Discovery Recap: Point of Light (Season 2, Episode 3)

“Be sure to kill us both, Kol-Sha. The one left standing will be the one who returns for you.” -L’Rell

Previously, on Star Trek: Discovery: Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) showed off her ability to follow orders to Pike (Anson Mount) as they investigated the Red Angel, Saru (Doug Jones) reminded everyone that he was the best captain to ever captain, Tilly (Mary Wiseman) reminded us that Tilly is good at sciencing and apparently attracting Uncanny Ghost Girls (Bahia Watson), Stamets (Anthony Rapp) strapped himself into the spore drive, even though he is also haunted by his deceased #SpaceBoo Culber (Wilson Cruz), and Dr. Pollard (Raven Dauda) would appreciate it if everyone could stop hurling themselves straight at danger and then expecting her to patch them up.

Burnham has decided to completely merge solving the mystery of the red lights with solving her relationship with estranged bro Spock (Ethan Peck), as if those two things are one and the same. Honestly, this ship needs a counselor. I’m tired, y’all.

Tilly, meanwhile is running a marathon in the halls of Discovery. It’s impressive how unsafe it seems. It also is pretty hilarious that Starfleet’s School for Wayward Baby Captains is so focused on the importance of jogging. I mean, I understand that there’s usually an outrageous amount of running involved in Starfleet, but I personally do not put “can jog proficiently” on my list of qualities necessary for good leadership. Tilly takes a significant timeout to argue with her Uncanny Ghost Girl about life and death, and how they weren’t all that close ANYWAY, and can you please go away ghost girl? She then manages to win the marathon, because apparently the other enrollees in Starfleet’s School for Wayward Baby Captains jogged in place in deference to Tilly’s need to hash it out with her personal ghost. Burnham is quite proud that her jogging lessons have paid off and she congratulates Tilly on a race well run, but Tilly is extremely distracted because Uncanny Ghost Girl will just NOT SHUT UP.

Saru and Burnham hit the bridge for a yellow alert of an unidentified craft, and the camera pans around the room as the bridge crew yell out their pertinent info in a very convenient order. Pike calls Owosekun (Oyin Oladejo) Owo, presumably for all of you out there that can’t pronounce Owosekun. Thanks. I hate it. The ship turns out to be a Vulcan diplomatic ship, so Burnham heads to the transporter to pick up Sarek (James Frain), but it turns out to actually be Amanda Grayson (Mia Kirshner) aka Gentlest Mom in the Galaxy.

You know what I really missed this season? Long scenes with extremely slow talking Klingons. Luckily for me L’Rell (Mary Chieffo) and Ash Tyler/Voq (Shazad Latif) have me covered as they have an extremely extra ribbon cutting of new Klingon ships or something. L’Rell’s slogan is still REMAIN KLINGON which is especially hilarious seeing as she has herself a torchbearer that is decidedly human and rocking a snazzy new beard.

Kol-Sha (Kenneth Mitchell), aka the dad of Kol (Kenneth Mitchell) is like, “really y’all?” and let’s face it, despite the fact that his son definitely inherited his shitty personality, he has got a point. Voq spent his whole life being shunned because he was an albino Klingon and now he’s like, yeah the Klingons will definitely accept me NOW. Okay. There’s some speeches, and capes, and fire, and a fight over Kol-Sha’s sweet face paint and it is all very Klingon. Most politicians use big novelty scissors at a ribbon cutting. Klingons head butt you in the face.

Back on Discovery, Amanda is filling in Burnham on her terrible, horrible, no good, very bad trip to Starbase 5 to visit Spock. They wouldn’t let her see him, talk to him, or even tell her much about what was going on. So she did what everyone would do, and stole encrypted files from Starfleet and brought them to Michael so she could illegally break into them. As you do.

Ash is sad that no one thinks of him as Klingon, not even L’Rell’s uncle! His… uncle-in-law? Won’t even give him a decent head nod in the hallway. L’Rell assures him that nobody’s opinion of him matters but hers. Tyler would like her to start treating him more like a Klingon, more like Voq, so she kisses him. It’s awkward. Tyler admits that the Tyler side considers L’Rell’s advances as a violation. I’m sorry y’all, but this is the worst storyline. Which psyche is in control? Are they merged? What happens when one side wants something and the other doesn’t. It makes for some truly icky consent issues and just… why? Ugh. Things are pretty shit for Tyler, as per usual.

Boy, I love switching abruptly between two stories that don’t go together either theme-wise or tone-wise as we head to Pike’s ready room where Amanda and Burnham have teamed up to convince him to allow them to access Spock’s medical file. He’s not so into breaking the rules. But he is into calling the captain from Starbase 5, who apparently has been ducking his calls, and having him be instantly available for a video conference. The captain is like, “I can’t tell you anything about Spock, old buddy, old pal, because his case is classified. Also he murdered a bunch of people. Okay, bye.” Pike doesn’t like that, and gives Burnham an order to break into the file.

Amanda listens to this file that says that Spock is suffering from an “extreme empathy deficit” and immediately blames herself. She wasn’t a good enough mother to a half Vulcan/half human Spock and now her baby is all grown up and apparently murdering people. While Burnham is comforting her, Amanda notices Spock’s drawings of the Red Angel which apparently he has been seeing?? since he was a young boy?????

Burnham would love to talk about this, but she’s got to drop everything to go answer a call from Ash Tyler, who apparently just wants to let her know that things are shit. Also, that Klingons have hair now and he loves leather but probably not L’Rell… sorry, what? Yeah. It’s an awkward phone call.

Back on the bridge Tilly is determined that no one noticed that she’s being haunted by an Uncanny Ghost Girl. Forgetting completely that she’s on Star Trek where if you are being haunted by a ghost, you can head to your crew and say, “hey y’all I’m being haunted” and instead of people being like “no way, you’re obviously crazy” they always say, “Oh, word? Let’s work on that.” Her ignoring Uncanny Ghost Girl works extremely well, in that she ends up screaming at Pike, looking absolutely bananas, and quitting Starfleet’s School for Wayward Baby Captains before jogging away. Again. Tilly jogs a LOT.

Tyler sees someone lurking in his quarters and decides, for no reason at all, that it’s his uncle-in-law because his uncle-in-law won’t say hi in the halls. So he does the tactical thing. He barges in and accuses said uncle-in-law with absolutely no proof and threatens to cut his throat. This is obviously the measured response one expects from Ash Tyler. But it turns out, that Uncle L’Rell was ignoring Ash because he felt awkward af that he was hiding Tyler’s baby in some weird stained glass room. Okay.

Tyler skulks off to stare pensively into an open flame, and L’Rell finds him so she can explain that she grew their baby outside of her womb and then stuck him in a closet, and never told him about it. She did this FOR him, you see, so when he runs off back to Burnham he doesn’t have to feel bad about leaving his son behind. The level of bad decision making on this show is just… beyond. Tyler felt whole when he looked at the baby Klingon so now he wants to be a dad and a partner to L’Rell. Okay.

Back to Amanda and Burnham who are talking about the Red Angel as if nothing interrupted their conversation. Apparently at one point Burnham ran away and the Red Angel appeared to Spock and told him where to find her. Sarek and Amanda just assumed it was Spock’s imagination, because we all know how given Spock is to flights of fancy. Burnham confesses that she’s also seen the Red Angel. She also confesses that she purposefully hurt Spock very badly in order to protect him from… logic terrorists. She vows to Amanda that she’ll find Spock and make it right, but Amanda says no, she will. Okay.

L’Rell and Tyler are ready to make a really weird Klingon family together, but when they reach their baby, they find murdered Uncle L’Rell instead. Kol-Sha shows up via hologram, cackling and generally being a douche. Look, Kol didn’t learn all his scheming and betrayal stuff from nowhere, okay? Kol-Sha used sensor paint?? to spy on Tyler and since Tyler went around all day confessing and uncovering deep dark secrets, that’s not… uh, great? Kol-Sha says he’ll give up the completely lifeless looking Klingon baby in exchange for the Empire, blah de blah.

Tilly finally confesses to Burnham that she’s being haunted, and Burnham, COMPLETELY UNEXPECTEDLY goes, “Oh, word? Let’s work on that.” Who could’ve predicted this? Anyway, Burnham hears one sentence about how the Uncanny Ghost Girl doesn’t know what crying is and immediately is like, yeah it’s spores. Obviously.

L’Rell and Tyler confront Kol-Sha, who is like, “If I could just get you to sign by the X, please?” But L’Rell and Tyler decide to outright brawl their way out of this situation, which is very dramatic what with Tyler’s Batman cape, all of the fire, and now a thunderstorm. Eventually Kol-Sha gets bored and paralyzes them both. Just as he is about to cut Tyler’s throat, a masked and caped figure strolls through and absolutely decimates. It’s Georgiou!

Georgiou has showed up to save these dumbasses from themselves. You know, L’Rell was set up as some sort of great plotter way back when but she really is tremendously bad at plotting. Anyway, Georgiou straight up tells L’Rell to give up the fantasy. She can be chancellor or she can be a family gal but she’s not going to be doing both. Georgiou would clearly toss both Ash and the baby into the ocean, but L’Rell isn’t feeling it.

Tilly apologizes to Saru for not immediately coming clean about being haunted. Saru is pretty sure he can get Tilly back into Baby Captain School because Pike seems like an alright dude likely to forgive her for yelling at her ghost girl in his presence. Stamets fires up the science and yeah Tilly isn’t haunted by a ghost she’s haunted by a sentient fungus or something. He decides to go ahead and just suck it out of her using the dark matter asteroid and a hoover. I really need Sue’s Science Corner here. I do not feel like this is legit. Just a feeling I, an expert in science, have.

Stamets sucks out a gross fungus thing and they trap it in a bubble. Okay.

L’Rell is doing what she does best. Ponderous speechifying. At least she’s serving a really cool caped look. Anyway, she tells everyone that Ash sucked and betrayed them, so she chopped off his head. Before that probably? he chopped off the head of her tiny Klingon baby. When I tell you I laughed when I saw the baby Klingon head it does not do it justice. I cried laughing. When the production crew was reading the notes and they read “tiny beheaded Klingon baby head” do you think they were like, “say what!!!!????” I think it’s more likely they were all “yeah, sounds right” and just did it. The Klingon baby head is just as lifelike as the Klingon baby was, so there’s that.

Anyway, she throws Ash’s head into the abyss and is like, “I am now L’Rell of House Mo’Kai, the First of Her Name, Chancellor of Qo’noS, Protector of the Realm, Mother of Klingons” and the Klingons are like, “okay”.  I mean, really, what else is there to say?

Ash and the baby aren’t really dead, of course. They are on Georgiou’s ship, courtesy of Section 31. Ash has decided to give up the kid to some sort of monastery. I personally would not give my baby to a place in which he’d never be allowed to leave, but this is Ash Tyler who makes bad decisions. The kid will probably be better off with monks, though. Can you imagine sitting that kid down, How I Met Your Mother style and instead of Slutty Pumpkins and slap bets it’s, “yeah, and then we took your dad and stuck him into some poor Starfleet schmuck from Seattle”. That kid would live in therapy.

Georgiou doesn’t care at all, and her first preference would probably be tossing the kid off the mountain. But she could use some half Klingon head case for wet work, so she invites him to join Star Trek: Blackwatch. Tyler accepts. What else is he going to do?

So… this episode happened. There was a Klingon baby head. Next week Jett Reno (Tig Notaro) is back! See you then!