Spoilers

Burnham and Tilly hunt the killer of a Starfleet officer as Stamets and the science team race against the clock to prevent the anomaly from killing anyone else.

There’s a lot going on in this episode of Discovery, making it feel episodic and bitty, and ultimately unsatisfying. Let’s unpack it.

Burnham and Tilly are tasked with joining the Qowat Milat (Romulan warrior nuns) to track down one of their own, who has killed a Starfleet officer in the latest of a line of dilithium thefts. Things are complicated by  Burnham’s mother leading the Qowat Milat party. Elsewhere, Gray’s body has been transferred to s synthetic body and Adira is concerned that it isn’t responding. And Stamets and Book have joined the Vulcans in an attempt to solve the DMA mystery, with the latter mind melding with T’Rina to  come to terms with what his nephew was thinking before he died.

It’s all heavy stuff, and yet… it falls flat, primarily because of the A-story’s resolution. The assassin J’Vini did what she did to save another race from extinction, but she did still kill people, and there’s no real sense of that recognition, and Michael’s fix is just a bit too easy.

Verdict: Ultimately, not the sum of its parts, this piecemeal hour would have benefitted from greater focus. 6/10

Nick Joy