hugh with a hangnail. She wants Hugh to stop making a fuss with Stamets. Jett is married to a woman. Nice, a lesbian. Looks like it. They relate about their partners' quirks. She tells him he's got a second chance. Gant recaps the situation. Michael suggests making a dummy system and "trapping the AI in it like a lion in the cage". Someone will have to be in the control room to close off the cage manually, I guess.
Spock says he'll go. I thought the redshirt was a goner. Spock says the cage is ready. So, I guess it worked. I looked away for a second and it worked. OK, I guess. Gant talks about how he ended with Section 31. Gant praises Control and Michael looks at him. Spock realizes Control is out. Michael reaches for her phaser but Gant threatens with destroying her hand. Spock is locked in. Michael talks to Gant. He says he was "reanimated, reconstructed". So, Control can take over humans just like that and revive them?
Michael listens to Gant preaching to her. She chats with him. Gant wanted Michael alone to ask for her help in getting the ball data. Oh, he will take over Michael. Spock hacks the intercom and warns Michael. Gant looks away, Michael shoots, Gant runs away (??), Spock forces the door open (!!!), Michael shoots again, Gant hits her. Aaaargh, so many flashes. Gant takes the same syringe to Michael's eye we saw stab Leland. Spock tries pinching Gant, but he says "it would be effective if I still had nerve endings" (??) and breaks Spock's hand. Michael fires a barrage of phaser shots at Gant, who is still standing with a hole in his chest.
Something pours out of Gant, like a crawling mass of ants, and moves to Michael. Spock is still tapping on the console. Michael dual wields phasers when the mass reaches her and falls apart. The floor became magnetized. Spock apologizes for being so slow. Control was blocking Spock's tricorder. They regained control of the ship. So now they are returning to Discovery. Pike got the raw time crystal to Discovery. L'Rell asks what the monks wanted in return but he won't say.
Pike hands over the insignia of the Torchbearer to Ash. L'Rell sounds like she will cry. Ash and she hold the insignia. Ash thanks Pike, who says he was meant to be guided by Tenavik.
Michael tells Discovery crew about Control's ability to take over people. Section 31 ships are coming to Discovery's location. 30 ships. It took a supernova to power the time crystal. Michael suggests one option – destroy Discovery. What about the crew?????? Pike sits in his chair. He orders Enterprise to wait for them and engages the auto-destruct sequence. Ah, the Janeway Gambit.
This episode opens with "previously on" that includes scenes I have no idea where they came from. Tilly discovers some cloaked girl and beams her somewhere. Anyway, the episode starts. Sarek is meditating on a beach. He opens his eyes and says: "Michael..." Total chaos on Discovery. The crew is abandoning ship to Enterprise. Control has infiltrated subspace radio relays, so they can't call for backup. The two ships connect with tubes. We see characters saying silent farewells to the ship. Michael keeps chatting about Gabrielle. Pike chats with her.
Michael touches the time crystal and sees her own death: unexploded torpedo destroys the bridge and Leland says "goodbye" as she dies. Saru and Pike activate auto-destruct. Discovery's warp core is ready for overload. We see Discovery crew mingling with Enterprise's. Saru brought over Siranna's knife. Cool, so officers can just carry knives like that. Pike enters the Enterprise and we finally see how awful the new uniforms are. Pike's Number One says: "We'll have no holographic communications – ever". Wow.
Philippa enters the bridge and winces at the orange color dominant on the bridge. She talks to Michael about cutting technology out of Leland. Enterprise moves away from Discovery. Auto-destruct fails. They fire photon torpedoes but Discovery's shields are up. Spock suggests the ball data is protecting itself (?????). Saru says the ball data merged with the ship. Michael is feeling her vision become reality. The vision is still going on. Leland is walking into the bridge and gunning fools. Michael crawls. Leland shoots her in the head. Vision ends.
Michael yells: "Stop!" She says they should have anticipated the ball data doing this (????). Spock says Discovery's existence is the problem. Michael proposes sending the entire ship to the future. They are hatching a plan for time travel. The suit is genetically locked to Gabrielle. Michael says she is the closest match they have (????). Stamets says they need a special alloy, which they can't synthesize. Michael says it's a tritanium-based alloy and they could melt cargo bulkheads to create it. Pike is willing to trust that a red signal will appear when they need it.
Spock says that Gabrielle denied having anything to do with the red signals, so they must have been made by Michael. Saru says they can't activate the crystal. Now they only need a supernova. Philippa suggests firing an antimatter missile at a red giant. People scorn her. They are called to the bridge. Another signal. It's the fifth one. Leland is five minutes away. The core crew will return to Discovery and the two ships will meet at the location of the signal.
Pike's Number One says that she upgraded shuttles and got experimental tactical flyers assuming "the shit would hit the fan". Enterprise warps and Discovery spore jumps. Cool animations. They reached Xahea. Tilly is giddy. She says she knows the queen of Xahea. Some research on my part showed the missing scenes were from "Short Treks", optional short episodes. Tilly says the Queen made some sort of technology that can recrystallize dilithium, meaning produce it infinitely. Stamets and Hugh meet. Aw-kward.
Stamets says to Hugh that he wants to move away from starships. Hugh says: "I get it". Forward motion. They wish happiness to one another. Hugh says he'll join Enterprise. Tilly has a bowl of ice cream as the Queen beams in. Queen instantly squees and lunges to hug Tilly. The Queen is a nerd. Tilly introduces them to Michael and Pike. The Queen recaps their plan. Philippa snarks. The Queen shuts her down and motions with a spoon through the air. Jett says she's doing "nuclear particle physics". Wow. The two like each other.
Of course, the Queen knows how to replicate the power of a supernova using her dilithium incubator. She says she will need tons of energy, though. There is just one problem – the crystal will burn out and Michael won't be able to come back. Michael says it to Ash. He is angry nobody consults him about anything. Michael says she hopes to land on Terralysium in the future. Everyone just glosses over the high risk of their plan. Ash says this is crazy but nobody cares. Michael says she loves them all.
Tilly is afraid. The Queen gives her a pep talk. Tilly is gushing. All of a sudden, we learn about dark energy powering the crystal. The Queen wants to stay on board. Philippa says Michael has a martyr complex. Michael sees Sarek and Amanda walking towards her. They felt she is in need of their advice. They talk. A lot. Sarek apologizes to both women. The women are crying and hug. The two leave.
Michael listens to Gabrielle's advice for time travel. Tilly talks to and hugs her. The crew gathered in the hallway to see Michael. They want to join her in the future. Saru interrupts her "I can't accept your sacrifice" speech. Ash talks to her and says he isn't coming with. He wants to try and change things in Section 31 from within. They hug and kiss. So much emotion and crying. Michael walks away. The crew is leaving farewell messages for their families.
Pike appoints Saru as the captain of Discovery before he leaves it for good. Enterprise arrives. Section 31 is 10 minutes behind them. Pike says his farewells. Nhan wants to stay on Discovery. Pike is still saying his farewells. Michael thanks him. Pike is about to leave. The crew stands together, like posing for a group photo and they all smile at him. He nods and walks out.
The crystal is still charging. They are running out of time. Jett is going to sacrifice herself. Tilly and Stamets walk out as Jett does something to the crystal. She also sees the unexploded torpedo being the cause of her death. Pike still hasn't left. Finally. Philippa reveals her real identity to Pike as he beams out. Tons of ships warp in. Like, literally hundreds of them. Pike enters Enterprise's bridge and the two ships prepare for battle.
The battle begins. Thousands of fighters launch. Enterprise will try to buy time for Michael. The components for the suit are just now being created. The crew is running around like headless chicken. 4 minutes until the time crystal is charged. Leland's fleet is all drones. Saru quotes FUCKING SUN TZU. Leland hails Saru and asks for the data. Saru isn't fazed. Leland launches TENS OF THOUSANDS OF FIGHTERS from his 30 ships. My God, this is worse than anime.
The barrage of explosions begins. It's like hundreds of thousands of lasers being fired at once. The crew is adjusting the suit as everything around them is exploding. Yeah, not buying it. The Queen is in a shuttle. Pike contacts her. She already analyzed Leland's fighters and says they have to be attacked from two sides at once to be killed. Pew-pew-pew. Philippa advises Saru to invite Leland on board. The crystal is charged. Jett says Saru to "get off her ass".
Pike puts Enterprise between drones and Discovery. My God, it's full of explosions. What the hell is this? Pike orders firing at Leland's ship. The crew is wheeling the suit to the shuttle bay. Perhaps instead of saying goodbyes you could have made the suit in time rather than waiting for the battle. An explosion throws them to their knees. Stamets is bleeding and dying. Spock and Michael carry on.
They are running out of time. In the sickbay, so many dying. Where is the EMH? The suit is ready. They are again talking as everything around them is falling apart. Michael merges with the Iron Man suit, I swear, the animation is straight out of Iron Man. Spock will fly a shuttle in front of her. They flash gang signs and touch palms.
Enterprise is falling apart. Michael does the "running start" pose. Discovery lowers shields, Spock and Michael fly out and drones surround her as an angelic choir sings in the background. Not a joke. An explosion knocks Michael back but she's got this. Leland beamed aboard Discovery while their shields were down. Leland starts gunning fools. He's going for the ball data. Total chaos aboard both ships. Nhan and Philippa are after Leland. They are locked out. Philippa tells Saru to stop bothering them.
Philippa asks Nhan if she would like to join her in making Leland scream and she answers: "Yum, yum." Michael and Spock land but she can't make the suit trigger to move forward. We see a torpedo lodge itself in the Enterprise. Michael sees the torpedo. She says to Spock that her vision is coming true. Pike orders tiny, cute drones launched to repair the ship. The officers will go to disarm it manually.
Michael can't figure out where the two remaining signals are. Discovery is being destroyed. Lasers are ripping the two ships apart. Something happens. A gigantic ship uncloaks and Ba'ul fighters appear too. Siranna hails Saru. He says: "You have learned to pilot a fighter?" Ash hails Pike from the Klingon ship. Hell yeah, why not just call Klingons from the start? Everyone on the Klingon ship says, "Today is a good way to die" in Klingon. Spock tells Michael each red signal led Discovery to necessary crewmembers, tools and locations.
Michael realizes she has to jump back and set the past events in motion. They are stuck in a time loop. Michael has to take a leap of faith. Leland is losing his patience looking for the ball data. Philippa says Leland is "kind of like an AI sausage". Really? I'll go watch the Orville right now, damn it. Leland says, "Women, stop talking". Philippa is holding the quantum amplifier he gave her previously. The two women run out. Admiral Cornwell and Number One reach the torpedo. 15 minutes befoe it takes out half the ship.
More sickbay action. Stamets is dying. Hugh is there and will induce a coma. Not again! Hugh says they are family. Sure, whatever. Michael set all her jumps. A missile slams right into Spock's shuttle. Michael activates the suit. Time slows down. A black portal opens and she is pulled into it. Again the angelic choir. Michael is flying through a shower of sparks. She's screaming. So much flashing. She will now do what exactly? She sees herself impaled in the Hiawatha.
Michael then visits Terralysium. Leland is punching women. Space pulls out two persons through a hull breach that closes. Tilly is trying to get the shields back online. Gravity systems are failing. Leland is still punching the two women. They walk on walls. Now the ceiling. They are still fighting. Leland is being the noodles out of Philippa, who shoots him in the face with a phaser and runs out while he's regenerating. Michael is still sending red signals. We see her popping throughout the scenes.
Number One and Admiral Cornwell are disarming the torpedo. The former says they're in the Hail Mary part of the operation. Pike says he'll be coming. Number One and Admiral Cornwell do the Indian handshake. Pew-pew-pew still going on. My God, so many lasers and fighters. L'Rell hits her head and laughs maniacally. Michael jumps back to Boreth and then to Xahea. Michael is back to the present. She's setting the coordinates to Terralysium 930 in the future. Saru tells Michael that it's hard to follow her. She says she will activate a signal.
Leland and Philippa are still fighting, but now in the engineering. Leland chokes her and gloats. She elbows and kicks him, and he gets inside the spore drive cage. He elbows the glass of the cage and it cracks immediately. Pike and Admiral Cornwell are disarming the torpedo. Nothing else works. She suggests sealing off the torpedo with a blast door. What about the walls? The torpedo starts beeping faster and faster. Do torpedos beep? A blue flash of light engulfs Admiral Cornwell. Pike is 2 meters away and completely unharmed. Pike is in the turbolift.
Spock says he can't go back. His engines are dead. He will not survive. Wow. What a defeatist. He stares her down. She just got him back. She doesn't want to let go. He says how Michael taught him so much and saved him. She says that wasn't she. Spock admits to being a weak man without her. She says, "Listen to me, little brother". Yeah, about that fight raging on? WHY THE HELL ARE YOU STILL TALKING????? Why wasn't this talk done in their Vulcan headspace? The time there obviously doesn't move.
Michael says she will send the 7th signal when she goes through the wormhole into the future. Leland is almost out of the cage. Philippa is bored. She magnetizes the spore cube and tells him to enjoy. Cut to Pike entering the bridge. BOOM! Spock contacts Discovery and says he won't be able to get back. Tilly is fixing stuff while everything is sparking around her. She is bloodied. Wow. Shields back to 40%. Spock tells "I love you" in Vulcan to Michael. Great, can we finish the episode already?
Michael does the Iron Man kneeling pose and jumps into space while spreading her wings. Saru says goodbye to Pike. Hugh is again checking on Stamets. Hugh says, "We're on our way". Leland says it's not going to end here. Leland screams as the nanobots are being pulled out of him, I guess. Philippa giggles in his face. Leland collapses and nanobots pour out of his face. I guess they were all in his head. All Leland's drones come to a halt. Everyone is watching Michael and Discovery enter the portal. We get our heartstrings tugged through warm scenes from previous episodes. Things go blurry as Discovery enters the wormhole. This thing is enormous.
The blur is still going on. They finally enter and they all disappear. Earth. Golden Gate bridge. Ash, Number One, Pike and Spock are being debriefed. They say the same story: Discovery exploded and they're all gone. They ask about Michael. They blame Section 31 and praise Michael. Ash is promoted. He asks if Control was eliminated. He is told it is. Spock recommends abstaining from historical events, meaning Discovery, spore drive or its drive mustn't be spoken of again, under penalty of treason. Yeah, that stopped Michael.
Spock's narration. 124 days later. They managed not to reveal the truth about Discovery. Sarek and Amanda are diplomatically immune from interrogation. They will never say Michael's name in the presence of others. Sure, so that's the trick to retcon Star Trek series. Spock says, "You teach me, sister, even now." So, there was still no red signal? Nope. Spock strokes his beard. Remember that remark she made when they first met? He believes she was successful and dons a new uniform. He is summoned to the bridge.
Number One does a double take. Pike raises an eyebrow. Spock shaved his beard. An anomaly in the Beta Quadrant. They have confirmation. Seventh signal, 51,000 light years from their present position. Spock will run the analytics. Original music. They move to Edrin Two. OMG, an alien with a burned face. Pike says, "Hit it" and they warp. Glorious shot of the Enterprise. THE END
I had low expectations but Star Trek: Discovery sank lower than I could ever expect. I could clearly see the show ran out of budget mid-season 1, seeing how the plot at that point involved going to a parallel universe, where the crew met mirror versions of themselves. This allowed the show to basically extend the cast without hiring new actors.
I could barely follow the plot. Taking a break from the show made the plot unfathomable. Without this synopsis, I'd be completely lost. The alternate characters had very few interesting differences from the originals except Voq. Still, it's inexcusable how much the plot was eviscerated by lazy writing. New doohickeys were introduced and discarded immediately, making everything feel so disposable. If I had to sum up the entire Star Trek: Discovery in one word, it would be "disposable".
Here are some of the disposable doohickeys that get introduced in Star Trek Discovery to resolve a plot point and are then never brought up again:
I'm especially angered by how the "species reassignment protocol" changed definitions throughout the show. At one point, it was Ash's body that had Voq's memories grafted onto it and later on it was a surgery wherein Voq's body was shaped to resemble Ash's. Which is it — Ash's or Voq's body? It's like the writers forgot what was going on and just made things up as they went along.
Admiral Cornwell looked like a promising, lifelike character and Saru looked like a genuine Starfleet officer but the rest were just washed out, two-dimensional cutout stand-ins. Tilly was a nervous wreck and I can't imagine any military recruiting her, let alone giving her captainship. All the other characters were similarly damaged, including Airiam and Stamets.
What pains me the most is that there was at least one way to make all those characters fit in, by simply having the crew do adventures, pick up all these stragglers, introduce their backstories and then break out the Klingon war around Episode 10. At that point, Starfleet could say that they're strapped for recruits and everyone is welcome, including these unreliable characters. That would make sense but the way STD did it was just topsy-turvy, completely unrealistic and frontloaded to all hell.
Michael Burnham/Spock is simply too perfect of a character. She is black Jesus, Thor, Iron Man, ninja, hacker, lover, diplomat, mutineer, fighter and much more in one. She did everything in the show and nothing happened without her involvement. I found it strikingly weird and deviating from all other previous Star Trek shows, which were plot-centric and where each character got a chance to shine. I found it pathetic how the characters whined "we need Michael to solve this". When she landed on Talos Four is when there was at least some inkling of the classic Star Trek, the one with kooky costumes and weird aliens rather than neurotic women.
In previous Star Treks, there were episodes focusing on a single character but here the entire two seasons centered on Michael Burnham. By the way, why not call her Michaela? Mikhayla? Every choice regarding Michael is wrong, including how she was apparently half-Vulcan only so she can be tied into Spock's story. She never showed anything even remotely logical and that could be clearly seen later on when Spock cut her down with laser precision. She was a bossy girl in a power fantasy story. Honestly, the story in the alternate universe felt like something out of Warhammer lore.
Well, the fan keeps spinning and the shit keeps coming in so let's Jackson Pollock this motherplower. Being the sadomasochist I am, it's time for round three of emotional self-flagellation.
We see a recap of prior events. I'd rather not suffer through it again. A bird is pecking at its feet and then it disappears. A guy gets up from the bed and it disappears too. All right... Holograms? Solid holograms? More waking up sequences in quick succession. Every time, the guy has a case with a Federation emblem. He looks Hindu. He's searching for some signals.
Wreckage in space. Pew-pew-pew. Two ships chasing each other. A black guy called Book is being threatened by his pursuer. An anomaly appears in space. Book heads towards it. Why? He says "nonononoNO" but Michael still bumps into him and tumbles towards a nearby planet. Wow, the chances of that. The suit won't respond but it does initiate a thermal shield. Michael engages a full system reboot.
We see the two of them crashing on the planet. The suit reboots right before Michael slams into the ground; she still does but somehow "reverse thrusters" have eased her impact. Of course, she survives without a scratch. The suit is wrecked. She vomits. Life support failure. There are flames around her? Why? We know she's invulnerable.
She looks around and then up. Desolate. Good thing the air is breathable. The suit disengages from her and she takes out a suitcase with a communicator out of it. Nobody is replying to her calls. She asks the suit to identify year. 3188. Multiple life signs detected. Michael screams like she won the KKKlingon war.
The wormhole is closing. Why? She goes nononononono and frantically taps the holographic keyboard, which looks dumb as hell with tiny keys. Initiate self-destruct? Why? The suit flies off, though it looked wrecked a second ago. It enters the wormhole, which closes behind. Michael falls to the ground and laugh-cries. Wow.
She investigates the suitcase and her supplies before reaffirming her own character sheet info. She taps her communicator badge but it isn't working. Her back is hurt. She can still walk? Wow? She sees a plume of smoke some 100 kilometers away. Not even joking. She says "WALK" and starts walking towards it. Wow.
Anyway, she reached the wreck. That was easy. She's got a teleport? The ship disappears and Book does an Arya Stark with a wrench of some sort. She taps him on the chest and they play what seems like patty cake. He aims the wrench at her like it's a gun and accuses her of taking him out of the sky. What is going on????? She apparently believes it IS a gun, denies it and tries pacifying him.
She tries telling her name but he doesn't want to know. He lunges at her but she twists his arm, kicks, punches and otherwise makes a fool out of him. He throws a boomerang knife at her. She ducks and it flies back to his hand, despite him going prone. How???? She got him pinned on his back to the ground, with her phaser pointed to his head.
He asks if she will put "that antique" down. She says no. He says, OK, on three. What?! She said no, you moron! She says she's going to count and does. Sigh. On the count of three, she stands up and backs away. Wow. He still doesn't want to hear her name. He berates her for creating a wormhole.
He asks where she got that weapon and then immediately says he doesn't wanna know. Wow? The two talk like they're brain damaged. The antique has tritanium alloy. He says she isn't from these parts and should go back. She says she can't. This is Teralysium. He asks who she is and then immediately says he do not wanna know. Idiot.
Michael apologizes for crashing into his ship and asks for his name. He doesn't want to say. It's "Book". Yes, Book. She wells up and of course he takes her on his ship, which is in pristine condition despite having been wrecked. Wow. She marvels at the ship's controls. He tells her not to touch anything. Of course, she will learn how to fly it in a second.
Book starts with some technobabble. It boils down to him needing dilithium. He has a very large cat. It has a thyroid condition and is named Grudge because she's heavy and all his. Book mentions a merchant. Michael wants to go there. She apparently has antiques with enough dilithium.
He gives her a uniform and tells his name is Book. His cargo is temperature-sensitive. They are outside and he taps on the holographic display, which is apparently projected from his watch. Michael asks about the cargo and calls him a thief. He says he's a courier and then flips the blame on his crashing on her.
Book says there are weirdos that believe the Federation is still there but it's gone. She is stunned. Why trust him? He's a space pirate and you let him lead you along. He says the Federation collapsed after the Burn, when most of dilithium in the galaxy just went boom. Wow. How?????? She asks how it happened. He says he doesn't know and that a lot of people died.
Federation tried to hang on. She won't believe it and asks when. He says 100–120 years ago. She says Federation is more than warp drive and ships; it's about a vision. He is snide and advises her to take off that badge. They move on over impossible terrain that must take them months to traverse. Well, they've teleported and it's still daytime. A HUGE CITY. Good God.
Some sort of launching platform is right above the city. Huh??? They enter it. Some sort of checkpoint. Book tells her to follow his lead. Some kind of drone scans them and finds something missing from her left forearm. One of the guards spawns a holo-glove (?) and orders her to stay put. Book says she's got something and she opens the bag with her Federation baubles.
The guard says he doesn't care. Book smooth-talks him and addresses the drone, saying the bosses are watching. Will this work? A voice speaks over the drone and tells the guard to let them in. She asks how this works. He explains it's like a holo-auction. She sees a portable transporter used by two people.
He leads her to a niche and tells the subspace array is through there. She gives him the tricorder and says good luck. She enters the niche and immediately gets wrapped in some red tangle. Book says this is their vault. She's in a stasis beam. He reaches inside the niche (??!?!?!?!!?) and snags the bag. She appeals to his morals. He is cold. She promises vengeance. He is still cold.
Michael is brought in front of two dudes, who ask her about her ship. She says she will hurt that man. The two don't trust her and the drone sprays something in her face. One guy says he's hungry. Michael laughs and is apparently dazed out of her mind. We get a bunch of Dutch angles. Truth gas? She snores and her head falls on her chest. The two guys bicker when Michael snaps out of the daze and starts motor-mouthing. Undiluted cringium.
They ask about the gear but she gets philosophical and says she's supportive. Wow. The hell is going on? Book argues about getting more dilithium with some alien girl in the open. She won't have a deal with him. An alien, Cosmo, approaches Book. It's the alien that threatened him from before he crashed. Michael babbles on. "For the sake of creation!"
The two guys ask about the guy that stopped her and she says it's Book. Cosmo is beating up Book when the two guys show up. Michael punches Book. Wow? Cosmo wants to shoot him. Nope. No weapons allowed in there, apparently. So, the drug wore off? I bet we never see anything like it again. All of a sudden, Michael and Book lock eyes and start punching guys left and right.
They steal what looks like tea kettles and start blasting. No weapons, huh? Total mayhem. They chat while being blasted by the aliens. Book punches a dude. Good God, so many lens flares and shaky cam cuts. Book activates a grenade of some sort and it blasts all the enemies. Michael is giddy. What was that? She seesruns towards a niche and grabs... dilithium? All the while, the guys are blasting them and one triggers the same grenade Book used. They fall down.
They teleported out?????? They're behind a waterfall. She punches him again. Baddies teleport in and start blasting. The two start KILLING FOOLS. Book teleports the two of them out of the heat. They're in the middle of nowhere when 6 guys beam in behind them and start blasting. More jumps. They wait for the gang to beam in and blast them straight away. Uh, it's a flaw in the instant teleporter? Anyone can ambush you. Why not teleport through a bomb or a grenade and only then follow the prey?
Book says the personal teleporter needs 30 seconds to recharge. So, when did he put one on her? We saw earlier as they were walking in the marketplace that people with the personal teleporter each wore their own. She apologizes for breaking his nose. He brings up a holo display and says she will be really mad. He grabs her and they jump off a cliff, disappearing in mid-air.
They spawn in the water. The personal teleporter can't be tracked underwater or when it leads into solid material. How?? She punches him AGAIN. That's not funny. He takes off his shirt. She says she hasn't been shot in a while. Uh, you haven't been shot ever? You're invulnerable. Book meditates and his forehead glows. He speaks gibberish.
A plant sprouts out of the water. He takes Michael's hand and squeezes some gel onto it. She asks what is that and if he was praying. He says it's something like it. She puts the gel on the wound and he binds it with a handkerchief. She groans. He gives her a gizmo that does "a bit of everything". She hails Discovery.
He gives her false hope. She clings on to it. He calls her a true believer and a time traveler. He says all time travel tech was outlawed and destroyed after the temporal wars. How is that even possible? She says she has to find her crew. Sweeping terrain shots. They're at the beach when the gang beams in. Cosmo is there too. The two drop their weapons. The gang shoots at the holo cloak and reveal Book's ship for a moment.
One of the two dudes that interrogated Michael blasts Cosmo. They ask Book for the access code to the ship. He gives it up way too easily, "Sticky". The ship uncloaks. Michael sees something inside the cargo hold. One of the gang shoots at it and a growl is heard. Book tells Michael to close her eyes when a monster emerges. The gang is mesmerized. It starts eating fools. The camera gets splashed with fake blood.
Michael and Book have their eyes wide open. Huh? The monster rages at them and swallows Michael. Book calls it "Molly" and speaks gibberish to it, so of course Michael is spat out, covered in slime. Wow, finally she shows some weakness. They bond. Book pets Molly.
They're on the ship and traveling. Molly is apparently a "trance worm" and Book has been saving them but apparently not long enough. She asks how he has this connection to everything and what it's like to feel everything. He says it's uncomfortable and that his family is one of poacher, with him being the exception. He isn't welcome in his family circle but he wouldn't trade who he is for anything. His name is Cleveland Booker.
A huge paradise planet filled with Book's buddies and trance worms swimming in the water. Idyllic. His planet used to look like that. He asks about what she left behind; 930 years. He asks why. She says to ensure the future, a future. He thanks her. Wow. He says he knows someone who can help her find Discovery.
They're at a former Federation station, where a possible reactor breach happened. They enter a ship and see the guy from one of the intro sequences. He welcomes her to Starfleet. It's a hologram, girl. She introduces herself. The holograms is somber and introduces himself as Aditya Sahil, a Federation liaison. She needs to find a Federation ship.
Aditya opens a holo display and says there are only two Federation ships in the 600-light-year radius, none of which are Discovery. She is floored and sits down. Wow, finally some weakness. He asks how come she knows nothing about the present. She says she's a time traveler. Aditya says Discovery could arrive tomorrow or in a thousand years.
Aditya tells her a secret. He is not a commissioned officer. He was never officially sworn in. There has been no-one to do it. So, he isn't a hologram. Today is the day he gets sworn in? He says he's doing his part to keep the Federation alive. He spawns a case with a flag. It has been in his family for generations. He wants to put it on the wall. Why?
She affirms him and asks him to do her the honor. The music swells. They shake hands. He spreads the flag and says hope is a powerful thing. She says sometimes it's the obookenly thing. If there are others out here, they will find them. Wow?
We see flashing lights. The crew is knocked out cold. Dead? Can't be. Saru opens his eyes. Alarm blaring. Oh, they're going through the wormhole and it's knocked them all out. They're out. He wakes people up and they all return to their stations at the same time. The ship is smashing into debris. The entire ship is falling apart. Brace!!!!!! BLAAAAAAM!!!
They punch through a huge piece of debris and keep falling. Thermal roll. OK. They will land into a glacier. 50 meters thick. Here — we — goooooo!!! They fire and land in one piece. Bumpy landing. They're encased in ice. We hear the ship creaking and groaning.
The crew comes to, again. The black girl, Owosekun, whoops and they all start clapping. Wow. Keyla Detmer is groggy and bleeding from her temple. She goes to sickbay. Tactical systems down, sensors don't respond. Jett Reno again complains about her back. She says they probably have a plasma manifold rupture. Should have left her on the asteroid.
Saru tries to instill hope. He emphasizes they're alive and that they'll soon find Michael. Jett Reno says she will modify tricorders. Yeah, didn't she make some sort of magical drones then? Saru instills confidence in his crew that he will be a competent captain. Tilly says she found 10-sided pockets of oxygen that appear man-made.
Saru repeats that "there is... life". Wow. He's the best character. He asks about the repairs. Georgiou comes in, her shoes stained with Leland's brains. Nasty. The spore cube needs to be cleaned so she harasses one engineer to do it. Saru tries intervening and sending her to the sickbay. Why haven't we seen his ear flaps activate again?
In a room, we see the gay doctor, Stamets. He's laying perfectly still. His gay boyfriend injects him with something and he wakes up. He was in an induced coma. The boyfriend is kicking him out of his bed; there are other patients. Wow. Gays have no loyalty. I thought it was just a stereotype. Some cringy humor here. Stamets finally gets up.
The gay boyfriend, Hugh, locks Stamets in some BDSM device and zaps him. Wow. This should be X-rated. They kiss on the mouth. Disgusting. Move along with the plot, please. Kayla Detmer is scanned and is good to go. She can't believe it. More panorama shots of the ship in disarray. Georgiou lashes out at poor Tilly, who tries explaining that they need to start an expedition to retrieve minerals and repair the ship. Saru is quietly listening, zoned out.
Tilly babbles on. Georgiou is fuming. Tilly says there aren't any dilithium readings. Georgiou lashes out and Saru finally intervenes. The lady with the mouthpiece, Nhan, butts in too. Saru still holds to Federation principles. He will go with Tilly to an expedition. Georgiou ribs her and Tilly almost drops a F-bomb. Saru doles out commands. They all leave and only then does Saru dismiss them.
Yep, they show it. Stamets comes in. Jett Reno shares her dyke wisdom with him. He doesn't want her help. She will follow him around "for the witty repartee". Wow. Saru and Tilly are all bundled up and waltz out. Really? On foot? They should be dead within half an hour. Saru has this cool swaying motion of his arms as he's walking. The best character on the show.
Looks like the same beach Book and Michael were on. Looks normal, like Iceland. Tilly is gushing about the wonders of the world. He encourages her to keep talking. Wow. Tilly questions her role in this trip. Saru affirms her and says he didn't choose Philippa because she can't control her emotional state. Wow, what a backhanded slap. Tilly is happy and cries. They see a black-clad figure in the distance and stop. Saru solemnly says: "First contact."
Nhan says this is a parasitic ice "of some kind". It apparently accelerates in shade. Philippa is fuming. They hear more creaking from the ship. Philippa ribs Nhan for joining Discovery. Nhan says she stayed because of Airiam, who paid the price of a soldier. Philippa says it's an "unbelievably shitty decision". Nhan replies that Philippa then made a similarly shitty decision staying on board Discovery, to which she says she likes jumping from universe to universe. So, it's a pastime for her?
They walk out of the turbolift and talk to a fish-eyed guy, Linus. Philippa is amazed by his big eyes, praises the breadth of his visual spectrum and seductively says to Nhan: "See you later." Will she plow him?
Saru and Tilly walk past a shut-down mine. Tilly mentions this might be a trap. The scenery is pretty bland. It's still the same gravel. Saru asks her to contain her fear. They see the stranger walking into a cave and disappearing. Will they follow? Of course. They walk into the same opening and teleport into some sort of a dilapidated salloon. There are aliens there, who don't pay much attention to them at first but then all start flashing their weapons and the then point them at the two.
Saru talks about their situation but the tavern patrons already know about it. Saru introduces Tilly, who says: "My name lacks authority." The patrons are baffled. Saru plays it straight. The patrons ask them to prove they are Starfleet officers and Tilly starts babbling about Starfleet Regulations.