Michael Burnham returns to Vulcan, convinced that her adoptive mother Amanda knows more about Spock and his whereabouts than she's been letting on. Meanwhile, Discovery remains in orbit of Kaminar to investigate a temporal anomaly left in the wake of the Red Angel's latest appearance.
At last, Spock is no longer a mere Macguffin being chased in season two; he's actually here in the flesh. But now that he's here, his role has transformed into something else that I have decidedly mixed feelings about. He's become, essentially a "damsel in distress." Reduced to some form of insanity, Spock is unable to help himself, and is an object for Michael Burnham to rescue.
On the one hand, I think, "sure, go for it!" Let's gender flop that old trope, put Burnham in the role of rescuer, and take on a cliched method of storytelling by coming at it in a new direction. On the other hand, I think, "it doesn't seem right to do this to Spock." This is a long and storied character, a fan favorite. He's been through a few reinventions (and a reincarnation), but he's been an active and iconic character in every version. This babbling lunatic iteration of him feels like a disservice to that history.
I do like that Discovery is taking the opportunity to paint in more about Spock, though -- specifically in revealing that as a child, he struggled with a form of dyslexia (maybe the human version, maybe a Vulcan version). This is a great new detail that comports with what we already knew of the character, the ostracization he experienced as a child and how it was a challenge for him to join Starfleet. Now we learn of another layer to that challenge, one that makes him even more heroic for having overcome it. Spock is as brilliant as we've always known him to be, and now we know it was that much more work for him to be so. It's inspirational, and positions Spock as a role model for even more of the audience.
But even as everything about Spock's past felt like it lined up for me, I questioned whether everything about Amanda did. Exactly how long has she been hiding Spock? Did she find him before or after she last talked to Michael aboard Discovery? Was Spock ever actually on that shuttle Section 31 was chasing? I don't need the show to necessarily spell out all these details for me (I mean, I definitely don't want other "how did Culber survive"-like exposition dump), but I do want to feel like it would make sense if I chased it all down myself -- and I'm not quite feeling that.
Other elements of this episode were a similarly mixed bag. When it comes to the continuing (mis)adventures of Section 31, Georgiou is still a great deal of fun. When you've got Michelle Yeoh in your cast, you use her for hand-to-hand combat sequences as much as you can possibly justify (and maybe more). So we got a great fight between her and Burnham this week. The context for the fight was fun too -- that Georgiou will help you... if it's also helping her somehow.
But as interesting as Georgiou can be, the character of Leland is equally and oppositely uninteresting. He's been fairly devoid of personality so far, and not a credible threat for Georgiou at all. Perhaps the show is trying to address this with the sudden revelation this week that Leland is responsible for the death of Burnham's birth parents. On the one hand, that seems completely extraneous and unimportant; but on the other, maybe it's the first step in actually infusing the character with some menace.
Meanwhile, on the Discovery, the time story seemed like it was full of potential. The ghostly glimpses of the past and future were a great gimmick to build a story around.... but then we got just one moment of each, and it simply didn't amount to much. Stamets' riding to the rescue seemed like it was going to be a difficult thing... except it wasn't. Instead, the subplot seemed like only a machination to bring Pike and Tyler closer together. And yet, while it was nice to have someone call Pike out on his borderline suicidal tendencies, I'm not sure we got significantly closer to knowing why he's this way.
In a season that's been full of shout-outs to the original Star Trek series, this episode ended with arguably the biggest one yet: the revelation that the next step on the Red Angel hunt is Talos IV, the planet where the first pilot episode, "The Cage," took place. I hope this doesn't become a letdown in the way that season two's premiere failed to deliver on the finale's tease that we might go aboard the Enterprise in a meaningful way. I'm wondering if we'll get to see Talosians again (with makeup advanced by 55 years). Might we learn that the original series' ban on traveling to Talos IV went in place not because the events of "The Cage" (as we'd logically assumed), but because of some new events about to unfold for us?
I'd say "Light and Shadows" deserves a B-. I wish I'd found the episode itself more satisfying, but even when it's a bit jumbled, the series once again tees up intriguing possibilities for what's to come.
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