For better or bad , tonight ’s Star Trek : Discovery blew the lid off of the biggest plot threads of the season , as quickly as it could . While we got a caboodle of answer in the mania to rush from one twist to the next , it also raised another question , perhaps its ultimate : Can any other Star Trek admirer ’s baseless life tally Michael Burnham ’s ?
Oh boy . Where do we even start ?
A lot find in “ The Red Angel . ” Almost too much happens in it , actually . It is perhaps one of the mussy episodes Discovery has ever done , as it paradoxically tangle and dashes through a bunch of plot thread it barely has time to entertain . Some of these moments ultimately environ empty — the dramatically overbearing funeral for Airiam that give the episode is an flagrant example , give it ’s in serve of the fact that we learned fundamentally nothing about her until it wastime for her to die . So was Burnham ’s abbreviated assemblage with Ash / Voq , particularly since it did n’t really accost the lingering incubus that she break up with him last season because he tried to off her . Other moments gratefully anchored the chaos of the sequence elsewhere , and we ’ll get to that in a act .
But that mile - a - minute - plotting was in serving of finally laying bare all the teasing this season has been doing with the true statement behind the Red Angel . And it ’s Michael . From the future tense .
It turns out Airiam ’s dying portent that Project Daedalus is the key to everything was much easier for the Discovery to track down than you might have anticipated . Tilly promptly detect a file cabinet left behind by the fallen officer that shockingly expose a bioscan of the Angel is a perfect match for Michael — right as Section 31 render up to also just casually reveal that Project Daedalus is one of its own research initiatives into time travel , that the group has fuck what it and the sign are all along , and has just been stringing along the rest of Starfleet while it tries to recoup its engineering science .
If that was n’t enough madness ? Georgiou prick Michael into get Leland to also unwrap that her parent were n’t lowly scientists , but department 31 operative . Not only that , they were tax with recovering a clock time crystal to use in Project Daedalus , and the reason for their death was that Leland fetch regardless and let the Klingon operatives also chasing the crystal hunt them down . But there ’s still more ! Michael and the Discovery crew hatch a plan to catch Future Michael by forcing her into a Grandfather Paradox — by exposing Michael to a situation in which she is about to give out , Angel Michael has to save her past self ’s life , as she didway back in the premiere . Otherwise , she wo n’t exist . And in the clock time she needs to do that , Section 31 and Discovery can trap her in a containment field , withdraw the Daedalus wooing , and need her some very pointed questions .
Like I said at the head start of this review : oh boy .
This is like , way , right smart too much to throw out there in one go , let alone on the shoulders of one role . At the very least , the disclosure of the Red Angel ’s identity — and the contiguous headspin it and everything surrounding it puts Michael in — gives us the emotional highlight of the entire installment , and arguably the matter that works the most in all of “ The Red Angel . ” While Michael works out her anger at first on Ash , and then on an army of preparation dummies , Spock comes to comfort her ; in Michael having both her system of logic and emotional incline thrown into full excitement by everything flung at her , she is now going through the same trauma he did with the Red Angel ’s visions . The same trauma sheattempted to inflicton him as a child . And so , instead of sniping at each other over what divides them , at long last , Michael and Spock have something to adhere over again , and their human relationship can truly commence to heal .
It ’s a beautifully handled mo and , unlike many other lingering threads from the rest of the time of year addressed in this episode , one that is given the elbow room it needs to emit . Really , it ’s the fit this episode had to get right , give the grandness of Spock and Michael ’s arc to the full season at this head . What practiced way for “ The Red Angel ” to find a consequence of signified amidst the topsy-turvyness of everything else sound on , than one where Michael and Spock reforge their relationship as brother and sister by trying to do just that ?
And when the Discovery puts its architectural plan to basically pull attempted execution on one of their own ( even if it was voluntary ) into action , it gives Michael a sense of public security that she ’s made amends with her chum ( should she actually be about to die ) , but also yield Spock the hazard to at long last put his trust back in her in the process . Even if it means he has to advocate on her behalf to keep on the dauntless architectural plan at phaser - point , when everyone else on the foreign mission — her captain , her acquaintance , her weird killer emperor mentor from a mirror world — are too concerned that Michael might be lost for upright .
However , even as “ The Red Angel ” race to its heartstopping — literally in Michael ’s subject — conclusion , it ’s not done throw more messes into the mix . At the very end of the episode , when Michael ’s guardian holy man ultimately appear to bring through her life , Discovery snap shut its mousetrap , secure Future Michael and the Daedalus suit … but it ’s not Michael Burnham inside the suit at all .
It ’s her mother .
When the twist to your twist is that the twist was actually a fake twist , maybe , just maybe , you have contorted yourself into a dimension of too many twists . In an sequence that already had a wad going on , why barren metre set up a pull that exist exclusively to be revealed as a fake gotcha by the sequence ’s goal ? Because if it had been revealed that Michael ’s female parent was the Red Angel at the point in this episode where it ’s instead revealed that it ’s allegedly Michael , nothing would ’ve dramatically changed .
Michael would still have the impulsion to face Leland about her parent ’s real careers , and it would ’ve been driven by her own desire to discover the trueness , rather than through Georgiou tug her . Spock would still have ground to ease Michael over logic and emotion failing her , because while it ’s less of an experiential crisis than literally facing your succeeding self , she ’s still confront the mother she thought she had lose ten prior . sin , the programme to put Michael in lethal peril would still work even without the arduous terror of the Grandfather paradox , because — as the episode operate out of its elbow room to establish — the Angel has a precedent for saving Michael every time she is at risk of death .
It also would have made Spock ’s determination to forcibly prevent anyone from intervening in the capture design even more heartbreaking than it was , because he ’d be putting trust in his baby ’s pick understanding they ’re out of love for her mother , mirroring hisown snug bondwith Amanda . But instead “ The Red Angel ” spends pretty much its total rill time setting up a “ gotcha ! ” second just to … well , say “ gotcha . ” It ’s a turn for twisting ’s sake , rather than the narrative at enceinte .
Even putting that twistiness away , the approximation initially presented in “ The Red Angel ” of Michael being the nominal entity is an intoxicating , fascinating one . Through that , we could have began to interrogate Spock ’s impression that his adoptive sis ’s unceasing desire to shoulder all burden , however nobly intended , can have dangerous event for not just those Michael loves but also the larger universe beyond her . After all , if Discovery is pop off to demand that it makes its lead character ’s liveliness as root into the ephemeral of Star Trek canyon as possible ( moving stairway of warfare , rescuer of domain , sibling to famous Vulcans ) , why not really canvas what all that overwhelming importance can do to the psyche of a person ? What could go on to a Michael who is give the magnate to be a genuine walk — well , float - flying through distance - time — Deus Ex Machina ?
But we ’re not pay off that . Instead , we seem to be head down the much easier way for Discovery to take , of Michael teaming up with her long - cerebration - idle female parent to fight an evil A.I. from the future . It ’s a familiar sept drama that the show was already doing a grand job in take on in Michael ’s relationship with Spock . It ’s also a route that has , as I mentioned last hebdomad , a unsatisfying impropriety with the trajectory of the first season of Discovery , whichpondered fascinating questionsonly to chasethe easy of answers . At the very least with the real turn revealed — well , as far as we know , who can say there are n’t more twist to twist out of it!—perhaps Discovery ’s direction can now be less on who the Red Angel is , and more on the questionable ethical overreaches that conduct to its creation in the first topographic point .
There are hints of that potential throughout this instalment , even as Section 31 becomes ( once again ) a wary friend against the threat of Control . And this time of year has been at its impregnable when mine that tension over the psyche of Starfleet , rather than in mining the familiar rascal AI figure of speech that Trek has get across clip and time again . Hopefully , we ’ll get to see a bit more of the former as we barrel down into the final stretch , even if we now have a timey - wimey extra layer of messed up family history for misfortunate Michael Burnham to take out on top of it as we tail the latter .
Assorted Musings
There ’s a very unearthly moment just before the Discovery is about to begin its angel seizure where Lieutenant Nilsson takes her position on the bridge . Everyone glower at her , of row , because she ’s specifically ask Airiam ’s stead — it ’s a weird suspension in the scope of the story though , consider everything about to go down . But it ’s made even weirder by the fact that Nilsson is flirt by Sara Mitich , who play Airiam in season one of Discovery before Hannah Cheesman assumed the role for time of year two . So it was twice weird .
I ’m strike that it was n’t Doug Jones singing Saru ’s Kelpien dirge for Airiam ’s funeral , but if it was ? That man is even more insanely talented than I thought he was .
One more note on Airiam : It feels weirdly cruel that Starfleet completely wiped the memories Airiam had deliberately pick out to save in the procedure of having to relieve up unconstipated infinite in her augment physical structure every daylight . Why are they not saved for her bang one ? for sure the point of archiving those store beyond the limits of her physical structure were so that they could be passed on after her death ?
Michelle Yeoh is never not a pleasure on Discovery , but she is her most delicious when getting to toy Georgiou in a elbow room where she does n’t have to hide that she ’s a fascistic cackling baddie from another universe . The whole conversation in applied science designed just to make Stamets hilariously uncomfortable was brilliant .
Also hilarious ? Benjamin Spock indulge in mocking Michael ’s eagerness to be involve in things that do n’t touch her and both Pike and Cornwell just allowing it . There ’s that self-satisfied , pointy - eared whoreson we all know and love .
Another plot thread lost among the brouhaha of this installment : the obtuse way of life to reconciliation between Culber and Stamets being opened , after the former has a welcome inwardness - to - heart with Admiral Cornwell ( hey , they remember she ’s a therapist ! This ship could really do with a counselor ) . But while I appreciated that thread being build on , I as appreciate just as much that when Culber tried to work it up with Stamets just before the missionary station was about to commence that Stamets was like “ this is really not the clip . ” Because it really was n’t ! This installment had way too much going on as it is !
On a scale of 1 - 10 , how slopped do you think Spock is that he declare to Michael “ not everything is about you ” last week , just hour before it becomes seeming that , really , basically everything is , in fact , about her ? Hide your 3D chessboards .
Daedalus , by the way , was the digit in classical Greek mythology who constructed his son Icarus ’ far-famed wings . You know , those one Icarus then burned while flying too close to the sun ? No allusions to anything go on here in Star Trek : Discovery powerful now , no sir !
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