User Reviews

The episode was enjoyable enough. However the whole sacrificing of Ariam felt forced. For one I feel that in the classic star trek series (TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager) they would have never sacrificed a fellow shipmate in this way. But apart from that, why didn't discovery beam her to a holding cell once she was blown out of the airlock? They did something similar before in season one with Tyler? So the whole "tragic" death scene seemed ridiculous to me.

Also why is no one asking about the status of Commander Nanh? In normal Star Trek the captain would have been concerned about every member of the away team and would have requested a status report at some point once the immidiate threat was over. But it seems in Discovery all the high ranking officers ever care about is Durnham.

If Star Trek Discovery has one big flaw, it is the focus on the main characters. There is a cyborg in your team who had a big accident and lost big parts of her human shell and her husband died as well. This is very interesting and a shame that we learn about her in the very last hours of her life. Michael and Spock on the other hand, are barely interesting, their "banter" is boring and for a guy without emotions, Spock has way too many of them. Additionally, the Spock of Discovery does not feel like Spock at all. He did not raise his eyebrow once, he does not speak like him, his opinions are not those of Spock... what have you done to that character?

All this nonsense "fanservice" needs to die. We don't need Spock or Kirk in Discovery, we need new characters and get to know them.

Look, I love Star Trek. I've seen them all and I enjoy watching it, I want ST:D to succeed and going by this season, it's a definet improvement on season 1. Plus looking at most other ST series, season 1 is always a bit of a mixed bag. It takes time for everyone to find their feet and this is true of Discovery too. The last two episodes have been the best yet. They still have their issues, but the bar was set so low in Season 1, that it shouldn't have been too hard to improve. I'm mainly putting it down to them firing the writers from season 1. They were just aweful and you can tell that since they left, the writing has improved. Not perfect, but they obviously inherited a mess and are doing their best to correct the series.

Let's just say that they need to keep Pike in the series, he's pretty much the saving grace of the show. Less Michael, more Pike. He still gets pushed around by the women too much and that needs to change, but he was a breath of fresh air in a show that is too dark.

They need to lighten up, seriously. Give us some decent story arcs of the characters. Not Michael, Tilly or Stamets. We want to know about the other bridge characters and here's the thing, I can't tell you their names because they never get any air time. I want to know about the comms guy and that other guy and the two girls.

I will say that having some kind of story arc for the robot girl was great, finally. But then they kill her off. Sigh. I will agree that I felt more emotion for her than the doctor in season one, actually, that's not true. I was very happy they killed him off as he was just the worst doctor on ST history. Then they had to bring him back, sigh again, but at least so far he's been relegated to a minor character. I guess I can live with that.

On too this episode, it was pretty good. The pacing was again good like the previous episode. They didn't try to pack too much into it, the story arc was good, we got to see some great shots of the ship for once and there was a little emotion at the end. Jonathan. Franks did a super job and it was nice to have the edits slowed down from a new shot every 2 seconds to holding a shot long enough so that we, the viewer, can figure out what is going on.

Look, I'm glad it's been renewed for season 3, if they can keep this momentum going, relegate Michael to just a normal character and make Pike the lead, bring some fun to the show, kill of this section 31 timeline and less of Michelle Yeoh's character, the show will succeed.

After all of the speculation about Airiam, we get a snootful in this episode. What it comes down to is she's just a girl, nothing more. A girl that can back up what memories she wants and ditch others. Lucky her. I imagine Data probably having to do that occasionally, even with his 800 quadrillion bits of storage capacity. But he probably kept updating himself, so by the time he was blown to bits in "Nemesis", he probably had more.

But Data's an Android, a fully mechanical life form- Airiam is a girl.

And although she's definitely compromised, there is a lot more to it than that. She is actually not the "bad guy", she's merely another victim.

We get to find out what's actually behind all of this, and suddenly we start thinking about movies like 2001: a space Odyssey, Westworld, Futureworld, Colossus: The Forbin Project, Saturn 3, The Terminator, those and many other films about technology gone haywire. Forbidden Planet even.

And the premise of this episode is rather interesting, because the bad guys, and we were expecting section 31, are not the bad guys we expected.

And whoever it is, it's probably an ancestor of Reginald Barclay. You'll see why.

Meanwhile, Spock is PO'd, and taking it out on his sister. Maybe he can channel that anger into something useful.

We also learned something about Discovery's new security chief, the planet she comes from has ties into The Next Generation, Deep Space 9, and Voyager, so it's appropriate that Jonathan Frakes directed this one.

Just amazing This series has not had a bad episode Just visually we are spoilt Cinematic brilliance The story progresses well Characters are fleshed out Spock and Burnham are at odds and it's becoming clear why he doesn't mention her in the Original Series Cannot wait for the next instalment Easy to see why this show was green lit for season 3 Just awesome

While this episode was great, really great. It has some serious strikes against it in my opinion. We are more than halfway through the season...with like 10 series of star trek shows... and suddenly we are being introduced to things that supposedly existed all along? Control? I don't buy it and I cannot believe it. That this AI has been there the entire time? Bull...Plop. Not only that but this seemingly background character robot is actually a human and has been big part of the crew's social activities the whole time??...just in the background? That is hard to swallow. It was just a lot of new information that really does not fit into the star trek verse..Actually no it does not fit at all.

I didn't like this episode too much. The scenes between Michael and Spock were overly dramatic and the demise of Airiam felt empty of meaning, considering that is a character that we didn't know anything about. Are we supposed to feel something with her death, to be left mouth-agape like all the characters on the bridge of the ship, for someone who we just really met in this same episode?

Bad writing in this emotional episode, and too many plot holes too ignore. Why couldn't they beam another away team to help out when Airiam went nuts? Why couldn't they beam her aboard the ship when she was floating in space (they had done that trick before).

What upsets me the most is that Airiam was an interesting character, and they killed her off just as we were starting to learn about her.

The premise of this episode is interesting though not very original (not even in star trek). There are some good parts. For instance, getting to know the secondary characters a bit more and some focus on tech and mystery. My biggest problem with this story is perhaps not this episode in itself. But how poorly the buildup to this arc was made. The episode wants us to mourn and have feelings for a character that we did not get to know before this episode. Yes, the character has been in the series for two seasons, but we had not gotten to know her, that makes it hard to have any severe emotion about her. The actors did a good job, but the writers failed in this one.

As a comparison in star trek DS9, the character Morn was a set piece in the bar. In season 6 there was a whole episode dedicated to his murder mystery. We had emotion because we were used to him being there and we empytised with the other characters when they mourned Morn. And that character did never say a word on camera and was no angel.

I am also tired of Burnham or Tilly being the solution to almost every problem. Why have a ship and crew if two people can fox about everything.

Hopefully the next episode will be better.

Do not expect much and you will not be disappointed.

Such attitude works pretty well for this episode and for entire "Discovery" as a show. Local writers are no geniuses - no Bradbury, Simak, Clark or Azimov among them. Thus accept this and move on. So, it looks like we are into another "Evolved AI against organics" old trope. It's not bad, if done right and ST:D can do it right still. If it tries hard enough.

Oh, and a side note - if you want your audience to feel bad for a character and his/her/it/they tragic demise, try do turn this character into something meaningful and three-dimensional before the same very episode he/she/it/they will meet his/her/it/they maker. So, rest in peace dear android lady. I must admit, I did care about your death far more than doctor's in season one (probably cause the actor as mediocre as any actor can be), but it's a weak consolation. Meh.

I liked this episode very much,but ,beside the fact Sonequa Martin-Green,Jayne Brook,Anthony Rapp,Mary Wiseman and Wilson Cruz are not quite the greatest masters of acting ,there are some minor problems with this episode and many of them were pointed out by other fans in their reviews from different fan sites.Here is a list of more important ones : -Spock is acting like a human and it has nothing to to with the classic character,although the actor is very good.Vulcans with emotions are considered to be almost crazy persons,so this thing has no sense at all,and if he embraces his human side,then why he shows so much hate when he talks about human emotions.Another problem is why a Vulcan will consider a LBGT relationship as being normal,because they can't love or hate and is nothing rational or prospere in that kind of relations.I don't think a race without human felings and guided by the logic would aproove this in any way. -Airiam,never had a life story but sudden she has a personal life and a personal history,just before she is killed , many fans are considering this as being too forced,but that is what you get when you have only half of episodes produced by the previous series on a full season,but if they wanted to kill the characters ,then they should have been started to develop her story with two or three episodes before,because nobody cares about a character used just to fill the scene with other secondary elements. -The crew and Burnham seems to be very selective about the crew members they really like,for example ,when the first blue shirt officer from Enterprise died crushed on that rock ,they forgot about him in a matter of seconds,even Pike was absolutely untouched about his death,and in this episode Burnham let the Barzan girl to die sufocated,even she could have helped her picking that breathing device for her (it was a matter of seconds),but no,she just continued to run after Airiam and she not even have the good will to ask her if she is okay,later,but yet, Burnham cries after Airiam,even if she wanted to kill all her crewmembers. -Tilly sending the memories back to Airiam on the finale was really a dumb thing. The minefield was never forbidden by the Federation,and they could just shoot the damn mines ,instead passing between them.

This episode and the last felt like I was watching Star Trek again. I think what the producers forgot was that trek fans love to connect with their favorite characters. They like to experience thoughts and ideas from different perspectives, while being entertained with sci-fi. The story with aria was one of the best so far. My only problem is they shouldn't have killed her off. I would have liked to learned more about why she was the way she was. And learn more about how she really dealt with being so different. Had we the fans connected with her on a deeper level in the previous episodes, I'm pretty sure this episode would have been a 9 if not a 9.5. And ratings would have driven through the roof.

Finally, a strong Star Trek Discovery. The Michael and Spock scenes were good and we had a one off with a well-told story about artificial intelligence and how even in the Star Trek universe it is something tough to grapple with.

The stupidest episode this season. Stupid Giant plot holes a mile wide. I just can't take this episode seriously at all.

Admiral automatically assumes videos cannot be faked and no one checked it in any depth. No one else checked footage until much later.

Admiral loses access to super computer located in the middle of nowhere, doesn't report it to starfleet command. Startfleet loses access to Section 31, doesn't do anything about it.

AI that seeks to evolve. There is no logical explanation why a smart computer that just does logical threat analysis would all of a sudden want to evolve and kill off the entire universe.

Arrives at base and sees field of mines that are for detecting cloaked vessels. You can literally SEE the mines. Just blow them all up from range with phasers! Or use tractor beams to smash them into each other. Nope. Instead, just plow through them without firing a shot and fly around blindly until saved by the plot for no reason at all.

Downloads whole database in minutes to brain, same database that took ages for the main computer to even analyse. Stores whole said database in some small location easily.

Beams onto station, immediately takes off masks with no idea why everyone is dead on the base. Computer that turned off life support before, doesnt try again.

Security chief's suit doesnt have its own atmosphere suited to her. So stupid. She should never have taken her mask off.

Captain gives order to stop robot lady immediately without mentioning robot lady is a traitor or compromised. Two people with phasers just stand there doing NOTHING, including suspecting security chief.

Security chief gets disabled, looks like she is dead and everyone FORGETS about her. No one bothers to check if she is alive or not. Instead they talk about stupid theories. Talk about utterly useless team mates leaving other team mates to die.

Robot lady didnt need to die. She could have reported that she thought she was compromised. Security chief could have warned the captain of suspicions well ahead of the mission. Could have vapourised her legs off, could have ejected her with her suit intact, could have beamed her directly to brig, could have beamed her to sickbay before she dies! Any of these things could have been done. It was a stupid, pointless death and thus worthless.

It's a bit late to make us care about some robot. Why the heck would we care about some robot we know nothing about? She's dead. Oh well, never knew her. No big loss at all. Especially when her death could have been easily avoided. I cared more about that stupid science dude that died at the start of the season.

Really disappointed with this episode. Could have been so much better