Can We Please Talk About Last Night’s Star Trek: Discovery Episode?
[SPOILERS FOR STAR TREK: DISCOVERY! SPOILER ALERT!]
Star Trek: Discovery has moved with breakneck speed through the mirror universe, and the latest episode was a lot to handle.
I have mixed feelings about how Star Trek: Discovery has handled its myriad twists and turns as of late. We’ve gotten so many moments and reveals that change everything we’ve come to know about the crew—the last few weeks have packed in twists that would have taken other shows entire seasons to reach.
So much has changed, in fact, that we’re left with what’s essentially a different show: Lorca is no longer Captain, but a mirror universe creep, now presumably dead. (I’m hoping he’s still lurking in the mycelial network, because I love Jason Isaacs.) We have a new Star Trek show whose Captain was revealed as a bad guy 13 episodes in, and now a vacant seat on the bridge. We’re in totally unknown territory.
Re: Lorca. It was hard for me to hate him after I’ve spent a season appreciating his approach as a nontraditional Captain (now we know why), but Discovery sure slathered on the “let’s hate Lorca now” reasons pretty thick. Not only did he “groom” mirror universe Michael, but he’s also apparently a fascist bent on subjugating “lesser” species. Cool, cool, cool. Lorca, we hardly knew ye.
What else has changed in the course of the three weeks since Discovery returned from hiatus? Oh, yeah, Tyler is actually Klingon (which we already kinda knew), but he also has the real Ash Tyler’s DNA spliced over his so he’s conflicted sometimes? Doctor Culber is still fucking dead and I’m not OK with it in the slightest. The luminous Michelle Yeoh appears to be back, at least for a while, as the intriguing-possibly-real-evil-but-sorta-allied-with-Michael mirror universe Emperor Georgiou, which might be the best plot choice Discovery has made of all.
I still have a lot of emotions I’m trying to work out about last night’s episode, “What’s Past is Prologue,” because I feel like I have whiplash from it. What didn’t happen yesterday? The throne room fight scene was done incredibly well; I was really tense while it was happening, turning to my friend and exclaiming, “I don’t like this,” because I was nervously on the edge of my seat. I’m not sure how they pull it off, but Discovery somehow manages to simultaneously be both mind-numbingly predictable and shockingly out-of-left-field.
While I was pretty sure Lorca was toast in this episode, I thought Emperor Georgiou would be, too—so I’m super-curious about where they take this. I’ve been wondering in Lorca’s absence who would be Captain going forward, but Saru’s inspiring speech to the crew seems to be positioning him to take on the role full-time, which I’m A-OK with. And now we’re apparently back in the right universe but everything has gone sideways in the war against the Klingons. Is it wrong that I found the mirror universe 100% more interesting than Discovery‘s prime and wish they’d stuck around a while longer?
I know I’ll have more to say about all of this once I calm down from what we went through, but right now I want to hear from you. What are your takeaways from “What’s Past is Prologue”?
(image: CBS)
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