LizstarTrek - Discovery Season 2 episodes 1-5

Every Sunday my Twitch subs and I watch Star Trek in my Discord. Here are my reviews and thoughts on each of the episodes as I see it. If you’re curious about a nerd’s views on Star Trek episodes, please read on, I go quite in depth with some of these episodes! I’ve watched some Star Trek before but not all of it!

I know literally nothing about Discovery, except for The Burn, and that it leads into Strange New Worlds. So uh… I’ve been dreading this one. But hey, who knows! Maybe it’ll surprise me!!

I am going to become the joker :)

Brother - ENT 7.5/10

We get a flashback of Michael first meeting Sarek, and also SPOCK! :O SPOCK, WE KNOW HIM! Discovery is now doing this thing where any time we see anything that is TOS related they do the fanfare. Neli calls it “The Starwars Episode 9 Thing” which god, she’s so right.

This is our favorite background character now. We call him “Christmas Ornament Guy”. He’s also like, the second half of Daft Punk, the first half is on the bridge.

Saru says he can smell Michael’s endrochrin system going into overdrive. Don’t do that, that’s creepy.

HE’S HERE! This is Pike, visiting the Discovery. Why? He makes it very clear, saying “look, it’s best to just be clear, out of respect to all of you. I’m being assigned as your new captain.” The reason is apparently extremely tense. There’s some “seven signals” that they’ve picked up recently.

Pike looks so different to me. Damn, two years between this and SNW, but it really is jarring how much 2 years and a different hair cut works. Anyways uh, Pike is, in fact, my favorite Starship captain. He’s AMAZING in SNW seasons 1 and 2. How is he in this? He makes a joke with Tilly, respect her, accepts she made an oopsie and put his data up for the whole bridge crew to see, went “Nah it’s fine. Everyone sit and look at this, cause it’s important you know who I am”, says he’s NOT Lorca, will never hurt or betray them, and takes time to know who everyone on the bridge is, which is great because they were all here in season 1 and I NEVER LEARNED WHO THEY ARE.

GOD I LOVE YOU, CHRISTOPHER PIKE.

If ANYTHING saves Discovery for me, it’s Pike.

Meanwhile, in the tragic sad gay room, Stamets is rewatching letters and logs from his dead boyfriend. It’s a little jarring lmfao. He announces to Tilly that he’s being transferred to a cushy retirement job. That’s a good thing! Maybe you shouldn’t work in the factory where your boyfriend was murdered. Tilly is being pushy and wants him to stay. Girl, no. Let a man rest.

We also have some stuff with Sarek being a shitty dad and Michael and Spock’s relationship being strained. This is not as interested to me as Stamets and Pike.

Everyone on the bridge crew is getting lines. They literally had no lines last season. Holy hell. The terrible AWFUL choice to barely treat these people like season 1 makes it hit even harder in season 2 that Pike is an actually GOOD captain, good person, and most of all, is STARFLEET. They turned their weakness into a strength, 100%.

They find a Federation ship down in an asteroid field, possibly with someone inside. Michael, Pike, and his two random people he came on board with head off to rescue them in some weird hamster ball ships. The science officer is a piece of shit who ignores all of Michael’s suggestions and immediately dies. What a surprise. His thing exploding almost kills Pike and makes his shuttle break.

Michael risks her life to save Pike, which works out. They go into the broken Federation ship and finds…

This is Commander Reno, she’s been stranded here for ten months. Her only fellow survivors are hooked up to life support to keep them alive. They set up a thing to beam them all out of there, but then Michael gets left behind cause of a problem happening as the ship falls apart around her.

She is gravely injured, and then sees some weird angel thing, before being rescued by Pike. Then she goes “NO!”, apparently having found some blue glowey rock, which falls through her and doesn’t beam with them. What? She was holding it?!

Apparently it’s some weird special glowing rock. It allows them to have infinite free energy. And it gave Michael visions as she was holding it.

THEY FOUND A FUCKING MARKER?!

Their treknobabble about this is hard to follow but that doesn’t seem to be important right now. They leave.

Pike’s staying on, as a “joint captain” according to him, because Enterprise is being repaired. Though before he fully takes over, Michael asks him if she can see Spock. Spock isn’t here, though… he’s taken leave. Apparently he’s been Weird lately. The Enterprise was on a deep space 5 year mission, they missed the war, and Spock has been acting ESPECIALLY weird about it.

Michael goes over to the Enterprise and listens to one of Spock’s personal logs, where he talks about having nightmares, and is gonna head out and probably die. Burnham has so much she wants to say to Spock after their shakey childhood, and prays she can find him in time.

This was mostly good!! Holy shit!

New Eden - ENT 7/10

Burnham asks Pike to help her find Spock. He explains he’s actually in a psych ward, and asked not to have anyone told. But since apparently he has these seven signals in his notes, it overrides that. But Burnham is afraid to try and reach out, since he wants nothing to do with her. Pike then is like “if you have ANYTHING to tell me, I’ll do anything I can”. She ALMOST tells him she saw an angel on that asteroid but then is like “nah”. Come on, girl.

A new signal appears and they need to jump through the mushrooms again to get to it, cause it’s 150 years away at top speed. Stamets comes out of retirement to do it, but is worried he’ll see his dead husband. After the jump he, cryingly, leaves.

As they reach this new planet, they find a planet with Humans on it. There’s a distress signal coming from it going “OH GOD SAVE US WE’RE UNDER ATTACK”, but signs on the surface are pleasant and fine. That signal has been on loop for 200 years, before warp was even discovered. Ooh, fun mystery.

There’s some weird stuff about religion. Pike what the fuck are you talking about? “This could have been an act of God” what? Did I dimensional shift into a completely different show?

Burnham, Pike, and one of the bridge crew (I haven’t learned their names yet, I am not Pike) beam down to the planet and pretend to fit in. They enter a church, which apparently hobbles together religions from Earth into a new pseudo religion, and htey also apparently worship… Digimon?

The colonists directly explain that they were rescued in World War III by an angel who took them to this new planet, Terralysium, and they built New Eden and solved their religious diversity by combining faiths. That’s uh… how that’d work.

Back on the Discovery, there’s some thing about Tilly almost dying to find some way to stop Stamets from needing to do mushroom magic. Also they find out some space thing is going to make the planet unlivable in 60 minutes. Saru hypothesizes that’s why the signal was here. To rescue the colonists.

Back in New Eden, Pike refuses to take these people back, because of “General Order One”, which is their excuse for getting around the Prime Directive not being here yet. They are kidnapped by a crazy guy who believes they’re from Earth and followed his distress beacon his family has kept here forever. Wow, what a wild conspiracy theory.

Tilly theorizes from Sick Bay a way to save everyone, with the help of some cute nurse who is weirdly flirty with her. There’s no way this girl is weird, she’s some weird angel messenger. Ah well, Gay Tilly will have to be but a dream.

Pike sacrifices himself to save a child who’s messing with their guns, and is dying. They use the church as a smokescreen to beam back, pretending that the angels saved them.

Tilly looks up who this nurse was, May Ahearn, an old friend of her’s apparently. The computer is like “They are not on this ship :) They are dead.” Welp. Spooky ghost!

Michael comes clean to Pike about what happened to her on the asteroid. She thought she was hallucinating, but seeing the art of the Angels on New Eden, it’s clear. She saw one of those Angels. Something is up.

They go back down to the crackpot in New Eden, after Michael convinces Pike. He has a soldier’s old helmet camera that recorded the Angels. They trade the helmet for a power cell that’ll help power his trinkets he’s been working on, and tell him the truth. He thanks then, and lights up the church. And then assumedly afterwards, the other colonists burn him at the stake.

Point of Light - ENT 5/10

The “last time on” is all about Ash Tyler. God no, don’t bring him back. Leave all that in the past, we were doing so well.

Tilly is still seeing this old childhood friend, “May”. She’s very friendly and CLEARLY a figment of her mind, and she’s having a nervous breakdown over it. Poor Tilly.

Meanwhile, Sarek’s ship shows, and Amanda beams over, needing Michael’s help.

I guess we need to do more Klingon stuff. Okay. The Klingons are unhappy at the new chancellor trying to unite them cause they’re old assholes who still want power, and also I guess she has a human torchbearer. I mean, everyone KNOWS he’s actually Klingon but y’know, they’re weird about it.

It’s REALLY weird to watch Star Trek and go “can we get LESS Klingon stuff”. This ends with him realizing Voq has a son, and making a plea that he’ll be his father.

Anyways back to the GOOD plot, turns out Spock is wanted for murder. Three of the doctors are dead and he fled the starbase. Also we get a great Pike quote. “I could break into this file but that’d be breaking the rules, and my mother wouldn’t like that.” God, he’s such a boyscout.

Tilly has a nervous breakdown and screams at her apparition in the head. To everyone ELSE, she screams at the captain, then quits on the spot.

POV: you just said something racist on the bridge. Anyways you’d think this’d be red flag for “has an alien in her head”.

Oh my GOD, Amanda mentioned Logic Extremists again. PLEASE do not let that come back. Amanda and Michael have a long conversation about how Spock hates her, and then Amanda leaves in anger. What? I feel like I missed something in that scene.

Tilly FINALLY tells someone what’s going on, Michael, who immediately realizes it’s Spore related and tells her to go talk to Stamets. Damn, thank you Michael. Wish that was solved earlier.

We get a big fight scene with Klingons, because some enemies to the throne kidnapped their baby. Okay.

What the FUCK is this Star Wars shit

Okay, it’s Georgiou, who is now a “security consultant”. And is apparently here to make sure they stay on the throne. She’s also here to force an ultimatum. Kill the baby, and Tyler. She does, and then becomes a Klingon cult leader, basically. They call her “mother”. Is it GOOD when your dictator wants you to call them mother? Anyways, actually the baby and Tyler leave, cloaked in a Federation ship. Oh boy, a war crime! Hey, it’s Section 31 :) Fucking lovely. Remember when that was just something one guy and a couple weirdos were doing in DS9? I miss that. Anyways Tyler joins Section 31. I hate that.

They determine it’s an intelligent fungal entity that has invaded Tilly’s mind, and immediately suck it out of her. Uh, that’s an intelligent creature, maybe we should first contact- okay.

This one was not as good.

An Obol For Charon - ENT 9/10

What the fuck is this image

We start with… Una arriving on Discovery! Hello, Number One! :D Good to see her.

They really went with the retro futurism look with her here. She’s hot af like this tbh, I like that kinda style.

There’s a Saurian on staff. We’ve never really seen him before. He’s very casual and pleasant. His name is Linus. I would die for Linus.

While she’s asking Pike to save Spock, they are pulled out of warp by a giant angry red ball. Okay. While studying it, suddenly everyone starts speaking random languages. Oh boy, it’s the Orb Of Babel. Luckily, Saru knows a bunch of languages. He goes around, saving the day, cleaning out a virus in the universal translator. He also has a cold. Poor Saru.

This is Jett Reno. She was on that asteroid a few episodes back, seems she’s still here. Thank god, I REALLY like her. She’s EXTREMELY casual, and a tiny bit rude, and I legit love her. She gets in a pissing match with Stamets about engineering and dilithium being better than fungus, but then they start working together. But during problems, power goes out and the fungus gets out, connecting to Tilly like a fucking Symbiote.

Holy shit, they’re gonna drill a hole in Tilly’s head. I’ve had nightmares about this. OKAY IT WAS EVEN MORE HORRIFYING TO WATCH THEM DO IT.

Saru is not just sick. He thinks the sphere is triggering the Kelpien biological thing called Vahar’ai. Kelpiens going through Vahar’ai either go mad, or are culled. Either way, he’s dead. And he’s given up, he just wants to save the ship, as whatever’s happening with this orb is clearly causing danger. He also thinks he can communicate with it.

They think the Sphere is dying and wants to be remembered so it’s trying to transmit what it knows to them.

It’s weird that we’re ALSO doing stuff with this fungus at the same time, cause it’s NOT related to the sphere. At all. It’s very distracting. Both A and B plots here are good but they’re not related in any way. It explains its a “jahSepp”, here to talk to Stamets. Stamets has been causing problems with his jumps. Also it has “plans” for Tilly, and is kind of… ominous and evil. When explaining it refuses to let go of Tilly, Reno pulls out a fucking blowtorch and is like “Not on my watch”. Holy SHIT she is cool as hell. They break Tilly out, the end?

The Sphere sends its message, then pushes them out of the way and dies. Saru announces that it’s now HIS turn to die. The bridge crew stands to honor him as he leaves, hugging his friend, Burnham, who escorts him to his room.

This is actually very emotional and well done. I’ve never been into Burnham that much, and her and Saru have had a weird relationship where they were beleagured colleagues, then very hesitant colleagues, now they’re best friends. While it doesn’t feel like it’s been super well built up, it feels very good here. I can’t hold the misfortunes of season 1 against it.

Saru asks Michael to sever his ganglia, which are causing him SEVERE pain, and kill him. She can barely do it. It’s very touching. Anyways before Michael can even touch them, they fall out on their own and his vital signs return to normal. Whoop, he’s not dying!

His threat ganglia are gone, and now they are no longer governing him. He isn’t constantly feeling fear. He feels a new sense of power, but it is troubling in a way. His people revere this, and how it kills them. It’s their truth. But uh, it doesn’t kill them! It’s a lie! He’s suffering from a mild shock about it, but realizes that it could be far FAR worse for his people. This whole thing also made Burnham realize she needs to stick with Spock no matter what.

The jahSepp makes them really high and then eats Tilly and teleports her somewhere somehow. To be continued?

I was wildly interested in this, this is by FAR the best Discovery has been.