What's Past Is Prologue

This week's installment of Star Trek: Discovery was all about the thrill ride. Some plot threads with intriguing potential were snipped quickly in service of delivering high octane action. To the episode's credit, though, the action was of a much higher caliber than Star Trek fans are used to getting.

Take the first big set piece, the huge phaser fight. There's never been anything with half that intensity in Star Trek, on television or in the movies. Hundreds of blasts, force fields, flash grenades, phasers set to "cinder," phasers set to "core sample" -- it was a jaw-dropping, pulse-pounding delight.

Or take the later big action sequence, the throne room fight. This one was a more hand-to-hand affair, making use of Michelle Yeoh's martial arts abilities and proving that Sonequa Martin-Green and Jason Isaacs have some stage combat chops too. Phasers, swords, knives, fists, and feet all swirled together in another thrilling concoction.

Is space action your thing? Well then, you got to watch the Discovery fly straight down the throat of the Charon, blow it up, and surf the shock wave out.

But all the action did sometimes come at the expense of personal drama. Having just had the truth of Lorca's mirror identity revealed to us, it seemed like there would have been a lot of mileage in having him remain in the mix as a villain for at least a little while. Every single main character had a relationship with him that would be worth re-examining in light of the revelation... but it seems we'll never get the chance. Just as we came to know the real Lorca, he's gone. (That was a hell of a death, though!)

Similarly, if the mirror universe hadn't been tied up in this episode, there were a few aspects of it that could have probably sustained further exploration. The Lorca/Landry relationship is one. The Landry killed earlier in the season was not from the mirror universe, it turned out, but Mirror Landry was nevertheless someone important to Lorca. Why and how? That's for fan fiction to sort out now, I guess. It also felt like more juice could have been squeezed from the duplicitous Mirror Stamets. To what degree were his experiments sanctioned by the Emperor, or indulging his own mad scientist instincts? Shouldn't he have had more of a plan than we saw? I guess not.

At the end of the day, Michael Burnham is the star of the show. With her, at least, the personal angles were explored. She knew all the right buttons to push with Lorca and Mirror Georgiou. But she's not done trying to use a doppleganger to atone for her betrayal of her old captain -- the last minute rescue of Mirror Georgiou means she's still around for more story. (There must also be a reckoning between Michael and Voq/Tyler, who was completely out of the story this week.)

It looks as though, once again, Star Trek: Discovery has reset its premise. They've found their way back to their own universe, but too late to prevent the Klingons from defeating the Federation. Unless your bet is that Discovery takes place from now on in a parallel timeline where the Klingons conquered everything (long odds on that bet), it seems the final mini-arc of the season will be a time travel story. To what degree things get reset is an interesting conundrum. Wind things back far enough, and you could have an original Ash Tyler (before Klingon capture and Voq replacement), an original Lorca (before the Mirror version took his place), an original Georgiou, the restoration of Dr. Culber, and more. But reset things too completely, and there's a risk of undoing the stakes of everything we just went through all season. Can the writers strike a satisfying balance between "righting history" and "making it all matter?" I'm curious to see.

I really enjoyed the visceral thrills this week, but longed for at least a little more meat on the bone. I grade the episode a B.