Trama

After the U.S.S. Discovery crash-lands on a strange planet, the crew finds themselves racing against time to repair their ship. Meanwhile, Saru and Tilly embark on a perilous first-contact mission in hopes of finding Burnham.

Discovery emerges out of the wormhole and heads straight into the middle of a devastated planet. The crew cannot get control of the ship, the sensors are not working, and the ship is caught in the planet's gravity.

The USS Discovery crash-lands on a glacier. The ship is damaged, and crew-members are wounded, including helm officer Keyla Detmer (Emily Coutts). Detmer is credited for her quick thinking which helped crash land the ship with minimum fatalities. Jett Reno (Tig Notaro) says that they are definitely not on Terralyisum since that planet was not this icy. All of the communication and flight systems are also down. So, they can't call for help, or can't locate Burnham.

Acting captain Saru (Doug Jones) decides to repair the ship before exploring the outside world, but they learn that they are missing resources that they require to complete the repairs. They need Rubindium in particular to rebuild some components of the ship.

Culber (Wilson Cruz) is taking care of Stamets (Anthony Rapp) in sick bay. It will take a few days for Stamets to recover fully.

Tilly finds that the planet's atmosphere is organized into pockets which resemble a decagon. Some pockets have higher concentration of oxygen, and some not. The pockets seem to be made artificially and are not natural. There is life in one of the pockets. Which means life survived. There is a settlement in one of the pockets which shows a supply of Rubindium and many other minerals. Tilly says that settlement has 50 life signs, with several ships with warp capability, but no Dilithium. Georgiou disagrees with Saru when he prioritizes repair of the ship over establishing communications. Georgiou argues that time is of the essence, but Saru is determined to go slow and carefully, and without revealing anything about the Discovery or its past, if possible.

Saru and ensign Silvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman) go to a nearby settlement to get the resources they need and find a group of poor miners being oppressed by a courier named Zareh (Jake Weber). The miners saw a Starfleet ship crashing into the planet. They believe that Starfleet can help them. The miners are led by Kal (Jonathan Koensgen). Zareh is the colony's only contact with the outside world. Zareh killed the last courier and took the route for himself.

The miners use programmable matter to help Discovery in exchange for some of the ship's Dilithium, which would allow them to leave the planet and escape Zareh. However, Zareh arrives and attacks the group, killing one of the miners and planning to take all of Discovery's Dilithium. Zareh says that he knows that the arrival of the Discovery was marked by the appearance of high energy Gamma rays and gravitational waves. Zareh guesses that Tilly and Saru are time travelers.

He is stopped when Phillipa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh)-the former Emperor of the Mirror Universe's Terran Empire and now Starfleet agent-overpowers Zareh and his men. Georgiou wants to kill Zareh, but is stopped by Saru most adamantly. Saru says that this level of violence is completely without justification and that they are still Starfleet officers. Saru leaves Zareh in the custody of the miners. The miners give Saru a personal transporter to get back to his ship.

The crew return to Discovery with the resources they need, but the glacier's parasitic ice has encased the ship and it is unable to take off until Burnham arrives and frees them with Book's ship. Burnham tells Saru that she landed in the future over a year ago.