Star Trek: Discovery -- Season 2 Episode 7 (The Sound of Thunder)

Saru is a bit of an oddity.  He comes from a pre-warp culture, but serves in Starfleet.  He was granted asylum many years ago, but we didn’t know much about the details.  Along comes The Sound of Thunder, wherein one of the Seven Signals is found above Saru’s home planet, Kaminar.

Kaminar is home to another race called the Ba’ul, who hunt the Kelpiens.  This makes visiting the planet tricky, since the Kaminar have warp drive.  Normally, Starfleet would avoid the Kelpiens altogether, but since they already know about interstellar travel, it might not be so bad.  Plus, they need information on The Red Angel.

So, Saru returns to his village with Michael Burnham.  He meets his sister and starts asking questions.  They’ve seen the signal, but not the angel.  Oh, and Saru’s presence has triggered some sort of alarm.

Saru has undergone an evolution his people believe impossible, but it’s not and the Ba’ul seem to know it.  What’s the deal?  Fortunately, the ship came by a vast amount of information that proves useful.  The Ba’ul do actually know more than they’re letting on.

The only thing really cliché about the episode is that Saru steals a shuttle and sacrifices himself.  I suppose there aren’t too many options.  We could have the Ba’ul beam him off or invade the ship and take him anyway.  That’s about it.

There’s also some tension between Saru and his sister.  Since he just disappeared, his village was left to assume that he had been taken by the Ba’ul.  She also realizes that he’s there for a reason and that reason isn’t to catch up.

My big complaint is that Culber is having such a hard time readjusting to life on Discovery and no one is doing anything to help him. The guy literally came back from the dead.  He’s also jumpy to the touch and has been through an ordeal, which might indicate some sort of psychological issue.  You’d think someone would have him talk to a psychologist.  Yet, there’s no indication they even have one on the ship.

However, it appears that what’s happening to Saru is natural and expected.  It’s still not clear exactly how it will play out, but it will be interesting to see what happens.

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Star Trek: Discovery -- Season 2 Episode 5 (Saints of Imperfection)

Some episodes are pretty straightforward.  There’s one main story and maybe a side story.  It might be personal growth that parallels a major conflict.  It might be a minor conflict that interferes with a normal mission.  Then, there are episodes like Saints of Imperfection.  It’s like, “Ok.  Put down what you’re doing.  I need you to pay attention.”

The main thread here is that Tilly, the overeager captain-in-training, is trapped in mycelial space.  It’s up to Stamets to save her.  Ash Tyler is now posted to The Discovery as a liaison to Section 31.  The ship finally catches up with Spock’s shuttle, bring it on board and…it’s not Spock.  Instead, they find Georgiou, who’s also looking for Spock.

So, the reason that Tilly was brought to mycelial space was that the spores needed her to slay a monster.  It’s not clear why Tilly, specifically.  However, this monster is killing mycelial life forms and has to be stopped.

Stamets finds a way to bring the Discovery into mycelial space and rescue Tilly.  Before going back, they find this monster that the spores want killed.  As a click-bait article might promise, you won’t believe who the monster is!

All of the story lines are tied together by things that are out of place.  Georgiou is not of our universe.  Tilly is trying to find something not of the mycelial universe.  Ash appears human on the outside, but is really Klingon on the inside.  He’s not really welcomed in either world and it’s about to get more complicated.

Speaking of the mycelial network, it seems like we’re never really done with that.  We get a full-on promise never to go back…until we have to again.  Then, that’s the last time…until the next time.  But this is the last time.  We mean it!

And for those of you reading these reviews as you’re watching the series, I feel your pain.  You can’t wait to see Spock.  I’m a few episodes ahead of you.  You’re not going to have to wait long.

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Star Trek: Discovery -- Season 2 Episode 4 (An Obol for Charon)

It seems to be a constant in the universe that when you’re in a rush, things pop up to block you.  When you’re late for a meeting, you catch all the red lights, for instance.  Or you don’t get a check you need until five minutes before the bank closes on Friday and the rent’s due Monday.  Or, like, when you’re chasing your science officer, who escaped from a psychiatric ward, and this giant sphere appears out of nowhere and stops you from moving.

Ok.  So, maybe that last one has never happened to any of you.  But it does describe what happens to the Discovery.  Spock has just escaped from a starbase where he was being examined when a sphere holds them and seemingly inserts a virus into their universal translator.

Many of the other systems are affected, but the big problem is Tilly being stuck in engineering with Paul Stamets and Jett Reno.  Stamets is a nice enough guy, but Reno seems to be a bit harsh.  This wouldn’t be a problem, except that Tilly is still dealing with that spore parasite that was manifesting as a hallucination.

Add to this that First Officer Saru is experiencing his death cycle.  His species normally undergoes this process right before being killed by the other major species on his planet, but he’s not on his planet.  So, what gives?

I’d like to say that everything works out, but that remains to be seen.  Spock is still out there, so that’s left unresolved.  Tilly disappears, but we have to assume she’ll be found.  As for Saru, his threat ganglia fall out.  He lives, but he has no idea what that really means for his species.  He’ll live without fear, but he’s never known it to happen to anyone.

It turns out that the sphere just wanted to dump its vast knowledge into the ship’s computer before dying.  This does give the crew a lot of information.  It would also explain something about The Next Generation.  In The Last Outpost, Data is able to give information on the T’Kon Empire.  I always wondered how Data had information on an Empire that ended about 600,000 years ago.  I doubt it’s directly from the sphere, but it’s possible.

In a nice bit of continuity, Number One comes onboard the Discovery for a few minutes.  We still don’t find out her name, though.  Maybe next time.

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Star Trek: Discovery -- Season 2 Episode 3 (Point of Light)

There’s that line: Hell is other people.  It’s not what other people think of you, but rather, what you think other people think of you.  That seems to be the theme for this episode.

Ash/Voq is having a hard time being accepted as a Klingon since he looks human.  Tilly thinks she’s going crazy because of what’s ostensibly a hallucination.  So, of course, she hides it for fear of the straight jacket.  Also, we learn that Spock lacks empathy and Burnham feels like she’s responsible, due to some untold transgression against him when they were children.  She can’t even bring herself to approach or contact him.

The story progresses on these three fronts.  Ash learns that he has a son, which T’Rell, the mother, saw as a liability.  Her association with Voq has made her tenure as chancellor a difficult one.  Having a kid wouldn’t make that any easier.

Tilly’s hallucination isn’t making things easier for her.  It’s taken the form of an old friend, May and pseudo-May is persistent.  This might be all good and well, but Tilly has training to undergo and she nearly has a breakdown in front of the captain and the rest of the bridge crew.  But, there’s hope.  May could be the result of a parasite.

As for Spock, it looks like it may be a few episodes before we see him.  Burnham gets a visit from Amanda.  Amanda may not have been the best mother to Spock and Burnham, but she tried.  Still, it’s difficult to think of Spock being in a mental institution.

I mean, he was seeing the same Red Angel that Burnham saw, so there’s that.  The big thing is that Burnham committed some undisclosed transgression against Spock that may or may not explain everything.  Either way, Burnham feels guilty.

The second season is doing a pretty good job of building a cohesive story.  There are a few missteps, like Klingons having hair now.  (Apparently, they were shaving it before.)  And everything is tied together.  Spock knew about the Red Angel.  The Klingons do, too.

I have only one really big complaint.  I know I keep harping on this, but what’s with the whole Disco thing?  Couldn’t they use Dis or Disc?  I mentioned this with the first episode.  I was hoping not to see it again.  I really want to know why the first five letters of the ship’s name.  We never saw Voyag or Enter.  Could someone explain this to me?

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Star Trek: Discovery -- Season 2 Episode 2 (New Eden)

The first season of Star Trek: Discovery left us with a lot to look forward to.  There was a distress call from Captain Pike of the Enterprise, who was assuming command of the Discovery.  We find out that he’s on a mission to find seven red signals.  Little is known about them save two things:  The location of one signal and that scanning them might blow out your sensors.

So, here we are in the second episode and one signal has already been dealt with.  It turns out that by approaching the signal, it disappears, much like the end of a rainbow.  There does seem to be a pot of gold at the end of each, though.

In the previous episode, Pike and crew found a downed medical transport with the survivors in need of immediate help.  Here, they find a colony of humans that predates warp drive.  There’s no indication of how they got so far out that it would take hundreds of years at warp drive without any sort of space ship.

As if that wasn’t strange enough, there’s a distress signal coming from the surface, yet no sign of trouble among the people.  Oh, and some radioactive rocks break off from one of the planet’s rings and heads straight for the surface.

Michael Burnham gets some more insight on what happened with her foster brother Spock.  He seemed to have known about the seven signals.  He’s also in a psychiatric ward.

The second season of Discovery is shaping to be much like what I expected of the first.  There’s an even, manageable pace.  In fact, we have a story that would be in good company among episodes of The Original Series.

There’s even a real moral debate on what General Order Number One really means.  The population is human, but they have no meaningful concept of warp drive or interstellar travel.  True, Jacob knows it must be possible, but it’s little more than a strong belief.  None of that is enough to go against the Prime Directive.

I’m also glad to see that the away mission went relatively well.  In episodes like this, there’s usually a fight to the death or some sort of crazy fundamentalist leader or something.  That sort of drama or suspense was kept to a minimum.

There’s a nice balance here.  We get enough to know that there’s a larger picture without it being too heavy-handed.  There’s still enough that we get to focus on one story at a time.  If this keeps up, I’ll have no problem finishing the season.

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