- After months spent reconnecting the Federation with distant worlds, Captain Michael Burnham and the crew of the U.S.S. Discovery are sent to assist a damaged space station.
- Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) of the USS Discovery and her partner, Cleveland "Book" Booker (David Ajala), invite the people of Alshain IV to re-join the United Federation of Planets. The Alshain's don't trust the Federation and believe that the Federation is offering Dilithium, so they can help themselves to the Alshain's technological bounty. The Alshains misunderstand that Burnham is on the planet to make the entire civilization their pet. This came after Book explained how he has a pet cat, who is a Queen. Alshain are alarmed that Federation has kept a monarch captive and attack them.
But Burnham figures that they are having trouble navigating, since they are not able to hit Burnham or Book during their chase. They prove the Federation's intentions by helping to fix long-broken Alshain technology. The Alshains rely on their magnetic poles to navigate, but the poles shifted 300 years ago, so they put satellites into orbit to compensate for the shift, except the satellites ran out of Dilithium. So, Burnham orders Discovery to inject Dilithium into the satellites to make them functional again. The Alshains figure out that Federation wants to be of help.
Saru (Doug Jones) encourages the people of his planet Kaminar, to engage with the Federation. Su'Kal (Bill Irwin) knows that Saru is missing his crew and encourage him to go back to his position at Starfleet. Book then departs to his home planet, Kwejian, to participate in his nephew Leto's (Luca Doulgeris) coming-of-age ceremony.
Burnham and the crew of Discovery attend the official reopening of Starfleet Academy, where they meet new Federation president Laira Rillak (Chelah Horsdal). Rillak also unveils a new space dock where the existing fleet will be upgraded, and a new generation of star ships will be constructed. Starfleet receives a distress call from a space station near Kwejian, and Rillak accompanies Discovery to investigate.
The space station has been sent spinning uncontrollably by an unknown gravitational distortion, and Burnham decides to help evacuate its personnel herself. Burnham and her crew cannot find any celestial object that could have caused a gravitational distortion that large. Burnham asks Tilly (Mary Wiseman) to accompany Adira (Blu Del Barrio) on an away mission to help fix the space station. Their aim is to fix the Thrusters to stop the spinning of the station. Discovery extends shields over the station when they are hit by a shower of frozen methane, but this drains the Discovery's power. The methane chunks are bigger than anticipated and drain the power quickly. Discovery has 15 minutes of shields left and the transporters are not working.
There is an escape vessel on the space station, but it is stuck to the station due to some debris which is on the outside. Burnham decides to undertake an EVA herself to remove the debris and help rescue the crew of the space station. Burnham manages to remove the debris, but the escape vessel cannot carry everyone at once. It will take 5 minutes to return after the first run, and the Discovery has only 4 minutes of shields left. Rillak wants Burnham to take the Discovery away and sacrifice the remaining crew on the station, which includes Tilly, Adira and Captain Nalas. Burnham refuses to leave and is intent on rescuing the entire space station crew. The shields fail and the Discovery is barely able to escape the oncoming debris as the escape vessel carrying Tilly, Nalas and Adira crashes into the shuttle bay of the Discovery. Nalas dies due to the injuries on impact with Discovery.
Rillak questions Burnham's decisions, and later reveals that she was observing Burnham as a potential candidate for a new assignment but has concerns about her approach. The assignment is to test a new generation pathway drive prototype, which will be installed on the Voyager. Rillak says that while Burnham is brave, but she is like a wrecking ball with huge swings. And this is a time when some careful rebuilding needs to be done.
On Kwejian, Book witnesses strange bird activity and flies off-world to investigate it, just as the gravitational distortion destroys the entire planet. Book returns to the Discovery and relays his observations. He is devastated to learn that Kwejian is completely destroyed
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