Star Trek Discovery Ep211 “Control”

Michael Burnham dreams of the day she saw her parents for the last time and wakes up gasping in sick bay. Georgiou gives her the results confirming that the Red Angel is indeed her mother.

Control approaches a subdued Captain Leland using a variety of familiar faces and informs Leland its plan for take over will require a facade — specifically Leland’s face, his body and…his “self”. Then Leland is injected with nano-particles and his “self” now belongs to Control.

Meanwhile, Michael views her mother’s mission logs and discovers when her mom put on the suit with the intent to travel back in time one hour in order to save her family, Klingons blasting into the lab firing away caused the suit to send Gabrielle Burnham 950 years into the future. Subsequent logs tell how Gabrielle kept trying to return to the past only to be yanked back 950 years in the future each time. A future where anti-matter detonation throughout the galaxy has wiped out all signs of life.

Captain Leland, who is now Control, informs Tyler and Georgiou at Section 31 they must alter their plans now that they know the Red Angel is not Michael Burnham. He plants doubts that Gabrielle is who she says she is. Leland wants the Sphere data transferred from the Discovery to Section 31 where he says he can prevent Control from acquiring the data and achieving consciousness. Georgiou is fixed on Leland with Michelle Yeoh doing a magnificent acting job with her eyes alone. She tells him he seems more “resolute”. Killing off Captain Phillipa Georgiou and bringing back her mirror universe double has made the character one of the most interesting on the show and has opened up Yeoh’s wide range of acting skills. She knows something is afoot with Leland.

Michael learns her mother put the Sphere in the Discovery’s path in hopes they could find a way to keep the data safe. But the containment field keeping Gabrielle in the present will eventually fail and soon. When Captain Pike visits Garbrielle he learns she knows nothing of the seven signals that they have been attributing to the Red Angel. Gabrielle demands to be released and Pike denies her request. Gabrielle tells him that the Sphere data must be destroyed to keep it from the A.I. However, the data doesn’t want to be destroyed!

A new plan is hatched…transfer the Sphere data into the Red Angel suit and send it into the future where the Control A.I. will never reach it while also beaming Gabrielle permanently to the present. But when Leland gets wind of this he persuades Georpiou to place a device near the suit that will reroute the Sphere data transfer to Section 31. Phillipa knows something is not right with Leland so she contacts Tyler and brings him over to her side. Then she shuts down the device sending the Sphere data to Section 31.

Tyler discovers Leland’s secret and takes a blade to the gut when he tries to fight Leland-Control. He gets off one word…”Leland”…to the Discovery as Leland beams down to take care of Dr. Burnham. All hell breaks loose and Leland pierces the containment field and puts a hole through the time suit. As Leland takes out one person after another, it’s Georgiou who jumps in and goes one on one with the Leland-Control, buying the others more time. But the damage is done and Dr. Burnham can no longer be beamed to the present. Michael, Stamets and the others break the containment field and the time suit and Dr. Burnham are sucked back to the future.

The landing party transports back to the Discovery and then the ship blasts the facility to Kingdom Come. However, Owosekum says she picked up another transport signal from the planet going to the Section 31 ship which masks its warp signature and takes off leaving Discovery unable to follow. But another signal comes in from an escape pod…it’s from Ash Tyler.

Michael lies in her cabin, awash with despair and loss of hope. Spock enters and somehow manages to drum up a pep talk for Michael. “Now does matter.”

While I like Ethan Peck I am wrestling with his interpretation of Spock. Specifically, he should have no interpretation…that was Leonard Nimoy’s job and Peck does not seem to be trying to give us that version of Spock. His mannerisms, inflections, his overall behavior does not line up with Nimoy. This is the hazard you come upon when casting a different actor to play a younger version of an established character. If you look at the show Young Sheldon, Ian Armitage plays the younger version of The Big Bang Theory character to perfection. He has taken Jim Parson’s speaking patterns, idiosyncrasies, movements and successfully put forth a character you can believe will grow up into Jim Parson’s character. I just don’t feel that from Ethan Peck. The same can also be said of Sarek. He is much too free with the emotions that Mark Leonard’s Sarek has suppressed. You need to feel you are watching the original actors when you see these characters. And I’m just not feeling it.

TO BOLDLY GO As we anxiously await Patrick Stewart’s return to the role of Jean-Luc Picard in his upcoming mini-series some questions come to mind. As the show will take place some time after The Next Generation and show us what Jean-Luc is doing in his later years…will the show take place in the original time line where all the television series have been set (yes, including Discovery) or will Spock have already gone back and changed history over to the Kelvin time line of the recent movies? For those who don’t know, the “Kelvin” time line refers to the USS Kelvin where a new time line is created when James Kirk’s father is killed when he crashes the Kelvin into the huge Romulan mining ship to buy time for his family and the rest of the crew to escape. The entire future is changed and we are given inferior versions of classics like Space Seed and The Wrath of Khan. Since Vulcans live longer it’s possible Spock hasn’t gone back in time yet. The general consensus is that both time lines still exist or else future Spock would never have gone back in time to begin with. With that in mind the new Picard mini-series is most likely going to be set in original time. Wherever the setting, I am looking forward to seeing Patrick Stewart back, who, to many (myself included), was the quintessential star ship Captain.