In Review: Star Trek: Discovery – Into the Forest I Go

Synopsis: Bypassing Starfleet’s orders, Lorca uses the USS Discovery crew’s ultimate asset, the ship itself, in an effort to end the war with the Klingons once and for all.

Review: Lorca goes against orders to return to the fleet and sends Burnham and Tyler on a dangerous mission to board the ship of the dead. Their job is to plant two transmitters that will allow Discovery to figure out the frequency of the Klingon cloaking device. In order to do that Lorca has to ask Lt Stamets to make 134 micro jumps while linked up to the spore drive.

As mid-season finales go this episode had it all. We have Lorca pushing his crew to the limit and making an incredibly big promise to Stamets whose very life is in the balance due to the unforeseen side effects of linking with the ships spore drive.

We also have Burnham and Tyler boarding the Klingon ship in order to plant the devices that will allow Discovery to do its thing. But we also have more story to what happened with Tyler while he was aboard the Klingon Prison ship and we get some inkling as to what L’rRell put him through. The implications of which we’ll get to learn more about in the second half of the season when the show returns in January.

Burnham got a chance to redeem herself and took on the Klingon commander Kol in hand to hand combat using a small Klingon weapon, which wasn’t quite as impressive as the batleth that Worf would wield in ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’. Either way, the fight was pretty well done and it gave Burnham a chance to retrieve her former Captain’s command pin.

Credit has to go to Shazad Latif for giving a convincing portrayal of the crippling effects of post-traumatic stress and also providing Admiral Cornwell with something to do in terms of talking him through it.  

The episode ends on a cliffhanger and leaves fans with some pretty good questions to ponder during the break. Questions such as what did L’Rell doe to Tyler? Where exactly has Discovery ended up? And what has happened to Lt Stamets?

Hopefully, the answers will be surprising and in a good way.

Star Trek: Discovery returns to CBS All Access on 7 January 2018 and Netflix viewers will get to see it on January 8, 2018.