During their search for Spock (heh), the Discovery crew encounters a mysterious sphere that threatens the ship. Even if they manage an escape, the encounter may be fatal for Saru; the strange sphere has triggered in him the vahar'ai, a sickness that immediately precedes the death of a Kelpian. Meanwhile, the alien entity that has bonded to Tilly continues to exert its influence upon her, even as Stamets and Jett Reno try to save her.
In its highly serialized format, Discovery hasn't often been able to present the episodic encounters with alien life that are the franchise's bread and butter. That's addressed here. The encounter with a dying lifeform/civilization feels a bit similar to several Next Generation episodes ("Tin Man," "Masks," "The Inner Light"), while not actually being too direct a copy of any of them. The difference lies largely in how Discovery's story unfolded in ways The Next Generation never would have.
The ship-wide malfunctions were an early point of differentiation, as Star Trek has rarely chosen to explicitly talk about the universal translator. The sequence in which everyone's speech fractured into sentences of a dozen languages (real and fictional) was fun, and afforded Saru a chance to save the day as he rarely has before. There was also a moment of almost Orville-like humor, as punchline alien Linus complained of how it "sucked" being sick with so many nasal cavities. There was a continuing willingness to acknowledge that Earth had culture after the Victorian area, this week with a mention of Prince, and a sung verse of David Bowie. There was also true horror in what happened to Tilly this episode -- possession, gross alien goo, and absorption. (And all of that more tense for the audience because it was happening to one of the most "regular, relatable human" characters Star Trek has ever had.)
Another character I love, love, love is Jett Reno. Tig Notaro's dry sarcasm and harsh edge is like a lance through the boil of pretentiousness that Star Trek can sometimes become. Her clash with Stamets, arguing over the best ways to do science, felt like the most realistic aspect of the episode. I'd love to have Reno around all the time.
But while Tig Notaro may have stolen my heart, the episode was, of course, all about Doug Jones. This episode gave him his best material on the show so far, and he rose to the occasion. The Saru storyline paid off every last detail introduced in his Short Treks episode, and that background added tremendous pathos to what he went through here. I really hope that Discovery's breakneck plotting allows room soon to explore what life is like for Saru now that he's fundamentally changed as a character and is living without fear. I'd like to see if a growing desire to help his people brings him into conflict with Starfleet.
Playing brilliantly off Jones, Sonequa Martin-Green was also outstanding in this episode. Her breakdown in the scene where Saru asks Burnham to kill him was a real milestone in the series. Burnham's Vulcan mask has slipped a bit before, but this was the first time it completely fell away and revealed the human beneath. Saru's plea that she reconcile with her sibling (as he never could with his) was one of the most intensely personal moments Discovery has brought us so far.
But there were some less effective moments for me too. The episode was a bit overstuffed, and the "search for Spock" Macguffin felt like unnecessary stakes to keep mentioning on top of "two people are in personal danger AND the whole ship might explode." I also was left cold by everything trying to connect with the original Star Trek pilot "The Cage." The character of Number One was nearly personality-free in her 1960s incarnation, memorable only because she was played by "Star Trek royalty" (Majel Barrett). She didn't make much of an impression on me here either. Plus, making Pike into a technology-fearing Luddite, in an attempt to explain why the original series had inferior technology to Discovery, seems to me like a misguided waste of time. (It doesn't explain the inferior tech of any other ship in any other Star Trek series anyway.)
The pacing was also a bit off in moments. I felt the audience was way ahead of the characters in figuring out the attempt at communication by the sphere. And more time could have been spent on Saru's revelation. How is he so sure that all Kelpian belief is a lie, as opposed to the possibility that the sphere-triggered onset of his condition might also have caused that condition to unfold differently?
Still, this was a fairly strong episode overall, and the best so far of season two. I'd give "An Obol for Charon" a B+.
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