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Let’s Talk About ‘Stormy Weather’:
- It’s a ‘bottle episode’!
- Burnham decides to fly Discovery into a subspace tear left by the DMA … and not a single reviewer of the episode pointed out they flew right into the Eye of Sauron.
- Everyone is surprised to find there is nothing to see on the other side except darkness, and nothing to hear but silence.
- A probe sent to determine what is out there disintegrates and … screams in pain.
- With nothing to mark their location in space, the ship cannot jump out of the void.
- Trying to make the jump, Book is zapped but the particles in his brain give some alarming new data about the DMA — it’s from outside the galaxy.
- Book is haunted by his dead father after the accident, and he’s a real pisser.
- Zora’s human responses are becoming concerning, especially as ‘she’ becomes overwhelmed and unable to focus on matters at hand such as the ship’s hull disintegrating.
- Gray is able to help Zora focus in order to track a ping to get the ship out of the void.
- With all the ship’s power needed for shields to keep from burning up while exiting the void, the crew must take shelter in the pattern buffer.
- Burnham follows ‘the captain goes down with the ship’ protocols and stays on the bridge to help Zora emotionally as they find their way out of the void. There’s no way Burnham will survive.
- Burnham survives, no questions asked, everyone else makes it out of the pattern buffer, and Discovery ends up back in a Federation space dock for repairs.
Star Trek: Discovery goes dark this week — literally — as Burnham decides the only way they can get more information about the DMA is by exploring a tear in subspace left by the anomaly. It sounds like a fool’s mission, but Saru helpfully rattles off some other missions that have done the same thing — sort of — by name dropping the Enterprise and Voyager (although it’s hard to know if this was a deep dive into Star Trek canon or if he was referring to one of the myriad ships by those names that litter the Trek universe. But exploring the unknown may not be the best idea at the same time as your ship’s computer is developing the feels, possibly getting all Skynet on us at some point. You’d think by now everyone would know that once an AI gains sentience, you gotta pull the plug.
Everyone is surprised upon their entrance into the rift. Saru promised it would be a bumpy ride and it was … for a few seconds. Then … nothing. Literally. No stars, no planets, no radio wave or pulses from stars. Just empty blackness (it is a ‘bottle episode’ so a minimal use of effects and no new sets — and one on screen guest star — helps cut down on the budget). The ship’s instruments can find or hear nothing so they send one of their cute little probes out to see what it can find … and then they watch it slowly disintegrate as it encounters what must be the edge of the rift. Horrifyingly, the poor thing sounds like it’s screaming while it’s being consumed. Attempting to light up the same area with a torpedo yields nothing but the torpedo’s time of destruction was shorter than the probe’s so whatever is out there is moving closer to the ship. Time to run.
But with no way to navigate using celestial markers, there is a very real danger of the ship getting lost and destroyed. So time to jump. But that is also impossible from inside of nothing, as Book finds out the hard way. (The one time Stamets decides to delegate some responsibility, and this happens!) Book is immediately confronted by his dead father, who keeps calling him by his real name Turex, but is this really a ghost conjured up by the burst of energy or is it just Book’s subconscious made real by the shock to his brain? Well, only Book can see him so that answers that question, but the old man is certainly giving voice to some of Book’s deep thoughts, like how he’s basically become Michael’s lap dog. Book finally stand up to his own worries and confirms he’s not showing weakness, he’s showing love.
The scans of Book’s brain — the effects of the shock are wearing off quickly — show that the energy spike is from beyond their galaxy (it also did some weird damage to the mycelial network inside the void), meaning the anomaly was not created by anyone or anything previously known by the Federation (so does that mean Ruon Tarka’s hunch in the last episode was completely wrong … or does he know more about what’s beyond the galactic barrier than anyone else?). Whatever this new information means, it’s certainly cause for concern.
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Also concerning is Zora and ‘her’ newfound emotions. And it’s not just the emotions, it’s that fact that she is becoming completely overwhelmed with all of the data from inside and outside of the ship that she has to process. Zora is especially frightened by the fact that she can’t feel or process anything from outside the ship’s hull while going through thousands of minute details inside the ship. But with her attention distracted, Zora nearly misses a major hull breach and she puts up a containment field before a crew member is on the other side, so he gets sucked right out into the void. This tragic and unnecessary death also begins to weigh heavily on Zora. She does find some comfort in Gray, who is feeling a bit adrift as the rest of the crew springs into action. He begins a conversation with Zora and offers to play a game with the computer that should help her focus on the main task at hand. It works, and it also gives Gray a chance to shine on the bridge when he relays all of Zora’s emotional issues to the captain.
Unfortunately, Zora now feels that Burnham as lost faith in her, but Burnham tries to brush that aside so they can get the ship back into normal space. A lot of coddling is needed to rebuild Zora’s confidence, and a plan is hatched to send a beacon out which will somehow ping back to the ship, leading them to the edge of the void and back into space. There’s just one little problem: they will need all the power they can get to the shields to keep the ship from burning up while it passes through the void’s plasma, and that means turning off life support. Now the only way anyone can, hopefully, survive is to seek shelter in the pattern buffer … meaning everyone on the ship will beam themselves into the transporter, in groups, and await someone to beam them back out. Saru assures everyone it’s perfectly safe. Famous last words, right? As everyone beams out, Book and Grudge make their way to the bridge to say ‘later’ to Michael, who is staying behind because she’s the captain, and Zora also needs an emotional support human to get through this mission. AS the pair hug, they both say those three words they’ve been wanting to say: ‘I love you.’ Awwwwww.
Now with Burnham in an environment suit and Zora nervously guiding the ship toward the ping, they both talk about their own existential crises and to help soothe Burnham’s nerves, Zora begins singing ‘Stormy Weather’ (not sure why she chose that particular song, but it seems fitting with the first line ‘Don’t know why there’s no sun up in the sky…’). As feared, the friction from passing through the barrier is wreaking havoc on the ship, with the main saucer section melting away and the bridge in flames. I don’t know why Michael didn’t beam herself into the buffer while facing certain death, but she did request that Zora get everyone else out when they were safe. And with that it seemed that Captain Michael Burnham was definitely going to meet her maker.
But … she woke up in sick bay surrounded by smiling, familiar faces — with zero explanation of how she survived — and Discovery safely back in a Federation space dock undergoing repairs. In her quarters, Michael is creating her own family tree similar to the one she saw from the orb she delivered last episode, and Zora asks Michael if it would be okay if she created one as well since she now considers everyone aborad Discovery her family as well. Michael thinks that is a great idea. And now with the data Stamets and Culber have obtained from Book’s brain, Saru believes Starfleet will be able to determine where the DMA came from. Who created, though, and why will still be bigger questions to answer moving forward.
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