Well, that was... breathtaking. An incredibly action-packed episode which gave several of the main cast a chance to shine. Fight sequences really well done, fast pacing, and some nice character moments for Michael and Emperor Phillipa.
I was quite happy we got to have the small moments from the bridge crew, who up until now have effectively been extras.
Hopefully in the second season they can expand them out and give them each an episode to shine. Maybe even personalities and backstories...
They're 9 months in the future and the Klingons have won the war. So I'm guessing some time travel is coming.
That would be my guess. Wouldn't be Trek without time travel, after all.
I found that annoying.
They teased immediately that the spore network could propel people through time by shunting them into future for a needless cliffhanger. Because despite Discovery almost single-handedly winning the war twice before, apparently they need to do so again.
We know the Klingons aren't going to win. That's a given. Prequel and all. The stakes aren't really there. But aside from that, teasing that they jumped ahead nine months strips some of the drama away as the obvious "reset button" solution is sitting right there.
How they can win is still a mystery. The Klingons were winning already until the Discovery stepped in with the jump drive. Then cloaking turned the tide back to Starfleet. Then Discovery managed to bypass the cloaking, but itself vanished. The Federation was now doubly screwed. So the war was lost again.
Now we need to have them spend an episode getting back in time and another where they win the war.
This assumes they didn't share the way to overcome the cloak with Starfleet before being sucked into the Mirror Universe. Which I believe was mentioned on the show. Despite, apparently, sending the critically injured Admiral to a starbase in a shuttle. (If they were close enough for a shuttle to seem viable as an emergency vehicle, why did they need a spore drive jump?) Which begs the question, why they didn't transmit the data, or send it with the Admiral?
But even if they do jump back in time (and I imagine getting enough spores to do so will be the trick and the focus of the next episode or so) and share the cloak nullifying tech, the Klingons were still winning the war without that. Hopefully the show remembers to explain this and doesn't just have the spore-less Discovery bringing the secrets of revealing cloaked ships as the war winning move.
I was mostly OK with the episode, but it escalated the stakes a bit beyond my comfort level. The death of all life in all manifolds of the multi-verse? That is way to big of a potential impact. And unnecessary ... they could have limited the effect to our region of both galaxies and it would have been big enough.
Ahhh the spore network's mystical BS. My least favourite bit about Discovery.
Really, just having the spore network itself die would have been enough drama. It would trap them in another universe and cause the deaths of an entire galactic ecosystem. That *should* be enough.
And it seemed to rush through the dark side story all too quickly. They basically crippled the Terran Empire in just a couple of episodes, including the deaths of major parallel characters. It was all too quick for me.
I wonder if the "rushed" feeling isn't due to the fact that this is a lot shorter of a season than we're used to. It's only 15 (?) episodes as opposed to 22-25 from previous series. Which does cut down a lot of the side stuff that we saw in earlier Trek.
I know people have complained about how we haven't spent much time on other characters, but, again, when your season is 10 hours shorter than what we had before, you really can't spend a lot of time on other characters.
I wonder if they'll go to a full length season in the future if the show proves successful for ABC.
I think the "rushed" feel has as much to do with the crazy epic scope. This whole season has been two giant stories that could have been unpacked into full seasons or multi-season arcs. Discovery's use of the spore drive to turn the tide of the war largely happens between episodes. The Klingon's turning it back with cloaking devices again happens between episodes. They told the story of a year-long war in five episodes. That could have been the entire season (or even series) with smaller side stories as tonal breaks and various exciting missions.
Jumping to the Mirror Universe for four episodes is another pretty giant storyarc that, again, takes a previously seen element of the series (the Terran Empire) and turns up the scope to 11. We see the Emperor and they die. There's a mass revolution. The entire politics of the universe is upended.
I think if they had another 5 to 8 or so episodes... we'd just see yet another big plot. I don't think they would have paused to unpack things. Honestly... I wonder if things wouldn't have been better had they focused entirely on Klingons this season and saved the Mirror Universe for season 2...
I half expected the guy who interfaces with the network to be pulled into the network as a consequence of the last jump.
They're probably saving that for when they jump to the past.
After all, they need some way of removing the Spore Drive from the story now that they've removed the problems of it torturing tardigrades to death, and the mental side effects were really being caused by the corruption of the network by Mirror Stamets.
