‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Had Its First Major Death — and Revealed the Season’s Villain

Spoilers for Star Trek: Discovery “Project Daedelus” past this point.

Well, that was a heartbreaker. After mildly enjoying background character and seeming robot crew-member Airiam (Hannah Cheesman), in one hour Star Trek: Discovery blew up everything we knew about her, made us care about her backstory deeply, and then killed her off. And not only that, but the tautly directed episode by franchise vet Jonathan Frakes also pulled the curtain back to reveal what certainly seems to be the Season 2 villain (though you never know with this show).

So first of all, turns out Airiam is not a robot. Not exactly, at least. As we discover pretty quickly, and then is confirmed later in the episode, Airiam was a human (or humanoid) woman who suffered a severe accident on the way back from her honeymoon. Her husband died, and her consciousness/whatever was left of her was transferred to this new, mechanical body. She’s less Data, more Robotman from over on Doom Patrol.

Not only that, but we get to witness the heartbreaking way she sorts her memories. In order to not overload her circuits, every day she sifts through what she’s experienced and either saves or deletes events based on how much she cares about them. Normal conversations are out; smiles from Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and teasing from Ensign Tilly (Mary Wiseman) are in. And in the background is always her most treasured memory, that last video from before she “died.”

Of course, there’s a problem. Airiam has been infected with a signal from a time traveling squidbot a few episodes back. We know going into the episode that the squidbot is a probe sent by the Discovery to explore a temporal anomaly. It came back, attacked Captain Pike (Anson Mount) and Ash Tyler (Shazad Latif), and then sent a signal which led to three strange lights in Airiam’s eyes, and Airiam was seemingly losing time while doing… Something.

Over the course of the episode, it becomes clear that she’s aware something is happening to her, but is clearly either unable to talk about it, or too scared (in true Discovery fashion) to reveal she’s failing. Either way, during an assault on Starfleet’s covert ops unit Section 31, it’s revealed that she’s being forced to work for what seems to be the overarching villain of the season: Control.

No idea what that is? That’s okay, it’s only been casually mentioned before. Control is Section 31’s Artificial Intelligence threat assessment program. It has previously advised Leland (Alan van Sprang), and been treated with concern by Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh), a refugee from an alternate universe where they don’t trust AI as liberally as in “our” universe.

Turns out, Georgiou was right to be worried. Following the breadcrumbs through the last couple of episodes where she’s been jockeying for control of Section 31 with Leland, and being overly helpful to Burnham, it seems like the former Emperor of the Mirror Universe may know exactly what’s going on and is actually trying to save everyone from (out of) Control.

Control wants all the info that was stored on the Sphere, the strange artifact discovered back in “An Obol For Charon” that contains nearly complete records of the history of the universe. In order to stop Control, Burnham is forced to watch as Airiam, now briefly in charge of her own brain again, is shot out of an airlock and dies. Before she does, though, she tells Burnham that this is all because Control wants something from Burnham; and to look for Project Daedelus.

There’s a lot to unpack here, but starting with the Airiam of it all, what an expertly crafted episode that pulled on the heartstrings simply and powerfully. The plot was pushed forward, but it’s really all about that epic, Star Trek sacrifice: one crew-member on one side of a pane of glass dying to save everyone; the other on the other side, forced to just watch. The info in the episode also serves to answer the question, why not just reboot Airiam? It’s because she actually, truly dies. Her robot parts might remain, but whatever was human in her is gone. RIP.

Then there’s the Season 2 arc, which gets blown up in the best way as we learn the central villain is right out of Avengers: Age of Ultron. Like that movie’s robot threat, the threat assessment software in Control sees a very simple way of taking care of any and all threats in the universe, and that’s to eliminate all sentient life. No humanoids, no problems. Bing, bang, done. And along with the anomaly glimpsed a few episodes back, it seems like Control has used time travel to upgrade its systems and weapons capability exponentially.

Is this whole plot a complicated way of explaining how the Star Trek universe got from super technological advancement to where we find them in Star Trek: The Original Series? Maybe: it’s something that’s been discussed a lot with the show’s spore drive, which is (literal) light years beyond the warp technology displayed before on the previous shows. Perhaps if the Federation starts to distrust tech a little more, they’ll downgrade their ships instead of continually upgrading them.

There’s also the question of how this all connects with The Red Angel, and I’d venture we’ll get more answers to that next week on the episode titled “The Red Angel.” But for the time being, I’m sticking by my theory that The Red Angel is a time-traveling Michael Burnham, who gets the tech at Project Daedelus and ends up racing through time in order to prevent Control from destroying everything. If this is, in fact, a battle for time itself, it would make sense why Control has it out for Burnham in particular.

However this all shakes out, Airiam will sadly not be there to witness it.

Star Trek: Discovery airs Thursdays at 8:30/7:30c on CBS All Access.

Stream Star Trek: Discovery on CBS All Access