Great Maker, that was intense. My hands are still sweaty and shaking. It goes without saying I loved it (
10, what else?). I haven't been this excited for a Star Trek episode since Discovery first came on and I wasn't disappointed by what I got. And luckily, I have been able to resist the temptation to open any Trek sites today, so I went into it spoiler-free.
I loved the space battle scenes. The pacing was tight and intense, and worked perfectly together with the chaotic swirl of the battle prep and suit assembly sequence at the beginning. The battle itself was more chaotic and visceral than anything I've seen on Star Trek before, including DS9. To offer an analogy, this battle was basically the World War 2 meatgrinder to DS9's Napoleonic monumentality for me. I also loved Michael flying through it all, and it came through really well how insanely dangerous that stunt was. Seriously, if it was me in that suit, it would've gone like "I'm OK, Spock, I just puked on the visor. I can't see a damn thing!"
On a side note, I'm also very glad Burnham remembered to save the Kelpiens too. If I were in her place, I would totally forget about that in my single-minded focus on getting all the signals in place. At least we finally know what Kaminar was needed for, something I wondered much about since The Sound of Thunder.
Seriously, the visuals were absolutely gorgeous all the time. The jumps themselves were really stylish and even the wormhole's light distortion looked kind of OK, but I'm no astrophysicist. Tilly or Reno might facepalm at how inaccurate it looked. Speaking of Tilly, she deserves every beer she wants from now on. Despite it never having a nonzero chance of happening, I was actually afraid she might die trying to raise the shields.
Spock and Burnham's goodbyes... there were no words. It was just so beautiful and emotional. As for Spock's shuttle being disabled, I was not surprised it ended this way, as it was the easiest solution and also spared him the need to do something stupid just for the sake of canon.
What I was disappointed about, however, was that they totally glossed over how Control was eliminated in the end. There are many adequate scenarios that would let me sleep at night, but I'm still quite bummed about the writers apparently forgetting the hardware/software distinction again and making it look like the whole thing was just contained within Leland. I guess Tyler did get his explanation though, after we cut to Spock, given he's going to lead Section 31. It would've been nice to hear the investigator saying a little bit more than a curt confirmation.
Other than Control, two questions remain for me:
- How exactly the Kelpiens and the Klingons were called, because I didn't quite catch that.
- To what extent is Discovery going to be expunged from the record? I'd find it quite harsh to sentence the whole crew to a literal damnatio memoriae, not to mention unenforcable. But then again, this was merely Spock's suggestion and not necessarily what Starfleet would implement eventually. I'd guess they would be retroactively reassigned someplace else and listed as KIA.
Observations:
- I absolutely lost it at Pike trying to invoke plot armor and Cornwell immediately telling him how stupid that would be.
- I wonder how the gravity failure scene was shot. I suppose they didn't have the kind of money and time Chris Nolan had with Inception.
- The wormhole effect reminded me of TMP a lot.
- I absolutely loved Number One's refusal to divulge her name. It worked really well for me, as she already looked like she was having none of the investigator's shit and just wanted this whole questioning to end so that she could go eat a cheeseburger.
- Loved the classic moiré scanner at Spock's station. Well, shit, loved the Enterprise and loved Spock in uniform at the very end.