In Review: Star Trek: Discovery (S5 – EP5) Mirrors

Synopsis: In Mirrors, Captain Burnham and Book journey into extradimensional space in search of the next clue to the location of the Progenitors’ power, while Rayner navigates his first mission in command of the U. S. S. Discovery and Culber opens up to Tilly.

The Story

Picking the story up from last week. The Discovery crew have located L’ak and Moll and Captain Burnham and Book have taken on the assignment of capturing them. To fulfill the mission they must travel into Extradimensional space and board the long-abandoned I.S.S. Enterprise. As they catch up with L’ak and Moll. Book tries to convince Moll that she doesn’t have to continue running, but matters get complicated when it is revealed that L’ak is not only a member of the Breen race but also happens to be Breen royalty and he is deeply in love with Moll.

Meanwhile, back on Discovery Rayner is getting to grips with commanding the ship’s crew in Michael’s absence.

The Acting

Eve Harlow and Elias Toufexis perform brilliantly as they finally reveal a few more layers to Moll and L’ak. The scenes that show us their backstory are pretty compelling and make a lot of sense when juxtaposed with the present day. David Ajala has some really strong scenes where Book tries to convince Moll that there is another way in which she can maybe live a less frantic life where she no longer has to run.

Overall

Mirrors does a solid job of fleshing out the characters of L’ak and Moll and gets things to a point where we may start to care about what happens to them. Insofar as moving the overall story ark forward, the episodes don’t really achieve a great deal as most of the focus is character-driven. We get some cool visuals of the I.S.S. Enterprise and Burnham gets to reference her brother Mr. Spock when she points out what would have been his workstation on the ship’s bridge. The theme of family is pretty strong in this episode.

Insofar as moving the actual plot forward. Not much is achieved beyond Michael getting hold of another Puzzle piece, which will likely reveal its secrets in next week’s episode.