Star Trek: Discovery -- Season 2 Episode 2 (New Eden)

The first season of Star Trek: Discovery left us with a lot to look forward to.  There was a distress call from Captain Pike of the Enterprise, who was assuming command of the Discovery.  We find out that he’s on a mission to find seven red signals.  Little is known about them save two things:  The location of one signal and that scanning them might blow out your sensors.

So, here we are in the second episode and one signal has already been dealt with.  It turns out that by approaching the signal, it disappears, much like the end of a rainbow.  There does seem to be a pot of gold at the end of each, though.

In the previous episode, Pike and crew found a downed medical transport with the survivors in need of immediate help.  Here, they find a colony of humans that predates warp drive.  There’s no indication of how they got so far out that it would take hundreds of years at warp drive without any sort of space ship.

As if that wasn’t strange enough, there’s a distress signal coming from the surface, yet no sign of trouble among the people.  Oh, and some radioactive rocks break off from one of the planet’s rings and heads straight for the surface.

Michael Burnham gets some more insight on what happened with her foster brother Spock.  He seemed to have known about the seven signals.  He’s also in a psychiatric ward.

The second season of Discovery is shaping to be much like what I expected of the first.  There’s an even, manageable pace.  In fact, we have a story that would be in good company among episodes of The Original Series.

There’s even a real moral debate on what General Order Number One really means.  The population is human, but they have no meaningful concept of warp drive or interstellar travel.  True, Jacob knows it must be possible, but it’s little more than a strong belief.  None of that is enough to go against the Prime Directive.

I’m also glad to see that the away mission went relatively well.  In episodes like this, there’s usually a fight to the death or some sort of crazy fundamentalist leader or something.  That sort of drama or suspense was kept to a minimum.

There’s a nice balance here.  We get enough to know that there’s a larger picture without it being too heavy-handed.  There’s still enough that we get to focus on one story at a time.  If this keeps up, I’ll have no problem finishing the season.

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