WHY WE LIKE IT: Sights, sounds and Tilly in the captain's chair.
WHY WE DON'T: Silly, but not in a funny way.
REVIEW: Okay, so the Burn. It came from a planet made almost entirely of dilithium (and thus may prove the key to restoring the Federation and others' ability to travel and break the criminal monopolies strangling the galaxy), or rather from Su'Kal, a maladjusted Kelpien who forged a bond with the dilithium while in the womb and has been raised by slowly-degraded holograms while waiting for rescue. And now you see what I mean by silly. Making the Burn essentially a super-powered tantrum right out of X-Men comics is a far weaker idea than exploring a power like the Tholians (whose modus operandi is screwing around with space-time) or some new enemy that could have fueled further stories. As a child Su'Kal apparently created the Burn effect (his mother's death?) and now the change brought by Discovery creates another crisis and could spark another Burn.
Missed opportunity or not, Su'Kal's holo-environment is an intriguing one, beautifully realized, and though Michael ultimately fails in her attempt to reach the distraught Kelpien, I always love her best when she's usual the soft sciences to figure things out. The whole thing has a pleasant weirdness and a tense ticking clock with enough foreshadowed danger to make us believe Saru or Culber might not make it back. Culber is my favorite Season 3 character so I would be very upset if that were to happen. With all the talk of Burnham's potential and Saru's own discombobulation whenever Kelpiens are concerned (he's hard to trust in this one, his loss of focus almost unbelievable), it feels like he's on his way out (his popularity with fans may or may not keep him safe). Finding a way to give Doug Jones a chance to play Saru as human (under holo-filter) is also the kind of thing you do when an actor is going to leave. I find it incredibly silly, and requires the holo-filter to hide all their equipment and make Saru walk on his heels and speak without a stuffy nose as if it's an actual biological change. Adira jumping in last minute (unaffected by those filters) may be the key to everyone's salvation (Gray is back just in time to possibly have an impact) and they're not gonna jettison a new character this soon. There's one other thing that bugs me about the A-plot, and it's that while we learn more about Kelpien culture, the episode seems to say it has remained unchanged in 900 years DESPITE our having left it just after a massive revolution. It's like saying I would recognize 11th-Century France as "my" culture.
While the Away Team navigates the psychology of a child who can blow up every ship in the galaxy, and Saru's own issues, Discovery is left in Tilly's nervous hands. Burnham's story about the rivet the captain can thumb on the chair to achieve focus is a nice one and well used. I like how Tilly keeps her cool, and her verbal sparring with Osyraa is fun. Of course, the leader of the Chain is gonna call her bluff and cause a massive cliffhanger, but Tilly still makes a good showing and is more decisive than Saru.
A longer than usual episode (55 minutes), I do find there's a lot of fat in this one. The whole bit with the Chain ship posing as a Federation ship creates something for Tilly to figure out, but they probably could have cloaked (a new capability) just as shown without that extra difficulty. Likewise, they send Book's ship into the nebula to scout for the planet, and we're supposed to care about the radiation levels that almost kill him. Next scene, he's fine with a quick course of treatment, and so is the cat (is Grudge ever going to be more than a joke? She seemed more important than she's turning out to be). Not to say these scene don't increase tension, but they seem superfluous when examined more closely.
LESSON: You gotta graduate sometime, for your own good.
REWATCHABILITY - Medium-High: A key episode in Season 3's story arc, but some questionable thinking.
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