All roads lead to an alien gambling den beyond the borders of the Federation. Booker and Tarka are headed there to get what they need to build a weapon to destroy the Dark Matter Anomaly, while Burnham and the Discovery are going to give chase and to procure a map of space just beyond the galactic barrier, where the mysterious "10C" aliens the originate.
After a fairly tense mid-season cliffhanger that implied imminent catastrophe, this new episode suddenly moved the goal posts in a way I found rather unsatisfying. As I understood things "last time, on Star Trek: Discovery," Booker and Tarka were on their way to destroy the anomaly, while Discovery had everything they needed to travel to the home of the aliens who made it. Suddenly, neither of those things is true; an extra step has been inserted into the narrative to stretch the taffy for another episode: the guys need a rare element for their weapon, the Disco suddenly needs a map. This is all pretty emblematic of the way this season of Discovery has increasingly gone. The details of the plot seem to add up less and less, but are "load bearing" enough for the emotional weight of each episode. Once again, at least, there was good material in that regard.
"Burnham vs. Booker" was a fun setup here, especially because even when the two are at odds, they can't help but find themselves working together. The criminal underworld setting was well-realized by the production, with good sets, good aliens, interesting background music, and more. There were cliches, yes, but they were generally fun cliches: the character of Haz Mazaro, the boxing ring subplot for Owosekun, the poker game.
Several side notes about that poker game. Film and television pretty much never get poker right, and this was no exception. Pot splashing, string raising, and other bad behavior abounded. And, as always in fiction, the final hand ended up being a showdown between a good hand and a better hand that somehow the loser never saw coming. Just once, it would be nice to see a showdown like this end on a big bluff that gets called, and the context here would have been great for that: Burnham has already said she knows she can't beat Book; how perfect would it have been for her to try to bluff him and for him (being empathic, and knowing her too well) to see through that? Oh well, they didn't really get anything wrong here that all the movie/TV poker doesn't get wrong too. (Oh, and: they've got to make and sell that deck of cards. They seemed like a lovely blend of distinct but usable. The stark black looked great, and the Trek aliens on the face cards were a lot of fun. I want a deck.)
I thought it a little strange that there was just one scene centered on Culber. It was a solid scene, him spiraling over his failure to help Booker, and being soothed by his husband. But there was no "arc" to Culber's story in this episode. It was just one scene, that could just as easily have been dropped into this episode or the next.
I liked a lot about this episode, but never could quite get past the feeling that it felt "unnecessary," following the season-long plot as it had previously been described to us. Overall, I'd give "All In" A B-.
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