In Review: Star Trek: Discovery – If Memory Serves

Synopsis: Spock and Burnham head to Talos IV, where the process of healing Spock forces the siblings to confront their troubled past. Stamets desperately tries to reconnect with an increasingly disconnected Hugh, while Tyler struggles to shed the crew’s suspicions of him due to his past as Voq.

Review: This episode packs a fair bit of plot in, but also serves as sort of a sequel to the original ‘Star Trek’ pilot episode ‘The Cage’.

The Story

Burnham takes Spock to Talos IV where she is forced to make a deal with the Talosians so she is able to see what Spock is seeing, which turns out to be the total destruction of the universe. But in order to see what Spock has seen, she must share the painful memory, which involved her shunning her half brother in an effort to try and protect him.

Meanwhile, back on Discovery. Pike has been ordered to stay put by Section 31 while all other ships engage in a search for Burnham and Spock. We also learn that Discovery has a spy in their crew and it isn’t the obvious suspect.

Also on Discovery Stamats is having trouble rekindling the flames of his relationship with Hugh, who is feeling disconnected from himself and his emotions.

The Acting

Ethan Peck absolutely nails it as Spock. He puts in an amazing performance, which I felt pretty much blows anything that Zachary Quinto did with the role out of the water. The conversations on Talos IV between Spock and Burnham where Burnham is seeing the events as she is walked through Spock’s mind are brilliant.

Overall

For me. This is the best episode of Discovery to date. It successfully pays homage to the classic series era with a recap of events seen on ‘The Cage’ starting off the episode and then progressing into the main story. The more modern looking Talosian’s look good and are not too far removed from how they looked in the original series.

We even get to see Vina who gets a nice scene with Pike when Burnham gets help from the Talosians in projecting a message to the Discovery to let Pike know that she has Spock.

Overall. A really well thought out episode, which pulls from the classic series in a respectful way and hopefully goes some way to bringing in some of the fans that have been staying away.