Rediscovering Star Trek Discovery: “Terra Firma, Part 2”

The Discovery crew offers toasts to a now absent friend

Michelle Yeoh and Sonequa Martin-Green deliver heartbreakingly beautiful performances as Georgiou and Burnham say their farewells. I don’t leave that moment off this list lightly.

But as a long-time Star Trek fan, I was even more delighted by the choice to end this episode with a “wake” for Georgiou.

It made me think of Admiral Kirk and his crew toasting their “absent friend” Spock in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. It brought to mind Captain Picard and his crew doing the same after Data’s self-sacrifice in Star Trek: Nemesis.

And it offers several Star Trek Discovery cast members chances to shine.

Burnham is absolutely right. Emperor Georgiou was “the most unexpected of gifts.”

I wasn’t thrilled with the series’ choice to turn the noble, nearly ideal Starfleet captain I’d seen in the Star Trek Discovery pilot episode into a murdering, morally ambiguous (at best), maladjusted refugee from the Mirror Universe. But the arc on which the series’ creative team sent Georgiou proved intensely satisfying.

It demonstrates how the highest ideals of Star Trek—the openness, honesty, and love we achieve in our best moments—can lead even someone like Emperor Philippa Georgiou Augustus Iaponius Centarius to become the best possible version of herself, and inspire them to make their world the best it can be, as well.