The crew are taking downtime, where we see all the crew dealing with the stress of the DMA in various ways, which is a nice bit of variety to see and worldbuilding. Tilly has realised that her issue is before she had a straight path direction to being captain, but now she realises he wants to try stuff before she gets there (which I feel). Culbert suggests getting her to lead a cadet exercise.
The exercise in question is designed to help with team building, to help combat the sense of isolation many communities are feeling with each other. Tilly approaches with the demeanour of a lively school teacher – in both a positive and negative way. The cadets remain closed off and Tal is surprised to learn they’ll be taking part in the exercise with the cadets rather than helping to supervise them. Before Tilly can finish explaining herself, the shuttle is hit by a gamma ray burst and thrown out of warp. One of the cadets, Sasha, tells Tilly she’s a trained pilot and can help, but Tilly orders her to sit down – and I can kind of see where this is going …
The lieutenant flying the ship is killed after the crash. They find themselves on an L-class moon. One of the cadets tries to rationalise they are in a holosuite program, but is not the case. Tilly asks Sasha to try to repair the piloting system (maybe this isn’t where it was going??), and the other cadets to work on other systems. Instantly the Tellarite (Gorev) and Orion (Harral) almost come to blows, and as Tilly forces them to introduces themselves, it is revealed the Gorev grew up under Orion Slavery.
At the Ni’var/Federation summit, Ni’var makes the unprecedented demand that it be allowed an exit clause before it joins the Federation – the Federation rejects this, and the talks are halted. Both Burnham and Saru infer from conversations they each have with the respective heads of state that there is something deeper going on causing the issues, and they should discretely investigate.
Meanwhile, the shuttle crew come under attack from bests below. Star Trek has had multiple ‘stranded shuttle crew’ episodes before, famously ‘The Galileo Seven’. The creatures are attracted by the equipment on the shuttle, so it is shut off and the creature leaves. Tilly decides the best choice is to move from the shuttle out the valley, where they can get a signal and have a vantage point. The crew argue – some want to stay, Tal and Harral insist going on their own to be faster, but Tilly insists on everyone sticking together.
Book has therapy with Culber, and again I am living for these continued therapy scenes with different characters. Wilson Cruz has an excellent way of exerting warmth, and I have no idea if in real life his efforts would be effective therapy, but heck I feel reassured so.
The shuttle crew argue about their situation as they walk, and while they stop, spider lighting hits and causes Tal’s legs to freeze into the floor. The crew manage to pull them out. Despite that moment of team building, Gorev maintains he is unable to trust Harral. Tal reveals the Harral’s dad was an anti-Chain activist, who died a political prisoner. With this revelation, a wall is broken and the crew start trusting each other a bit more. There’s even a cute moment where she gets them all to say ‘aye’!
Burnham and Saru argue the need to grow past prior mistakes and misgivings, and reveal their solution is for Starfleet (specifically Burnham, as a citizen of both the Federation and Ni’var) to act as a third intermediary. Meanwhile the shuttle crew reach the ridge, but determine the monsters will reach them before they can be beamed away. Tal volunteers to distract them, but Tilly orders she go instead (which isn’t a great command decision – sending your ranking (and most confident) officer rather than the ensign). However the plan works, and the crew are beamed off, and taken back to the Academy, bonded.
Kovich tells Tilly the reason people didn’t trust Discovery on its arrival to the future was the fact they all carried themselves with the demeanour of optimism, which stung in the post-Burn society. But it’s exactly what they needed. Tilly is given an offer to teach at the Academy, although – knows she won’t take it right now, it’s there for when she’s ready. Ni’var joins the Federation. President Rillak reveals to Burnham she wasn’t sure Burnham was the right person for the role, hence her secretive way of asking for help, but is glad she did. Burnham asks for more transparency in the future – which I mean yeah, you think they’d be passed that.
Burnham and Tilly hang out, and talk about how they first met. Tilly reveals she actually does want to stay as a teacher, and leaves Discovery. We’ll have to wait for future episodes to see where this goes – either we won’t be seeing Mary Wiseman for a while or we’ll be having Tilly/Academy subplots every episode.
Stay tuned to find out?
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