Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 2x10 - "The Red Angel"

All sentient life. I guess the planet we shipped all the Trump worshippers to will be OK.

 

Now this is funny. It's also alarmingly apt:

 

Time travel...coffee...here comes Janeway!

If the Red Angel isn't careful, it's going to get spattered on the windshield of the timeship Aeon...

 

A self-replicating robot swarm taking over the whole galaxy is a longstanding sci-fi trope.

 

Just one minor note, but Peck’s emulation of Nimoy’s pronunciation of “senSORs” was positively fangasmic.

 

Well, they already did Ming, so might as well move on to this, I guess.

 

Huh. I don't quite know what to make of this episode. I was expecting a monumental, cliffhanger-style story, but it turned out to be much more of a bridging episode, placing the figures on the chessboard before it all gets moving again. The first half especially seemed like a setup sequence like this, before they finally realized Burnham being the variance and everything came into proper motion again. In the end, it kind of reminded me of the season openers of Game of Thrones; suspenseful, with certain plotlines feeling a bit rushed, but eventually picking up the thread by the end. I think this episode could've benefited greatly from a longer running time.

Well, first things first, the revelation. When we first were told it was Michael, I wasn't the littlest bit surprised, as it was the obvious choice from the start, so I didn't ever consider it. In the end, while I'm glad I was right about her not being the RA, the true answer was in front of my nose and I didn't notice it: as soon as we were told Project Daedalus was Section 31's time travel suit and Burnham's mom was the engineer working on it, it should've been obvious. Granted, I once again got distracted by the Red Herring instead of focusing on the Red Angel, which is actually quite poetic, now that I think of it.

So the true food for though to take away from tonight is what happened during the climax, specifically why Control killed Leland. For me it seems like Control shot the needle into his brain when he was trying to give the energy boost to close off the time wormhole. Therefore, I conclude that Future!Control needed more time to slip back into our time through the Red Angel's wormhole so it needed to keep it open just for a little bit more. If it did come back armed with 500 years worth of future knowledge, then in the end all the red bursts, all of the Red Angel's work was for naught: Control is already winning and 500 years ahead of us. I'm anxious and curious how it'll be defeated.

The plan to bring back and capture the Red Angel had a glaring flaw from the beginning, namely that Burnham needed to be in mortal danger. After all, opening the wormhole to the past would risk Future!Control seeping in through the cracks, so if the RA, by virtue of being in the future, already knows Culber's going to revive Burnham anyway, she would obviously see no need to travel back to save her. Because of this, I was very afraid that Georgiou would eventually attempt to stop Culber from doing anything, so I was geniunely surprised by Spock coming to this cruel but very rational conclusion. I just hope he appreciates what a risky move it was.

I liked the focus on the revelation concerning Burnham's parents. Their connection to Section 31 and Leland might not be the most original idea but the episode walking us through Burnham processing the emotions it brought forward from her made it work in my opinion. I found seeing her punch Leland, lashing out at Tyler and talking it out with Spock very satisfying to watch and I could practically feel the catharsis she felt. Spock was very, very Spock in his heart-to-heart with her, and I felt joy when I saw they really do love each other after everything. Even if he continued to perform epic burns of Burnham (Epic Burnhams?) in front of her crewmates.

Observations:

• I haven't read through the thread yet, but Tilly being annoying was probably brought up again. As I saw it, she just learned that her best friend was the Red Angel, whose shoulders the fate of the world rests upon. I would've been hella anxious too.
• Georgiou was absolutely infuriating in this episode, and she was obviously having way too much fun making everybody uncomfortable, so she was definitely meant to come off like that. Tilly's hilariously awkward attempts to look away turned the scene absolutely hilarious for me.
• Only when Leland started talking about time crystals in the Orion black market on Qo'noS did I realize he was talking about the same thing Mudd used.
• Nilsson taking over Airiam's station wasn't really done well. The camera just lingered on her for far too long, which together with the reaction shots, came off as the show winking at us for knowing who the actress played previously. This was the first scene in Discovery that instantaneously broke my immersion. I guess many would call me lucky for that.
• The reconciliation/kiss scene with Tyler and Burnham only worked for me because Burnham was scared for her life and needed to have an emotional outlet. Their romance just doesn't do it for me, mostly because I don't really know where to put Tyler this season.

 

It actually answered a question for me, which is “do non-uniformed suits still exist in the 23rd century?”

 

Mrs Burnham is unaware we've switched her regular time crystals with new Folger's Crystals. Now let's watch.

 

One of the things I kinda hate about this season is the seeming "all casual dress is black" thing. One thing the Mudd episode got right last season was showing Stella in a TOS-ish outfit. While I don't expect cardboard sets, it would be nice to see some evidence that bright colors and retro-futuristic styles were in vogue.

 

I thought something didn't really add up with that, since if she was originally killed as a child, it would be difficult to come back, as an adult, and save herself, if she never reached adulthood in the first place.

It's like the exocomps, where they only act if there's real danger, rather than attempts to fabricate it.

 

I'm not convinced it killed him. I suspect it might have implanted some kind of nanovirus into him...

I fully expect an "occupied" leyland to return.

 

It might have shown up, if she'd actually died while she was in the brig.

 

I assumed it killed him and then impersonated him through the comm channel as we were already shown it impersonating the admirals. I wonder if such a biological-technological interface could work though. For Airiam, the virus only overrode the cybernetic parts, at least that's what I assumed, but given Control comes from 500 years in the future, it could also conceivably create a virus that can interface with a human brain as well.

Edit: I just remembered, my assumption was also fueled by how it started to parrot back Leland's words at him before stabbing him in the eye. It felt almost as if it was generating a synthetised voice based on Leland's.

 

I could have sworn his eye was already healing a bit again....

 

See also-- the half-brother that Spock never mentioned to Kirk despite serving over 20 years together.

 

It looked like it, yeah. His fate might have deliberately been left ambiguous. His eye started looking okay as he was still lying on the floor, and then we cut to Tyler hearing him speak. So we can't really know if it was truly him, or if he was taken over by some kind of nanovirus or if it was Control using a synthetised voice while he was incapacitated.