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With the Discovery nowhere in sight in the third season premiere, the second episode rectifies that situation by putting us back on the bridge at the most inopportune moment — the ship has just broken through the wormhole and has sustained some major damage, leaving most of the crew unconscious, injured or dead. And it took a whole lot of teamwork and ingenuity to get the ship to the ground in one piece. But with the ship itself pretty much dead, no one can tell what planet they’ve landed on, or even where they are in time and with no way to communicate with Michael, they are as alone as she is. But Tilly determines that the planet has elements that they need to repair the ship, and Saru decides that he and Tilly will try to find what they need, and barter as inconspicuously as possible — not really that easy when a Federation starship falls out of the sky — reminding Tilly and Georgiou, who wants to head out guns blazing, that the ship still possesses an insane amount of knowledge that could still impact the future should it fall into the wrong hands. Thus, the episode basically splits various crew members into teams as they attempt to get the ship operational and off the ground before the entire thing is encased in ice as night falls.
Saru & Tilly
The main portion of the episode focuses on the commander and ensign as they make their way across this strange new world, unsure of what or who they may find. They do spot someone and assume there may be hostility, but the figure walks away from them and then … disappears. Deciding that they should follow, the pair pass between a pair of rocks and are transported to an intergalactic version of an Old West saloon, apparently. Tilly has a part of the ships communications with them that they need repaired, but she’s also confused by the vessels she’s been able to scan and how they travel at warp without dilithium. This is our first clue that whenever they are, it is some time after ‘the burn’ which we learned in the premiere was the event that destroyed most of the dilithium in the universe. Tilly is also flabbergasted by the futuristic tool one of the men in the saloon has that is able to repair the part they need. An offer of dilithium is made in exchange for the help, which makes everyone’s eyes light up, but there is a problem and his name is Zareh (Jake Weber).
Zareh is basically the mustache-twirling Old West villain who strolls in with his men to try to take what’s not his, and that includes a big chunk of Discovery’s dilithium. Another clue to where they are comes when Saru offers up their ‘antique’ Federation equipment for the men to barter at The Exchange. Of course this is where Burnham and Book narrowly escaped from with their lives, but is The Exchange on this particular planet or somewhere else? Zareh isn’t really interested in bartering, he just wants the dilithium but he does make Saru an offer for 200 units, Saru counters with 100, Zareh comes down to 175 and they finally agree on 150 units … that Tilly has to go fetch, quickly, because once they lose daylight the planet’s parasitic ice will consume her and Discovery. But someone else shows up: Georgiou (whom Nhan believed was still on the ship helping about which Jett Reno scoffed that Georgiou would not be helping anyone), who actually does help Saru and Tilly out of their sticky situation by taunting Zareh, allowing herself to be zapped quite a few times by his weapon (which he’d just used to kill someone but for some reason she assumed he’d rather make her death slow and painful) to place her and Saru in a position to fight back while Tilly took cover. They and the other men in the saloon did manage to take out Zareh’s men as if they were wearing red shirts, but Saru insisted that Georgiou did not kill anyone else. They gave Zareh a talking too and sent him on his way into the cold darkness, leaving his fate unknown. The one thing Zareh did figure out about the Discovery crew was that they are time travelers which helped explain to the bartender why they were so wide-eyed about things they were seeing. But now with darkness upon them, how will they get back to Discovery? The bartender hands them a personal transporter — something else Michael discovered when she arrived — and said ‘Welcome to the Future’. Saru did promise to send the survivors at the bar the dilithium they needed to power their ships and barter with at The Exchange, so we have to assume he kept his promise since we didn’t see him actually do it. Back on Discovery, it was all hands on deck to get the ship powered up and out of the ice before it was too late.
Detmer
During the rocky exit from the wormhole, Detmer seems to have taken the hardest hit. At first she seemed dead as she lay on the console with her eyes open, but she snapped out of it in time to help get the ship into a position where they could crash land with minimal damage. But there seems to be something wrong with her, perhaps with her implant. Saru orders her to sick bay and she’s quickly patched up, the doctor telling her there’s no neurological damage. But … something is still off as Detmer walks back to the bridge as if she’s in a fog. It takes all of her powers of concentration to snap out of it to try to get the ship out of the ice but we’re left to wonder if this is some long-term damage that will negatively, and possibly fatally, affect her.
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Paul Stamets, Hugh Culber and Jett Reno
With many of the ship’s crew experiencing severe traumatic injuries, Hugh is forced to bring Paul out of the artificial coma he was placed in during the second season finale to help heal from his injuries. When he awakes, Paul has no idea about the crash and when Hugh says he needs the bed for those more seriously injured, Paul responds with ‘more serious than me?’ Paul is still in bad shape and needs to go through at least one cycle of some healing gizmo to even get back on his feet, five cycles if he wants to get rid of the scar on his chest. Paul agrees to stay for at least one cycle, but he knows his help is needed.
Making his way to engineering, Paul is annoyed by Jett’s attempts to help, insisting he’s fine and he can handle what he needs to do. So she tags along just for the conversation. But she knows he’s still not 100% and even after insisting he is fine, she finally gets him to admit he’s in pain. But she’s in pain too from a spinal injury and she can’t crawl up into a Jeffries Tube any more than Paul can so she calls for assistance. Paul, however, insists he can do it and ends up getting injured again as the ship is rocked by the growing ice. Jett tries to do what she can to help him with the technical issues but she needs help with the interpersonal part of the communication and gets Hugh there to help talk Paul through his pain. Paul does manage to successfully replace a damaged piece of equipment and gets the ship back online so they can break free of the ice.
Back on the bridge, Saru and his team are still waiting for some of the ship’s operations to come online, like the shields, but the ice is growing faster and faster, making it even more difficult to get a ship off the ground that isn’t really designed for a vertical liftoff. As they struggle to get Discovery out of the ice, a large ship of indeterminate origin appears above them. They continue to try to break free and suddenly Discovery is caught in a tractor beam that draws the ship up and out of the ice. And they are being hailed. Not knowing who or what is on the other side of the call, Saru hesitates to answer but finally gives the order to put the hail on screen. And …
It’s Michael! And looking very different with long, braided hair. She’s say happy to finally be reunited with her Discovery family and reveals to them that she landed on this planet a year ago. So, apparently this is the same planet but what happened in the year between Michael’s arrival and the arrival of Discovery to make it freeze over? Or is this just, maybe, the other side of the planet, or one of the poles? Or … is this the same planet but in another universe? Georgiou did say earlier at the saloon that she enjoyed hopping between universes, and something about Michael just seemed a bit … different so I’m not entirely sure this Discovery has been contacted by their Michael Burnham. Or perhaps she’s just mellowed out after a year with Book and Grudge. Of course, I could be completely off base and everything is as it should be but that is something we will have to discover as the season progresses.
New episodes of Star Trek: Discovery stream every Thursday on CBS All Access.
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