HERE THERE BE SPOILERS

There’s honestly a lot to love about “All Is Possible.” In some ways, it feels very much like a return to a familiar past. There’s a downed shuttlecraft with no help in sight and a group of cadets thrown together who must learn to work together if they are to survive. Meanwhile, the Ni’Var plot offers us political intrigue that Burnham and Saru can solve in twenty minutes of conversation, and Discovery takes that directly from TNG tropes. The episode’s overall tone and theme concern cooperation and its importance to not only to our immediate survival in a crisis but also in macropolitical movements. While “All Is Possible” doesn’t quite hit as hard as the two episodes that precede it, in terms of pacing, it’s nice to have an episode be more straightforward. Plus, I do wonder what we’re going to see with Tilly going forward.

Plot Ahoy!

“All Is Possible” features two plots. In the first, Tilly leads a team building exercise that goes horribly wrong when the shuttle full of cadets not only crashes after a disastrous encounter with a rogue gamma ray burst but does so on the entirely wrong moon. The shuttle pilot, Callum perishes shortly after the impact, leaving Tilly, Adira, Harral, Gorev, and Sasha stranded on Kokytos, a class L moon. They discover the hard way that the moon hosts a Tuscadian Pyrosome, a large colony organism that locates prey by following electromagnetic signatures. Of course, the signatures in question happen to be the same ones used by the Starfleet technology. Tilly orders the cadets to shut everything down, but they all quickly realize that without life support, they will freeze to death due to the low temperatures reached on the moon’s surface. Thus, Tilly suggests that they abandon the shuttle and head up to the top of a nearby ridge where their personal communicators will hopefully be able to reach the Armstrong, even though that ship will be looking for the shuttlecraft elsewhere.

The cadets squabble, but Tilly convinces them to keep going. Adira tries to go it alone, but Tilly refuses to let them. The group struggles against the elements, including spider lightning, and they catch sight of the Pyrosome, which splits itself into two organisms and continues to hunt them. Harral suggests finding a cave, and Sasha mocks him. Adira again volunteers to head off alone, just as the lightning strikes the ground, causing the ice to melt and then freeze again aground Adira’s legs, trapping them in place. Tilly uses the bandages in the emergency medkit as a rope, and the cadets help pull Adira to safety.

The thin veneer of cooperation between the cadets begins to break down as Gorev rounds on Harral for being Orion and therefore selfish. Tilly acknowledges Gorev’s grief at having been victimized by the Emerald Chain when they left his family to starve. He watched his grandmother starve to death and then had to bury her himself as his parents were too weak from starvation themselves to help. However, Tilly asks Gorev if he’s ever talked to Harral about Harral’s experience with the Emerald Chain. Adira speaks up and identifies him as the son of Bashorat Harral. The elder Harral had championed the cause of emancipation, but he died a political prisoner before Osira could offer the Federation the Armistice.

The cadets, in light of this knowledge, now suddenly treat Harral better, and everyone once more heads toward the ridge. Unfortunately, the Pyrosome has found them. Adira, once again, volunteers to run as a way to draw the organism away from the group, and while Tilly likes the idea, she orders Adira to let her play bait. Adira protests, but Tilly ignores them. She runs, drawing the Pyrosome away, and the cadets make contact with the Armstrong, just in time to beam everyone, including Tilly, to safety. After disembarking from the Armstrong, Tilly encounters Kovich, who offers her a place teaching at Starfleet Academy, which she accepts.

Meanwhile, Burnham and Saru contend with their own situation. Saru informs Burnham that because Admiral Vance has fallen ill, President Rillak requires their presence at the conclusion to the talks with Ni’Var to “look official.” Unhappily, Burnham complies, but just as the talks are about to end, President T’Rina informs Rillak that Ni’Var requires an escape clause, permitting it to exit the Federation whenever it pleases. Rillak refuses to accept this clause, and both groups prepare to walk away. Burnham follows Rillak and demands to understand why she’s giving up so easily, and Rillak replies that she represents many interests and can therefore not look weak. Saru, similarly, requests an audience with T’Rina who tells him that her hands have been tied by the Vulcan purists who seek isolationism in the wake of the DMA’s destruction. She needs their political support, so she can ill afford to alienate them.

Burnham and Saru offer a compromise. They recommend the formation of an independent body that will conduct regular reviews with member worlds. Rillak and T’Rina both protest until Burnham suggests being a member of the committee herself as a citizen of both the Federation and Ni’Var. Deeming that plan acceptable, Rillak and T’Rina finish their talks, and Ni’Var rejoins the Federation. Later, Rillak admits to Burnham that she knew about the escape clause because T’Rina had notified her, which is why she brought Burnham down despite her initial misgivings that Burnham would be the right person for the job. Burnham then asks Rillak for transparency where she can offer it, if Rillak wants her support. Rillak agrees, and the two appear to have a much better working relationship.

Book continues to work with Culber with mixed results. Culber suggests that he create a mandala, and Book calls it a pale imitation of a Kwejian ritual. As a result, Book must face the reality that he will have to live without Kwejian for the rest of his life. Book continues to work with the weight of his loss.

Analysis

We’ve known that Tilly has struggled with her role on Discovery all season, which at this point means only four episodes, but “All is Possible” affords her a new and different challenge than what she’s ever experienced before. The episode feels very much like an homage to Star Trek: 2009, with its icy landscape and monstrous dangers. While the Tuscadian Pyrosome is no Hengrauggi, the visual framing of its emergence seems to imply that it’s a parallel. However, Tilly’s predicament also calls to mind the events of “The Galileo Seven,” one of the more interesting early episodes of TOS. The episode falls about halfway in the show’s first season and features Spock marooned on a hostile planet with Dr. McCoy, Mr. Scott, miscellaneous lieutenants, and a profoundly damaged shuttle. Spock, while technically in charge, finds himself subjected to prejudice based on how differently he acts from the way his human crewmates would like him to do. Eventually, Spock finds a way to save the surviving crew members, despite their efforts, and though he brings the survivors home, at no point do they ever apologize for or acknowledge the wrongness of their actions. Even back on the ship, Kirk attempts to needle Spock about how “human” his actions may have been.

Much like its characters, “The Galileo Seven” never quite acknowledges the position in which it places Mr. Spock. While his crewmates do disregard his order to abandon him to die, they never quite realize that cooperation is necessary to their survival, and they do not truly listen to Mr. Spock. Only after seeing the results of his plan to signal the Enterprise to save them all do they admit that he may have had a few good ideas. Granted, he admittedly is not the greatest communicator in this episode. “All Is Possible,” on the other hand, not only acknowledges the necessity of working together in order to overcome adversity but also identifies how key communication and understanding are to building cooperation.

The episode employs the rather unsubtle medium of a team-building exercise to get there, but instead of isolating Tilly or Adira as the Spock stand-in, the cadets bring their own issues. Val Sasha has never seen a non-human before. Taahz Gorev despises Harral for being Orion, and Harral bears the weight of the Emerald Chain on his shoulders. Gorev’s loathing for Orions is understandable, considering that the Chain forced his family to starve. However, no matter how legitimate his reasons for disliking Orions, which Tilly validates, Gorev’s hatred could have lethal consequences on Kokytos. Tilly’s solution is elegantly simple; she asks him to talk to Harral.

Tilly’s approach reminds me of a concept in criminal jurisprudence known as restorative justice. The idea behind it is that in some cases, justice can be better served outside of a courtroom by bringing together the victim and the wrong-doer. The victims get greater control over deciding what justice will look like while the wrongdoer has a chance to atone more directly. Restorative justice relies on creating connections to work; these connections grow between the victims and the perpetrators as well as between the perpetrators and the greater community as a whole. Overall, restorative justice results in much lower recidivism rates than traditional approaches to criminal acts precisely because bringing together the victims and the perpetrators often foments the growth of empathy between them. In a sense, that’s what Tilly does for Gorev and Harral. Through understanding that the Chain cost Harral his father, Gorev gains new insight into Harral. That understanding in turn means that Harral will not be quite so ostracized.

“All is Possible” forces Tilly to take a good, long look at what she really wants, so when she accepts the offer to teach at the Academy, she’s heading in an entirely new direction. However, her handling of the away mission reveals that she’ll do fantastically well as a teacher. More importantly, however, this new path is one that’s uniquely her own. Tilly finally identifies the core of her struggle, which has been that she isn’t sure she wants the life she’s worked so hard to get. That’s an important lesson to learn, and while I’m sorry we’ll see less of Tilly going forward, I’m glad the show let her get there.

The Ni’Var plot ends up being significantly less interesting than Tilly’s arc in this episode. Burnham and Saru correctly deduce that they’re meant to serve as a politically neutral third party, allowing Rillak and T’Rina to preserve their agreement while maintaining support from opposing voices in their respective administrations. The really big moment in this arc is when Burnham takes the first steps toward finding common ground with Rillak. Burnham cannot ignore politics with impunity, but her request for more transparency, within reason, is a fair one. That’s a good balance to strike, and it’s a nice note for a midseason episode.

Book and Adira each make some progress on their own journeys. Book continues to struggle with the immensity of his loss, and Culber cannot offer him any easy answers. The mandala is a good outlet and metaphor for the emotional work Book has to do. Adira still struggles to believe in their own ability to make connections without Gray’s presence. I love Tilly’s advice to her. Like Adira, I think many of us do tend to lead with “I can’t” where in reality, we really can. There’s a beauty in remembering that all is possible when you’re open to it.

Rating:

Three and a half cups of Earl Grey Tea

Stray Thoughts From the Couch:

1. 1. Did anyone else notice that the ice moon’s name is “Kokytos?” Dante named the final level in his Inferno “Cocytus,” and rather than conceive of it as a fiery abyss, that last level is an ice tomb. He borrowed the name from “Kokytos,” which is the Greek river of wailing. In the myth, Kokytos borders Hades, so how do you feel about the writers sending Tilly to Hell? Because that’s what they sort of did.
   2. Y’all, Gorev is apparently a Tellarite? That was news to me, but sure, they can get a design overhaul.
   3. Anyone else wonder if T’Rina has a very Vulcan crush on Saru?
   4. Please just let me again say that I’m going to miss seeing Tilly as often. I hope I’m wrong about that, but we’ll have to see how the rest of the season plays out.
   5. Also, a muerto parado is actually a thing in certain cultures, though it’s perhaps not the custom now that it apparently is for Culber’s family. At this point, my Google search turned up some fascinating funerals but nothing entirely conclusive. I’m not linking them here, but you’re more than welcome to explore them via your own search bar.
   6. David Cronenberg is back as Kovich, who remains no less mysterious for all that he’s a consultant with Starfleet Academy now. I really like the mystery, surprisingly. He’s like the Cigarette Smoking Man but ostensibly less malevolent.
   7. If you’re looking for more Trek content, feel free to check out the podcast on which I’ve been working here.
   8. Lastly, if anyone wants to know what I want for Christmas, it’s that snow globe. That’s a legit fantastic prop.