Awesome / Star Trek: Discovery

"This ship bears the name Discovery. Never has that been more fitting, or more prescient."

Awesome moments in Star Trek: Discovery.

Per Wiki policy, spoilers are unmarked.

Season 1

"The Vulcan Hello"

• As an Establishing Character Moment for The Federation, outside of just the crew of the Enterprise, one of the first things we see is Georgiou and Burnham, two Starfleet officers, covertly saving a species from extinction by using a phaser rifle to break a layer of bedrock at the bottom of an existing well without being spotted (or so they think). In so doing, they kept an entire sapient species from dying out, proving that this series has learned from the missteps of later Trek series that treated the Prime Directive — referred to as "General Order One" — as a justification for remaining uninvolved and letting species die out from preventable causes. Even better, in a moment of Fridge Brilliance, Georgiou and Burnham start the series off by using a phaser weapon for peaceful and beneficial means — defying the Darker and Edgier attitude that the series seems to otherwise possess.
  • Phasers in Star Trek have a long, proud history of being just as, if not more, useful as tools than weapons. Embracing the fact that this isn't just a futuristic assault rifle that fires little energy bolts instead of bullets is an important establishing moment for the series as a whole. . . yes, it does get Star Trek.
• Saru and Burnham cannot get a fix on the unidentified object (later revealed to be the Klingon beacon) using the advanced sensors of the Shenzhou. So what do they do? They go for the Mundane Solution of magnifying it through the old-style telescope in Captain Georgiou's ready room.
• Voq, son of none, proves himself worthy of being the Torchbearer by thrusting his hand into flames. And holding it there.
• The opening credits are gorgeous, showing all the little parts of phasers and the Enterprise, and how they all work.

"Battle at the Binary Stars"

• Burnham out-logics a computer! Spock would approve (and they did grow up together)!
• While the Klingons are more prepared for battle, Starfleet proves to be dangerously resourceful. USS Europa is rammed by a cloaked Klingon warship (at this point, Starfleet doesn't even know cloaking technology exists), and despite the ship nearly being bisected within a few seconds, they still have time to trigger their own warp core to self-destruct (ensuring the Klingon ship's destruction as well) and ordering at least some of the crew to the lifepods.
• After the Starfleet forces have been destroyed, disabled, or forced to retreat, T'Kuvma takes the time to begin recovering the fallen Klingon bodies for proper burial. Shenzhou, despite being a broken wreck at this point, uses the opportunity to booby-trap a nearby Klingon body with a Photon Torpedo warhead, which T'Kuvma brings inside his own ship, allowing them to disable it in one blow.

"Context is for Kings"

• The Scenery Porn panning of the Discovery, the ship that saves Burnham and her other passengers from dying.
• Burnham demonstrates her badass cred when she effortlessly takes down the other three prisoners when they attack her. Landry, notably, treats her more politely than when they first met.
• Burnham distracts the monster, giving the rest of the away team a chance to escape to the shuttle. She crawls through the Jefferies tubes, pursued by the monster, while reciting a passage from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as a Survival Mantra. She ends up exiting over the shuttle bay, dropping directly into the open hatch of the waiting shuttle so they can escape.
• Cadet Tilly deserves credit for not only keeping her composure amid the carnage on the Glenn, but for going right back to work aboard Discovery afterward despite knowing that the very same thing could happen to her if something goes wrong with the spore drive. It's no wonder Stamets thinks she's worth keeping around!

"The Butcher Cares Not For The Lamb's Cry"

• Burnham, after seeing 'Ripper' savagely maul Landry, still has the guts to prove her theory correct by facing down the creature without a forcefield, bringing it a tasty meal of spores.
• The Discovery's Gunship Rescue of the Corvan II colony.

"Choose Your Pain"

• Lorca and Tyler's escape from the Klingon ship. They beat up the guards, steal the guards' weapons, find the cargo bay, and use a Klingon raider ship to escape to the Discovery. You could accuse Gabriel Lorca of many things. Cowardice is not one of them.
• Stamets technically following Saru’s order of initiating the spore drive, but using himself instead of the tardigrade. When he wakes up he cackles happily.
• The first f-bomb uttered on screen in Star Trek, and what is it for? Tilly geeking out about how cool science is. Not an exclamation of grim-dark frustration or the harshness and unforgiving nature of war, but about how utterly amazing science is and how the idea of the spore drive opens up so many new possibilities of exploration. Sure, because of the backdrop of the Federation-Klingon War, its military applications are where they get applied first, but it still frames the spore drive and its related discoveries and science through that lens, rather than as a weapon of war.
• As well as heartwarming, Michael (under orders this time) and Tilly release Ripper, and it uncurls itself and zaps off under a gorgeous rendition of the theme music.

"Lethe"

• Michael calling her father out on letting her believe she’d failed him and he was disappointed in her, and as a human, managing to save him with a mind meld.

"Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad"

• Burnham's brilliant method to force Mudd to make another time loop: she reveals her identity to him and then kills herself. Mudd could just take the victory he's been handed, but, just as Burnham predicted, he just can't let go of the potential reward for delivering her alive to the Klingons.
  • Mudd notes that the dark matter pellets he swiped from Lorca's lab kill with incredible pain, as Tyler gets to demonstrate. Burnham swallows one on purpose and barely flinches as it destroys her from the inside out.

"Into the Forest I Go"

• Lorca's brilliant plan to use the spore drive to play Kol for a chump and devise a method of seeing through Klingon cloaking devices.
• Michael fights a duel with Kol. Despite Kol's overwhelming physical superiority, the two of them are more-or-less evenly matched. Michael finishes the fight by prying Captain Georgiou's Starfleet insignia from Kol's chest, right before the Discovery beams her out. Kol is left screaming powerlessly as the Discovery blows the "ship of the dead" to pieces.
• A minor bit due to Lieutenant Keyla Detmer's character development (what little of it we ever see, since she's mostly a Bridge Bunny so far): In Battle at the Binary Stars, the look on her face during the fight is one of contained-but-evident wide-eyed fear. In this episode, when told to keep the Sarcophagus (the same ship she faced off with in the pilot) busy to buy Burnham and Tyler time, she fires off a Pre Ass Kicking One Liner with a smirk before proceeding to make Discovery dance circles around the larger ship.

"Despite Yourself"

• While impersonating her Mirror Universe counterpart, Michael has to fight off an assassination attempt by Mirror!Connor, who is trying to keep his position as captain of the I.S.S. Shenzhou by killing her. While Michael is caught unprepared, she manages to even the odds by disabling the turbolift's gravity and kills him. While Michael is clearly horrified at having killed someone who looks identical to her old crewmate, she manages to regain her composure and emerges from the turbolift to thunderous applause from the bridge crew. And at long last, Michael Burnham is a captain.
  Bridge Crew: Long live Captain Burnham! (perform the Mirror salute) Long live the Empire!
  Michael: Long live the Empire!
• The same subtle lighting effect they apply to the Reliant from Khan has been applied to the ISS Shenzhou. The lighting is red and the hull paint darker, and the Shenzhou looks badass. Especially since she's put next to the still vanilla painted Discovery, which you can immediately tell comes from a kinder, gentler Starfleet.

"The Wolf Inside"

• Before the away mission to Harlak, Ash warns Burnham that her well-intentioned attempt to warn the rebels about the incoming Orbital Bombardment may very well result in her death. Burnham's response? "Better dead than one of them." Ash can't disagree with that.
• Burnham is attacked and overpowered by Voq in Ash's body. Just as he's about to kill her, he's grabbed from behind and tossed across the room by Mirror!Saru, presumably because she didn't abuse him like the rest of the crew.
• For the crime of attempting to murder an Imperial Captain, Voq in Ash's body is sentenced to death. Burnham personally activates the transporter, beaming him out into open space. He is immediately beamed up by the Discovery, where Prime!Saru reveals that Burnham tricked Ash into helping smuggle the Defiant intel off the Shenzhou by slipping them in his empty holster.
• When Voq angrily tells Saru that he should have left him to die, Saru sets him straight with barely-controlled rage:
  Saru: "No. We are stranded in a cruel, anarchic world. But we are still Starfleet. And we still live and die by Federation law. No matter how heinous your crimes."

"Vaulting Ambition"

• A huge moment in retrospect for Mirror!Lorca. This is someone from a cruel, despotic universe where humans in general are ruthless xenophobes. When Kirk, McCoy, Uhura, and Scott were switched with their Mirror Universe duplicates, it took no time at all for them to be identified and locked up, and Spock indicated it was trivial to spot them because they couldn't act like "normal" people. Mirror!Lorca managed to replace his duplicate for over half a year, successfully con Starfleet medical personnel and psychiatrists who were closely examining Lorca to look for problems after the loss of his ship and crew, including Cornwell, who the real Lorca had been in a relationship with, overcome the xenophobic upbringing and Properly Paranoid behavior to successfully command a crew with multiple non-human species without blowing the cover and no-one suspecting, and, perhaps most impressive, not set off Saru's danger sense.

"What's Past Is Prologue"

• The first time Saru took command in a crisis, he came off as a bad parody of a Starfleet captain. This time, when the stakes are literally all life in every universe, he doesn't bark orders or pull rank. He lets the crew do their jobs, and provides stern but encouraging advice when needed. Then he takes the big chair and coolly leads the Discovery into battle. Fine Character Development indeed.
  Saru: It is well known that my species has the ability to sense the coming of death. I do not sense it today. I may not have all the answers; however, I do know that I am surrounded by a team I trust. The finest a captain could ever hope to command. Lorca abused our idealism. But make no mistake, Discovery is no longer Lorca's. She is ours, and today will be her maiden voyage. We have a duty to perform, and we will not accept a no-win scenario!
• The battle itself is one for Discovery and her crew. A prototype science ship takes on the city-sized flagship of the Terran Empire and wins.

"The War Without, The War Within"

• Stamets using the last of his Prototaxites to terraform a moon, and the result is gorgeous. And he doesn't even have to use protomatter. Even more so as he accomplishes at least as much in an hour as he had in several years of work.

"Will You Take My Hand?"

• The bridge crew of the Discovery stands in support of Burnham when she threatens mutiny again if Starfleet doesn't call off the attack on Qo'noS, with Saru, the one who'd taken her original mutiny on the Shenzhou the most personally, being the first to do so.
  Saru: We are Starfleet.
• For saving the Federation and not compromising their ideals to do it, the crew of Discovery are awarded the Starfleet Medal of Honor, Cadet Tilly and Lieutenant Stamets are promoted to Ensign and Lieutenant Commander, and Burnham is reinstated with her conviction pardoned and charges expunged.
  • Combined with Heartwarming, Burnham's speech about who the Federation and Starfleet truly are cements Discovery's status as a Decon-Recon Switch, recommitting the series, and the franchise as a whole, to the ideals it first strove for all the way back in 1966. It's an outright rejection of Darker and Edgier as an entertainment necessity on par with The Death of Superman.
    Burnham: We are no longer on the eve of battle. Even so, I come to ask myself the same question that young soldier asked the general all those years ago: "How do I defeat fear?" The general's answer: the only way to defeat fear is to tell it "no." No. We will not take shortcuts on the path to righteousness. No. We will not break the rules that protect us from our basest instincts. No. We will not allow desperation to destroy moral authority. I am guilty of all these things. Some say that in life, there are no second chances. Experience tells me this is true. But we can only look forward. We have to be torchbearers, casting the light so we may see our path to lasting peace. We will continue exploring, discovering new worlds, new civilizations. Yes. That is the United Federation of Planets. Yes. That is Starfleet. Yes. That is who we are. And who we will always be.
• The Discovery receives a distress call on the way to Vulcan and comes face to face with the ship that started it all: the USS Enterprise, NCC-1701, in all her (slightly artistically updated) Constitution-class glory...and the ending credits of the episode are set to the classic Star Trek theme.

Short Treks Season One

"The Escape Artist"

• Credit where it's due, Mudd's plot is impressive. He is scamming numerous bounty hunters trying to claim his bounty with a small army of android Mudd impersonators, which he sells to them while in disguise. To say nothing of how much he's managing to annoy the unfortunate Starfleet crews who have to deal with it all.

Season 2

"Brother"

• Pike asks his new bridge crew to sound off just prior to dropping out of warp to investigate the first anomaly. Despite each of them stating their names fairly quickly, he remembers all of them, and their positions, and repeats them back immediately as he's giving out instructions. Easy with names like Burnham or Saru or Detmer, but a bit more difficult with unusual names like Airiam and Owosekun. Understated awesome to be sure, but a pretty clear demonstration of the kind of steel-trap mind a Starfleet captain would logically have to possess.
• Jet Reno found herself stranded on an asteroid with a bunch of wounded/dead crew and a ship incapable of ever flying again. She then spent the next 10 months keeping those crew alive despite being an engineer and jury-rigged the ship to maintain life support. There's a good reason Starfleet's engineering prowess is so widely known.
• Discovery capturing a piece of an asteroid in their shuttle bay. Tricky flying by Detmer and a concerted effort by many of Discovery's scientists and engineers yields a massive chunk of space rock, which happens to be comprised mostly of non-baryonic matter (something unknown to Federation science until this day). An true achievement for Discovery's original designation as a science vessel.
  Tilly: This is the power of math, people!

"New Eden"

• Tilly, with some prompting from May, finds a way for the crew to rescue the colonists on New Eden without violating the Prime Directive: Using the gravity-warping dark matter rock they captured in the previous episode to tow the radioactive debris into a safe orbit. The moment is topped off with the use of the old musical cue from Star Trek: The Original Series.
  • Props to Detmer too, for pulling off a donut (that's sustained circular drift, thank you) in a starship.

"An Obol for Charon"

• Even though he is dying, Saru fights through his illness to help save Discovery and allow the dying star-like being to send its last message.
• When "May" refuses to leave Tilly because she has plans for her, Reno immediately says "Wrong." And then shoots the entity. It didn't work, but it demonstrates that Reno is not going to let anyone on her crew get hurt if she can help it, whether she's known them for ten months or ten minutes.

"Saints of Imperfection"

• As it turns out, when Starfleet says No One Gets Left Behind, they mean it: when Tilly finds herself in the mycelial network, Discovery follows an insane plan developed by Stamets to partially get in there and help Tilly.
• However it happened, Hugh Culber managed to revive within the mycelial network, survived with literally nothing to eat for weeks or months, and while he was being attacked/deconstructed by the beings living in the network, had the presence of mind to use something he could tell repelled them.

"The Sounds of Thunder"

• Saru tearing through his restraints and smashing the Ba'ul drones with his bare hands to rescue his sister. Then for an encore, he liberates the entire Kelpien species.

"Light and Shadows"

• Amanda calling Sarek out on how hard Spock has had to apply himself to the Vulcan way of life, to the point of suppressing his human half, despite literally being half of who he is, all to meet the standards of the Vulcans who have never and seemingly will never accept him, as well as bringing up what she was willing to give up in the name of her love of Sarek, what she has sacrificed to be able to fit in amongst Vulcans, a sacrifice she makes clear she doesn't think he would have made, even for her. And that ultimately is why she hid Spock among the ancient crypts, rather than have him handed over to the Federation who want to prosecute him for murder.
  Amanda: Do you know why I read him [ Alice in Wonderland ]? Because Spock had difficulties. Human difficulties. Learning, reading, writing. The Vulcans called it L'tak Terai.
  Sarek: A temporary complication remedied at the Learning Center.
  Amanda: No. He had no support. Nobody wanted to help a half-Vulcan child with a learning disability he'd inherited from his mother. And in order to save our son, I began to read him a story about how to survive when up is down and left is right.
  Sarek: Your obsession with a book about chaos has done a disservice to our children.
  Amanda: They were the ones who were on both sides of the looking glass. Not you, Sarek. You never truly respected humanity.
  Sarek: If that were true, I would have married a Vulcan.
  Amanda: Would you have left Vulcan for me? No, you wouldn't. I sacrificed everything for our family.
  Sarek: That does not change the fact that you have harbored a fugitive, which is a flagrant abuse of my authority.
  Amanda: I don't live under your authority. I'm your wife and I'm your partner. Try again, husband.

"If Memory Serves"

• When Pike finds out what the stakes really are from Spock and Burnham, he decides to disobey orders and go rogue. He just starts the standard "I'm about to disobey orders" speech when Detmer interrupts him to ask what course he wants, showing he doesn't even have to ask if they'll follow him.

The Red Angel

• Meta level, but after 90s Trek had so much difficulty with portraying same-sex couples that it wound up being limited to metaphor and a single episode romance, Discovery manages to outright refer to Stamets and Culber as gay, on screen. It is a minor distinction at most in universe, but for the gay viewers in the audience, hearing explicitly that term being used unambiguously to refer to a character means a whole lot.

"Through the Valley of Shadows"

• In order to obtain a time crystal, Pike has to knowingly submit himself to the future we see in "The Menagerie" - an immobile, horrifically scarred man in a beeping chair. It takes him a moment, but he reaffirms his belief in both his own and Starfleet's values, and brings it back to Discovery.

"Such Sweet Sorrow"

• Even just the promo trailer for the episode is full of awesome. Discovery and Enterprise^note "No bloody -A, -B, -C or -D" get to go all Back-to-Back Badasses against a fleet of Section 31 ships commandeered by Control. And we're getting to see the updated◊ Enterprise bridge!
• Although she has no way of knowing how dangerous it was, it's still pretty ballsy of Po to call out the outwardly intimidating Georgiou for being a snarky bitch while she was helping the crew.
• Reno solves the problem of how to charge the crystal in time without exposing everyone to its traumatizing visions: she just tells the others to leave and locks herself in to endure them as she continues working. And she stays focused enough to get the job done in time for the next episode.

"Such Sweet Sorrow Part 2"

• The entire Battle near Xahea. Not since the days of the Dominion War have we seen such a spectacular battle sequence put to screen — capital ships blasting away at each other in close-range combat, hundreds of fighters and drones dogfighting in huge swarms, and of course Burnham flying through the carnage in her Red Angel suit, leading Discovery toward the wormhole.
  • After all the times that Federation starships are only shown firing one or two weapons at a time, here we see Discovery and Enterprise cutting loose with multiple phaser volleys while tanking hundreds of shots from Control's fleet.
• Admiral Cornwell's Heroic Sacrifice, as she manually engages the blast door to seal the explosion of a torpedo lodged in the Enterprise's hull to contain the blast, then turns to the torpedo and waits for the explosion.
• The Big Damn Heroes arrival of L'Rell and the Klingon ramming ship. A rather impressive bookend to "Battle of the Binary Stars," with the Cleave ship ramming into a Starfleet ship, now L'Rell arrives to rescue Discovery and take out two of Control's ships.
  • L'Rell chants, in Klingon, "It is a good day to die!" ("Heghlu'meH QaQ jajvam" in Klingon.) Tyler shouts it as well, followed by the rest of the Klingon bridge crew. Later, we cut back to them being savaged in the battle, and the Klingons are singing. Klingons don't always pull a Big Damn Heroes, but when they do, they do it with style.
  • Among the ships in the Klingon fleet are the classic D7 battlecruisers showing off their firepower.
• Everyone and everything involved in the hallway fight between Georgiou, Nhan, and Control/Leland. From Alex Kurtzman challenging the cast/crew to do something awesome with the season, to Olatunde Osunsanmi (the director) for working out the scene, to the crew who built the hallway and choreographed the fight, and the performers for carrying off an impressive fight.
• To survive transit into the future, the shields need to be repaired. Tilly is the only one who can do it, having done so before. The catch? The previous time, she did it blindfolded as part of a bar bet, so she has to do it now with her eyes closed. She succeeds.
  Tilly: Somebody owes me a beer.
• Spock stepping onto the bridge of the Enterprise, no longer scruffy-looking and wearing his familiar blue shirt, as a variation of the TOS theme plays.

Short Treks Season Two

Season 3

People of Earth

• For the franchise as a whole, Saru being made captain of Discovery: the series is now the first to have an alien as captain of its featured ship.
• Adira, the Teen Genius Inspector who sabotages Discovery in order to investigate the ship and confirm whether or not they were Starfleet. It turns into a major case of The Bus Came Back for a species when it's revealed that they're a human with a Trill symbiont!
  • Simply the fact that someone managed to bond a symbiont with a human without them both dying. For reference, when Will Riker allowed himself to be a stopgap host for a symbiont, the strain almost killed him in just a few days. By contrast, Adira has had that squid for a year.
• Discovery itself, now 900 years out of date, withstands two quantum torpedoes from the United Earth patrol ships. Admittedly, the next shot would have killed them, but surviving even that much shows just how tough the ship is.

Die Trying

• Kovich proves to be Georgiou's match in wits, easily deconstructing her manipulations and even getting one over on her by revealing that the Terran Empire is gone and that she likely joined the crew for personal reasons.

Scavengers

• Georgiou and Burnham infiltrate an Emerald Chain slave camp under the pretense of being there to trade dilithium, finding Booker and disabling the security system keeping the slaves penned in, which allows Booker and his Andorian friend to get a large number of the captives to a nearby ship so they can escape.
• Tilly is well on her way to the captain's chair. We see her confidently firing off instructions to the engineering crew and working her holo-PADD like she was born with it, followed by her one-on-one with Saru: she admits that she loves Michael and might have gone on that mission herself, but understands what needs to be done for the good of Discovery and Starfleet.

Unification III

• Just the fact that the Vulcans and the Romulans finally put aside their mutual differences, estrangement, enmity, and paranoia to reunite after centuries, if not millennia, on their homeworld (now renamed Ni'Var). It also shows a much better outcome for both civilizations than the planetary destruction showcased in the 2009 film set in the "Kelvin timeline"— and, even better, Spock is forever recognized for his efforts in bringing both civilizations back together.

The Sanctuary

• Detmer uses the Nautilus to pull a David vs. Goliath against the Viridian and force Osyraa to withdraw. She even uses the programmable-matter console to create the controls that she originally learned to fly with. Best of all, she seems to be moving past her PTSD from that crash earlier in the season.
• Adira coming out as non-binary. For a few episodes, a lot of fans had been worried that the big deal that the producers had been making about introducing the franchise's first non-binary character was only referring to the Trill symbiote, but instead they confirm that they've never identified as female even before it, and after enough time with the crew feel comfortable revealing it, which Stamets easily accepts.
  • There's also the undercurrent of it all - of course 23rd century denizens living in the 32nd century would roll with someone coming out as non-binary (particularly Stamets, being under the same queer umbrella). But Adira coming out like this, to someone they really don't know very well at this point, even if he is clearly developing into a mentor figure for them, plays as the first major coming out for them, which is a big deal for anyone under that umbrella, that this is the first time they have vocalized it to someone else, and are accepted for it.

Terra Firma Part 1

• The classical Greek style play about Empress Georgiou's rise to power. A spectacular setpiece given full room to breathe by the camerawork and further enhanced by the ballad that Mirror Stamets recites.

Terra Firma Part 2

• Georgiou revealing that, while she wanted to trust Burnham, she knew better. Cue Owo and Killy bursting in to the rescue, confirming their status as the episode's 'good' bad guys.
  • Owo and Killy are accompanied by Saru and another Kelpian. During the fighting, Saru grabs Culber and tosses him straight into the ceiling.
• Upon "dying" in her return trip to her time in the Mirror Universe, Georgiou awakens to find herself back on the remote world where she went back three months prior. Burnham explains that, from her point of view, she simply walked through the door and collapsed for a minute. Georgiou finds that there's three months worth of bio-data on her on a device on her wrist, confirming that it all happened. Dumbfounded as to how these two events could reconcile with each other, they ask Carl who - or what - he really is.
  Michael: Who are you? Really?
  "Carl": Really?...(voice echoing) I AM THE GUARDIAN OF FOREVER.
  • Following this, the simple wooden door that Carl stood next to explodes, and re-forms into the familiar off-center ancient stone archway from the original series.
  • For bonus points of awesome, Carl's declaration is overlaid with Bart LaRue's dialogue saying the same thing from "The City on the Edge of Forever".

Su'Kal

• The episode features Tilly's first episode as acting captain. She faces off against Osyraa, the leader of the Emerald Chain, and does not disappoint.
  • When Osyraa first shows up, Tilly is naturally nervous, but when the former hails Discovery she not only keeps her composure, Tilly verbally flips her off. All while the bridge crew are grinning at their acting captain.

That Hope Is You, Part 2

• Tilly proves that she has what it takes to make the toughest decisions when she asks Owo to take the oxygen mask and complete the mission to disable the warp nacelle. And Owo is able to complete the mission and is saved by a DOT-23 Sphere data bot rescuing her.
• Zareh has Book on the ropes and is ready to knock him off the turbolift when he makes the mistake of threatening and insulting Grudge. Book gets his Heroic Second Wind and kicks Zareh off, proclaiming "She... is a queen!"
• At the end of the episode, we see that the healing has begun now that the Burn's mystery is solved and the Emerald Chain is in disarray. We see that the Federation has begun to rebuild, with the Trill quickly rejoining and Ni'Var possibly returning. Saru has left to help Su'Kal adjust to a brand new life, thus Admiral Vance has made Burnham captain of the Discovery-A with its new mission to help deliver dilithium mined from the planet to worlds starved for it. And after poor Saru spent so long being unable to push forward a unique warp command, Burnham gives a glorious one:
  Burnham: Let’s fly.

Season 4

Kobayashi Maru

• After Michael figures out the Alshain’s satellites aren’t working, every main character in the ship gets a chance to show off their knowledge and help out.

Anomaly

• Tilly asks Adira if they've included something in their calculations, Adira testily responds that they're smart and don't need Tilly double-checking their work. Tilly succinctly smacks them down, saying "you don't get to do that, we're all smart and we all check each other's work." While Tilly immediately laments that she's sounding like Stamets, the point is valid: in a crisis where any mistake can cost lives, put ego aside and do the best job possible.

Choose To Live

• A joint MOA for Dr. Culber and 32nd century science (and a posthumous one for Altan Soong), as they build a new synthetic body to house Grey's consciousness.

All Is Possible

• T’Rina calling out the Federation in general for having an assimilation policy, and not thinking about the individual needs of its members. Also Michael’s solution, being a bridge between Ni’Var and the Federation, compromising for a better future but not excusing sins of the past.

Rubicon

• The standoff between Discovery and Book's ship involves both ships jumping repeatedly with Discovery constantly appearing in the way to prevent Tarka from launching the weapon.

Coming Home

• Burnham, Rillak, and Book convincing the 10-C to not just stop the DMA, but to shut it down altogether.
• During the evacuation of Earth, we see a shuttle about to be hit by a chunk of debris, similar to how Gray Tal died in the previous season. A newly-arrived starship, the USS Mitchell comes out of warp and blasts the asteroid just in time.
• The President of Earth declaring their intent to rejoin the Federation immediately.

Season 5

Jinaal

• Tilly's magnificent (though slightly miscounted) rant to Captain Rayner. The "twenty words" part also doubles as a funny moment.
  Tilly: Since you won't give me permission to speak freely, I'm just going to take it. Captain Burnham, she sees something in you but for the life of me I have no idea what it is. So how about this, how about I'm next? Here are my twenty words: You're. On. A. New. Ship. Fresh. Off. A. Demotion. Trying. To. Hide. How. Hard. That. Is. By. Being. A. Giant—

Mirrors

• Burnham and Book discover that the next clue is onboard a Terran Ship—the I.S.S. Enterprise to be exact! It turns out that after Spock's reforms led to the Terran Empire's downfall, refugees took over the ship and booked it to the Prime Universe because they knew that a better life lay for them on the other side. And they succeeded, as most of them managed to integrate themselves into Starfleet, including one Dr. Cho—or should we say Admiral Cho. Even better, she went right back to this very spot and hid this clue as a tribute that even from the darkest of places can people seeking home emerge.
• When the Enterprise is sent spiraling on a collision course towards the wormhole, Burnham uses a tractor beam to send a message to Discovery, which Rayner recognizes as passage from his species' sacred works. He quickly has the crew come up with a solution to widen the gap big enough for Enterprise to get through and preserve the ship, Burnham and Book, and the clue. That in itself is a far cry from how he was with the crew back when he first came onboard, and trusted them to come up with a strategy to save everyone.
• Just the mere fact that after the original 1701 was blown to smithereens over the Genesis Planet, the tried-and-true Enterprise has been resurrected, even if it's the Mirror Version. Still, she managed to survive transitioning from another universe, sat abandoned for 800 years, and still ran like a charm, and is now on her way to Starfleet HQ to no doubt finally put Kirk's baby in the Fleet Museum. And keep in mind, this is only just a year after the Enterprise-D was resurrected on Picard, meaning that all five of the big hero ships of the pre-2017 Trek shows will now comfortably get to enjoy a long-earned retirement. If only Kirk could see her now.

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