Episode two starts with a prologue by Spock which is actually his personal notes from his own computer and the mystery of the seven signals becomes a lot more confusing when Burnham calculates that Spock knew of the seven signals long before anyone else had and to add to the confusion Burnham finds out from Pike that Spock has been in a psychiatric facility, under his own submission, and not on leave. The discovery of another stellar signal brings everyone to the bridge and to the realisation that the signal is in such a location that it would take the Discovery 150 years to get there at light speed, cue Stamets and the Spore-Drive.
The Discovery crew arrive at a planet that has a human population that may date back to WWIII (2053). An away team of Burnham, Pike and Owosekun head to the surface to find a multi-religious society with simple methods and the society centres around their church. An extinction-level astronomic anomaly causes the Discovery bridge crew to collectively think of a solution to save the habitants and the away team. Tilly devises a plan to use the gravitational mass of the asteroid from the previous episode to pull the anomaly (in this case radioactive debris from one the planet’s ring) away from the planet, and they succeed and save the day.
This episode has many small foreshadowing stories in it and they’re all complimentary to the storyline and, hopefully, the future storylines. Stamets gets upset and disheartened as he sees his deceased partner, Dr Cuiber, every time he connects to the Spore-Drive, Tilly tries to devise a method using small particles from the asteroid for the anti-matter to be used with the Spore-Drive to try and ensure that Stamets doesn’t have to hook up to it anymore. Tilly gets knocked unconscious during the procedure and wakes up in sick-bay and is reprimanded by Saru for embarking on a dangerous exercise that could’ve killed her. Whilst in sick-bay she encounters an old friend and finds out that friend was deceased long ago. The away-team return with camera footage of the first encounter of the settlement where the appearance of an Angel is recorded on a soldier’s helmet-cam. This same Angel is disclosed to Pike by Burnham as something she briefly encountered whilst on the Hiawatha, and until Pike sees the footage at the close of the episode, he is unconvinced.
VERDICT: I rate this episode 9 out of 10 because it’s a gripping episode, with oodles of compassion, right and wrong and the Discovery doing what all previous Star Trek series have done, save the day!! I would like to mention that the character of Tilly, played brilliantly by Mary Wiseman, is the star of this episode, she’s funny, creative and immensely intelligent but at times unconfident in her position but always able to think on her feet. The comedy timing by Mary Wiseman is spot-on. This episode reminds me of a classic ST:NG episode where they have to be creative to save the day. Discovery nailed it!
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