User Reviews

Sometimes the writers like to play the trick of acting like someone is dying/dead/gone forever so they can have the fond farewell or funeral speech to elicit all the feels. Everyone speaking eloquently and emotionally about what they thought of a certain character. It's a neat trick and works at times, but it has to be earned.

In this episode the writers go all in and basically every major character gets to write and speak their fond farewells because they're going to the future with no way back, supposedly. The problem is we all know there is a way back because this is Star Trek. The other problem is this isn't earned in season 2. Game of Thrones pulled this off Season 8, and it was earned and great. This felt a bit cheap and overdone.

To add insult to injury, how is Control and Enterprise an hour away from Discovery, racing full tilt to get there, and yet Spock and Michael's parents somehow manage to get there from Vulcan in 20 minutes so they can say their fond farewell in person with plenty of time to spare? Ridiculous.

Anyway, it had some moments and set up the finale which was much better, so I still gave this episode a 6, but it felt like a reach.

Was this episode a parody of what some people think Star Trek is?

Burnham, after thinking for a moment: "Of course! .... " Saru: "You are proposing we remove Discovery from the galactic equation entirely?!"

Burnham: "My mother started this. I'm going to finish it."

Burnham, after proposing to utilize the suit: "I'm sure there'll be some trial & error opening the wormhole."

The writing and acting are competing to see how ridiculous the show can get.

1. So the data from the sphere doesn't want to be destroyed so it turns off the self destruct. Pike takes the next obvious step to just blow it up using the Enterprise. But because Discovery has it's shields up this suddenly becomes impossible for some reason. Enterprise which is the Federation flagship could have unloaded weapons on this Discovery for 56 minutes which would have destroyed this ship shields or no shields.

2. Somehow Michael's parents heard about what is happening and managed to get to her to say goodbye. I thought all transmissions were jammed ? And if they knew the situation why didn't her parents notify Starfleet to send the Enterprise/Discovery some help ?

3. Discovery used the spore drive to jump. Why don't they just jump back to Earth to get away from Section 31 and then have the entire Federation protecting them ? Or just jump to the other side of the galaxy.

4. They somehow manage to outfit a million shuttles with weapons and build this time-suit for Michael in less than an hour.

5. If they are building a brand new suit why can't they code it to whoever's DNA they want ? Why does it have to be Michael ?

All the past whining that Michael being the Red Angel, then her mom shows up and she's not but now suddenly she is again.....make up you mind and stick with it!

Section 31 is coming and we can't destroy the ship, it won't let us, and we've got 56 minutes til they show up.... but yet Spock's parents travel faster than Enterprise in their own ship and then just leave right before the bad guys....Sarek was never one for abandoning his child in a crisis!? Damn Vulcans are holding back on tech again?!?! LOL 🤣 🤣

And all the sappy sappy sappy over sentimental goodbyes, and no one left! They're all staying together to face Section 31, which is only 10 minutes behind Enterprise, about the length of a horrible Michael Burham speech. She caused the war and everyone keeps saying this is her fault.

Too much build and not enough plot.....can't do this, let's do this...but wait we're gonna do this instead because Tilly has a friend who can perform the miracle we need out of her bum?!!!? WEAK plot filler.

Pick a plot and go with it already! 20 minutes of goodbyes, 10 minutes of external CGI, 10 minutes panning the old Enterprise bridge remade shiney and 5 minutes of Burnham crying..... that's not a story, that's a waste of an episode.

End the Michael Burnham show and get back to Star Trek. And the gay sub plot....move forward indeed.

Kurtzman is a producer & creator of the show and he is a writer on the two-part season finale. He and Ortiz often write schlock that is pure futuristic fantasy with no basis in or respect for science, logic, character consistency. And time travel is a favorite deus ex machina of bad futuristic fantasy writers because it doesn't need to make any sense and they think they are being really deep and metaphysical. Like the person who thinks the (answered before ever asked) question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, is some deeply intellectual question, or worse a sign of enlightened philosophical contemplation. I had extremely low expectation for this show. But I found it enjoyable, to my surprise. Then the second season started and at first I thought it interesting, but then it started using time travel as the explanation for everything, and my eyes started to roll.

So now we have a season full of random and changing rules with no scientific reason for their existence are offered like they make sense to a highly advanced crew. The red angel is stuck 950 years in the future for no reason whatsoever, except if they don't make up some excuse, the whole premise of the season falls to pieces. In episode 7, the departing angel leaves a time portal which lingers open for some explained reason (which the finale will dispute entirely as they count on it closing quickly). Of course, they can't just launch a probe into it. They much hop a fragile weak shuttle and fly closer then launch a probe which then flies itself into it. The probe gets upgraded with ai which comes back and starts the entire 2nd half of the season's plot. So an ai flies back in time to find more advanced knowledge so it can become... super-sentient? I don't get it.

Does the AI have ADHD? Is it emotionally impatient for some reason? I guess it Lacks resources in the future? We've seen this overused storyline before(can you say Borg), but this little hyperactive child A.I. seems to want powers and knowledge that it doesn't even know exists, and jumps at whims to send itself back to a more primitive time. And of course, fake sci-fi writers think A.I.=a soul. And since you can't copy a soul, you can't make copies of an A.I. So you can clone a human and create new sentient clones of everyone, but A.I. which are stored digitally in memory chips--well that's impossible for it to just make copies of itself. We all know how difficult it is to make a copy of a word doc, mp3, video, or backup massive amounts of data. All advanced, super genius A.I. are reduced to the ignorance of the writer about technology, science and logic. Now of course, its hatred of life (again for no sensible reason) leads it to somehow wipe out all life throughout the whole galaxy? Hmm, that's gonna take a lot of work and resources. So it evolves to transfer itself into one human--the life form it needs extinguished, and then take control of their ships and technology (none of which it could build) so it can accomplish its goal to wipe out the thing enabling it to achieve its own goal. Oh wait it does make one random copy of itself and puts that in another life form. But it doesn't exist in any other computer, but sometimes does. So it needs the sphere to... i dunno. It already has seized control of all of S31 without any assistance. What exactly would the sphere get it that it couldn't do already. The sphere lacked the knowledge to inhabit bodies. It has already evolved in a way the sphere didn't. This is logic that only makes sense to tv viewers and studio writers and execs. This is the standard low-bar for Kurtzman and Ortiz. Their writing is often dramatic and silly simultaneously.

The show has devolved into brainlessness required watching. If you can shut down your brain enough you can enjoy it. All scholock has its audience--just look at the worst of reality TV. Making the show revolve around this jesus-like single player where all roads lead to Burnham is a mistake. You'd think the producers would have some inkling of Star Trek's past and the revolt that single-genius-always-saves-the-day-character focus caused with all the Wesley-hatred. But maybe these people are too young to learn from recent history. Its a shame because I like the burnham character and the actress. But the weak plot and logic swirling around her are leaning into soap-opera-melodrama. Soap operas make everything melodramatic because every storyline happens to the same small group of people year after year after year. So they rely upon the "melodrama" to make it falsely interesting, because you know nothing substantial is really going to happen.

I wanted to like a new Star Trek series, I wanted so much to like it. I still want to like it, but oh my god are they making it difficult.

If I had to summarize the plot, they want to blow up the titular ship, but the titular ship doesn't want to be blown up. So they decide Burnham will Red Angel the ship alone into the far-flung future, and bad guys are coming so they only have an hour to execute their plan, so they have to hustle. They say how much they wish there were more time, but there's no time to waste; then everyone-- Burnham in particular-- spends that hour staring meaningfully, and monologuing, and bidding tearful farewells predicated on never seeing each other again, even as they're repeating over the intercom "hey, you coming? I did say 'to the bridge *immediately.* Did I stutter?" TICK TOCK folks. Oh, but then all Michael's friends don't want her to go alone, so they're coming with her, so that hour of overwrought goodbyes was for nothing.

I have to wonder if they knew when they were writing & filming this that they'd been renewed for a third season, because it reads like a series penultimate episode. So now after all these dramatic tears, the characters will spend another season together and the next time they go through all of this it'll be far less potent.

Then the bad guys arrive and "surround" them in a flat 2-dimensional circle-- in space-- as though these ships can't move vertically FFS, and they're out of time, because of how much they *wasted* on staring and monologuing and tearful goodbyes, and I'm sorry but it's obnoxious. It's silly and it's style over substance and it's obnoxious, and I hate that because I so badly wanted to like Trek's newest iteration.

If you haven't noticed, or are not bothered by this obviously bad writing, then your standards are too low or you simply need to think more.

So, the Discovery crew has to keep Control from accessing The Sphere data, but can't delete it because the Sphere's self defense mechanism preventing them. They activate auto-destruct, move over to Enterprise, say bye-bye to Discovery and guess what ? it doesn't work, because The Sphere somehow merged with the Discovery and stopped it. Ok so far.

Lets forcefully destroy Discovery by torpedoing it with Federations flagship, Enterprise. Sure, why not, a logical thing to do. Oh wait, it doesn't work, because Discovery got her shields up and we all know that once a starship gets its shields up, it is impossible to destroy /s.

They have AN HOUR before the Control ships arrive. In front of them is a Discovery, a sitting duck that doesn't fight back, and Michael yells "STOP" at Captain Pikes orders to torpedo it, and they all stop and don't think twice about it.

Michael suggests they should remove Discovery from this time completely, using the time crystal and they have a meeting discussing how will they accomplish that complicated feat. No one even mentioned the idea of simply destroying the Discovery with Enterprise.

Their plan is to create a new time traveling suit, using the specs they have, and have Michael pilot it on a one way trip. Oh and don't worry about the suit being made of material they can't synthesize, they will just melt a part of cargo bulkhead and just cast a mold. Simple, definitely more easy than destroying Discovery.

Remember that Discovery got her shields up to prevent them from destroying it ? Well forget about that, they just beamed back onto Discovery to chase another Red Angel signal that appeared. It's not like The Sphere would let them come aboard in the first place because they just wanted to destroy it. It's not like they could arm a few torpedoes inside the ship then get back onto Enterprise, no no, that would be thoughtful writing, and we cant have that.

Also, remember how THEY WERE RUNNING AWAY FROM THE CONTROL AND DECIDED THEY WILL DESTROY DISCOVERY BECAUSE THEY CAN'T OUTRUN THEM ??

Well forget about that too, because they JUMPED WITH THE SPORE DRIVE onto the new red signal, that just happens to be in the same range from the pursuing Control ships. It's not like they could JUMP ANYWHERE IN THE GALAXY TO ESCAPE THE CONTROL, right ??

The place where signal led them to is a planet with a Queen tech Jesus that has history with Gilly. With her help, they make an elaborate plan to charge the time crystal while protecting the crew from it's visions at the same time. Enterprise joins them, they decide to stand their ground against incoming Control ships, while the crystal charges.

They somehow summon a FLEET of shuttles and weaponized landing pods to defend them against the attackers. They get surrounded, Pike commands "Battle stations" and the episode ends.

I remember when Star Trek Enterprise got canceled and why it happened. Last 2 seasons of that show were better in every way than this. It is only a matter of time before it is canceled.

This show has great visuals... however it is not Star Trek, nor does it possess a shred of logical plot or genuine attachment to characters or even the ship itself. Its a hollow show, with pointless dialogs. The A.I onboard Discovery willingly control systems and shields???? Alarm bells? no lets just carry on as usual and reboard it like that's no issue. 30 starships coming in 1 hour lets retrofit some shuttle pods???? that's a bright idea!!! Out of no where Spocks Dad&Mum show up for a short conversation all the way from Vulcan and 5 minutes late depart into the void??!! They have transporters and dozens of shuttles.. yet they whip out a weird space bridge to dock with the Enterprise???!!! Oh yea some teenage tattoed all wise Queen just pops onboard, absolute garbage. I see the Enterprise and the bridge and the crew, and I wished I was watching something else... forget Discovery

I liked the Enterprise bridge, meeting room and interiors. More than arbitrary nods; I think the set designers really thought hard about how to make as many aspects of the Matt Jeffries designs fit within the Disco design language. They added an outer layer to the bridge to make it small like TOS and large like Discovery at the same time, which, even though a little strange, I understand. I loved the grilled light on the top of the turbolift, the Enterprise plaque, and many more specific design details. I missed the chronometer. Where's the chronometer? I will undoubtedly notice more nods in subsequent viewings but it was easy to see they did their homework and respected the Connie and the era she was brought to life.

SMG's acting was not repetitive and stunted in this episode. Her emotions felt genuine, appropriate and diverse. I think she is a director's actor, unlike, say Shatner or Stewart. I hope future directors figure this out. I've noticed significant changes in her acting (quality?) from episode to episode sometimes. Maybe it's the director that isn't good sometimes? That could explain many of my issues with her in season 1.

I have been asking for the past many episodes how data can protect itself. They kinda explained it in this episode - the data had been a computer virus from the start: it had "merged with" or infected Discovery's computer a long time ago. They should have realized it in the first five minutes, not taken three episodes to come to that conclusion, but oh well, ok. I'm wondering how they beamed over (through shields?) and why Control allowed them to jump?

I liked the depiction of the technobabble parts. The characters seemed to be actual engineers working things out rather than throwing random statements at each other at high speed. Nice to see another short-trek meld into this season. A more significant and relevant contribution this time.

Spock, in his non-uniform and his hands-behind-back erect position seems to be mostly standing around in this (and many previous) episodes. No wonder Pike has no words for him. (In a well-directed episode, I wonder if the no-words dialogue was a directorial misfire or the director trying to convey a layered meaning.) I'll take this opportunity to say Pike ROCKS!! The guy really hasn't missed a moment since coming on Discovery. I thought his comment to Spock was the most moving moment in that great bridge scene. I liked how he called out each by name and complemented different traits in all of them.

Even though there was no story (and good that they didn't try to shoe-horn one in), I liked this episode. I'm sure that was probably a tempting urg, but the right choice was made.

Like I said initially, this episode was a little sappy... much more than we are used to in trek for sure, but other than the Michael/Ash scene - I thought they did it well. I would have much preferred Michael to just walk away when he told her he wasn't going. I guess your sappiness-o-meter varies depending how much you have grown to enjoy/accept these characters. I found myself really caring for this crew as season 2 progressed. So this episode was an emotional ride for me.

Just to beat a dead horse - They could run a series centered on the Enterprise and Pike, still remain within canon and I'm certain it would be well received. All in favor?!?!?!? (Hoss raises his hand 😀)

It was nice to see Me Hani Ika Hali Ka Po again. I like the actress and the character. Tilly's short was a good one in my view... as was Tilly's contribution in this episode.

Nice to see Jet again in engineering. I'm betting she is going to play a significant part in the season ender. Maybe take over as Chief Engineer as Stamets has said he wants to leave when this is all over?

I found the time-crystal treknobabble followable.

Have we seen the end of the Culber/Stamets relationship?

Hey, I think this is about as good a set-up for a finale as you could ask for here... could the stakes be any higher? I think they accomplished alot in 1 episode here.... hell, DS9 drew it out for 6 episodes before they got to it.... I really wanted to watch the final episode last night!

There really not much to gig this one on.

Here's hoping the finale episode doesn't disappoint me like it did in season 1.

Technologically speaking, this is one of the most inconsistent and therefore worst episodes ever. Forget all the long painful drawn out goodbyes. Let's just look at the premise: the Enterprise somehow makes four unnecessary connecting bridges for the Discovery crew to evacuate it, when of course it's much easier to just beam everyone off. Predictably, the remote self-destruct doesn't work, and almost as predictably, the Discovery raises shields to protect itself. In Trek II, Admiral Kirk uses the Reliant's command code to force it to lower its shields; why can't Admiral Cornwell do the same thing to Discovery? Oh, it's because the A.I. has taken it over and is protecting the ship? Well then why in the heck would it then lower its shields to allow the crew that just tried to destroy it to reboard it? What were the writers thinking?? And then, does Discovery have magic shields that can withstand constant phaser fire and photon torpedos? Has anyone ever seen a Trek episode where two equally matched ships don't start to drain each other's shields when they fire on one another? What about creating a nuke and putting it adjacent to the Discovery? What about when the crew gets back on, they intentionally create a warp core breach? So many ways to destroy a starship as we have constantly seen in Trek episodes, but somehow this one is now completely indestructible, and thus the only way to get rid of it is to take it into the future? And what, the A.I. won't just get it in the future and just end all life conscious life 950 years later then it planned to do? What's 950 years to an eternal A.I. in the grand scheme of things.

Lastly, did anyone else notice how now Trek is just ripping off fantasy (not sci-fi) arcs done in Marvel comics? Time crystal? Sounds like the Time Stone on Thanos's gauntlet. This whole idea of fate and people being fated to do things. This is not Trek.

As a few other reviewers already pointed out this episode was a bit over the top when it comes to drama. Or to put it more accurately - unnecessary and redundant drama.

Michael and Discovery crew spend the entire episode bidding each other farewell and in the end they all go together. I just don't buy all this drama. Not because I'm prejudiced against this show. I do love the overall story and characters but I can't ignore it when the story becomes pointless for almost the entire episode.

I love this show enough to mostly ignore the lazy writing and gaping plot holes. Especially when there is something interesting going on in the episode. When it's boring though then these little inconsistencies start to piss me off.

Discovery built a new Red Angel suit from scratch. It's totally new. So why it's Burnham specifically that has to go and be the Red Angel? This suit doesnt have to be coded to her dna.

How did Sarek and Amanda got to Discovery? And if they could find them why didn't they bring help with them? The future of the Galaxy was at stake no less. And Sarek is a very prominent and important figure in the Federation. Why didn't he bring Vulcan fleet to help Discovery fight the Control? Moreover, why did't Discovery call for aid from the other Fedreation ships if ship-to-ship communication was still possible?

And here goes the drama... Discovery is all alone - but it doesnt have to be. Michael is risking her life once again by becoming the Red Angel - but she doesnt have to do that. Someone else could do that.

The relationships in this show seem stagnant and therefore overly dramatic. It's all the same between Paul Stamets and Hugh Colbert from one episode to another. Ditto Michal Burnham and Ash Tyler.

The only thing I really did enjoy about this episode was seeing Enterprise as it was before Kirk took the captaincy. I really hope we'll see Enterprise and it's crew in season three and Michelle Yeoh's Section 31 spinoff.