Star Trek Discovery Ep 2.10

Star Trek Discovery Ep 2.10 - the Red Angel

With the season coming toward a close, the scriptwriters are going to try to write themselves out of the corner they painted themselves into.

*** Spoilers ahead ***

The opening was the farewell to Airiam who was lost at the end of the last episode. The cast and crew shared their feelings in their remembrances of her. Nicely done.

The story then took the first twist when Tilly barged into a meeting with the information she found about Project Daedalus and the identity of the Red Angel …… Michael Burnham. Dr. Culber than reports the bio-neural signature was a 100% match. Of course, all of this sets the audience up for the second twist at the end when the Disco team spring their mousetrap for the Red Angel and Burnham shouts in recognition, “Mom?”

Argh.

Would Burnham’s “bio-neural” signature be a 100% match to her mom’s?

Children have 50% of their DNA from each parent, so would that apply to their “bio-neural” signature? Somewhat dishonest by the scriptwriters to have the Disco science nerds speak so confidently of the “bio-neural” signature without giving any hint they could be completely wrong!

The episode pacing was a welcome break from the usual headlong action set-pieces allowing for more character interactions. One good moment was Nahn talking with Burnham about their final moments with Airiam. Still another was the conversation between Dr. Culber and Admiral Cornwell. And still another was the thaw of hostility between Spock and Burnham. And lastly, Mirror-Georgiou continues to beautifully deliver wicked lines.

On the whole, I think the Disco scriptwriters have done pretty well on characterizations in both season 1 and season 2. I do question placing so much of the story telling burden on one character. Although there are other characters in Disco, their roles are much smaller compared to Burnham. TOS had the big three and their interactions. TNG had strong leads and a solid ensemble cast as did other flavors of ST.

My main problem has been the scriptwriters very uneven track record on the big plot points. Last season there was the twist of the Mirror Universe and the way the Klingon war ended. This season the twists are that the Red Angel is technology from a Federation Section 31 secret project and the enemy in/from the future is the “Control” AI also developed by the Federation.

Time travel stories can work very well as in the movies Star Trek – The Voyage Home and in Star Trek – First Contact and various TV episodes like City on the Edge of Forever (TOS), Cause and Effect (TNG), All Good Things (TNG) and a number of others.

It remains to be seen how this season cashes out.

My immediate reaction to the whole Red Angel time travel suit and time crystal just didn’t work all that well for me. One would have to assume time travel would require a tremendous amount of energy transmitted from some fixed but distant power source through the micro worm hole into the Red Angel suit channeled through the time crystal. This would mean the Red Angel would have very little flexibility in its forays into various time points. But hand wave all of that aside, the biggest problem is the Red Angel is not omniscient. How would Mom know from whatever point in time she is inhabiting that Michael is in danger? She would have to be constantly checking the timeline!

Anyway, we are as always asked to suspend disbelief in sci-fi but I was left a bit dissatisfied with this plot development.

To end on a positive note, Jeff Russo’s soundtrack work remains top notch: ratcheting up the tension when needed and hauntingly beautiful at other moments.

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