#anthonyrapp

Daphne Rubin Vega with her Rent co-stars

Well, that’s one way to solve a mystery.  ‘The Red Angel’ steps up and answers the question that has been plaguing us all season long.  It also stops to introduce a few new questions because, well, if we didn’t have things to speculate about we might stop watching.  We are also reminded of just how tight the Discovery crew is, with some possible indications that we might finally see the crew as they were at the very beginning of the season.  Less a few Enterprise crew members, but all the better for it. 

Let’s begin with the final departure of Airiam.  Not really wanting to make light of a funeral I won’t spend a lot of time on this issue, but I have mixed feelings about this entire scene.  Last weeks episode provided a powerful, emotional goodbye to a character that we’d only barely gotten to know.  Part of that not knowing is what made her exit so affecting.  To this week then spend a good chunk of the episode having various cast members give all the reasons why they will miss her takes away a bit from the place we were left.  I’m almost surprised we didn’t get Admiral Cornwall’s reminiscing on her non-existent time with Airiam thrown in.  Ok, maybe I’m being a little harsh, but I would have liked to see the funeral scene maybe be a bit more subdued, keeping in line with the fact that we’d just mourned a character we hardly knew.

Relationships from last season that have definitely been put to the test last season also finally get a little revisit this episode.  The direction that Stamets and Culber are taking can be a little heartbreaking, especially considering the initial excitement that the show had unburied it’s gay.  It does seem that eventually, we’ll get these two back together, but you can’t help but want to push that along.   I’m not as convinced by Burnham and Tyler though.  Something is feeling a little rushed by Burnham accepting him back.  Yes, yes, she was on the verge of voluntarily dying, but this is also the man who trusts an agency that is responsible for her entire life.  He also chose a life in the Klingon Empire with his ex Klingon lover over her last season.  Maybe just a tiny bit more hesitation would be appropriate?

Speaking of Michael’s entire life (here come the spoileriest spoilers, if you want to stop now), the revelation of the identity of the red angel was...unexpected.  I suppose the hints have been there all season.  We’ve been given a lot of pause to stop and think about who Michael’s real parents were so in a way the revelation should have been somewhat easy to pick out before now.  I wonder how this ties to Michael’s past exactly though.  At what point in Michael’s timeline is her mother traveling from?  I suppose this could be the ‘fix’ to the continuity the producers have been promising and we’ll get a third ‘Star Trek’ timeline out of this.  The original, the Kelvin timeline from the later movies, and now the Michael timeline.  That wouldn’t explain Spock never mentioning a sister though since it appears the divergence would start after the introduction of Michael.  Still, time travel.  It can be best not to over explain it.