I admit, I felt a bit underwhelmed by this episode, but last week's one was a tough act to follow. I think it was caused mainly by the whole crisis in the mycelial network being of a much lower magnitude than what I would've expected. Still, if I don't consider my prior expectations, it was actually a beautiful and poetic concept: Paul, halfway between the network and normal space, saw Hugh lying dead, and in his grief, reached out for his energy and somehow brought him to life on the other side, in a form that was inadvertently hurting the network as it tried to defend itself against his presence. I found it a quite fitting allegory for grief, and specifically, how it hurts everything around you when you can't let go. I'm not sure if Hugh being back defeats the allegory or not. Let's see how Paul deals with the fallout going forward. Their moments together, Hugh finally accepting Paul as real, and deciding to sacrifice himself so that Discovery would be saved and Paul could move on were very touching.
I'm sad that the shuttle carrying Georgiou instead of Spock was spoiled by the press photos a few days ago, but I don't usually hold this up against the episode itself; I wouldn't have known without that picture of her standing in the medical shuttle's doorway. These kinds of things happen, as James Cameron can attest to, with the marketing campaign for Terminator 2 spoiling what was supposed to be the movie's big twist; namely, that Arnie was the good guy this time.
May's plot and motivation reminded me a bit of how Smiley pretended to be our O'Brien to kidnap Sisko to the Mirror Universe to get his help against the Alliance. So in that way, while I kind of wanted Tilly to be outraged for just a little bit longer (wonderfully strong acting from Mary Wiseman in that scene, I might add... her righteous anger felt palpable, beautifully raw and very real), I wasn't uncomfortable with her eventually deciding to help. Sisko isn't the most stoic man and he didn't act on his anger towards Smiley for long either. Of course, Sisko wasn't rescued like Tilly was and didn't have a choice at any point, so the analogy is far from perfect.
I was taken aback by how overtly Section 31 operated in this episode. I didn't have any problems with it, the Federation does have geopolitical interests that need to be served, but it was still surprising how official Cornwell's mediation between Starfleet and S31 was. Article 14, Section 31 of the Starfleet Charter being namedropped was a nice little touch, and I'm curious what would happen in the next 100 years that would force Section 31 to retreat into the shadows. Perhaps it might be something that Georgiou will do in the future. I don't believe a word that leaves your mouth, Pippa, even if you're only asking what today's Stardate is.
My customary little things I noticed:
- I utterly loved everybody's absolutely dumbstruck 'what the f***' reactions to Tyler's combadge. Probably the exact same reaction that many viewers had. I'm just wondering myself how much of Starfleet's common 24th century technology is already in use by Section 31. The tethered tractor beam was a really cool, unusual gadget as well.
- Leland's uniform looked almost exactly like that of Sloan, with the exception of a very visible zipper. Black leather never goes out of fashion, I guess.
- I absolutely lost it when Leland jokingly suggested they took Georgiou instead of Tyler and Pike and Cornwell immediately shot it down in unison.
