Star Trek: Discovery 2×02 keeps the episodic feel from the franchise’s inception alive in its second outing of the season.

This is not a show about a captain and his crew. It is not a show about a captain and her crew. Instead, Star Trek: Discovery is a show about a crew aboard a ship carrying out missions together. In fact, since the show’s second episode, the Discovery has arguably not had a true captain.

When Michael Burnham boards the Discovery in the third episode of the series, “Context is King,” Burnham notes, “so many people, with so many places to go.” To which Saru replies by touting the vessel’s impressive specs including the fact that it can accommodate 300 discrete scientific missions (a Starfleet record). In the season opener of season 2, Tilly discusses reallocating assigned labs on board and suggests moving engineering to a two-story location. Bottom line: Discovery has a lot of people working on a lot of different things all the time.

One of my favorite elements of the season opener was Captain Pike leading a roll call across the bridge. While the crew assembled onboard Discovery never really felt like cogs in the machine, perhaps due to their shared struggles under Lorca, the gesture did peak my interest. The ships do not warp, or in Discovery‘s case, jump, simply because a Captain says, “Let’s go.” Someone is piloting, someone is plotting coordinates, someone is scanning for transmissions, someone is navigating the mycelial network… you get the point.

In this episode the more playful side of the story arrives when we actually get to see people performing jobs they love to do. Stamets runs onto the bridge when the rings of the planet start to collapse because he “heard there was a problem.” Keyla Detmer, who got her pilot’s license at 12, gets to do doughnuts in space. And Tilly breaks direct orders to solve a seriously crazy science problem using her asteroid.

This crew thrives when they are firing on all cylinders. And the show takes on a new life when it finds a way to balance this large, talented cast with the storylines that not only unite them, but set them apart.

‘Star Trek: Discovery’ 2×02 review

Star Trek: Discovery 2×02, “New Eden” takes on an away mission that not only allows one of the pillars of the bridge to touch down on a planet for a while, but also manages to check in with the rest of crew without losing the core story in the process. The Red Angel, the search for Spock, the seven signals are the drivers of the seasonal arc. That groundwork, particularly the last element, literally drives the missions of the Discovery by granting them coordinates and a lack of need for Starfleet approval for firing up the spore drive.

The first away mission takes the crew to a second signal, cast well beyond any ship’s reasonable warp drive abilities for a simple day trip. Since a distress call is at the heart of the transmission reaching the bridge, Stamets agrees to suit up once more to jump the ship. But as he confides in Tilly, the jumps may be safer on his body, but they are worse on his mind.

Stamets saw Hugh Culber in the network. He believes in some way, that biology and physics and math can explain why Hugh is not truly gone. But he cannot shake the belief that if he were to see Culber when he returns to the network, he might not have the strength to come back again. His idea of what lies beyond life in the present is intimately tied with astromicology and the cycle of life and death.

Which brings us to the central theme of the episode, faith versus science. Outside of Stamets and Tilly’s discussion in engineering, others are quoting scripture, Shakespeare, but perhaps most importantly, reference to Clarke’s three laws. The ideas arose from Clarke, a sci-fi writer, in his imaginings of the future. Much like Star Trek hinges on some tech that we have no conceivable way of understanding or putting into context or practice, one of Clarke’s laws says that advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Examining the planet and the inhabitants from above a few observations are made — the collective is from a pre-warp time, their central structure is a church, and they are without electricity. All of this is confirmed when the landing party, consisting of Joann Owosekun, Burnham and Pike. But context, as they say, is king. The landing party quickly discovers that what looks like a nondescript church on the outside, tells another story entirely on the inside. It houses a collection of faiths, melded together to create one great unifier. No outliers, just harmony.

There is a moment in the episode where Burnham suggests that they scan the book the people have consecrated as their central doctrine. But Pike offers up another suggestion, look at the story the pictures in the stained glass tell.

This particular moment is what put “New Eden” into context for me. The text of books, calculations, hold the potential to explain many great things. Burnham wants to read, to hold discourses, to calculate her way around the universe to understand. Stamets seeks that same understanding, but conveys it in a way that illuminates when his light is added to it. Books versus glass.

Stamets is a storyteller and the mycelial network can be explained away with science ad nauseum. Or it can be a called a “mushroom highway.” The term doesn’t strip it of the science, but since it is out of the realm of understanding the network does appear that fanciful.

Right now, Burnham does not have an answer for what the Red Angel is or that the signals are trying to tell them. All she does have at the end of the start of this episode is the knowledge that the combination of the two plagued Spock enough to voluntarily check himself into a psychiatric facility.

“New Eden” wants us to be in Pike’s shoes. We are confronting Jacob, a human on the cusp of discovering and understanding what is possible by asking the questions that seem impossible to those around him. There are people flying among the stars, Earth did survive. But Captain Pike has to protect those who are generations removed from the planet their families were taken from. Should he provide hope to just one of the chosen to give him a chance to feel validation that science does have a place in the larger story?

The story of the inhabitants of “New Eden” also plays well with Pike’s introduction to the series. A war is raging on, this group of people are taken, saved by an Angel. They came together and created a new life for themselves on an unknown planet without ever hearing of how things ended back home. They got by. While Pike was not active on the warfront, he led his crew who were stranded, hearing everything second hand from the war raging on home front.

Where Burnham charges in with questions against the leader of the collective asking if they desire rational explanation, Pike takes an observational role. He takes in the story, does not ask pointed questions, thanks the people for their time and hospitality, and above all, orders his team to abide by Starfleet Order 1.

As Burnham makes moves to get closer to her brother, it will be interesting to see if her demeanor changes when faced with the unreasonable or seemingly illogical claims from Spock. Both Pike and Burnham have respect and confidence in the abilities of Spock. But in this gray area, one must take what appears to make the least amount of sense with a few grains of salt.

The shift to a more episodic nature in season 2 will hopefully allow for more of these missions. I think they add color to the characters relationship with larger concepts that may not come out otherwise. After all, that’s what Star Trek has always been about. Tackling the unknown with the logic of a Vulcan, but the empathy of a human.

Stray observations from ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ 2×02:

Star Trek: Discovery 2×03, “Point of Light” premieres Thursday, January 31 at 8:30 p.m. ET on CBS All Access and on Friday, February 1 on Netflix outside the U.S.