115: “Light and Shadows” – Star Trek Discovery Season 2, episode 7

Hey everybody, in this episode of Trek in Time, we’re gonna talk about looking for Spock, finally finding him, getting some hints about where we might be going, and also some mysterious stuff from the future. That’s right, we’re talking about Star Trek Discovery, Season 2, Episode 7, Light and Shadows.

Welcome everybody to Trek in Time. You should know by now that we are watching every episode of Star Trek in chronological order. We’re also taking a look at the context of In history at the time of original broadcast. So we’re in season two of Discovery, which means we are in early 2019 contextually.

And who are we? Well, I’m Sean Ferrell. I’m a writer. I write some sci fi, write some stuff for kids, including my most recently released The Sinister Secrets of Singe available in bookstores now. And with me is my brother, Matt. He’s that Matt of Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact in our lives.

Matt, how are you doing today? I’m doing good.

I think I mentioned this to you before, like how I’m finally feeling settled into my new house and starting to feel like a home again. I’ve been getting caught up on TV shows I have just like put on the side a little bit because I didn’t have the time for it.

And I’ve been in sci fi heaven. I don’t know about you, but like between watching Star Trek with you for this and then the new Star Trek stuff, like, uh, the new Pike show and then the lower decks being back. And I’ve been binging Foundation. It’s like, I feel like I’m in like hardcore sci fi heaven right now.

Yeah.

We’re in a very good era for, for sci fi. It’s really, it’s, it’s a lot of fun right now. Yeah. Ahsoka, which I did start. And, uh, we will be talking about at some point as Matt and I always share at the end of the episodes. Uh, if you become a direct supporter of the show, we have a spinoff. Podcast that we do called Out of Time in which we talk about things that don’t fit within the context of this program.

And on a recent episode of that, Matt was like, let’s talk about Ahsoka and I hadn’t watched it yet. And he very kindly backed off of talking about it, waiting for me to catch up. So I’m in the process of doing that. And Oh boy. Anyway. Yes. Um, before we get into our con our conversation about the most recent episode that we’re talking about, we always like to take a look back at your comments.

And your thoughts about what we are talking about. So Matt, what have you found in the mailbag for us? From the last

episode, I think it was 114. There’s a few comments I wanted to call out. One of which was from, uh, Dan Sims, and it’s gonna be obvious why I’m calling him out on this. Uh, he said, I had made a comment about, I did not like the filmmaking in that episode because they use Michael Bay’s 360 camera technique to make excitement out of a conversation in a, uh, ready room, which was not an exciting conversation.

Uh, and how that’s horrible filmmaking. He said, can’t agree with you more about Michael Bay. It’s sad how many people love

it. Yeah. What’s astounding. Yeah. What’s it? Thank you, Dan. And what’s astounding is if you compare it to the original series or you compare it to Next Generation, think about all the conversations that take place in what basically looks like a boardroom where it would just be like three cameras set up and it would be like, here’s a shot of five people sitting around the table.

Here’s a closeup on one person talking. Here’s a closeup on another person talking. Here’s again, the boardroom filled with five people. It’s like public,

public access, like a town hall meeting. Yeah.

And it’s riveting because they’re talking about things that matter as opposed to like, let’s get this camera spinning.

And, uh, something came up recently through the myriad algorithms that rule the world now, uh, on one of my social media feeds, a thing came up, which was the phrase that J. J. Abrams used. To keep everybody on target when making the first Star Trek film. And normally stuff like that, I let those click baity things just like whisk by and not worry about it.

But this was one where I was just like, okay, I need to know. I need to know what that phrase was. Do you want to guess what that phrase was? Lens flare. No, no, although that, I, I, if this was a quiz show, I would accept that as an answer. The phrase was, and it was an interesting, it was at the end, an interesting little article because it reminded me of something that I knew, I know you knew, I don’t know if you remember it now, but I had forgotten it, but re reading the details of why the films exist as a alternate timeline, it had to do with Paramount effectively splintering in two, and being sold to two different companies.

And there was the film properties, and there was the television properties. And Star Trek was split and went to both. So we end up with now the films being made as completely separate. They cannot connect. To the original television programming. So by design, they had to make them an alternate timeline. In order to separate them, in order to create an identity that would be separate from the television program.

J. J. Abrams phrase that he used to keep everybody on task was rock and roll. And when I read that, I was like, that’s exactly what Matt. Is talking about when he talks about the identity of the films feeling so strange and the TV shows, I think, pulled some of that into them. Discovery, especially pulled some of that into it as it’s part of its new identity.

The context being an identity of rock and roll action and energy where there’s not really a need for it in that moment is how I interpret that. Uh, so that ties into Dan’s comment, I think.

Uh, another comment was from Ajax Chan, same episode. While the scientific explanation of Culber’s return is hand wavy, I’m glad they brought back Wilson Cruz as an actor as well as Culber the character.

To me, he’s the heart of the show and one of the most relatable characters. And I agree with that. Yeah. He does feel like the heart of everything. Um, that kind of like the empathy of the show. He’s the, the voice of… Emotions, when something is happening. I wish they would do more with him, to be honest, uh, but I’m glad that he’s back, too.

And then there was, uh, another comment from Value of Nothing. I totally agree. I thought that’s why you have serialized storytelling, so that you could tell these longer stories. This is when we were talking about, like, the overarching story, kind of having to short change things, because they were taking cheats and consolidating things down, and, oh, look, oh, these two characters are best friends, even though we’ve never seen them be best friends, they’re now best friends, because they did this they’re best friends.

You could have an episode following Culber and his experiences there, and then you could start out later with Tilly and May and have them go on some adventure. And then, yeah, when you get to the end, the whole thing would have stakes and dramatic importance. Instead, it seems like a farce. It’s so brief and superficial.

That’s kind of what I was getting at in our last conversation about this, was they’re hurting themselves in their storytelling and the techniques that they used. I understand why they did what they did. I just don’t agree with it. I wish they hadn’t done it. And it’s nice, but it is nice to see that the show has been making corrections season to season.

Like this season, they corrected for a lot of the downsides of season one. Yeah. And even though it’s going to take us a while to get to season three, season three makes more corrections to make up for the mistakes of season two. And then the new shows, like they do make up for the mistakes of this entire show.

So it’s like, it’s clear that they’re learning and hearing the feedback and trying to find that. Secret recipe that

works well. Yeah, it’s, when you take that perspective, it’s a little bit like last week, uh, was a little bit like complaints about a river flowing where it does. It’s, by design, the way the show and the way the, the episodes and the storylines and the streaming nature of the program are structured, they are forced into this path of, We’ve got to shortchange something somewhere and we’re either going to lean heavily onto completely serialized storytelling with no episodic nature, which would be what original Trek was, or we do the opposite.

And they’re really, it feels like right now they’re trying to straddle that line that’s impossible to straddle, trying to do both. You can’t do both. Because when you’re trying to do both, you’re doing both of them poorly. That sound in the background is, of course, the read alert, which can mean only one thing.

It’s time to set the phasers to stun, as Matt will end up stunned by the Wikipedia description. Best of luck, Matt. I’m gonna need

it. Discovery is confronted by a time anomaly while researching the Red Angel’s signal over Kaminar. Pike and Tyler investigate the anomaly in a shuttlecraft, sending a probe into it.

That same probe soon returns through an anomaly having been upgraded with future technology. It attacks the shuttle and secretly infects Arium’s augmentations, a character we still have no clue who or what she is, using the shuttle’s computer system. Pike and Tyler destroy the probe with Stamets help as his exposure to the mycelial network allows him to ignore the time discrepancies in the anomaly.

Meanwhile, Burnham visits Vulcan as she continues to search for Spock. Confronting Grayson, Burnham learns that their mother has been hiding Spock. Who is a, who is in psychological distress and is repeating phrases in a series of numbers. Their father, Sarek, instructs Burnham to trust Starfleet and take Spock to Section 31 to fix his mind.

Section 31’s doctors claim they can help him, but Georgiou warns her that Spock will not survive the memory extractor that Section 31 plans to use on him. Georgiou helps Burnham stage an attack that allows Burnham and Spock to escape the ship.

Thank you once again, Wikipedia for splintering storylines, plot lines and storylines in.

Very interesting, in interesting ways. Uh, yeah. This of course is episode number seven. This is Light and Shadows, directed by Marta Cunningham, story by Ted Sullivan and Vaughn Wilmot, teleplay by Ted Sullivan. The original air date of this was February 28th, 2019. As always, we have the main cast of Sonequa Martin Green as Michael Burnham, Doug Jones as Saru.

Anthony Rapp as Stamets, Mary Weissman as Sylvia Tilly, and we still have Anson Mount on hand as Christopher Pike. Wilson Cruz does not appear in this episode, despite the fact that he was the main focus of the previous one, but Shehzad Lateef as Tyler is in this one. We also have Michelle Yeoh, James Frayn as Sarek.

Mira Kirshner as Amanda, Ethan Peck making his first appearance. His voice has been used in previous episodes as Spock, but this is his first appearance as Spock and Alan Van Spring is another guest star as Captain Leland, what was going on in the world at this time in February 28th, 2019? Well, Matt, I don’t have to tell you what you had on infinite repeat on your iPod.

That’s right. You were dancing your little heart out to Seven Rings by Ariana Grande. Do you want to sing us a few bars? You’re a little off key, but otherwise, that was terrific. And at the theater, people were lining up to see How to Train Your Dragon, The Hidden World, the third of the How to Train Your Dragon movies.

This one earned 55 million in its first week. And if you haven’t seen the How to Train Your Dragon movies, I will give them an enthusiastic endorsement. These were movies that I went to see because I had a son at the time who was at the right age for animated films like this, and I went without much interest of my own, but after seeing the first one, I was more than ready to see the sequel, and then when the third movie came out, my son mysteriously had become an older teenager and no longer had interest in seeing films like this, so I did not see the third film until I happened to be visiting family over a holiday.

Where two younger family members were watching this film. I sat down to join them. And by the end of the film, I kid you not, I was in tears. And on television, we are trying to compare a streaming show to other streaming shows, instead of talking about things that were broadcast on the main networks. So, so far we have talked about the top streamers.

Which included Lucifer, Stranger Things, 13 Reasons Why, Money Heist, Orange is the New Black, and The Handmaid’s Tale. And at number seven in the streaming shows was Sex Education. And this is a British teen sex comedy slash drama created by Laurie Nunn for Netflix. And it stars, among other people, Gillian Anderson and Asa Butterfield.

And it is the story about a Group of teenagers and adults in the town of Moordale as they contend with various personal dilemmas often related to sexual intimacy. And in the news, on this day in February, we have Pope Francis paying tribute to Cardinal Augustine B. Who… Died in 1968 as a pioneer of Jewish Catholic dialogue.

The Catholic church, famously in Vatican II, finally dropped the blaming of the crucifixion of Christ on the Jews. So this was a turning point in relationship between the Catholic church and the Jewish community. Also in the news, YouTube announced that it would turn off comments on videos featuring children under the age of 18 after it was discovered that pedophilia rings were using those videos to share comments and using it as a network of sharing information amongst itself.

And the North Korea United States Hanoi Summit. basically ended with Donald Trump leaving and Kim Jong un returning to North Korea with no agreements reached on relations between the two companies and the two countries or on nuclear weapon policies between the two of them. So on to our discussion of this episode.

This one is Really, two episodes in one. They make that abundantly clear very early in the episode, where Burnham and Captain Pike are having a conversation, and Burnham is like, I have to go back to Vulcan, because I think that my mother may know something about what is going on. The last time that we saw Amanda, Amanda and Burnham had some very harsh words, as Burnham revealed that her discovery of Vulcan extremism potentially putting her family in danger.

As a child, made her, in an attempt to protect Spock, completely reject him in a way that would hurt him. And Amanda took this information very deeply and very personally. And left with a, then, our working together to find your brother is over. So now, Burnham is in a position where she feels like she has to go and try and reopen that door.

To figure out if she can find out where… Spock is. They now know because of the episode prior to this that the Red Angel is a humanoid using tech. Saru was able, with his keener eyesight, to see through the glare of the angel’s light and recognize that it’s a humanoid wearing some kind of suit. There’s technology involved, and they believe this is somebody from the future coming back and doing things in the past to create a specific set of timeline events.

They do not, they do not know if it’s nefarious or not, but Burnham’s interest in doing this, Pike understands. and allows her to go. In the meantime, Pike stays with the Discovery to investigate what effectively looks like a rip in space time. And so now we have two completely separate storylines. These two will not reflect one another at all in this episode.

So, Matt, my question to you, did you find these two storylines competing with each other? Did you find they worked well in balance with each other? Or was there one that stood out to you as like, I wish they’d spent more time with this one? Oh, that’s a

tough question for me to answer. I hadn’t thought about it in that way.

Um, overall, I really liked the episode. So I think it worked for me, um, because I did not find it distracting, but I wish they had spent more time kind of in hindsight, looking at it again. The Spock storyline. Um, it’s the more emotional storyline. It’s the more character driven storyline. To me, it has, you know, as a Star Trek fan, it’s where the, you know, my heart lies.

So it’s like, I wish they had done more with the Spock stuff if they were going to focus on one or the other. But I didn’t find the timey wimey part of it. Distracting to the storytelling of the Spock part, the way they kept jumping back and forth. It didn’t feel disjointed, even though they weren’t, they didn’t have any relation to each other at this point in time, they have no known relationship to each other, but didn’t distract me.

I mean, did it, did it distract for you? Did you think that they should have broken these apart?

I think when you have any kind of television storyline or, or movie storyline, I’m always Keenly aware of, does it feel like time has moved for me or not? And this episode, for me, felt like time had moved tremendously, meaning I was stunned at how much they got into the episode.

And for me, that’s an indication of, they did a good job. I did not feel like one outweighed the other one. I agree with you that the more emotional of the storylines is… The Spock storyline. I think that the emotional weight in the Pike storyline around the timey wimey events is far subtler, but is finally a coming to roost of the Tyler and Pike don’t like each other Storyline, which has, whenever you have a show like this, where you have two characters who are going to be as kind of like cantankerous to each other.

If it’s not built around character, think Spock, McCoy, like the two of them are going to trade barbs in every scene in which they’re seen together because that’s their characters. That’s their relationship. And we come to love that. In this case, this is not built around character. This felt like, okay, this is the writers setting something up for us to have a moment of reaffirmation of, of, you know, we’re on the same side.

And this was finally that coming to an end. So from a certain standpoint, the only emotional storyline of the Timey Wimey stuff, the primary emotional storyline is their relationship. And it’s not really that gripping because ultimately it’s like, you know, this is going to conclude. I did find. Uh, a little bit of a buoying of the emotional storyline when Stamets finally steps in.

Because then you have Stamets and Tilly who make an interesting pairing in his saying like Oh yeah. I understand what we have to do. We have to get me onto the shuttle because I can pilot them out because I can navigate all this stuff instinctively. And her absolute panic of, this is going to be nearly impossible.

There’s no way we can do this. And his absolute faith in her, and the closing line of him saying, do you think I’d let anybody teleport me through space and time? D’you think Like, I would just give that to anybody. She even makes the funny line of like, let’s test this first. Let’s do this first. And he’s like, like, yeah, trust the math.

And it was in that moment, I was just like, at this point, when this Uh, Episode aired. We are still a little bit more than a year from the pandemic. We’re a little bit more than a year from COVID 19 becoming what it’s become. Uh, I really kind of like sucked in a breath when he said that because I was like, this is literally a show saying trust science.

Like, the numbers mean this, so trust it. And we live in an era post 2020 where what is on full display is an absolute debate between whether you can trust science or not, which seems like a… Absolute remarkable statement to make, but that is where we are. So seeing a show which is hammering down a year earlier to say, you can trust science.

I was like, gasp, like, what an audacious thing for them to say. Um, yeah, but the whole balance between the two storylines I thought worked really well and I found myself gripped no matter which. moment we were in. I was also acutely aware of how both storylines felt like they were on, and this goes back to what we said last week and what we talked about at the beginning of this episode in the mailbag.

Both storylines felt a little bit on fast forward to get us to a specific place. Um, but I feel like watching Discovery at this point feels like an exercise in let them hit the high notes. They’re telling good stories. And they’re doing it a little faster than you might like, but let them hit the high notes because it’s still a good tune.

Yeah, no, I, I agree with that. I wish they would slow down a little bit. It could just be that they could have just cut out some of the plot elements they wanted to hit over the course of the season. Just cut a few of them out and you could take a little more time per episode and still have the same exact story.

Like the same overarching story wouldn’t change. Yeah. Uh, but, but for this one, it’s like, you just strap yourself in, you know, it’s gonna be fast paced and just kind of like, just go along for the ride and enjoy it. And that’s kind of how it felt to me. Um, and I think, I think the emotional beats of the Spock storyline.

We’re a good juxtaposition to the just action of the Pike storyline because it was just very techno babble, action, stuff happening, explosions, they’re lost, just things happening, just chaos. And it was like, so it was, it was a kind of a nice juxtaposition to have this quote slower in the discovery storytelling

moment

with Spock.

And then you go back to the fast pace and then you go back to Spock and then you come back to this. I thought it was a nice juxtaposition. Yeah, over. And the, the other thing is for this episode where I complain about like the Saru Burnham, Hey, we’re best friends. Didn’t you all know we’re best friends?

We’re besties now in not showing us This episode, I think did a good job within the action of showing those character moments and showing those character beat. That shows why these two characters are really good together and these two characters like each other. I got a sense of that. So it’s like, even though it was like those two guys that are each other’s throats on the shuttle.

It’s the same. They did the same thing in Enterprise with, um, uh. Uh, Reid and uh, I’m blanking on his name, the engineer, when they, Shuttle Pod 1 when they were stranded. Trip

and Reid. Yeah, Trip and

Reid. Yeah, they became kind of like best buddies after that. This was kind of a similar moment with the two of them, but for me it was like there was the moment of Georgiou and Burnham in the, aboard the ship and how Georgiou organizes the breakout.

Yeah. The, it’s, it’s action. It’s nonstop action with the two of them. They actually have a whole fist fight that’s. Mind blowing in the hallway. Yeah. But there is such character development in all of it between the two of them in action. It’s kind of like the John Wick style of storytelling where it’s like, you’re learning from the action how these two relate to each other.

Right. I love that. It was really well done. And I, and I got elements of that with the. The Pike storyline, and then of course with the Spock and like Burnham and her mother and all those, that dynamic of the family was so strong and well done, even though it was kind of on fast forward. I was very impressed with how they were able to work in those character beats within a fast paced storytelling.

Yeah.

Some of the beats that we’re talking about, I think we can, without rehashing plot, too drastically. Within the timey wimey stuff, I like Saru’s interaction with the bridge crew when things start to happen. Pike is gone. He’s gone with Tyler in a shuttlecraft and Saru has command moments of once again having to turn and face the entire crew and say, this has become a rescue mission.

Here’s what we need to do. And then quickly throwing details at each member of the crew and the people on the, on the bridge, looking at one another and looking to him for leadership and you’re, and without the show being. about that as the crew, effectively, you’re starting to see that the makers of the show are like, Oh, the audience needs to know who these people are.

Like, we need to get a better understanding of all of this. Who are the background players? Because they’re starting to come into focus a little bit. And some of them, like there’s, uh, Commander Reese in this one spits out some details about like, Oh, why I’m going to be able to do this is, is because I’m looking for the shuttlecraft in this way and Saru’s reliance on Stamets and immediately sending Tilly to like, we have somebody aboard who’s going to be able to do these things.

And you start to see how Saru has become that focal point. And it’s also nice to see that this is now several episodes post his ganglia and his change. And we’re starting to get a sense of he’s become a better commander. He’s become effectively a better captain. And then… Can I just

add one… Yeah, absolutely.

One note to that? Yeah. I wrote down in my notes when watching the show, I wrote, I love how quickly and calmly Saru jumps into captain mode. And it’s that exact scene you’re talking about. Yeah. He’s just like, bam, right there. And it’s something that we’ve seen that turn from after his ganglia is gone. And I really liked it.

And it reminded me of the Picard Riker relationship. Yeah. That Riker was, you know, obviously the first officer, but it was, he was more of a co captain. Yeah. If Picard wasn’t around, there was no question. That Riker was basically captain and doing what he was doing. And this was the same thing for me with Saru.

It’s like, Pike’s off the ship, Saru’s here. He just immediately calms the crew down, gets everybody focused. And within like a 60 second sequence, everybody’s focused and feels good about what they’re doing. And they feel confident just because of his… Command style. Yeah. I really enjoyed that. I thought it was a good, a nice, a nice

touch.

Yeah. And aboard the shuttlecraft, we have the two, uh, characters who up to this point have been abrasive to each other. And we have a scene earlier in this episode where Tyler is basically like, you owe me an explanation saying that to a captain. is audacious. Um, and we are beginning to see a Tyler who is less ashamed of his Klingon origins.

We’re seeing him incorporating that in an understanding of like how he navigates. And we’re seeing a little bit of Klingon come out in Tyler. Tyler is presenting a little bit as like, I’m going to walk up to my captain and be like, you owe me an explanation without fear. And that’s a more Klingon maneuver.

And we’re seeing Pike bristle at that. We’re seeing Pike bristle at the idea of this person who killed a member of the crew being free to walk around and be a member of Starfleet still. But that’s not the only issue aboard that shuttlecraft, because Tyler is seeing a captain who is effectively reckless.

And he’s not wrong. And he calls them out. And that, for me, was one of the high points within this side of the episode, was by the time everything is solved, Pike turns to Tyler and says, you weren’t wrong in what you saw. There’s something going on with Pike that we aren’t privy to yet, where he has this kind of self destructive aspect and it’s playing out in this way that is…

Potentially dangerous to not only him, but other members of the crew. So that’s, that’s a really, uh, compelling and remarkable aspect to have in a character who’s supposed to be able to be a captain in command of an entire ship. And it made me reflect, that side of the story made me reflect back to the original pilot, which we watched before we started watching Discovery, which Before we started introducing Pike, I mean, when we were, when we were doing our rewatch, the original vision of Pike was one who was basically burnt out.

And that hint of that is on display here. I think, I think right now in this moment, it’s on display, which ties nicely into the storyline going on on the other side of the episode, which is Burnham, Spock, she goes home, and we have multiple characters showing up and given the opportunity, and I think the writing does a very good job at this, of giving the characters an opportunity to kind of like, encapsulate themselves.

In a brief moment and say, this is my guiding star. This is why I do what I do. This is the thing that drives me. We see it from Amanda. We see it from Sarek. We see it from Burnham. We do not yet see it from Spock. But the reason we see it from those three, I think is because all three of them are trying to figure out what is the star for Spock?

What is the thing that is driving him forward? And they’re all understanding none of us are in the same place that he is, but there’s something driving him. And how does that intersect with what is driving me? And it creates such nice tension between the three characters as Spock is literally just muttering in the background.

And we see these three characters say, as Sarek has said, like, I am driven by the need for logic to be my North Star, while also balancing desires that do not fit within Vulcan ness. He accepts a human as his wife. He accepts another human as an adopted daughter. He has a half Vulcan child and he is trying to do his best.

And Amanda effectively throws that all back in his face and says, This isn’t all about you. Some really great Tension between the two of them. And she says that, and moments later she has her hand at the back of his neck. And you are given an impression that this woman, Amanda, has come to understand that she can fight with her husband in a way that two humans would not necessarily fight with one another.

She can say things. And she says things in anger to him and throws things in his face that if you said it to another human, the emotional impact of those things would be damaging to the relationship. But she knows she can say them because she can stay then follow that up with the logical statement. And yet, I am your wife and I love you.

And it is enough, like, the argument is written beautifully as an argument between two species that are alien to each other. And I love that.

Yeah. That whole scene where they’re all arguing and Spock’s in the background muttering was so well crafted and emotional to me. Got a little, got a little choked up, Sean, with Sarek, who’s arguing purely from the logic of this, this has to be a logical solution.

This has to be a logical solution. He does such a great job when he lays out. If she does what your suggestion when, if you let Burnham do what you’re suggesting she should do, she will basically be back in jail court martialed again. We will lose both our children. Yeah, and then he says, all choked up the whole thing where he says, I’m not prepared to lose both my chil children on the same day.

Yeah. And he, so it’s like, I love that he does the opposite of what his wife is doing, of what Amanda’s doing. She’s arguing for an emotional point of view and then comes back with these pointed logical statements like you just said. Yeah. And he’s arguing purely from logic and then has this one moment where he ties it back to this one clearly emotional statement coming from a Vulcan who is clearly bubbling under the surface trying to keep his emotions in check.

Yeah. I thought that was such a great… Mic drop statement, because that statement ends the entire conversation and they all kind of focus back on what to do next. And then we see Burnham taking Spock to Section 31. I thought it was such a wonderful end to the whole, that whole dynamic and that whole conversation.

I agree.

And I loved the inclusion of the Alice in Wonderland. as a touchstone between Burnham and Amanda and Amanda and Spock and Burnham beginning to build a bridge with him in that that hearing some of the things he is saying are references from quoting from Alice in Wonderland as all of them are like he is lost in a chaos in his mind and he is trying to use these things as touchstones hard logic numbers and references to the literature he read as a child as ways of pulling himself back to, to firm ground.

And by the end of the episode, Burnham has the brilliant connection to say, like, you’re talking about Through the looking glass, a reflection, the mirroring. And she has this moment of understanding perhaps that in his chaos of his mind, what is coming out of his mouth is a mirror reflection of the thing that is in his head.

And it really does create that moment in the story where They are using, like, mirroring, duplicates, Spock being of two ancestries, the back and forth, the imagery of the angel being symmetrical to itself, like, all of these things are pushing the ideas of doubles and reflections, and I feel like in this episode, her leap into perhaps the numbers are in the wrong order is .

The moment she said that, I went back through almost the entire season in my head, and like, they’ve been telling us this entire time that this moment is coming. Like, all the ways they’ve visually been depicting the Red Angel, all the ways that they’ve been talking about the bifurcation of Spock’s identity, and also of Burnham’s identity.

They’ve played with the idea that, like, she is, in some ways, not who she would have been. Um. The fact that Georgiou is involved, and Georgiou, of course, is the Mirror Universe version of the Georgiou that Burnham knew, and Burnham in this episode is stunned to discover that she can trust her. There’s this great moment of like, I wish I could have, you know, interrogated my mother and Burnham asked Georgia, did you kill her?

And she just kind of like, it’s all a blur. Like of course she did like that, but here he, she is stepping in once again in the kind of motherly matronly role and says to Burnham in a very cryptic way, there’s stuff about you that I know that I can’t get into right now, but I wish I could tell you. Like, what does she know?

Like, and then we get the hint of that with Georgiou talking to Leland, the captain in charge of the ship that’s part of Section 31, and saying like, you’re responsible for the death of her parents. So we have this kind of soap opera building in the background. In that storyline, but Burnham on the shuttlecraft, talking with Spock, trying to lovingly, she’s just like petting his hair and just being comforting to her ill brother, and then has the computer run the numbers backwards.

And discovers, lo and behold, that it is the location of Talos IV. So here, again, it had happened for me previous to this, the self destructive nature of Pike, thinking about the origins of Pike as a character in the original pilot, and how he was burnt out and just seemed ready to give it all up. And then this episode ends.

With Burnham discovering that Spock has been reciting the coordinates for Talos IV, which is the planet from the original pilot. We are going to go back there. So at this moment for me on first watch, uh, this of course is a rewatch, but on first watch I remember. Like, gasping, like, the idea of all of that was captivating for me.

And I felt like this was really a moment where Season 2, which for lack of a better word has been uneven for us. We’ve had a little bit of like, uh, uh, yeah, uh, like back and forth. This isn’t, you know, everything we were hoping it would be, but it still feels like Star Trek. But for me, this is like. Oof, this really hit me, like, in the treks, it, and, square in the treks, square in the treks, and, uh, and seeing Spock for the first time in this mode of this actor playing the character that we all know so well, I can’t wait to see more of it.

And that’s as somebody who grew up emulating Leonard Nimoy so much in watching Star Trek and wanting to be able to raise my eyebrow just like he could. I can

confirm to our listeners, he did do

that. Yes. Sat in front of a mirror, held down one eyebrow and just practiced until finally I could, I could throw it up with the best of them.

So for me, that part of the story where it’s, we’re going back, Talos IV like giddy up. Like this is like it all sort of just like came together for me and like, whoa, I’m ready to go.

Yeah, I’m in the same camp. It’s like this is as a Star Trek fan. It’s hitting all the right notes. Just wish they would slow down just a little bit.

But it’s it’s otherwise it’s it’s starting to hit this. That’s part of the reason I think I like this episode so much. They did a very deft job at the fast paced storytelling. It hit all the right Star Trek notes for me. And it felt very Star Trek y at the end of the day. And so it was kind of like hitting that, it satisfied that hunger I have for Star Trek, which was a

good thing.

So listeners, viewers, let us know, what did you think about these two storylines? Do you agree that they felt balanced? Do you agree that both of them felt complete? Or did you think that there was a little bit of one overshadowing the other? Next time, If Memory Serves, the next episode is If Memory Serves, so please jump into the comments and share your speculations about what that will be about, wrong answers only.

Before we sign off, Matt, is there anything you have coming up on your main channel that you want to share with our listeners?

Yeah, the, um, episode should be out by the time this episode drops, which is about, uh, I have geothermal heating and cooling, I have a geothermal heat pump system in my new house, and I go through all the details of what went into it, how much it cost, why we did what we did.

Um, and it’s an eye popping amount of money. It’s a, it’s a, it’s an interesting exploration. And as I, I think I’ve. Put it in the title of the video, um, I’m kind of like the guinea pig for everybody else. Like, is geothermal worth it?

We’ll find out. That sounds in some ways terribly foreboding. Uh, as for me, you can check out my website, seanferrell.

com. You can also look for my books on Amazon, Barnes Noble. Your local bookstore, public library, wherever you pick up your books, my books should be available there as well. And, if you want to support the show, please consider reviewing us on Apple, Spotify, Google, YouTube, wherever it was you found this, go back there, leave a review.

Please don’t forget to subscribe, and please do share it with your friends, that really does help. And if you want to support us directly, you can go to trekintime. show Click the Become a Supporter button. It allows you to throw some coins at our heads. The welts, well, they sting for a bit, but they do heal, and then we make the show, and then we’re all super happy.

Thank you so much everybody for listening or watching. We’ll talk to you next time.