Star Trek: Discovery S01E11 Mini-Review: Two-Faced

Star Trek: Discovery, Season 1, Episode 11: The Wolf Inside

Another entry in the Mirror Universe, and, well, we get the surprising revelation of Tyler's true nature -- although with the sudden murder of dr. Culber, it's about time. And that seems to be the big crux of this episode, because the whole 'trying to obtain a data package in order to get back home to their universe' bit actually happens entirely offscreen, and via teleporting and 'executing' Tyler so the Discovery can pick him up. No, the drama here is just in them meeting the group of aliens gathered together to fight the Terran Empire, and Michael Burnham is just desperate to find out the 'secret' behind making Klingons play nice with each other, which seems to simply be a common enemy.

There's a bunch of neat monologues from Burnham about integrating into a psychotic society that instantly executes mutineers and turns alternate-universe Saru into a nameless slave, about trying to maintain who she is even as she's forced to play alongside these horrific shit to maintain her cover. It's a bit dark, but then everything goes straight to hell as Tyler's real identity is revealed. He's actually Voq (who I must admit I've forgotten exists) -- or rather, he's got Voq's personality implanted beneath him, causing him to go absolutely wild when Tylervoq sees the alternate-universe Voq palling around with lesser beings. I'm not sure what that says about 'our' Voq since he deigned to stick around in the body of a human, but eh.

I dunno. It's a plot twist that I think would've worked better if they didn't essentially just pull a Scooby-Doo trick on us. Introducing a character early on in a story, and then completely seemingly forgetting about him by excluding him from every other episode, only to have him be the dude wearing the rubber mask pretending to be a monster. It's a decent twist that makes sense, but one that makes me roll my eyes. It doesn't help that Voq isn't really a well-defined character either and more of a set of motivations, but eh. I digress... I mean, Tyler himself is also more of a walking plot device as well. We really needed more episodes with Voq and Tyler to make me really care about these developments, and at a the moment I just mostly shrug.

There are some B-plots and revelations -- the Emperor is Mirror!Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh is definitely more than welcome), we get a brief role by Mirror!Sarek and Tilly and Saru try to save Stamets but fail, causing Stamet's 'soul' to wind up in a weird spore dimension and meet his Mirror counterpart. It's okay, I suppose. As a whole, the episode is, again, serviceable. It's never bad, but the breakneck pacing as a series, as well as the 'nothing happens until the last 10 minutes' feel of each individual episode really give a frustrating undertone to all this.