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Let’s Talk About ‘…But To Connect’:
- Zora is beginning to get a little sassy, holding out information that is urgent to stopping the DMA.
- Kovich reminds everyone on Discovery that it is illegal to have sentient hardware incorporated into the ship, putting Zora’s existence in danger.
- Delegates from planets Federation and not gather to vote on how to handle the DMA, and Ruon Tarka has a solution to blow up the power source and shut it down.
- Repercussions of Tarka’s solution include preventing warp travel in the area of the explosion, and killing whoever is on the other side of the DMA.
- Federation representatives argue for mounting a ‘first contact’ mission with whomever has constructed and is guiding the DMA to determine their motives because their intentions may not be malicious.
- Others just want to blow it all to smithereens, consequences be damned. There has been enough death from the DMA already.
- Stamets doesn’t know if he can trust Zora, despite Hugh, Saru, Adira and Gray advocating on her behalf. Kovich may be leaning toward removing Zora from the ship’s system.
- Zora has decided her prime directive now is to protect the people on board Discovery. She considers them family and will not put them in any danger.
- Zora creates a ‘kill switch’ to show good faith to Stamets, and if she exceeds her boundaries they have the capability to completely terminate her.
- Tarka reveals to Book he has ulterior motives for blowing up the DMA — he needs to create enough power to get back to his home and reunite with his partner.
- The Federation members and non-members vote for a first contact mission, leading Tarka and Book to take matters into their own hands.
- Kovich makes a decision about Zora, and gives Stamets a surprising answer.
- Gray hitches a ride back to Trill to continue his studies, and Adira takes a week off to help Gray get acclimated.
- Tarka’s scar is explained — it’s a mark of being enslaved by the Emerald Chain. Book remarks he removed his as soon as he could.
I’m so happy Star Trek: Discovery has found its way again. Who knew ditching Tilly, once a beloved character who became exceedingly annoying, would save the season? We have to assume at some point she will be back, and hopefully much more confident than how she’s been written at the beginning of the season. This week’s episode also gave us some classic Trek moral conundrums in deciding who should live and who should die.
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The season thus far has been leading up to this point, appropriately since it is the ‘winter finale’ episode, with Zora’s burgeoning human emotions. Michael has tried to downplay them with only a tiny bit of concern, but as they are now trying to determine the origin of the DMA with no less than 147 different possibilities, they need Zora and the knowledge from the sphere data to pinpoint the exact location. And when she does, she refuses to divulge the coordinates with the reason being she knowns the ship will move into action, putting the lives of the crew at risk. She simply wants to protect them, and this behavior is extremely concerning to Stamets who believes Zora could now kill them all on a whim. Kovich arrives while the ship is undergoing repairs, and begins to run some diagnostics on Zora to determine what exactly she is. If he finds Zora is a sentient AI, she will have to be removed because such things are illegal.
Meanwhile, Federation and non-Federation members have convened at Starfleet HQ to debate methods of dealing with the DMA before it kills more people. And with Zora acting up, Michael has to lie a bit to the president that they will have the coordinates of the DMA’s origin soon. Many of those present, including Book, have basically had enough of the killing and want to attack the DMA head on. Others, like Michael, are urging a more diplomatic approach citing various species across the galaxy whose actions seen from the outside appear to be aggressive, but from the inside is just survival. Ruon Tarka interjects that he has created a device that will go to the heart of the DMA, its power source, and destroy it once and for all. Unfortunately his materials, used by Son’a in Star Trek: Insurrection, have been banned by the second Khitomer accords because of the damage they may incur not just to the DMA, but to the entire area of space around, and whatever is on the other side. This explosion could make warp travel in the sector impossible, and it could kill billions of beings on the other side of the DMA. Billions have already been killed, Tarka counters, so it’s no big deal if billions of their attackers die as well. Yeah, but that’s not how the Federation works, Ruon. But Tarka is persuasive if nothing else, and he knows Book is an easy mark for his manipulation, revealing to him that the power generated can also help him get home, not to Riza but to his actual home planet … which is on the other side of the DMA (so … are Tarka’s people resposible for the DMA?). Tarke sells Book a story about his partner (Tarka is gay? Sounds like his science partner is more than just a colleague) on Riza and the agreement they made that if they were separated they would reunite back on their home planet someway, somehow. Tarka has no idea if his partner made it back, but he really needs to find out. Book, still an emotional mess about losing his own family, advocates for Tarka’s ‘blow it all to hell’ approach. Michael resists countering the argument, but she has to be Federation loyal and tries to make the appeal for a peaceful resolution knowing that it is going to cause a huge rift in her relationship with Book. In the end, the vote comes down on the side of peaceful first contact.
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On Discovery, Stamets is advocating for the removal of Zora from the ship’s systems simply because he feels he can’t trust her from killing them all on a whim, thanks to their previous dealings with Control back in Season 2. Zora affirms that her mission is to protect everyone on board the ship, and when asked who gave her this directive Zora proclaimed she gave it to herself. She also has no conscious memory of how she came to be, but her new behaviors and reactions to things begin to point to her being a new life form, and if that is true then Zora does not have to be removed from the ship. Saru, Hugh, Adira and Gray all advoate on Zora’s behalf, trying to impress upon Stamets that removing Zora now simply because he doesn’t trust her would be akin to murder. Stamets refuses to even consider that Zora is anything but a part of the ship’s computer but looking deeper into the system reveals a previously unseen and unknown area, different from anything else. Looking closer at the area, they find ‘memories’ of life on Discovery, or what could be Zora’s dreams. Seeing all of this gives Stamets a new perspective on Zora, but it is really Kovich’s decision … and he says he’s leaning toward removing Zora. Now Stamets advocates for her, finally seeing that she does have the best intentions of the crew in mind, even as she goes so far as to create a kill switch if they believe she is exceeding her directives. Stamets makes a deal with Zora — if she will provide them with the coordinates they so desperately need, which would in turn save billions of lives, he will destroy the kill switch. Zora puts the coordinates on screen, and Kovich declares that she is not a sentient AI but is indeed a new life form, meaning she does not have to be removed from the ship. Stamets is pleased with the decision and Zora is invited to join Starfleet so she must follow their directives, but Kovich tells Stamets that if he hadn’t been okay with the results of his investigation, he would have been reassigned to another ship for not being able to work side-by-side with Zora. And with the coordinates in hand, Discovery can move forward with the diplomatic mission now that they can jump to the location of the DMA’s origin.
Except … Tarka and Book aren’t happy with the peaceful mission approach, or rather Tarka isn’t happy that the Federation is inadvertently denying his travel home, so he installs his new and improved spore drive on Book’s ship since Book is the only other person capable of navigating. When Michael realizes Book is gone after finding Grudge in her quarters with a note to ‘take care of my girl’, she runs to the launch bay but gets there too late, terrified of the consequences that lay ahead if he and Tarka do detonate the bomb, possibly causing a war with the beings on the other side of the DMA.
And that’s in until February 10th. Enjoy the break and we’ll see you soon!
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