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Which is exactly why the whole thing doesn't work.
You can kill the sibling or you can kill the neighbor. Tomlinson was the neighbor and they treated him as such.
Airiam, despite what anyone thinks, was still just a neighbor, yet they presented the episode as if she was the sibling. The stuff at the beginning was the equivalent to "Hey MC Neighbor, remember how your parents practically raised me and we've always been so close despite never actually mentioning it before and our relationship never extended past borrowing a cup of flour? Yeah. Me neither."
So Airiam's death scene is an obvious TWOK homage, the bit with the gravity boots and floating blood is TUC, and the flying mines Galaxy Quest. Surely there must be a Sha ka Ree and V'ger reference in here too.
It worked fairly well for me but had the various details like her honeymoon, the beach sand, and memory management been given over the season or even a few episodes I'd have felt more attachment. As it was, the Airiam info was just waving a flag that this character is important! That's usually a sure sign of death for a background character in Trek. For me, the Tomlinson comparison has some bearing but in her case, the understatement at the outset and brief character beat in the phaser room made her reaction in the chapel very moving. We had her loss, but the bigger losses all around from the bases watching the neutral zone to the crew on the Romulan ship to care about as well as those on the enterprise centering back on the marriage which should have been the start of a new life. Here it was just her not all that well connected because her build up is done all at once out of no where. It's a good story but far too compressed.
I think some of you care more about the death of Connolly than the death of Ariam. Why? Because "White Male". That's why. Nothing else. But there were posters who went on and on and on about someone who was in three scenes. Versus someone we've seen for over 20 episodes.
We got to see that Airiam had suffered an unimaginable amount of grief and trauma in her life and had overcome those things. Seriously, I'm amazed how much of that was packed into a single episode.
My emotional reaction was to that and I also had empathy for the main characters -- they were the ones who knew her and their grief was plain.
Questioned:
- Why the Federation would outlaw the use of Space Mines in the 23rd Century (And it's a policy they completely dropped by the 24th century - (See DS9 S5 "A Call To Arms" <--- Hell, those Mines were self-replicating too )
- Why Pike didn't just use the Ship's Phasers (and other weapons) to clear a path once things started to deteriorate on the approach (or warp out and come back and try something else.)
- Why if they still had Transporter locks on the members of the Landing Party (Arium in particular); that Discovery did just beam her out into space using the Transporter.
- I also have to wonder how Arium disabled her Helmet (she says as much) to the point where Control (who is in control of her motor functions) couldn't re-enable it, but hey "Drama".
Disliked:
- That they killed Arium (I'm not taking points off because it served the story fine.)
Also:
I honestly think the 'Red Angel' will turn out to be Arium in some form. She may be from the timeline where Control 'won'; but yeah, I think she's the one trying to 'fix time'. Bu, time will tell.
So, again, 9/10
Overall I find the story arc in this season a lot more cohesive than what was done for Season One, thus I actually think we'll get a satisfying conclusion that ends this story and sets up Season 3. But, we'll see.
Yeah, I wondered about why they didn't shoot the mines or wait until the spore drive was fixed and just jump past the mine field. Surely Jett or someone could have helped Stamets test the many rows of glowy Christmas lights, but it always seems to be lonely work in the spore drive. Except when Spock and Burnham randomly decide to hash out their personal affairs there.
If Control needed Ariam to deliver the dead planet info, what was the point of the mine attack?
I gave it an 8. The previews made this out as an action episode and it was sort of, but it felt a bit flat to me. Just a bit. I found the sibling spat between Burnham and Spock a bit tedious. Yeah, it was probably realistic, but it's not what I watch TV for. I think there were mixed opportunities with Airiam. It would've been nice if they had built up her character before killing her. We finally learn more about her background, and then she's killed. Supposedly she was married, and interacted with a crew a lot. Had a close connection with Tilly, etc. But none of that was on camera. That lessened her demise.
But, there was good stuff in this too. I enjoyed Cornwell. Learning about Control trying to, well, take control was interesting. I guess we see how the possible future occurs. And, to prevent it, they need to ensure that it doesn't get its hands on the AI knowledge.
Not sure what Airiam meant that it was all on Burnham? I guess we'll find out!
Yeah, I wondered about why they didn't shoot the mines or wait until the spore drive was fixed and just jump past the mine field. Surely Jett or someone could have helped Stamets test the many rows of glowy Christmas lights, but it always seems to be lonely work in the spore drive. Except when Spock and Burnham randomly decide to hash out their personal affairs there.
If Control needed Ariam to deliver the dead planet info, what was the point of the mine attack?
^^^
To disable Discovery so that the ship couldn't escape.
Remember Control already had Ariam disable the Spore Drive. With the targeted Mine attacks Control also disabled both the Warp Drive and Impulse Drive; but again, once the Admiral stated, "This shouldn't be happening..."; and Pike first raised the shields, they still had Warp Drive; but Pike kept heading further into the Minefield until Control succeeded in disabling all the Drive systems.
The memories of the crew laughing and hanging out together, we need more of that in this series. That scene is one of the reasons why I think the show is failing it's smaller characters and not allowing this crew to be more cohesive.
I was thinking exactly that while watching. One of the things I miss from TNG are the real friendships that formed. The crew interactions as they solve problems.
Again, I'm one of those who wants much more character development.
But for those who think that Airiam's death is unearned, how about Robert Tomlinson's death in TOS' "Balance of Terror?" We're only introduced to Tomlinson and his fiancee-almost-wife Angela Martine in that episode...
Still no emotional impact?
My tears upon seeing Airiam's fate were real. I've understood others' arguments for unearned moments before. This wasn't one of them. I saw enough glimpses to understand how her death affects characters that I do care very much about, like Burnham and Tilly.
I didn't have an emotional impact on Tomlinson's death but I still say that development happened naturally. Just by the wedding scene we see that the two were deeply in love, and we even got to see interaction between them throughout the episode. The difference with Airiam is all the emotional stuff that happened to her was through memory, or in show terms, a clip show. We have (As @Lord Garth points out) 20+ episodes with this character and we saw none of those memories before. So basically we're comparing a character who was in one episode to a character who was in over 20 and had less development than that one episode character other than the cliched bait and switch kill episode. I just feel like the impact would have been greater if they treated Airiam with the same respect in life as they did in her death.
As for other one episode examples
Lal - Developed naturally to the point where you cared about her, but she was only in that one episode so they did a great job making it so you did care at the end
Amin Marretza - Same a Lal, and played by the great Harris Yulin. Also, it was key development for one of our main characters
Sim - He was basically Trip Tucker so we cared about him too.
Tuvix - Same as the others
These characters had time to develop naturally over the course of the episode. They weren't just given a clip show of images like Airiam was. They were the story, and that was the only time we saw them. With Airiam, she was a member of the crew and we saw her almost every week. That's the key difference.
I thought the twist about Control looking for the data on AI from the sphere download was really good. It paid that plot line off nicely, and actually made perfect sense.
I haven't rewatched the sphere episode, so I'm forgetting, but was there any RA or signal influence in that story that caused Discovery to encounter the sphere? If so, that might have prevented Control from getting it's hands on the AI data first directly from the sphere itself.
I give it about a 7.5. Airiam's fate fell kind of flat for me, since there was no emotional investment in the character whatsoever from previous episodes and the stuff presented here seemed rather forced and rushed. Other than that it was a solid story. I enjoyed the continued Spock/Burnham interactions.
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