Star Trek: Discovery Season 2 is All Over the Space (and Time)
Diana Keng
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Although Star Trek: Discovery Season 1 took us through the mycelial network and into the Mirror Universe, Season 2 has racked up the light-years in travel.
There was a dash into the Beta Quadrant to save an unknown human colony. Then a run-in with the sinister Section 31. And then trips to Kaminar, Vulcan, and, most recently, Talos IV.
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While forging new adventures, this season has been firmly rooted in pre-Kirk Trek lore, introducing Captain Pike and searching for Spock. There seems to be an aim to reboot the nostalgia of the original series if that's even possible.
And they haven't forgotten about their adventures in Season 1. Both Ash Tyler (whoop-dee-doo) and MU Georgiou (oooh... ahhh...) are deeply enmeshed in this endeavor.
Not only that but they've even tied into their series of mini-episodes, Short Treks, that aired during the hiatus.
Related: Short Treks -- A Rundown of Discovery's Mini-Missions
That's a lot going on. So what's working? And what needs Red Angel-ing into another, more distant quadrant?
1. An Obol For Charon -- Number One Appears
Highlight: To peak nostalgic curiosity, Captain Pike's legendary right-hand woman (played in 1966 by the First Lady of Star Trek herself, Majel Barrett), known only as Number One, made her only appearance so far in the series, played by Rebecca Romaijn.
2. An Obol For Charon -- Chief Reno
Highlight: My prayers were answered and Jet Reno (Tig Notaro) returns to the Discovery as their Chief Engineer. Love her!
3. An Obol For Charon -- Stamets and Tilly
Lowlight: Having figured out what May is, Stamets has every intention of ridding Tilly of her fungal friend. Again, ew.
4. An Obol For Charon -- Worried Stamets
Lowlight: Of course, that doesn't mean he has any idea how this will work. It bothers me that Stamets really never gets any moments of happiness or certainty. He's kind of become the emotional punching bag of Discovery. More on that later.
5. An Obol For Charon -- Saru Considers The End
Highlight: Although I was fairly certain they would NOT kill him off, Doug Jones really sold Saru's conviction that vahar-ai spelled the end for him, either physically or mentally. My mind boggles at how much time Jones spent in that prosthetics department for shirtless Saru scenes.
6. An Obol For Charon -- A Not-So-Final Request
Highlight: Gotta love a twist reveal. Fearing his vahar'ai will drive him to madness, Saru begs Burnham to help him end his suffering. Her hesitation allows the vahar'ai to complete and his fear ganglia FALL OUT. No fear ganglia, no constant anxiety. Super Saru is all kinds of awesome.
7. Saints of Imperfection -- Welcome Back, Emperor
Highlight: It's pretty split in the general populace but I'm firmly in the pro-Emperor camp. Someone likened her to the Q influence on Star Trek: the Next Generation but she's got more of an agenda even if she's just as much an agent of chaos.
8. Saints of Imperfection -- May's World
Highlight: In a salute to the Alice in Wonderland narrative they like to reference, May manages to drag Tilly into her mycelial world via a cocoon while Stamets and Reno are both distracted by air-borne hallucinogens in Engineering. The whole situation is very much like something Lewis Carroll's Caterpillar would dream up.
9. Saints of Imperfection -- The Monster
Lowlight: Not a lowlight because Culber comes back but how we find him. It's one of those horrifying realizations that he's been trapped in a dimension that has been trying to digest him, quite literally, for who knows how long. If being murdered wasn't bad enough, this gives a whole new perspective on the phrase "living hell."
10. Saints of Imperfection -- Stamets' Second Chance
Highlight: For a brief instance, Stamets gets some joy and hope.
11. Saints of Imperfection -- So Close and Yet
Lowlight: Can't make it easy, can they? Culber can't follow the Discovery crew back out of the mycelial network because he doesn't exist there anymore.
12. Saints of Imperfection -- Bring Him Home
Highlight: Typically, I'm not a fan of deus ex machina devices but I have to admit, although May's explanation was pretty garbled, using the mycelial cocoon as a biological 3-D printer was kind of cool. Bad science but satisfying TV.
13. The Sound of Thunder -- Ash Still On Board
Lowlight: OMG, putting Tyler aboard the Discovery has got to be the most contrived plot point ever. Just go away.
14. The Sound of Thunder -- Siranna
Highlight: After watching the Star Trek: Short Treks which ran between seasons, I was hoping Season 2 would take us back to Saru's homeworld because his relationship with his sister, Siranna, was such a strong bond which was suddenly severed by him disappearing one night to join Starfleet.
15. The Sound of Thunder -- A Kelpian Hello
Highlight: Having Saru introduce Siranna to Burnham was a brilliant way to meld his two worlds. He recently told Burnham how much she reminded him of his sister and, as he hadn't seen Siranna in twenty years, he was probably closer to her than his biological sister.
16. The Sound of Thunder -- Airiam 2.5
Lowlight: Although I am truly ecstatic that the other bridge crew are getting more lines, scenes, and allowed to show some personality, Airiam is still largely an enigma. We don't know where she's from, what her function is, and I wasn't even sure her name wasn't Ariel before writing this. She's become a vital part of the narrative but there's an awful lot of exposition missing here.
17. The Sound of Thunder -- The Baul
Lowlight: Honestly, I was a little let down by the reveal of the Kelpian nemesis. I had some vague theory that The Culling was actually just a rite of passage and post-vahar'ai Kelpians lived on the other side of the Eye's beam. When it just turns out it was a Morlockian style of population/predator control... well, it makes sense but it was just so simple.
18. The Sound of Thunder -- Forced Evolution
Lowlight: There's some fundamental ethical issues with forcing an entire population to evolve suddenly but I'm not the person to argue it. However, as a Trek-follower, this is a pretty murky Prime Directive quagmire. Non-interference usually means not interfering and, yeah, this was some heavy-handed interference whatever way you want to look at it.
19. Light and Shadows -- Amanda
Lowlight: Burnham and her mother parted on poor terms the last time they met. Because Amanda realized that Burnham had done something to hurt Spock irrevocably, she no longer trusted her daughter. Not much has changed by the time Burnham makes her way to Vulcan.
20. Light and Shadows -- Sarek
Highlight: I always love seeing James Frain as Sarek. Even if he's just meditating with great intensity.
21. Light and Shadows -- SPOCK! Finally!
Highlight: This has been the slowest search in the galaxy, seriously. We've been expecting to see him since the premiere but first, he was on leave, then he was in hospital, then he was a fugitive. So finding him in a temple on his homeworld seems almost anti-climactic. Except, of course, THEY FOUND SPOCK.
22. Light and Shadows -- Section 31
Lowlight: Spidey senses tingling, Burnham doesn't think Spock is safe with Section 31 and whether it's the sinister lighting or how Leland couldn't shake the villain vibe he twerked all the way back to Earth, their stay on the cloaked (!) Federation vessel is not destined to be a long one.
23. Light and Shadows -- The Emperor's "Help"
Highlight: The Emperor doesn't divulge secrets without an ulterior motive but I feel like Burnham is okay with that as long as she can get her brother away and gets to kick some Georgiou butt at the same time.
24. Light and Shadows -- Ash and Pike
Highlight: It kind of kills me to admit it but Pike and Tyler had a really interesting adventure together in the shuttle. Their timey-wimey space trap and the crazy seat-of-the-pants shenanigans they had to pull to survive and escape was top-notch space drama writing.
25. If Memory Serves -- Talos IV
Highlight: Singing flowers and all, the incorporation and updating of "The Cage" footage was freaking amazing.
26. If Memory Serves -- Old School Trek
Highlight: In another nostalgia play, bringing in Vina and fleshing out her relationship with Pike was fantastic. I'm impressed with how they managed to convey how Pike's effect on her life kept her sane after he'd left Talos IV without breaking stride on the main narrative. Brilliant work.
27. If Memory Serves -- Siblings
Lowlight: Another underwhelming reveal. Maybe that's on me. Ultimately, it was just too predictable a falling out based on what Burnham had revealed previously but his reaction (and the fact he's still pissed about it) does speak to the type of person Spock is and was.
28. If Memory Serves -- Stamets' Heartbreak
Lowlight: Oh, for Pete's sake, cut Stamets a break already. His husband gets murdered in. the. same. room. as. him. Then he's guided out of the mycelial network by Culber's "spirit" (?). Then he mourns. Then he tries to leave the ship. Then he finds out his spore jumps have been destroying the mycelial network. Then the "spirit" turns out to be alive. Then he has his husband back but now Culber BREAKS UP with him?
29. If Memory Serves -- Culber Confronts Tyler
Highlight: As annoyed as I am with Culber's treatment of Stamets (and I get that he's reacting in a realistic post-traumatic way), I appreciated the very heartfelt butt-kicking he wanted to lay out on Tyler. Mostly because Tyler never really faced any genuine consequences for killing Culber in the first place. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, "it was Voq." #eyeroll Also, it gave rise to possibly Saru's best line ever: "The Starfleet manual offers no regulatory guidelines for interactions between humans with Klingons grafted to their bones and a ship's doctor returned from the dead."
30. If Memory Serves -- Bait and Switch
Highlight: Finally, an end-game that has been built into the general knowledge of the world. Rather than pulling some solution out of nowhere, the Talosian ability to project reality is well-established early on (like, in 1966). Although even Captain Pike needs a moment to catch up to the plot, sending projections to Section 31 while shuttling the real Spock and Burnham to the Discovery is very clever little finesse to play on Leland and manages to please Georgiou at the same time. "Good-bye, Spock," earned a solid LOL from me.
