DISCO S1E12 "Vaulting Ambition" Review by AnswerMan

Horrible:Meh:Adequate:Good:Fantastic

Well, it's time to crank out these last few DISCO reviews so that I can go ahead and cancel that CBS All Access subscription. So here we go...

"Vaulting Ambition" begins with Burnham and Lorca being beckoned to the emperor's enormous ship. On the ship, Lorca gets thrown in an agonizer booth (of course), and Burnham is greeted to a grand welcome and a special dinner with Georgiou. This dinner features by far the most chilling moment of the series so far, as it is revealed that they are eating the Kelpian that Burnham had chosen earlier. Man, that hit me hard! I assumed that when asked to choose a Kelpian, she was choosing a servant, not dinner! Holy crap I did not see that coming! But what a great moment, and it is an indicator that this Trek series can go darker than any other.

"We finally got to use this quantum variance detector!"

Anyway, soon enough Georgiou sees through Burnham's lies and decides to execute her own adopted daughter. Burnham switches to the honest approach, where she explains that she is from another universe, and can prove it with the quantum signature of prime universe Georgiou's badge. Luckily enough, there happens to be a quantum signature finder-outer machine within arm's length, and the story is confirmed. This prompts Mirror Georgiou to kill everyone who witnessed the event. It turns out that she is familiar with the other universe, and doesn't want the virtuous ideas from there to start infecting the people in her own universe and causing trouble. They come up with an agreement where Georgiou will help our Discovery get home in exchange for information on the spore drive. Nothing can go wrong there...

Meanwhile Stamets is connecting with Mirror Stamets and they're both trying to figure out how to get out of their dream world and wake up to help their ships. Oh also, there is a sickness that is taking over the spore world which will probably eventually kill every single thing in all of the infinite universes. So there's that. Stamets does some soul-searching regarding the loss of Culber, and then hops out of his hospital bed ready to go. Mirror Stamets is also awakened, and ready to carry out his plan as well, whatever that might be.

Also the crew is trying to figure out what to do with an increasingly tortured Voq/Tyler. They determine that there's nothing they can do, and Saru slowly coaxes L'Rell to help put him back together.

But the whole point of the episode is the huge plot twist that reveals that Lorca is actually from the mirror universe. This is revealed by Burnham slowly piecing together some details like why he was so obsessed with her (they were creepy daddy-daughter lovers), how he manipulated the situation to end up in this universe and on this ship, and how he shares an aversion to light with everyone in the mirror universe. This is played out in symphony with a scene where a captor is tormenting Lorca and demanding that he say the name of his sister, who Lorca apparently had wronged in some way. At first we are led to believe that Lorca doesn't know the name because he's not from around here, but then later he confirms that he does when he gets the advantage in the fight and stomps the guy.

"Vaulting Ambition" is an important episode in the overall story arc, but as an individual episode is only Meh. The big reveal at the end is predictable for anyone that's been paying attention. That said, it's still fun to see Burnham walked through the process of coming to the realization on her own. The question of whether Lorca is a bad guy or not has not been completely answered, either. There's still hope that perhaps he's done all of this for a good reason, though it's not likely. The whole Stamets wandering around in spore world was slow-moving and a drag on the episode. Ganglia, anyone?

Published Mar 9, 2018