Well, you all know I like it when Star Trek just goes fucking nuts. I like it enough that I’m not even too upset about doing an episode in the Mirror Universe. I mean come on, Paul Guilfoyle showing up as a cryptic man in a bowler hat on an empty planet with a mysterious door? Let’s go fucking nuts.

• Get it out of the way early, I guess: the David Cronenberg-looking guy who is in fact the actual David Cronenberg makes a direct reference to the Kelvin timeline. Kinda wish the time soldier’s uniform had been slightly off in some way – maybe a TNG-inaccurate commbadge or something just to reinforce that he’s not quite TNG.
• So Georgiou is dying because you can only do one of traveling in time and leaving your home universe. Though didn’t Classic Spock get to live out his twilight years trying to repopulate the species on New Vulcan in the Kelvin universe? I guess it’s down to that old saying: “Dimension-jump before time-travel, molecules unravel; Time-Travel before Dimension-Jump, retire to New Vulcan and hump.”
• And here I thought Vance was gonna be more of the obstructive asshole kind of Admiral, but this is like the third week in a row when he’s told Saru to go ahead and just do the Right Thing – and the week before that was the one where he told Saru he should’ve asked first because he would’ve told him to do the right thing.
  • In fact, if anything it seems like maybe Saru is becoming too conservative in the face of the Realpolitik of the future.
• Where’s Reno. Can we have some more Reno please?
• Space Dad Stamets comforting Adira that their ghost boyfriend is maybe – ahem – ghosting – them because he wants them to make living friends is a bit Chef’s Kiss.
• I don’t like Mirror-Tilly (Who I will refuse to call “Killy” because that sounds like an AVGN joke). This whole thing where they try to portray her as evil by having her visibly struggle not to crack up laughing at every evil thing.
• Oh look, there’s Mirror-Nilssen, retconned into existence because back in season 1, her actress was playing Ariem instead.
• So I assume the idea here is that Georgiou will earn herself a place in the prime universe by making the active choice to reject the Terran way. I wonder if there will be some technobabble wrapper around it to make it make sense.
  • I guess there are three likely ways to interpret what’s going on. First, Georgiou has actually been sent back in time to her own universe; second, that this is all some sort of illusion or simulation by Carl to test her; or third, that this is real-but-not-literal, and she’s undergoing some kind of metaphysical experience that she’s perceiving as revisiting her past, akin to Adira’s experience communing with the symbiotes.
• Unsure what the point of the magic bracelet is going to be. Unless Georgiou needs to wear it from now on and it will turn color to indicate if she is in danger of being Too Evil For This Universe, which would be a stupid plot device but kind of funny.
• Nice to see Anthony Rapp return to his theatrical roots. Also, I think I would’ve enjoyed Rent more if someone had stabbed Mark at the end of “The Tango Maureen”.