Perpetual Infinity

***(3 out of 5)

Michael Burnham lost her parents at age 10 or 12. In an attempt to go back one hour and save Mike and Michael, Dr. Gabrielle Burnham in her experimental Red Angel temporal armor ends up 950 years in the future, alone among many totally dead worlds.

She was the one who moved an Earth church to Terralysium, but remains unable to save her family in multiple attempts. Unable to destroy the Sphere called Sphere (which contains the knowledge that will give Control the power to destroy all living things), Dr. Burnham undoes the Sphere's gravitational binding and puts it in Discovery’s path. When and how she achieved this is unclear- is setting a boiling moon thrice the size of a Death Star in motion easier than waving a big magnet over the Control AI before it can become a supervillain?

After briefly arguing that destroying the Sphere Data is like burning the Library at Alexandria, Saru gets out a digital cannister of digital gasoline anyway... and finds that the data is inflammable. Gabrielle has seen Michael die hundreds of times (and presumably hundreds of ways, despite her growing pessimism with temporal mutability.) She's seen it and prevented it at least once, in Michael's youth on Vulcan.

While Ash fiddles with a glowing pog, Spock hatches a plan to use dark matter particles to keep Dr. Burnham in the present, and put the dangerous data into the Red Angel suit and throw it back to the future.

I can’t understand why “The Distant Future” is declared inaccessible to Control. There are several dozen ways to time travel in Star Trek, and just the soup of the day, Klingon Time Crystals, have already been in Section 31's wrong hands for decades.

Leland, now riddled with Control's nanites, stabs Ash, kills some dudes, damages the Red Angel suit, and gets away with half a copy of the Sphere Data, more's the pity.

They nuke the site from orbit, it's the only way to be sure. Torpedoes reach the surface in what looks like one second (probably using warp speed, although I think that raises further questions.)

This maybe was their last chance to paper over why young Michael, hiding in the closet, heard her father die, and then heard her mother die longer. Possibly Michael is remembering the sound of her mom making a paradox-inducing number of curtailed attempts to change this moment? Just horrifying.

Anyway, now the empty Red Angel suit and Mom by herself are each yanked back through the wormhole into the bleak and foreboding future. Just horrifying.

Spock sets up a game of chess with Michael, which is pretty cool. Not as horrifying. "We have only now... we will find a way."

The Red Angel

 **(2 red angels out of 5)

Depending on what the vague images of autopsy and funeral mean, Dr. Pollard probably did everything she could and/or intentionally deleted Airiam’s digital memories to stop the AI Control’s infection. 

Everyone bonds over Airiam's funeral, including Michael & Nhan, Michael & surrogate-surrogate-mom Georgiou (interplanetary genocidal mass murderer), and Michael & handsome Ash (who ate the righteous version of Georgiou). Also both Ash and Georgiou are working for the dirty tricks squad who are most directly responsible for Control and thereby Airiam's death, so they should always be involved in all of our efforts to fight Control.

Tilly brings a bombshell from Airiam’s files- the Red Angel is Michael.

Because sick days and mental health days don't exist, Dr. Culber is back at work. He's getting some therapy regarding his separation from Cdr. Stamets. This advice comes from Admiral Cornwell, the paragon of making good choices in love. Also on the subject of love, Georgiou claims she’s had both Culber and Stamets, whose Mirror Universe selves were pansexual rather than gay. And Michael kisses on Ash for reasons that escape me. For handsomeness, I think.

Leland reveals that Michael’s parents were not killed because Klingons kill and eat parents whenever girls like telescopes and science, but because Section 31 and Leland personally had the Burnhams building a classified, wormhole-based, winged, time-travel spacesuit powered with a stolen Klingon time crystal. Michael clobbers Leland real good.

To set a trap for the Future Michael, they agree to kill the Present Michael as slowly and painfully as possible with toxic atmosphere and radiation, as you do. It's so horrible that everyone tries to back out except Spock, who pulls a gun to make sure no one will save Michael except the Red Angel. Which happens after the last possible second, but the Red Angel who zaps Michael back to life is Michael's mom instead.

And then Control stabs Leland in the eyes. There doesn't seem to be a reason. For handsomeness, I think.

Project Daedalus

****(4 frozen corpses out of 5)

Admiral Cornwall brings hovering, glowing orbs for a truth scan on Lieutenant Spock. Admiral Patar, the Logic Extremist who runs 31, is known to Cornwall (Did Cornwall learn all this recently? Are Logic Extremists legally allowed to serve in Starfleet at the Admiral level?) and Discovery heads for 31 HQ, because of course Cornwall knows where it is.

Airiam, it transpires, is a Robocop. Badly injured in a shuttle crash that killed her fiancé, she must weekly save the memories she likes and delete the boring hallway walks and elevator rides. She keeps games with Tilly, working out with handsome Rhys, and that one time Michael smiled. She revisits the beach vacation where marriage was proposed. Tilly’s “Half Robutt” is a less welcome term to Airiam than “Cybernetic Augment”, and one wonders how she’d feel about “Black Mirror Cookie”?

The Federation used illegal mines against cloaked ships during the war. Pike objects on moral grounds, Cornwall flatters Pike’s top-notch morality, and nobody shuts down the mines. 

Spock and Michael verbally spar over chess. It gets very heated, and Spock angrily claims Michael takes on responsibility for everything because she can’t bear the grief. “We will never relate as equals so long as you attempt to assume every burden is yours alone.” 

Airiam’s internal “Because” Dots seize her mind, and the ship is rocked by mines. The Landing Party finds the frozen bodies of the admiralty. Saru’s eyes spot the lack of heat signature changes in recordings, proving Spock’s been framed by Section 31. Using hologram puppets, Control has been running the show for two weeks since killing the Board of Shadowy Figures. 

Suspicious Tilly finds Airiam has suspiciously left her memories behind on Discovery. Airiam/Control attacks Nhan, pulling out one of her breathing implants. The robutt moves on to choking Michael and some punchy kicky.

Control wants all the knowledge from Old Sphere the Sphere, in the hopes of going full galactic Skynet- as Spock’s visions warned. Tilly reaches Airiam’s real self, who can’t control her body (except for disabling her own helmet) and Airiam begs Michael to kill her via space ejection. Her last words are “I Love Everyone” and “Find Project Daedalus”. The shock and horror seems to make everyone forget that transporters and Dr. Pollard exist. 

Best of season? Discovery’s skill at high octane tragedy’s finest flower? Yes, probably.

If Memory Serves

 ***(3 illusions out of 5)

Showing me real footage from “The Cage”, albeit chopping it up like a paper doll puppet show, made me briefly happy, then they dropped me back into wildly spinning cameras in the dark and redesigned holographic Tellarites before I got too nostalgic.

Why are Section 31 taking orders from Starfleet brass? I thought in Section 31 the chain of command was: “We have chains to hit you with, so we’re in command.”

Over Michael’s objection, Spock takes their shuttle straight into an amazing-looking black hole- oh, wait, welcome back to Talos IV where you can’t trust your senses and the spindly locals are barely this side of wanting to breed you in cages as workers.

The singing plants are charming. Spock is unable to deal with time as a fluid and I fully empathize as nobody makes the rest of this look like it did in 1965. Why redesign the Talosian heads and robes? Why is mangled Vina barely twisted at all and obscured by lens flares? 

Spock saw and heard the Red Angel in childhood, and melded with it a few months ago, sharing the Angel’s apocalyptic nightmare. And the entire universe, as always, is at stake. 

Having been murdered by Voq, Culber attacks Ash in the lunch room, which fearless Saru allows to play out for catharsis while Pike makes tut-tut sounds. Let’s see where this goes and if anyone’s shirt comes off. Culber has taken “till death do us part” literally, and moves out on Stamets to get his head together.

Vina appears to Pike and tells him she’s shacked up with his illusion- a lifetime together in these few years. Oh, and sends an untraceable S.O.S. from his buddies, it’s either romantic or awkweird.

Section 31 has invasive neurologic tech from or based on the Terran Empire. They love things from the Terran Empire! Georgiou tells Leland how she did a genocide on the Mirror Universe Talosians. Talosians allow 31 to capture Michael & Spock’s vanishing projections as Michael and Spock return to Disco by shuttle.

Nhan takes Ash off the bridge. Discovery disobeys 31s orders and turns fugitive to save the galaxy.

I cried at Michael and Spock’s miserable emotional rift, very well performed, very painful.

This episode won an Emmy for outstanding makeup, proving that I am petulant for wishing they’d honoured Star Trek’s original designs.

Light and Shadows

 **(one light and one shadows out of 5)

Pike and Mike recovered Spock's shuttle with Georgiou inside, so when Mike recaps this for Pike as "we know the shuttle that he stole disappeared somewhere in the Mutara Sector" it doesn't really track. My headcanon also probably doesn't work, but it will have to wait. 

Pike and company do forensics on the Red Angel's time travel antics, having Saru's visual evidence now that it's a person in a suit. There's a Time Hole spewing time back into the universe, so be alert for Groundhog Day radiation.

Commander Burnham uses a shuttle with Star Wars or even Dune speed capabilities to make the Kaminar to Vulcan trip during a commercial break, simultaneous with Ash and Pike's 5 minute trip to the time hole.

Sarek's deep in meditation to find Spock in the Force, but Amanda has been hiding him in their standard Kir'Shara basement cave while he has a standard severe mental breakdown. You've heard his voice, now enjoy his beard.

When Sarek learns of this, he continues his bizarre track record of emotionalism and logic leaps by declaring Section 31 is their best bet to heal his unresponsive and raving son! Their Noggin Technicians wear clear plastic raincoats in dark metal rooms and defer to the unseen "Control", so that's clearly legit.

Forced by questionable circumstances to work together, Pike and Ash fight a Matrix Squiddy from the 27th century before Stamets the Tardigrade Time Powers guy saves their bacon. In case the grabby Doc Ock arms were getting a little too Marvel, Lt. Com. Airiam is secretly compromised by literally the three dot sigil of DC's Brainiac. (Oh, shows what I know- that's the mathematical symbol for "Because"!)

Georgiou seizes command of Section 31's Leland with blackmail- she knows Leland had Michael's parents killed.

Michael, knowing of her brother's form of dyslexia, discerns Spock's repeated numerical sequence is backward coordinates for planet Talos IV. Road Trip!

The Sound of Thunder

 ***(3 big lies out of 5)

The poor Kelpians have every right under the equitable Ba'ul system! In the Great Balance all people can scoop up kelp to eat, enjoy the outdoors, worship the benevolent Watchful Eye, and die horribly at the onset of space puberty to feed the just and fair Ba'ul.

Was it always thus? Lo, these thousands of years ago, Kelpians were real ass-hats after space puberty and they were predators to the Ba'ul, probably. So, it's all for the best and since the Kelpians haven't been permitted the chance to develop anything more advanced than baskets they CERTAINLY don't qualify for Starfleet defense against the warp-capable Ba'ul. 

In fact, Starfleet didn't see nothin' and they better move along because the Ba'ul have full bellies (or whatever the equivalent is in a rod puppet covered in mucilage and ink or whatever the heck is happening there) and great big guns.

Michael and Saru pay a nonchalant call on Saru's priestly sister Siranna and have some tea and make some waves and get the Ba'ul nervous enough to try to buy their silence with a free dissection. 

Saru's new lease on life has grown him bigger claws in the form of neck darts, and he more or less forces this same transformation upon a goodly portion of the entire unsuspecting populace of Kelpians with some quick button pressing. Fortunately no one has enough time to kill themselves as Saru had intended to do when this happened to him.

Also fortunately, the Red Angel appears and deactivates the Ba'ul's big guns, barely an inconvenience, don't even worry about it.

Kaminar's Cattle learn painfully today that they don't need to die at va'harai and that the Ba'ul had better switch to beef alternatives right goddamn yesterday.

Vive la Revolution! 

      

Saints of Imperfection

 ** (2 magic teardrops out of 5)

Because the audience hopes to see Spock on our Spock chase, we chase Spock's shuttle a little more and who should turn up inside it but Emperor Georgiou, now an agent of Section 31?! Pike knows what 31 is. Mike knows what 31 is. We all know what 31 is! More Covert than Covert, my rump.

Pike gets on the hologram with Leland, also an old chum from Section 31, like it's a an ordinary branch of Starfleet Intelligence that Archer or Sisko should've easily known about a century ago and a century from now, no biggie. And also here's a Section 31 liaison in the person of handsome Ash Tyler and this lovely Section 31 gift card redeemable nowhere because we surely don't exist.

Nhan is mentioned to be chief of security, so watch out- because on Discovery that's the Defense Against The Dark Arts post.

Speaking of space magic, Tilly was kidnapped by the Spore People into the Mushroom Kingdom through a cocoon, and her Spore buddy May has to convince the local Spores not to eat her alive in tiny painful bites because their natural approach to new things is eating them. They need her to fight a monster named Culber. A monster the Spores found awhile ago and chose to revive instead of just eating him. The monster has covered himself in poison bark to stop them eating him, which they want to do. Won't Tilly help them?

Culbers are friends, not food! Why did the jahSepp heal him just to start trying to eat him again? No time! 

Pike rides to Tilly's rescue, Stamets bringing the whole ship half in, half out of the mycelial network like a doorstop. Try to avoid getting a hundred people twisted into flesh and blood pretzels like the crew of the Glenn!

Tearful reunion of traumatized Stamets and Culber, which is always good, especially when the prevailing theory is that Stamets' mushroom soup tears transported Culber's energy into the mycelial network "like a lightning rod" where the locals gave him a body that can't leave their dimension.

"I need you to make it make sense," says Captain Pike, a tall order which no one fulfills. But on the bright side we still get Culber back, thanks to more cocoon shenanigans.

Admiral Cornwell pops in to tell us she knows about Section 31, and she condones its terrible, weirdly public, sly, sexy nastiness, so Pike should too, and maybe subscribe to any streaming service that gives us more of it someday.