Project Daedalus

This is another one of those episodes where so much goes on and the direction is hard to understand. That strange woman with the classic football helmet takes center stage. We always see her in the background. Once again the tiresome Tilly and Michael have too much screen time. Spock has a big todo with his sister which is more emotional than any Spock speech I've seen.

After all of the speculation about Airiam, we get a snootful in this episode. What it comes down to is she's just a girl, nothing more. A girl that can back up what memories she wants and ditch others. Lucky her. I imagine Data probably having to do that occasionally, even with his 800 quadrillion bits of storage capacity. But he probably kept updating himself, so by the time he was blown to bits in "Nemesis", he probably had more.

But Data's an Android, a fully mechanical life form- Airiam is a girl.

And although she's definitely compromised, there is a lot more to it than that. She is actually not the "bad guy", she's merely another victim.

We get to find out what's actually behind all of this, and suddenly we start thinking about movies like 2001: a space Odyssey, Westworld, Futureworld, Colossus: The Forbin Project, Saturn 3, The Terminator, those and many other films about technology gone haywire. Forbidden Planet even.

And the premise of this episode is rather interesting, because the bad guys, and we were expecting section 31, are not the bad guys we expected.

And whoever it is, it's probably an ancestor of Reginald Barclay. You'll see why.

Meanwhile, Spock is PO'd, and taking it out on his sister. Maybe he can channel that anger into something useful.

We also learned something about Discovery's new security chief, the planet she comes from has ties into The Next Generation, Deep Space 9, and Voyager, so it's appropriate that Jonathan Frakes directed this one.

Ok. Old fans like me who saw all series, must get used to having a third Spock. Fine. Its allmost off the old timeline that lasted 40y. Fine. Production value, new characters and aliens, acting, CGI, direction, hello Mr. Frakes again, although did not feel his presence as much as all other ST he directed, are all top notch. 8. Its entertaining! Great Sci-Fi! But the series story line is chaotic. And when the Capt. of a Star Trek episode is billed as a supporting actor... Too many cooks!

Finally one episode i can follow and understand without bothering about what happened few episodes before or the main story being interrupted by many sub-plots that i don't care because too many sub-stories to follow like in many previous episodes..

Plus on this episode the story was good WITHOUT MANY sub-sub-sub plots, just a straight episode introducing the cyborg as well, i am sad for the end, but it was well written.

so... it was good!

I hope you will continue this way.

After one and a half season, I can at last say that this is indeed Star Trek! I don't know if it was the writers or the directors - it was not the actors - but I am feeling that is at last starting to get its footing! Now it only remains to get rid of that ridiculus spore drive and give the rest of the crew the chance to play some part in the story, as they did in this episode, and we are in business!