Review – Star Trek: Discovery Shows off the Good, Bad and Ugly in “Point of Light”

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

With two solid episodes under their belt to start season two, “Point of Light” introduces some familiar faces for the first time this season and quite a convoluted mess of storylines and plot arcs as well. While there were some great moments, there was simply too much crammed into the episode, including a head-scratching plot point that I really could have done without.

Ensign Tilly is still seeing the strange and annoying apparition of May Ahern (Bahia Watson) which in turn leads Tilly to question whether she is losing her mind. In fact, during a command training exercise on the bridge, she starts yelling at the imaginary May, making it look like she is losing it, and she quickly excuses herself and leaves the bridge. Suffice to say there is an explanation for all this, which I’m sure will have some impact going forward, but it was all rushed and weird, like most of this episode.

We get our first glimpse of Tyler/Voq (Shazad Latif) and L’Rell (Mary Chieffo) this season as they try to deal with the many issues arising after the unifying of houses. There are disagreements on who should lead and how it should be done, not uncommon in any government, let only with the Klingons. Then, out of nowhere, it is revealed that L’Rell had a child, that she became pregnant with Voq’s child before he underwent the surgery to look human.

The introduction of the child felt clumsy and forced but the chaos this child introduced did allow for an appearance by Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh). As part of Section 31, the very sketchy division of Starfleet no one wants to talk about, Georgiou explains why she has arrived on Kronos and why L’Rell must remain in power. How they go about this is interesting but not nearly as much fun as Section 31’s interest in Tyler. That bit of information alone salvaged this episode from drowning in exposition and the confusing crisscrossing of storylines.

Meanwhile, Burnham’s foster mother Amanda (Mia Kirshner) arrives on board Discovery with concerns about Spock. Soon, mother and daughter are sharing all they know about Spock and, the red signals and the Red Angel. They enlist Pike to try and access some medical records and find out Spock has escaped the hospital and killed people while doing it. None of this makes sense to those who know him and so the mystery deepens. Then Burnham drops her bombshell, that it was her and not Spock’s vision of the Red Angel as a child, that drove him to become a recluse. This strange revelation does set the stage for more drama when Burnham and Spock eventually meet and is possibly the reason Spock has never mentioned his step-sister. I’m not really sold on this plot arc but I’ll save my judgment until I get more information. However, whatever Burnham did to Spock, it better be pretty bad to cause this kind of rift between them and splinter the whole family.

There were some interesting ideas in “Point of Light” and some great performances but the episode was ultimately undone by trying to cram too much information down the viewer’s collective throats. Maybe some of the ‘interesting’ new plot points will play out well done the road in season two but for now,  it made for a messy and jumbled episode.

Three stars out of five