While Captain Burnham leads an away mission to a planet that was once home to the aliens responsible for the DMA, Book and Tarka secretly infiltrate the USS Discovery. 

There’s 29 hours left until Earth and Ni’Var are hit by world-destroying debris, and while this signifies an urgency in the way that the crew talk about their plans, we’re still far from the sort of ramped-up drama you’d expect by this time. As with previous weeks, there’s still a great deal of side missions and pontification.

The away mission to the planet that Species 10-C once occupied proves ultimately useful in discovering a way to communicate with them when they reach first contact discussions, but not before the crew experience hallucinations due to an unknown substance not being filtered out by their spacesuits. Maybe it’s just me, but surely every alien environment could have potentially harmful agents – do they all need to be filtered out manually or just when the story demands it?

The questionable science continues with Tarka and Book sneaking around the Discovery, hidden from detection by the use of a patch to conceal themselves from Zora the supercomputer. It’s creepy watching the renegades hiding in dark corners and spying on the unsuspecting, with Tig Notaro’s Jett Reno having something to say.

Verdict: Enough with the side missions! There’s two more episodes to go and hopefully everyone now has what they need to make first contact. 6/10

Nick Joy