Void

Story: Stormy Weather
Written By: Anne Cofell Saunders & Brandon Schultz
Series: Star Trek: Discovery 
Year: 2021

I give this season credit: it isn't awful.  I think the biggest problem this show still has is that I struggle to shake years of grumbling disappointment with the over the top action and melodrama.  It still has hints of that, which I'd probably be more forgiving of had the prior seasons not gotten so bad. And we are also once again hunting mysterious doomsday weapon...that part sucks.  But there is a hint of good Star Trek too. 

While investigating the DMA, they find it creates a subspace rift, and they enter it.  Once in they find nothing.  Absolute nothing. It is utter darkness, with no sound, nothing they can scan.  It's impossible how much nothing they find. They send a DOT out to scan, but it is disintegrated.  Burnham almost continues to investigate before quickly deciding the whole place is too dangerous and she aborts the mission. Honestly, it is the first time I think I can remember her seeing something reckless and deciding against it.  good for her.  

Unfortunately, they can't escape. They can no longer see what direction they are heading.  They attempt a jump but the spore network is wonky inside the void and it shocks Book.  He keeps seeing a hallucination (probably) of his dead father who derides him endlessly for not killing anything he can find for revenge of the planet's demise.  Book's love of Burnham is both the reason for his different path.  Also Book had some residual particles found in his brain from the shock, and those particles lead Stamets to believe that whoever created the DMA came from OUTSIDE the galaxy.  They are getting somewhere after all.

Zora, the ship's computer that is melded with that sphere data, is struggling to scan.  Zora's developing emotions, and her concern for the crew is making it overwhelming when so much is going on.  The ship is just stressed out man.  Gray teaches the ship a game that I guess sort of helps but not really.  At least they tried to make Gray useful this episode, but they are still a pretty non-character to me.  

Ultimately they discover they could spot an exit using SONAR, and while it seems to work, the shields likely won't hold based on the distance they have to travel.  They decide to put the whole crew, save Burnham, into the pattern buffer in the hopes that if the ship can make it out, the crew will remain unharmed by the damage the ship takes.  And it works.  Zora sings a little song and the ship escapes, with Burnham waking up days later to find the ship is currently under repairs and the whole crew did make it out alive. Except that one guy who wouldn't listen and got himself sucked out into space.  You shoulda listened dude!

I am enjoying this season more than I expected honestly.  The ending of Season 2 was so awful, and I really think it put a bad taste in my mouth for much of Season 3.  We came off the doomsday Terminator plot of Season 2, and then we had a whole post apocalypse Federation and a whole other mysterious doomsday investigation...I think I was grumpy through most of Season 3.  But I took a long time off before diving back into modern Trek. Perhaps the distance has helped me enjoy it a bit more. I am still annoyed they are investigating yet another mysterious doomsday weapon, but I have felt the individual episodes feel more like Star Trek to me than anything this show has done before.  It's had entertaining episodes in the past, but I have forgotten most of it.  Perhaps I will forget most of this season as well, who can say...but at least I'm not miserable every episode.  

NEXT TIME: Zora's Sentient Issues