Through the Valley of Shadows

 ***(3 out of 5)

“I’m not angry, I’m enraged.” says Michael Burnham, running off on an unsanctioned solo mission chasing Leland, which very nearly gets her taken over by Control. Spock badgers his way into coming along on the side quest, where they find more frozen space corpses and a slightly alive former Shenzhou officer turned Section 31 goon, Kamran Gant. Well, maybe less than slightly alive. 

Gant is a Control puppet, like Leland. Were they rebuilt from corpses? Entirely made of nanobots completely beyond the ken of the present day Starfleet? Unclear. They fool tricorders, they're fast and strong, they don’t have nerve endings, and they don't stop when you put big holes in them. Spock finally stops the fight scene with magnets. Would Gant have been susceptible to phaser vaporization? For some reason our heroes aren't using that setting. Just the energy bullet setting. Because it's cool.

Poor Jett Reno lost her Soyousian wife with all her irritating vegan steaks- she died in the Klingon war. She urges Culber to get off his existential mope and use his second chance at love. 

Pike (since Burnham isn't around and Ash and L'Rell think it's crazy risky) quests for a time crystal on planet Boreth, where Ash and L'Rell banished their very pale baby. 

Tenavik, son of none, was a very pale baby a few months ago, and is now a Dungeons and Dragons cleric. He's full of doom and assures Pike that taking a crystal will lock him into a horrible destiny. Confirmed by terrifying visions, its curse will seal Pike’s fate. He will be melted by radiation and confined to an iron lung chair. Is that better or worse than the Arnold Rimmer uniform that also awaits him? 

Pike fears no evil, he's pretty amazing. Reno is always welcome, coming to Culber with a hangnail to share some important thoughts on love. Spock and Michael are young and brave and they're working through some things, very admirable.

So it turns out Boreth is secretly full of time crystals and Klingon Timekeepers have been guarding them for generations, accelerating the lives of trees or inconvenient babies. Klingons seem like responsible, sensible people who wouldn’t ever use these crystals to erase human hist