Cornwall boards a hidden Discovery, and prepares to interrogate Spock to determine his intentions, using some sort of a truth test. Cornwall shows Pike and Saru the footage of Spock’s murders, but Spike speculates that it is doctored.
Cornwall speculates that the main intelligence source for the Federation is under the control of a rogue admiral, and orders the crew to arrest her. The Discovery crew having to break into another Starfleet facility, in an episode directed by Jonathan Frakes? I have high expectations!
Airiam is reviewing a video file before watching back her memories. She chooses which memories she keeps and which she deletes. Tilly comes in and we get what I think is actually our first character development with Airiam (there has been criticism about Discovery not really getting a look at the bridge crew, a departure from previous series – the writers said this was deliberate when Lorca was captain to show a disconnect, and after he left, we would see more of them – that was more true for the latter parts of the last season but we’ve not really continued that trend here). Airiam tells how her shuttle crashed at the end of her honeymoon, killing her new husband (and probably explains why she’s a cyborg).
Staments diagnosis the spore drive as Burnham and Spock go through their Red Angel data. As Airiam goes through some data, the future virus takes over her again. Cornwall goes through the S31 defences. We get a very wholesome moment when Pike calls out Cornwall for S31’s use of mines, with Pike accusing Cornwall of sidelining the Enterprise in the war because they knew they’d get in the way ethically. Cornwall rebuts that they sidelined the Enterprise because if all else was lost, they wanted their best to survive, as Pike is proving with his objections, rendering him temporarily speechless.
In her quarters, Burnham challenges Spock to chess, in order to help ground his sense of logic. I love the use of chess in media so hopefully this’ll shine. Airiam starts to think she might have been compromised when she sees the code having started to change its defence tactic, and so she asks Tilly to stay beside her but annoyingly doesn’t say anything like why or even ‘even if I tell you to leave later don’t’ which is what I’d say. Discovery arrives at S31 HQ, where the mines are armed. Cornwall gives the conn the route to get through the mines, but the shields would have to drop to prevent them triggering them.
Burnham and Spock are playing chess, with some beautiful macro shots. The game is soon abandoned with Burnham believing Spock is rejecting her attempts at helping by purposefully losing while he accuses her of refusing to see other perspectives, before moving on to how Bunrham tries to shoulder responsibility (for her parents’ death when she couldn’t save them, or Spock’s family from extremists when it was he who made them the target). With the final exclamation that he enjoys for once being able to feel emotion and not feel guilty, he swipes the chessboard off the table and leaves.
Some of the mines are being remotely aimed towards the ship, so Discovery raises their shields and tries to out manoeuvre them. Airiam is taken over again and tells Tilly to leave, which she does because Airiam never mentioned she was worried about being controlled. Nhan, fortunately, has worked out something is up and keeps an eye. The mines keep pummelling the ship as Denver is forced to fly completely manually as the mines disrupt sensors. Burnham speculates the mines are adapting from their actions, and so the ship should react randomly to mitigate the attacks. Airiam finishes downloading and sending some data, and the mines stop attacking.
The rogue admiral hails them, and informs them she was ordered to attack them by Starfleet Command, shocking the bridge. The admiral states they are to all be arrested.
We get a Staments V Spock which I didn’t realise I was missing – During Staments’ repairs, the engineering lab faces a power cut, which Spock complains about as it interrupts his galaxy saving work. Staments, nonplussed, counters that if he doesn’t fix the drive, they’ll all be arrested, preventing Spock from finishing his work – to which Spock submits and begins to help. Spock and Staments then actually share a moment, where Staments offers advise on Spock’s relationship with both the Red Angel and Burnham, and Spock on Culber.
An Away Team of Airiam, Nhan and Burnham beam onto the base (apparently that requires no shield circumvention …???), where for some reasons the weapons keep making weird loud noises and humming up and beeping (much in the same way pistols in films click when they’re lifted – as if they’re being recocked). The crew encounter frozen blood floating around as Airiam is taken over.The away team come across a bunch of frozen bodies. One of them is the rogue admiral, and she’s been dead two weeks. Conveniently, Saru has figured out why: they’re holograms – as was Spock’s murder video. Tilly works out that Airiam was compromised and filled her head with some sort of data, as she backed up her archive on to the ship. Pike warns Burnham and Nahm, but Airiam, with her augmentations, is apparently fast enough to dodge phaser blasts at point blank range and incapacitates Nahm. Burnham asks her what she’s doing instead of shooting her for reasons, giving Airiam time to knock the phaser out of Burnham’s hand too and knock her down. The two fight before Burnham locks her behind a door. They work out Airiam downloaded all the Sphere’s knowledge on AI, which would be super advanced AI. Also no one has realised yet that Nahm is suffocating to death but okay. They speculate that such an AI would be able to destroy all life, but as she goes to destroy the data, the door locks. Tilly does what Tilly does best and she talks to Airiam and sends her memories, disrupting the virus’ control over Airiam. Airiam tells Burnham to eject her into space – that classic control story. Pike and Spock encourage Burnham to eject Airiam. Burnham initially refuses, but Nahm manages to get up and pull the lever, killing Airiam – who dies reliving her favourite memory.
The credits play over the light sound of a beach which is a bit much, but the scene is incredibly well acted from the cast. It’s just a shame we only got any character development from Airiam in the episode she dies in. The moment, as potent as it was, would’ve been much more so if we actually connected with her more deeply here.
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