Discovery just put us back aboard the ISS Enterprise, a ship we haven’t seen since the original “Mirror, Mirror.” It’s Thursday morning, so clearly that means it’s Discovery time, and we get an amazing adventure this week.

The episode is aptly titled “Mirrors,” and just like it sounds, it’s sort of this series’ version of a mirror episode. I know Discovery has actually been to the Mirror Universe, but this season we hadn’t really touched a whole lot of that. There are a couple of different plot threads here, but overall we stay in the primary story arc, which is the story of Moll and L’ak and the Progenitor technology they’re chasing.

When Discovery Remembers the Legacy

The thing I like about the episode right off the bat is that we get to see the ISS Enterprise. A Mirror Universe ship, and somehow it ended up in interdimensional space. I love that as a series Discovery isn’t afraid to keep visiting legacy locations and things of that nature, and in the grand scheme of things I think that’s exactly where it always shines. What have I said before? When Discovery remembers it’s part of a bigger legacy, that’s when it ultimately kicks the most butt.

You’ve seen it in the clip that was released last week. The crew of Discovery finds that the place where the time bug happened is hiding something, and you have to adjust the viewscreen so you can see past the normal spectrum. What they find is a wormhole, collapsing and reopening. This isn’t the first time we’ve had a wormhole that can open and close. If you remember, Deep Space Nine had one for quite some time.

Burnham Takes the Away Team

Burnham has a moment where she says she’s going on the away team. I know a lot of people criticize her as the I’m-going-to-save-the-universe captain. I personally don’t think it’s any different than Kirk always having to be the one to save the universe, or Picard and them. I will say she does tend to put herself in danger more often than I think is necessary.

She decides she’s got to jump into this thing, and she makes the decision to leave Rayner in charge. At first Rayner’s very against it. Captain, it’s too dangerous for you, this and that. And she takes the opportunity to tell him that she trusts him. “I know you can lead this crew, Commander. I believe in you.”

Then she takes off. It’s literally her and Book. They take a shuttle into this wormhole with the opening and closing aperture, and what they find is that Moll and L’ak’s ship has been destroyed. The only way those two could have gotten out is if they got aboard something else, and that’s when we see the ISS Enterprise. It’s dope.

Aboard the ISS Enterprise

They manage to get on board, and as they’re walking around it’s funny, because they’ve done some minor redesigns. Clearly this is what the Strange New Worlds sets have been doing between seasons.

You find out there was actually a mutiny after the new high council person, who we know to be Spock, tried to make reforms and changes. They were ultimately hurt and damaged, and they ended up falling into this little pocket dimension. So whoever they were, they got away into this universe. You later find out one of the scientists actually grew up and joined Starfleet, and then, magically, any information about her disappeared. Clearly she was part of the science group investigating the Progenitor technology. Remember what Jinaal told them: they took every opportunity to wipe any reference to themselves or their mission out of as many databases as they could find.

Because aboard this ship is another piece of the puzzle.

Moll and L’ak, Star-Crossed

We get the backstory for Moll and L’ak, and you find out L’ak is Breen. Apparently this is what the Breen look like outside of their suits. They say they have two faces. One is the translucent face that’s underneath the helmets they wear, and the other is the face you see on L’ak, which has sort of reconstituted back into a solid one.

Moll was the courier who delivered dilithium to them on a regular basis. She got a better contract, but apparently the two of them fell in love. Hey, man, star-crossed lovers is legit. I’m down.

What ends up happening is the two of them are caught by L’ak’s uncle, and at that point his uncle basically puts out the Breen equivalent of a fatwa. It actually has a name in the show, and essentially it’s a hit that will follow them forever. Their whole point is to use this technology to barter for their freedom and get this irremovable thing removed.

Well, Burnham knows that can’t be allowed to happen, because she’s seen the future. The minute the Breen get their hands on this technology, Starfleet’s done for. It’s literally been shown.

Because Plot and Reasons

So the four of them meet. Book does his best to talk to Moll, there’s a brief mini shootout, and then a stray shot hits a terminal that throws up force fields. Because plot and reasons. Totally fine with that, whatever.

Book says, look, I can go to the bridge, I can fix this, I’m going to need your help. He and Moll head up there, and that’s how we’re getting the backstory, because she’s telling him stuff while they work. Book is trying to explain: listen, I know he may have been a crap dad, meaning the original Cleveland Booker, her father, but he always talked about you. He starts to convince her that she can help. “For what it’s worth, he loved you. But I’m sorry for what you went through because of him.”

Both of them are convincing the other person, until they don’t. She gets impatient and forces a surge through the power conduit system, which causes explosions, and the shuttle, because plot and reasons, gets disengaged from the ship. I don’t fully grasp that, but whatever. It literally helps the story keep moving forward, and I’m fine with that.

Now they have to navigate the Enterprise back toward the aperture. Earlier in the episode Burnham had used a Kellerun proverb on Rayner. Meanwhile Rayner’s got everybody working communications and whatnot, and what he sees is a tractor beam coming out of the aperture, flashing. Kind of like Morse code, but for the Kellerun, and the message is a line from that proverb. Luckily he understands it, because that’s a really complicated way to go. But whatever.

In the end they make it out. She’s got the next clue, as well as a vial of some sort of liquid, and hopefully that liquid is going to lead them to the clue after that. Right now they’re very close to finding it and completing this mission. I love that idea. I think it’s a really good one, and we’ll see where it all plays out.

The Verdict

Star Trek: Discovery Episode 5, “Mirrors,” is a solid 7.5 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.

I liked it. It was a little sloppy in some areas. You can tell this is the part of a Discovery season when things have to get messy, and by that I mean the plot needs to plot. Unfortunately they’ve kind of written themselves into a bit of a box in certain areas. So what do they do? Contrivances start to happen. By the way, this isn’t unique to Discovery. It’s the kind of thing that happens in many series all over the place, so I’m not holding it against the show whatsoever.

You can call it filler, but the events here are actually leading us somewhere, and that makes it a bridge episode. This whole hour served to give us a greater understanding of Moll and L’ak as characters, and then to get the MacGuffin, which is that last piece of the thing.

Let me know what you thought of the episode, and how you feel about a season getting sloppy on its way somewhere. I know I think you sometimes get sloppy episodes, but that’s any series whatsoever. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above, and the rest of my Discovery coverage is in the playlist on the channel. Never forget, everyone loves a know-it-all.