- After reuniting with what remains of Starfleet and the Federation, the U.S.S. Discovery and its crew must prove that a 930 year old crew and starship are exactly what this new future needs.
- Using Senna's memories, Adira guides Discovery to Starfleet headquarters. The whole HQ is hidden behind a distortion field. The distortion field is sustained by the energy of every ship inside the field. Some of the ships have organic hulls and holographic containment walls. New constitution class ships that can carry 2000 souls. Ships with detached nacelle design. The HQ itself looks like a flying rain forest. The find the USS Voyager - J, which is 11 generations of evolution. The Discovery crew is happy and excited to be home.
Starfleet Commander-in-Chief Charles Vance (Oded Fehr) asks for Burnham, Saru, and Adira to beam over to the base, where Adira is taken away for medical testing. Vance tells Saru that during the time, Kaminar eventually joined the Federation. But due to the Burn, most Federation planets are now out of reach. Vance gets reports of Starfleet vessels being attacked by the Emerald Chain led by Osyraa (Janet Kidder). The Emerald Chain is an Andorian & Orion syndicate.
Saru and Burnham give Vance a detailed record of The Sphere, the Red Angel, the Control, and the wormhole that brought the Discovery and Burnham 930 years into the future. Burnham says that the Sphere data on the Discovery is 100,000 years of records of the Sphere entity as it roamed the Galaxy. Vance says that the Federation is down from 350 member worlds at its peak to 38 members currently. The subspace relays are down, and there is no way of contacting others. He refuses to discuss events related to the Burn. Vance says there is nothing in their database regarding the Red Angel or the Control. His records indicate that Discovery was destroyed in 2258 with no mention of a Spore drive. Vance also says that he cannot corroborate that the Discovery came to the future to stop the evolution of Control into a conscious entity. Vance says that the Federation has spent most of the 30th century in a war to outlaw temporal travel. Thus, the Discovery's presence in the future is by their definition, a crime. Burnham says that all sentient life was at rick, if they did not make the time jump into the future. Vance is indebted but needs evidence to believe their story.
Vance informs Saru and Burnham that the crew will be interrogated and reassigned while their ship is studied, which Saru agrees to in hopes of earning the trust of Starfleet. Burnham knows that if the crew is re-assigned, that would be the end for many of them.
Realizing that Starfleet is dealing with a health crisis. The Kili species is infected by a deadly protein. Burnham wants to demonstrate the effectiveness of the crew to Vance, by finding the cure. But Saru wants Burnham to go through the proper channels and respect the ideals of Starfleet. Burnham convinces Security chief Willa (Vanessa Jackson) that they have a functioning Spore drive, and they only want to help. Willa agrees. Saru and Burnham find that the Kili visited an industrial planet impacted by toxicity of mining for a thousand years. Due to the toxins, everything on the planet was mutated. So, when the Kili ate the plants on the planet, their mutated proteins entered the Kili bodies. To create an antidote, they need a sample of the healthy protein of the same plant that they ate. Burnham says that the Federation had a seed vault ship in the 23rd century. It had samples from every plant in the Galaxy. The crisis could be solved through the seed archives aboard the USS Tikhov. Burnham receives approval from Vance to take the Discovery crew there with the spore drive and retrieve the seeds.
They find the occupants of the Tikhov dead except for a man Dr Attis who is fatally injured. Turns out the ship was hit by a coronal mass ejection 6 weeks ago, which killed Dr Attis's family. At that precise moment, Dr Attis was beaming into the seed vault, due to which he survived but his body when into a phasing effect at Quantum level. The Discovery help bring Dr Attis back into his physical form. Dr Attis helps them access the seed vault. But he refuses to leave the ship, despite knowing that he has been severely irradiated and will die within a few days. He is the same species as security officer Nhan (Rachael Ancheril), who decides to remain with the Tikhov to ensure he and his family receive a proper burial.
Discovery returns to Starfleet with the seeds, and an antidote for the health crisis is synthesized. Due to this success, Vance agrees that the Discovery crew may remain together but insists that they answer to him. He says that the Burn had many theories, but none were ever pursued in the absence of any evidence.
Meanwhile Georgiou is interrogated by the future Starfleet team. She manages to shut down her Holo interrogators simply by blinking in their resonant frequency. Which forces the human interrogator to come forward. The Interrogator informs Georgiou that the Terran empire has fallen, the distance between the 2 Universes grew after she crossed over, and now there hasn't been a single crossing for 500 years. Georgiou gleans that the Burn was indeed an attack on the Federation. But she is stunned when the interrogator surmises that she cares about someone on the ship.
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