The truth about Ceti Alpha VI is revealed as Khan, Delmonda and heir people prepare to escape.

We’re barrelling into the endgame this week and it’s all about prejudice being called out. For Tuvok, that prejudice is trying to discover whether Doctor Lear is lying, as he suspects. For Lear, it’s the assumption that Starfleet were at fault, an assumption that’s the biggest piece of evidence yet that she’s Khan’s daughter. Both scientists are gifted, ethical people. Neither are right and both find themselves knocked on their heels by that.

In the past, the same motif changes everyone’s lives. Five years have passed since the last episode, Khan and Marla’s daughter Kali is alive and well and Madot (Zuri Washington) is her teacher and nurse. We also learn she’s estranged from Ursula (Mercy Malick). The pair have been a key part of Khan’s community throughout the season, the first couple to get pregnant, their baby lost to an accident and now trapped on two different sides of an ethical divide. Madot is fully invested in Khan and Delmonda’s future, Ursula is made entirely of scepticism and bitterness. Except where her old partner is concerned. The pair have been an emotional pinwheel for the season to spin around all season and the reveal here, that Ursula is sincerely happy that Madot got to be a kind of mother is both sweet and feels final.

That finality is drawn from the imminent launch of the Venture, the escape vessel the two groups have spent five years building. As the episode progresses, we learn the story Khan has told his people about this and his true plan are very different. The launch will destroy their cave, forcing all but the four crewmembers back onto the hostile surface with minimal resources and little time for their would-be rescuers to find them. It’s a gamble, and one Khan decides Kali doesn’t get to make. He arbitrarily declares she, and he, will be on the vessel, not Delmonda (Olli Haaskivi), as originally planned. Delmonda finds this out as we do, and even as the realisation that this is the Khan we’ve always known hits, Delmonda makes his final gambit too…

A confession. The Elboreans’ engines collapsed, and when they dropped into the Ceti Alpha system and the resulting damage destroyed Ceti Alpha VI. They knew Khan’s people were on Ceti Alpha V but Delmonda made the choice anyway.

This is a brilliant narrative choice that locks the Elboreans in, explains (partially) Starfleet’s oversight and gives Khan the last thing he expected and the first thing he knows: the truth, and vengeance. This is where our prejudice takes centre stage as we fully expect Khan to kill his friend. That’s certainly on the cards, but Delmonda is saved by Kali’s arrival. The two men instantly fall into a co-conspiratorial polite lie to not frighten the child and their final moment together is chilling in its ambiguous sincerity. Khan thanks his friend for his insight, apparently sincerely. Delmonda tells Khan he has been and always shall be his friend. A callback certainly but one thick with tension, meaning and perhaps forgiveness. One that means Khan confounds us once again. Vengeance tempered with compassion. Tyranny shot through with love.

Time and again this episode takes the prejudices that drive its characters and explores, or explodes them. It closes that way too, as Lear reaches a tipping point, going rogue and returning to Ceti Alpha V without permission. Sulu, having confirmed that the Venture’s wreckage is not in system, sends Tuvok after her. While, in the past, the long-exiled and presumed dead Ivan (Maury Sterling) returns…

Verdict: This is a great set up episode, littered with big choices, big payoffs and no one having all the answers. The two time periods are converging and the truth is finally about to be discovered. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart