Captain's Blog: The fugitive Discovery crew bring the fight to Section 31, but who knew it'd be a tearjerker, too, and this is why I love the new Star Trek. This episode works it. "Project Daedalus" Frakes can flex. For his third episode, Jonathan Frakes once again kills it. All three of his have been in my top five for the entire series, and this may go down as the most memorable. There are some just beautiful shots of the ship both still and in action. He employs several inverted camera twists during scene transitions and some of the most confident and controlled pacing since... well, the last time he directed (Episode 2 but who's counting?). He knows when to punch up the excitement and when to simmer on the emotion, and he even has a little fun filming the fight scenes, using a little outside the box (for Trek) wire-work, slow-motion, and POV shots that really stand out against the larger backdrop of cheap choreography Trek is known for (no double-fist punches here!). Renegades. The crew of the Discovery took a stand last week after they rescued Spock from Section 31 (the super-secret-spy branch of Starfleet) and now they are wanted fugitives by the Federation. But all is not what it seems when Admiral Cornwall sneaks aboard to warn extremists may have taken over 31 and compromised a Starfleet which has come to depend upon it too strongly since the war. The solution: break into their super-secret-spy base and reset Control, the AI that "manages" Section 31. But there's a problem when they send Airiam along because her eyes have been flashing the red flashes of death since getting virused by the cyber-squid from the future (two episodes ago?). You might remember Airiam (or as I like to call her, Computer-Head Girl) from standing around the bridge, twitching her neck and spouting lines of treknobabble and exposition. Like most of the ancillary crew, she's been little more than set dressing, lucky to get a line in here or there. No one even noticed when they recast her between seasons. The corruption-by-virus plot isn't exactly original (it happened to Data on TNG in 1988), but they manage to squeeze an entire heartwrenching and tragic character arc for her into just this single episode. Proof that good writing can course-correct for a season and a half in a matter of minutes without compromising action or spectacle. The short version of her story is (as if there was a longer one): she was human, eloped with her husband, had a tragic accident on the way home, he died and she got augmented to survive, with memory files instead of memories, but even these she has to pick and choose from because the virus is taking over more and more of her storage space, and she's helpless to stop it. But by showing us her memories as she filters through them, we see the friendships she has with the crew and the pieces of her humanity she's holding desperately onto. It's effective and endearing and the kind of off-the-clock social life Discovery needs to show us more of for us to believe they're any kind of family. Then again, the TNG cast didn't start playing poker till Season 2 either, so... Work in progress. Michelle Paradise writes this week's episode and she's also co-executive producer with Alex Kurtzman (of Lost fame) with plans to take over next season as showrunner, and hot damn, the woman can write! She packed two hours worth of story into 50 minutes and covered all the bases. Space battle with razor-mines? Check. Burnham and Spock bickering over psychology and chess? Check. Backstory and character development? Check. Section 31 mysteries and revelations? Check. Lots of great moments with my girl, Cyborg-Face Detmer? Double-check. And if you needed further proof she knows how to write, she kept a certain former Klingon sleeper agent I shall not name locked in his quarters and off camera the whole time. Ethan Peck continues to impress as Spock, even if his portrayal comes off as more Quinto than Nimoy. I miss Nimoy's aloof but serene original presentation, but it may yet play out that we are in fact watching Spock transition into that more mature iteration before our eyes, and the path is simply not a smooth one. His emotions are simmering under the surface and a little sibling bickering never fails to boil them over. He's fun to watch, but he's funnest to watch with Burnham, who's acting is never better than when they push each other's buttons. The subtext and history is evident in their snarky passive aggressive jabs at each other, each trying to out-logic the other over 3D chess. At first it's with good intentions, to be helpful, but quickly wears thin as their conversations devolve into past hurts and defensive denials. Peck shines with every emotion he doesn't show, while Sonequa Martin-Green shows every layer of hers buried under pretense. Bravo to both of them. And again props to Paradise, for not only writing the dialogue with such subtext but then incorporating it into the plot, as Burnham must learn from Spock's chaotic and uncharacteristic refusal of logic to help get the ship through the minefield by way of unpredictability. Of course it's Airiam's episode, and in all fairness too, because it's obviously her last. I wish a character didn't have to die to get more development on Discovery, but if you're gonna do it, this is the way to go. Spoiler Alert, but I don't believe in spoilers, because the minute we see into her memories at the beginning, we should've seen a tragic ending coming. It's not the outcome that matters but the emotional experience, and this episode sticks the landing. Tilly distracts Airiam from her murder-rage by downloading her memories back to her and Burnham closes her into the airlock. With a few last moments of coherence before escaping, she begs Burnham to release her into space. The seconds are ticking down. Burnham can't do it. Commander Nahn, though, another background character who hopped over from the Enterprise with Pike to take over security, has had her eye on Airiam the whole time. And as soon as Airiam tries to warn everyone about Project Daedalus, Nahn pulls the lever, and ejects Airiam into space where she dies replaying her favorite memory, that one of her husband and her eloping before their accident. Did Nahn have the guts to make the hard call? Or is she protecting a cover-up? Time will tell... Conclusion: I can't remember the last bad episode, but this was once again among the best. Improved pacing helped elevate all the subplots and give room for all the emotional beats to land. The action worked, the suspense worked, the twists didn't pretend to be any cleverer than they were, and the emotional ups and downs all landed. If Season Two is a demonstration of Discovery finding its legs, then this is what it looks like running. With 5 episodes left, and most of it's plot lines already converging smoothly, it's hard to imagine them tripping up before the finale.
Captain's Blog Supplemental: Spock: "Okay, Michael. Let's play chess." That shot of Discovery hiding in that planet's shadow at the beginning is just fantastic and sets a great ominous tone for the episode. Killer sound effects on those mines. Pike: "That sounds to me like a distinction without a difference." So did the Enterprise sit out the war on accident or was it sidelined on purpose, to keep their nose out of the nefarious choices they were making to win? This possibility and Cornwall's explanation (to preserve the best parts of it) are both great. So, real talk for a second, but... Did Tilly and Airiam ever have even one conversation together before their best-friends ending? Just saying.
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