Listen, I know that big universe-shaking space battles and ‘splosions are cool and all, but do we really have to end every season with them, ‘Discovery’ creative team?
WARNING: Spoilers for this episode of ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ lie ahead, obviously. If you haven’t seen the episode and don’t wish for any of its content to be spoiled for you, the time to turn back is NOW!
RECAP: Honestly, not a lot happens in this episode besides the emotional staring, hugging, kissing, and looking intently into the camera. So. Much. Emotion.
But I’m being serious, though. Enterprise finds her way to Discovery and the crew leisurely takes their time abandoning ship; finally, Captain Pike gives the order to self-destruct the vessel… and she won’t blow. It seems the Sphere data has taken over the ship’s controls, fully protecting itself by any means necessary.
Control and the Section 31 armada are chasing the two Starfleet vessels, so Burnham makes the very Burnham call to have the squad create her a temporal flight suit and she’ll just guide Discovery into the future where Control can never get at it (my call about the ‘Calypso’ Short Trek story from weeks ago is coming closer and closer to reality). It’s a really emotional call, you guys – and you know that the show’s stories never revolve solely around Michael Burnham as the primary character of the entire universe <sarcasm>.
So, it’s a tense situation, and time is of the essence – except that everyone and their mother has time to swing by and have a super-emotional heart-to-heart with Burnham. Literally everyone and their mother, as Amanda and Sarek somehow find a way to swing by Discovery after it spore-jumps to a random planet way far away in the face of this race against the clock. This is literally a laughable plot contrivance. I feel like I am literally saying “literally” too much here.
Oh, and the entire Discovery bridge crew decide to stay on-board with Burnham as they head to the future, because reasons. Let’s just telegraph the fact that we’re gonna shove the action of this show hundreds of years into the future next season, since the gang’s all coming along, okay?
OBSERVATIONS:
- A conveniently-located forest AND a lake right outside Sarek’s home on the desert planet of Vulcan? Cool. Cool cool cool.
- Seriously, though; Section 31 is breathing down their ass, but the Discovery crew is evacuating the ship at such a leisurely pace, it seems like they are moving out of their college dorm and reminiscing while thinking about their transition to adulthood as they go. No rush, kids! The crew has time to dawdle, time to chat, time to voice-blog… even though they’ve made this second season all about it, the creative team doesn’t have a great grasp on the concept of time, eh?
- For as routinely salty as I am about this show – sweet Q, it’s always nice to see the Enterprise, isn’t it?
- I cannot take the forced drama of Leland killing everyone in Burnham’s premonition. That is one under-prepared Starfleet crew and one over-dramatic AI.
- So, we’re able to get all necessary Discovery crew back onboard the ship and get everything ramped up and good to go (with another mycelial-devastating spore jump, sigh) in less than the five minutes that Control was inbound? See above for my (extremely valid) complaints on the creative team’s generous bending of time constraints in the plot.
- The random girl from the ‘Short Trek’ is the key to the whole solution, hooray! But oh no, Michael can’t come back from the future, because science reasons. Lots of convenience in this scene, but this is part of the course in ‘Discovery’ these days, isn’t it?
- Ash lumbers into his scene and utters “You’re leaving? Forever?” Good god, the (lack of) acting.
- “Dark energy” … “time crystal” … what is this, Star Trek or Farscape?
- LOLOLOL Sarek and Amanda had time to get there? To Xahea? Cheese and rice, the convenience of time is all over the board in this show.
- Again – the crew says their emotional goodbyes to their people – and we the viewers don’t give a damn about any of it, BECAUSE WE DON’T KNOW THESE CHARACTERS. Also, if the crew all have so many beloved people here in the present that they all have to send “Dear John” letters to… why are the Disco ducks leaving all of them behind? This is not what Starfleet has asked of them when they signed up.
- Also – why the Hell would Nhan stay on Discovery? She, to my understanding, is a career officer on Enterprise, and in the few weeks (months?) that has passed on Discovery this season, she’s been shown interacting with the crew exactly zero times. Well, she did interact with Airiam… on an away mission… and Airiam tried to kill her by ripping out her breathing apparatus. So, yeah, good times, I guess.
- Also – we all know that Spock doesn’t end up in a far-flung future scenario, so it looks like we are set up for what is sure to be an overly-dramatic scene where he gets separated from Michael/Discovery somehow and will be subjected to a loving-but-loud goodbye from Michael.
- Is… is that… a Constellation-class four nacelled Section 31 ship? *brain shuts down*
CLOSING THOUGHTS: Apparently the entire season finale episode will be one ginormous battle. So that should be fun and not overly dramatic at all.
PRINCIPAL CAST FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE:
Sonequa Martin-Green as Michael Burnham
Doug Jones as Lieutenant Saru
Anson Mount as Captain Pike
Anthony Rapp as Lieutenant Stamets
Mary Wiseman as Cadet Tilly
Wilson Cruz as Dr. Culber
Ethan Peck as Spock
‘Star Trek: Discovery’ features new episodes Thursday nights at 8:30 pm online via CBS All Access.
