As the Federation recovers, a strange anomaly causes a disaster on a space station, and Discovery is scrambled to help. Upping the tension, the President of the Federation decides to come along as an observer.
Tropes:
- Asteroid Thicket: An Oort cloud of frozen methane passes over the station just as it has stabilized, forcing Discovery to extend her shields over the station to protect it.
- Call-Back: As Burnham lampshades, this isn't the first time that she and Book have been chased off a cliff. That happened to them back in the season 3 premiere.
- Commander Contrarian: President Rillak questions some of Burnham's decisions during the crisis until Burnham forces the issues by asking if she's actively trying to countermand her. This is part of her Secret Test of Character.
- Digging Yourself Deeper: Burnham and Book's diplomatic overtures only serve to come off poorly with a species already wary of the Federation, though fixing their satellite array and dropping off some dilithium after they escape mends fences a little bit.
- Doomed Hometown: Or rather homeworld, as Kwejian becomes this for Book and his surviving compatriots via a Negative Space Wedgie and the resulting Earth-Shattering Kaboom. And this is after the planet and its residents survived the Trauma Conga Line of extensive ecological devastation from the Burn and decades of abuse from the Emerald Chain, as established in the third season.
- Downer Ending: Burnham manages to rescue nine of the ten people on the space station, along with Adira and Tilly, but Commander Nalas and two Discovery crew members are killed when an asteroid impacts Discovery moments before it jumps. Then, as they're dealing with the fallout of that, they discover that Kwejian has been destroyed.
- Earth-Shattering Kaboom: Kwejian's moon is smashed to bits and Kwejian itself is rendered a lifeless husk by a strange anomaly, the planet having been cracked apart and knocked out of orbit by the gravitational forces impacting it.
- Enhance Button: This is used on Nalas's transmission to spot a gravitational distortion in the background, the first hint of the dangerous anomaly moving through the region.
- Evolving Credits: The opening credits have been updated with a planet and its moon cracking apart, and a black hole.
- Foreboding Fleeing Flock: The first sign of trouble on Kwejian is a massive flock of birds suddenly taking off without warning.
- Freudian Excuse: The trauma of losing her parents early in her life has resulted in Chronic Hero Syndrome becoming the basis of Burnham's personality.
- Gravity Screw: The gravity on the station is flipped, so everyone is forced to work on the ceiling.
- Hope Spot: Just as the repair team from Discovery begins to stabilize the station, an asteroid shower arrives and starts beating the crap out of it.
- I Lied: Burnham asks President Rillak if she really had been to Nalas's homeworld or if she just pulled all that information from his file. She deftly sidesteps the question by asking "Does it matter?"
- Improvisational Ingenuity: Transporters fail during a rescue mission? No problem, let's use the station's escape shuttle. It can only travel one-way one time? Reprogram it on the fly. It's stuck in place due to debris? We'll send a worker bee out to pull the debris loose. And so on, and so on...
- Internal Homage:
- The new spacedock is named after Jonathan Archer. Archer's theme is even playing when the President debuts it.
- Like in Star Trek Into Darkness, an opening mission goes wrong fast and the main characters are forced to run. It also takes elements from Kirk's opening diplomatic scene in Star Trek Beyond, which quickly goes south as the leader misinterprets Kirk's statements.
- Michael is forced to learn that her trauma-induced Chronic Hero Syndrome makes her unwilling to deal with any more loss, and is a bad thing in the long run, just like Kirk did in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Rillak's lecture on this subject and how it can get people killed is similar to the ass-chewing that Admiral Pike gave Kirk in the aforementioned Into Darkness.
- The Title Drop refers to the original Trope Maker of the Unwinnable Training Simulation, and characters discuss its Hard Truth Aesop.
- Layman's Terms: When Tilly describes a distortion in technical terms, the president asks for an explanation in Federation Standard, so Burnham simplifies it.Tilly: Oh... it's extreme lensing. Two-pi steradian solid angle.
Rillak: In Federation Standard, please?
Burnham: Gravitational distortion. Hit the side of the station, must've taken out the relay, as well. - The Needs of the Many: President Rillak cites this as the reason that Burnham wouldn't be a suitable captain for the mission that she's trying to staff, as her need to save everyone means risking the many to save a few, which doesn't always pay off.
- Negative Space Wedgie: An unknown one hit the station, knocking it out of position and tumbling through space at high speed. The same anomaly then rips apart Kwejian and its moon while Book is trying to figure out why the wildlife is acting strange.
- Parental Substitute: Su'Kal explicitly calls Saru "the father I never knew".
- Plot Hole: Despite Discovery's formidable armament, no one suggests using phasers or torpedoes to clear the Asteroid Thicket before it impacts the station.
- Rank Up: Tilly is now a Lieutenant, and Detmer, Rhys, Bryce, Owo, and Nilsson are Lieutenant-Commanders.
- Rousing Speech: Saru gives one on Kaminar to convince them to accept the Federation's offer of wider cooperation.Saru: Here, we live, love, grow food in the light of our sun. Uh, however... it is not... our sun. We share it with six other planets in our solar system. A system which is one of many in... a shared galaxy, Beyond our galaxy... space. In truth, we are on an island together. We must ask ourselves, do we honor our interconnection, or do we curl inward like a leaf pulled from its tree? After the Burn, that is what many chose. But this is a new era. Is it not?
- Sacrificial Planet: Kwejian is destroyed to show that the galaxy is facing a dire new threat.
- Secret Test of Character: President Rillak came along on the mission because she wanted to see if Burnham was suitable to captain Voyager-J with its prototype "pathway" drive.
- Suicide Mission: When the escape pod on the habitable section of the station is blocked by debris, Nalas panics and suggests braving one of the decompressed sections without any environmental suits to protect them, to the point that he pulls a phaser on Tilly and Adira to force the issue. President Rillak has to talk him down from getting his entire crew killed.
- Talking Down the Suicidal: Once Nalas starts to panic and pulls a phaser on Tilly and Adira, President Rillak tries to talk him out of his Suicide Mission plan by reminding of his home. It works.
- Title Drop: The President mentions the Kobayashi Maru when the mission to save the station ends with Nalas dying at the very end.
- Wham Shot:
- As Book takes off in his ship to figure out why the wildlife has gone crazy, he sees Kwejian's moon suddenly get ripped apart by what looks like a moving black hole that engulfs it.
- The episode ends with the sight of a shattered rock that used to be Kwejian.
