WHY WE LIKE IT: Tilly's back!
WHY WE DON'T: Is it just me or do Caleb and Tarima's flirting really weird?
REVIEW: I count myself among Tilly's fans, though I know that's not a unanimous opinion, and was surprised to hear she wasn't a regular on the show. Apparently, she's on training missions with the third years, so that explains that, and perhaps promises a fuller return in the future. That said, now that we have our status quo, bringing her back could be risky. In practice, I loved her guest appearance even if it means Discovery's overplayed psychobabble trauma therapy elements are back with her. But then, this is an episode about trauma, specifically the trauma incurred two episodes previous when the group lost a student, while two others were grievously injured. I wasn't thinking about it then, but it's all an allusion to school shootings. Starfleet Academy's "Trek metaphor game" is strong, because we'll also get Tarima's new inhibitor acting like anti-depressants, and we could see SAM's peril as a "stolen childhood" story, the Doctor's as a parent grieving for the loss of a child (indeed, Belle, from "Real Life").
So the kids are NOT alright, after all, after the events of Come, Let's Away, and Ake calls in the big guns, i.e., Sylvia Tilly, who in the guise of an emergency theater class, will make them work through their trauma. Things aren't made any easier by Tarima forced into joining the Academy side (her new implant and exploration of her powers require science courses she can't get at the War College, which seems a very iffy justification) and resenting it AND what she thinks the class' reaction to her being there is (for a telepath/empath, she's pretty clueless), especially Caleb's. But even when Tilly is called out on the covert therapy, she doesn't let up, and the kids are going to work it out for themselves eventually. SAM, at least, is a total theatre kid, and her choice of Our Town creates an interesting framework for the episode.
I might have preferred a play I knew - Our Town's high school production Americana theatre isn't my bag, and I would probably confuse it with Oklahoma 9 times out of 10 - but there's enough discussion of it that you're primed for the connections made between it and the story being told. Readings of the play have double meanings, and the show even pulls some similar lighting cues, so the direction is on point. Ultimately, through their analysis of the play, the kids are going to learn to "hold both" (like I said, it's Discovery traumababble), which I take to mean "be sad, but also move on". It's definitely something you have to learn early in Starfleet, but this class faced a real-life Kobayashi Maru a little too early. As one of the wounded, Tarima has perhaps the most to overcome, including the audience's dislike. Her relationship with Caleb remains a sore point because she's pretty insufferable when they're together, but have to room with SAM and Genesis is what humanizes her. I dare say that Genesis is once again a highlight, suffering through feelings for Caleb, but supporting Tarima 100%. I think Tarima falls in friend-love with her here, and when, at the end, the Betazoid finally joins the group she was holding at arm's length, Genesis's casual little embrace makes the decision for us. Okay, yeah, Tarima is alright.
But back to SAM. She's still glitching, fatally so, and the Doctor and Ake bring her to her homeworld of Kasq (a kind of planet-sized holodeck where time moves differently, like that planet in Blink of an Eye, referenced, though they make a mistake - the Doctor didn't spend a lifetime there, only 3 years) to be fixed, but it's impossible and for all the respect they owe the Doctor (who is kind of a legend to them), they can only terminate her. As it turns out, the theme of the episode is upheld because she's not glitching because of some mechanical/programming problem, but because of trauma. She never had a childhood (resulting in the Data-like behavior we've seen), so no learned capacity to cope with what recently happened. The feedback loop is a mental health problem, and the solution lies in the temporal differential. The Doctor chooses to parent a reset SAM from infancy for 17 years, giving her the tools she needs before overlaying the original SAM's memories over the new being. We'll have to see how she changes, but her love for her friends seems intact. But this is less about SAM than it is the Doctor, explaining why he's been so aloof with her, remembering all the people he's lost over the centuries, including his own holographic daughter. They go at it a bit hard, but it's nonetheless an interesting exploration of his "infinity", and ultimately gives him more to play as SAM's dad. It's not like he didn't passionately care before, he just repressed it. As for Ake, I'm quite taken by how much she cares for her brood, and while Tilly and the Doc get all the best lines, I connect with her (Holly Hunter is a treasure) more than anyone.
LESSON: Everything I know about Our Town I learned from this episode.
REWATCHABILITY - High: This one made me emotional, and I'll always love a piece that's about the power of catharsis.
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