Star Trek Discovery 2.3 - a mom's life & a pro-life message?

Good Disco.

Bad Disco.

Good ST-Discovery is the characters and the actors bringing them to life.

Bad ST-Discovery is the multiple story arcs on the assumption more is better.

Story line 1 - the red bursts/red angel
Story line 2 - the complicated lives of Sarek/Amanda/Michael/Spock (he is some how connected to the red burst/red angel)
Story line 3 - Tilly and the alien entity
Story line 4 - Klingon royal palace intrigue
Story line 5 - Michelle Yeoh's character is now part of Section 31

I would hope the writer's room will not be giving equal weight to all five balls they have juggled into the air! Will they all get mashed together into a mass of confusion and dis-satisfaction?

In this episode, in brief, the complex lives and hard times of being a mom in the far away future yet having age old challenges.

Amanda, Spock's mother and wife of Sarek, hasn't had much to do in previous flavors of Star Trek and so it is great to see her life get filled in a bit. Everyone can relate to her dilemma of feeling regrets and responsibility for how her children turned out. Mia Kirshner has done a wonderful job bringing to life Amanda Grayson. Her name seemed familiar and a quick check on the interwebs say I have seen her as the ruthless killer Mandy in 24. I wouldn't have made the connection as the two characters are as different as can be and it is a tribute to Kirshner's range as an actor.

Meanwhile, on the Klingon home world, it is not surprising that L'Rell is having trouble keeping things under control. She came to power under the threat of global annihilation that is not the best foundation for a stable government. And, of course, as a woman in a male-dominated society things are even more difficult for her. And we find out she had a son with Voq while all of this was going on further complicating things.

I've never been a fan of the whole Voq/Tyler plot device. It is such a mess but it is what it is and it looks like Tyler will be spun off into the Section 31 spin-off Star Trek with Michelle Yeoh's Mirror Georgiou and will probably appear a few more times in Disco season 2. Shazad Latif is a fine actor but the character he plays was just too much for me. In science fiction you have to “suspend disbelief” sometimes but some concepts are just way too nutty.

Anyway, after episodes 1 and 2 with tight stories, episode 3 was a mixed bag to me. As usual, high marks for the actors for their performances but the episode just threw too many balls in the air.

Lastly, did anyone notice the Pro-Life message in L'Rell's actions pertaining to her pregnancy? The child was very "inconvenient" for her, yet she had the child brought to full term by ex-utero technology!

#StarTrekDiscovery