Story: New Eden
Written By: Vaughn Wilmott & Sean Cochran
Series: Star Trek: Discovery
Year: 2019
Discovery moves to their next location of the mysterious red bursts, and uses the Spore Drive to get to the Beta Quadrant, as at top speed of Warp it would take 150 years. So they skirt the rules of the Spore Drive ban and jump. They find now red signal when they get there, but instead a Class M planet with a seemingly pre-warp human civilization. They are obviously intrigued by this revelation, and decide to investigate.
Pike, Burnham, and Owosekun (a bridge officer leaving that post for the first time in the show), head down to the planet, and find a group of humans whose ancestors were from World War 3 Earth, and were apparently saved from the destruction of Earth (which never happened) by a mysterious being they presumed to be an angel. This obviously concerns Burnham, as she saw the Angel image while on the asteroid, but thought it was a hallucination. Anyhow, the being saved these humans, sent them to this planet far away, and they've lived there ever since, living off of their faith in the angels and the combination of a bunch of Earth religions.
Meanwhile on Discovery, Tilly fucks around with the asteroid and gets injured. While she is in sickbay, the Discovery finds that there is an asteroid heading for the planet that will kill everyone. Tilly is egged on by a friend in sickbay, and comes up with a solution with the Asteroid that will save all the people on the planet. It's a good bit of Trek problem solving, but also adds some mystery to the show, as Tilly's friend ends up being a figment of her imagination, a manifestation of a childhood friend who has apparently died...is Tilly going crazy or is there something deeper going on. I'm gonna bet the latter on that one.
I liked the concept of this episode, of faith vs science, of the usual difficulties that come with the Prime Directive, and the more Star Trek-like tone of the story in general. I took it easy on Season 1 in a lot of my reviews, particularly that first half, because I could see a nugget of Trek buried within it's darker themes and grittiness. And honestly, I was a little more prepared to be harsher on this second season. As much as I can still defend the first season, it was not without it's flaws, and if this second season didn't shape up into more of the kind of Trek I'd like to see in our modern world, I was probably going to starting beating up on it. But the first episode of this season was pretty solid, despite my boredom during the asteroid action adventure sequence, and now this one has me sold. If the Red Angel arc is going to be an excuse to tell more episodic Star Trek stories each week with a theme connecting them for a grand finale? Well then I like this arc a lot more then WAR.
They may have something with this concept here, at least I hope so. We get a season of different Trek stories, and some serialization. It's the perfect way to have their cake and eat it too. I hope I'm right, and we get more variety in the storytelling. Serialization is great and all, but it often leads to a blurring effect with episodes. I remember specific Trek episodes of yesteryear because they all had their distinct stories. Even the serialized DS9 had specific stories told each episode. I'm hoping that they are going to use this arc as an excuse to tell a variety of stories.
NEXT TIME: The Return of the Klingons
Written By: Vaughn Wilmott & Sean Cochran
Series: Star Trek: Discovery
Year: 2019
Discovery moves to their next location of the mysterious red bursts, and uses the Spore Drive to get to the Beta Quadrant, as at top speed of Warp it would take 150 years. So they skirt the rules of the Spore Drive ban and jump. They find now red signal when they get there, but instead a Class M planet with a seemingly pre-warp human civilization. They are obviously intrigued by this revelation, and decide to investigate.
Meanwhile on Discovery, Tilly fucks around with the asteroid and gets injured. While she is in sickbay, the Discovery finds that there is an asteroid heading for the planet that will kill everyone. Tilly is egged on by a friend in sickbay, and comes up with a solution with the Asteroid that will save all the people on the planet. It's a good bit of Trek problem solving, but also adds some mystery to the show, as Tilly's friend ends up being a figment of her imagination, a manifestation of a childhood friend who has apparently died...is Tilly going crazy or is there something deeper going on. I'm gonna bet the latter on that one.
I liked the concept of this episode, of faith vs science, of the usual difficulties that come with the Prime Directive, and the more Star Trek-like tone of the story in general. I took it easy on Season 1 in a lot of my reviews, particularly that first half, because I could see a nugget of Trek buried within it's darker themes and grittiness. And honestly, I was a little more prepared to be harsher on this second season. As much as I can still defend the first season, it was not without it's flaws, and if this second season didn't shape up into more of the kind of Trek I'd like to see in our modern world, I was probably going to starting beating up on it. But the first episode of this season was pretty solid, despite my boredom during the asteroid action adventure sequence, and now this one has me sold. If the Red Angel arc is going to be an excuse to tell more episodic Star Trek stories each week with a theme connecting them for a grand finale? Well then I like this arc a lot more then WAR.
They may have something with this concept here, at least I hope so. We get a season of different Trek stories, and some serialization. It's the perfect way to have their cake and eat it too. I hope I'm right, and we get more variety in the storytelling. Serialization is great and all, but it often leads to a blurring effect with episodes. I remember specific Trek episodes of yesteryear because they all had their distinct stories. Even the serialized DS9 had specific stories told each episode. I'm hoping that they are going to use this arc as an excuse to tell a variety of stories.
NEXT TIME: The Return of the Klingons
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