Now that’s the way to end an episode. Oh my goodness, the cliffhanger that’s about to take us into episode 10, the series finale of Star Trek: Discovery.
A whole lot of things are going down in this one. You literally have wall to wall events happening, and the tension was so high I found myself legitimately going, what’s going on? I’m excited, clearly, as you can tell. I’m not overselling it, I promise. They decide to finally move this ball forward, and we end on a really great cliffhanger. If you haven’t watched the episode, why are you here? Go watch the episode. Seriously.
Two Black Holes and a Path Down the Middle
They beat the Breen to the rendezvous point. By this point we’ve added another Primarch, by the way. Tahal is on her way to take over dude’s forces, because somehow she finds out about his death, or something, whatever. No Breen secret goes untold. Ancient Starfleet saying. Whatever.
So the crew of Discovery make it to the thing, and it’s a binary pair of primordial black holes. Luckily there’s a path right down the middle, because the two black holes’ gravities pull on one another and kind of cancel out. Dead center, there’s something locked in the middle of that. The casing they’re finding is about 800 years old, roughly the age of the scientists who put this whole treasure hunt in motion. So inside, presumably, is the Progenitor tech.
They’re cloaked, and they’re investigating it and being in awe, as Starfleet will do, and that’s when the Breen ship shows up. The Breen waste no time. They attach a tractor beam to it, pull it right out and stick it in their shuttle bay. And everyone’s like, what are we going to do, we’ve got to do something, we’ve got to figure something out.
Alpha, Bravo, and Who Gets the Chair
The plan is to have two teams, Alpha and Bravo. Alpha is going for the actual device itself, which is in the shuttle bay, and that’s going to be Cleveland Book and Burnham. Bravo is heading to the bridge to turn off the shields, and that’s Adira, who’s going to hack it. It’s Adira’s first away mission, but not alone. Gen Rhys is going along as the security detail. And no, in no way, shape or form are Stamets and Culber happy about it. But at the end of the day it’s part of growing up, and Adira wants more responsibility.
Meanwhile, on the ship, Rayner is left in charge, and he selects Tilly as his fill-in first officer. “Rayner, you have the conn.” “Tilly, I’ll ask that you serve as my acting first officer.” “Yes, sir. Thank you.” “Very good.”
Burnham Being the Hero Is the Job
We get Burnham being a hero again, and again, I don’t have a problem with this. There are people who do. People who are like, Burnham’s a Mary Sue, Burnham’s this and that, blah blah blah. Look, she’s only as much of a Mary Sue as Captain Kirk or Picard or anybody else has ever been.
The nature of Star Trek is that it’s an adventure show. It was sold as Wagon Train to the Stars. So it’s science fiction, but it’s high adventure at the same time, and the captain has always been the first person to get themselves in trouble when they probably shouldn’t. So the fact that it’s a woman? Guys, get over it.
Moll Just Wants Her Dude Back
I’m enjoying the story a lot, especially because Moll is dedicated to one thing. She just wants to get her dude back. “I will bring you back.”
So when they finally get to the thing, they put the key in, because that’s what’s left, and it opens up and there’s this portal, like a door. What they do is send some unwitting Breen officer in, and he gets sucked in. When I say sucked in, I literally mean sucked in. And the second guy didn’t fare much better than that.
The whole time Moll’s like, I thought you saw what happened, why didn’t we have a secure clip, and everything else. And I’m like, what is this, Cliffhanger? Seriously? The safety clip, that’s what was going to stop him? Get out of my face. At the end of the day, dude got sucked in because she’s got no clue what she’s doing.
Burnham does reveal to everybody that she has a piece of information. It’s literally a saying, and she says it on the ship: “Build the shape of the one between the many.” “That’s cryptic. I trust it’ll make sense when it needs to.”
The Breen Masks Are Doing Alien Iron Man
Choosing the worst opportunity ever, Burnham and Book essentially make up. I don’t know if that means they’re together again, but they’ve definitely dealt with the stuff between them, and they do it while they’re in these Breen masks.
Oh, by the way, the Breen masks are doing alien Iron Man. Most of the time when you see them in their masks, it’s the Iron Man face, with the things on the outer edge that move, the whole bit. I did think it was weird that Burnham’s has a green light to it and Book’s doesn’t. That’s a strange faux pas, and I say faux pas because she’s got the exact same readouts he has, but for some reason we don’t see any of that.
I did think it was very cool that while they’re in their Breen getups, at one point it’s “you ready?” and go, and they show the split screen of their helmets, and all I could think of was Voltron. Mega thrusters are go. Let’s go, Voltron Force. Or Power Rangers, even. Whatever. It’s good.
Burnham and Book have to take out a pair of guards watching over the shuttle bay. Eventually the two guards are found to be missing from their posts, and Moll’s all like, I thought your men were trained, this, that. And dude’s like, they are. So she puts everybody on alert.
Five Days Is Not Earned Trust
That’s when they realize they’re going to have to do something. Through a coded message, Burnham tells the ship: I need you to bring the ship in, punch through the shuttle bay shield and rescue us. It’s going to blow everything out into space, and I expect you guys to come get us. She doesn’t say those words, in fact, but she says roughly that, and Rayner understands it.
The whole time, Rayner’s been sort of skulking around the bridge. He doesn’t want to sit in the captain’s chair, and they make a point of pointing it out. And there’s a weird part with Tilly, where it’s “we trust you to command us, it’s taken us a while to get here.” And I’m like, y’all have been working for the man for maybe a week, if that. Five days, roughly, is all it took for you? Not even five business days.
I don’t know. None of what’s happening in terms of them trusting Rayner feels earned to me yet. They’ve had moments, and I feel like those moments would build to, say, next season or something. It’s all happening really fast, especially if this is supposed to be one adventure. That would be like someone after a single episode of the old Star Trek saying, oh yeah, we’ve been with you so long, you’ve earned our trust. Dude, you barely know him. Really? He’s earned your trust?
Thank God That Ship Is Flat
Stamets does what Stamets does. He does the math, because math don’t lie. They take the ship in, everybody’s firing, and right there in the middle of the shuttle area, boom, the ship stabs right into their shields at the right angle and they fly into the shuttle bay. It’s pretty incredible.
And I’m like, thank God their ship is so flat. If they had the big pylons like the old Enterprises have had, they would never fit in this thing. So thank God for a super flat ship, because they go in, they spin around, and everything starts getting blown out. Correction, sir. It’s sucked out.
They transport stuff out. But right before all of that, the gateway was open, and Moll, because she can’t give up, jumped in. So who follows her, after connecting with Book? Burnham. Because Burnham’s got to save the day. Burnham’s going to Burnham, and we’re going to find out what happens next episode.
The Verdict
Star Trek: Discovery season 5, episode 9, “Lagrange Point,” is a 9 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.
All the pieces came together. This episode gelled really well, and I was very happy with all the parts. The contrivances are contrivances, but that’s the nature of storytelling and science fiction and Star Trek. I don’t have an issue with any of those things.
If you do have an issue with the contrivances, tell me. Did you really like what’s been going on this season? Let me know what you thought of the episode in the comments on the video above. The season 5 playlist on the channel will get you caught up on every episode.
