"Point of Light" - I am very grateful to the producers for taking the very worst parts of Discovery and dumping them into a single storyline that I hope I can ignore. Tyler, L'Rell, Georgiou, and Section 31,
all cordoned off into one corner of the storyline? Yes, please. For your next trick, please kill all of them. Any episode with an A/B/C structure is going to have trouble giving any of them legs, but I found Tilly's Ghost compelling and I was grateful that they didn't make us spend five or six episodes of Tilly trying to hide it and messing up her life because of it (which is what Galactica would've done). Just admit what's going on! And she did! Good writing choice. The Red Angel stuff was mostly exposition, but well done for what it was. The whole thing was worth it for Amanda's kiss-and-stalk-off bit at the end, which was very interesting viewing.
"The Escape Artist" - eh, it was fine. Exactly what it said on the tin, Rainn Wilson being zesty and some pretty sharp direction. The script didn't have space to lift off The android thing felt like an extremely weird homage to "I, Mudd," but it was really just weird. Particularly because this guy bears little resemblance to Harcourt Fenton Mudd, and turning him into a regicide only makes it weirder.
"An Obol for Charon" - well, I'm flattered that the producers of
Discovery saw fit to use the plot of an episode of
Starship Excelsior (Season 4x01 "Picking Up The Pieces") here.
Excelsior handled the big revelation ("it's not trying to kill us! it's just trying to communicate!) better and tied it into character motives more, but
Discovery was off trying to do things with Saru, and I like Saru a lot. And, hey, the core idea is classic
Trek. Lower your shields and smile at the unknown a little and the unknown will smile back. That's why I put it in
Excelsior. Delightful to see
Discovery finally getting the same idea. (I know the Discovery producers didn't actually borrow the plot of an
Excelsior episode. Just our sound effect library.
)
The Tower of Babel trick was marvelous, one of those things you can't believe Trek didn't do decades ago once you see it. It's very good that Saru isn't dead, but I'm worried they just robbed him of the thing that made him distinct from other humanoids. (Although, gotta admit, it's not like the story was doing anything interesting with his threat ganglia anyway.)
And, side note, I really like this universe's Chris Pike. I find it impossible to accept that this Chris Pike is the same person as the Prime Universe's brooding, distant Captain Chris Pike -- and, honestly, why didn't they just make him somebody else, if they're going to abandon everything that made Pike Pike? -- but he's a good captain and an inspiring leader. Better than Archer, so far, and I'm not an Archer hater.
All these episodes are thumbs up from me. Keep it going,
Discovery! Listen to your heart! Keep cracking little jokes! (We know you watch The Orville!) Keep embracing Gene's Vision! Let Captain Pike run everything forever!
Kill everyone in the Voq subplot!
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