5x05 Mirrors

[6.8/10] “Mirrors” does the exact sort of thing I ask for from Star Trek: Discovery. We have a focused story with an immediate goal. It centers on a handful of characters with meaningful tension and key connections to one another. It spends time with our antagonists, both in the present and in flashbacks, so that they feel more like people than cardboard villains. And it requires the right blend of working together and camaraderie to solve the problem du jour, in the proud Star Trek tradition.

And I didn’t really like it.

Which, I think, is another way of saying that even in its final season, I just don’t connect with Discovery’s style. For most of my reviews, I center on the writing -- big picture story choices in terms of plot or character or theme that can make or break an episode for me. And on all of those measures, “Mirrors” is resolutely sound.

The halfway mark of the season is a good point to have our two big couples, Michael and Book on the one hand, and Moll and L’ok on the other, confront one another. A clue that must be retrieved from a pocket of space that seems to wreck anything that comes in contact with it poses a suitable challenge. The fact that what they find there is the I.S.S. Enterprise is a neat twist. And I especially like Rayner and the rest of the squad doing the usual Starfleet problem solving routine to rescue their comrades.

On the character front, I’m also encouraged by the show’s attempt to add depth to L’ok and Moll. Thus far, they’ve had personality but not character. Giving us flashbacks to their experiences in the Breen Imperium follows the same laudable tack Discovery did with Ruon Tarka. Seeing that bond form in the past makes us more likely to care about how the baddies are motivated by it in the present. Writing in what their relationship cost them, and what they’re trying to achieve, is good block and tackle to turn your villains into people and not just obstacles to be leapt over.

And thematically...well, I don’t know...it’s fine. “Mirrors” gives us some closure to the events of Mirror Georgiou’s alt-timeline jaunt in season 3’s “Terra Firma”. It turns out the Action Saru that Georgiou spared went on to rescue many of his comrades and got them to the prime universe, which is nice enough, even if we’re told rather than shown. The vague lesson, about not giving up hope, is trite but fine, even if it comes in a writerly scene that practically paints the point on the screen in a way that gives me pause.

And that's the problem, really. The ideas here aren’t bad, but the execution is still just hard for me to warm too. When I think about what I would change in “Mirrors”, it’s hard to come up with something that isn’t already hard-baked into the series. As I’ve mentioned before, I think the show overuses its music, trying to inject emotion into scenes that can't earn that sentimental response on their own, and ironically exposing that fact. But that's been a longtime thing for the show.

The dialogue doesn’t do anybody any favors here, but it’s largely fine. Often, it’s too blunt or too didactic, with characters making statements that seem more intended for the audience than one another, with the viewer just happening to be an unseen observer. But again, that's nothing new and seems to be part of Discovery’s style.

The other problems I have are unavoidable. Discovery continues to look sterile, antiseptic, and unreal. It’s hard to feel Moll and L’ok’s coming together when the lone site of their rendezvous seems to be some odorless, CGI-sweetened soundstage. While it’s cool to finally see the face of a Breen, their frozen computer-generated visages look downright comical by 2024 standards. I guess, at least, the visit to the I.S.S. Enterprise is an excuse to use Strange New Worlds’ practical sets, but still, everything about how the show is shot and visualized comes off cold and removed, which is something far too late to fix now.

And once again, the performances are solid, but don’t elevate the material. Eve Harlow makes the biggest mark as Moll, with some strong emotional moments when the going gets tough, but even she’s reduced to playing a generic femme fatale much of the time. The rest of the cast in the episode does yeoman’s work, without any real faults in the acting, but they aren’t able to elevate the material either.

The result is an episode that is resoundingly solid but unspectacular. The episode is well-constructed, but ultimately still unengaging, to where it’s hard to criticize the thing too deeply, but it’s hard to praise much of it either.

At the end of the day, the idea behind giving us deeper insight into Moll and L’ok, and contrasting and comparing their connection and potential second chance with what we’ve seen of Michael and Book is a sound one. But the execution is so generic, clumsy, and flavorless that it leaves no impact. The show is doing and saying the right things, but the effort comes off plastic and desultory, to where you can barely connect wit the characters or materials.

“Mirrors” does feature some genuine high points and low points. Commander Rayner’s nervousness about stepping back into the captain’s chair, only to gingerly but resolutely finding his way into Discovery’s more open culture, and working with his crew to save his captain, is a nice little storyline. Tilly looking out for Dr. Culber’s emotional well-being the way he looks out for the crew’s is sweet, even if the listing toward “spirituality” sounds dicey for Star Trek. And hell, I even got a kick out of Book asking Burnham if they should “hit it” given the Enterprise environs, and her responding, “Let’s just fly.”

For the most part, though, “Mirrors” is an episode with a sound footing and a few good gimmicks, that nevertheless fails in its overall project to make us care about these new characters, their connection to the ones we already know, and the broader fetch quest the crew of Discovery is on. You can fix story problems; you can rehab characters; you can come up with good themes for your work. But things like tone, visual grammar, the style with which you present everything, is much harder to fix on an episode to episode basis After four and a half seasons, those things are pretty well set, and maybe, even when you shore up everything else, that's still enough to keep crusty old grumps like me from connecting with your show.