I liked this episode for what it was. It was probably one of the best mirror episodes we’ve seen. Campy or not, I still have to really suspend my disbelief to believe that the Empire survives for hundreds of years. Internally, they are killing each other to advance and now we’re seeing that in their off hours, it’s like a giant frat party. How were they ever mobilized to follow a chain of command long enough to conquer anyone. This isn’t something I’m holding only against this episode, but it is sort of a handicap when I watch them.
That being said, this was a decent episode. I am glad that the writers showed growth for Georgiou, that the prime universe had rubbed off on her and made her realize how horrible she had been.
The Admiral Vance scene with Saru at the beginning of the episode was another good moment and the reasoning he gives for allowing them to go on the mission doesn’t seem hackneyed.
I really hope that the Sphere Data doesn’t become a MacGuffin. Like the spore drive, the data has a real chance of becoming the obvious way of solving any problem they come across. There needs to be some kind of limiter to understand why they can’t use it every time or why it is suddenly offering solutions episode to episode.
I didn’t particularly buy Mary Wiseman as Captain Killy. She just felt like she was Tilly play acting, especially in the moments where she seemed flustered by Georgiou. The writers have created this narrative of how much of a brutal killer she was, but doesn’t portray that for me, at least not yet.
It was a nice move by the writing staff to bring in Hannah Cheesman as the mirror Airiam. Yes, I believe she is meant to be Airiam and not just a random background character. It feels like the powers that be knew some of us would be meticulously going over things frame by frame and threw us a bone without making a huge deal out of it.
Carl was the right level of weirdness. We didn’t need it spelt out to be the Guardian of Forever or some kind of giant explanation right now. Right now, he is a vehicle to send Georgiou on her voyage. And if he turns out to be the avatar of the Guardian or the Q or whatever, I think I can be okay with it.
There were some weird camera shots hovering over people during the assassination attempt. It felt like these shots were inferring there was a massive conspiracy, especially including Detmer and Owo, who seemed to be in line back in season one. It left me with more questions.
This was a good first part, setting up the story and getting us and Georgiou where we need to be. This episode will lose points in the future if we spend two episodes in the mirror universe and waste time and rush into a silly season finale. If this was a twenty plus episode season, I wouldn’t have any concerns about that, but this is Discovery’s track record.
