This is a transcript of our fourteenth season two recap, available here.

Saru [from episode]: Goodbye. Captain Pike.

Captain Pike [from episode]: Goodbye my friends. My family.

re:Discovery theme plays.

Ben: Hello and welcome to re:Discovery, the Star Trek recap podcast which promises not to shave off its cool beard without warning when you’re already having all the feelings. I’m Science Officer Ben McKenzie and as always, I’m joined by Captain Carla Donnelly. Captain I need to ask you what did you see happen to Discovery?

Carla: It just went boom Ben.

Ben: Well I’m going to have plenty of feelings and questions and they might go boom too as we discuss Such Sweet Sorrow, part two of the big finale of Season 2 of Star Trek Discovery. There’s no denying it’s epic and emotionally satisfying on so many levels but it leaves us with so many questions. And maybe it doesn’t wrap up as many loose ends as it thinks it does.

Carla: WHAT?!

Ben: Yeah, we’ll get to that, all right, but we start where we left off: the Section 31 fleet under Control’s, um, control has Discovery and Enterprise surrounded and Captain’s Pike and Saru are sending their crews to battle stations. The plan remains the same: get the new Red Angel suit working so Burnham can open a wormhole to the future taking Discovery and the spheres advanced A.I. data far into the future, out of Control’s grasp. Enterprise and a fleet of hundreds of armed shuttles and repair craft will hold off the enemy until the suit is ready and keep them from getting between Discovery and the wormhole or following it through. That’s all easier said than done as Controleland reveals he’s not outnumbered: the Section 31 ships detach hundreds of tiny drone fighters. It’s time for an epic space battle! There’s lots of phasers and explosions in space and soon both ship’s bridges have fire, smoke and bits of rocky debris all over them in true Star Trek things-are-serious fashion.

Carla: Pew pew pew!

Ben: Everyone is in on the fight including Po aboard a stolen shuttle. Aboard Discovery Reno and Tilly raced to meet the science team with the now charged time Crystal catching up to them just as Stamets is impaled by debris from damage. In the shuttle bay Spock powers, up the suit and gets into a shuttle to guide Michael. Discovery drops her shields for a moment and the two head out to a safe distance to initiate the wormhole, a fleet of other shuttles providing cover. But while the shields are down Controleland beams aboard Discovery and enters the bridge, shooting the bridge crew before heading off to find the sphere data! But no one dies; Michael’s vision isn’t quite coming to pass. Michael and Spock land on some debris at a safe distance as a photon torpedo lodges in the Enterprise’s saucer – another part of Michael’s vision. Number One and Admiral Cornwall head to the torpedo to try and disarm it. Meanwhile Discovery’s shields on the verge of being disabled, and they won’t last long without them – or be able to go through the wormhole. Just as all looks grim, Tyler arrives with the cavalry L’Rell’s massive Cleave ship plus a squadron of Ba’ul fighters flown by Kelpians including Saru sister Siranna. WHAT?! Michael can’t get the suit to fly into the future though and realises it’s because she needs to go back in time and set the red signals to prepare everything for this battle. Evolving the Kelpians into warriors getting the time Crystal recruiting Reno and Po to make it work and establishing a safe harbor in the future: Terralysium. Aboard Discovery, Georgiou and Nhan team up for an epic fight with Leland, while Tilly takes Stamets to sickbay before heading off to fix the ship’s shields. Hugh has returned to Discovery to be with Paul, and puts his husband in a healing coma, promising they’ll be together from now on, as a family. At the same time aboard Enterprise, Number One and Admiral Cornwall discovered the torpedo is 15 minutes from detonation and the closest blast door, which will prevent the blast from completely disabling the ship, is jammed open. Michael finishes programming her jumps, and leaps into the past…

Carla: In the incredibly psychedelic sequence that is possibly my favorite in Discovery thus far-

Ben: Mmmm.

Carla: – we see Michael make her five jumps as the Red Angel. We get to see her point of view which doubles as a nice recap as she leaves her bursts all over the galaxy. On Discovery Nhan, Controleland and Georgiou are fighting it out in a corridor that is sporadically losing gravity. The fight sequence is essentially unreal and bore many squeals of delight from me. We truly do not deserve Michelle Yeo. Georgiou lures Controleland into the spore drive lab – but why? Cornwall and Number One are trying to no avail to deactivate the torpedo. Time is running out. Pike orders Number One back to the bridge and he takes her place. Katrina Cornwall tells Pike that she can close the blast door manually from the inside. There is 90 seconds left and no other options. Pike tries to bargain with her but they run out of time. Pike leaves and watches with utter dismay as the torpedo is detonated, Cornwall sacrificing her life for the Enterprise crew. Pike informs all hands that the Admiral has been lost.

Michael returns from all of her jumps. Spock’s shuttle is broken, he cannot return to Discovery, and therefore cannot come to the future with Michael and the crew. In a tear jerking scene, the two say their forever goodbyes. Michael in older sister mode counsels Spock to “find that person who seems farthest from you” and to accept those who reach out to him into his life. Michael promises Spock that the seventh signal will be for him to let him know that she’s okay. They tell each other “I love you” before Spock is beamed to the Enterprise. In the lab Georgiou lures Controleland into the spore drive and magnetizes as it slowly splitting him apart nanobot by nanobot. In a show full of great screams, Alan van Sprang’s last time on camera was truly epic. We’ll miss you Leland.

Okay. It’s go time. Michael flies outwards to open up the wormhole. The crew’s saying goodbye to Pike and the Enterprise. A montage of Siranna, Po, Spock, Tyler had me blubbering like a baby. Discovery speeds towards the sixth signal: the guiding light to the wormhole, the crew facing towards their future.

Cut to San Francisco. Tyler, Number One, Pike and Spock are being officially interviewed individually by Star Fleet. They all swear that Discovery exploded and Spock suggests to maintain the safety of the Federation that all reference to Discovery and her crew become wiped from the record and be punishable by treason if ever spoken of again. Tyler is officially promoted to Commander of Section 31. The episode wraps with Spock’s narration. Many months passed with no sign from Michael and the crew. Spock is reinstated onto Enterprise and we see him sparkly and clean shaven in his blue science uniform on the bridge. It was a beautiful moment that passes the baton and also has sent our crew into the unknown future.

Ben! Are you excited that Discovery is cleaved from cannon now and it’s creating a new future for Star Trek?

Ben: Oh yeah, absolutely. And I was so happy that everybody, well, pretty much everyone made it. I mean obviously a lot of people died, but only one like, you know, named character. They got off pretty lightly in that respect. I was sure lots of people were gonna die.

Carla: But I was also like so surprised that there was all these other people that were going that we didn’t know about.

Ben: Yeah. I was really surprised by that too because when she meets the bridge crew in the corridor in the previous episode they’re like “We’re coming with you”. And that’s a big deal, because it’s like this is a one way trip into the future.

Carla: No!

Ben: “We want to come with you because we’re your family, we’re your friends.” And then there’s all these other people and I’m like “What are you doing here, you didn’t sign up for this! You’re supposed to be out there in a shuttle blowing shit up with lasers, not hanging out on Discovery!” And the sickbay is full of people the science lab is full of people.

Carla: I know! Are they supposed to be going or are they just like casualties of war? Like literally and figuratively.

Ben: Yeah I don’t know. I just don’t know.

Carla: Because we know that Hugh came back on purpose. But what about everybody else in the medical bay?

Ben: Yeah I thought they were all supposed to be gone. But maybe the bridge crew was speaking on behalf of a large portion of the Discovery crew, because it’s not clear how many… I mean clearly all of the people who were piloting shuttles are not on Discovery so they’re not going.

Carla: Right.

Ben: But are they the only ones who left because you don’t see any Discovery crew on the Enterprise at any point nobody’s wearing Discovery uniforms they’re all wearing the new Enterprise style uniforms so I guess?

Carla: Who knows who’s going.

Ben: Yeah and it doesn’t make… I mean I was a bit confused because the original plan was they were going to have Discovery fly through on remote autopilot right but it would never have made it because it would have had the shit blown out of it by all of the Section 31 ships. So they clearly needed a crew, but I thought it was just going to be that skeleton crew of just the people that we know.

Carla: Right. And I thought they were all just going because they love Michael, like, not just ’cause they love Michael obviously. And this is the thing that I really love about this like tying the whole theme of misfits, and chosen family, you know. Like, that actually… That move was one of the moves that made the most sense to me out of the whole Discovery storyline, that they were all going to go with her.

Ben: Oh yeah.

Carla: I was so still so surprised and heartened you know.

Ben: Yeah, yeah. But yeah when I saw like the sickbay full of people I was just like…

Carla: Yeah, what the fuck? What is going on? I mean…

Ben: I mean it makes sense they had that the doctor stayed like well otherwise people are going to die. But where did all these people who are in the sickbay come from?

Carla: I know!

Ben: Yeah. So I was a bit surprised by that. It’s questionable but I guess that means that I guess we’ll find out when they when we get to the other side in Season 3. We’ll find out how big a crew complement Discovery has and where they’ve really ended up because it’s…

Carla: We don’t know about that either.

Ben: They’re not really sure. I mean they kept talking in the last episode about how they weren’t sure where they were going to end up. So, yeah… I guess we’ll find out.

Carla: Well also because Mama’s suit didn’t really work properly the first time so…

Ben: And this is a copy of that one. So yeah. Yeah.

Carla: And Michael you know it’s not an old hand, so to speak, at operating it. So let’s see where they end up.

Ben: Yeah she just got that one YouTube video that she watched. A YouTube tutorial from her Mum: “How to fly a time travel suit.”

Carla: Dude can we just get into like how… I don’t want to keep harping on about the red bursts, but when does she, I mean obviously the seventh one is coming from the future. So does she… You know there’s a point where they all bleep at the same time.

Ben: Yeah. Yeah.

Carla: When the fuck does that happen?

Ben: We don’t know.

Carla: In the future. From the future.

Ben: This is what I mean when I said that I feel like they don’t tie up all the loose ends in this episode.

Carla: You think that’s on purpose?

Ben: No I think it’s not. I think they’ve just overlooked. I think they just gone we don’t care because it was very emotionally satisfying. I want to say that upfront like I didn’t get to the end of the episode and go “I’m so annoyed about these continuity errors that I can’t enjoy this!” because it was very emotionally satisfying.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: I did feel like there’s a lot of things that don’t make sense about what happens in this episode. For number one last episode they very clearly established that the time crystal is overcharged and once you make a jump with it that’s it, it’s going to blow up. She makes, like, at least six jumps.

Carla: Yeah!

Ben: How the fuck does she do that?! I mean maybe you could argue that going 950 years in the future is a big jump that’s going to blow it out and maybe it’s easier to go into the past or it’s easier to only go back like you know less than a year, because I don’t know that we know exactly how long it’s been between the bursts. I think it’s I think it’s like it feels like about six months’ worth of time. Which isn’t just because that’s about… no longer, that’s longer than we’ve been watching the show. But every now and then they do mentioned like that was months ago. And I think it’s only it’s relatively real time it’s like a few months have passed. So maybe it’s not a big deal to jump back a little bit in time. But they don’t establish that. They say that “you make one jump. That’s it that’s all you got” and then all of a sudden he’s like “shit I need to make five other jumps.” But it can’t be just five, because as you say who goes back and does the coordinated you know seven bursts. And she can’t do it now because she doesn’t know where the seventh one is going to come from.

Carla: That’s right.

Ben: So she must do it later.

Carla: She’s doing it from the future.

Ben: Yeah. Which means the thing must be working, right? Like they must still find a way to repair it, or something, I don’t know. But then also she makes more than one jump to each location because the burst happens and then vanishes. And then she goes back to the same place, like on the Hiawatha, there’s the burst which leaves them there. And then by the time they’ve got there and they’ve done all their stuff she appears again to see herself.

Carla: There’s so much wonky about this also like where the fuck does the red burst come from?

Ben: Well yeah, they don’t establish that either.

Carla: What is that? That’s a part of her suit?

Ben: And did she watch like 16 other YouTube tutorials to know how to use the advanced stuff in the suit? Because if it was her in the suit the whole time… this is the other thing.

Carla: (laughs) There’s so much wrong with.

Ben: Well remember when we were talking about the plan to trap the Red Angel? And they’re like “well she always turns up to save you. Yeah it must be you. Yeah”. Then it’s not her mum.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: But.. And it works because her mum does show up to save her but her mum is not the one who showed up previously to save her.

Carla: I know.

Ben: It was her!

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: It doesn’t make any sense. And then…

Carla: When they showed that I was like “what! what are you doing?!”.

Ben: Yeah, you’re fucking it up guys. And also yeah she must… she’s somehow learned to use the awesome advance technology in the suit because it’s also revealed she’s the one who goes back to Kaminar at the end of that sequence and destroys all the Ba’ul technology. And I’m like “how the fuck do you know how to do that?” So yeah I think they thought this will tie everything up nicely and you like no it doesn’t actually make sense guys.

Carla: There’s always a bit of like “it’s temporal!” Shrugs emojis, guys.

Ben: Yeah it’s still there’s still some gaps there though. I don’t know.

Carla: But I tell you what they I think they really got right.

Ben: Yeah. What was that?

Carla: Which was I love, I love where Spock’s story ended. Like really that passing of the baton to him going now on to his adventures again on the Enterprise and what they did with his character and his development as a person, and where he’s now leaping off into where he goes into canon from now. I thought that was really awesome. What about you? Or did you think it was cheesy?

Ben: No I liked it. I did like it. And there’s that nice bookending where the whole season begins with Michael talking about Spock, and then ends with Spock talking about Michael which is kind of a lovely symmetry there that’s really nice. But I don’t know I, I also, her advice to him I felt was a bit on the nose.

Carla: It was bit crammed in there. (laughs)

Ben: Well I mean I was I just didn’t know like I was listening to it and I actually didn’t immediately go “oh I understand what that means”. I’m like, “Who the fuck are you talking about?”

Carla: Kirk.

Ben: Who’s the person farthest from you? Is he really?

Carla: They’re pretty polar opposite.

Ben: Or is it Bones?

Carla: Oh, well.

Ben: I mean they do have a very intimate relationship. He shares his katra with him. (both laugh) I don’t know. It’s kind of both of them but it’s…it makes sense. I mean they do become best friends later on, but it also… I don’t know, I feel like this was not the moment for that. Like I didn’t want them… It felt a little bit like cheapening the friendship he has with Pike.

Carla: There was quite a few things shoehorned in there but I don’t think it really did because I’ve said it before… I think it really sets up why he was so like crazily devoted to Pike like you know like almost crazy romantic way. You know for everything that happened in that episode which is just so out of character for everything else that he does. You know I thought it did a good…it was a good way of kind of explaining that.

Ben: Yeah and we get a good sense that they’ve been through some shit together and they really yeah that bond is strong and I mean and it’s impressive that they managed to do that when Spock was not in most of the season.

Carla: Yeah. That’s true.

Ben: Or at least a good half of it you know and when he did first turn up, he was not okay.

Carla: Did you think they were actually going to go?

Ben: Did I think Spock was going to go?

Carla: No. Like did you think they were actually going to make it through the wormhole?

Ben: Yeah I did. I did.

Carla: I didn’t. I had…

Ben: Oh really.

Carla: I realized that I had so much distrust for this whole portion of the franchise, I was like until they actually went through, and even then I was like have they really gone? Like until the…

Ben: Well they’ve done it in a way that means we can do whatever we want next season. You don’t know what happened. Yeah like maybe they end up in the past.

Carla: And then also like when Stamets copped the hit to the chest I was like I thought he was going to die.

Ben: Yeah I thought he was going to die. ‘Cause like I said-

Carla: So then I was like NO.

Ben: -the death count was so low among the main characters.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: And I guess this is a show where it’s not it’s not that kind of show. You know it’s not Game of Thrones, it’s not a J.K. Rowling end-of-the-series novel, right. It’s not like we’re going to kill off all your favorite characters but I did feel like to make this epic we had to lose some people and we only lost one and it was a character who was never part of either crew in the first place. I mean I like Admiral Cornwall. But I wasn’t like, “oh, I’m so sad that she’s died”. And also it really felt like “I’m going to die so you don’t have to”. And that kind of felt a little bit like oh boy you know he can’t die anyway.

Carla: Yeah. So what was with her cryptic like “this isn’t where your story ends”? Like…

Ben: How do you know that?

Carla: I know.

Ben: What are you saying?

Carla: And he’s like… are you picking up what I’m putting down. He’s looking at her like “what the fuck” everything has got double meanings now for him poor thing.

Ben: I do have to say that whole bit that whole storyline with the torpedo is ridiculous. Like why didn’t you just make more of the important bits of the ship out of whatever that blast door is made out of like that is… It’s like the joke that’s on Red Dwarf…

Carla: What you couldn’t like pull it and roll under the door? Like.

Ben: Yeah well also Yeah. Because like it didn’t…

Carla: I mean surely Pike could have helped.

Ben: It closed fast but not that fast. Like you’d at least have a go. Like even if you lost a couple of legs it’s better than getting blown up into space right. (both laugh). But I mean it’s not like she’s going to go back for a hat or something. But like get one of those robot repair drones in there, it’s got arms, it could pull the thing!

Carla: Right?!

Ben: I don’t know. I thought there was a lot of other solutions that felt a bit contrived.

Carla: Like someone’s got to die.

Ben: But seriously one blast door protects all that side… Pike stands on the other side of that door when it goes off, and he’s fine, and the whole front of the ship gets blown up. And I’m like “There’s no other things made out of whatever that blast doors made out of on any of that part of the ship? This is ridiculous.”

Carla: Right.

Ben: So I thought that was a weird solution and I was not yeah I just felt it just… I got back into it emotionally it was fine emotionally it made sense I was onboard but just from a logical point of view I was just like this is nonsense. There’s a joke in Red Dwarf about this situation where they’re like why don’t they just make the whole spacecraft out of the thing the black box is made out of? And, um… Yeah. I don’t know.

Carla: I realized that I pretty much spent the whole episode like I was just waiting to see if they went because I didn’t trust that it was going to happen. And there were so many times at that point where I was just like going to fast forward to the end to see whether it happened or not. And then I was going to be able to watch the episode.

Ben: (laughs) Carla I am I am shocked by this.

Carla: I’m so dirty. But yeah I am pumped. Did Georgiou went with them? So I don’t know what happens.

Ben: Well she’s got yeah because she’s got to get back somehow.

Carla: Well we know she’s going to be in the Section 31 show but well do we really? like they’re saying there’s a Section 31 show and they’re like putting pictures of her all around but…

Ben: She’s supposed to be the star.

Carla: Oh so they…

Ben: The captain right.

Carla: Right.

Ben: So there’s some storyline that’s going on.

Carla: Yeah and Tyler, well he was, his rank is commander of and I’m not sure if he’s been made captain.

Ben: Well they kind of put him in charge.

Carla: Yeah…

Ben: But they don’t have any ships anymore.

Carla: I mean they say they’re going to say “we’re going to make it official”. Oh yeah that’s right.

Ben: They blew up all their ships. Yeah. That was the whole Section 31 fleet.

Carla: I think I read that that’s sort of like oh yeah that’s the article that you sent me with like they’re going to make it underground they’re going to explain they’re going to bridge that gap between what Section 31 was now to the underground organization that it becomes by Deep Space Nine and yeah…

Ben: Which makes sense. I mean here it is very much like an official black ops wing of Star Fleet whereas later on it’s like Star Fleet like doesn’t even know what they’re doing.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: And I think that I mean look there’s 100 years of 110 years or so of time for that to happen in. So that’s fine. That’s not I don’t see that as a problem and I think that could be quite interesting how they show that evolution depending on… I mean we also don’t know exactly when the Section 31 show is set.

Carla: That’s true.

Ben: We don’t know much about it yet. So, it could be set in the Discovery era, maybe it’s set 50 years later we don’t know. It could be set any time. It’d be nice if they set it 50 years later because they probably just like in that same article which we’ll link to in the show notes Kurtzman was talking about how you know now they’ve freed themselves from the constraints of the canon that they were enmeshed in. They don’t want that for the Section 31 show. I mean that’s even worse for that show because they’re trying to operate on the fringes and stuff. Yeah. So I don’t know. It’ll be interesting to see what that and what happens with that and how they get Georgiou back for the for that show. But if the red I mean if the angel suit could do several jumps…

Carla: Yeah. Yeah. If they could get it working properly.

Ben: Well I mean they could go to…

Carla: Cause mama bird’s obviously got it working at full capacity from the future. Yes, so she has the ability, she can be wherever she wants.

Ben: They just need another time crystal. They could go back to Boreth. I mean but then this one hasn’t blown up yet so we don’t know what’s happening with it.

Carla: And that’s the other thing I was like if they’re in the future.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: Why would she set the red burst like three months later? Like why would she make him wait for three months?

Ben: Yeah, they’ve got a time machine.

Carla: They could. She could have just done it like then.

Ben: And how could she guarantee she could do it anyway because the suits not supposed to work. So yeah there’s a lot of questions here and maybe some of those are like things they’ll answer. But I feel like if you’re going to jump 950 years in the future to escape canon, you don’t even want the canon left behind by the previous season of the same show, you want to free yourself from that.

Carla: Well maybe I just won’t even be explained. That’s it it’s over.

Ben: Well I hope that they do. Just because there’s a lot of baggage that is there. I think for the people left behind. They’re all like clearly it all makes sense to them and they’re not worried about it but they don’t know everything that happened. So, I think it’s for it’s for us the viewers particularly people like me who like continuity and get enmeshed in it. I mean I look and I enjoy it. So, figuring this out could be fun. And if they give us even some hints in the next season, I will be happy to try and stitch those things together. But yeah, I think they have left a few things. More so I mean yeah it is. There are a few other questions too.

Carla: Well shoot because I don’t have much more for this except, I’ve got one note that says crab man’s head is huge.

Ben: It is huge.

Carla: We saw it in profile. Jesus Christ. I loved the split screen.

Ben: Oh, that was great the three way split screen.

Carla: It just made me yearn for more of it. So hopefully there’s more of that in the new season.

Ben: I also have a question about this about what we learn about Control in this episode because they talk about the fact that all of the ships are being coordinated from one place and you’re like “okay great. That kind of makes sense”.

Carla: Isn’t that Leland?

Ben: Yeah but also that makes… But then why would you do that. Yeah it is Leland but that doesn’t make that I mean I had some questions about that I’ve ret-conned it, not ret-conned it I’ve continuity explained it myself I have a head canon for why this makes sense because if you are a super advanced A.I. who can control multiple starships at once you wouldn’t put yourself in one place and make yourself vulnerable you’d distribute yourself across all the ships you’d make copies of yourself or you’d have bits of yourself here and there you wouldn’t exist in a single physical location where you could be blown up you’d have backups upon backups and you’d be transmitting yourself across places but then I thought well if it’s going to be Leland I mean yeah for narrative purposes we need a face for the enemy and Leland is a great face because he’s so punchable, but not the actor, the actor’s delightful, but you know, because he’s doing evil sort of work.

Carla: Of course.

Ben: Although I think it’s quite mean how they keep calling him Leland, like there’s that great bit where Saru says “Now this is going to look like a human, but it’s not a human.” And I’m like “Yeah, you tell ’em Saru!” But then they just call him Leland as if he’s the same person. And he’s, like, he doesn’t exist anymore, he’s just a body being controlled by nanotechnology. But I guess what I came up to was that Control is so advanced that it can’t live in the computers on the ships. It can only live in the advanced nanotechnology and control the ships from there, so it’s got like a subroutine that’s controlling all the ships, but its actual consciousness is too advanced to live in those computers, it can only exist in the human brain augmented by nanotechnology, since it’s hard to escape from where it was before. So, I don’t know. But then it existed in multiple places because we know that it can do that because it did it with that other guy.

Carla: I think like as it evolves it gets bigger you know what I mean?

Ben: I guess so. And they killed it because it was a conscious being. I mean it was evil and was going to kill everybody. And I guess it makes sense that it was Georgiou that did it because although Nhan was bang up for it.

Carla: Yes, she was, she was ready.

Ben: I liked that they teamed up. That was cool. Yeah yeah yeah. And they had the epic fight in the corridor.

Carla: Dude that was crazy.

Ben: It was awesome. We can come back to that and Short Chats. I’ve got something I want to tell you about.

Carla: I don’t have anything else for this. You go to Short Chats. do you have anything else?

Ben: I got a few other things. Do we really believe that Discovery is going to be kept a secret? Like there were a lot of people at that battle and not all of them are Star Fleet crew, like the Klingons know about it, the Kelpiens know about it…

Carla: Klingons don’t care.

Ben: Klingons don’t give a shit. Oh, and the Klingons, know about do the Klingons, know about Tyler? He’s on the fucking bridge of their ship.

Carla: What the fuck.

Ben: We got told that would bring the whole empire down.

Carla: And they’re like the D7’s coming, didn’t get to see it!

Ben: No, I didn’t get to see it.

Carla: That was mean!

Ben: And I was so confused about how like how evenly matched up that was because it’s like we’ve got two much bigger starships and we’ve got this fleet of like 200 like little repair craft and shuttles that we’ve equipped with phasers and shit and you’ve got 30 medium size ships plus your hundreds of you know automated drone fighter things which are cool but I’m like also aren’t the Section 31 ships equipped with all super advanced technology that the rest of Star Fleet doesn’t have the cloaking devices and super advanced weaponry and shit like that? Surely, they should just be able to blow the shit out of them but they don’t and they only launch one photon torpedo the whole time and it doesn’t go off immediately unlike how advanced is this technology. So, I think that that was a bit weird and I think it would have been fine except they called attention to it by having the photon torpedo be such a big plot point.

Carla: I’m not sure Section 31 is armed to the teeth though. I think they’re supposed to be nimble, small and nimble.

Ben: I guess that makes sense.

Carla: And they’re not supposed to be drawing attention to themselves with going into battle or having weapons or anything like that. Third that kind of made sense to me.

Ben: Okay. Yeah I buy that I buy that but I mean they should have had at least I guess I guess the other mitigating circumstances they don’t want to destroy Discovery so they can’t like blow up the Enterprise so badly that it destroys Discovery and wrecks the data on it. But also, you know what else I want to know. Where was the sphere data in all of this? Like it was it was protecting itself when it was on Discovery by itself. Why is it not helping is this pitched battle?

Carla: Didn’t Georgiou say that she transferred it to that thing that she was holding in her hand.

Ben: I don’t know if that’s true though because would it let itself be transferred.

Carla: I don’t know.

Ben: Yeah that’s a good question.

Carla: That was what I was what I thought.

Ben: It does want to be copied.

Carla: Because it wasn’t on the computer. That’s why Leland was Leland was trying to find it and it wasn’t there.

Ben: Yeah. It doesn’t seem to care who has it as long as it exists. Yeah like that which makes sense. That was the spheres motivation. I want my knowledge to live on after me. So, I guess it doesn’t care who copies it where as long as it’s not being deleted.

Carla: Oh, know that thing was a transmitter so Georgiou was like I’ve transmitted it somewhere. Yeah. And then Leland is like “oh you put it in the spore drive because that’s the thing you want to protect the rest of or some shit”. Yeah. So, she’s transmitted it somewhere. Who knows?

Ben: Oh no. This this this directive from Star Fleet you can’t talk about this.

Carla: Well I think its question about that like they’re getting interviewed and it’s like well none of this shit that they’ve been doing exists on any logs anyway. I’m like that’s fucked up.

Ben: Yeah. Like it’s the future. Like surely the computers are recording everything that happens.

Carla: Like aren’t they checking in? Aren’t they like do you know what I mean?

Ben: Well they weren’t checking in because their communications were jammed which is why they didn’t get any backup.

Carla: But any of it about the red bursts, about the angel. I guess they didn’t they just didn’t know that they were building the suit.

Ben: Yeah well, they probably didn’t report that because they didn’t want…

Carla: Or the missions to get the time crystal or anything like that.

Ben: Yeah well, they didn’t want Control to know that they were doing it. Yeah because Control didn’t know like they didn’t, they didn’t specifically. Yeah, they went after Michael but they didn’t make Michael a priority because…

Carla: So, they went fully dark?

Ben: Yeah, I think they did yeah. Which makes sense. Yeah. Because who knows how Control is maybe listening in?

Carla: So, while not fully docked because Admiral Cornwall was onboard so she obviously knows what’s going on with her armada.

Ben: Yeah but they couldn’t communicate.

Carla: Exactly. And now she’s dead so.

Ben: Yeah, they did say it at some point they only had ship to ship communications they couldn’t contact Star Fleet. So yeah, I guess that makes sense.

SFX: Swoosh!

Ben: Now it’s time for re:Discovery Short Chats, where we talk news, trivia and anything related to Discovery, and also any questions you have for us. You can still follow our socials and get in touch even though this is pretty much our last episode. Captain, we got a few questions and comments about the ending of the series, as you would expect.

Carla: Sure. Yeah, we did. Yeah we got a comment from Adam Ford, long e-mail but basically the question was “do you think Star Trek TV show can work well within a novel in chapters format, which is like the new TV format, or is the Star Trek concept too closely associated with the previous story by story format that the previous six series observes?” So, I’ve actually been thinking about this a lot because the one, the one anachronism that it has is that because it’s on CBS it’s cut for commercials and I really noticed that.

Ben: Yeah. Because it’s like got four acts each episode and there’s like a fade to black every time.

Carla: There’s a cliff-hanger. There’s a cliff-hanger each, you know, each cut which I just find so antiquated and hilarious.

Ben: Does that mean that there’s ads on CBS All Access?

Carla: Not on All Access I don’t think.

Ben: Do they also broadcast it on actual CBS?

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: Oh, I didn’t know that.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: Ah there you go. Okay. What have you been thinking about the episodic sort of story of the week format?

Carla: Well it’s funny because I didn’t notice that until you put it quite early on.

Ben: Oh right.

Carla: I just feel like that format would be odd now. And also, like back when it was like a 22-season episode, season commission, you know you would get you big blockbuster episodes then you get a whole bunch of shit in there as well because they had no budget. You know sometimes it was creative and it was really interesting. A lot of the time it was like quite bizarre and terrible.

Ben: It’s really hard to pump out 22 quality scripts a year ever with a writer’s room.

Carla: Especially sci fi you don’t like that especially back then required quite significant investment in terms of practical effects or digital effects. So now I’m just like I love the episodes are as long as they go for. And you know there’s never one set episode length and you know we have a shorter season but the quality is a lot higher but I do kind of miss a bit of the cheesiness. What about you?

Ben: Well I mean I think you can have it a bit both ways I think.

Carla: We did have that last season with some of the standalones.

Ben: We did a little bit. I mean they did tie back in but I but I think you had that one you had the really strong arc at the end of the sort of well towards the end of the Mirror Universe. So I think you had like smaller arcs in the first season but they didn’t have a lot of standalone episodes. It was a bit more of a hybrid show. I think if you look at no one will be surprised when I mentioned Doctor Who. If you look at Doctor Who now like the modern Doctor Who is a kind of hybrid model. Some seasons more so than others. There’s still very definitely a separate adventure of the week but then there’s also a bit of a meta narrative over the top. And you get like episodes that really do standalone. But the character development and little bits of the episode will push it along. And so I think you can hybridise it you can do a bit of both and maybe I mean if they’re stuck in the future and they can go anywhere and see anything maybe that’s what Season 3 will be like maybe they will have crazy adventures because they’re essentially on a five year mission in the future.

Carla: I do miss it. I think you know it gives different writers opportunities to develop characters in you know more linear ways and more lateral ways I should say the adventure of the week was also like less stressful like I feel like this you know full novelization thing is like really super stressful. I think you can still have cliff-hangers in that and still sort of keep people guessing and wanting to see it each week. But I just mainly I miss it from the character development because I felt like those adventures of the week really did significant as I said lateral development of the characters. So I miss that.

Ben: Easier to focus on different characters each week too.

Carla: Yeah and give them a different thing to do. You know. Yeah just a couple more comments. From Lachlan Kingsford: “So did that look like 2001: A Space Odyssey to you?”

Ben: Oh what when she’s going through the wormhole.

Carla: Whoa.

Ben: Yeah that was cool. Just the sparks like flying an empty void.

Carla: Oh my god it was cool.

Ben: Yeah yeah.

Carla: And also, like you know the slice of time. Spinning around so fucking great.

Ben: I also thought actually when Discovery went through the wormhole that also that also seemed a bit 2001 like with all the colours and people being blurred it was very Star Trek: The Motion Picture as well actually.

Carla: You could easily just put the 2001: A Space Odyssey score over the top of that.

Ben: Surely someone’s done that. Going to have to find that on the Internet.

Carla: That’s it. I just want to do a correction. Don’t know if Reno is leaving on on I’m on some kind of psychedelic drugs. I’m sure I read it somewhere but I could not confirm that. So, I really hope that she’s staying because she’s on Discovery looks like she’s being positioned to have more of a presence next season.

Ben: So yeah well Stamets is you know in a coma. That was a bit weird how the one love scene they get is like Hugh going “It’s okay Paul. I’m putting you in a coma, go to sleep now” (both laugh). Uh yeah, I did that, I cried though. Yeah, I cried. I cried. I was so happy.

Carla: It felt it felt really genuine.

Ben: It did.

Carla: And I’m like “Okay great. I’m good. Let’s put let us, let everyone put the past behind us”.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: I think my misgivings about how they did that progression of their relationship in little bits were really overcome by how much both actors but particularly Hugh as an actor really just sold it and gave it an emotional reality that I was just like “oh I’m so happy but it’s so sad that you’re back together. He’s a look… he’s not dead but he’s not well. But I’m going to look after you. Oh beautiful”. Yeah. I cried. It was great. It was great. Now I had a couple of things that I wanted to talk about. I mentioned earlier I wanted to talk more about that cool fight sequence in the corridor. This totally reminded me of the Fred Astaire dance sequence from the film Royal Wedding. Have you seen this Carla?

Carla: No.

Ben: It’s this very famous he’s dancing in a house and he dances up the wall and onto the ceiling. And they do it by having a camera mounted on the floor but the whole set revolves. Yeah, I’m sure that’s what they did with this. I will post a link to it in the show notes.

Carla: There’s a few Michel Gondry film clips back in the day that did it.

Ben: Oh yeah. Yeah, you’re right. But I think Fred Astaire was like the first big one is from then I think it’s from the 50’s sometime.

Carla: Would have been psychedelic.

Ben: It’s pretty cool. I really dug that and it was just yeah – how great to see that done as a fight sequence. Now I got. Here’s something else for Short Chats. Carla. What does this ending mean for Zora?

Carla: Yes soo.

Ben: Where is she?

Carla: A lot of talk on “teh interwebs”.

Ben: Yeah tell me.

Carla: That even Zora could be a thousand years in the future from that point.

Ben: So, she could be two thousand years in the future?

Carla: Correct.

Ben: Wow.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: And then there’s still human beings like with tattoos having wars. That’s a bit sad for them.

Carla: Well you know. But stupid is as stupid does.

Ben: And then they go back in time. Well the other possibility I thought of was that maybe Georgiou figures out a way to get back to her time using Discovery but leaving you know the Discovery crew without Discovery but then leaves it somewhere where they can find it and tells it to stay there. A thousand years so that it’s there when they need it so they can just get it back again.

Carla: Yeah that’s a good one.

Ben: So I don’t know if that’s…

Carla: Also another possibility is that Zora is already there and she can make herself known.

Ben: Oh yeah.

Carla: In the new season.

Ben: Yeah. Which would be another point in favour of her being in evolution of the sphere data. Who knows. I think they’ll be very if she does show up in the next season. I think the crew will be very wary of her. (both laugh) They have not had a good time with artificial intelligence they’ll be like “get away from us!”. Now there’s so many other Star Trek things happening Carla.

Carla: I’m not up to date on any of it. Give me the info.

Ben: Well just the TV shows. But we know so little about them we know this like at least four other shows going on. It’s crazy. So we’ve got the Section 31 show which we don’t know what’s happening with it. Hopefully Tyler is in it. I do want to say that he’s been left behind and I love him. I want to stick around so I hope he’s in the Section 31 show would make it would be weird if he wasn’t. We got the Picard show we know about that. We got Lower Decks the animated comedy show about the low ranking folks on a starship. We’ve got there’s been talk of a Star Fleet Academy show.

Carla: WHAT.

Ben: About younger Star Fleet people being made by a couple people who were involved with some teenage shows like I forget which one I think there might have been producers on The O.C. or something so there’s that which would be a bit like Wesley Crusher school days.

Carla: Is this like it geared to a younger audience kind of thing?

Ben: Teen audience yeah.

Carla: Yeah ok.

Ben: But I haven’t seen much about that.

Carla: I would watch the shit out of that.

Ben: Yeah I’ve only seen it mentioned a couple of times but if it hits the same spot as something like Riverdale or Sabrina like but with sci fi instead of fantasy I think that could be really awesome. And now of course there’s heaps of talk about a spinoff with Pike and the Enterprise crew and…

Carla: But is it real talk or is it just internet chatter?

Ben: Well I mean Kurtzman said he’s heard the fans that they’re keen for it. I personally am in two minds about it. I’m like we don’t need that.

Carla: No we have enough.

Ben: It would be fun. I mean I certainly like Spock and Number One and Pike I think they’re all great characters played by great actors doing great job but I don’t. I would be worried that you know it would be detrimental to whatever Discovery’s doing although now that Discovery is like off in the far future they’d be so separate and you’d have this one show that was like we’re playing in the canon sandpit and the other show that’s like we’ve gone off to do something fucking crazy. I don’t know. I’m in two minds about it. I don’t think we need it. I do want to see Anson Mount in more stuff but it doesn’t have to be Star Trek. I’d love to see Rebecca Romijin (“Ro-Main”) as you have taught me it’s pronounced not “Rom-jin” because I’ve been misreading it all these years so I’m very sorry Rebecca. If you listen I’m also sorry for calling you by your first name, we’re not on first name terms. You just seem really cool. But yeah. So I just there’s heaps of Star Trek stuff happening but we have no dates for any of this other stuff starting so we don’t know when it’s going to happen.

Carla: It’s fucking cool like I’m into it. And I love the breadth of it. I’ve got serious side eye on a new Enterprise show like they’ve struggled so hard with Discovery I think they’ve learned a lot of lessons that they’ll be able to kind of just easily transfer onto a new spinoff. But in terms of getting the appropriate you know writers room, show runner and stuff like that I think they would really struggle to get that magical combination that if they do this as a pre-Enterprise like their fans would be feral. And I think that I just don’t see that really kind of happening anytime soon.

Ben: You mean you don’t think they want it.

Carla: Oh no they would just be so all over combing like…

Ben: Oh yeah.

Carla: Look at what happened with this. Like this was just a shit show, you know what I mean in terms of fan reaction but I think if you’re going to put something that’s like that which is what is the gap of the next eight years or whatever in the Enterprise’s timeline as a show like it’s just going to have a level of scrutiny that on the one hand I’m sure they have a lot of canon there that they can just be paint by numbers, but at the same time anything that slightly deviated from that or you know what I mean like it would just…

Ben: Well I mean the thing is they’ve already there’s not that much talk about what happens to the Enterprise and Pike before you know actual Star Trek: The Original Series and they they’ve they already covered all the stuff we know about.

Carla: Because why they don’t take the comic book stuff or anything like that?

Ben: None of that is considered canon.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: Yeah. And I also even if it was I think the TV show producers would be well advised to ignore it when they’re doing their own thing and just do what’s best for the TV show. Yeah because you can’t keep up with all that stuff and…

Carla: How much money do they have as well? Like really to do it well.

Ben: That’s a lot of shows. But I mean that’s also a point in the favour of maybe they’re thinking about it because why else would you build this, I mean the Enterprise bridge is not just a refit of the Discovery bridge. It’s pretty cool separate set and…

Carla: It is only one set though like…

Ben: I guess so yeah and the corridors could be just a redress of the Discovery ones so who knows. I don’t think they need to do it. I think if they do it I’ll certainly watch it because it’ll probably be cool. But yeah I think who knows?

Carla: I’m also at Star Trek overload a little bit because I’ve been watching Enterprise in tandem with this.

Ben: Yeah me too.

Carla: And I’m just like with all the new shows.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: Are we going to be at saturation point? I don’t have much more time to watch TV beyond that if I’m honest. (both laugh)

Ben: I’m not watching that much else at the moment, so I mean I’ve finished season 4 of Gotham and season 5 and on the streaming services yet. Most of the shows that I really care about are not making new seasons at the moment so you sort of you know. The other thing I did want to ask is, how wise is this to put Discovery a thousand years in the future? How different does it need to be for them to fulfil this promise of we’re going a thousand years in the future, canon’s behind us you know what’s going to happen? How can they possibly live up to that? I’m a bit worried about it.

Carla: Well I don’t know. Look every Star Trek show has a primary an alien enemy show and a general overarching mission or you know issue. The only thing that really differentiates to me all the Star Trek shows is the time that it’s set because of the technology that they have available to it. The aliens are different in the way that the aliens operate a different but all of those storylines pretty much followed the same trajectory.

Carla: The only thing that’s really cool and the thing that keeps you like hooked is the different kinds of technology that they have.

Ben: Right.

Carla: So that’s where I think that this that’s where the money makers going to be in this new show. Is the imagining of the future at that point in time, we’ve seen little glimpses of it in Voyager. We had a couple of episodes that were set up a thousand years in the future.

Ben: Oh right.

Carla: Yeah. So I mean they’re disaster ones but…

Ben: Oh yeah. Yeah.

Carla: So it’s all technology based and caring about the crew. Yeah. So we already care about the crew.

Ben: They’ve got that in their favour for sure.

Carla: Yeah. So

Ben: Okay. All right.

Carla: What do you think?

Ben: Well I mean Discovery has its technology already and what they’re going to be coping with is being a thousand years behind everybody else is in the future. And also they’ve got to paint Doctor Who had this problem as well where they put when they did the future and the modern series they went like five billion years in the future and five billion years in the future looks like retro-futuristic flying cars like it’s kind of like a bit bullshit to be honest. I’m like “you went five billion years in the future and the best you could imagine was some aliens who look kind of cool but are basically humanoid aliens and some flying cars. Is that is that it is that all you got?” Like. Why. Why go that far in the future if you’re not going to try and come up with something like mind blowingly different, like and I am I’m a little worried about that. I mean look who knows what they’re going to do. Maybe it will just be really awesome and I’m being pessimistic for no reason but I think I’m just worried that they’ve set themselves up to do something. Yeah it’s a super cool and there’s no way that they’re going to be able to realize it but they could.  They might surprise me.

Carla: But that was the best part about Voyager.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: You know a holo-novels, the Doctor…

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: And sometimes it’s like it’s just that twist on what the technology that we already have you know but even still of all the Star Trek that we have they’re all within a couple hundred years of each other. You know the time-the main timeline you know so this is so far beyond that. I hear your um your anxiety.

Ben: They still have pre original series level technology even if it now looks like what we would imagine it should look like.

Carla: But I’m also saying to you is that Star Trek is inherently formulaic. (both laugh)

Ben: Yeah okay sure. Sure. I shouldn’t expect to like it suddenly it’s going to be an anthology show or something. Yeah. Do you think that’s going to bring back Short Treks?

Carla: I don’t know, who knows about anything? Yeah I think that really goes back to the previous questioners question which is you know like they’re really struggling to imagine Star Trek now. Like the last time we had a season show was I think the last season of Enterprise was 2005. That’s before internet 2.0. Right. So like you went from having essentially the same formula to for most of the, except for the original season, for most of the Star Treks that we know. And now I think we have seen those teething problems in understanding how it fits into the digital landscape now. So maybe this is their opportunity to really bring their A game in a way that’s fresh.

Ben: Yeah. Well look whatever happens I’m bang up for it. I’m excited and I can’t believe we have to wait like a year.

Carla: Yeah. Well or who knows? I think Picard is due out next year. So yeah, we definitely don’t have anything this year.

Ben: No no.

Carla: But what about us Ben? When’s our next episode going to be?

Ben: Well this is a good question because I’m sure you listening want to know what’s the future of re:Discovery? We haven’t gone a thousand years in the future but we probably are going to go a little bit into the future. We’re not going to do an episode next week but we do want to do a wrap up don’t we Carla?

Carla: Yeah. We might wait a couple of weeks to say I actually want to either re-watch the whole season again or listen to all of our episodes or both. Before we do a wrap up so maybe three weeks or something but keep us in your podcast feed is what we’re saying.

Ben: Yeah, we’re not totally disappearing but we are going to have a break certainly from having weekly episodes and we’ll figure out what we’ll be doing next because we got a few other things on don’t we Carla? We should tell people about those.

Carla: Oh yeah, we can plug them.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: What. What do you want to talk about first? indiepodfest?

Ben: Let’s talk about that. Yeah.

Carla: Yeah. So, we’re having an independent podcasting festival in July. Yeah, the first one in Australia.

Ben: That’s going to happen in Melbourne. We’re going to be celebrating the art and craft of making independent podcasts. We’ve already been talking to potential guests. We’re going to be crowdfunding it. We don’t have any source of external funding so watch out for that. We’ll post about it on the social media and if you can’t come to Melbourne if you’re too far away or if you’re busy that weekend there will be an opportunity for you to support the festival and get access to audio of the proceedings there. So yeah, we’re real excited about that we’ve been working real hard on that for months now.

Carla: For a long time.

Ben: And we still got a few months to go. Yeah well that’s pretty good. But if you want to hear our voices on a regular basis you still can. Carla you’ve still got podcasts going.

Carla: Oh, I have one that’s basically completed it’s about this filmmaker Steven Soderbergh so it’s called Club Soderbergh. So, we’ve covered all of his films to date except for High Flying Bird. So basically, we’ll put out an episode every time he makes a new film but essentially, we’re…

Ben: You’ve finished with the bank catalogue.

Carla: Yeah, we’ve finished with the back catalogue. We will be doing we’ll be doing that live at indiepodfest. So, they go twofer.

Ben: Yeah. Come along.

Carla: And I have a theatre slash performing arts criticism podcast which is very different to this but if you like going to the theatre and you like my opinions then perhaps, you’ll also like my other show Across the Aisle.

Ben: Yeah it is a great podcast. I enjoy it.

Carla: Thanks Ben.

Ben: Yeah. Yes. Well you do a good job, you and Phillip. I feel like I’m there in the theatre with you.

Carla: Oh, that’s beautiful. That’s what we want.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: And what about you? Prachat!

Ben: Yeah. Pratchat is still going so if you’ve not listened to it that’s my monthly Terry Pratchett Book Club podcast. We are reading every single Terry Pratchett book, a bit like Club Soderbergh, we’re covering his oeuvre. We’re covering his canon yes but he did write an awful lot of books. So, it’s going to take us about six and a half years to do them all. We’ve only been going for about 18 months we’ve still got about five years to go.

Carla: Oh my god.

Ben: And we do some bonus episodes were recently recorded our first live episode at a convention here in Melbourne. We’ll be doing the next Australian Discworld convention in Sydney in 2021 so that’ll be fun. I’m really looking forward to that. It was a great time. So, there’s that. That’s coming out of new podcast because my audio drama night terrorists is now being broadcast on the BBC on the radio. Oh my God so fancy. So, if you want to listen to that you can it’s being broadcast weekly on Sundays at 6 p.m. U.K. time and you can look it up on the BBC website. It’s being broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra which is the digital spin off of Radio 4.

Carla: It just means that you’re so cool. Well isn’t that what the kids say these days.

Ben: I don’t know.

Carla: You’re so extra. (both laugh)

Ben: I thought that meant fancy. Does that mean I mean I’m fancy? Glamourous?

Carla: I think it means like bombastic.

Ben: Oh yeah.

Carla: Or like amazing.

Ben: I guess that could be me.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: Yeah you can listen to that on the on their site. You have to wait for it to come out each week. So, it’s a bit like Discovery. It is about time travel and it’s an it’s a comedy show. It’s kind of. We always say it’s a bit like sort of early Doctor Who if the doctor was a cranky Australian woman played by Susan from Neighbours. But it’s good fun. And we’ve done a new podcast to go along as a companion to it.

Carla: I love that you’re recapping your own podcast weekly. Benjamin!

Ben: It’s more like, it’s more like After Trek or um or The Bridge or what’s the name?

Carla: I don’t know what it’s called.

Ben: The bridge thing.

Carla: You can’t find it.

Ben: But the podcast is called On the Terrace. Are we plugging anything else? What else can we tell you about?

Carla: I think that’s it for now. That’s enough.

Ben: This is good. This is a long episode.

Carla: That’s okay.

Ben: Let’s say it’s a fun time to end the podcast.

Carla: But otherwise we will be back in your ears sometime in the next month doing a recap of our entire experience of doing this and the season and we’ll have more information for you at that point.

Ben: Yeah. So, until we see you next.

Carla: Live long and prosper.

Ben: Don’t get sucked into a wormhole.

Ben: You’ve been listening to re:Discovery. You’ll find links to all the creatives involved on our website, rediscoverypodcast.com. We’d love to connect with you. Find us on Twitter and Facebook as @reDiscoverypod.

Splendid Chaps: re:Discovery is brought to you by Splendid Chaps Productions. Find more entertainment for your ears at splendidchaps.com.

This is a transcript of our thirteenth season two recap, available here.

Michael Burnham [From Episode]: I wish there was more time. There isn’t. I love you. All of you. Thank you for the greatest moments of my life.

re:Discovery theme plays.

Carla: Hello and welcome to re:Discovery, the Star Trek recap podcast that is so excited to talk about it, let’s just begin. I’m joined by my Science Officer Ben McKenzie Ben. Are you excited?

Ben: There’s no time to talk about how excited I am Carla. Let’s just get straight to it!

Carla: Holy crap. It’s episode 13 so you know what that means. It’s the first half of the two-episode season finale and it does not pull any punches. Even before we know what happens with Discovery the title “Such Sweet Sorrow” leads the way. We last left off with Pike calling the XO on Enterprise and beginning the self-destruct protocols on Discovery. The episode opens with Sarek meditating on the beach at sundown, he whispers “Michael” and we cut to Discovery. The crew are all packing their quarters to evacuate. The Enterprise is clearly back in action as she has arrived to take Discovery’s crew. This is the first full view we get of the re-imagined Enterprise’s bridge and I was breathless.

Ben: So good.

Carla: So good. Pike swagger is onto the bridge like a man wearing a custom-made suit. He looks happy to be home. Number One assuring him that the holograms have been fixed and will be no more. Pike initialises the self-destruct sequence remotely. But it does not complete, the Spheres self-preservation has seemingly taken over the ship and does not allow it to be destroyed. They fire torpedoes to no avail. Michael, having had a glimpse of her future by transporting the time crystal to the Enterprise, sees Leland board Discovery and kill the whole crew. She tells the bridge that they cannot destroy Discovery so the only option is to take Discovery so far into the future Control can never get the data. But however, will they charge the time crystal in time? No time to languor in the gorgeous saltiness that is the newly minted Captain Georgiou, a new Red Burst arrives conveniently taking them to the planet Xahea – you remember where Tilly’s friend Po the queen of Xahea comes from? No? Well keep going it will all make sense soon. Po is a scientific genius who has developed a way of re crystallizing dilithium so surely, she can help power the crystal.

Ben: Meanwhile in engineering Hugh visit Stamets but let’s Paul speak first. Paul says Hugh was right to say they both needed to move on so he’s planning to quit working on starships and maybe pursue that post at the Vulcan science academy. Hugh says he plans to stay aboard the Enterprise, Stamets heads off to finish the new angel suit and that’s where they leave things… Carla, what!? Anyway, we will come back to that. Po arrives and after being plied with ice cream by Tilly listens to the crew’s story, she works out a way to charge up the time crystal without needing the energy of a supernova. But there’s a drawback. The crystal will end up with too much energy and burn out meaning it’ll be a one-way trip into the future for Michael. Tyler is horrified when he discovers this but Michael is willing to go ahead with the plan anyway hoping she will end up on Terralysium with her mother. The crew respects her decision and she shares her love for them before Pike orders everyone to get back to work. Po surprises Tilly with the news that she will be staying on board Discovery when the Section 31 ships come as to do otherwise would be to shirk her responsibility of protecting her planet. Georgiou argues with Michael about her stupid plan. But Michael rebuffs her and walks away only to walk straight into another parental moment – Sarek and Amanda have boarded Discovery, Sarek having felt that Michael was in trouble through their joined katras.

Carla: Awkward.

Ben: They have come to say farewell and reveal they are proud of her. They all express their love for each other and Sarek even asks for, and gets, Michael’s forgiveness before they leave. Later Michael watches a video tutorial recorded by her other mother about how to pilot the suit but is called to the bridge, the Enterprise is close by. On the way she meets Tilly who takes her to her closest friends among the senior crew as well as Spock. They’re all staying aboard Discovery and following her into the future. She tries to talk them out of it but is touched and realizes their minds are made up. Tyler however is staying behind. He feels it’s his duty to make sure Section 31 never creates another situation like this one with Control. Michael walks away from him seemingly distraught but turns back for one last kiss. Everyone records messages for their loved ones before Pike orders the Discovery to move away from Xahea to make sure it’s not in danger from the coming conflict with Control ships and hands the captain’s chair over to Saru. Though he graciously defers the question. As the Enterprise arrives, Pike lovingly commends the Discovery crew but Control’s fleet is only five minutes away. Both crews have prepped shuttle craft with weapons to keep Control busy until the new time travel suit is ready. But in engineering Stamets, Tilly and Reno are worried it’s taking too long to charge up. Tilly suggests a plan to speed up the charging but it would mean the crystals time altering effects will leak out, making it dangerous to human minds. Reno says she can handle it and orders the others out of the room to do it and she sees the same flash of the future as Burnham before her – including the detail of an unexploded photon torpedo lodged in the Enterprise’s saucer. Tyler asks for Pike’s trust and says he must leave before the battle to do something important. Georgiou reveals to him she is Terran and then he returns to the Enterprise. After that the Section 31 ships appear and everyone gets to battle stations to be continued.

Carla: Dot dot dot.

Ben: What the actual f Carla! This episode. Holy moly.

Carla: We just have to get straight to chop chop. Is Season 3 they’re all living a thousand years in the future?

Ben: I think I think our previous listener who predicted this might have been on the money because it seems like there’s no other way. Like everybody’s going into the future. I think for a while during this episode I thought you know you said last episode maybe they’d get rid of Michael and I was like “No come on. She’s the main character” and for a while doing this episode I was “like holy moly it’s going to happen. Why. What’s what?1”. And then everyone said, “no we’re coming with you” and I’m like “Oh yeah!”.

Carla: Yeah but then I was like “Whoaaaaaaaaaaa”.

Ben: That’s nuts but also Spock’s going with them. And we know Spock ends up back on the Enterprise. So, what is going to happen?

Carla: Dude seriously if this show ends up a thousand years into the future for a couple of seasons, I will lose my mind.

Ben: That would be amazing.

Ben: It would be like because I’ve been thinking about it on the ride up here right. It’s like we need that Star Trek for now, like we know like that that the Star Trek that was delivered in the 60s to the 60s consumer right. We need that Star Trek now which is like we’re so we understand completely like all of the technologies of the Star Trek universe all that kind of stuff.

Ben: Oh yeah.

Carla: Where you know I like that, that to me would be the most logical step forward. And they were, as you know listeners would know, like they were my most exciting episodes from just, well from Enterprise and from Voyager and then I’m thinking like “maybe they like get in touch with that organization that sends all of those time travellers back to those series”.

Ben: Oh wow.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: You think they’re the secret time masters?

Carla: Maybe I don’t know.

Ben: That would be totally amazing.

Carla: So good.

Ben: Crazy stuff.

Carla: What do you think?

Ben: Look I have no idea where this is going to end up. I, I, they could go into the future. They could come back they might find the time; the time suit might take them somewhere else.

Carla: OH MY GOD.

Ben: It might splinter time into like three different timelines and people end up in different places and will have like this weird multi fractured, you know I don’t know. I think if anything I actually feel like anything could happen but I also feel like it’s such a great set up this episode and it’s so wonderful because often when you get these two-parter of things at the end of a season I mean in old series of Star Trek it would usually be the first part of the two-parter would be the season finale right.

Ben: But now that we’ve got this two-parter at the end they’ve just they’ve taken a whole episode to set up this like intense situation and also let everyone have a chance to say goodbye which I loved and it made me think about what I love about Discovery as a Star Trek show because I feel it is a show that we need now in another way as well as the way that you were saying because we also need that compassion. We need that empathy and that care for each other which you know we saw often see missing in public discourse in the way that we treat other people who are not like ourselves or our governments do on our behalf.

Ben: And we need a show that says “no we can we can be heroes, we can be space explorers, we can be tough people doing what needs to be done and we can love each other and look after each other at the same time” and I felt like this episode like so summed that up and it’s been a theme running throughout the whole season. I think you know Pike’s little speech about being a starship captain last episode really like also brought that to the fore. But this episode really hit that spot for me and I was like yes, I need this episode if something awful is about to happen. Let me have this moment beforehand while ramping up that tension. And I mean wonder what a way to leave that like we’re all going into the future; we can never come back and we’re leaving you know our mates behind and our families and our lives behind like just huge. I’m pumped. I have not, I really don’t know what’s going to happen next episode but I’m so excited.

Carla: Yeah me too. It’s pretty limiting like it’s a pretty limiting way of looking at it for them because they don’t even know what’s in the future or where they’re going to end up but they’re working under the supposition that they’re going to not be able to come back. But I think they’re like I think it’s tied up like I feel like all threads are tied up at this point except for like what the fuck’s going to happen.

Ben: Well there’s still there’s still two Red Bursts to go so that’s presumably going to light the way to where they’ve got to go.

Carla: Potentially.

Ben: But you know and we still I mean we still I think Zora can’t come into it because like you can’t introduce that character in one episode or maybe you can because this episode showed us that they do expect us to just run with the Short Treks as being part of the show because here’s Po who is a pretty major character in this episode and makes all these references to her previous appearance without them being fully explained. So, if they’re expecting us to have watched that and understood it then maybe they are expecting us to have watched the Zora Short Trek. But I still feel like they can’t just introduce that character out of nowhere in the last episode surely?

Carla: I don’t know I didn’t have any feel-pinions about that but at the same time I feel like also we’ve had three out of four Short Treks be present in this season so I’m like is Harry Mudd in the next episode?

Ben: But have we really had the Zora one? Or are we just reading into that because we’ve had the…

Carla: Oh, that’s true, like we haven’t had it confirmed but it’s…

Ben: I still think your thing about Airiam memories.

Carla: Well not so much says Airiam became Zora. But like that what Discovery is abandoned a thousand years into the future. That’s a pretty direct through line to what’s happening right now.

Ben: True and also the Sphere data of the Sphere, spheres information has now integrated itself with the ship because you know it stops the auto destruct sequence it turns on the shields so they can’t destroy it with the torpedoes.

Carla: So how much prep background processing has been happening already?

Ben: Exactly.

Carla: Zora could have already been halfway developed.

Ben: I mean maybe Zora is an A.I that was, who knows, hoovered up by the Sphere data. It’s not I got to say only on the topic of the Sphere data. I never thought it would become this big of a thing. Not in the way that it has anyway like I liked it when they were using it. Like in Saru’s – in the Kaminar episode, “An Obol for Charon” where they were you know using it to figure out what was happening on his planet. I thought that was cool.

Carla: Or “An eyeball for Sharon” as our A.I keeps calling it. Sorry I couldn’t stop laughing.

Ben: I know, that was weird.  We look we’ve just revealed to listeners that we use artificial intelligence on this show for our transcription. So, we’re sorry if you’re frightened. It’s okay. This one’s totally not trying to kill anyone and it hasn’t injected any nano probes into us. But yeah. So, there was that and then there was Control through Airiam was trying to get its intelligence on artificial intelligence. And I thought those were two nice plot points but then it’s all become about the A.I. And so now I’m hoping that the Sphere information taking over the ship or integrating with the ship becomes more important than that because I kind of feel otherwise it’s a waste of this whole idea of this amazing archive of information if it just becomes about this one part of it. I know that might be a silly thing to think but I just yeah, I hope that they it doesn’t just vanish after this after becoming a fairly one-dimensional plot point. And it’s worked well I thought in that capacity but I think it’s just got a lot of potential to do other stuff.

Carla: To me it’s like it’s just introduced the concept because at this point in time I’m just like and what everyone’s just like” okay cool Sphere it’s got data, it’s got data, sweet let’s just download it” like what the fuck what the fuck is this thing? And it’s not that I need everything to be introduced before but I’m like “This is such a bizarro thing” and like everyone’s just like “yeah got the data okay let’s roll”. You know?

Ben: Yeah, I, well I liked it. I thought that episode I just realized I used the wrong episode name earlier because “An Obol for Charon” is the one where they meet the Sphere but I don’t know I liked it because I was so weird and you know what I’m like. I like weird aliens. And remembering more or less forced it on them to download its data. Like because it was disrupting all their systems until they let it do it and then they’re like “oh you want to share your data with us? Let’s trust you” and again that was you know that theme of trust and love that’s been running throughout the whole season. They decided to trust this weird alien entity wasn’t trying to harm them and they were right to do it.

Carla: But don’t you think there’s been also this like other sort of thing like pretty on the nose I think about faith in there.

Ben: Yeah there has been a few lines. Yeah and particularly in this episode.

Carla: Particularly in this episode about the bursts and I’m like “What is this?”.

Ben: And interestingly because you know that’s always been a thing where they’ve tried to avoid too many explicit questions about religion in most of the Star Trek shows, it comes up a lot in Deep Space Nine with the whole Bajoran religion and also it’s fairly frequently but not constantly touched upon in Voyager particularly when it comes to Chakotay’s beliefs and then they also do a bit of exploration of Klingon spirituality through B’Elanna’s storyline but it’s usually something they avoid. And that was kind of because you know Gene Roddenberry’s idea of the future we’d move past religion like he saw it as a relic from the past that we didn’t need any more which I think is a simplistic way of thinking about it but I get where he’s coming from in a way. And supposedly Jason Isaac’s said he wasn’t allowed to you know use any sort of profanity which included blasphemy because that would indicate that he had some sort of idea that was religious stuff that he was saying he was told he couldn’t say that I think I read that article was about that so he wasn’t allowed to say that kind of stuff. So yeah. Which means I thought they were continuing that on Discovery. But then I’m not so sure now. But yeah there is a lot of stuff about you know “jump and the net will appear” kind of thinking which is a bit…

Carla: And particularly now tied in parallel with like Pike going “well you know like sometimes it’s better not to know you know”. It’s just it’s been a bit it’s been a bit on the nose, eyebrow raising for me but I think it’s helped them to kind of maybe flub a fair bit of stuff in the story line some kind of get it all wrapped up. So that’s really like the biggest thing isn’t it? It’s like are they going to go to the future?

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: I can’t really…

Ben: How they’re going to get out of it if they don’t? Is the other question.

Carla: Yeah that’s true. And what does the vision mean you know? Is that a separate timeline? I kept having like freak outs that they were in some kind of temporal rift already.

Ben: Oh right.

Carla: So, they were in a loop and something and that was why that she, everyone sort of kept seeing the death of everybody on the Enterprise. Like do you remember that episode was a was it of Voyager where like they were just in a loop where they all died all the time?

Ben: Yeah yeah.

Carla: And I thought maybe that was what was happening with this but obviously not. Well who knows.

Ben: Yeah. I don’t know. I thought it was. I think it’s significant that both Michael and Reno see the same glimpse of the future although she does see the longer one where you know Leland shoots everyone but they both see that specific detail about this photon torpedo in the Enterprise. For me that was a bit weird because I’m like “Well we know the Enterprise doesn’t get destroyed because this is happening in the prime timeline”.

Carla: So that’s why I keep thinking about temporal…

Ben: Do you think they’re going to splinter Discovery off into its own timeline?

Carla: No no I just thought that maybe there’s like some kind of alternate loop happening.

Ben: Oh right.

Carla: Right. They have to bring the timelines back together.

Ben: A bit kind of like the Harry Mudd episode from season one.

Carla: Yeah exactly. Exactly.

Ben: Okay.

Carla: So that’s what I was that’s what that was the only thing that kind of gave me that indication.

Ben: Yeah, we’re definitely going to get some Star Wars style action next episode though.

Carla: Well and also this episode like the intros and the outros are like full movie, style, length scenarios with their special effects.

Ben: Yeah. Yeah. That’s true. I was thinking more you know we’re going to get a big space battle.

Carla: Oh, I thought you meant like the guy that looked like the red-faced guy. (laughs) Darth Maul.

Ben: (laughs) Oh that guy the pointy face, the spiky face guy. Yeah. No, he’d look great. We should talk, we’ve got to talk about the Enterprise though.

Carla: Holy shit. I actually, like, had tears. I had like little skin prickles.

Ben: I respect that but I’m not very as nostalgic about the original Enterprise. They’re not my favourite crew. They’re great.

Carla: I think you’ve seen all the films?

Ben: I enjoy the films. Yeah, I’ve seen all the films. But I thought they did an amazing job of re-imagining what it would look like given the style that they’ve done Discovery in. Thought that was brilliant. And I love any time you get to see that kind of stuff like…

Carla: That was the wonder in it for me. You know I was like “whoa”.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: And I love Georgiou’s comment she’s just like “bleurgh so orange”. (both laugh)

Ben: Yeah yeah. You just wanted to be black and broody. Yeah. No, I thought that was. That was awesome to see all the crew in their uniforms. That’s a lot of set and a lot of…

Carla: I was thinking the exact same thing Benjamin.

Ben: Outfit to build. So surely, they’ve got to reuse it for something. I mean you think the Enterprise is going to come back next season.

Carla: Oh, look it’s you know it’s going to be well you know like it could also cross over into Section 31 show as well. So, it could be used in that show. I’d assume.

Ben: Yeah that’s a good point.

Carla: You know?

Ben: Yeah it’s I think it’s a thing where maybe they’ve just seen I mean this probably doesn’t work in the timeline of production but I was going to say that they saw how well bringing Spock and Pike went and so they’re like well we should have do some more stuff with this. And again, you know it seems weird to past Rebecca Romijn as Number One and then use her in like two episodes.

Carla: Are you speculating that there’s going to be another Enterprise show?

Ben: I don’t know that there’ll be a separate show. I mean there’s a lot of fans calling for it. I think that’s unnecessary. And I do want to say like Discovery has really been – I just I’ve loved it for itself. I don’t really need this other stuff it’s been really cool seeing the Pike and Spock and Enterprise stuff coming in. But I want to see more of Discovery.

Ben: Yeah. I mean we just Saru just got made captain of the ship although he was like “We’ll talk about it later”, I was like “what!”.

Carla: I just think it’s so funny that we were talking last episode we’re like “Oh I think Michael is going to go” and then we were like “Oh who’s going to be the captain?”. And now I’m like Michael’s going to go and she’s going to be the captain!

Ben: Yeah. Well yeah maybe it could happen.

Carla: And that sort of look like what the head nods were kind of a sort of circulating don’t you think?

Ben: It was, well I mean look I interpreted it as he was… I just don’t know why he didn’t say it like he says she’s going to need a new captain and he like taps the chair and he looks at Saru and Saru is like coy about it.

Carla: Because Saru is the more senior officer. And that’s…

Ben: An I, and also, he’s just kickass now, I think he is the right choice for captain and Michael might die. She’s going to be in a suit out in space. I mean I hope not. I want to make that clear. Because I just you know the thing about Michael this season and I said this a few times early on is it felt like she was really kind of being backgrounded in a weird way and which she’s the main character of the show and yet. And while the plot technically was so much about her, this season, for a long time we didn’t know that. And it felt like she just wasn’t being used very much. And so, I will be really disappointed if they get rid of her and continue the show but I’m really glad that the rest of the crew is going with her because it makes me feel that whatever happens that’s not going to be it. Like they’re all going together.

Carla: I feel like they’re creating a new show or like they’re just bringing like Discovery’s…

Ben: Soft reboot kind of…

Carla: Exactly.

Ben: It’s the same show it’s continuing on but we’re changing the format.

Carla: Because like in the first season they all went to the Terran universe. That was like, that was the Discovery show. This is like you know whatever this is.

Ben: This is Discovery “Love and Hope” edition. That’s what it is. And I love it so much so.

Carla: So, and then next season it would totally make sense that they, and but like when not the whole, pretty much the whole bridge crew signed up to go was like “Oh yeah. This is what’s happening” because, and that’s why I think that Michael was going to leave was because so many of the main characters are leaving. It’s like Pike and Spock are going back.

Ben: Yeah but they’re always temporary.

Carla: Yes, that’s true. But Jet, Jet’s going not she’s not the show’s main character Georgiou she’s going to go get her own show on Section 31 so it’s like.

Ben: Is Reno definitely leaving?

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: So, she’s not sticking around?

Carla: No.

Ben: That’s a shame I feel like we could have had more of her.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: I mean you know…

Carla: So then is she going to die and maybe she’s the one who dies.

Ben: Well yeah, I don’t know.

Carla: I’ve got so many other little notes here. Sarek trying to smile was truly traumatizing.

Ben: That was weird was that I. I kind of liked it but also, I got to say something actually about that because in that scene he passes the buck back to Spock about the distance between them. He’s like “Yeah I respect it, I’ll keep my distance like he suggested”. But when you watch that original series episode it really does not seem like that’s how it’s been and they haven’t spoken to each other for 18 years and Spock’s just like “we won’t speak now” but he’s clearly not necessarily happy about it and Amanda sort of is certainly like this is “balls” whereas in this episode she’s like “mm hmm mm hmm yeah. You’re a dickhead but I love you”. You know that’s kind of her attitude here. That was weird. What do you think about that scene? Was it necessary?

Carla: No, I don’t. Look you know I think in terms of like everybody got a goodbye because I’m assuming that we probably won’t see Sarek and Amanda again either.

Ben: Well not if they’re like 1000 years in the future.

Carla: So, I feel like everyone got their goodbye.

Ben: Yeah it was weird it’s weird.

Carla: It was really uncomfortable. I was just like “I want this to stop now please. Cut”.

Ben: Well I also I thought from a pacing and perspective like it really kind of undercut the tension because it’s like we’re in a race against time but somehow my parents have found time to get here from Vulcan to say goodbye and you’re like “what”. And somehow found us as well why I guess we don’t know the whole you know the linking of the katras thing but yeah. But if that’s true why did they need the Red Angel’s help to find her in the forest when the monster was eating her?

Ben: Well they didn’t know the monster was eating her.

Carla: I guess that’s true. They didn’t know that she’d run away but he hadn’t katra mind melded with her by then.

Ben: Ok fair. He hadn’t done that was before she got… No that was after she got blown up! That was the whole reason she was running away. (both laugh).

Carla: Okay.

Ben: Look. That’s fine. I’m sure there’s a way to explain that. I’ll think about it and be great.

Carla: Well and now we know like Nhan’s going, sweet!

Ben: Oh yeah, she’s sticking around.

Carla: And Po’s going as well?

Ben: That’s weird isn’t it?

Carla: So weird but I’m also totally down.

Ben: Yeah, she’s great. She kind of disappeared from the episode after she told Tilly that I was really surprised she wasn’t in that scene later where Tilly, Stamets and Reno are looking at the crystal. I’m like “where are you?”. Or is she just staying? Maybe she ended up staying on the Enterprise because she’s not like going into the future with them. She’s just not going back to where she’s going to help battle Section 31.

Ben: Yeah, I think maybe that’s because it was a bit confused. So maybe she’s on the Enterprise somewhere but don’t really see her after that point on it or at least I don’t remember seeing her.

Carla: And Hugh going to the Enterprise.

Ben: Yeah. What?

Carla: What?

Ben: What does that mean he’s leaving the show. I don’t want him to leave either.

Carla: No.

Ben: But then I don’t know. How do you feel about what they did with that storyline this episode? Like one scene and it’s like Hugh not saying the thing and letting Paul say the thing which is like “oh you right we should go our separate ways”.

Carla: So awkward like they’ve been lovers for like you know a decade or something.

Ben: They’re married like you know?

Carla: Yeah. I don’t know what’s going on there but I do like that Paul was like he had come to some kind of acceptance like he’d obviously processed it to the point that he was like “I’m going to try and make a decision that’s good for my mental health”.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: So that was positive I think and I think like sort of maybe Hugh was building a bridge to kind of be like “I don’t hate you” because it was pretty bad the last time, they were sort of communicating. So, this was more them coming together a little opening up the lines of communication.

Ben: Sure. Yeah.

Carla: I think it just made that feel better I guess for everyone and sort of give more context as to what’s happening.

Ben: Yeah, I go with that but it’s still I mean it just felt like though I don’t know felt like a scene in like a very serious drama like a romantic drama. Where like the two people they want to be together but something’s in the way and neither of them will just like say what they feel. And we’ve had, we’ve talked about how we’ve mostly avoided that this season where people are keeping things from each other which has ruined their relationships or been a contrivance of the plot. This doesn’t feel like a contrivance of the plot it does feel like genuine angst that real people would have. But it’s still immensely frustrating I’m like “Look guys just kiss already. Just come on” and I was just yeah. If they don’t if they don’t sort that shit out and next episode, I’ll be so sad. I’ll be bereft. I’m just worried it’s going to end up like, kind like at the end of season two of the new Doctor Who. Spoiler alert if you haven’t seen it. Where Rose and the doctor get separated and I kind of felt that it’s not quite the same for me cause I kind of felt that relationship needed to go somewhere else anyway but they instead of having a proper resolution they just sort of tear them apart unwillingly like they end up in separate universes.

Carla: That’s not very nice.

Ben: And I kind of feel like that might be what’s in Hugh and Paul’s future and I don’t want that for them I want them to either work it out or be okay with it. And while Paul seems to have sort of figured it out for himself.

Carla: There’s no way they could do that to those characters.

Ben: Hugh’s definitely not okay with it. He’s hiding it, he’s swallowing it but he’s realized he was wrong to push Paul away, I think.

Carla: Well that’s a bit of projection I think Ben.

Ben: Well maybe I don’t know but it seems like…

Carla: I think I think like a minimum he’s realized how much he’s hurt Paul.

Ben: Yeah, minimum for sure.

Carla: And that’s kind of like it was a regret.

Ben: He’s full of regret.

Carla: Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s minimum. I’m not sure about, like, lovey-kissy.

Ben: Sure.

Carla: But you know like actually kind of accepting how much he had felt pain in the situation.

Ben: Maybe I just want some people to like to be together on this show, cause Michael and Tyler.

Carla: (chants) “Po and Tilly, Po and Tilly”.

Ben: Oh yeah, I could see that but she’s got a whole planet to run.

Carla: That’s true.

Ben: That’d only ever be, you know, a sometimes kind of relationship. But I could see that that would be fun.

Carla: I could see them…

Ben: I mean they’re totally compatible…

Carla: As Marceline and Princess Bubblegum from Adventure Time and just have their own little kingdom together.

Ben: That would be amazing.

Carla: Engineering together.

Ben: Yeah that would be cute. Yeah but what about Tyler?

Carla: Their goodbye was actually very heartbreaking.

Ben: That was that was yeah that hard.

Carla: Yeah that was a sucker punch.

Ben: He’s like basically owning that, yeah, “look I told you I believe in their mission” and he does like he’s sticking to his guns but he’s now also like “someone’s got to stick around to make sure they don’t fuck up things again like they did this time”.

Carla: But I also think that he’s someone who has just made a really good emotional decision for himself. He’s like “this is who I am. This is what I want to do. I’ve got a kid, I’m not going to fucking go a thousand years into the future, no matter how much I love this person that I have an incredibly tumultuous relationship with. I’m going to like do a solid for myself and see how shit works out in this timeline”.

Ben: What do you think he’s gone off to do?

Carla: Don’t know. That’s a very very good question.

Ben: Do you think he’s gone…

Carla: I reckon he’s going to go and get Tenavik.

Ben: Yeah. I was going to say do you reckon he’s gone to Boreth to get like… Yeah, he’s going to visit the time lords. Has he gone, has he gone to find someone who knows more about time crystals?

Carla: I don’t know. Oh, just like a rally the freaky deaky troops?

Ben: Maybe. Ah. What if he takes his torch bearer status and comes back with a fucking Klingon battle fleet to blow up Section 31. How sweet would that be?

Carla: That would be good.

Ben: I mean it wouldn’t work because he’s supposed to be dead and the Klingon. That’s a giant leap.

Carla: (laughs) That’s true I forgot about that.

Ben: But but but it was a sweet thought for the two seconds it took for me to realize how wrong it was.

Carla: There’s only a few other notes I have for this – original torpedo sound.

Captain Pike: [From episode](torpedo sound effect) “Fire”.

Carla: Killed me.

Ben: Ah and also the original door sound when they get on the Enterprise.

Saru: [From Episode] “All Discovery crews accounted for the Enterprise.” (door swoosh sound)

Carla: Oh my god!

Ben: It made me realize that we hadn’t heard it on Discovery like their door sound is different. And I didn’t realize that but it was great. Yeah.

Carla: I have Georgiou’s best quote for this which is she calls a Michael “some galactic rubber band with a martyr complex”. (both laugh)

Ben: That is amazing.

Carla: Whoever is writing Georgiou’s dialogue is having a great time.

Ben: That’s true.

Carla: Other than that, I thought Pike looked ragged. Obviously, everything is playing on his mind.

Ben: He’s been through the wringer.

Carla: And still so elegant and kingly in shutting everything down.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: Wrapping everything up.

Ben: Yeah, he was really onto it and just the way he’s just again you know the kind of show we need right now – a leader showing great empathy for the people that he is in command of.

Carla: And dignity.

Ben: Yeah absolutely.

Carla: Immense dignity you know and really understanding what people need in order to thrive in their relationships and in their working life. You know for me, like him and Michael like, Emmys for sure man.

Ben: Oh yeah.

Carla: Like unbelievable performances.

Ben: Oh yeah.

Carla: And they carried a lot of this show when it was like pretty loose in terms of storyline and everything that was happening. Their performances really floated the boat in this sometimes so. Yeah, I hope they get the accolades that they deserve.

Ben: Yeah, they should be up for that for sure. What did you do? I mean I obviously you know famously I love the extended bridge crew and they all got little while lots. Most of them got little moments. I thought they might give Nilsson a bit more dialogue in this episode but she didn’t get any. She was there. She got like Pike talked about her but she didn’t get to say anything that was interesting so I wonder if she’ll get a bigger role next season if she’s still around.

Carla: Well she’s going with so…

Ben: she’s going with them which has been a surprise he’s like “Do you even know each other?”. I guess you do but yeah, I loved that a little letter writing scene.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: You get that little short backgrounder reminder. I particularly like Owosekun’s one where she’s like writing to her family going “I know you don’t understand” because she’s from the Luddite community so she’s like “I don’t you understand me going out to space on a starship and learning how to use this technology”. But yeah, I just loved all of those little moments though they were great.

Carla: Yeah, I think they’ve done a really good job of carefully giving us like little breadcrumbs so that we know enough. And so, like for this. So, we’re set up for the next season like we’ve got a pretty good profile on the bridge crew. We don’t really know much about Rhys or Bryce. But that will happen soon. I think.

Ben: They might be our only characters next season, like we might not get a new captain. It might be Saru in charge and yeah who knows?

Carla: So exciting.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: Do you want to go to Short Chats?

Ben: I think we should.

Carla: OK.

Carla: Now it’s time for re:Discovery Short Chats, where we talk news trivia and anything related to anything now. We will also be taking questions but we only have one more episode. So, send in all of your questions to our social media. Yeah maybe if you have like season wrap up questions maybe we could do like a little short episode after the season and answer some questions.

Ben: That  might be a good idea.

Carla: Yeah so send them through. What do you have today Ben?

Ben: I don’t know that I have a lot to be honest. I was kind of emotionally overwhelmed by this episode.

Carla: Fully. It was hectic.

Ben: And it’s also been quite a hectic week and weekend for me so I watched it late at night in bed and I and I loved it but I was just sort of yeah left going “What!”. But I am intrigued by the visions of the future and what they’re going to mean and I think you know I was thinking about other shows that have done those sorts of future visions and other times we’ve seen those sorts of glimpses of the future. It’s not clear which kind of time travel future glimpse we’re looking at in those situations. Mm hmm. So, is it like Pike taking the crystal, this is definitely a future? And if so, what does that mean, how are you going to get out of it? Or is it like this a potential future now you have the means to avoid it like in so many other you know time travel stories. So, I was I was thinking along those lines and I’m just not I’m not sure.

Carla: Well mine is completely superficial.

Ben: I’m fine with that.

Carla: Hugh is like Wolverine level ripped, like it’s ridiculous.

Ben: Yeah yeah.

Carla: And your kind of a bit like don’t want to objectify him but you’re just like “whoa what is happening under that uniform?”. Go to his Twitter account. All these people are calling for him to be some black superhero. I don’t know what the superhero is and he’s like “Yeah hire me”. Like pulling up his shirt full Myspace selfie picture and the dude is like he’s like the most ripped person I’ve ever seen in my life.

Ben: Well I mean when he had his shirt off a few episodes ago I mean well…

Carla: He was probably doing a bit of a power pose as well like you know turning on to the side and got those obliques and everything.

Ben: But when his body got rebuilt like it got rebuilt with like 0 percent fat. Not 0 percent you know 0 percent excess fat. It’s like he’s like you are at peak human condition my friend.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: And yeah look he’s amazing.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: I want to see him and more stuff for sure.

Carla: I’m always curious about the white uniforms. Like I’m like “Yeah, I guess what you don’t ever deal with any kind of body fluids anymore, Star Fleet medical?”.

Ben: Well they just chuck it in a disposal unit and print a new one. Like it’s not a problem, I guess. But it’s good. I mean you want to. It’s like when you wear a lab coat you wear a white lab coat because you want to know when you’ve spilled things on you. That’s why they’re white. Because if you spill something on yourself you don’t want to be like “oh I didn’t notice because a black uniform and now my skin is burned off”. You want to know immediately.

Carla: I’m such a grub that I’m like I see anyone wearing a white anything and I’m like “wow you think you’re the king of England”. (both laugh)

Ben: It is weird because he never from memory, you don’t see such a distinctly different medical uniform in any of the other shows. They just wear the same uniform as the science division. So, I think it’s good in that sense to me but yeah, he does look good in it. He fills it out well.

Carla: So, then I have one question left for you.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: Is like are you are you going to be watching Friday Night? Are you going to download? Are you busy? Are you watching on Saturday? What is your what is your situation?

Ben: Look I’m going to watch it as soon as possible.

Carla: 7:00 p.m. Netflix release, Friday Australian Eastern Standard Time?

Ben: Yeah, I mean I haven’t fixed my schedule for next weekend. It’s all over the place at the moment but I’m hoping I will watch it as soon as it comes out. There’s no I mean I’ve avoided spoilers this whole season. There’s no way I want this last one so I’ll be keeping off the Internet that day.

Carla: You got to do you can’t be on from midday Friday.

Ben: Okay. Because that’s when it’s on.

Carla: That’s when the first screening happens, I think. Eastern, on East Coast time.

Ben: Yeah right. Yeah. Okay.

Carla: So 12:00 p.m. It’s cactus but until 7:00 p.m. which is like, that was the reason why I started downloading it because it’s too long of an internet blackout for me.

Ben: It’s hard.

Carla: It’s just Twitter. But still you know what I mean like.

Ben: Yeah. Although I don’t, I find that as long as I’m not looking at the feed from the re:Discovery podcast account it’s not too bad because I don’t follow that many big Star Trek fans it seems on my personal account. I don’t know why but I don’t see as much.

Carla: No, they probably just have the sense to not spoiling anything.

Ben: Yeah back in the day you know when there was no internet downloading of episodes or streaming and if you wanted to see a show that was aired overseas before it got here which was usually like six to 12 two for infinity months later what you had to do is ask somebody in another country to tape it for you and mail you a cassette. I got stuff like Sliders the first season of Sliders I got from America. I think with season seven or eight of Red Dwarf I got on VHS from someone in the UK via a friend here in Melbourne and we were very respectful of spoiler space back in those days because the main way you talked to people online overseas was on mailing lists or newsgroups and so what you would do to avoid people reading your spoilers is you would to a “dot dot dot dot dot dot” and you’d words in that said “spoiler space” and you respected it because it’s like you might not be able to see this for 12 months. Let’s not have a whole conversation about it that excludes you because you can’t watch it yet and I think you know that’s the dimension of spoilers that people forget it’s not just about preserving a surprise for someone it’s also about not locking somebody out of a discussion because you can’t talk about this because you haven’t seen it so you haven’t got an opinion about it all you can do is listen to our opinions about it and ask questions and I think that’s an element of why spoilers are important that often gets forgotten.

Carla: I’m ruthless if anybody spoils anything for me, I unfriend them and unfollow them.

Ben: It’s like this is not happening again no.

Carla: Bye see ya later. I had I had the Drag Race finale ruined for me once and I was like “That’s it!”.

Ben: Oh wow.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: Yeah. I’m not that ruthless but I’m quite cautious.

Carla: Come on mate. We’ve had the internet forever. Like everyone knows what the deal is.

Ben: I think now though people expect that everyone has seen relatively easily see something.

Carla: No there’s a 48-hour embargo.

Ben: You know what I got spoiled about the worst one I got was the “Red Wedding” in Game of Thrones and it got spoiled for me by the M.C. of an event I was speaking at and being at that event was one of the reasons why I hadn’t seen it yet. And he spoiled it on stage for the whole audience and I was, I was not impressed.

Carla: What a jerk.

Ben: What it was like “that is not cool dude” like he thought you were making a cool hip reference but it’s like Sunday and this was aired in the US on Friday like that is not cool.

Carla: Yeah that’s not cool.

Ben: So yeah, I was I was unimpressed by that.

Carla: All right well we’ll hit play together at the same time.

Ben: Is that a pact?

Carla: And then we can message each other on Slack.

Ben: Okay well we’ll do it. That’s a pact.

Carla: All right. And you guys as well hit us up as soon as you’ve watched it. No spoilers though on the Twitter.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: We want to hear what you think and how you feel.

Ben: And tweet the re:Discovery pod account because you know that way if we haven’t quite got there yet we can ignore it.

Carla: You’ve been listening to re:Discovery. All links to creators are in the show notes on our website rediscoverypodcast.com. We’d love to connect with you, as we’ve just said, so please add us on Twitter and Facebook @rediscoverypod.

Splendid Chaps: re:Discovery is brought to you by Splendid Chaps Productions. Find more entertainment for your ears at splendidchaps.com.

This is a transcript of our twelfth season two recap, available here.

Captain Pike [From Episode]: You believe in service, sacrifice, compassion. And love.

re:Discovery theme plays.

Ben: Hello and welcome to re:Discovery. The Star Trek recap podcast which promises not to show you a horrifying glimpse of your dark fate. I’m Science Officer Ben McKenzie and, as always, I’m joined by Captain Carla Donnelly. Greetings Captain.

Carla: I would never sacrifice myself for you like that Ben, just letting you know.

Ben: It’s good to know where I stand in this week’s episode “Through the Valley of Shadows” opens with Michael taking a call from Amanda, who’s dressed in full Princess Leia mode, and knows about Burnham senior from Spock. But before she can do more than ask the two of them look after each other it’s time to go. A new Red Burst has appeared this time over Boreth, the Klingon monastery where Tyler left his son. Michael realizes he’s hiding something and goes to him. He tells her about his son, and she comforts him. L’Rell arrives to negotiate Federation passage to the planet and she tells Pike and Tyler that, aside from the monastery, Boreth is also the source of the time crystals – another reason outsiders are not permitted to go there. Tyler insists he go but she forbids him saying the danger to the Empire is too great if either of them is discovered alive. Pike offers to go in his stead, but L’Rell warns him that no one can take a time Crystal without great sacrifice. Burnham meanwhile gets permission from a very assertive Saru to follow up a lead – a Section 31 ship has checked in 10 minutes past its scheduled time.

Ben: Saru orders Spock to go with her. On Boreth, Pike meets the timekeepers – the Klingons, who guard the crystals and tell him he’s come for nothing. But when he persists, they tell him those to whom the crystals are revealed leave broken. Reno arrives at lunch in the mess to tell Stamets they’ll soon be working on a time crystal. But Stamets is distracted by seeing Hugh reinstated in uniform hanging out with other crew members. He heads off to prep on his own. Tenavik the Klingons, showing Pike around the monastery reveals his Voq’s son, already grown thanks to the influence of the time crystals. WHAT! In their shuttle Michael and Spock debate whether she is the common denominator in the Red Signals when they arrive at the Section 31 ship, they run into its crew who’ve been left to die in space. They beam aboard the only survivor who turns out to be Gant, the tactical officer from the Shenzhou. He says he was investigating a suspicious subroutine when the computer took over and ejected everyone into space. But they’ll only be able to find out more by revisiting the ship. L’Rell and Tyler have a moment together. She tells him she understands that he is in love with Michael and that she has made her peace with Voq being dead and Tyler being someone else.

Carla: On Boreth, Tenavik takes Pike to the chamber where the time crystals grow and warns him that everyone meets their fate when they come into contact with them. Is he ready? Pike grabs one crystal and is transported to a disaster happening on a star ship. A group of cadets are in serious distress. Radiation is leaking at critical mass. In a truly upsetting sequence Pike witnesses his fate – to be severely disfigured in the accident. And just like when you wake up out of a dream to realize you’re still in it, Pike is then standing in a hallway when he sees something robotic coming towards him. He comes face to face with his future self. Horribly disfigured from radiation exposure unable to walk or talk. Pike screams and wails in distress. Tenavik asked him whether he accepts his destiny because to take a crystal is to… err, crystallize it. (both giggle)

Carla: Pike chants the reasons he is a Starfleet captain and agrees to take the crystal believing he has no other choice to save humanity. Tenavik nods in respect. On board the Section 31 ship fool-me-thrice Michael and Spock find out that, of course, Gant has been overtaken by Control. The Control ship takes off to destination unknown, leaving Michael in a struggle to the death with the Control nanobots. Spock saves her just in time by magnetising the floor. Spock convinces Michael that she is a threat to Control, which means there’s still a chance things can be saved. They hurry back to Discovery. Reno visits Hugh and gives him a gay to gay power chart. She reveals her wife died in the Klingon war and tries to give him perspective, albeit in the least persuasive tone possible. Michael and Spock make it back to Discovery just in time for 30 Section 31 ships to turn up. It’s showdown time. Michael convinces Pike the only way to destroy the sphere data is to destroy Discovery. Pike begins the self-destruct protocol.

Ben: Man.

Carla: Whoa.

Ben: Serious business. This is a pretty grim episode Carla.

Carla: Yeah dude. I cried a couple of times.

Ben: I mean I was fully into it though. This was a good one.

Carla: Yeah for sure.

Ben: You think so?

Carla: It really. Yeah. Its sucker punched you gave you a lot of, gave you a lot of meaningful thread wrapping up moments. That really winded me that whole Pike scene I was like “whoaaaaaa”.

Ben: You know I knew I knew it would be something I thought he might get a glimpse his future but not quite like that.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: Like once when they started talking about “oh you know time crystals you have to pay some sort of price” I’m like “but we know his future. Is he going to see his futu-WHAT”? And then they made him choose it, I was like “Oh man”. Wow that was full on.

Carla: Well it wasn’t really a choice was it? It’s like I have to sacrifice myself or you know…

Ben: Yeah. It’s like everyone dies or I know my own future.

Carla: But also, he doesn’t know that he gets to go back to Talos IV.

Ben: No, he doesn’t know that.

Carla: So that’s kind of sweet as well. Bittersweet, I guess.

Ben: Yeah. He gets a better ending than he thinks he’s going to get.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: But that makes his sacrifice more meaningful.

Carla: Well and then also like he was sacrificing himself to help the kids. Like this is his deal. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Ben: Yeah, he’s the good guy. Yeah, he’s the good cowboy as you put it.

Carla: (laughs) Yeah.

Ben: Without all the shit bits.

Carla: No.

Ben: Yeah. No, I really liked that. But yeah it was it was rough.

Carla: Where do you want to begin?

Ben: Well look I think there’s I mean there’s a couple of main threads in this episode.

Carla: Sure.

Ben: I mean there’s Pike’s adventures on the planet, but also, we’ve got a few emotional wrap ups here. What you think about Michael and Spock finally teaming up on a mission like, have we not been waiting for this to happen properly? Because like when…

Carla: I’m so disengaged by this relationship I was like “Who cares”.

Ben: Oh really?

Carla: Yeah.

Carla: Because it always feels like it’s about them anyway, so it was a pivot I guess in the way that it was productive.

Ben: Yes, I guess that’s true.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: Yeah. Did you smell the trap? I mean was…

Carla: Of course. This is so stupid.

Ben: I mean as soon as soon as we met Gant and it was like “I know this guy” I’m like “He’s fucking got nanobots in him. What are you doing?”. And actually, there’s a bit where when Michael’s talking to him Spock’s like looking and I’m like “he’s suspicious”. But then I don’t think he was and I, and because he didn’t act at that point – because I thought he was going to pull a phaser on him or something and Michael was going to go” What are you doing”. He’s like “He could have been taken over by Control because he would have been logical about it”. But no, they’re fooled. And I’m like “Why do you not think this is a thing that could happen like you know that it’s taken over…”.

Carla: I literally said “fool me thrice” because it’s happened twice before.

Ben: Yeah. (laughs) Yeah. Yeah.

Carla: Right!

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: Seriously.

Ben: Holograms, then Leland, now Gant. You think he’s named after the chart?

Carla: No. Because it’s two Ts.

Ben: Oh yeah that’s true he’s only got one.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: Yeah that makes sense.

Carla: Good one, project management humour, thanks Ben. (laughs)

Ben: (laughs) Well we want to reach some audiences out there.

Carla: No, for me it was like, because look Michael’s whole arc is about controlling her emotions or being human or the intersection between the two.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: Right.

Carla: So as soon as her nostrils flared when that Section 31 ship hadn’t checked in and I was like “Oh here we go”. Because she was, she was on a revenge mission.

Ben: Yeah, I did think that when Saru gave her the okay to go.

Carla: That was weird.

Ben: Well I kind of liked it in the sense that it’s like “oh yeah new Saru” but also, I was like “Is this not obviously a trap to anyone else?” like that don’t even mentioned the possibility. And all Spock says is “Saru sent me to make sure that you know you didn’t let your emotions get in the way”. I mean I’m…

Carla: Too late.

Ben: Lucky, yeah well lucky that he did go. Or you know Michael would be nanobot-isized. Is that the right word?

Carla: Sure. Actually, that was, I love that whole sequence so yes. The needle in the eye necessary to inject the nanobots. Why it has to go in the eye I don’t know?

Ben: Yeah well because it didn’t cause the whole thing. Leland wasn’t taken over until it jabbed him in the back of the neck.

Carla: Now I’m so sure it was in the eye.

Ben: But no because remember because after that he’s in the chair and they’re talking to him as a hologram and then they jab him in the neck.

Carla: Yeah but I think they just gave him more or something.

Ben: Okay but now we got to see a bit how they worked.

Carla: Yeah. That was cool.

Ben: And they’re like they’re just filling up his body and she like blows a hole in him with the phasers and now we know why phasers don’t work.

Carla: A whole T2 kind of deal.

Ben: Yeah. Yeah it was cool but also I like that we finally got a bit of Control’s motivation and it is that whole but it was it’s a I like it they added an extra layer of sophistication because it is like “I have to kill you all to save all life” but he’s more than that Control’s like “I want to turn myself into the ultimate form of conscious sentient life. And then I can destroy all other sentient life because then sentient life will be safe because it’ll just be me and I won’t kill myself, so it’ll be fine”.

Carla: The ultimate programmer’s response.

Ben: Yeah. Yeah. (laughs) Okay. Is there any are any other professional groups with whom we interact that can piss off this week? Hey actors…

Carla: I’m sure more.

Ben: You’re all dumb. Comedians, you suck. No, I don’t mean that. Yeah. No. I thought I liked that. I like that it was just that extra little nuance that I hadn’t picked up from what we’d already heard.

Carla: Yeah. No, I agree.

Ben: And now it makes sense to me why it wants the Sphere data because it’s making a distinction it’s not just that it’s searching to become sentient or conscious. It’s acknowledging that it is but it wants to be the ultimate version of that. And then it feels then it feels like “once I’ve done that then I can kill everyone else and sentient life will be safe forever”.

Carla: Yeah, I would really love to go to the series. That’s at, that’s at that 500-year mark with the obo-robo-octo.

Ben: Robo-octopus things. Yeah.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: Yeah. That’s interesting because we don’t know when it happens in the future do, we? We know that it must have happened presumably by about 500 years in the future because that’s how old the probe is when it turns into the octopus. But we also don’t know, and it happens before 950 years in the future but we don’t. Apart from that we don’t know when it happens. I mean presumably relatively soon. I mean how long would Control really wants this data and wants to do it now. I mean presuming that means it can use it immediately to become the ultimate sentient being. So, no I don’t know. Yeah, I liked that though.

Carla: I did too. I’d love to really kind of horror style nanobots coming towards the her.

Ben: With the tentacle shapes and stuff.

Carla: Yeah that was really sweet.

Ben: Yeah. And then they got magnetized to the floor. That was that was a nice old school…

Carla: I agree.

Ben: There was a couple a couple of old school. I’ll talk. Actually, I’ll talk. I’ll save that for Short Chats. there’s a couple of old school references in this episode which I don’t know if there were deliberate but I liked them a lot.

Ben: Okay. Yeah. Shall we move on. So that’s Michael and Spock are we all good there?

Ben: Yeah. Let’s talk about Pike’s journey.

Carla: Wow.

Ben: What a full-on experience.

Carla: Yes.

Ben: I did actually. One thing I will say I was just talking about Saru and when they first go down to the planet to show what it’s like there outside the monastery there’s this great like shot matching where Saru’s like face becomes the face of the rock including like his very specific like mouth shape. I thought that was kind of awesome. I really dug that.

Carla: (laughs) I didn’t notice that.

Ben: Yeah. So, there’s this big rock face. It’s like someone’s carved very crudely Saru’s mouth and eyes but also it just looks awesome. Yeah, I really like that.

Carla: That’s great.

Ben: How was the outside of the monastery? But yeah, he goes down in his cool parka.

Carla: Oh my God what a babe.

Ben: Yeah. Yeah but he takes it off he’s just wearing his uniform underneath. I thought he’d be wearing cool arctic clothes.

Carla:  They just wanted to put him in a parka.

Ben: Yes. Yeah. And then he meets, he meets the blue Klingons, the one of whom looks a lot like the Ice King from Adventure Zone I thought.

Carla: Adventure Time?

Ben: Sorry not Adventure Zone, Adventure Time. Adventure Zone is a podcast. We don’t need to spruik that.

Carla: I think they have any blue people there?

Ben: No well actually one of them is an elf who’s blue. In the original storyline so you know. But yeah, I thought that was it was a little Lord of The Rings. What with their get ups.

Carla: Well look to be honest I feel like I’m not sure what I don’t. I don’t know if it’s me but I’m just sort of sure it’s happening with the Klingon, looks in this season they seem to get… they’re progressing in… they feel like they’re evolving because L’Rell looked really different this time.

Ben: Yeah. She didn’t have any hair this time around.

Carla: No and she was kind of blue like she was also kind of blue. Yeah. You know maybe they change colour in proximity to the time crystals?

Ben: I did like, I thought for a minute when we were on the planet that all the Klingons there were blue but there was like a reddish brown one as well so there’s still a bunch of different looks for Klingons.

Carla: Sure…

Ben: But they all seem to have no hair. And yeah, the Voq’s son all grown up, I didn’t see that coming.

Carla: Except for old mate Voq’s son, he’s got hair. He’s got he got the cool prog-rock Klingon hair.

Ben: He’s got his like crown on as well. Yeah cool metal crown. He’s the he should be on an album cover. Klingons are metal as fuck really.

Carla: Yeah fully.

Ben: Yeah and these guys are just like they’re more like fantasy metal or something. I’m sorry. If you’re a metal fan out there please send me the correct subgenre of metal. I’m aware that there’s 4000 of them and I’m not across them all but whichever one is like singing about unicorns and…

Carla: I swear to God they would be like some kind of Klingon, metal band.

Ben: There’s got to be surely, more than one.

Carla: Yeah of course. So whatever that genre is that would be the genre.

Ben: Yeah okay. Yeah. Yeah. Klingon rock? Is that a thing? I mean there’s Time Lord rock they call it “Trock”.

Carla: What?!

Ben: It’s like. You know like indie rock bands singing about Doctor Who and there’s Wizard Rock.

Carla: I don’t want to know this stuff.

Ben: Which is like you know indie rock bands singing about Harry Potter. That’s a whole thing.

Carla: Really?!

Ben: So, there’s got to be Klingon ones.

Carla: Okay.

Ben: Yeah. I want a Vulcan rock band.

Carla: No, they would never do that.

Ben: No. I guess they would be too emotional for them.

Carla: Yeah. I don’t even know what Vulcan music would be?

Ben: Very… I get the feeling like it would be like very precise.

Carla: Precise, like mathematical.

Ben: Like plucked strings that sort of thing.

Carla: Or just one you know like atonal.

Ben: Like that famous piece of music there’s like one note and then a rest that last 10 years and then another note. (both laugh) Yeah.

Carla: Yeah that’s perfect.

Ben: That would be very Vulcan.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: Anyway, Pike meets the Ice King and the other monastery Klingons. And it goes on a quest. It’s very Dungeons Dragons. I kind of loved it.

Carla: Yeah, I did too. But again, it’s just kind of I don’t know like… There doesn’t seem to be enough, there’s not enough consistency in this season for me.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: It’s like that. It’s kind of you know every director comes on to do their episode and they’re like “oh I’m just going to do this”. It’s like “come on guys”. Yeah.

Ben: Did you not plan this? Yeah, I did think it’s a it’s a it is a little weird I think that it’s suddenly revealed that the time crystal is not just a thing. It’s like the Klingons have a whole planet full of them. They just and they don’t let anyone touch them because they think it’s too difficult. So now I’m wondering whether those rumours that Section 31 heard about the Klingons, experimenting with time travel technology are not true. They just someone said that because they heard about “hey there’s time crystals on this planet” and they’re like “oh they must be doing time travel shit”.

Carla: No because L’Rell did say that they had experimented with it but it was too dangerous.

Ben: Yeah. But surely that wasn’t 20 years ago? That monastery has been there for a long time.

Carla: That’s true.

Ben: Yeah. Yeah but then again…

Carla: They may not have had the technology to combine with the time crystals until that point.

Ben: Well also I mean how long has it been there? We don’t know because time doesn’t flow normally there. It’s fucking Narnia on Boreth.

Carla: That’s right.

Ben: That’s what’s happening. There’s no wardrobe though. Just a bunch of cool glowing crystals.

Carla: Oh my God I cried in that sequence. It was so powerful.

Ben: It was full on. It reminded me and I guess I should have thought about this but it’s a little bit like the way Spock dies. Star Trek II.

Carla: Which I also cried in quite significantly.

Ben: Again, radiation business is also a little bit like how the Tenth Doctor dies in the end of time. He also gets some radiation.

Carla: I didn’t cry in that.

Ben: No, I didn’t cry. No that’s not true I did cry a little bit and then they strung out the end for another 15 minutes after he’s supposed to have died. I’m like why am I still anyway. A lot of people find that really emotional. So sorry, sorry. But yeah no it was, it was powerful. What did you think of the… we only got a quick glimpse but it was nice to see a recreation of what the future of Starfleet will look like through the lens of the Discovery design team?

Carla: Sure, I loved his fleet captain uniform.

Ben: It was kind of awesome wasn’t it?

Carla: Yeah it was really hot.

Ben: And the I liked how he found himself in that situation because I got the sense that he wasn’t just sort of observing it. He literally felt like he was there and he very quickly figured out what was going on and just acted the way he would act. And then cut to what seems, you know, it seems like a sinister figure coming down the corridor. And then he realizes it’s him. Like, whoa,  fuck me, just rough just rough.

Carla: So rough!

Ben: So, I’m swearing those episodes because I’m very emotional.

Carla: And one would assume that you can’t become Airiam-ized in the future because of radiation?

Ben: Well I think yeah, it’s that is a problem right because now they’ve established that they have these full body prostheses that can reconnect your brain to your motor functions. It makes this sort of 1960s idea of what that might look like i.e. you are in a chair and you can’t speak or move around kind of weird but I guess…

Carla: I guess it’s kind of like an iron lung type situation.

Ben: Yeah it is because it is keeping him alive.

Carla: Yeah it is. It is kinetically connected to his brain like he is moving it with his mind so that technology matches.

Ben: Oh yeah that’s true but they can’t.

Carla: But he can’t project… OK it doesn’t matter.

Ben: Yeah no but maybe it is it’s the radiation that means is his cells that are still there are too damaged or what have you.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: But yeah, it’s just yeah. Oh, and when he’s when he comes back from the vision though Carla like and they’re like “you have to choose like if you want this crystal you have to accept this is your fate now”. I’m like “what?!”. Yeah this is awful. Like not just you’ve seen it. Now that’s your price. But no, you have to choose. If you don’t take it you might avoid this future. But if you do that’s it. You’re like “Oh man!”

Carla: And now they’re not even going to use the time crystal.

Ben: What do you mean?

Carla: Well they’re going to blow up Discovery.

Ben: Well are they really? I don’t know. What do you think, do you think they will?

Carla: I don’t know.

Ben: It’s a bit dramatic. I mean it’s a drama show. So that makes sense. But.

Carla: Don’t know. We’ll see.

Ben: What about the scene with L’Rell and Tyler where she basically says “I’m letting you go, go off and live your life. I accept that you’re not the man that I loved anymore, you’re too changed now, you’re somebody else. But I see a little bit, I see enough of him in you that I respect you”. How did do you feel about that? You don’t really care?

Carla: I don’t really understand this storyline like I don’t understand why they had to put that scene in there. Because you know she he’s left he’s supposedly dead. The kids you know like but I don’t know I guess that was a nice bit of closure. You know.

Ben: It was nice to know what she thinks about it. And for him to have that moment of course because…

Carla: It makes him more of a choice rather than you know being victims of circumstance.

Ben: Yeah. Yeah. Which I think is nice because then we know we kind of have an expectation that you know she’s not going to show up and battle Michael for the right to be Tyler’s husband. Yeah. So, it’s not. Yeah. I thought that was nice.

Carla: I’m just clocking that as well. That’s clear that that’s back on. Right?

Ben: It is now. Yeah. Well or at least that it will be.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: Yeah yeah.

Carla: You got that vibe too?

Ben: Yeah. I think last…

Carla: She’s so tiny, she’s so tiny because he’s like a normal, well normal-ish size man for an Australian, about 6 foot 2. Yeah. But look when you see her next to him, she’s like almost like up to his belly button. Like she’s just so tiny. It’s crazy.

Ben: Yeah well look you know people overcome these problems every day.

Carla: No, I know I just. It just blows my mind when they had that hugging scene and it’s in profile you like wow yeah you forget how tiny Sonequa Martin-Green is because I guess she’s just such a big presence.

Ben: Yeah, she has a big presence. Yeah. And then and you know the main time when you see her and she is shorter she’s standing next to Saru who’s just taller than everybody, so it doesn’t really matter. But yeah. So, the other thing though from the episode the other thread was Stamets and Reno and that who situation.

Carla: What was all that about?

Ben: I liked when they had. Well as you know I love whenever the bigger crew get involved.

Carla: Oh of course the little scene.

Ben: Yeah, they’re doing their, what was it, autonym?

Yeah.

Ben: It’s auto antonym game.

Carla: Auto anonym yeah.

Ben: Yeah. And Linus our favourite lizard man who is like “oh stupid humans” I can play your game. And everyone was there including you know Lieutenant Nilsson. She was there. That was nice. But yeah then Reno’s like “he can’t concentrate because your boyfriend came back from the dead. Your husband who came back from the dead doesn’t want you anymore”.

Carla: Bit rude that she was like “oh I thought you’d be over that by now”. It’s like “come on mate”.

Ben: She’s a bit awful. She is like and to know and I think it makes even less sense that she’s that awful when we discover that suddenly she’s been through the same thing. Well she’s lost someone. I liked her wedding ring though.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: I was fucking cool.

Carla: Yeah. And that she still talks about her wife as if she’s alive. That was weird.

Ben: Yeah, I think. Well you know written that way for dramatic effect. So, then she could go… “she’s dead”. Oh no. And possibly not human. The way that she described her.

Carla: Yeah, I don’t know what that alien species is.

Ben: It was hard to know if it was an alien species or she’s just saying she’s from another planet, she’s a human who lives on another planet but then why would you say that? That’s like going oh yeah, my husband’s Italian. Like why would you.? Why would I say that? I wouldn’t say that. I would just yeah. Anyway. But it was it was nice, I guess. What do you, I mean they’re really taking that storyline real slow? It’s like here’s a little tiny bit here’s another little tiny bit. Here’s another really little tiny.

Carla: Every time she pops up, I’m like “Oh yeah”.

Ben: Really parcelling it out for you. Yeah. Yeah. And also, Reno’s like “Where the fuck are you? Not here. Like what are you doing?” and I guess it’s like “oh well you just know part of the adventure this week”. Well like surely, they can use an engineer every week. It’s just weird. Is just weird to cast Tig Notaro and then be like “can you come and do five minutes every four weeks?”

Carla: And also, like what it’s just so the gays can stick together? I’m like she hasn’t had any kind of storyline except t0o she’s almost like a “gay magical elf” like she has had to just she’s just existed to project to keep Stamets storyline…

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: Continuing.

Ben: I really hope that like she’s in the last couple of episodes and she does something amazing, some amazing technical jiggery-pokery with the time crystal because I’m just like you know she’s got all of that know how I want to see her use it.

Carla: Yeah for sure.

Ben: It would be great. So yeah, I hope that happens.

Carla: Okay.

Ben: Yeah like she gets the schematics and makes a new red Angel Suit for, that Michael pilots or something.

Carla: Oh, that would be awesome.

Ben: Yeah…

Carla: They don’t have a lot of time though right now because they’re just about to blow up the ship.

Ben: That’s true. And I like that he’s been very organized about “let’s get the hell out of here. Let’s evacuate everyone”. But he also, the look on his face like when in that moment when Michael says the only choice, we’ve got is to blow up the ship which is never the only choice. I mean come on people. But the way Pike looked it seemed to me he was like thinking “but I know that’s not my fate. I don’t die here. I know what my fate is now” and I thought he was going to say …

Carla: They’re not going to blow up the ship with everyone on it.

Ben: No but he is the captain he would presumably stay on board to make sure it blows up right.

Carla: No. Not if you’ve got enough time usually only captain goes down with the ship if they need someone to pilot it whilst everybody escapes.

Ben: Yes that’s true but you might need someone to do that because if you cannot eject or if the crew is all going to get into shuttle craft or escape pods and leave, although there might be enough shuttle craft to carry them all because as we’ve established there’s only about 140 people on board.

Carla: And they don’t do that anymore since the Titanic so.

Ben: Yeah that’s it. That’s right. That’s very important. But if they leave right. What’s to stop the Section 31 ships from just killing them all? I mean they don’t really care about the people but they also don’t want them to get away and warn the rest of Starfleet. And Section 31 is not that big it turns out they’ve only got 30 ships. I mean that’s still quite a lot I suppose and.

Carla: It’s a lot.

Ben: And they’re very high-tech ships with like cloaking devices and weird weapons and heaps of power and stuff so…

Carla: That’s a lot to keep under the radar.

Ben: Yeah it is. It is. Why have people not noticed this? Also, I again like Tyler is just serving on Discovery at this point and sure we know he’s secretly working for Section 31 but he’s just walking around like he’s a member of the crew. I’m like “it’s not very secret. Surely some Klingons, might find out about that and then be like oh he’s not dead” like it’s…

Carla: I was thinking about that as the crew manifest and stuff like that.

Ben: But yeah well, he probably wouldn’t be on the crew manifest, I guess.

Carla: Yeah, I don’t think the Klingons are really caring.

Ben: Now they’re not really talking to Starfleet unless you know someone summons L’Rell. Actually, that was the other scene when Pike is talking to them after he’s been to the planet and he’s saying like “it’s going to be all right your sons okay”. And he gives back the “Torch Bearer” insignia. That was, I liked that too. That was a nice moment. And now. Yeah. Now Tyler’s got it. Does that mean he’s the Torch Bearer? Is that how it works. Again, I don’t know. I mean they don’t really need a Torch Bearer now.

Carla: And like what if Michael and him have a baby. It’s going to be half Klingon.

Ben: Yeah, it’d be like B’Elanna Torres.

Carla: Cool.

Ben: Be turned out really awesome. One hopes before long.

Carla: I don’t have anything else.

Ben: Ok well shall we go to Short Chats?

Carla: I think we shall.

Ben: Now it’s time for re:Discovery Short Chats where we talk news, trivia and anything related to Discovery. And also, any questions you have for us follow our socials and get in touch. And captain we had some interesting theories people have come up with about what’s going to happen at the end of the season.

Carla: Yes, we did a shout out to you guys. We had a couple we had Jessie Scott – Hi Jessie. Just basically said “Borg vibes”. It’s a common theory going around right now.

Ben: I’m really not sure about that. I mean we did we kind of had that discussion we ended up cutting it from episode but yeah, we… I don’t think it’s a Borg thing.

Carla: Unlikely let’s say unlikely.

Ben: Yeah for sure.

Carla: And we had Jez, no Jen “Jazfic” on Twitter saying “I think they’re all going to be flung into the future to fight it out. Control will lose and all life will be saved but Discovery and the Section 31 ship will be stuck there. This is based on absolutely nothing I should add. Just wondering on what a good season cliff-hanger might be.”.

Ben: Yeah OK well that’s a pretty good idea.

Carla: I like that one. Yeah.

Ben: Yeah. Yeah. I like it. We were talking on a previous episode about where Zora comes from.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: And we were talking about whether it’s Airiam’s memories. You had a theory about that.

Carla: Oh well I just thought the part of Airiam memories could have contributed to Zeus quote unquote personality or development as an A.I.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: But that leads into Richard Ingram’s letter.

Ben: All right. Yeah. Yes.

Carla: To us. Hi Richard. Who had the most amazing letter “I have had a suspicion for a while the events of the Short Trek Calypso might be a little peek into the resolution of this season, once time travel became a major plot point especially after “The Brightest Star” was a prequel to one of the storylines”. Yeah good mapping there.

Ben: Yeah. Yeah.

Carla: “Mostly it was Zora a statement that she was under instruction to wait at a specific point. And now after this episode I feel there is more to it as Zora said she was abandoned for nearly a thousand years and Gabriel Burnham was travelling from 950 years in the future. Since the timeline of this story has sentient life in the 23rd century is this the fixed timeline? Once the crew of Discovery deal with Control and the have they purposefully left Discovery to wait for Gabriel Burnham maybe with some tech onboard to bring her home?

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: Mind blown Richard.

Ben: I think that is genius Richard. It really does explain what she’s doing there. She’s waiting for someone and it’s not. What’s his name? It’s Gabriel Burnham. And yeah that makes total sense although we don’t find out where she is. It could be that she’s hanging out near Terralysium which we know is where Gabriel Burnham’s hideout was. So that’s hopefully where she got sucked back to when she got sucked back into the future because otherwise, she’s kind of screwed.

Carla: But it also doesn’t account for the development of Zora.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: So, if she’s just been flung into the thousands into the universe then it’s just the Discovery ship it’s not… but I guess an A.I could develop over 50 years or something like that I’m not sure yet.

Ben: Well I mean I don’t think I think Discovery hasn’t time travelled, I think it’s just waiting 950 years out because an A.I can wait that long. But the main reason or the only reason that I don’t necessarily think that’s what’s going to happen is I feel like we would have to have more of a seed of where Zora comes from. And there’s such an “A.I’s are evil vibe” this this season from because the only one we’ve encountered is Control that I think that’s way too much of an ask to develop that in the last two episodes. You know so I love the idea and I kind of hope that is what happens.

Carla: Me too.

Ben: I suspect that there’s too much work to do to sell us on what and who Zora is. In the last two episodes because he can’t I mean he can’t assume everyone is saying the Short Treks. I mean you know you didn’t need to have seen The Brightest Star to follow the Saru episodes this season.

Carla: No but it’s certainly augmented it.

Ben: Yeah Richard, excellent excellent theory. I love it if you’ve called it maximum props to you. Yeah it is a cool idea. I like it a lot.

Carla: Yeah. And so, thinking about the other Short Treks it did make me remember that we haven’t seen Harry Mudd in this season.

Ben: I don’t think we’re going to.

Carla: No, I don’t think we will either, which is a shame.

Ben: Yeah it’s a shame because he’s great and maybe that’s why they did the Short Trek with him because they’re like “he doesn’t really fit into this storyline, so we’re not going to put him in there’s no room for like a standalone episode where he turns up. Unless I mean I guess he could be if one of the other Red Bursts takes them to where they’ve got to go and there’s I think three left. But there’s only two episodes left.

Carla: I think there’s two left.

Ben: Because this was number five of eight. Now actually this is a point I was a little confused about.

Carla: I thought it was 7?

Ben: Oh no you’re right, 7, 7, so there’s only 2 left. So that makes sense. But this that confused me because I was like “are these ones reappearing in the place where the seven all appeared at once.

Carla: This has been all of my confusion Ben.

Ben: So I think they’re going to have to make that clear because they’ve made it a mystery that nobody knows what the Red Bursts are about but they haven’t really clearly said you know that new ones are appearing in the same places because I get the impression they didn’t. Because otherwise they could just go and visit where the other ones were because they knew where they were.

Carla: But remember they were flashed but it was too fast for them to be like…

Ben: Oh, too far away for them to get you a precise location. Yeah. But I guess they. Yeah, I guess that’s true. So yeah maybe it is that they’re appearing in the same places where they originally appeared but that’s not been made clear to us so I think we’re obviously going to find out.

Carla: And that also brings in another time travelling entity into the conversation.

Ben: You know what though I think I think that’s going to be Michael.

Carla: What!

Ben: Yeah, I think Michael’s going to get in the equivalent of the Red Angel Suit because I think that’s why the brain scan. I don’t. I don’t know. They kind of the hand waved that away but I kind of feel like that would make sense.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: But I don’t know.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: Yeah. Well guess we’ll find out. We’ll find out. Now I do want to talk about I mentioned earlier in the episode that there were a couple of little nods to other things I thought in this story but I think they would just like coincidence, I don’t know if they’re on purpose but when Pike was standing in the corridor in his flashback and the motorized chair comes in the background I’m like “oh shit it’s Davros”. And I’m like “It’s not Davros, I know who it is” but it just felt so sinister because we’re used to seeing that image or at least I am in Doctor Who of like you know the horrible and when you think about it it’s very ablest visual signifying of evil. But it’s you know the twisted and evil wheelchair bound Nazi scientist and Pikes like the opposite of that. He’s like he’s a good guy but he’s in a bad way. So yeah, I thought that was an interesting little…

Carla: I think that was the name of his country album.

Ben: “He’s a good guy but in a bad way” (laughs).

Carla: (laughs) “Good guy in a bad way”.

Ben: That is a good name for an album.

Carla: Captain Pike.

Ben: I’d listen to it. I also thought it’s interesting because Starfleet Captains seem very keen to blow up their ships.

Carla: I remember I remember. Janeway came close.

Ben: Yeah, a few times.

Carla: A few times yeah.

Ben: While the original Enterprise got blown up. That’s why there was an Enterprise A. The Enterprise D, well not, well they almost self-destructed it at a few times and then they kind of crashed into the planet. The Enterprise E, Picard was going to blow it up to stop the Borg but he really didn’t want to. He’s like “No! No more” I love that scene it’s so good. Yeah so, I don’t know I think they blow up a lot of it. It’s kind of reminded me that scene in Galaxy Quest where people are like “why do you build a self-destruct system? What do you need that for? Why is that useful?”. And we know why it’s because aliens are always trying to use Starfleet ships against them. It’s against the people universe and we won’t be party to this but it. Yeah. I’m glad that he’s organizing an evacuation party. That’s good.

Carla: Well let’s see dot dot dot.

Ben: Oh, I did. You know what else I forgot to mention. We did see the return of Spock’s space butt in this episode, only briefly and it was in silhouette. You didn’t get a good look at it this episode.

Carla: This Section 31, I did write down a note to say the Section 31 EV suits were out of control.

Ben: Yeah. (laughs)

Carla: (laughs) Oh sorry. Fucken hell. They were very very sexy.

Ben: There are. They were very good.

Carla: I didn’t see. I have not even peeped. Scott. Scott. Blah. Have not even Spock’s butt. But yeah, I don’t know what’s happening to me I’ve missed it. I’ve got to start paying attention.

Ben: You’ve got to get on board.

Carla: I know!

Ben: It’s good, it’s good business.

Carla: Yeah. Okay great.

Ben: Also, I’m excited because right at the end Pike says contact the XO on the Enterprise. Does that mean we’re going to see Number One next episode? That would be great.

Carla: That’s a good… Yeah. That’s great!

Ben: I hope she comes back; she was cool. I think Rebecca Romijn did a great really great job of playing her.

Carla: But back on Spock’s wardrobe, so like “hipster Spock”.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: I am very kind of disturbed his like low, what are they called Ben?

Ben: Low neckline?

Carla: Yeah. No, it’s not. It’s not a “deep V”. It’s just liked a low neckline.

Ben: (laughs) That’s something else.

Carla: (laughs) In the t-shirts Ben!

Ben: Yeah, I know what you mean. I was distracted this episode by his beard because I don’t know if I don’t know if it’s changed but it’s really pointy on his cheeks. Oh, it’s like got two triangles like coming up on his cheeks.

Carla: “Eyes up here Ben. That’s what it’s saying”.

Ben: I know I stopped looking at my beard. My eyes are up here.

Carla: It’s more like the butt, the butt “my eyes are up here”.

Ben: Yeah. Sorry. Sorry Spock I’m distracted by your beard and your butt. You’re just very pretty.

Carla: He is very extremely pretty.

Ben: Yeah. I mean everyone else is pretty good as well.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: There’s only two episodes left Carla.

Carla: I know!

Ben: Does it feel like two episodes is enough?

Carla: I don’t know so much happened in this episode.

Ben: We did progress a lot.

Carla: I mean I can’t even conceptualize how much can happen in two episodes.

Ben: Actually, this is one of the things worth touching on in Short Chats. We have heard through the rumour mill that big changes are afoot at the end of the season. We don’t know anything more than that.

Carla: What!?

Ben: Not that something’s going to happen. We don’t know. We’ve heard that Spock, as you’ve said Pike and Spock are definitely leaving. So…

Carla: I wouldn’t be surprised if Michael goes either.

Ben: Michael goes?!

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: Who’s the main character of the show?

Carla: Don’t no.

Ben: Tilly? She’s barely in this episode.

Carla: I haven’t seen Tilly in ages.

Ben: She did like she was at the lunch but she didn’t say much. Yeah, I don’t know. She’s maybe she’s got more to do next episode but I don’t think we’ve got time for Bryce and Reese to team up.

Carla: Not yet.

Ben: That’s a shame. Next season.

Carla: Next season. We have the new show runner coming on board so hopefully she’s going to put in a lesbian captain and I would just basically – you can just chuck me into the grave after that. I’ll be done. I’ll be cooked.

Ben: Everything’s cool.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: What if what if what if they go to Vulcan and they get a lesbian Vulcan?

Carla: Nooo don’t Ben! Don’t, I can’t. That’s not ever a possibility.

Carla: Okay.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: All right. Okay. I just thought, I just know you like Vulcans. I was just trying to. Just got to, “how we make it even better?”.

Carla: Nothing could be that good, life could never be that good.

Ben: Yeah. And on that note.

Ben: You’ve been listening to re:Discovery. You’ll find links to all the creatives involved on our web site rediscoverypodcast.com. We’d love to connect with you. Find us on Twitter and Facebook @rediscoverypod.

Splendid Chaps: re:Discovery is brought to you by Splendid Chaps Productions. Find more entertainment for your ears at splendidchaps.com.

This is a transcript of our eleventh season two recap, available here.

Gabrielle Burnham: People think time is fragile precious beautiful sand in an hourglass. But it’s not. Time is savage. It always wins. So, this is meaningless

re:Discovery theme plays

Carla: Hello and welcome to re:Discovery. The Star Trek recap podcast that won’t try to kill you. Let’s face it that’s all we can promise at this point in time in Discovery (both laugh). I’m joined by my Science Officer Ben McKenzie. Ben are you tempted to have further augmentation with nanobots?

Ben: No. No no no no no.

Carla: Nan no bots?

Ben: No no bots! That’s what they are.

Carla: It’s Episode 11 and moving towards wrapping up Season Two’s storyline and a lot of elements of Season One. But not before some more twists and turns namely the Red Angel does not know anything about the Red Burst.

Ben: What!!

Carla: This episode addresses many other things I was confused about. But let’s back it up to a flashback. We meet 11-year-old Michael with her parents on Doctari Alpha. We are shown that, yes Michael’s mother used the time travel suit to get away from the Klingons, sending her 950 years into the future. A future where no sentient life exists. Michael comes to in sickbay, Hugh has been reinstated as a medical officer and is treating her. Michael believes it’s all a dream and is desperately shocked to find out it wasn’t. Her mother is unconscious on Essof IV. She begs to see her but is too unwell. Cut to Section 31 and Leland is being held captive by worker robots that Control’s direction. Control reveals to Leland that it now needs a corporeal presence in order to complete its mission – get the Spheres data. Leland is injected with nanobots that overtake his body and effectively make him a puppet for Control. This is going to end badly. Michael’s mother gains consciousness and is wild with fury. She begs to be released so she can continue her mission to stop Control. She has battled the timeline with over 800 missions, every attempt to change the outcome of total sentient annihilation unsuccessful. Dr Burnham begs Pike to delete the Sphere archive, it is the only way that Control cannot evolve. She has the worn bitterness of someone who has been alone too long and seen too much. She has no patience for chit chat and does not want to see Michael. The crew try to delete the Sphere’s data, but it is too heavily self-protected. They decide to transfer the dash to the suit instead and send it far into the future where it cannot be accessed by Control.

Ben: Spock discovers one of Gabrielle Burnham’s logs explaining that his unique human Vulcan psychology and his dyslexia made him the only person she could successfully communicate with and he and Michael discussed their shared past. They asked Pike to let Michael talk with her mother and he agrees. Since the energy holding her in the present will soon run out and she’ll be snapped back into the future. But Gabrielle remains bitter and stubborn. Only she can save all life from Control and she tells Michael to let her go. Controleland meanwhile had sent Tyler to Discovery to steal the Sphere data claiming he has a secure location in the Section 31 ship’s computer and that he knows Gabrielle Burnham is dead, so is suspicious of the Red Angel. After the data encrypts itself Tyler refuses to go through with the plan and Control Leland surprisingly backs him leaving him aboard Discovery. Instead sends Georgiou to intercept the transfer of data to the suit. Georgiou and Dr. Burnham discuss Michael – mother to mother. But when Gabriel describes Control’s attitude to her using the exact same phrase Control Leland years earlier Georgiou realizes what’s up just as Michael and Stamets arrive with phase two of their plan – using dark matter to power the transporter and free Michael’s mum from the tether back into the future. Georgiou sends Tyler to secretly check on Leland and he discovers Control has taken him over, but too late to avoid being stabbed with a shard of glass.

Ben: Tyler sends a quick warning to Discovery as Controleland beams down and tries to take the data by force. He’s not slowed down by phaser fire, so Georgiou engages him in melee. Gabrielle begs Michael to let her go, there’s no time for the transporter part of the plan. They have to destroy the devices keeping her here so the suit her and the data are taken out of Control’s reach. Burnham, Stamets and Nhan, shoot the emitters and the suit. And Dr Burnham sucked back into the future. Seconds later Discovery beams all crew back aboard and destroys the base with photon torpedoes. But it seems Controleland escaped, leaving behind only an escape pod with Tyler inside.

Carla: Poor Tyler.

Ben: He’s had a rough day. Feeling defeated as Control now has about half of the spheres data., Burnham is comforted by Spock who assures her that what they do now can affect the future and that they can win through a combination of instinct and logic. Carla what’s your instinct about this episode?

Carla: (laughs) I don’t know. I was just grateful to have so many question marks that I had, wrapped up, from last episode about, you know, Hugh what Hugh is doing. What happened to Michael. The thing that we don’t know that’s still leftover is Michael’s dad…

Ben: Yes.

Carla: Big question mark there.

Ben: We don’t know if he’s alive or dead. That’s true.

Carla: And also, I still don’t understand how, I will just refer to as “the suit” because it’s no longer the Red Angel, it doesn’t have an official title Project Daedalus suit or whatever.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: I still don’t understand how the point 950 years in the future is the snap back point.

Ben: Well this is kind of what we were talking about last episode, so we knew that she had have gone into the future and my, and I think what happened was the first time she used it, it went wrong somehow and now it’s doing what it’s supposed to do which is tethering itself to its origin point. But unfortunately, that origin point is the point 950 years in the future.

Carla: Okay.

Ben: Yeah. So, which look I mean whether I get a lot of questions about the logic of how they’ve decided the suit works has because I actually have to say a little bit disappointed by that element of this episode although everything else was great. I thought some of the logical stuff how they point out it works I’m like “that seems a bit dodgy to me”. But look you know I worked it worked for the drama, so I won’t complain too much and still I have I have some questions.

Carla: All right well why don’t you, do you want to ask them what do you wanted to believe it until we see some more episodes?

Ben: I think well I look they might they may well answer them for me. I don’t know but I do. Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know. I will say though if we go right back to the flashback at the start of the episode the whole thing where Michael’s like “they never told me that they worked on a space suit like that that Section 31 and time travel” they’re discussing it openly in front her.

Ben: I mean you know she doesn’t know what “crystal” or “suit” means I guess but still yeah those are I guess they could be things that her parents’ other scientific disciplines are about still. Yeah, I don’t know.

Carla: I thought that was interesting, you know. But I also think that you know it harkens back to the overall theme of this which is trauma and so trauma really warps your ability to recall information like some information you remember like you’re still there and other information just is not. She’s also a child. She doesn’t really have.

Ben: That’s true.

Carla: You know much, I would just say it’s not that she doesn’t have the understanding but she’s a child. She probably has little interest in what her parents are doing together at work. So, it just didn’t register.

Ben: Yeah, she’s really interested in the supernova.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: And being a kid, science kid, weird, weird, nerd science kid.

Ben: Yeah, I can identify with that. But also, she you know she doesn’t have the context. She doesn’t know anything about time crystals or Project Daedalus. So yeah. But I was I was a little bit weirded out that it’s just in the next room in a hidden alcove. Yeah that was a bit that was a bit intense but that’s all right.

Carla: What other things do we have ticked off? Oh yeah. Leland alive.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: Puppet for Control.

Ben: Yeah. So, I think we were both right. Like he wasn’t injected with something. Yeah. He was just stabbed in the eye. But also, he wasn’t dead, and he did get injected with something this episode. So, it’s kind of like both of us were I quite liked that outcome, but awful. Like presumably he’s dead now.

Carla: Yeah, I think like…

Ben: Do you think he’s still in there somewhere?

Carla: I don’t know, I don’t think so. Depends on when Control stops controlling him, I guess such a bad word. We can’t talk about it without it becoming like Dr. Seuss book.

Ben: Yeah. Yeah. I like when I was coming up with a portmanteau for his name Controleland does works.

Carla: I think it’s called a “couples name” Ben (laughs).

Ben: It’s yeah. Okay. Well they I’m shipping them. No, I definitely don’t ship them. Wow. No one should know when you know it first of all no should be shipped by something called Control. That’s that’s red flag 101. But yeah, I don’t know. I have a lot of questions about Control too. I find it very confusing now.

Carla: Hang on I just want to back it up one second.

Ben: Yeah go.

Carla: What I thought was it was happening with the needle was confirmed to me with the first scene that we see him that I was like “okay so if Control, you know, presumably has Control of everything, it’s making these little robots that are like making modifications to the ship in the background”. And so, by seeing these little robots like having him pinned down and all that kind of stuff I’m like “Yeah this is what he’s doing here”.

Ben: Okay.

Carla: We don’t know what I’m saying who we don’t know how far developed Control is already, you know what I mean?

Ben: Yeah, I interpreted that a little bit as the Discovery era equivalent of an emergency medical hologram like it’s a, it’s a medical robot. That Control has taken Control of it, but I don’t know if that’s true. I’m might be just making that up. And it also it’s made these nanobots Where did it get nanotechnology from. That’s pretty advanced business.

Carla: This is what I mean about. We don’t know how much Control knows.

Ben: Yeah. And also, we don’t know what kind of technology Section 31 one’s got access to. I mean we know they got comm badges. They got they got Terran memory stealing technology. They’ve got advanced computer artificial intelligence stuff here. I mean they’ve got all kinds of stuff.

Carla: I think it’s safe to say it’s got the most knowledge in the universe because it’s this confluence of so many different cultures knowledge that has been stolen or appropriated or given to them, you know mostly stolen I assume.

Ben: It’s a bit of a worry.

Carla: Tortured out of people.

Ben: I do I am a little annoyed that we don’t have any kind of motivation for it. I don’t know. It’s kind of implied that it agrees with Leland’s sort of attitude that it must, he wants to bring order to the universe. You know even if he has to be a bit brutal about it and that he’s going to take Control says it’s going to take that to its logical conclusion you’re like “why?”. I mean is that what you were built for is that is that your sort of directive. And are you going to take it so far. It’s like Skynet, like waking up and going “Yeah okay. So, my job is to make sure humans don’t kill each other. There’s only one way to do that which is if I kill them all”. That’s like… It’s sort of that kind of we assume that the evil artificial intelligence is just going to kill all non you know artificial intelligent life.

Ben: But this is my big question about Control, and I think actually that first scene where it’s talking to Leland really brings it up. Is that the whole point of it wanting the Spheres data is so they can achieve real consciousness. But what we see of Control does not in any way seem like it doesn’t already have consciousness like in what way does it not?

Carla: Yeah because it has like, it has motivation.

Ben: Has motivation, has memories, it has personality.

Carla: Mm hmm. I’m sure about personality.

Ben: Maybe not a personality of its own but it doesn’t need one to achieve its aims. So, what’s the big deal about it being conscious?

Carla: It has motivations and desires which is a cornerstone of sentience, I guess. Really. I’m not sure if it’s about becoming sentient, I think it’s about having the technology to be able to fully realize its plans.

Ben: Right.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: Okay. Well I guess that does make sense but also, it’s a bit confusing as to where this motivation is coming from because there’s Control in the present. Right. And then there’s the… because Airiam wasn’t being controlled by Control in the present Airiam was being controlled by the future A.I. sending information back through time, although that was only from 500 years in the future.

Carla: That right, that’s kind of the midpoint.

Ben: Yeah but it’s not clear when exactly the devastation takes place. We know that it happened sometime before 950 years in the future. And we know that it was localized in the Alpha Quadrant. And that bit of space where the Federation is because we find out here that Burnham’s mum, seems feel safe 50000 light years away on what would eventually be called Terralisium. So yeah that was I don’t know. I still have a lot of questions about it, so I just don’t know. Like you. Who’s calling the shots? Control, future Control. It’s a bit it’s a bit murky and I’m hoping that I hope that it gets cleared up. I have a feeling it won’t. I have a feeling that they just sort of like happy to go “it’s all Control” Control whether it’s now or in the future and I’m like Yeah, I think there’s a distinction to be made.

Carla: I think I’ve mentioned this before, but it just really does seem like, I mean this kind of A.I. robot conscious robot trope really does seem to reflect our anxieties about who we are as people.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: Because they only learn from us, right? And that human race is inherently destructive in the way that we treat each other, and we treat the planet. So, there’s always this kind of moralistic overtone of you know “the best human is a dead human” you know, to an A.I. So, it kind of feels trope-y in that way. It also just feels like they just find humans irrelevant. So, they should just all be gone, eradicated.

Ben: And in this case not just humans you know but and…

Carla: Oh yes that’s right.

Ben: Vulcans, Klingons and everybody else.

Carla: Meat Sacks.

Ben: (laughs) Yeah.

Carla: All meat sacks.

Ben: All meat sacks. Because Control not the only person who shows up to reveal their secrets this episode. Because this is where we finally meet the Red Angel, properly, and learn what they’ve been up to all this time. How did you feel about this?

Carla: Oh, I felt it was a bit ham fisted.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: It felt a bit blunt. You know.

Ben: Yeah, I would agree.

Carla: I was a bit clobbered over the face with how stubborn she is like Michael blah blah blah. But also, at the same time you know 800 missions. It’s got to do something to you.

Ben: Oh yeah. I mean we don’t know. We don’t know how much personal time has passed for her but it’s clearly a lot. And she’s done a lot of things although not all of the things the same. It is a bit intense. I mean I liked the logs and they’re sort of a shorthand way to explain a few things like the Terralysium colonists, although why she saved them? I mean I it’s like one sentence, but I gathered that the point was she wanted to preserve some vestige of life in the future. And because she’s 50000 light years away and there’s no pre-existing technology on the planet. For some reason that means she can’t be discovered. But why she moves them there like in the past rather than to where she is. I’m not 100 percent sure what…

Carla: So, my interpretation of that was like also it was like an Easter egg. You know for eventually like no matter how sort of time travel was uncovered or you know Control was uncovered or whatever it was it’s kind of a deliberate Easter egg as well that you know how could these people be there blah blah blah mysteries of the universe that kind of thing.

Ben: Yeah although I have to say now that I think about it that also doesn’t quite make sense because this is the reason that she’s safe on that planet is that it had no pre-existing technology but she put pre-existing technology there because she transferred all the colonists all those, all those survivors. It’s also not really said how or if I mean the suits got some pretty crazy powers my way as well like it can bring back the dead with a tachyon burst, it can transport an entire church full of people across time and space.

Carla: Yeah, I don’t know how that works yeah yeah.

Ben: Like it’s yeah it does it’s a bit of a McGuffin really isn’t it? I can do anything you want it to do. That’s not really what the McGuffin is but you know it’s a it’s a plot device is what it is. Yeah it does whatever the plot needs it to do. And in this episode one of the things it does is it can’t stay in one place. Now I thought we talked about this last episode. I thought they had cut the strand and she was now stuck here but it turns out that no they’ve just caught her and the strand, you know the gravitational beam through the wormhole is still open and stretched back. But then what did they close last episode to stop the transmissions getting through if that’s the case? I don’t know. It’s, it’s…

Carla: And can a human being survive being jetted through a wormhole, without the suit? What’s the point of the suit?

Ben: I know. And where is she going back to? This is the other thing that I was a little unclear on at the end of the episode you know. Is she going back to 950 years in the future?

Carla: That’s what I thought.

Ben: I mean I thought that was the case but then yeah. Does that mean that they didn’t manage to reprogram the suit? I mean I thought it was a bit weird that they were able to reprogram the suit to go really far into the future past the 950-year mark. When the whole point of it was it always just goes back to where it came from and it can’t go anywhere else. So yeah it was a bit weird.

Carla: Yeah, it’s a mess.

Ben: It is a bit of a mess. It’s a bit of a mess. I mean look at exciting and dramatic mess.

Carla: Sure.

Ben:  I really enjoyed the ending particularly with you know Georgiou and Leland just fighting to smash in each other.

Carla: Oh my God.

Ben: That was great.

Carla: Michelle Yeoh just marry me like have everything I have.

Ben: Just well I don’t go that far.

Carla: Or just kick me in the face.

Ben: Just be  my TV smash people in the face all the time. She’s really good at that.

Carla: My favourite was Georgiou and Tyler forming an alliance.

Ben: Oh, that was great.

Carla: That was amazing.

Ben: I did like that. Yes.

Carla: Because. Yeah, they’re two completely outcasted freaks. They should have an alliance.

Ben: Yeah. Yeah. And I like that. Yeah, they sort of they were very chummy about it like they seem to have developed an understanding.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: And I think their understanding is really forged just did a mutual distrust of Leland. Which I thought was nice and very you know obviously it’s not Leland so much that they need to distrust what he has become. He didn’t seem very bothered by being shot with phasers, did he?

Carla: No. But he you know he’s gotten all of that extra Klingon physiology.

Ben: No, I meant Leland. But yeah, I did think that was my first thought when Tyler got stabbed and he’s like you were I’m like “oh you’ve stabbed him thinking he’s human you’ve forgotten he’s like a killing on his organs are in different places”.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: But I don’t know I guess we’ll find out if that’s the case.

Carla: Is that because the nanobots were just like repairing everything as time goes as has, he gets shot?

Ben: I don’t know. I guess so. I mean that’s one of the benefits of having nanobots right they can do, and you do all kinds of jazz.

Carla: Can I ask one more stupid question?

Ben: You can ask as many as you like. I think this episode has given us lots of scope for that

Carla: Limitless. Yeah like I don’t understand this whole 950 in the future thing.  no sentient life. But there’s life of some kind? There’s still…

Ben: No, I don’t think so.

Carla: Plants and stuff?

Ben: Oh, there might be…

Carla: What is she living on?

Ben: There must be plants and stuff but then it does say…

Carla: That’s my question is she living on if there’s no creatures? How is she eating?

Ben: Yeah, it’s a good question and they keep talking about how well all the civilizations home worlds have been completely destroyed.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: And presumably all sentient life means everybody else. But if you destroy the whole planet while you’re destroying all life.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: So yeah, I don’t know. Maybe she’s just nicked stuff when she comes back.

Carla: That’s what I though she’s going to get some Macca’s. See you later.

Ben: Yeah. Like there’s all these undocumented appearances that the Red Angel where she’s just like stealing somebody’s takeaway.

Carla: (laughs) But then also how is she like creeping on Michael all this time?

Ben: Yeah. What’s the deal with that? I don’t know. Like it’s not exactly subtle. The Red Angel Suit when it shows up.

Carla: She’s just peeping through the window.

Ben: Even when there’s not a red burst like it’s an angel floating in the air going (sound) “Waaaaaaaaaahhh” and there’s like tachyon detection., but you know all this kind of stuff that you would think the Vulcan science directorate, if nobody else, would be like “now wait a minute”.

Carla: Yeah yeah yeah.

Ben: But it doesn’t happen. So, I don’t know?

Carla: And so, then that goes back to my whole thing of me, last episode going “I don’t understand the whole Red Bursts thing”. And so at least now I know that doesn’t make sense.

Ben: Yeah well not yet anyway.

Carla: So that’s “watch this space”. What – that’s actually like a huge question mark. I’m like “what is going to happen there?”

Ben: It’s clearly a big clue as to the answer.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: I feel like Michael is going to end up inside the suit because I also felt I was very “hand wavy”, where they’re like “yes definitely you. This signature definitely matches your brain pattern. Oh, but also there’s a big similarity between moms and daughters”. I’m like “guys” where Michael wakes up Michael’s like “hey you said it had to be…

Carla: Especially with mitochondrial DNA didn’t you know Ben?

Ben: I didn’t know what that’s got to do with a bio-neural signature.

Carla: Me neither.

Ben: But then it’s all just weird isn’t it. It’s all just words…

Carla: Isn’t mitochondrial, mitochondria is this stuff in the brain, it’s electricity in the brain that clears out all the cells and keeps everything functioning.

Ben: Well mitochondria there is mitochondria in your brain but there’s mitochondria in everywhere.

Carla: Everywhere, in every cell.

Carla: So yeah, it’s like it’s like the little tiny sort of cell that was once a separate organism that was captured by the kind of cells that we have. And yeah. And the idea is that you know that the DNA does get carried down the generations without much change.

Carla: But we have 50/50.

Ben: Not in mitochondria you don’t.

Carla: Oh, is that… okay…

Ben: Yes.

Carla: Alright, there you go.

Ben: I might be wrong about that plays right into my wrong there’ll be a show note about it no doubt.

Carla: Of course.

Ben: How you feel Michael fared this episode. I mean it is intense for her. Obviously.

Carla: It felt, actually felt like an episode about her.

Ben: Yeah. And she went through a lot of stuff. I mean how harsh was it that “oh here’s your mom. She’s actually alive. She’s been gone for 20 years. Now you find out she’s been tried travelling and trying to save you and the entire universe. And she doesn’t want to talk to you”.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: Like that’s pretty rough.

Carla: Sure.

Ben: I did, I did hear somebody I know I think was sort of complaining that I felt she’s gotten real whiny and I’m like “if there’s any excuse” like come on this is intense. And I thought she rallied pretty well like she had – this was really rough episode for her but she still managed to get in there and do the job and yeah, sure, she was lying on a bed feeling pretty awful and then sorry for herself at the end of it but well who wouldn’t like, “jeez”, it was rough and then and Spock gives her a bit of a rallying speech and she gets up.

Carla: Yeah. Which is nice. Spock could have gloated quite a bit around that like “taste of your own medicine hey”.

Ben: Oh rough.

Carla: He feels, he’s got the touch of Sarek to him you know like he’s got the Vulcan diplomat about him. Let’s put it that way.

Ben: That would that would cut him to the quick. He would not like that at all. I’m just looking at my notes here. I see. Oh look. That was the other reason that she says she is. She’s trying to establish that she can change the past, Burnham senior, and that’s why she saved those people from World War Three as much as anything else to prove that the past could be changed. I think. But you’re right. Well have you changed the past. And she clearly has changed the past because she says that she was the one who put the Sphere into Discovery’s path so that they would find it and hopefully they would get its data and then Control wouldn’t get it. Which you know means that there must have been an original timeline where that did happen. But for whatever reason she hasn’t been able to go back and stop all this from happening.

Carla: Well there’s been like 800 timelines where Control always wins.

Ben: Yeah yeah. And it’s not clear where she can and can’t go. Like she can’t go back an hour before the Klingons come to kill her husband because of something she mentions a “time storm” at some point which is never explained but also it seems like she can’t go back in time and just stop Control from being created in the first place.

Carla: Right.

Ben: But I guess if she can’t be there for very long, she can’t do very subtle things she has to sort of do something…

Carla: It’s all so…

Ben: Blatant.

Carla: And also, that she said that Spock has been the only person who’s been able to communicate with her and understand her. So obviously she’s tried to communicate with many other different people, beings, aliens and not gotten anywhere.

Ben: Yeah yeah. Which I thought was interesting although I got to say I don’t know that I feel very comfortable with the way that they basically present dyslexia as some sort of superpower in this episode. It just doesn’t make any sense. It’s like only you can understand my time travelling ways because you are both logical and emotional and also you have dyslexia.

Carla: I don’t understand this whole thing.

Ben: It doesn’t make any sense. It’s very flimsy.

Carla: It’s strange.

Ben: Yeah. I mean unless I mean the only way, I can see it really making sense is if it’s not the dyslexia that helps him. It’s the whatever exercises or mental discipline or whatever he’s been doing to overcome it which means he’s used to looking at things that I don’t quite fit because of how he naturally perceives them and has a system or a method for reassembling them into a way that does make sense. Maybe that could explain it. I don’t know but I. But even he like his brain got messed up by it.

Ben: But then again, they represent they’re presenting that is like some mind-bending thing that you can’t understand the Red Angel because like it travels through time and it’s not. And I don’t think they’ve made it really clear why. Like I sort of I’ve come to the idea in my head that the reason is she’s existed across all these different timelines. And so, when he mind melds with her, he doesn’t just see visions of the past and future. He sees all these conflicting visions of the past each year.

Ben: But that’s not presented in the text of the story. That’s me like making that up to make that make sense. But I think that’s what’s going on and like in the episode where the Talosians has put his mind back together it’s really just said that it’s seeing the past and future in a weird order. And I’m like “I think it’s got to be worse than that because nobody else has this problem when they finally get to talk to the Red Angel”. They’re not like “Oh mum you’re alive. My brain is exploding. No, it’s totally fine”. So yeah, I don’t know. I don’t. It’s a bit flimsy I feel.

Carla: Yeah. There’s a lot of question marks.

Ben: Yeah. So, I guess I guess what I’m saying is that on some levels I really enjoyed this episode and, on some levels,,  it just left me a bit these explanations are not very satisfying.

Carla: Look I have to say it’s been a very shabby season. Like I mean not shabby maybe shaggy is the word. Like it’s been pretty all over the place. And the way that it’s been that is there feels like a valiant effort to kind of try to thread it all back into some kind of much like Spock’s brain or something into a coherent narrative.

Ben: No don’t mention Spock’s brain.

Carla: Yeah but I have confidence that you know like it’s all going to whether or not it’s satisfactory or not it’s all going to make sense and the next final three episodes that we have and they’ll put a bow on it and be like “Okay that turbulent time in Star Trek Discovery history is over and we’re going to move on with the third season and it’s going to we’re going to make sense from day dot”.

Ben: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well it’ll be really interesting to see where they go with these final three episodes, I think.

Carla: Shall we go to Short Chats?

Ben: I think we shall.

Carla: All right. Now it’s time for re:Discovery Short Chats, where we talk news trivia, and anything related to Discovery and or sci-fi it seems. We will also be taking questions I haven’t heard from you guys in a while so shoot us through a question.

Ben: Surely, you’ve got questions because I know I’ve got loads. (both laugh)

Carla: So, do get in touch with us now on our socials. What do you have today Ben?

Ben: Well I just got a couple of little things really. I saw some nice echoes in this episode of things from other sci-fi stuff that I love. Yeah. And one was the idea and I have to be I can’t write exactly where I’ve seen this before but I love the line that Gabrielle Burnham has when she’s talking to Pike and she says “you’re a ghost to me” because you know she’s from the future.

Carla: She’s seen everything.

Ben: Everybody’s dead as far as she’s concerned and that’s kind of echoes back, I think it’s in the Doctor Who “New Adventures” novels that this idea comes up. So, this was a series of novels if you’re not familiar with them listeners, which were written after the TV series Doctor Who got cancelled back in 1989. They continued the story in these novels and the novels were very definitely aimed at the adult fan audience. So, they gotten quite dark. And there was all kinds of crazy shit that happened in them. They’re not considered canon now although they were for a long time. The Doctor in them becomes quite manipulative and dark. They explore these weird. I mean it’s a bit grim dark people in their 20’s writing “Yeah this is how you do proper science fiction”. When I look back at it was all happening in the sort of late sorry in the 90s it was happening in the 90s. So, it was at the same time as you were saying like the big spiky pole runs on superheroes and everybody wearing pouches and getting all grim backstories.

Carla: Okay.

Ben: It was it comes out of the same kind of milieu but with Doctor Who. But yeah there’s a there’s a few times where the Doctor sort of has this kind of  people accusing him of thinking of everybody as ghosts because he’s lived so long. He travels through time that everybody’s dead to him and I think there’s a similar line that crops up in the TV series and the Christopher Eccleston era from memory. But yeah, I just thought that was it was kind of interesting and it really was a nice shorthand way of showing how grim she’s gotten and how this time travel has affected her.

Carla: Well yeah and this is also analogous to you know many cultures gods – they’re painted as grumpy, intolerant, immersed in godly matters because she’s almost like a god like she you know…

Ben: She got godlike power, right?

Carla: She exists in all space and time and has witnessed you know as far as we know at least a millennia, of our quadrant of the universes, history.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: I only have a couple of things one is it’s been confirmed that Pike and Spock are leaving Discovery at the end of Season 2 which is understandable they’re going to go back to the Enterprise.

Ben: They’ve got other shit to do.

Carla: So that actually makes me excited about sort of thinking forward to the third season like who’s going to be the captain what kind of missions are they going to go on.

Ben: Will they go back to Vulcan where they were going to pick up then you can find out who it is?

Carla: Maybe that’s a good point.

Ben: What if Sarek was the captain?

Carla: No no no he’s not in Star Fleet. He’s just an ambassador.

Ben: He’s very definitely not in Star Fleet. He’s very angry about his kids being in Star Fleet. One of them in particular anyway, yeah no that makes sense.

Carla: Yeah that makes me excited.

Ben: As could be anybody. I think it’ll be a new character.

Carla: I hope so. Actually yeah. What about you?

Ben: I think it will be. I think it’ll be good. I think there’s a lot of people who probably wish it would be a prime universe Lorca re-emerging but I…

Carla: Or even Georgiou.

Ben: What Prime universe Georgiou.

Carla: No no. Terran Georgiou.

Ben: Oh yeah yeah. She’s going to be busy with…

Carla: Oh, that’s right Section 31.

Ben: Because now Leland is practically dead. Probably anyway certainly. He’s can’t be trusted.

Carla: Maybe it will be Captain Saru?

Ben: But I think he’s he would’ve earned it. I think so too.

Carla: Yeah yeah. And Michael can be first officer again.

Ben: Yeah that would work out. Yeah. I’d be into that. But yeah, I’d also be totally open for it to be a new character. I think that would be fun. We’ve never had a we’d never had a show before where the main like the captain of the ship changes every season and I think that’s kind of awesome.

Carla: Yeah, I do too.

Ben: It gives us a lot of scope. I mean presumably though if everybody goes back to the Enterprise from the Enterprise will also lose Nhan.

Carla: Yeah. That’s. No, I’m not into that at all.

Ben: Well she never knows she might stay. She might stay on board Discovery. She’s pretty cool. It’ll be interesting to see what happens. Yeah.

Carla: Do you have another thing?

Ben: Yeah. There’s the other thing. Weirdly that this episode reminded me of was “Back to the Future” because they keep talking about how they’re going to need a power source. Basically, this is in the flashback like when they’re doing the time travel experiment and they need “only the power of a supernova could power this” and they’re like “oh if only we knew where a supernova would happen. Oh, we do. Look here’s this thing. Save the star system now”. But it just reminded me of that. Not terribly accurately perhaps but yeah, I thought that was fun.

Carla: I have one more thing and I mentioned that last episode to talk about goes to Phillips who’s the costume designer.

Ben: Oh yeah yeah.

Carla: She’s amazing and I don’t really have anything to say about her apart from the fact that she’s amazing and also that there is done a tonne of press and interviews about like linguistically how she sort of took translated or you know yeah translated the original series uniforms into to where she wanted Discovery to go and then there’s another great interview about her talking about developing the Discoveries uniforms and how basically she kept the same cut from the Discoveries to the new TOS uniform so they looked almost exactly the same it’s just you know the different colouring. I’ll chuck up a couple of different interviews with her in with her and you can have a look because it’s I find that stuff super interesting.

Ben: Yeah, it’s cool and I would love to. Hopefully she talks also about some of the casual outfits on the show like and some of the Vulcan fashion particularly because there’s cool stuff going on there.

Carla: She’s done so much so many interviews I’m sure there’s that specific something out there which is one amazing interview where she was talking specifically about how her and the set designer worked together too. They work together. She stylistically have a meta frame for the design linguistics but then like with the Terran universe she’s talking about how when she created those uniforms then the set designer then took the patterns from their uniforms and made it into wallpaper so there was kind of like referencing each other and just sounds like such a great process.

Ben: Yeah sounds great. Yeah, I’ll be I’ll be really excited to read that because I have to say the design in all aspects of Discovery has always been top notch.

Carla: It’s amazing.

Ben: Everything from the sets to the costumes to the makeup to the special effects to the sound on it. We had that one nice. We always talk about the spinney directing stuff.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: It had that one shot this episode where it starts off upside down with Stamets  at the display and then slowly rotates 180 degrees until he’s the right way up and I actually really enjoyed that for some reason. I don’t know why, it just really really tickled me in a way that you know spinning around people doesn’t always fit me. I mean sometimes I feel like it does ramp up the tension and sometimes it feels like you just shoot somebodies face?”.

Carla: Or just for just slow it down like it does don’t even have to give it up. You could just slow it down to the point that I don’t feel like I’m going to puke.

Ben: I luckily have not had that problem but I, but I get I get where you come from.

Carla: All right. Anything else.

Ben: There is one other thing I should talk about Carla as I am doing a comedy festival show. It’s on this week as this comes out from the 1st to the 7th of April at Campari house in Melbourne’s here in Melbourne a comedy which sometimes

Carla: Science informed comedy as well.

Ben: It’s true we sometimes do talk about psychology here on the show and I’m doing this show with Alanta Colley who’s also a science comedian and it’s called “You Chose Poorly. It’s all about the psychology of decision making and why we’re so poor at making good decisions. So, I feel like maybe Michael and Spock sometimes could learn from some of the stuff I’ve been reading. Certainly, her mum as well. Maybe I don’t know yeah, it’s just this episode had some real highs and lows for me, and I just had mom’s so harsh, so hard.

Carla: Understandably though.

Ben: Like the first thing she says to her own daughter is “no, no”. That’s rough. Come on.

Carla: You’ve been listening to re:Discovery. All links to creatives are in show notes or on our website We’d love to connect with you. Please add us on Twitter and Facebook @rediscoverypod.

Splendid Chaps: re:Discovery is brought to you by Splendid Chaps Productions. Find more entertainment for your ears at splendidchaps.com

This is a transcript of our tenth season two recap, available here.

Michael [From episode]: (punching sound) That’s for my mom, (punching sound) that’s for my dad.

re:Discovery theme plays.

Ben: Hello and welcome to re:Discovery. The Star Trek Recap podcast, whose mum probably won’t show up unexpectedly right at the end. I’m science officer Ben McKenzie and as always, I’m joined by Captain Carla Donnelly. Greetings, Captain.

Carla: Hi, Benjamin. How are you?

Ben: I’m very well. Is your mum going to show up at the end?

Carla: She’d like to, I think.

Ben: Yeah, my mum, I’m sure my mum would love it. She’d be great. She’d be a hoot. But she’s not here, so that’s okay. Well, let’s talk about this episode, “The Red Angel”; which confirms our theories, reveal secrets, heals old wounds and opens new ones before yanking the rug out from under us in a big reveal which may have already made a joke about it. We begin with the funeral service for Commander Airiam, at which we hear moving speeches from Pike, Tilly, Detmer, Stamets and Burnham, watched by the entire crew. Plus, Admiral Cornwell and a newly released Tyler. It concludes with Airiam’s casket being shot into space as Saru sings a Kelpian song of remembrance. In the ready room, they confirm that Control has been destroyed and Airiam memories purged. But that while there’s no sign of the A.I from the future, that doesn’t mean it’s not hiding somewhere. Tilly finds a clue in Airiam’s memories, a Project Daedalus file which says Michael is the Red Angel. In sickbay Dr. Culber confirms the bio neural signature is a definite match to Burnham. But there are still many questions. Leland and Georgiou arrive and drop a bombshell. Project Daedalus is an old Section 31 program researching time travel in response to intel that the Klingon’s were doing the same. The Red Angel suit is their design, but they thought it was destroyed just prior to testing 20 years ago by Klingon spies.

Ben: Thankfully, they’ve been working on a method to recover the suit. A mousetrap which can catch the Angel and stop it going home. A plan to use the trap is developed by Tilly, Stamets and Georgiou. It needs huge amounts of power, so Georgiou offers up Essoff IV, an old Daedalus test site abundant in deuterium to use as an energy source. Hugh arrives during the discussion and Georgiou flirts with Stamets in front of him, revealing that Stamets counterpart in her universe was pansexual. Everyone is confused and uncomfortable. Leland works on a way to close the Angels wormhole and prevent the A.I using it to travel back in time. He’s watched by a suspicious Saru, who knows he’s keeping something from them. Burnham has also picked up on this and tipped off by Georgiou that it’s Leland secret, asks to speak to him alone. He reveals that Burnham’s parents were secretly working on Project Daedalus and that they had a crystal vital to the Angels suit. They lied to Burnham to keep her safe. Leland had stolen the crystal and believed he’d covered his tracks. But the Klingons, who wanted it for their own research were able to find it. And that’s why they were killed. Burnham realizes she wasn’t to blame for their deaths, but that Leland is. And she punches him twice, once for mum and once for dad.

Carla: Cut to Michael’s second, or is it third? uncomfortable conversation that day, where freshly galvanized and enraged, she confronts Tyler about his knowledge about her parents. He swears he did not know anything, and she rightly attacks him on being associated with this organization. But he believes in their mission and that “it’s not quite all black and white”. On the warpath Michael is kicking the shit out of a punching dummy when her fourth uncomfortable conversation comes knocking for the day. It’s Spock and he wants to talk with a capital T. He helps Michael understand that her actions were that of a child and appropriate to everything that happened to her and that he doesn’t blame her for all that has transpired. And as with everything in this season, inexorably linked, Michael and Spock’s reconciliation puts into action what appears to be the conclusion of all the dangling threads thus far. And what continues to be one of the shittiest days ever for Michael Spock convinces the crew that it is Michael the Red Angels seeks to protect, so therefore she must be bait in order to capture it. In what is possibly the most upsetting sequence thus far in Discovery, they slowly torture and suffocate Michael waiting for the Red Angel to appear. On the Section 31 ship Leland is waiting for the wormhole to appear so that he can close it. Michael flatlines. The Red Angel materializes and shoots her with a beam that revives her. Leland retinal scans to authorize the process to close the wormhole and is injected in the eye with something from Control. They capture the Red Angel. She falls out of her suit. We see a black woman that looks like… an older Michael? And Michael gasps and whispers… “Mum?”! Ben, where do we even begin?

Ben: No, I don’t, Carla, there’s so much going on. I love this episode so much.

Carla: Holy shit. We just have to talk about mum, I think.

Ben: I think we do. Although I do, I do just want to say I don’t think. I don’t think Control injected Leland or anything.

Carla: Are you kidding?

Ben: No, I think it just stabbed him right through the eye, into the brain. I think he’s dead.

Carla: No.

Ben: Yeah, I think he’s dead.

Carla: Because he’s a whole eye went kind of like all twitchy and milky and there was like some kind of electrical…

Ben: Oh, OK. All right. Well, you look, you might have been you might have seen more there than I anticipated. I just thought he was stabbed through the eye. Like classic…

Carla: Why would Control kill him?

Ben: Sub orbital frontal lobotomy. Well, because it…

Carla: It’s not high enough to do that by the way.

Ben: Oh good. Yeah, we know that that’s true, that’s fair. But I do, and we’ll get back to this, I’m sure, but I do just want to flag…

Carla: It is one of my questions so we can get straight into it.

Ben: Control is a computer, right? It just controls the equipment that it has. Although that seems to be the ship’s computer on his ship rather than Control but infected with whatever it was affecting Control. But that means, right, because Control can’t spontaneously build new bits of computer, so somebody put that spikey injector or stubby thing into the retinal scanner.

Carla: What is even that?

Ben: And I’m like, why would you build that in there?

Carla: That’s exactly right.

Ben: It is actually the kind of thing Section 31 would do, though, isn’t it? So, if somebody scanned and it was a fake retina, they’d get stabbed in the eye.

Carla: There’s such a huge question mark over this. Because also it’s like is the force of that needle literally enough to push that huge-arse men, arse over backwards?

Ben: Sure. Well, maybe, maybe he’s just surprised because it hurts so much.

Carla: Yeah that’s true, it did look like it kind of punched him.

Ben: Yet or, it instantly killed him, and he just fell down because he was twitching, and he didn’t say anything.

Carla: I reckon he’s being “borg-afied” or something.

Ben: Oh shit. Okay. All right. Okay. Well look, that’ll be exciting to find out because I just thought he was dead. But you know…

Carla: Well they’re definitely like imprinting his voice to use it to impersonate him.

Ben: Yeah. I mean that’s why it does it. Right so it can take over.

Carla: (laughs) He’ll live on in that way.

Ben: Yeah. Which presumably means it’s highjacked the beam that Tyler is firing into the rift to close it as well rather than just closing it. Like is it transmitting something?

Carla: Oh no!!! He’s going to like keep it open and then octopus are going to come out.

Ben: Oh shit. Who knows?

Carla: Like I didn’t even think of that.

Ben: I mean we get such a shocking conclusion that it’s like almost like, wait, what’s going on here? Or we don’t have time to worry about that because we need to talk about Michael’s mum. We have to talk about her. I mean, yeah.

Carla: Of course.

Ben: Now, you said you thought she looked… I reckon she looks, she isn’t much older than Michael. I mean, cause that’s the benefits of time travel. Right? I thought she looked pretty young.

Carla: Yeah. But she still looks like she’s in her 50’s to me. Yeah.

Ben: I didn’t think she looked that old. Yeah.

Carla: Not that’s that old but just older.

Ben: No. But like compared to Michael. Like, yes. Michael’s y’know like 30.

Carla: I think it’s because she had more sort of greying hair. That’s the kind it wasn’t you know, like so that that was giving me older person indication.

Ben: Okay. Okay. Yeah, fair, fair. But what a reveal though!

Carla: That was good, I have to I tip my hat to that and I have to be like “holy shit”.

Ben: I didn’t expect that.

Carla: That was great.

Ben: I did… I was hoping it wouldn’t be Michael in the suit though. I was hoping they’d find…

Carla: I thought “that’s basic”.

Ben: Because they… but but they kind of ruled that out earlier on, though, right? Because they said, “look, we know it’s you”.

Carla: “It’s definitely her”.

Ben: “Airiam said it was you. The Project Daedalus file has a bio neural imprint”, whatever that is, “signature bio, neural signature that matches yours exactly”. And then and then Culber’s like “it can’t have been faked like this. All these random elements that a fake thing couldn’t replicate”. I’m like “what do you mean? I don’t understand what that means, but what it means narratively is this is definitely a match for you”. But they never. Yeah. And then it’s not her.

Carla: And then it’s not her

Ben: You know, it’s her mum.

Carla: I guess we’ll find out what it’s all about.

Ben: Yeah. Whether she’s spoofing that or whether Airiam lied.

Carla: Look, they have the ability to time travel. I’m assuming they probably have technologies to do whatever the hell they want.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: I loved it. I love that reveal. I was…

Ben: Yeah, it was great.

Carla: And also, even though it was like a horrible day for Michael. It feels like she’s finally getting…

Ben: It paid off…

Carla: Getting her life back together.

Ben: Yeah. Like she had the worst day ever. And then she gets to meet her mum, who she thought was dead for 20 years.

Carla: And she got to kick the shit out, Leland, which would have been great.

Ben: That would’ve been very satisfying.

Carla: She got back together with Tyler.

Ben: Are they back together?

Carla: I think so.

Ben: I think… I don’t think they need to be, but I think it would be nice if they were. But I also think that, you know…

Carla: If they are just like a one off? Are you kidding?

Ben: Well, not a one off, but they sort of, you know, they needed that moment together. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re back together, back together. But it’ll be interesting to see where it goes. Yeah. Yeah. Because I think his attitude to Section 31 is going to have to change.

Carla: Sure.

Ben: If she going to…

Carla: It’s a pretty big barrier (laughs) between them.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: Yeah. Hey, can I ask you, did you think that that was like… to me, like when they revealed that about what Leland had done, quote unquote, to her parents, you know, I was like, “Oh, is that it?”.

Ben: Yeah, I was a bit the same because the way that it was kind of being talked about with Georgiou like we talked about a couple of episodes ago, I figured like he had them killed. But no. Like, it’s just…

Carla: I thought that he did it himself.

Ben: Yeah. Yeah. Or that. Yeah. I thought at the very least he would have ordered it or made it happen. But as it turns out, he didn’t do either of those things. He’s just, he just gave them a job and then gave them a thing and thought they’d be safe. But he was wrong. He messed up but he was trying to do his job. He wasn’t like… and the job was not get these people killed. It was like get these people the thing they need to do to make this time machine suit. And then, yeah, the Klingons, found it.

Carla: So, let me get this straight. If this is what you think. So, we’re assuming that Michael’s mum, name unknown currently, took the time crystal and powered up the suit and took off into the future. That’s how she survived?

Ben: Yeah, it’s hard to know if she’s because, because the way they said it was that this happened just before they were ready to test the suit. So, it could have been that it was like all set up and ready to go or not quite ready. But she’s like “fuck we’re going to get killed by Klingons, I’m going to get in the suit and turn it on because what’s the worst that can happen is, I die. That’s going to happen anyway. Let’s give it a shot.” But then also the way they’ve described that it works is that you go through time and it leaves this tether back to where you came from. And then that sort of pulls me back to where you were. And that’s like how the whole mousetrap thing works, is that it cuts that off so that you can’t go back. Which means she’s going back to where she came from. So, is she going back to 20 years ago or did she did she have a first trip that was like into the future and now she’s coming back from the future? She has to have gone to the future. Right. Because she has to know all this stuff to know where to go back in time to.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: Yeah. I don’t know. There’s still a lot of questions, not least about why she went to the places that she went to, like why she cares about the Hiawatha and the Kelpians and why she saved all those people from World War Three. Like it’s not at all clear.

Carla: Well, I’m sure we’re going to find out. We have four episodes left.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: And that’s a lot of time to get the find it all out. You could have it all wrapped up in one episode.

Ben: Well, we could, but I feel like the pacing is good on the mystery this season.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: Like I feel I feel like we’ve had some really good reveals and resolutions along the way. And this feels like the right time to figure out who the Red Angel is. Because last episode we had the whole thing about “oh, it’s probably Michael”. And then at the start of this episode we have “it’s definitely Michael”. And at the end of this episode we had “it’s fucking not Michael guys”.

Carla: And where’s her dad?

Ben: Yeah, that’s a good question. Did he survive to what happened to him? Yeah. Did they really die at all? I mean, did she ever see their bodies?

Carla: No. Well, that’s kind of what I’m thinking now. Like she was just in that cupboard.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: You know, she didn’t see them. She thought she heard them being murdered, but could have just been Klingons, getting freaky on her dinner, you know.

Ben: Yeah. And I mean I think the one of the biggest things for her is not just that she found out that she wasn’t responsible for them dying, but that they’d been lying to her like they’d been working for this organization that she hates and that is responsible for their death, but they were working for that organization. I mean, that’s a lot to discover all in one conversation.

Carla: Yeah, that was really. That was a tough scene.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: Because you can just see the scaffolding just starting to like…

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: She. She’s due to go to the asylum.

Ben: Well she’s working it out by punching the shit out of some punching dummy’s as  you said. I mean but I got to say those were like MMA style like they had faces on them.

Carla: Yeah. Yeah.

Ben: That seems a bit rough for Starfleet. I would have thought they’d have like faceless things to punch for training.

Carla: You know Starfleet have always been pretty practical I feel like in terms of training.

Ben: Yeah. Okay.

Carla: You know, in the future it’s…

Ben: Yeah. But you don’t need a face.

Carla: Like kicking out… well no in the future they’re doing it on holodecks like with fake people.

Ben: Well that’s true.

Carla: You know, like they’re actually quote unquote killing people on holodecks.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: So, you know…

Ben: I guess I guess the idea…

Carla: That’s as real as it gets.

Ben: Yeah, the more real you can make it the more prepared you are for a real situation.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: I guess that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Carla: And then she makes up with Spock, so that’s all part of her… that was really nice.

Ben: Yeah. That was a good conversation where he’s like “look it’s basically we’ve all let out all our shit. And I know what I said to you was harsh, but it’s true. And you were just a kid. It’s okay. I forgive you. If that’s what you need. I’m doing it. I mean it”. And it was really nice. Yeah.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: But then he straightaway “also I’ve figured out we have to kill you”.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: Although I gotta say here I find his, his analysis is a bit dodgy Carla.

Carla: Is it?

Ben: Because what he says is… right, his theory is that whenever the Angel shows up without sending a red burst, which is a signal to Starfleet “hey, you should come here” that it’s always to save Michael. But, during the crisis on Kaminar when Saru and his sister were in the Ba’ul’s stronghold, the Angel appears and saves them and doesn’t send a red burst.

Carla: Yeah, but the red burst led them to Kaminar.

Ben: Yeah, but the red burst led them to the Hiawatha and that was one of the places they said an Angel appeared without one to see her. So, I’m like, this is a little bit dodgy Spock. And he and the Angel intervened even more directly on camera because it shut down the Ba’ul’s system.

Carla: I still don’t understand the whole red burst thing. But I’m not even going to go there because that’s just.

Ben: Well, quick, you want the short version that I think it is.

Carla: Yeah, you’ve said it to me before and I’m like, I don’t even think that it’s that so.

Ben: Oh, OK. It’s just a signal.

Carla: Yes, I know. But there were seven. No, I’m not going there. Let’s just stop. What else?

Ben: Lots of things. What about the funeral? Can we…

Carla: I thought you would like that.

Ben: I did. Well, I, I wanted it to happen.

Carla: Because you’re a sad man (laughs).

Ben: Well, I wanted it to be a proper funeral. And I wanted to get let out. I said that last episode, in fact I was quite, I had a few predictions, but I loved the funeral. I thought it was really nice.

Carla: Yeah, it was nice.

Ben: And it was a nice way to wrap up our knowledge of how Airiam had interacted with the rest of the crew.

Carla: It’s so weird that they don’t cremate the bodies, like when they shoot them into space. Where do they go?  Just into space?

Ben: Well, into a sun maybe? Maybe they shoot it into a sun or something?

Carla: They’re just going to like float around or something?

Ben: Yeah, but they like space explorers. But I assume that they don’t do that for everyone. It’s just people who said that’s what they want to happen.

Carla: Okay.

Ben: And Airiam’s like, yeah, I just want to float through space forever.

Carla: Okay.

Ben: Yeah. I mean, the problem…

Carla: To me I’m like, that’s just garbage, like you’re putting garbage in space.

Ben: Yeah, but space’s big there’s plenty of room. It’s not like landfill Carla. (both laugh) There’s no… you’re not going to run out of space.

Carla: That’s true.

Ben: Right? I mean you run out of space in orbit around a planet.

Carla: Yeah, I suppose you will go where you’ve never been before.

Carla: That’s true. Although you might… and look, if you go into the atmosphere of a planet, you’ll burn up and then you will get cremated.

Carla: You’ll be like a little ash rain.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: That’s nice.

Ben: Really nice.

Carla: Vaporised.

Ben: Although I am a bit worried that Airiam’s body obviously has a lot of cybernetics in it. And while her organic bits are clearly dead, dead, dead, maybe like some weird robots could like reanimate her body.

Carla: Oh, that’s a crazy point doesn’t even go there.

Ben: I don’t want it to happen. So, I hope that we don’t go there.

Carla: Yeah, I really liked the funeral. I loved Saru’s song.

Ben: It was beautiful. Yeah, it’s I don’t think it was Doug Jones singing.

Carla: It was him singing.

Ben: Was it really? His singing voice is very different. So, I thought maybe it was someone else. But that’s wonderful. I’m so glad to know he can sing as well.

Carla: I know it’s sickening.

Ben: What can’t he do this man?

Carla: (laughs) Shoot him out of a spaceship.

Ben: So good. That’s amazing. Wow. It was a beautiful song.

Carla: Yeah, it was nice. And it was, you know, it was to the point, but it was, you know, weighty enough as well, which I appreciated.

Ben: Did they…

Carla: It didn’t feel perfunctory?

Ben: No. Did they, did they write like Kelpian language for him to sing in.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: Wow. That’s cool.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: Because we never heard Kelpian. Because you so often don’t hear the foreign or non-human languages on Star Trek shows because everything’s universally translated.

Carla: Next.

Ben: Well what about, I mean it was nice to see Nhan and Michael makeup.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: In their little corridor scene. You know, she was like, “I’m so sorry. Like, you all loved her so much. I did what I thought was right”. And Michael was like, “no, you did do the right thing. I get it. It was a hard it was a hard call. And I would be dead if you hadn’t”. It was basically she acknowledges that. I thought that was really nice.

Carla: Yeah, I was good. Well, the whole theme of that episode is reconciliation.

Ben: Yeah. Because everybody’s…

Carla: Everyone I meet up with everyone.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: Come back from the dead.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: Making up for dying.

Ben: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And including Michael and Tyler but not though…

Carla: Michael and Georgiou as well. That was weird.

Ben: Yeah. When she puts a hand on her shoulder…

Carla: What was up there?

Ben: She’s off the wall this episode. Georgiou though. I mean what’s going on in that scene?

Carla: What is happening to her?

Ben: I know she’s just gone.

Carla: Is she just having fun?

Ben: I think she’s having a fun time. We haven’t had much of a chance to see that side of her personality because she hasn’t interacted with that many people. And with Michael, she’s got that kind of motherly kind of relationship. But they want to show her. I mean, it is a little bit trope-y. It’s that “we’re going to show she’s the evil one because she’s sexually aggressive”. But I think at least they’re being fun and playful with-it in. And it’s and it’s not like horrendous, like it’s just making everyone feel uncomfortable. And as Tilly said (whispers) “what just happened?”. (both laugh) That was great. But she I think also she did it deliberately maybe to provoke something happening between Hugh and Stamets. And I don’t know what her game is there, but I you know, she didn’t really turn on the flirting at Stamets until he was in the room.

Carla: She just seems perennially bored, which…

Ben: And horny.

Carla: And horny, which, you know, for a woman like her, you’d expect that with her coming into the Star Fleet universe.

Ben: She’s used to being in charge of doing whatever the fuck she wants as the Emperor. So, you know…

Carla: Having as many orgies as she likes.

Ben: Exactly.

Carla: With whoever she likes.

Ben: And whatever she likes.

Carla: She can’t eat Kelpians anymore. There’s no pleasure left for this woman except for the occasional fistfight.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: You know. She’s, you know, even in an incremental way, taking Leland down, I’m sure has become incredibly boring for her.

Ben: I think she’s going to be pissed if he’s dead or taken over by Control. She’s going to be pissed off that she didn’t get to do it, do you reckon? Or is she just she’s not that interested. She just wants to be in charge. But she’s going to be in charge once he’s out of the way. Surely?

Carla: That’s the only thing that she desires.

Ben: Yeah

Carla: But maybe they’ll be like a Control versus Georgiou thing.

Ben: Is it is it still Control or is it some fragment of the future A.I?

Carla: I feel like Control knowing that it was, you know, at the level that it’s at, it has you know, it’s like it’s safeguarded itself. It’s backed itself up.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: Somewhere.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: You know, in case it was destroyed.

Ben: Yeah. And Pike does break that as a possibility is like, look we destroyed Control. We wiped all the stuff that was in Airiam’s hard drive and we’ve checked all of the Section 31 ships, we’re pretty sure there’s nothing there. But you never know. It could have been something out before we blew it up and it might be hiding somewhere. And it is it’s hiding on the Section 31 ship with Leland.

Carla: I just love that because I work in IT, it’s like. Oh, well, one would hope that advanced A.I in the future like has adequate disaster recovery. (both laugh)

Ben: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Carla: You’re like okay…

Ben: It’s backed up to the cloud somewhere.

Carla: That’s good. Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. Sticking needles in retina. Retina things.

Ben: Interestingly, that was something else actually, just quickly on Airiam, that you got that sort of x ray of her body and the head.

Carla: Yeah that was cool. Oh my God.

Ben: And you could kind of see how her nervous system is connected up and there’s like bits of it that are still most of us still organic. But there’s like this bit that’s making her brain work or storing her memories. That’s not clear. I mean, again, you know, I’m making it up in my head, but it makes sense to me that most of her brain is still her original organic brain. It’s just like they’ve locked up her motor functions because she had a spinal injury and they’ve hooked up a thing to store her memories because part of her brain was destroyed, and she can’t make memories very easily or at all, maybe. So, I thought that was just interesting to think about that more. I don’t think we need more concrete details and that’s fun to speculate.

Carla: Yeah, I did have one thing. Again, on Spock’s logic. I did have a quote from him. He said, “The one variable we cannot possibly predict is the future”. And I’m like, really, Spock?

Ben: That’s not a variable. That’s like the outcome of that is the outcome when you predict things. Yeah, I remember that line, too.

Carla: I’m like that’s literally prediction. So yes and no?

Ben: Well, I guess what he means is we can’t get any data from the future because we can’t go into the future and we can’t receive information from the future. But someone who’s a time traveller can. Which means they have access to info. I’m going to guess that kind of what he meant. Well, I’m going to say…

Carla: It’s that because they know, and we don’t?

Ben:  Otherwise it’s just like it’s just nonsense.

Carla: It’s just garbage.

Ben: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Carla: And I’ve got another note that said “love the awks expression. They all exchange around Spock’s takedown of Michael”. (both laugh)

Ben: Oh, yeah. They’re all just try not to laugh.

Carla: I know.

Ben: And even Michael is like not as it’s just kind of embarrassed rather than angry. Which I thought was a nice a nice way to sort of soften that.

Carla: This is a good scene, like this is a good Star Trek franchise of faces.

Ben: Oh, yeah.

Carla: There’s great faces and more subtle acting because we know Americans aren’t really good at that.

Ben: Not really.

Carla: Not acting in that way. But generally, as audiences.

Ben: As audience. Right. Gotcha.

Carla: So that, you know, that’s an evolution.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: Of serialized television.

Ben: People have to say how they feel all the time because they can act it.

Carla: Wow.

Ben: And I know, I know. But you know, some people do need it a bit more explicitly signposting for them and that’s fine. But yeah, I really like that too.

Carla: And one more faces moment, like when Michael is dying – I just like what kind of level of training do you have to get you to be able to be like Cornwell and Pike? You know what I mean? Like, they’re just like handling the situation and everybody’s fuckin spazzing out around them. You know, they just completely go into trauma mode like they can’t even do their roles adequately.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: You know, and they’re just like monitoring the whole situation.

Ben: Well, we know Pike’s had what? We don’t know exactly how long. Probably if you went back to that to “Brother” and looked at his file, it would tell you when he graduated from the academy. But I think he’s been a starship captain for at least a decade.

Carla: Yeah. So, he’s seen a lot of crazy shit.

Ben: Like the Enterprise is not his first time a captain. So, yeah, he’s he’s been through some shit. And we also know he’s had like a bunch of Star Trek style adventures on the Enterprise already because he’s already been to Talos and he’s like, I’m not sure. I don’t show you ever say how many years he is into the five-year mission. But presumably he does two of them because there’s still like, you know, another nine years to go before the Enterprise gets taken off.

Carla: Oh, yeah.

Ben: So, yeah, I mean, he’s been around and Admiral Cornwell. Well, I mean, who knows how long she’s been doing it.

Carla: Well she’s a psychologist so you know.

Ben: Yeah.

Carla: Hahaha.

Ben: Yeah, yeah.

Carla: Well that was just a nice little bit of backstory about her.

Ben: Yeah. Well I mean we knew that from last season. That isn’t new information, but it was nice to see it brought back. I thought.

Carla: Yeah. Just a little reminder.

Ben: What do you think of that scene with her and Hugh?

Carla: I don’t know?

Ben: Is it weird like because surely, they have a ship’s counsellor, right?

Carla: I don’t think they do on Discovery.

Ben: I guess it’s on a small ship like we discovered last episode it’s only got like a 120 or 140 people on it or something.

Carla: Yeah. I don’t think they do.

Ben: So maybe they don’t have. But you’d think, you’d think they’d have to have one though? I mean they see so much weird shit.

Carla: They probably do it virtually like there’d just be resources that you can access virtually.

Ben: Talk to a hologram…

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: Psychologist.

Carla: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Ben: Who’s on a star base somewhere.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: Or you just get on the shuttle and go to the star base and admit yourself like Spock did. I guess.

Carla: There’s that too.

Ben: Yeah. That seems a bit full on.

Carla: I don’t know like I feel like it was kind of giving us a little bit more context that we needed for what Hugh is thinking and feeling and going through. Why is he not in uniform? But he was in that mission. I don’t understand what is happening with him. Is he on sick leave? What is happening?

Ben: Yeah, it’s a bit weird, isn’t it? I mean, Spock’s not wearing uniform either. But then he’s not a member of the crew. But he is still a Starfleet officer. Well, I guess he’s been stood down at the moment because, oh no they said all the charges against him been dropped. I don’t know why he’s not in uniform, but I guess he’s not an official member of the crew.

Ben: And maybe Hugh isn’t either, because he was declared dead. So maybe they can’t just reinstate him, but they’re letting him do stuff because they like him. I don’t know.

Carla: That’s a good point.

Ben: I mean, I don’t know. How do you how do you feel about how much room that storylines being given? Because he hasn’t been in every episode since he came back from the dead. And then this episode he has, you know, has the moment he goes in. And there’s the whole thing, weird thing with Georgiou in the room. Then he talks to Cornwell. And then also there’s him listening to Stamets at this funeral at the start and going  “oh, what a beautiful thing” and Stamets tells that great anecdote, which I thought was really quite beautiful about how Airiam felt that…

Carla: Oh, my God, are you kidding? I feel like “hogging the mic much? Like he’s just talking about his own story.

Ben: No, no, no. That was Airiam’s story.

Carla: No, I know. But it’s like literally exactly what just happened to him with Hugh.

Ben: So, sort of look, I didn’t I didn’t feel that.

Carla: But you liked it. That’s nice.

Ben: I liked it. I liked it because it’s that…

Carla: We all project.

Ben: Well, it was that way of using a scientific principle to talk about wonder in the universe, which is I’m just a sucker for that. So, I really enjoyed it. Anyway, you know, Hugh sees him and he has him saying that and then tries to talk to him when the whole crisis with Burnham is going down just before they’re about to kill her to summon the Red Angel. And I don’t know. What do you think of that way that’s going? Cause Stamets seem to be like this isn’t the time for that conversation. Then he says, like it might never be the time. What do you think’s going on?

Carla: I just don’t think he wants to engage with him about it anymore. He’s heartbroken and he doesn’t want to talk about it. That’s fine.

Ben: Yeah, that’s fair.

Carla: You know?

Ben: Like you, I lost you. You came back from the dead and then you told me you weren’t that same person and that I should move on. Now you want to talk to me about it? Make up your fucking mind mate.

Carla: It’s sort just like back…. Like, basically, it’s like “don’t call me, I’ll call you”. That’s essentially what he was saying. Like, if I’m ever ready to talk about this. You’ll hear from me. But fuck off until that day.

Ben: And that’s fair enough really. I can’t fault him for that.

Carla: I don’t know. I think they just kind of building it up to whatever that conclusion is going to be like, whether he leaves Discovery, or he stays, I don’t know, but they’re giving it that groundwork. So, it doesn’t kind of seem odd.

Ben: Yeah, I just felt it was a bit weird because they made such a big deal about his return and then it just feels like they haven’t spent much time on it and it’s going somewhere very emotionally real. But in terms of, you know, and the characters, there’s some interesting stuff happening there, but there’s not a lot of time being spent on it and it’s not interacting with the plot very much. So, I’m just curious to know if it’s going to have like some massive payoff in the next four episodes, which it might.

Carla: It might, the whole thing’s pretty hodgepodge. So, I don’t really, I’m not really reading into it too much. You know what I mean?

Ben: Yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough.

Carla: I did like the way that all these tendrils wrapped up together because I thought it was like a perfectly masochistic final penance for Michael, like for her to go through that in order to kind of like it’s like this rebirth process…

Ben: Yeah. Literally die and be reborn.

Carla: Literally with her mother. Yeah. And with her mother. Reborn by her mother.

Ben: Oh shit! Yeah, that’s true.

Carla: You know, which has been the source had her mother’s death has been the source of all of her pain, you know. And you know, she seems like the kind of person that needs to suffer for anything that’s good that is gained. So, I thought that that was a really smart way of wrapping up her personality and all the things that have happened to her.

Ben: Yeah, I hope she. I mean, this is obviously massive for her. And I hope, hope has some big – I’d like to see some changes for her as a result. But also like, can we just talk about mum’s like life laser?

Carla: (laughs) I know what is that?

Ben: She just shows (buzzing noise) “wake up”. Like I wish I had one of those. That’s like a maybe it’s 500 years in the future defibulator.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben:  I can’t say that word. That’s like the one with the defibulator or defibrillator?

Carla: Defibrillator.

Ben: Defibrillator. There we go. Yeah, I find it hard. I never get it right the first.

Carla: That’s okay.

Ben: Wait, hang on. Your plan is to let her die like the Angel supposed to arrive and prevent her from dying? But she doesn’t prevent it from dying. She just brings it back to life. I did at the same time, Michael’s got to have horrendous injuries. Like the toxic atmosphere is like burning her face. What’s it doing to the inside of her lungs?

Carla: I know I was expecting like a whole “Total Recall” situation when it was happening.

Ben: Yeah, it was, it was gross. But then when she sort of wakes up and she’s brought back, she’s just kind of like “Mum?!”. And then, yeah, she seems okay. So, I mean, I guess she’ll be yeah. She’ll be brought back to life. I did see somebody on the Internet said “hey, this is my recut of the end of the episode” and they just they just do the bit where she dies and then they just cut to the credits. I’m like whoa! that would be intense. I’m so glad they  didn’t do that.

Carla: But not off brand. (laugh)

Ben: (laughs) Yeah, fair. Any other bits of the episode you want to?

Carla: I think we should go to Short Chats.

Carla: All right. Let’s do it.

Ben: Now it’s time for re:Discovery Short Chats, where we talk news trivia and anything related to Discovery and also any questions you have for us, follow our socials and get in touch. Captain, we’ve got a few things. We’ve got a question on Twitter.

Carla: Yeah, hit me.

Ben: Let me find it. So, Darren Lutchner.

Carla: Hi Darren.

Carla: I hope I’m pronouncing you’re name there right. Darren sent in the question, “would you like to see any other characters from the Original Series join Discovery?” and Darren suggests he’d like to see Scotty meet Stamets and think that they would verbally hit it off. I don’t know how I feel about that Scotty would be really young, like he’s not the engineer of the Enterprise, he’d be like an Ensign or something in his career, I think.

Carla: Well it could be one of the ships that they come up on.

Ben: Oh, yeah.

Carla: You know, yeah, that’s really plausible.

Ben: That is that would be fun.

Carla: I would like Sulu.

Ben: Oh, yes. Young Sulu. Yeah. Cool.

Carla: And he could actually be out rather than being inferred.

Ben: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean it’s very well caused the problem it’s kind of. Yeah. There’s a lot of things inferred about Sulu. Because it’s, I mean it’s like…

Carla: It’s a J.K. Rowling type situation.

Ben: It is. Yeah. In the in the prime-time line in the Kelvin timeline he’s explicitly.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: Got a partner and a kid.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: Which is nice but yeah that would be cool. I don’t know. I mean I think I might’ve mentioned it before, but I kind of feel with time travel introduced here and the fact that they’re making like the future Picard show that it would be crazy not to do some kind of crossover like at least once.

Ben: Like just something little like even if it’s just Picard watching holograms of the Discovery crew doing something that becomes that’s a plotline in his show like it wouldn’t even have to be time travel necessarily, but I thought that could be cool. But specifically, Original Series characters, I don’t know. I mean,  Spock was my favorite. So, I kind of feel like anything more for me would be greedy, although I would like to see more of Number One. I hope Number One comes back.

Carla: I would like maybe Janice Rand, Yeoman Janice Rand.

Ben: Oh, she’s cool. Yeah.

Carla: Her crazy woven beehive.

Ben: She’d have to be a cadet in Starfleet if she’s even in Starfleet. At this point in time, because she’s like at the start of her career, I think on Star Trek. So, this is, and this is like what did we decide? Like about nine years before that.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: So, yeah. So, she’d probably be in the academy, I guess. I mean how long do you go to Starfleet Academy for?

Carla: I don’t know. Probably a very long time.

Ben: Yeah, maybe. Or we could meet her as a teenage girl. Maybe they inspire her to go into space. That could be a fun little thing…

Carla: Oh, when I went to Starfleet Academy, it was only one day.

Ben: Oh, right.

Carla: But that’s because I was so good at it.

Ben: (laughs) Of course.

Carla: Yeah.

Ben: And you got chosen for the command training program.

Carla: And got chosen for the command training program.

Ben: Accelerated entry. Yeah. Yeah, I understand.

Carla: What else do you have Ben?

Ben: Ah now I do. Well, one thing I didn’t talk about this episode. You told me to watch out for butts in Star Trek. And I’ve got to say, Spock’s butt in that space suit.

Carla: Set the Internet on fire.

Ben: Holy moly. It was good.

Carla: Yeah, it was.

Ben: Yeah, I know. I didn’t even see the people on the internet talking about it.

Carla: Are you kidding?

Ben: I was just watching the episode going “that is… That’s a good butt”. Nice one!

Carla: I saw the butt, but then of course you hit the hashtag and it was just all everyone.

Ben: #spocksbutt is that the hashtag? “the search for butt” (both laugh). Star Trek 3… I don’t know. I thought that was cool. I enjoyed that. I enjoyed that a lot.

Carla: People were discussing his workout routine, how it could possibly get to that kind of bubble butt on such a skinny guy, there’s lots of theories bandied around about…

Ben: He’s got padding in the butt of the space suit.

Carla: Squats… What kind of squats…

Ben: That’s too much.

Carla: There was a lot of chat.

Ben: Just enjoy it. Just enjoy it. Yeah, that’s what I say. I did. I enjoyed it. Now, I didn’t predict this on-air last episode, but on Twitter, I did wonder whether we would see…

Carla: Lieutenant Nilsson?

Ben: Lieutenant Nilsson more. Because as we’ve previously mentioned, the actor playing Lieutenant Nilsson is Sarah Mitich, who was the original Airiam who was replaced by Sarah Cheeseman. Is it Sarah?

Carla: No Hannah?

Ben: Hannah Cheeseman. Yeah, for this season, who did a great job, but Sarah Mitich has appeared in the background of a few scenes without really. I mean she had like one background bit of dialogue which is probably not scripted. And then yeah, when the doors open and she comes onto the bridge and it’s Airiam. replacement and everyone’s a bit awkward about it. Yeah, it’s her.

Carla: I was like Airiam 1.

Ben: So, she’s, she’s back on the bridge and I I’m really glad to see her back, you know. Yes. It was nice. It feels like a nice bit of continuity. But also, clearly there’s something…

Carla: It’s probably contractual or something like that.

Ben: Yeah. It’s probably like “we contracted you for like three seasons, but we’ve decided now we want to kill off this character in the second season. So, we’re going to recast that character and give you a new one. Is that alright?” And she’s like “yeah”. It’s like “you can also show your actual face”. “Oh, that’s great”. So, but it is nice to see her still there on the show because, you know, she did a great job as Airiam in the first season. She got like about three lines of dialogue.

Ben: But because of her being there, we felt that emotional attachment to Airiam. much more easily this season, even though it wasn’t her playing the role. So, it’s nice to see her back. So, I really enjoyed that.

Carla: I want more Rhys cause Rhys is the biggest babe on Discovery.

Ben: He’s pretty. He’s great, he’s great. And Bryce though as well.

Carla: Bryce?

Ben: Is it Bryce? Who’s the other guy? The other guy on the bridge.

Carla: The black guy?

Ben: Yeah isn’t his name Bryce?

Carla: I don’t know. I’m only all eyes for Rhys.

Ben: I think it is.

Carla: Who is this guy?

Ben: It’s Bryce or something like that.

Carla: Yeah, no he’s nice there.

Ben: But they’re all good. They’re all good. Yeah, but I would like you know, we had that Owo episode, Detmer’s had a few good moments. Obviously, we now had the big Airiam episode. There’s still four episodes left. There could be a Rhys and Bryce episode. Maybe they team up.

Carla: Who knows?

Ben: Maybe, maybe. Yeah, it’ll be fun, and we might see some more of Nilsson as well. I think that’ll be great.

Carla: Yeah, that’ll be good.

Ben: I also like this episode was directed by Hanelle M. Culpepper.

Carla: Yes, is that like a French-Canadian name?

Ben: No, it’s a very, it feels like a very southern American southern United States named to me. It’s like I like when I first hear if I hear the name Culpeper assume like someone’s got a big white beard in there. They’ve got a pipe and they’re like (southern American accent) “oh, yeah, I’ve, uh, directed some Star Trek”. But that is not what is happening because she is an African-American woman. And I got excited to see her name in the credits because I like I see her work because I hadn’t been paying that much attention. If I’m really honest to the director credits until or whenever the first Frakes directed episode was “I’m like, oh, I should be paying attention to this”. She did a great, great job on this episode. And she’s also directing the first two episodes of the new Picard’s show.

Carla: How exciting.

Ben: So first African-American woman to direct the debut of a Star Trek show.

Carla: Hey, hey!

Ben: And yeah, I think that’s really great. And she did such a good job with this. I just feel even better now about the Picard’s show. I think it’s going to be great.

Carla: Next week, we’re going to, I’ll do Short Chats on the costume designer. She’s. African-American woman, her costumes are crazy.

Ben: Oh, they’re off tap. I want I want all of Spock’s clothes. I want to dress like Spock or Hugh, Hugh’s got some great clothes as well.

Carla: I’ll get you the squats formula. (both laugh) The squats formula.

Ben: I’ve got to get on the regime. If I’m going to fill them out the way he does, was there anything else you wanted to talk about?

Carla: No, that’s it from me.

Ben: I’ll see you next time.

Ben: You’ve been listening to re:Discovery. You’ll find links to all the creatives involved on our web site rediscoverypodcast.com. We’d love to connect with you. Find us on Twitter and Facebook @rediscoverypod.

Ben: Oh, before you go, I almost forgot. I’m doing a comedy show. You can catch me in “You Chose Poorly” as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival from the 1st to the 7th of April at Campari House in Hardware Lane in Melbourne. You can find details via my website benmckenzie.com.au. But this, as always, is a Splendid Chaps Production.

Splendid Chaps: Find more entertainment for your ears at splendid chaps dot.com.