Captain’s log: 2257

Jonathan Frakes returns to direct this episode that first aired on 14 March, 2019 and was written by Michelle Paradise.

When members of the Discovery crew infiltrate a Section 31 station, Pike (Anson Mount) and the rest begin to fear they have a leak aboard ship.

Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Spock (Ethan Peck), meanwhile, attempt to work together, but things don’t go as well as she hoped. The discussion and more take place over a give of three-dimensional chess, in which both characters realise they don’t know one another like they thought they did, but are still family whether they like it or not.

The goal at Section 31’s base, is to reset the Control Threat Assesment program, which most of Starfleet, but for 31, have been cut out of by logic extremists. The leak in the system is not who we think it is, it’s Airiam (Hannah Cheesman), who actually gets some great moments in this episode, which obviously means, she’s about to be lost.

There are some great sequences, the chess, the flashback to the death of Burnham’s parents, and the Discovery’s approach to the Section 31 base, which used to be a penal colony, and the emotional climax which sees Airiam’s demise, and the revelation that the Red Angel came back to stop Control’s amalgamation of data from the ancient sphere they encountered. The information contained centuries worth of information on A.I., and would have allowed the evolution of Control into sentience… something the Red Angel has seen and come back to stop before it leads to the death of all sentient life in the galaxy.

Ariam advises Burnham to find Project Daedalus, and we are left stunned at episode’s end with her death.

Captain’s log: 2257

Airing on 21 March, 2019, Red Angel was written by Chris Silvestri and Anthony Maranville. It ups the ante a little more as Micheal Burnham learns she has a deeper connection to Section 31, and that we may know who the Red Angel is… the bio-signature indicates that it’s Burnham.

It seems Leland (Alan van Sprang) was the one who sent Burnham’s parents to the planet where they were killed, and that her parents were the creators of the Red Angel suit that she and the Discovery are now trying to track and trap. We here things about a supernova, and a time crystal, as well as more about her parents, and revealing this at this point in the season, you know it’s going to have relevance with how things will play out before the end of the season arc.

Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) is back, and she has some great interaction with Stamets (Anthony Rapp), Culber (Wilson Cruz) and Tilly (Mary Wiseman) as they try to figure out a way to capture the Red Angel.

The way they decide to attract the Angel, the only one that seems guaranteed to work, is to put Micheal Burnham in physical danger. She has to die. Because if the Red Angel is her future self, she has to come to save Burnham, or she will never be.

It’s a theory. But is it the right one? Will it pay off?

As we hit the climax of the episode we see that Control isn’t willing to lose control yet, and finds a new vehicle in Leland, and we are left with the reveal of who the Red Angel is. It’s not Burnham, it’s her… mom?

We are racing towards the end of the second season and things are starting to happen really quickly now. The Human Adventure continues on Thursday as I journey deeper into the second season of Star Trek: Discovery, now available on blu from Paramount Canada.

Boldly go…