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There was a lot going on in this week’s whirlwind episode of Star Trek: Discovery relating to the revelation of the Red Angel’s identity and her capture. Not to mention some shady business over at Section 31. But the key part of the episode focused on Michael’s mother being the Red Angel … which raises some questions about her supposed death when Michael was a child. Was Leland telling the truth about seeing her body, or did he already know she was time hopping around the universe and used that story to keep Michael from seeking her out?
I liked how this episode tied into something that seemed rather innocuous a few episodes back when the Discovery encountered that massive sphere which wanted the ship to be the keeper of its vast wealth of knowledge accrued through centuries of space travel. It’s also interesting how the concept of Control, which was also introduced a few episodes back, was also folded into the story. Whereas these episodes felt like one-offs upon first viewing, they show that the people behind the show have had a very distinct plan in place for telling this season’s story. We’ve known since the appearance of the Red Angel that the future holds complete destruction of all life in the universe, but we never knew how or why … until now. But the origins and meanings of the seven red signals still remain a mystery as Dr. Burnham claims to not know anything about them. But is she telling the truth?
Michael had to deal with the wanting of talking to her mother again balanced against the demands that her mother only wants to speak with Captain Pike. Michael still insists that if anyone can get through to her mother, it’s her. The reunion was rocky at first, but it was difficult for Michael to understand just what her mother has seen, knowing the history of so many people she’s now encountering (and her little aside to being able to tell Pike his future may not be what he wants to hear was a nice tip of the hat to his not too distant future that Trek fans know too well). But Gabrielle finally revealed to her daughter that she’s seen everything in her life to this point, so while she wasn’t with her physically she knows the woman her daughter has become (she also knows more about Philippa Georgiou than the renegade is comfortable with, particular her soft spot for Michael).
But Gabrielle finally reveals exactly what she’s been attempting to do — prevent Control from accessing the sphere data which would then allow the AI to become sentient and destroy the universe. The logical response is to simply purge all the data from Discovery’s memory banks, something Saru is horrified to do, losing all of that knowledge (of course, this is something they have to do to make the original series timeline make sense). But, the data doesn’t want to be erased and constructs its own firewalls to keep that from happening. But there is an even more logical way to get the date off of Discovery, and away from Section 31, by dumping it all into Dr. Burnham’s time travel suit and send the thing far into the future beyond what’s already been gathered, preventing Control from accessing it.
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But there was a bit of shocking information last week regarding Leland on the Section 31 ship when he was jabbed in the eye with a very sharp needle. It seems Control, which had previously tried to mimic other humans at the Section 31 base, has found a way to infect — or assimilate — a human host, injecting Leland with millions of nanobots, putting the flesh and blood Leland under complete control of Control. And with that, may we assume that somehow Discovery just gave us a Borg origin story? It seems far-fetched considering the Borg ‘originated’ in the Delta quadrant millions of light years away and were never addressed until Star Trek: The Next Generation — and Starfleet didn’t venture to the Delta Quandrant until Star Trek Voyager — but it is possible (especially considering that Control tells Leland ‘struggle is pointless’ as it’s injecting him) considering this season’s focus on time travel. But the question of how and when all this happens is up in the air. It’s been known that the Borg have been around since at least Earth’s 15th century and have assimilated smaller planets since that time. Discovery has the spore drive, which we know has sent the ship nine months into the future by the end of the first season, so could that be used to send Control to the Delta Quandrant of the past? It seems a gamble but perhaps the reason to do that is so there is no advanced technology, that they know of, to help Control evolve. We’ve seen what happened to the probe that went 500 years into the future, so the future definitely does not seem to be the best place for an AI to go.
But the future just may be the way to prevent Control from evolving in the present by download that sphere data into the Red Angel suit and sending it far, far away. Control-Leland isn’t about to let that happen, enlisting Tyler and Georgiou to retrieve the data as it’s being downloaded to the suit. Tyler has qualms about the operation, and Georgiou seems to think Leland is behaving oddly but she ultimately agrees to the directive. But her talk with Gabrielle has rattled her enough that she contacts Tyler on a secure channel, now realizing that perhaps giving Section 31 all of that data isn’t such a good thing after all. The crew of Discovery also see what’s happening with the data transfer and it all becomes clear that Control is the destructor of the universe and must be stopped. But Dr. Burnham must also be released so she can continue to try and stop Control from becoming sentient.
Except the time crystal in her suit is shot and the jumping off point that she’s tethered to is pulling on her ever more stronger. They believe that they can send the suit into the future and keep Gabrielle in the present but the plan backfires when Control-Leland beams down to where Burnham is being held, kills a few ‘red shirts’, has a knock-down, drag-out battle with Georgiou (after stabbing Tyler before leaving the ship when Tyler discovered his true nature), and takes a few phaser hits from Michael, Stamets and Nhan. Ash is able to alert Discovery about Leland … well, he just gets his name out before collapsing and ending the transmission (no fear though, he takes an escape pod off the ship), but it becomes clear that unless they get rid of the suit, they are all in danger. The containment field is destroyed and the suit and Gabrielle are both sucked back into the time vortex. Section 31 got just a little more than 50% of the sphere data, so is that enough for Control to at least begin to evolve? Did the removal of the suit from the present, along with the data from Discovery, change the course of the universe?
With only three episodes left, there will be a lot of ground to cover as the series aligns a bit more with the original series timeline.
New episodes of Star Trek: Discovery begin streaming Thursdays at 8:30 PM on CBS All Access.
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