It feels like Season 3 of Star Trek Discovery has only just started, but it’s already over with Episode 13, ‘That Hope Is You, Part 2’. *Warning: Spoilers Lie Ahead!*
Effectively the end of a three-parter, along with ‘Su’Kal’ and ‘There Is a Tide…’, this episode brings the season to a halt with an unsatisfactory taste in the mouth. The season started so well and looked like it was laying on a sumptuous feast. Instead though, it ignored that mid-season for some rough mirror-takeout, and then decided to only eat one ingredient at the end by falling at the ‘Altar of Burnham’. It could have been so much better.

After last week’s Die Hard ripoff, this week the show went for more of a 1930s serial feel, with some cartoonish ‘bad guy’ plot devices and false jeopardy. It also failed to address some of the weaker aspects of the storyline and then wrap things up too neatly at the end, while also betraying several characters.
As ‘That Hope Is You, Part 2’ starts, the bridge crew have escaped led by Tilly (Mary Wiseman), who has gained their respect and is stepping up. Helped by the Sphere data, which has taken over the maintenance robots, they start to work their way through the ship, before Osyraa (Janet Kidder) locks them in a section of the ship, and starts to slowly vent the atmosphere. This whole thing wanders off into Bond villain idiocy, as you would have thought Osyraa would just immediately vent the atmosphere, not do it so slowly that they can possibly be saved. She doesn’t even really use them as leverage either, only briefly teasing that later with Michael (Sonequa Martin Green), albeit half-heartedly.

As a plot device it infuriates, but does give us the best scenes in ‘That Hope Is You, Part 2’, as the bridge crew come together to enact a plan to knock the ship out of Warp. If Discovery concentrated more on these characters, instead of short-changing them every two minutes, it would be a far superior offering than it is. We’ve finally seen some development with Joann (Oyin Oladejo), Detmer (Emily Coutts), Rhys (Patrick Kwok-Choon), Bryce (Ronnie Rowe Jr.), and Nilsson (Sara Mitich) which has provided us with a properly bonded crew of interesting people. Because of that, this is where the true heart of the episode lies, and not with the incessant obsession with Michael.
Despite alluding earlier in the season that a more sensible direction for the show would be taken, by the end of this episode, the writers have jerked back the opposite way. All previous hope that we would get a balanced and more interesting show are dashed and Tilly especially is pushed into the background. Why there is this insistence that this be ‘Star Trek: Burnham’ I do not know, as no other Trek show has been quite so focused on a main character before, even TOS. If they worked TOS like they do Discovery, then you would have had Kirk, everyone else would have been Chekov or Chappel, and there would be no Spock or McCoy.

Back on the Dilithium planet, we continue to get a fairly solid Trek plotline with Saru (Doug Jones) trying to bond with Su’Kal (Bill Irwin) and convince him to turn off the holo simulation. If we ignore the fact of the ‘Su’Kal is responsible for the Burn’ clunker, which is an equally cute and annoying idea as the Voyager/V’Ger nonsense in ST:TMP, there is some good drama here. Jones and Irwin make this resonate emotionally, with patience and naivety, respectively. It must be said though, that they do dodge the more interesting moral and emotional discussion, with a mere ‘you couldn’t have known’. Regardless of whether he knew or not, Su’Kal is still responsible for millions of deaths, so it would have been nice to address that and how others may react to him.

‘That Hope Is You, Part 2’ comes to a head all too quickly and has a suddenly rushed epilogue that trashes all hope for a more balanced show. By the end we’re left with Saru taking a sabbatical, and Michael promoted to Captain, ahead of Tilly. How the last third of the epsiode treats Tilly is perhaps the most egregious part of the last three seasons, turning her into a wet paper bag at the last second, after building her nicely. The writers are obviously so keen to have ‘Star Trek: Burnham’, that all other characters will be pointlessly sacrificed, even if their stories are more interesting.
Season four has a lot of explaining to do, and we can only hope that they save Discovery from the wreckage of their own making. The elements are all there, but they just need to get out of their own way. If they can’t, then just send Michael off in her own USS Narcissism show, and let us have the Discovery with a well-balanced crew.