They made Tilly cry. Episode gets a zero!
Nah, I kid. This was a pretty good episode, though I'd have rather we learned more about Airiam before we got to this point in the series. Let's see...
* We learned Airiam was an augmented human, that she had to download and store her memories (or delete them), that she liked playing Kaldis-kot, that she adored Tilly (who wouldn't?!), and that she was the survivor in a shuttle crash that killed her husband, which may be why she was augmented, not 100% on that one. So it was good what we got, but I'm not sure it was enough, at least not to where we had time to let it all register.
GREAT
* Tilly stumbling over how she's not a fugitive (except that one time) was adorable. Go Tilly.
* The moments we actually get from Airiam are nicely done, and you can see she's probably a fun person to be around.
* Spock and Michael hashing it out over a game of chess, and the raw emotions bursting forth was a great scene.
* Spock and Stamets having a moment with some human compassion from Spock was a good one. I like it when people talk as people.
GOOD
* We learned that CONTROL really has taken over, that it's trying to gather all of the sphere data in order to evolve, and in doing so wipe all sentient life from the universe.
* We find out Admiral Cornwell may not be as neck deep into Section 31 as previously thought, which speaks better of her, I might add.
FAIR
* The "you're all under arrest" scene on the bridge with Admiral Vulcan, and then the "aw yeah" moment right after where it feels like Admiral Cornwell is giving a response that's only missing where she calls out The Rock in a challenge for the title belt.
* Super secret shuttle engaging in super secret shuttle rendezvous is super secret.
MEH
* The mine scene didn't work for me at all. They're mines, they move slow, the ship was moving slow, and it just felt very contrived.
* The mining station (?) itself. That whole sequence felt a little silly when they beamed aboard. Loved the gravity boots kicking in, but no one was immediately suspicious when the station had no power, no gravity, no atmosphere, etc? Yeah, it may have been hidden from sensors, but once they were on board a round of "what the hells" should have been a bit forthcoming.
FINAL THOUGHTS
That ending was certainly a bit of an emotional roller coaster. I did tear up, because I liked Airiam, even though I didn't know much about her, and now her character is gone. We'll see some of the fallout from that next week, I'm sure. There are Star Trek episodes that can cram a whole bunch of character growth into an hour, and make you cry. This one *almost* managed to do that for me. I did tear up, but it was more "aw, I wanted to learn more about Airiam and see her interact with other characters," rather than a fully developed character suddenly dying, which is still sad, but the impact is blunted quite a bit by the rush.
Side note: At the beginning during Airiam's memory sequence, until they talked about a shuttle, I also thought it was a commercial. I was saying "hey, I'm on the commercial free plan!" and then I realized this wasn't Cialis, it was Star Trek.
All in all, this one gets a Genuine 7 from me. The emotional performances made it work better than it probably should have, but they were enough.