New Eden

DVD, Discovery S2 (New Eden)

Trek's relations with faith have followed somewhat of a pattern with society: as the western world has grown steadily more secular and materialistic, so Trek has eschewed portraying faith, at least for humans. In 'TOS' Christianity was still the dominant worldview of America and that was represented by a few minor references that showed Captain Kirk and his crew took such things for granted, and probably annoyed atheists no end! He mentions that 'the one God is enough for us' when dealing with Apollo, one of the Greek 'gods,' and on other occasions, such as 'Bread and Circuses,' where the Roman Empire rules a planet, we see the crew's excitement at the realisation that the underground group they helped were followers of 'the Son,' or Christ, wondering happily that the same historical events could be transpiring there. Of course Gene Roddenberry's views shifted, or he had more control by the time he came to his 'purer' vision of Trek in 'TNG,' by which time he was much less interested in discussing such things (though it certainly wasn't as simple as a belief, or I suppose a non-belief, in atheism - read his long interview in the book 'The Last Conversation' for more on what he really thought in that regard). Those who took the reins after he was gone, through sickness and then death, continued that path of largely ignoring matters of faith and preferring to act as if all Trek was, and always had been, based on science, and science alone. No longer were assumptions made about what 'western' humans believed, and in fact it was more likely that if they were discussed at all they were dismissed wryly or it would be eastern philosophy or religions that would be given the limelight.

'The Star Trek Encyclopedia' has a reference for Hinduism and Divali, but not one for Christianity, which is a telling choice, as if the latter is too personal to be approached, while the former is 'other countries beliefs,' so it's safe to mention. Perhaps they thought they were being true to Roddenberry's ethics, or maybe the word Christianity never actually appears in Trek? There are certainly hints at it, such as in the Leonardo Da Vinci holoprogram that Captain Janeway was so fond of on 'Voyager' - there's even an episode in Season 4 where she almost seems wistful about the kind of beliefs he had, and certainly in 'DS9' we see much discussion over the years of alien beliefs, something key to the series, along with the difference between faith in something beyond oneself, and a straightforward belief in scientific fact. The difference is, it's never humans who are allowed to show faith - sure, they can have it for their friends and their Captain, even their technology, and especially the science that makes so much of it work, but they never look for answers beyond their own understanding, the reason of existence having been created, for them, as the unending vastness of space to explore. Indeed, if such things were looked into too strongly then there's the danger they would realise that all of Trek is empty endeavour, ultimately the struggle or the 'adventure' the end in itself, which is a cold reality to confront. By the time of 'Enterprise' they'd reverted to a much more simplistic mode of storytelling akin to 'TOS,' with pretty much only religious alien terrorists to represent the issue, inspired by the attacks on the Twin Towers in 2001, without the assumptions of Christianity being the main influence, and ignoring such things to focus on the action rather than the philosophical.

I find it interesting that the current key-holders to the Trek brand (on 'TV'), have chosen to explore belief and faith. They outright announced it as the direction of the season, perhaps as an antidote to the war focus of the first season. I wonder if it had a backlash from some people, however, as I know one person who had never seen Trek before and was sucked into Season 1, but quickly gave up on Season 2. I suspect he had issues with addressing religion, and that this is what turned him off it. That's a good thing, because if Trek is doing something to shake some people out of their bubble with its storytelling then it's no longer the bland, rather mindless shambles that Season 1 gave us. Now, I know that Trek isn't going to come down on the side of faith. It can't, as that would undo its aims, and people are comforted by its scientism because that philosophy says that we can explain it all, given time. We don't need outside help, and therefore we don't need outside rules. We make our own morality (regardless of the reality that morality comes from the absolute rules of a benevolent dictator). But at least if Trek is dealing with such issues there's a chance they might stumble upon some truth that wouldn't have even been skirted around if they were ignoring them, and perhaps for a few people it will make them question, where there was no interest in even asking a question before.

That said, I much preferred it myself when Trek either ignored the reality of faith or just showed the results of it in moral ways. Trek has largely lost its moral compass because of the secularisation of society. It's gone far from being an optimistic vision of the future, which, let's be honest, was a false hope for viewers if they were treating Trek as a roadmap for the real future of our world, or even as inspiration in that direction. Quite apart from the fact that warp travel is essentially impossible for us, humanity will never band together, either as the Borg with no individuality, or a combining of our differences into a shared vision, without guidance from beyond humanity. Some look to aliens for this, others the supernatural, but there's only one source that will make this world perfect. Trek is entertainment to me - the finest (though I can't say that wholeheartedly after 'Enterprise,' the current film series, and 'DSC'), and it doesn't go beyond that. Which is why I'd rather they didn't tackle that part of my life if they're going to misrepresent it. However, I was intrigued hearing about the theme of this season, and even heard rumours that Pike was to be presented as an actual Christian, something we'd never seen before. I do sense some kind of struggle in him in this episode, we hear that he had disagreements with his Father, who was both a scientist and a teacher of comparative religion, and he does squirm a bit with the issues that are presented in the story. But in the previous episode we hear him use God's name in vain, so he clearly isn't a committed example of the faith, which is much more realistic for Trek as I doubted they would make such an iconic character come down on that side very strongly, if at all.

Still, it adds an interest to the character that I wonder about. He's not the Pike I really wanted him to be, he doesn't have the open charisma of Jeffrey Hunter, nor the intensity. He's pretty laid back, although he does get to present his rash, heroic side (in a scene that was also stupid - a native girl picks up a Phaser and somehow overloads it in seconds!), but succeeded in displaying one of the key character traits of this man, something we know will eventually injure him so badly that he'll be completely immobile and trapped in a propelling chair for the rest of his life (at least that chair and injury seemed believable for this century, whereas I don't get the rationale behind showing people in wheelchairs on the ship - unless they're Elaysian and find Earth gravity too strong then their ailment or disability would be cured: McCoy could give someone a pill that grew them a new kidney, that's the level of medical advancement they'd reached!). The only trouble, and that goes for every aspect of the series, is that I don't have trust or faith in the ability of the writers to deal respectfully and realistically with either classic characters (look how they botched both Harry Mudd and Sarek, one a murderer, the other signing off on genocide, where before their characters were respectively a roguish con artist and a noble ambassador!), or deep themes. Even if it were the 'DS9' writers, the best in Trek, I'd wonder if they could pull off such things, but I'd at least have some hope. I come to 'DSC' without that.

One major issue with the series is that it's all based around a flawed character - Michael is like an angel herself, she floats in, has all the answers, like a female Wesley Crusher, and her backstory is in name only, she hardly shows the Vulcan heritage I thought was a masterstroke when I first saw her, but was so quickly stripped away. She has learned lessons, for example that she didn't go against Pike's orders not to reveal who they really were, even when he's injured, as that's exactly what she would have done before her previous experience of being held responsible for so much in her mutinous behaviour to her favourite Captain, Georgiou. At the same time you know that they'll probably forget this if it ever becomes convenient, because like modern 'Dr. Who' (which, again, this episode feels very reminiscent of), there's little internal consistency or logic. Not only is she an unstable character who gets more attention than she deserves (a bit like if Seven of Nine became the Voyager crew's keenest, and most trusted advisor in her first season), but here she shows her lack of diplomatic skill that is surprising from someone who has had Sarek as a guide for much of her life, probably the best diplomat in Trek history. Mind you, this version of Sarek is also unstable, so perhaps in this alternate reality (because come on, this must be another timeline, it can't be the Prime for all the massive changes to tech, attitude and everything else!), she has learned everything from him and that's why she is the way she is.

Burnham insults the whole colony of humans they've uncovered on this planet they're calling Terralesium by suggesting all their beliefs are ridiculous, saying there must be some 'rational theories' as to how the church they were transported within from Earth came to be in the Beta Quadrant - I did appreciate that for once the writers were sticking to distances in space by having Pike say the planet is a hundred and fifty years of travelling time away from them, which is why they're allowed to dust off the spore drive. I need to detour here because there are some points to consider, I'll come back to Burnham later. We hear that the spore drive is considered off limits because the use of tardigrade DNA that enabled Stamets to make the jumps was against Starfleet's rules on genetic manipulation. Now that's a cool rationale for why the spore drive could be technology that is unavailable to crews in later series', at least partly, because it's a following of the rules and procedures which is what Trek had laid down, and must follow. 'DSC' has been terrible at upholding Trek convention so I'll applaud any time they do so, and it is a small thing that makes it feel more like Trek than, say 'Stargate SG-1' (which I definitely had an impression of in this episode!). It still isn't enough to show why spore was ignored in the end, because as we see here, if it's deemed necessary they can use it under the Captain's discretion.

There's much more of a 'TOS' cowboy feel to the role of Captain so far this season, and not cowboy in the way that Lorca did whatever he wanted, often in contravention of his superiors, but in the style of a ship being far out in space and having to rely on the experience and intuition of its Captain to make decisions. That's what Trek really needs and potentially Pike is the leader you want in such a situation, which is why he's always been a strong character in the psyche of Trek despite having so little screen time. It doesn't mean you have to agree with his reasoning as a viewer, however. The spore drive use was overlooked, they say, because it was a time of war, and I buy that, even though it's not a well presented time in Trek history, but I'm still not sure what the urgency and importance of these signals are that Pike claims mean so much to the Federation. I don't understand the threat, or if there even is one. I can see it's something that's had a grave effect on Spock, since Pike reveals that he checked himself into a mental facility on a Starbase shortly into his leave, but it's not like we know his mind is falling apart and Burnham has to find the answers to save him. That may be what it becomes, I wouldn't be surprised because they seem unable to create stories unless they're personal, but I hope not. Anyway, to me it remains questionable why Pike would have carte blanche authority to reach these signals, especially as they don't actually find anything on that planet (except for the artefact from our 21st Century, more on which later).

The reference to genetic manipulation legislation is cool because it resulted from the fallout of Khan and his Augments, as we hear in 'Dr. Bashir, I Presume' in 'DS9,' so I like that they put that in there, and I like even more that they did it without referencing Khan, who gets too many mentions in modern Trek, and whom, after the debacle of 'Into Darkness' is persona non grata in Trekland (will we ever see Nicholas Meyer's Ceti Alpha V series? I'm in two minds). But Pike's choice to unspool the spore drive again and put Stamets back in the seat (he has little other integration into the story otherwise, and had become a mechanical device, essentially, defined only by his bond with Dr. Culber), is only one decision that is questionable. The other is his use of General Order Number One, the Prime Directive as we know it, that Archer so wished he had back in the NX-01 days. It apparently applies to this colony on the planet because they're a pre-warp civilisation, and yet they're also human, brought there by the Red Angel (we never find out how, though the possibilities relating to time travel add further mystery, since the Angels have been seen in the 21st Century, and also by Spock as a child so they're clearly something that encompasses a wide time period). If they're human then surely the directive wouldn't apply to them, and this is the thorny issue at the heart of this episode: whether to tell them of the fate of Earth or not.

That's another cool aspect of the story: these people are descended from those who were transposed from Earth during World War III in 2053. That's terrific because so little has been said of this conflict that was a defining moment in human history. Ironically, it does smack a bit of 'TOS' inventing the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s because that was still thirty years away from their TV production in the 1960s, and they had not even the slightest hint of a clue that Trek would not only be alive and well in that future decade, but would be thriving! I wonder if the same will happen with WW3, which I believe was first hinted at in the pilot of 'TNG' (actually it was in 'TOS,' amazingly!), when Picard was summoned to a court of the post-atomic horrors of the 21st Century, recreated by the power of Q. It was tied down to a definitive year by the film 'First Contact' (are they hinting at Borg involvement in the season - I did hear rumours), and out of the ashes of that period rose the Phoenix of Zefram Cochrane, the first human warp ship, and thus Trek was born. It's a great story that fits well with Trek ideals and history both, so it's wonderful to have it part of the story, and is the kind of thing 'Enterprise' would have done in its Season 4 canonfest, for sure. It's telling 'DSC' uses it, because this is the most miserable Trek series ever made, and the least optimistic. Maybe, if it was written better it would be the most realistic, too, but I won't get into that here when there are far more interesting things to discuss. Will Trek still be remembered in the real 2050s? We're almost in the 2020s now, so that's a mere thirty years away, the same timeframe as 'TOS' and its Eugenics Wars. It's funny to think of.

I'm still not sure why humans, even humans from WW3 would be covered by the Prime Directive - we even saw similar events happen before, where people from the past, which essentially these are, were allowed to wake up in the Trek future. There's obviously Dr. Gillian Taylor from 1986 in 'Star Trek IV' who returns to the 23rd Century with Kirk and crew. More relevant still is the 'TNG' episode 'The Neutral Zone' in which other people from the 20th Century are found in cryo-stasis and brought out of the freeze to find themselves in a completely different world. That was a fascinating episode that really showed how people might react from 'our' time if they were brought into the future, but all we get from this episode is the reaction of one solitary scientist who Pike breaks the directive for so as to get something from him! That doesn't seem right when he could just as easily have beamed down, transferred the data from the helmet cam of a soldier who was in the church during the 2053 attack, and beamed back up without the guy knowing. So he's behaving inconsistently, as you'd expect from these writers. I don't know why they'd be left in the dark, but if they are going to be then there shouldn't be any exceptions. I suppose the answer is that Jacob (whom I almost thought was Tony Todd when we first see him in the dim lighting of the chapel), was a 'follower of science' and had realised who Pike and the others were, so the damage was done. It was because of him that they found the beacon in the first place, he and his ancestors had kept it running 'in faith' that someone would come eventually. No explanation of why aliens never came to their aid.

They do seem to be implying that these Angels are a force for good, in that the only two times we've seen them so far, one turned into Pike when he came to rescue Burnham, as if giving her hope, and the second rescued the people in the church from the war, and could also be said to have initiated the Discovery's mission to Terralesium, which allowed them to save the planet from an asteroid field that would have been an extinction level event for the planet, killing everything and everyone. So there's a sense that these things are benevolent for some reason and I look forward to finding out what it all means, because I have no idea, though as usual they're just as likely to drop the ball and fail to follow through on the clues and facts they're giving us, just as they failed so spectacularly to portray a war, or the Klingons, previously. I also find that this episode is a bit unsettling, and I'm not sure what message it's supposed to be saying. To return to Burnham, she obviously doesn't put stock in faith, which is strange when she was brought up as a member of a race that was so heavily religious, Vulcan mysticism such a key part of their culture that she would probably have been a part of it. Granted, Spock is a Science Officer and we didn't see much of that from him in 'TOS,' but it was a different story in the films, where he underwent the most transition of anyone through death and rebirth, and became a different person through that experience.

Burnham hits the nail on the head when she claims her religion is science, because that has been the religion of Trek, as much as it might not want to admit that it follows something, has belief in what it doesn't know, and therefore faith. It's a deliberate decision to believe that everything is natural, there is no supernatural, and therefore we make of life what we will. That has almost always been Trek's creed, and that's fine when it's not specifically comparing such an ideology with the faith of the Bible and God, but here it's a very muddied exploration of the subject matter, even blasphemous in its depiction of a combination religion that is a collection of all the major Earth religions into a new one in the stained glass of the church. Again, I found it to be a very 'Dr. Who' type of approach, which is both shallow, so as not to offend, but also not thought out. In reality, far from everyone joining their differing beliefs, many of which would be diametrically opposed, they would each continue to believe from their experience and wouldn't cobble them all together into one. It doesn't make sense and fails to understand what faith and religion means. It also makes the people appear simple. 'SG-1' was always doing this, visiting agrarian, pastoral colonies of humans that had no idea of the kind of technology the team had or understood aliens, and you have to remember these people are descended from us, those who went missing could be alive right now. I get that the've lost the ability to use technology, but again, the scientists wouldn't have let such things die, and the most important thing to remember is that science and faith are not mutually exclusive - otherwise you wouldn't have any Christians who were also scientists, and indeed many of the most famous believed in God and that they were exploring his creation, just as he'd given us brains to reason with, the ability to design and make, really the whole ethos that Trek is founded upon. But because science has been portrayed as being 'truth' rather than bare fact, and man's theories that have either not been proved, or mistakenly 'proved,' faith has become known as something that is not compatible with reason.

It's true that it goes beyond understanding, but not reason. Blind faith is something else, and is just as likely to be found in science where mistakes have been made or theories disproved - and that's another thing, not all scientists agree, so it's not even as simple as science being an unshakable certainty on all we know. Into this strides Burnham with her religion of science, but I'd have to agree with her that it seems unfair to leave these Terralesians to continue on their misguided path. I didn't even get the impression Pike thought it was a good thing they had built as I can imagine Picard might have celebrated it (as wrong as he'd have been), so it's not like they're even portraying this group as having developed an enlightened brotherhood that was worth being ignorant for. Even if they had decided to inform the people of WW3's end and that Earth is still in one piece, and as he tells Jacob, they're part of a Federation of many worlds that work together in peace, I'd have expected a speech on what those people had done, comparing them to the Federation in miniature, but it was more like poor scientist man, he's the only one who knows the truth and will go back to his daily grind knowing what really happened, leaving these people in the dark. That was the other thing, Jacob is shown as being a man of faith himself - he waited so long for his beacon to be found, but it's reliance on tech to solve problems rather than a power beyond our own (even though it appears it was a power beyond that manipulated the whole mission). And like 'Dr. Who' it's all okay because Pike gives him a power source so the church can have its lights back on. Surely that's a major violation of the Prime Directive, changing their culture - if they can't learn to build a power source for themselves then maybe they shouldn't have one, going by the Prime Directive's logic?

Things also might have been different if the colony was ruled by a cruel leader: in 'Paradise' on 'DS9' a similar story occurs where Sisko and O'Brien crash on a world with a human colony. They're from the 'present' so the Prime Directive never comes up, but it is a tale of one woman's desire to shake off technology, which she considers evil. Nothing like that level of depth is apparent in this episode, which is another reason why the series feels like it doesn't know its own history. Trek kept growing and developing for so long because the same people were making it and they kept track of what had come before so you gradually saw more and more development that fed off and advanced from previous events - they could do the same story with a different crew, but delve in deeper or approach from another angle, and that's the sad fact of this new group: despite having a few people familiar with Trek, it's not enough to keep track of all the details and so it's reverted to square one. It could be the 1980s where they make the same mistakes as 'TNG,' and I don't know if they'll have eighteen years in which to maximise their output and get to a point where we're seeing genuinely new and satisfying developments and exploration of issues or cultures, especially with the slow addition of new material, fewer episodes over a longer period of time, and serialised stories that don't allow the characters or locations to breathe. In that respect it is so much more like 'Stargate' which was 'soft' sci-fi, as much science fantasy, a bit like 'Star Wars,' and very repetitive, relying on likeable characters to carry it through regurgitated sci-fi tropes. The difference is that I do actually like 'SG-1' because of the characters, but 'DSC' I often don't appreciate, often because of the characters.

At least the Bridge crew continue to get more exposure, this time Owosekun even allowed on the Landing Party (I can't see why they wouldn't have at least one security guard to accompany them, but no), which was a rare treat for her. Not that we find out much about her that makes her anything more than a walking Tricorder - she's a non-believer, which is handy because it suggests that some people are believers, and I think a lot of Trek people would wish that there aren't any believers in this future, so I'm finding a positive out of a negative. It's also a revelation to hear that she came from a Luddite collective (the opposite of the Borg collective, perhaps), which is why she's assigned on the mission as she'll be able to blend in better. Do we see this? No, of course not. There is a moment in a deleted scene on the DVD that demonstrates this when she gets them time alone by volunteering her and her friends to clear away after the meal, but there's nothing in the episode that showcases her un-technological upbringing, unless you count using a magnet to open the bolt of a trap door, but any Starfleet officer should be able to show such aptitude and sense. It's typical of this series that it's logic for having someone along is mainly so she can pull a bolt back for them, that's her specialism!

If Owosekun remains bland and undeveloped, it's left to Tilly to carry the B-story, and she really takes the episode down. I can't imagine a more irritating character, and all those people who hated Jar Jar Binks must be absolutely wretched watching her! For myself, I liked Jar Jar, but Tilly is too much for even my mild proclivities, a constant annoyance - I think Stamets says something along the lines of her being quiet again, and she really should. She's the most unprofessional Trek character ever, and not funny in the least. She's an embarrassment to Trek. I was thinking it over, and how similar she is to Reg Barclay from 'TNG,' and I came to the conclusion that he's a fun character because he's not there all the time. If Q showed up every week we'd soon grow tired of him, as we would of Barclay, and I do of Tilly. In small doses, perhaps if she had as little to say as the Bridge crew, she might be someone I could tolerate, but she's just so awful. We're supposed to feel sorry for her whenever something bad happens or she gets slapped down, or in this case, thrown across the Cargo Bay to bounce off some crates, ending up in Sickbay, but I don't feel any sympathy for her whatsoever. I guess it's a product of knowing one of the few things I do about the season, the mycelial network bringing dead people back, that it wasn't a surprise when her old friend from school shows up. At first I found her almost as irritating, this girl that keeps popping up as a weird visitor to Tilly in Sickbay, but she became more interesting when you realise she really is weird, not just a dud note in the writing. That's the trouble, the writing is usually so uneven that her initial oddness didn't stand out enough, whereas in the old series' that would have sparked off an atmosphere.

Tilly's story of trying to use the asteroid they picked up last time as a way of replacing Stamets in the spore drive (don't ask me how), does tie into saving the planet as they use it to draw the meteors away, and is a moment that works fine - you actually get to see the ship in space, for one thing, and I like it when plots have synergy, but it can't disguise the fact that Tilly is so objectionable and does not fit in the Trek world at all. Saru even chews her out for taking a risk that injures her, yet because she comes up with the plan to save the day he commends her for ignoring orders, and generally I don't think Saru has been very well written either so far. The kinds of things he says in that faux school teacher fashion, are just awkward and he's really not the character I thought he was set up to be. He also gets his wires crossed, as Pike has already announced this is a Prime Directive issue, but then when the meteors are set to collide with the planet Saru states that they're responsible for everyone on it, but if they were truly following the directive it would mean abandoning the people to their fate, just as would have happened if they hadn't been there (getting involved makes me think of 'Into Darkness'). I'm not saying that's the moral thing to do, but that's the way Starfleet usually works, unless they can find a way around it. So there remain some silly inconsistencies like that and Pike merely getting his ribs cracked when a Phaser went off underneath him, or whether they consider the people right to continue their weird amalgam religion or not, or Stamets just wandering onto the Bridge so causally because he heard there was a problem, or Saru telling him to run to the spore drive when they've so frequently used intra-ship beaming as a method of expediency - if there was one time when it would be justified it was there!

I was expecting the Red Angel to show up and fix the problem, averting the collision, but the only sighting we have of it is in the helmet footage from WW3. It was exciting to see even that tiny glimpse of the conflict that hadn't been shown before, the closest being in 'First Contact' when there's still the aftermath of war going on even a decade later, but wise of them not to try and present anything of the mid-21st Century. It was slightly disappointing that there wasn't much to see, but this marks the first connection to time travel (other than the loop last season), with its vision of what's to come in the middle of our century, two hundred years before 'DSC.' It was also fun to notice Jonathan Frakes was back as Director, though nothing stood out about this episode, so maybe when I saw his Season 1 entry it was just my imagination that it felt more Trekky? It was fine, and I liked the drone shots they can use now to get a proper aerial view looking down from a starship, but there was still so much that nettled or made me uneasy - seeing all those symbols of other religions in the stained glass of the church I found a little chilling; appropriating the Enterprise theme when all is well at the end never feels right for this series; Dr. Pollard (who is, like the Bridge crew, getting a little more screen time now), mentioning a xylophone in a Klingon marching band - for one thing I doubt the Klingons would ever use a plinky-plonky instrument such as that, and they wouldn't have a marching band, it's totally ridiculous and gives the wrong image of their culture yet again! And the door chime from 'Voyager' being used when Burnham visits Pike's Quarters is awkward and wrong, as if they're tying to squeeze in all eras, when they should be staying true to a specific era.

The message was muddled, despite numerous references to faith, even early on, such as Pike's lack of experience with the spore drive leading him to say he's taking it on faith, which runs through the episode, but doesn't get a payoff. I don't know what Pike really feels like, whether he's a believer, or whether it should even be important to the story. I don't know if what he said about Arthur C. Clarke's famous line of 'sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic' being altered to 'sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence being indistinguishable from God' was a bit bizarre. Is that really what it's been adapted to, or was that invented - I wouldn't put it past the idiocy of the writers to think they could rewrite a classic sci-fi author like that, the height of arrogance, and I'm not sure what it's saying, either. It was already done practically in 'Star Trek V,' a Vulcan tricked into following a false god that led him to destruction, and I can get onboard with that, but if they're saying, for example, the supernatural revelation of the Bible is given by aliens then it's ludicrous. Mind you, Burnham even goes so far as saying that the faith the Terralesians cling to is a lie. She was right in that it was false, a conglomeration of ideas strung together, but I didn't know if she meant all faith, or just this mishmash on the planet. Either way, if they come down too hard it risks alienating viewers, and being an American TV show, even in that increasingly secular country, must mean they wouldn't be as definitive as Burnham appears to be. Right?

One good thing I did like, besides the WW3 references, and Tilly's device for extracting a part of the meteorite and holding it in its own internal gravity, was that Burnham does actually make right an earlier mistake which she's committed before on the series: she's about to tell Pike she saw an Angel when he rescued her in the first episode, but then just thanks him for rescuing her, but at the end of the episode she admits she's wanted to tell him about the vision and there's a slight discussion about more data giving context. That wasn't too bad a way to end an episode because it shows Burnham is learning to trust, and I like it when she does that instead of being about to say something then keeping it to herself and lying so convincingly as she has done on other occasions. Because of this, and the other good things I noted, I liked this episode about the same as the first, whereas I would have felt it was a lesser story due to Tilly's awfulness. But it inspired lots of thoughts from me, as you've just read, so if they can keep that up, they may not be onto a winner this season, but they won't be as much of a loser as Season 1, and I'll take even minute progression at this point!

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