Problems
- An orbital shot of Earth clearly shows that Los Angeles still exists during this time period. However, Voy: Future's End established that it had sunk into the Pacific after an earthquake in the mid-21st century and became a reef.
- In DS9: The Changing Face of Evil, Martok mentions that the Klingons were never bold enough to attack Earth. It stretches credulity that Martok wouldn't have considered a fleet of ships in visual distance of Earth preparing to attack being turned away at the last second to not constitute an attack.
- The simulation of Qo'noS being destroyed ends with the typo "END SIMULTATION."
- When Discovery leaves for Vulcan, we see it fly past Jupiter. Saru then asks if they have "cleared the Sol system." Detmer says they have, which is wrong because they then pass Neptune.
- It takes Discovery around ten seconds to travel between Jupiter and Neptune at subwarp speeds, which is far too fast, even if the planets were lined up. But even then, they wouldn't be lined up. In the 2250s, Jupiter and Neptune will be on opposite sides of the Solar System.

Factoids
- Clint Howard plays the Orion who gives Tilly drugs in this episode. He previously played Balok in TOS: The Corbomite Maneuver, Grady in DS9: Past Tense, Part II, and Muk in Ent: Acquisition.
- A shot of a urinating, presumably male Klingon in an alleyway would seem to imply that Klingons have either two penises or at least two organs capable of urinating. This would be consistent with previous continuity establishing Klingons to have numerous redundant organs. It is also the first time we've seen urination on screen in the franchise.
- A deleted scene from this episode depicts Georgiou being invited to join Section 31.

Remarkable Scenes
- Tilly's swift rude awakening to the fact that Georgiou is mirror Georgiou. The fearful, awkward salute is the best part.
- Georgiou, upon witnessing the Orion dancers: "I knew your whole universe couldn't be boring."
- Burnham: "The only way to defeat fear is to tell it no. No, we will not take shortcuts on the path to righteousness. No, we will not break the rules that protect us from our basest instincts. No, we will not allow desperation to destroy moral authority."

My Review
This is an extremely disappointing conclusion to a story that opened with a lot of potential in the terrific pilot. The pilot offered the potential for a story that articulated the deeper reasons for the Federation-Klingon cold war we see in TOS. The potential for a story about nationalist tribalism that both resonated with real world events and substantiated the unique quirks of Klingon culture that ripple across the chronologically later stories. The potential for a story that sets up a century-long struggle in vain to "remain Klingon" that ends on a tragic but dramatically compelling whimper when Ezri Dax correctly assesses that the Klingon Empire was dying and deserved to die a century later on DS9. How can one "remain Klingon" when one defines Klingon identity as blood and soil the way T'Kuvma, Voq, and L'Rell did? We always knew their ideology was destined to fade into the mists of history as the Klingon Empire was gradually subsumed into the Federation's inevitable hegemonic melting pot.

This theme isn't new. Non-Federation aliens have felt threatened by the Federation melting pot many times on Star Trek. Recall this quite revealing exchange from DS9: The Way of the Warrior. It begins with Quark, regarding root beer. Quark: "What do you think?" Garak: "It's vile." Quark: "I know. It's so bubbly and cloying and happy." Garak: "Just like the Federation."

As an important piece of context, normally neither Quark nor Garak would bother with experiencing Federation cultural trivia unprompted by others, but the Federation's expansion and its growing appeal to more and more Alpha Quadrant species had begun to make it harder and harder to ignore the Americana (so to speak) of the Federation.

Their conversation continued. Quark: "But you know what's really frightening? If you drink enough of it, you begin to like it." Garak: "It's insidious." Quark: "Just like the Federation."

This is why the Klingons went to war with the Federation. They wanted to "remain Klingon" in the face of the frightening threat of the Federation's expansion due to the growing appeal of the Federation's values. T'Kuvma, Voq, and L'Rell rightly regarded the Federation as insidious. It posed an existential threat to their xenophobic values, which opposed diversity, inclusion, and assimilation.

But by the end of the season, all the potential for a deep meditation on Klingon nationalist tribalism had devolved into a set of motivations and events with layers of incoherence caked upon each other. Even setting aside the fact that the narrative lazily cut over most of the war using the mirror universe diversion, L'Rell's infiltration plan turned out to be ill-conceived and failed miserably. She easily could've died on numerous occasions—most notably when the ship of the dead was destroyed—and kept narrowly escaping death entirely due to dumb luck, rather than any kind of skill or planning. Her reprogramming of Voq turned out to be riddled with bugs and she never achieved her original objective of using him to gather intelligence about Discovery's spore drive.

The way she comes out on top in the end is likewise painfully incoherent on many levels. Burnham decides on the basis of seemingly nothing more than naive hubris that L'Rell could take over the Klingon Empire by brandishing a PADD with a claim that it can blow up the world. L'Rell idiotically agrees that is a workable plan and further agrees to end the war she just a short time ago was so deeply committed to that she was dropping lines like, "This war ends when we crush you." She even took a beating to prove her commitment to Klingon tribalism. But all those deep commitments suddenly vanished as soon as Burnham offered her a half-baked way to take over the empire. It turns out L'Rell was never a committed nationalist. Just power hungry.

She was also, as always, the beneficiary of incredibly dumb luck. It's not clear why the High Council would believe her when she said to them, "Hey guys, I've got this PADD that can blow up the world, so therefore I'm the leader of the Klingon Empire now." It's even less clear why they'd be so willing to just call off the war based on such an unproven threat when they had Earth itself on its knees. Nor is it at all clear why Klingons everywhere would all unanimously agree with this radical reversal instantly without the slightest hesitation. When all the Klingon ships just turn around and go home, the narrative expects us to celebrate it as a victory for peace, but it's hard to not just laugh at the absurd implausibility of the scene instead.

It's also ridiculous for the narrative to imply that everyone thinks L'Rell's hold on power could ever last. The Federation essentially effectuated a regime change in the Klingon Empire. L'Rell even did it holding a Federation PADD. It's hard to imagine that not breeding resentment among at least some Klingon houses, who might already be a bit annoyed that they had to call off the war on the eve of victory. Since the PADD is gene-locked, all they'd have to do to end the threat she poses to their homeworld is assassinate her. Or what if they just destroyed the PADD? Or how about the fact that L'Rell couldn't possibly monitor every Klingon on the planet? They could go spelunking for the bomb and dismantle it. Clearly, neither the characters nor the writers thought any of this through.

L'Rell and the war are just the tip of the iceberg of vacuous writing here though, as there are a litany of other stupid details in this episode. It's hard to accept that Burnham's and Saru's obnoxious behavior on the bridge wouldn't have immediately blown Georgiou's cover. It likewise strains credibility for Saru to be outraged about letting Georgiou out of confinement when he did exactly the same thing with L'Rell in an earlier episode. The height of absurdity here is letting Georgiou go in the end. There is no reason for this other than to make it convenient for the writers to bring her back randomly in the future. A bad story point motivated by lazy writing.

Also Georgiou said Cornwell told her that Tyler's "Klingon id has been neutered" and that he is "benign" and "useless to them." She also says he is somehow tarnished to the Federation. But these statements are contradictory on their face. If he's useless, then he's also harmless. But if he's useful, then clearly there's potential for harm. The latter is clearly shown to be the case by the events of the episode, as he seems to have access to all of Voq's memories. Thus, he seems far from useless, but don't tell Tyler. Because at the end of the episode, he idiotically agrees that he's "no good for either side." The narrative seems to idiotically celebrate this line as though he said something really deep. (He didn't.) Then Tyler undermines the point anyway by going to live on Qo'noS, which for those of you keeping score at home, happens to be picking a side. He might be "no good for either side" (which is wrong), but he's totally picking a side anyway (because it was a stupid line to begin with). Speaking of Qo'noS, it is stated in an earlier episode that no humans have been there in 100 years. And yet no one seemed to care about a whole bunch of humans being there during this episode. In fact, there seemed to be a whole bunch of them there already before the landing party even got there. Go figure.

And then there's Cornwell's absurdly swift caving on her plan to destroy the Klingon homeworld as soon as Burnham calls her up and says, "Hey, genocide is bad." Cornwell's response was basically like, "Golly, yeah, you're right, I didn't think of that!" On that note, it's hard to imagine a good reason why neither Cornwell nor Sarek appear to have been punished for attempting a genocide. And speaking of Federation policy on matters of great significance, it appears the Federation has put the spore drive in mothballs, in an apparent attempt to resolve the continuity issue of why we never see it again. It's good that they're trying to respect continuity, but as usual they did it in a terribly sloppy way. It's stated that Starfleet is working on a "non-human interface" to the spore drive, which implies that there are significant medical consequences for piloting it, but that doesn't actually seem to be the case. We've seen Stamets pilot it several times. Sometimes he had some medical problems, but they were always quickly resolved. It's not actually terribly clear precisely what danger the spore drive poses now or why they can't just keep using it.

It should be noted briefly that there are a handful of small details to praise in this episode. Georgiou enjoying herself on the Klingon homeworld was highly amusing. The depiction of a rich, reasonably diverse society on Qo'noS was nice to see too. We saw minority communities and non-warrior castes of Klingon society, which has been somewhat rare on Star Trek thus far. Also Discovery's jump into the underground caves showing the ship struggling against the planet's gravity was depicted in a much more satisfying way than the similar scene in The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry when Discovery appears to magically hover over Corvan II effortlessly. It's also nice to see that Discovery will soon get a new, presumably permanent captain.

Though that brings us to that neat trick the writers pulled at the end, whipping out that pretty shot of the fully reimagined Enterprise swooping in majestically, as though just begging us to forget about the incredibly unsatisfying episode we just watched because something better lies ahead. The audience pandering isn't even concealed, given that the emphasis of the scene isn't on the supposed emergency that brings Captain Christopher Pike to the Discovery, but instead on the nostalgic glee of seeing the Enterprise again. As for the reimagined Enterprise, we should all have mixed feelings about it. On the bright side, it's a great way for the writers to send a clear message to us about how they regard rebooting visual continuity. Previously it had been a bit more vague. They seemed to be respecting some visual canon, but not all of it, so it wasn't clear where their boundaries were. As such, for those invested in visual canon remaining consistent, watching Discovery has so far been a vaguely stressful exercise in "which canon will they crush this week?" Selectively respecting or rebooting canon is bad storytelling as has been previously discussed, but it would've been even worse if we never got a complete answer as to which visual canon they will and won't respect. With this episode, we've finally gotten a pretty clear answer to that. They'll reboot anything. They'll even reboot the Enterprise. Nothing is sacred. We can accept that now and move on, even if many of us may disagree with it.

What should give us pause about that though is by now it's clear that the writers' blasé regard for visual canon is merely a reflection of their blasé regard for all canon. This season has been riddled with continuity errors both internal to Discovery and external to other Star Trek shows. Their whole approach to canon in general is at best described as strained, and at times has been downright sloppy. So for those of you who are unconcerned with visual canon but are still hoping that the writers will build upon story canon respectfully, at this point the best advice would be to not get your hopes up too much. The track record so far hasn't been great. And unlike the illustrious Enterprise season 4, it seems unlikely that better writers will show up at the end of the show to clean it all up this time. We're witnessing the soft rebooting of all of Star Trek, not the careful stewardship of a timeless epic. Where once the whole of the story was treated with the literary rigor required to carefully interweave a chronology spanning centuries, now Star Trek is just being arbitrarily twisted and morphed with little regard for the finer details like a pulp comic book franchise.

And like a comic book franchise, we have a proportional reduction in internal storytelling depth. This season has repeatedly violated the principle of "show, don't tell" in its writing. Aside from obvious details like cutting over most of the war, there are more subtle violations of this principle as well. In this very episode, we have Burnham telling us how Klingons murdered her parents rather than the narrative showing us. The scene would've been dramatically improved by a flashback, but we didn't get one. The war would've been dramatically improved by showing it to us, but we didn't get that either. And most importantly, the terrific pilot offered us potential for the story to show us how the Federation learned to stop taking "shortcuts on the path to righteousness," to see how the Federation learned how "not break the rules that protect us from our basest instincts," and how to "not allow desperation to destroy moral authority." But we weren't shown any of that. We were told it in a speech the narrative didn't earn.

This season of Star Trek started out by asking a lot of difficult questions about the tension between identity and multiculturalism, and then merely pretended to answer them. It punted the deep questions with shallow platitudes.

Problems
None

Factoids
- This story is set in the 33rd century. This is further into the future than any Star Trek episode has gone before.
- The writer of this episode Michael Chabon stated that the unseen enemy "V'draysh" is a syncope of "Federation."

Remarkable Scenes
- The hologram of Zora crying as Craft exits the dance.

My Review
Like General Chang from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country hitting you over the head constantly with overwrought Shakespeare references, this entire episode hits you over the head over and over again with overwrought references to Homer's Odyssey, an invocation of Greek mythology that is about as lazy as TOS: Who Mourns for Adonais.

Zora is meant to represent Calypso, for whom the episode is named. In Homer's Odyssey, Calypso rescues a marooned Odysseus and keeps him on her island for some time due to loneliness. In this episode, Zora rescues a marooned Quarrel/Craft and keeps him on her ship for some time due to loneliness.

Quarrel's/Craft's two names also mirror Odysseus, whose name is traditionally defined as "to be wroth against," or "to hate." Synonymous with quarreling. As for Craft, Odysseus was traditionally defined as "skilled in all ways." Synonymous with being crafty.

In Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus was apart from his wife for many years due to war, missed her, and wanted to escape Calypso to be with his wife again. In this episode Craft was apart from his wife for many years due to war, missed her, and wanted to escape Zora to be with his wife again.

In Homer's Odyssey, Calypso was sad that Odysseus wanted to leave, but instead of holding him further, she gave him everything he needed for his journey back. In this episode Zora was sad that Craft wanted to leave, but instead of holding him further, she gave him everything he needed for his journey back.

And so on, and so on...

If shallow, heavy-handed Greek mythology references were the episode's only sin, it might be worth a few more points, but there are so many more cringeworthy details compounded atop this. Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the story is the setting. Here we have yet another irrelevant likely filler episode sandwiched between season 1's cliffhanger and its eventual resolution, but this time instead of being set ambiguously sometime during season 1—which was bad enough in the previous episode—we now have a story absurdly set a thousand years later aboard a somehow perfectly preserved Discovery that has been ordered to sit in space in stasis for no apparent reason.

Then—as if this episode hadn't imitated enough of Star Trek's worst episodes already—the ship's computer became an emergent AI like TNG: Emergence, one of TNG's worst episodes. Then like about a million other bad Star Trek episodes, the AI turns out to have serious emotional problems, exhibiting behavior also reminiscent of HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Meanwhile, rather than give us answers to basic questions like who the unseen enemy "V'draysh" is, how the Discovery was preserved perfectly for a thousand years but abandoned, or why so much of the Federation's history seems to have been forgotten by at least one human colony, the writers left all that intentionally vague out of an apparent desire to not "get hemmed in by canon" or some other similar platitude that is often trotted out to defend stories with this kind of reckless disregard for the long term health of the franchise's canon.

On the contrary, setting this story a thousand years into the future doesn't do a damn thing to prevent the writers from cornering themselves with canon. If anything, it's one of the worst settings imaginable for preventing future writers from being burdened by canon. Because of this episode, any Star Trek story set far enough into the future has to account for the apparent decline and possible fall of the Federation, or at least rationalize how Craft and his entire planet could be unaware of the Federation's existence.

Constraining future Star Trek stories with this kind of baggage almost never goes well. We've seen what happens with poorly thought through exposition that saddles the franchise with long-term plot implications before. The "warp speed" limit in TNG: Force of Nature was quietly forgotten. The absurd "warp 10" drive that turns you into giant newts from Voy: Threshold was intentionally forgotten with prejudice. There are many examples. This episode's ambiguous proclamations about the Milky Way's future are not impossible to work into future stories, but will require future writers to be at least as clever as this episode's writers were lazy.

And none of it was necessary. There's no reason the story had to be set a thousand years into Star Trek's future. It could've easily been set during a known future era, such as during one of the Federation's many wars from previous shows. Craft could've been a Federation soldier escaping a battle that didn't go well. The idea of the Discovery floating in space perfectly preserved would still be absurd and tough to rationalize, but less so a hundred years into the future than a thousand years into the future. What's important here is this same basic story could've been told in another century that would've actually leveraged canon instead of wasting Star Trek's distant future in such a gratuitously lazy way.

All this just to do an awkward mashup of 2001: A Space Odyssey with Greek mythology, both of which are referenced by science fiction works so often that it is quite cliched to do it yet again unless it is truly earned. It wasn't earned here. A story filled with tired, overused references and no substance of its own is just smoke and mirrors, not real depth. But what else should we expect from a story that rocks a "DISCO" shirt, expecting us to find it, like, real punny, man?

Problems
- None beyond the ridiculous mycelial magic discussed at length in the review itself.

Factoids
None

Remarkable Scenes
- Georgiou showing up and Pike not knowing her true identity.
- Georgiou: "You're the one who brought me to this insufferable place. You don't get to be surprised I'm here."
- Tilly: Whatever you are, I am holding a Type 3 phaser rifle. Which is more powerful and generally larger than the Type 1 or the Type 2. I guess that's why they call it a 3."
- Culber suddenly appearing cowering and traumatized.
- Stamets' reunion with Culber.
- Tilly to May: "To him, you're the monster."
- Culber's rebirth of sorts in the mycelial cocoon.

My Review
Quoth Michael Burnham: "And if there is a greater hand leading us into an uncertain future, I can only hope it guides us well." It's as though she's begging the writers for fewer cringeworthy lines like, "Words define us," (like, whoa man!) and more coherent storytelling, because this episode is a bit of a clunker. What we have here is a story about some mushrooms kidnapping Tilly into their mushroom space via a mushroom transporter, but it turns out the mushrooms just need help defending themselves from a dead guy made of mushrooms who is then reborn using the mushroom transporter; meanwhile after a full search of the Mushroom Kingdom, it turns out your Spock is in another castle.

All joking aside, Stamets' reunion with Culber was legitimately touching and well-acted. This even aired on Valentine's Day. Aww! But the plotting is ridiculous even by Discovery's standards. The magic powers of the mycelial network approach Voy: Threshold levels of voodoo. The story is vague at best about precisely how Culber's "soul" was transported to mycelial network to begin with. We can maybe help the writers out here by cooking up some absurd rationalization that the story didn't give us: Let's assume that Stamets' connection to the network was the conduit by which he arrived there. Perhaps Stamets and Culber had a connection between them through some sort of special mycelial infection Stamets shared with Culber through intimate contact, such that Culber's consciousness was copied to the network before he died. But even so, there are still so many problems. Why did the jahSepp recreate Culber just to break him down again? Why would the jahSepp want to eat something that was made from their own matter when it was established that they only break down foreign matter? And for that matter why didn't Tilly ask May to stop the jahSepp from eating the ship once they forged an alliance to defeat the "monster?"

The writers simply weren't interested in rigorously sketching any of that out. They just wanted to turn up the urgency of everything to eleven and hope you wouldn't notice that these things don't make sense. Except of course when they painfully interrupted a countdown to have an emotional scene. This happens frequently on Discovery, but this episode was a particular offender. It felt like people were constantly warning the away team that they need to hurry because everyone's about to die, only to see the away team turn around and talk about their feelings for an excruciatingly long amount of time.

The most painful thing about the episode though is the retconning of Section 31. In the 22nd century Section 31 exists as a shadowy organization nobody knows about. They do super shady things and the very few people exposed to them react with horror and work to root them out. Now in the 23rd century Section 31 is basically the CIA, everyone knows who and what they are, not many people think what they're doing is particularly shady, and nobody wants to see the organization rooted out. Then in the 24th century Section 31 is somehow back to being a shadowy organization nobody knows about. They do super shady things and the very few people exposed to them react with horror and work to root them out.

Yeah, sure, we can concoct some tortured rationalizations for why Section 31 was widely known and fairly popular in the 23rd century but not in the 22nd or 24th, but—say—driving them underground after some incident during the events of Discovery doesn't erase the apparently widespread knowledge that they previously existed. What are we supposed to believe, that after they are driven underground they make everyone forget they ever existed, Men in Black style with a flashing amnesia device? Though that would be fitting given Discovery's track record of transforming Star Trek into a goofy comic booky MCU-tone story. As usual, Discovery is playing it fast and loose with canon and hoping we don't think about it too hard.

And that's exactly the problem: it takes extremely tortured rationalizations to make any of this Section 31 stuff make sense. And beyond that, the whole idea of the narrative itself treating Section 31 as a necessary evil rather than the total perversion of what the Federation stands for that it is is precisely the opposite of the spirit of Star Trek. The whole concept behind Section 31 has always been to depict them as monstrously evil. Such evil should not be glorified by Star Trek. We especially shouldn't glorify it by simultaneously glorifying a mirror universe character as some sort of antihero.

Bad mushroom science is one thing, but Star Trek has seriously lost its way with this Section 31 plot thread. It's an insult to Star Trek and everything it stands for.

Problems
- Bodies don't freeze when they're spaced.

Factoids
- The title of this episode appears to be a reference to Psalm 23: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil."
- Kenneth Mitchell plays Tenavik in this episode. He previously played Kol and Kol-Sha.
- This episode establishes that Section 31 has a fleet of a bit over 30 ships.
- Reno's wife was killed during the Klingon war.

Remarkable Scenes
- L'Rell and Tyler arguing over who should go down to the surface.
- Pike's vision of the future showing him how he'll end up in the wheelchair in TOS: The Menagerie.
- Reno encouraging Culber to patch it up with Stamets. Reno: "You have a second chance. And it may not last forever. Don't screw it up."
- Spock saving Burnham from Control.
- Pike telling L'Rell and Tyler about their son.

My Review
Another clunker in a season full of clunkers. After spending some time with L'Rell's and Voq's/Tyler's son (so much for those theories that he might grow up to be "the albino" from DS9: Blood Oath), Pike becomes convinced that the vision he saw of ending up confined to a wheelchair is inevitable for no clear reason other than being told that it is inevitable. It's entirely unclear how taking a time crystal and having a conversation with a time monk deprives him of all free will for the rest of his life, but that appears to be what the writers expect us to believe. Gone is Pike's agency to resign from Starfleet, change careers, or simply kill himself before the impending accident. Foreknowledge of it as a possible outcome doesn't render it merely a possible outcome, but somehow a certainty.

Bad takes on the philosophy of free will aside, the whole notion that the Klingons are sitting on rich deposits of natural resources that can be used to build powerful time travel technology that they simply refuse to use because it wouldn't be honorable or something is utterly stupid. Countless Klingons would have no such scruples, yet for some completely asinine reason we're supposed to believe that this power is never exploited across centuries of Star Trek stories. The tendency for this series to grant superpowers in a prequel that history never recorded and not think through the implications of how they would ripple across canon is an endless source of frustration and one of the principal reasons why this whole show ought to be struck from canon with prejudice.

And somehow, overwrought time crystals are not even the stupidest detail of this story. That honor goes to the cliffhanger. They're being chased by a fleet of 30 ships, can't outrun them with warp drive, and need to buy time to figure out how to use the time crystals to defeat Control. So rather than do the overwhelmingly obvious thing of using the spore drive to jump across the galaxy—say—to Terralysium where it would take the enemy 150 years to catch up to them, they just suddenly forget that option for no coherent reason and decide blowing up the ship is all they can do, which is especially incoherent given that they used the spore drive earlier in the episode to travel to Boreth. But hey, at least we finally had a scene with Linus where he wasn't used to make a body humor joke.

Problems
- The stardate mentioned at the end of the episode is 1201.7. This is six units below the stardate mentioned in the pilot episode: The Vulcan Hello.

Factoids
- The title of this episode comes from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet: "Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say goodnight till it be morrow."
- Clocking in at almost 65 minutes, this is the longest single episode in Star Trek history.
- Number One is given a name in this episode: Una. This legitimizes non-canon books which originally gave her that name.

Remarkable Scenes
- The start of the space battle.
- Leland boarding Discovery.
- Spock and Burnham putting together the mystery of the signals.
- Burnham's trip through the wormhole.
- Leland's funky gravity fight with Georgiou and Nhan.
- Cornwell sacrificing herself to save the Enterprise.
- Georgiou taking out Leland.
- Discovery disappearing into the future and those that remain organizing a conspiracy to pretend none of this ever happened and bury all knowledge of Discovery, her spore drive, and her crew.

My Review
Well the surprisingly lengthy space battle was indeed fun as expected, but as usual with Discovery they put exponentially more effort into production quality than writing quality. As usual there are so many layers of incoherence and bad plotting to work through. For starters the absurd number of shuttles and "pods" (whatever those are, and who knows why they're never seen again...) hinted at in the previous episode is much greater than it seemed. They number at over 200! Seriously? Then we have super genius teenager Po who knows military tactics better than every trained Starfleet officer. Then there's the surprise allies arriving to save the day trope executed more sloppily than usual. Tyler somehow organizes and teleports everyone to the battle in the space of what, an hour? How does Tyler organize all that? When did he really start preparing it all? How did those ships get there so fast? Why couldn't Tyler have contacted Starfleet for help if he was able to reach the Klingons and the Kelpiens? There are no good answers to these questions. An even more awkward question is why didn't the Klingons look surprised that Tyler is even alive? Remember earlier in the season when L'Rell faked his death to keep her hold on power? The writers apparently didn't remember that.

Then there's that indestructible blast door on the Enterprise. That torpedo blows off a third or so of the saucer section but somehow leaves Pike untouched when he's standing just on the other side of a door. And why didn't Cornwell get one of those repair robots to pull the lever for her? A similarly embarrassing oversight has to do with the motivation behind transporting Discovery to the future to begin with. Set aside for the moment that they could've avoided this whole mess by using the spore drive to get out of range of Control to begin with. That was covered in the earlier reviews. What we need to talk about now is they've actually made it worse: Georgiou destroyed Control and nobody took a step back and realized, "Hey, wait, we won. We don't need to send Discovery to the future anymore. Control can't weaponize the sphere database if Control is dead. Hooray! No need to maroon a whole crew of people!"

But the writers didn't notice that either because they were utterly committed to sending the ship and her crew to the future at all costs because that was supposed to reconcile Discovery with canon. Except it doesn't. Not even close. It's an insult to expect the audience to believe that all the numerous tough things to reconcile that happened across these two seasons can be satisfactorily reset buttoned by making it classified. Too many people already know too many things. And making Discovery or the spore drive classified doesn't fix the numerous outright continuity errors, or the visual reboot. The only real solution is to dump Discovery into a multiverse like the Kelvinverse from Star Trek XI (2009) where it always should've been to begin with. It's quite remarkable that the writers saw the problem clearly enough that they were willing to almost totally retcon Discovery out of existence, but they didn't take it all the way. Thankfully they haven't yet precluded the conclusion that Discovery is in a multiverse. So we must continue to presume that it is and hope they never contradict it. Indeed, we should further hope they endorse Discovery being in a multiverse on-screen some day like was done with Star Trek XI (2009) for the long term health of the franchise's canon.

Looking to the future, Discovery's third season will have have some interesting plotting problems to solve internally. Setting aside canon concerns, the other half of Discovery's overall awfulness is its unwillingness to think through its innumerable comic bookish superpowers or the implications of the corners they write themselves into. They're going to be in the far future with an unknown political geography in an obsolete starship that has suffered from massive battle damage. Assuming they somehow survive, what do they do? This finale makes it seem like they're stuck there forever, but they still have the time travel suit. It just needs a new time crystal. And there sure seemed to be a lot of those on Boreth, so... yeah. Even if Discovery somehow delivers us the perfect fix to its canon-wrecking two seasons by endorsing the multiverse solution, it seems pretty clear we shouldn't trust them to tell a coherent story on its own terms any more than we should trust them to play nice in the sandbox of Star Trek's epic canon.

Overall, Discovery continues to be a massive disappointment and at times even a disgrace to the Star Trek franchise on many levels. Let's hope the writers start paying closer attention to the damage they're doing to the franchise and work to make repairs before it's too late.

Problems
- The Romulan fleet is visible from the surface of the planet despite being shown to be in space the whole time.

Factoids
- The title of this episode is a Latin phrase that literally translates to "even in Arcadia, there am I." The "I" is typically interpreted to refer to death and "Arcadia" is typically interpreted to refer to a utopian land. It could thus be interpreted to mean something like "even in paradise, there is still death."
- The Zheng He bridge set was adapted from the Discovery bridge. Jonathan Frakes filmed his appearance as Riker for this episode while directing an episode of Discovery's third season.

Remarkable Scenes
- Picard flying the La Sirena.
- Narissa: "Sad queen Annika. Six years old and all she got for her birthday was assimilated."
- Seven of Nine taking out Narissa.
- The orchids engaging the Romulan fleet.
- Riker showing up with the Federation fleet.
- Picard talking down Soji then collapsing from his brain disease.
- Picard meeting Data preserved in a simulation.
- Picard waking up in an android body.
- Picard killing Data's preserved consciousness.

My Review
Suddenly the synth ban that lasted for more than a decade is gone. Why? We don't really know. We see no public debate in the Federation. We see no media coverage of how others in Federation society perceived what went down on Coppelius. We don't see fearful conservatives on FNN (The Federation News Network originally shown in the pilot episode, remember that?) pleading with the Federation legislature not to sympathize with the synths since they clearly did have the power to destroy the Federation and indeed were moments away from pushing a button that would do exactly that. It all just gets hand waved away off-screen without a moment's reflection. While it's true that many of us may fantasize about the authoritarian right simply disappearing from political power wherever they wield it as soon as possible, the real world doesn't work that way. It ought to be obvious that a single dramatic event can't just magically overturn years of reactionary attitudes entrenched in the hearts of minds of an entire society overnight. Good fiction doesn't pander to our fantasies, it reflects the actual human condition. When Star Trek is at its best it lays bare who and what we are while also giving us a realistic taste of how much better we could be. This story was far from that.

And just what were those super synths anyway? Who knows. Clearly they were just a generic villain plot device. Nobody really cares about who they are and what their civilization is. So much for seeking out out new life and new civilizations, huh? Nobody's the least bit curious about a multi-galaxy synth civilization nor all that interested in possibly dissuading them from their apparent mandate to wipe out organics whenever they're summoned Ghostbusters-style. Just blow up the beacon, sweep the problem under the rug, and pretend it never happened. Likewise let's not at all concern ourselves with what happened to Narek who suddenly disappeared from the plot never to be seen again inexplicably after pleading with Soji to destroy the beacon. His sudden disappearance was almost as cheesy as the absurdly large copy-and-paste fleets of all precisely the same ship. Hundreds of identical ships is incredibly bland and feels like yet another cheap and unrealistic way to up the stakes artificially. DS9 showed us how to do this correctly with a bunch of different types of starships working together evoking a sense of real effort both on the part of the visual effects team but also the characters in bringing to bear whatever they could muster. It's also quite dumb that they all warp out as quickly as they warp in, without even a single ship sticking around to investigate this strange new world, establish diplomatic relations, or do anything remotely in line with first contact procedures. The whole thing felt incredibly rushed.

The laziness abounds elsewhere too. CommodoreGeneral Oh delivers generic evil mustache twirler lines constantly, including a cheesy order to use "Planetary Sterilization Pattern Number 5" along with the obligatory dramatic pause before ordering the fleet to fire, giving Riker's fleet time to arrive and intercede. The Deus Ex Machina: The Tool device from the previous episode turned out to be even more ridiculous a superpower than it seemed like it would be on two different occasions in this episode. Raffi and Rios even break the fourth wall when Raffi asks "What's happening?" after it's used for the first time and Rios replies "Nothing that makes sense." It was literally a plot device that we're supposed to just accept can do basically anything. The damn thing even wrecked what was otherwise a very charming scene when Agnes referenced the Picard maneuver from TNG: The Battle only for the scene to get overwhelmed by the magic of the all powerful space ocarina. Raffi and Seven of Nine get a bit short shrifted here too apparently somehow developing a relationship which is yet another important thing that happens off-screen. Seven does however have a touching scene with Rios shortly after Picard "dies" talking about how she promised herself she would never commit another murder but failed to resist temptation when presented with the opportunity to kill Narissa, but that is one of the only well-written scenes in the episode.

Of course the elephant in the room is the final death of Data and the death and resurrection of Picard, which while compellingly presented and incredibly moving to watch are utterly offensive in their implications. Picard and Data both essentially commit suicide in this episode (Picard's suicide merely on a time delay) while endorsing numerous platitudes about how mortality supposedly gives meaning to life. Data says that peace, love, and friendship are precious because we know they cannot endure and a butterfly that lives forever is really not a butterfly at all. What the fuck? This is pseudo-intellectual garbage on par with the ending of Battlestar Galactica having all the characters throw their technology into the sun. The whole point of people inventing technology for as long as civilization has existed is to prolong the length and quality of life. While the title of the episode loosely translates to "even in paradise, there is still death," that isn't necessarily true anymore. The advent of highly advanced androids that are nearly indistinguishable from humans to whom any human consciousness can be transferred is one of the greatest inventions in human history because it could effectively make anybody immortal. And you can sure as hell bet that the vast majority of people would prefer to have themselves transferred into one of those bodies without a ten or twenty year death clock on it as Picard did shortly before euthanizing his best friend for no coherent reason.

This of course isn't the first time that Star Trek or even Data himself has mused about the value of mortality. Recall this exchange from TNG: Time's Arrow, Part 1. Data: "I have often wondered about my own mortality as I have seen others around me age. Until now it has been theoretically possible that I would live an unlimited period of time. And although some might find this attractive, to me it only reinforces the fact that I am artificial." Geordi: "I never knew how tough this must be for you. [...] Knowing that you would outlive all your friends." Data: "I expected to make new friends." Geordi: "True." Data: "And then to outlive them as well." Geordi: Now that you know that you might not?" Data: "It provides a sense of completion to my future. In a way, I am not that different from anyone else. I can now look forward to death." Geordi: "I never thought of it that way." Data: "One might also conclude that it brings me one step closer to being human. I am mortal." At first glance, it might seem as though Data valued the idea of being mortal as far back as that TNG episode. But if you look deeper at the exchange, the thing Data is expressing the most discomfort with is being different from his friends. He didn't want to be special by being immortal while everyone else must age and eventually die. But what if everyone could be as immortal as Data? It seems in that case the discomfort Data expresses in that exchange would be moot.

Better episodes of Star Trek have also more tastefully dealt with suicide. In Voy: Death Wish we see a much better version of the supposed torture that Data was said to be enduring trapped in the simulation in this episode. In that Voyager episode, a member of the Q continuum—a race of beings who are immortal—is imprisoned, suicidal, and prevented from killing himself for the rest of eternity which he argues is a kind of torture. Janeway decides to grant him asylum from the Q, then pleads with him not to kill himself with his newfound freedom from imprisonment. But he does so anyway and the narrative correctly treats this as a tragedy, in direct contrast to how the narrative glorified Data's death and Picard casually endorsing a time limit on his android body in this episode. Once upon a time Star Trek was about seeking out new life and regarding every death as a tragedy. Now it's apparently about how death is beautiful or something. To add insult to injury, this episode that celebrates Data's death and moralizes about the supposed beauty of death aired during the middle of an unprecedented global pandemic. The writers should stop and think about how those dying in the hospital when this aired would've done anything to get an ageless android body and take that as a lesson to think through the implications of the stories they tell a bit more in the future.

At first this series showed a lot of promise, but it eventually fell into the same traps that too many TV shows do. The writers structured this story more as mystery than suspense. Then when we finally got answers to the mysteries they were unsatisfying because they were premised on overwrought threats to everyone everywhere that were quickly resolved with cheap reset buttons. A story that could've been a compelling exploration of the deeper systemic reasons why the Federation so often bans whole categories of technology in fearful, reactionary ways ended up just being 10 episodes that tried to make the same point that TNG: The Measure of a Man made 31 years ago, except in a considerably drawn out and dumbed down way. Hopefully the next season aims higher than this.

Problems
None

Factoids
- Kurtwood Smith, who plays Clar in this episode, also played Annorax in Voy: Year of Hell and the President of the Federation in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
- With this episode, Q has now appeared in four Star Trek shows: TNG, DS9, Voyager, and Lower Decks.

Remarkable Scenes
- The clumsy censoring in Tendi's flashback.
- Tendi functioning well under pressure on the secret mission.
- The Q cameos.

My Review
While the Q cameos were charming and there are some nice moments of levity in Tendi's flashback, the rest of the episode is a jumbled mess. The surprise twist at the end inexplicably turning the tone from scary to goofy on a dime bends suspension of disbelief to the breaking point especially given that the episode opens with the characters being abducted and put into a cage against their wills and later threatened with "death by eels." There are countless intentional holes in the plot thanks to the numerous out of context flashbacks that aren't connected together in any coherent way making the whole story quite hard to follow. Yes, the story intentionally favored mystery over suspense, but just because it was intentional doesn't mean it was good idea. Moreover, much of the plot was once again driven by Rutherford's implant's magic superpowers and once again no attempt was made to explain why he has the implant, why it's so powerful, and why more people don't get them. Plus the marathon of references to previous Star Trek episodes reverted to the pilot's tendency to overload us will banal surface level one liners rather than anything substantive. A real clunker.