The weekly Discovery report is here with a look at a time-travel episode!
Moll and L’ak buy some piece of the puzzle or device that will help them get to the Progenitors’ tech. Discovery gets to the coordinates left from the last crew and just as a time bug that Moll has gotten aboard the ship takes over. This time bug causes the ship and crew to jump through time, though unaware. Burnham and Rayner are unaffected because of trying to beam at the same time as the first time jump. They retain memory and uniforms, but are still jumping with the rest of the ship. Stamets is unaffected as well because of his tardigrade DNA. This enables all three to find out what has happened and slowly fix it. It culminates in Burnham needing to convince the bridge crew to go to warp and break the bubble after going maximum speed and Rayner inserting a device Stamets has made on the time bug. They succeed but with a close call between present Burnham and past Burnham. The way the time bug works, no changes to the past will have been made, and the ship and crew lost 6 hours. Rayner learns the importance of connecting with the crew through all the time jumps. They find a trail of a warp signature of Moll and L’ak and proceed to find the clue somewhere else.
Here we go with our thoughts on this week’s episode!
Music
Mr. Daps: “As I’m thinking about this week, the music really didn’t stand out to me at all. I don’t know that it did anything wrong but I also can’t recall any of it. With the way this episode bounced around, this might not have been a terrible thing. However, it probably isn’t an episode’s score I’d want to listen to on a record.”
Murray: “This was one episode that wasn’t heavy on the soundtrack. I didn’t find it with any themes that stuck out the most. But, it didn’t distract from the episode. If I were to grade it, I’d give it a C. It was good, but not anything big.”
Design
Mr. Daps: “This week was a lot of fun from a design standpoint. It was fun to see how the changes to Discovery were made with each time jump. It was a clever way to show different periods of time. There were a couple of moments that threw me off but overall, I enjoyed how they played with limited spaces to show movement through eras.”
Murray: “Set design did great at making subtle changes to the ship each time jump. It was the same, but also noticeable to indicate some element of a different time. The one design faux pas that did bug me a bit was the lighting on past Burnham. When she first came face to face with present Burnham the lighting was off which made me notice they were shot at different times. There was a slight blue hue I noticed. Usually it’s not quite that noticeable, but somehow it made past Burnham look out of sync to me, which broke the fourth wall for me a bit.”
Story
Mr. Daps: “This story felt like another take on a story that has been done before… more than once. While I did like the character development in this story, I also felt like it was a bit of a filler episode. I do have to wonder if helping bring the crew together and show Captain Burnham’s leadership style could have been achieved with a different storyline.”
Murray: “I do enjoy time travel episodes, but this was quite a Star Trek trope. It’s not the first time jump story, though done differently. It was more about facing your past, and what makes a great crew. I did enjoy that part of the story, but the rest reminded me of some Next Generation episodes, and even some Enterprise episodes especially with the temporal war being referenced.”
Hit or Miss?
Mr. Daps: “I will admit, I found myself glancing at my watch during this episode. This was not my favorite episode of the season. In fact, it’s probably my least favorite this season. It didn’t move the overall story forward, except by six hours. While it did help develop the relationship between Captain Burnham and Rayner, I think there were probably other ways to do this. There were also some missed opportunities that could have really made this episode memorable. This episode is a miss for me.”
Murray: “I enjoyed the episode. Like I said, time travel stories are right up my alley. But, I have to say the episode was still a miss for me. It was a bit of a bottle episode that didn’t quite stick the landing. Nothing really advanced for the mission or crew, except for Rayner. The Star Trek clichés of time jumping problems was a little too convenient. It’s been done in Next Generation, especially in ‘Cause and Effect’ (though I know that was a time loop). It was still fun, but I wish it had something more to the mission for it to really be a hit for me.”
