2x10 The Red Angel

The characters reasoning in this Episode makes 0 sense.

They figure out, that the Angel is Michael. OK!
Now they want to trap it using a plan Michael cocked up, thinking the Angel would appear to protect her. That kind of makes sense. But as long as the safety net (The Doctor standing by to recessitate her, should the Angel not appear) is there, why would someone not wanting to be captured appear?
It isn't necessary. I certainly wouldn't.

There is a reason former Star Trek writers shyed away from crossing own timelines (With the exception of DS9 and they were really careful not to make too long story archs - and that was a show about beings living outside of time...).
You really easy fuck up - and the fuckups here are countless.

Also, what the f*** is up with Section 31?
In ST:DS9 their mere existence was a very well kept secret. Yet here we are decades before where everyone seems not only of their existence, but also about their missions.
Not even mentioning their AI System, which kept and analysed Data for the Admiralty aiding their decision making.

I will get really angry if the staff of this show keeps mentioning the word canon. They blatantly disregard it every turn - canon-wise this Season is even worse than the one before.

It's still an entertaining show, but they really should rebrand it as something other than Star Trek as it clearly ain't anymore. It's some random Sci-Fi Show using the trademark...

[5.5/10] I first started watching Star Trek (specifically, The Next Generation) when I was only 5 or 6. I have to imagine much of it went over my head, but I still enjoyed the drama, the spectacle, the friendship that was on display. And as much as I still enjoy revisiting those old episodes and think plenty of them hold up to scrutiny, I wonder if I wouldn’t have been able to invest in some of those stories in the same way if I had seen them when I was older.

I say that because this episode is, if not ruined for me, then at least severely weakened, by my certainty that Michael Burnham wasn’t going to die here. It’s still early in the run, so maybe Discovery could turn Game of Thrones and decide to kill off its main character a few episodes before the finale, but it wasn’t bloody likely. As a (curmudgeonly) adult, I’m painfully aware of how the rules of T.V. work, which meant that all the teary goodbyes and final confessions and heartfelt moment had little impact on me when I couldn’t buy into the mortal peril the show wanted to present.

Now it doesn't have to be that way. Situations where the audience doesn't buy into the heightened risk can still have meaning so long as they accept that they characters do. Most Marvel Cinematic Universe fans are sharp enough to understand that the events at the end of Infinity War are unlikely to be permanent, but the emotional response of the characters, the talents of the performers, the way the script delivers the weight of those events on our heroes, gives it a force even if things seem destined to be undone.

And even apart from the false stakes that Discovery tries to establish here, it’s just not good on a scene-by-scene basis. An show has to work doubletime to make the character interactions feel realer, the scenarios more potent, when the big event that everything’s building to has no actual risk given the realities of semi-network television. Instead, we get some of the most weakly-written, weakly-performed bits in the show so far.

Because “The Red Angel” basically alternates between overwrought one-on-one conversations and exposition dumps until it’s time for the fireworks. The exposition dumps are clunky but fine, if not exactly organic. We learn, very very quickly, that Section 31 knew about The Red Angel the whole time because they invented the time suit in an arms race with the Klingons. We learn how, via some of the usual treknobabble, Stamets and Tilly and others can construct a trap to capture the Red Angel. And eventually we even figure out that the angel is a genetic match for Burnham, so that they can lure the angel in by putting Burnham in (supposed) danger thereby provoking the angel to try to avoid the grandfather paradox.

That is all adequate, if still a lot to throw at the audience at once. Despite the persistence of the whole Red Angel arc, Discovery has kind of blown through plot points this season, having extended info dumps when necessary to try to keep the audience up to speed. It doesn't make for the smoothest ride, but it’s part and parcel with Trek’s M.O., so I can live with it.

What I can’t live with is the reveal that Leland was stealing a time crystal and inadvertently got Michael’s parents killed while they were secretly working on the red angel project. Discovery is no stranger to crazy twists, but this one is just too contrived for me. It feels far too convenient that the Section 31 baddie that Burnham and friends have already been jostling with turns out to be the guy indirectly responsible for her parents’ deaths. And while it’s meant to seem very much like clockwork, the last minute reveal and centrality of Burnham to all of this is another convenient instance of the universe seeming to bend around our main character. It’s just too much, in a way that makes the story seem like it’s twisted and stretched to fit around our character rather than the other way around.

I also couldn’t buy any of the supposedly emotion-filled moments between Burnham and/or Culbert and the other characters. There’s a lot of reckoning that’s supposed to be happening here, but there are so many bad platitudes and dry cool action lines that any genuine sentiment in these scenes completely evaporates. Culbert’s therapy session with Cornwell is trite and atrocious. I was never invested in Burnham/Tyler so that did nothing for me. Even Michael’s moment with Geougiou, which was at least more understated, still felt propped up.

Hell, the years-long estrangement between Burnham and Spock is seemingly (at least temporarily) patched up in a single conversation here. At least Spock feels more like Spock here, with his dry witticisms and pure rational utilitarian perspective in the moment. I don’t care about any of his relationships with the folks on Discovery (except maybe Pike?), but at least he seems more familiar as the character we know and love in this one.

That said, “The Red Angel” features what may be the worst Trek scenes ever. The moment where there’s awkward tension between Stamets and Culbert, only for Georgiou to come in and make a big deal about her and their sexuality, felt like something out of a bad CW teen drama. To be frank, a lot of this episode did. But the acting and tonal problems were particularly glaring there, with break-up discomfort and mean girl taunting that may as well have been pulled from Dawson’s Creek.

The least I can say for “The Red Angel* is that those final fireworks, while mostly devoid of real stakes, have a good rhythm. I never doubted that the red angel would emerge to save Burnham, but the show at least makes the viewer work for that, and has Georgiou and Spock, Burnham’s adopted family, showing a bit of their true colors just before a member of her biological family appears. That twist seems like another convenient shock for shock’s sake, but the sequence to get there shows the series’s ability to pace these bits of action well even when the result is a foregone conclusion.

I think I would have been twice as thrilled with it if I had been watching this as a five-year-old. (Though given the amount of death and modern prestige sturm und drang here, it’s probably for the best if five-year-olds don’t.) Maybe the character conversations that seem cheesy now would seem profound. Maybe the supposed peril that seems entirely hollow now would seem true and full of danger. Maybe the signposted themes of not blaming yourself for things beyond your control would land. Alas, I’m a grown-up now, and I expect better from my prestige sci-fi shows than this.