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| "You are walking through a red forest and the grass is tall. It’s just rained. Most of the blood has washed away." |
Following up on last episode's cliffhanger, the crew of Discovery realise that they are where
they should be, but sans starbase and surrounded by wrecked Klingon vessels.
After they are attacked by a Vulcan ship, they come to the realisation that
they are in an alternate universe; the mirror universe, where the Terran Empire
is the dominant power in the alpha quadrant and Star Fleet promotion is via
dead men's boots(1). Fortunately, they are able to grab a data core and learn
before things get embarrassing and/or lethal that in this universe, Lorca is a
fugitive after apparently murdering Burnham, who was the captain of the Shenzhou, and that the Discovery is commanded by none other
than Sylvia 'Captain Killy' Tilly.
The first half of the episode is pretty light, as the crew redecorate the
ship to look like its MU counterpart - assumed to have been transposed into the
regular universe when Discovery
accidentally unlocked the interdimensional axis of the mycelial network(2) - and
Tilly taps into her inner bitch queen from hell. Unfortunately, all is not
laughs and light, as Culber struggles to treat Stamets, whose over-exposure to
the spore drive has left him pale-eyed and largely unresponsive. In addition,
Tyler's fugues are not helped by L'Rell using a Klingon prayer to try to help
him 'remember who he really is.'
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| "She's like a twisted version of everything I've ever aspired to be. I'm gonna have nightmares about myself now." |
Finding references to the visit of the USS Defiant, Burnham suggests that details of that visit could give
them a clue how to get back without the spore drive. To get these records, she
plans to board the Shenzhou, announce
that rumours of her death were greatly exaggerated in order to allow her to
capture Lorca, present him as a bounty and retake command. Then she can access
the secure files aboard the Shenzhou
and it's home for tea and crumpets (and to hand over the critical anti-cloaking
equations.) Tyler will act as Burnham's bodyguard, since he has no known MU
counterpart - funny that - and he desperately tries to get Dr Culber to find
out what was done to him without getting pulled from duty. Alas, Culber learns
that Tyler has undergone extensive bone reshaping, and Tyler kills him.
Not going to lie to you, I am not happy about this. There's been a lot
of backlash against Culber's death, since he's both an excellent character and
one of the few who straight up butts heads with Lorca over his dodgier
decisions, and one half of what is a) the franchise's first on-ship gay couple,
and b) the most adorable couple on the Disco(3). I'm not happy for both these
reasons, although I will allow that the high level of representation on the
series - there are only one and a half cishet white men in regular speaking
roles and one of them is an alien - means that minority characters will catch a
fair percentage of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune(4). Now, After Trek insists that he is 'not 100%
dead', so since they've ruled out his mirror version I'm thinking some sort of
fungus-based or even tardigrade miracle cure for a snapped neck, but I guess
we'll find out.
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| Damnit. |
Anyhugh. Tilly threatens to rip a man's tongue out and use it to lick
her own boots, and thus Burnham is placed aboard the Shenzhou, where she is forced to allow Lorca to be placed in an
agoniser booth and then to kill her replacement as captain(5) when he tries to
protect his promotion. What with one thing and another, she's kept super busy until
late in the day, at which point she retires to her cabin to get all The Bodyguard with her bodyguard(6), while
Lorca frankly languishes.
So, it would appear that we were right about Tyler. Shazad Latif is a
good enough actor and a big enough woobie that you still feel bad for his
confusion and pain, just a lot less bad than you do for Culber suffering the
fate of those who are too clever for their billing. I wait to be convinced on
that one, because right now it felt like a shock for shock's sake, which is a
bad reason to kill anyone, let alone to traverse the perilous waters of killing
your gays.
For the future, we have the aftermath of Cuber's death to explore, the
way back to the main universe, whatever damage the Witch of Wurna Minor may
have done, and the mystery identity of the Terran Emperor, the anonymity of
which has been referenced so often that we can't possibly go home without a shocking
reveal.
(1) Or dead women's boots, because thankfully there are no 'captain's
women' in this incarnation of the MU, just captains and women, often both at
once. Possibly this is a result of the Constitution-class
USS Defiant making a time-slipped journey
to the MU and encountering the Enterprise
NX-01, and Hoshi Sato subsequently overthrowing her male colleagues.
(2) I'm starting to realise why no-one ever replicated the spore drive.
(3) A title they were unlikely to lose so long as Tilly remained single, and even then with anyone currently on the ship.
(4)My next essay on fan reaction is totally going to be called 'The
Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fandom.'
(5) A fresh-faced youth whose alternate she had to watch die in the
brig in the two-part opener.
(6) Apparently this too is time she couldn't be spending retrieving the
information from the secure terminal which, presumably, the captain has in her
cabin.
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