In Review: Star Trek: Discovery – Project Daedalus

Synopsis: The Discovery crew infiltrates Section 31’s headquarters and suspicions arise that the crew may have a traitor in their midst. Meanwhile, Burnham tries to help Spock, but her efforts don’t go as planned.

Review: A traitor is revealed and she is not a willing participant.

The Story

The Discovery gets a visit from Admiral Cornwell who tasks Pike and the crew with a dangerous mission to infiltrate Section 31’s base of operations, which is a tough sell given that Pike and the rest of the crew are persona non grata in the eyes of both Section 31 and Starfleet.

Meanwhile, Michael tries to help Spock re-embrace logic by challenging him to a game of 3D chess, which does not go to plan given that Spock is not too keen on the idea of rejecting his human side.

Also, the crew begins to suspect a traitor in their mists, which we all know is Lt. Nilsson.

The Acting

Hannah Cheeseman puts in a wonderful performance as Airiam, who has a tragic storyline. She manages to get the audience to feel empathy towards her character, which is a huge achievement given that the writers have pretty much sidelined her as the cool looking Cyborg until recent times.

Overall

This was a great character driven episode for Michael and Spock to discuss their issues with each other, but it’s also an episode that has a certain degree of tragedy attached to it. Given the fate of Airiam and what Michael is given little choice in doing in order to protect herself and the Discovery.

As we learned last week. The traitor among the U.S.S. Discovery crew is their resident Cyborg Lt. Airiam Nilsson, but it is only really this week in which we get to know her and who she is via her interactions with Tilly. What we find out is that she was once human and had a happy life on Earth with her husband until a tragic accident killed him and left her close to death to a point where it was only possible to save her by turning her into a cyborg.

The way all of this plays out is really well written and performed. In fact, Airiam’s storyline was more compelling than the Spock and Burnham stuff that was going on.

In regards to the action quota. We see a great sequence where Discovery has to navigate blindly through a minefield and we get a great fight scene between Burnham and Airiam.

As to the Red Angel and his or her motives. We know very little, but we do learn that there could well be some sort of conspiracy brewing within Starfleet and in order to get to the truth. Discovery needs to find out about Project Daedalus.

Hopefully, we’ll learn more next week.

Overall. A really good episode for character beats, but not really too much in regards to the overall story arc this week other than the revelation that Starfleet could well be the means of its own destruction.