Star Trek: Discovery is really good with time. We knew this almost immediately when one of its earliest episodes to really wow us was âMagic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad,â a delightful time loop caper. We knew it again, when it flung caution to the wind and catapulted itself into a future no Star Trek show had visited yet at the climax of season two. And now, as it stares down its final end, Discovery once again turns to timeâand twists it, to look back on its long, strange trip.
âFace the Strangeâ is a deceptively simple episode on the surface, and a bold move for a show on its last lap: instead of accelerating the chase between Discovery and Moll and Lâak as they hunt for more clues to the Progenitor tech, it almost literally slams the brakes on everything to deliver a wonderful little character piece, not just for Michael Burnham, but to give time to explore Discoveryâs crew, and even its newcomer in Commander Rayner, who is still struggling to adapt to Discoveryâs more personable approach to hierarchy. After leaving Trill with Adira unknowingly tagged by Moll, the Discovery heads to coordinates where it expects to find the next piece of the puzzle, only to find… nothing. But what Adira was tagged with, it turns out, wasnât a tracking device, but a âTime Bug,â a piece of Krenim technology held over from the Temporal Cold War (another great bit of using Discoveryâs handling of time, in this case the passage of it, for a fun Voyager/Enterprise nod!). The Time Bug infiltrates Discoveryâs systems, and locks them downânot by disabling the shipâs systems, but by trapping them in a spiraling series of time loops.
Burnham and Raynerâwho were busy arguing in the ready room over Raynerâs abrasive moodâare partially unaffected by the bugâs looping, having attempted to beam back to the bridge at the precise moment it activated. While theyâre caught in the same looping, being shunted backward and forward in Discoveryâs timeline, they remain aware between each loop that something is wrongâand that if they donât put aside their differences and disable the bug, Discovery will be shut down while Moll and Lâak solve the clues to the Progenitor tech and doom the galaxy (to the Breen, of all people, we learn in one of the loops!).
This is already a really fun idea, because as we previously saidâDiscovery knows how to do a killer time loop story already, and has known how to do that for a very long time. But what crucially sets âFace the Strangeâ apart from âMagic to Make the Sanest Man Go Madâ (god bless the show also toned down its love of long episode titles) is a context that the episode itself ultimately plays with: one of these episodes came just seven stories into the showâs existence. The other is the 59th, and in the time between them Discovery has done so much, changed so much, and developed in its own confidence, that it can use a similar structure and format like this again not to say âhey, look Star Trek fans, we can use the same tropes as the shows you loved,â but to instead say âhey, how do we use this trope to make a Discovery story?â
The answer is in both its charactersâof course, particularly Michaelâbut also in the masterful way âFace the Strangeâ uses the concept of time looping to revisit a bunch of key moments from Discoveryâs metatextual past, giving Burnham, who went through it all, and Rayner, as the newcomer, (and eventually Stamets, who thanks to the spore drive tardigrade DNA, canât be affected by time loopsâa delightfully clever nod back to âMagic to Make the Sanest Man Go Madâ!) a chance to see just how far this crew has come through and how much itâs changed them all along the way. Through Michael and Raynerâs eyes as they puzzle out the pattern of each loop, and what they need to do to stop the bug, we get to go through so much of Discoveryâs pastâfrom it being built in drydock in San Francisco, to the moment it jumped to the 32nd century, to fighting off the Emerald Chain in season three, and, most crucially, climaxing back in the early days of season one when Michael was still just a downtrodden turncoat barely given a second chance by Starfleet after the start of the Federation-Klingon war. And with that perspective, and the carried awareness from loop to loop, both Michael and Rayner alike come to understand what Discovery has been through all the better.
Itâs an episode thatâs perfect for a final seasonâstandalone enough that it is also simply just a great time loop scenario, but also vitally informed by Discoveryâs history over the last four seasons to deliver a really touching moment of acknowledgement for the series as it looks back on how far itâs come. Itâs fun seeing the old blue metallic uniforms again, or seeing Stamets realizing that a) heâs a little worried he can quickly empty engineering of officers with a totally fake spore breach warning, or b) he used to be able to do that even quicker by being a massive asshole. Itâs just as fun to see Rayner, whoâs still resistant to connect to Discoveryâs crew, soften as he sees everything they went through to get to where they are now, and slowly but surely use the things heâs picked up about them to his advantage. Itâs both extremely fun and extremely good that, in the last time loop set during Discovery season one, we not just get to see how cold and distant the bridge crew were back then, but that Discovery finally does justice to its former cyborg crewmate, Airiam (the returning Hannah Cheesman), making her belief in Michael key to saving the dayâthree seasons in the making, but a far more fitting farewell to the character after her clunkily unceremonious death in season two.
But above all, âFace the Strangeâ is Michaelâs episode, and her journey is the one examined most of all. Because if youâre going to narratively go back in time to Discoveryâs first season, well, as much as she doesnât want to, youâre going to have Present Michael face Past Michael. Sonequa Martin-Green plays the encounter to perfection: two determinedly stubborn women with things they still want to prove to both themselves and the world, pushed in each otherâs faces. That it becomes a knock-down mirror match punch-up is deeply funnyâfitting the aggression if Discoveryâs original wartime setting while also just making it the inevitable outcome of putting two unstoppable forces in each otherâs way. But Martin-Green sells just how much of a difference there is between Michaelâs past and her presence in these moments with incredible charm and subtlety. The show really hammers home that while there are still things about Michael that are still Michael, the young woman petrified that she had no place aboard a starship in season one and the undeniably heroic captain of season five represent a remarkable journey the character has been on.
Crucially, however, while Burnham vs Burnham ends with her current self Vulcan neck-pinching her past self, the actual moment the day is saved is done not by Michael, but Rayner, finally learning the keys to understanding what makes the Discovery crew tick. After Past-Michael wakes up and, being so eager to prove her worth, takes the Rayner and future-Stamets on at phaser-point in Engineering as they prepare to finally destroy the Time Bug, itâs Rayner who steps in to get her to back down, making a connectionâby leaning on the things Michael had told him about herself in their argument at the start of the episodeâand getting Michael to see that one day sheâs going to prove herself on a long, painful, but rewarding path ahead of her… if only she stops being so stubborn for a damn second and let them save the future. Even if she doesnât remember it, itâs the exact perfect advice season one Michael needsâadvice sheâll learn the hard way through Lorcaâs betrayal. And in having it passed onto her from Rayner, a man who Michael herself has begun to help grow and connect to others again after all his own frustrations and hurts, really hits home just how far sheâs come.
âFace the Strangeâ is an episode Discovery could only pull off once, as its journey comes to an endâand it does so almost perfectly, an incredibly compelling use of a time-and-tested Trek format to examine the metatextual and textual journey itâs been on these last seven years. While thereâs still more adventures to go on just yetâwith the Time Bug stopped, the race between Discovery and Moll and Lâak is now tighter than everâthis was a great chance to take a moment and have its heroes and the show alike take stock of how much itâs grown: and how ready it is to bid farewell.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, whatâs next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.