Five episodes into Discovery Season 2. Spoilers.
The main part of the episode, the ‘Tilly is lost in the fungus network’ plot, works fairly well. There are some good performances, particularly from Stamets and Tilly. There’s a little suspension of disbelief in terms of how much risk the ship takes on in order to save on crew member, but that’s an old Star Trek trope. There is also way too much ‘siting around talking while the ship is in peril’. Lots of talky scenes ended with some shake up remaining everyone of the ticking clock.
The end didn’t quite come together for me. The resolution for Dr Culber is too easy, with it only costing something (the Tilly/May connection) that 30 seconds before wasn’t even clearly something that was wanted. Two episodes ago it was driving Tilly insane after all. I’d have preferred the version with Stamets having to give up Hugh again, I think.
We then have what has been a new pattern for this season, basically a normal episode packaged with book ends to progress the main plot. Mainly more chess moves – get TyVoq onto the ship, establish a clearer reason to be chasing after Spock. But it was really 10 minutes without much interest (other than Michelle Yeoh’s normal great performance as Georgiou).
On a final note, the tachyons worry me. Time travel plots have rarely been Star Treks greatest hour. I fear we’re heading towards ‘turns out the angel was Spock’, or some other ending along those lines. But happy to wait and see, for now.
Quick hits:
– Michelle Yeoh is a lot of fun as Emperor Georgio. Lots of nice little touches in her performance here, more unspoken than anything else.
– “The war changed her” – yeah, just a little bit.
– It’s a little odd having a head of security who seems to be pretty on top of her job regarding “not trusting people” and “keeping an eye on things”. Worf should take notes.
– The ‘Discovery’s halfway into the network effect’ was beautiful, really nicely done.
– ‘Generally larger than the Type 1 or Type 2, which is why the call it a Type 3’. Nice little metajoke on how weapons are normally named in Science Fiction.
Some great tight writing this week – “We won’t survive complications”, “Execute isn’t the word I’d choose”, and so on.
– First appearance of the chest tap communicator. Another unnecessary but neat connection to TNG.
– “Nation Building is never pretty”. On its face that’s a pretty unpleasant attitude for a senior Star Fleet Admiral. I hope that it was just written by someone who didn’t really know what it meant.
– Some interesting music cues this episode, using some low frequency strings to generate foreboding. Nice change up.
763 down.