2x03 Point of Light

[7.7/10] I wasn’t necessarily asking for what amounts to an epilogue to the first season of Discovery, or a backdoor pilot for Georgiou’s new Section 31 spinoff. The Voq/Ash Tyler story had promise, but was never my favorite part of the show’s first season, and revisiting that core part of the twists-upon-twists that season 1 of Discovery offered is not, in a vacuum, my idea of a good time.

And yet, I think I felt for Ash Tyler and/or Voq, cared about L’Rell, and appreciated the Klingons and their internal politics here more than at any moment in Discovery’s first season. Tyler, having to walk the line between human and Klingon on the other side of the divide is more interesting, and has more actions than words than the number of tortured monologues we got with him in Starfleet. L’Rell having to balance her need to show Klingon strength and unite her people while having affection for her lover and her child is more compelling than all the “Make Qo’Nos Great Again” material we got last season. And the familiar backstabbing and machinations among the Klingon high council is more twisty and exciting than all the surprise reveals from before.

At the core of all this is a simple, relatable struggle to figure out who you are, done up in sci-fi splendor in the way only Star Trek can. Obviously none of us (I hope) have found ourselves genetically altered and mind-wiped to think we’re a different person. But Ash’s struggle to hold onto the part of him that’s Voq, a proud Klingon who wants to restore honor to his people and be taken seriously as a member of their species, but who also remembers Ash’s sense of violation at L’Rell’s touch and struggles to know what to do or how to act, captures a sense of duality and internal tension that is universal.

It’s the parallel between his self-identity and Michael Burnham’s own struggle between her human physiology and her Vulcan upbringing that should have provided the foundation for a more compelling connection between the two of them before. And yet, the scene where they speak to each other by hologram (which feels edited and staged to mirror the outstanding scenes between Rey and Kylo Ren in Star Wars: The Last Jedi) is laden with meaning and regret and feeling in a way that so many of their earlier interactions were lacking. In a show whose writing can be thudding, Burnham’s offers of commiseration with Ash, her words about L’Rell that are layered with her own feelings and wistfulness for their time together, does so much to underscore the connection between these two characters, in a way that makes you genuinely sorry they’re so separated from one another.

As Burnham feels the separation with one person she loves, she’s reunited with another. Amanda Grayson, her adoptive mother, appears on the ship with a stolen copy of Spock’s medical file and a bundle of concerns and her own set of regrets. Again, there is a power to the way that Amanda’s description of life in Sarek’s home, in the differences between Burnham’s upbringing there and Spock’s, led to family strife and estrangement, that didn’t hold water in the same way last season.

It ties into that same sense of duality, where we’re told that Spock, who was half-human, was discouraged from showing emotion, from embracing his human side, to the point that Amanda tried to quell her own emotions around him. That contrasted with her treatment of Michael, who received all the expressions of motherly love that Spock was denied. That naturally creates jealousy, and frustration, and the sort of lostness that could lead an otherwise noble Starfleet officer to be involved in some (likely twisty and already hush hush) incident at a mental hospital in the here and now.

It ties into the meta-narrative of this season, with Amanda explaining that the “Red Angel” Michael saw on the planet matches the one Spock claimed to see as a boy, one that represented a change in him for the worse. It also hints at the strains in his and Michael’s relationship, where she hurt him to try to protect him, to stop him from following her so that the logic extremists would not go after him. The latter deepens the relationship, the sense of violation and betrayal amid intimacy that mirrors Ash’s feelings. And the former is a confirmation that there’s more to a supposed hallucination, a connection to something real, than the person experiencing something fantastical but prone to logic might believe.

That connects Michael’s story to Tilly. I’ll admit, I quickly grew tired of Tilly’s imaginary friend, whose chipper demands became as annoying to the audience as to Tilly. (Though I’ll cop to appreciating the fake out over her references to a shorter, blonder captain.) But there’s something very Star Trek about Tilly experiencing this seeming delusion, only to have it revealed that there’s a scientific cause to it that their technobabble abilities can remedy. I’ll admit that it’s odd to have it broken up over two episodes, but it actually feels like a pretty standard Star Trek “weird thing happens/main character doubts themselves/solution is found” story.

But what I appreciated about it is the way that it ties into Tilly’s character relationships. As I said for last week’s episode, there’s a father-daughter vibe to Saru and Tilly’s dynamic, and seeing his disappointment with her after her Durden disturbance on the bridge, followed by his reassurances after she’s been treated, is endearing as hell. More than that, while Discovery occasionally tries to force the Burnham/Tilly dear friend vibe too much at times, Tilly’s confession of her deepest concern and need for help to Burnham, and Burnham’s confirmation that Tilly isn’t crazy, validating Tilly’s willingness to confide in her, makes for an incredibly heartening scene that fortifies that relationship up. As Trek-y as it feels to have the voices in your head turn out to be some sort of interdimensional parasite, it feels even Trek-ier to have the solution come from a person who trusts you despite how wild what you’re describing is.

That sort of trust is at the core of Ash’s story in “Point of Light.” He wants the trust of the Klingon people. He wants the trust of L’Rell. And most of all he wants to trust himself, to know who he is and figure out who he wants to be. The key to that ends up being his son, another admittedly crazy twist that requires some elaborate explanation, but which immediately clarifies that kind of life and devotion that Ash wants to have.

It also adds stakes to the usual Klingon succession plot. Much of the business on Qo’Nos in this one felt like those classic Ronald D. Moore episodes of The Next Generation that set aside the Enterprise problem-solving for engrossing Klingon palace intrigue. Having a red-painted rival steal L’Rell and Voq’s child to try to guarantee their ouster as chancellor not only gives us a good dose of the usual Klingon ambition, it gives us Discovery’s best combat scene, with bat’leths and hack and slash flair.

It’s exciting, albeit a little convenient, when Mirror Georgiou shows up to save (then semi-ruin) the day, but there’s high tension and action in the scene up until that point. And as much as I’m not necessarily enamored with the idea of a Section 31 spinoff, the notion of Mirror Georgiou as a brutally practical “security consultant”, there to try to maintain order in the galaxy through whatever means are required is a compelling counterpoint to L’Rell and Ash trying to balance their desire to unite the Klingon people with their desire to rebuild something of the life they once had together.

So we have L’Rell pulling the equivalent of an Elizabeth style “virgin queen” declaration (or rather, the opposite of that, given that she designates herself the metaphorical mother of Qo’Nos). We have her and Ash’s child sent to a monastery where he will not know the same pull of two lives and sides of oneself that Spock did. And we have Ash finding himself invited to join the “freaks are more fun” crew that Mirror Georgiou is putting together.

The latter development makes me roll my eyes, as the last five minutes are selling that spinoff pretty hard, and in such a shallow “calling all misfits” sort of way it would make Suicide Squad blush. But it still ties the knot I didn’t know needed to be tied. Ash Tyler was never Discovery’s most interesting character, but he often had the potential to be. The notion of being pulled between being human and being Klingon in a way not even Worf dealt with, of having part of you love one person wholeheartedly and another part love another, of not knowing what your place is in this universe, are all fodder for a sympathetic and unique character who warrants explanation and conclusion.

In “Point of Light”, Discovery finally makes good on that with Tyler, making him the echo of Spock’s past, and another piece of Michael’s growing list of people she loves whom she feels a distance and sadness about. I’m not necessarily signing up for another 13-episode arc on “The Adventures of Section 31”, but for once, Ash Tyler felt recognizable and interesting amid the Klingon Machinations, and sympathetic and wounded as a human being, with an episode that synthesized him into the best and most compelling version of the character we’ve gotten so far.

(As an aside, it didn’t really fit in this review, but I loved how Amanda Grayson was depicted her, and the motherly concern and confidence she showed in equal measure made for a distinctive parallel between her and L’Rell, and deepened and arguably justified the Spock family drama that’s been the centerpiece of this season so far.)