black alert star trek discovery

Star Trek: Discovery - Black Alert

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Summary [ ]

Play as the crew aboard the U.S.S. Discovery or the mirror universe's I.S.S. Charon . Players can play one on one, or they can form teams of 1 or 2 with each person playing a different crew member. Will you be the Discovery 's Saru , Michael Burnham , Paul Stamets , Keyla Detmer , or Cadet Tilly , or the Charon 's Philippa Georgiou , Gabriel Lorca , Captain Killy , Ellen Landry , or the mirror Paul Stamets ? Each crew member has their own unique ability to help or hinder the Discovery . Regardless which side you represent, players will activate locations to advance their goals, teleport to the other ship to sabotage it, navigate nodes on the network, and more!

Tensions will run high as each team hurries to thwart the others' plans! Traverse the tile-grid map and stop the Discovery at key mission locations. The Discovery can travel on the spore network, which they can also manipulate by rotating tiles, while the powerful Charon has to move one tile at a time creating a tense game of cat-and-mouse. Crew members can teleport into the other ship for offensive measures! Some locations activate challenges where crew will clash. Other locations can damage the enemy's ship or detain their crew, causing them to spend precious time in recovery or risk leaving the location inoperable. If any ship takes too much damage, the other side can quickly claim their victory! Use your time wisely as the Charon advances on the Discovery before they can slip away back to the prime universe. Will the crew of the Discovery return home, or will the crew of the Charon catch them first?

Components [ ]

• 1 Game Board
• 19 Network Tiles
• 10 Character Standees
• 2 Ship Standees
• 2 Fleet Tokens
• 10 Character Cards
• 6 Mission Cards
• 12 Corruption / Terran Fleet Cards
• 49 Command Cards
• 12 Damage Cards
• 4 Wounded / Detained Cards
• 12 Corruption Tokens
• 2 Current Player Tokens
• 36 Resource Tokens
• 2 Location References

Black Alert: Using your Discovery

Carnac | September 11, 2020 September 11, 2020 | Independent Ship , Ships , Strategy

So on Tuesday, I went over the basics of the Discovery . Today I’m going to going to hit the actual using and upgrading of your new ship. So get ready: Black Alert!

How Black Alert Works

In terms of practical use, it’s not really an instant jump. It’s more like super speed than beaming in. So you’re not going to be instantly appearing in the middle of a system, you’re going to be entering from the edge. From a competitive balance standpoint, this is probably a good thing, especially in PvP. Gives targeted players a little bit of warning. But I understand why this might cause some consternation to players.

It’ll costs me 850 Cultivated Mycelium to complete one Black Alert jump. This cost will go down as you upgrade your Discovery’s warp engines. (More later on how you get and cultivate Mycelium.)

You can only jump to systems that are within the Discovery’s warp range, which isn’t very great. For instance, until you get your Discovery to tier 6, you’ll need to have Cadet Scotty on your ship in order to reach the level 28 Mycelium systems.

How Strong is the Discovery?

Not very. It’s a ship you can build at level 21, so out of the box, it’s only a little bit stronger than a Vahklas . Obviously your research will have a big impact on the initial numbers, but a new Vahklas for me would be 87,540, and a Discovery would be 102,159.

If you’re a level 21 player, you’ve got to feel like you hit the jackpot. While I certainly wouldn’t have recommended skipping the Vahklas before, now I think it’s not the worst idea. For comparison’s sake, here’s my level 15 (tier 4) Discovery, and a level 10 (tier 2) Vahklas. Same crew. Same research. And the Vahklas is a little bit stronger. I suspect this difference will increase as each is leveled up.

Firing Pattern

For an explorer, the Discovery has got a nice firing pattern, and it’s got a nice (for it’s size) kinetic weapon that fires every other round.

(Once again, thanks to our friends at LCARS for the firing pattern. )

Crewing your Discovery

So the Discovery crew that we’ve gotten thus far isn’t really great for the Discovery. They’re good officers ( Burnham and Saru in particular.) But their big impact is on PvP, not on hostiles or mining.

Ten of Ten works on your Discovery, but it’s not the massive improvement that you’ll get when mining say, Latinum . For hunting the hostiles, the Pike crew is best, with T’Laan . If you’ve got 5 of 10, she’d be a huge help.

Powering Black Alert: The Care and Feeding of Mycelium

First of all, to power your Discovery’s Black Alerts, you’ll need to cultivate Mycelium (see below). You get Mycelium in one of two ways, either by harvesting (mining) it, or by attacking hostiles. You’ll then cultivate it in the Mycelium Greenhouse that you’ll find in the refinery tab, under Discovery.

If you haven’t built your discovery yet, it won’t appear.

Here’s a list of the systems where you’ll be able to find Mycelium.

First, the level 23 systems

And then the level 28s., harvesting vs. hunting.

Your harvesting rate of Mycelium is dependent on your ship’s level. So hunting hostiles for Mycelium will help level up your ship,

But in general, it’s much faster to harvest (mine) than it is to collect it from defeated hostiles.

Just doing some quick math, you can mine 800 raw Mycelium in a little less than two minutes (depending on your Discovery’s level. My level 14 can do it in 84 seconds, but the exact number is trivial.)

You can certainly get more by grinding out level 29 hostiles at around 150 a pop, but the question is, what’s the opportunity cost of doing this? What’s the best use of your time. You only have so many hours in the day, and many tasks to accomplish.

If you’re in a pinch and need some right now to cultivate, then hunting will be better. In the long run, harvesting should allow you to get all the Mycelium you need AND go hunt swarm, or grind out hostiles for faction rep, or anything else you can think of to advance yourself in the game.

Upgrading the Discovery

The thing that’s going to slow you from upgrading your Discovery is going to be the spore drive parts (kinda like the way D’Vor parts are a brake on upgrading that ship. Again, as a basis for comparison, I’ll use the Vahklas. Given that it’s a specialty ship, and that it can eventually get you officer badges, you’d expect it to be more expensive. It’s a good deal more expensive in every area other than ship parts.

You’ll get the Spore Drive parts from your Discovery refineries. You’ll find these in your refinery menu.

You can also get some from the Discovery Recruiting Special.

And, if you’re just not that patient, and you want an Oompa Loompa now , you can purchase packs in the store that include spore drive components.

Random Black Alert Question

Can you Black Alert jump to a system that requires a warp token?

Yes. Yes you can. Are you happy now?

For the purposes of this article, I did receive Discovery blueprints and cultivated mycelium from Scopely.

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Star Trek: Discovery - Review

Burnham and crew attempt to escape the mirrorverse..

While board games based on established intellectual properties have had a spotty reputation in the past, that is increasingly no longer the case. In the last several years there have been a slew of strong tabletop designs that have successfully adapted movies, video games, and television series. Star Trek: Discovery - Black Alert is the latest success. This game captures the spirit of this recent Trek property through a tense adventure with a unique and clever format.

The focus of the game is around the U.S.S. Discovery’s spore drive – a key plot point in the first season of the show. The drive allows the ship to travel through the mycelial network and perform jumps to distant locations. It’s a rad piece of unique tech that came to define this Federation vessel. Unfortunately, the drive has malfunctioned and caused the ship to slip into a mirror universe. It’s a bit of a pickle, one we’ve seen before across various Star Trek eras, although it’s certainly given a distinct twist here.

Star Trek Discovery: Black Alert

In this alternate universe, the Federation has been replaced by the malevolent Terran Empire. This is a well armed and motivated force that has realized the Discovery’s unique properties and is now hunting it. This clash of civilizations is the framework for the game. Two players take on the roles of Federation crew members aboard the Discovery, and two others work together aboard the I.S.S. Charon. This team-versus-team design is relatively uncommon in board games and an effective approach in establishing a singular atmosphere in Black Alert.

The two teams' goals are asymmetrical. On each of the Federation players’ turns, they move their character to one of the stations on their ship and perform an action. These include functions such as navigating the mycelial network by operating the bridge, gaining resources from the current tile via the cargo bay, or rotating a network tile with engineering. The crew is trying to complete three missions by gathering the required resources and maneuvering the Discovery to a specific spot on the board. 

This is a tricky endeavor, as traversing the network requires the ship to move along routes randomly seeded on the board through tiles at the start of the game. You have to move along the route until you hit a node and stop. Manipulating the board so you can gather resources and then head to the required systems to complete missions requires time and preparation. And time is limited.

The Terran players, meanwhile, are in pursuit. They want to destroy the Discovery or hop aboard it and complete infiltration missions to take over the spacecraft. This is accomplished through moving in a more deliberate tile-by-tile path towards the Discovery, ignoring the mycelial network completely. Activating weapon systems allows you to hammer the Discovery, and you can even call in nearby Terran fleets to harass and slow the Federation crew.

This game captures the spirit of this recent Trek property through a tense adventure with a unique and clever format.

The asymmetry is enticing without being overwhelming. It's not as complex as strategy board game standout Root ; instead, Black Alert offers streamlined gameplay whose main hurdle is internalizing the different ship locations and their actions. Once you have a handle on that, the experience is a tense 90-minute affair with competing interests and solid tactical decision points.

Much of the drama of play is found in each faction’s deck of action cards. These are drawn and played each turn, allowing for a degree of uncertainty in the opponent’s capabilities. They also serve as a resource to bid into challenges, where each side plays cards facedown and compares strength. This is the resolution mechanism for firing at each other, as well as committing sabotage or trying to imprison characters who have boarded your ship. Committing your strongest cards to these challenges and foregoing their potent effect is a large tradeoff, one which emphasizes the pressure of Black Alert and how time is scarce.

One of the more interesting elements is the tempo. The Terran players aboard the Charon push headlong towards the Discovery, while the Federation group has to balance fending off their pursuers and moving forward on their objectives. The pursuit of the Federation objectives is the overarching timer of play, as the objectives are easy to accomplish given space. This is what keeps the game brisk, offering a high degree of focus.

The game does a good job capturing the tone of Star Trek: Discovery. The ship is under constant pressure, forcing the crew to keep on the move and continually put out fires. There is a general sense of unease and mystery, and the scientific element is embraced through details such as the mycelial network manipulation and movement, as well as gathering resources and completing technical missions. The competing focus between external and internal stress is well realized. 

While the team format is the most effective and enjoyable aspect of the game, it does provide for an occasional slump in rhythm. The teams take turns, allowing for bite-sized progress as a result of their actions. These gains can be immediately undone, however, which can make progress feel halting. For instance, when the Charon catches up to the Discovery and starts unloading its weapons into the Federation vessel, the Federation player can immediately repair the damage. Unpredictable resolutions and occasionally wild card effects can upset this tit-for-tat flow, but there are moments when progress seems to halt. It’s the game’s primary flaw, though fortunately these moments are infrequent.

One of the more daring inclusions is the corruption system. Corruption tokens have a chance to be placed on the board when players use specific cards from their deck. It’s a cost that must be weighed, as placing corruption on the board bears inherent risk. If too many are placed, then the universe collapses and everyone loses. This can either be a climactic finale or a limp ending devoid of satisfaction. But the game teases you towards this conclusion as these tokens can serve as hazards for The Discovery, and the cards that place them often have strong values that you can use in a challenge. 

During my sessions with Black Alert, I occasionally found myself wishing it took similar risks in other areas of the game. I would have loved to see more large and provocative actions on occasion, that could drastically alter the landscape. It’s an effective game, and one that certainly captures its source material, yet it butts up against the line of greatness and never really manages to cross it.

Star Trek: Discovery - Black Alert is focused and streamlined, managing to offer a full experience in a relatively short amount of time. It’s not bloated or overly expensive, and it’s just the type of mid-weight board game that is becoming more rare in recent years. The game supports head-to-head play for just two players , but with a reduced scope that dampens the fun considerably. It works better with four. 

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The Verdict

“That Hope Is You, Part 2” is reflective of the season overall in that it has plenty of moments that shine, but it’s also very uneven. Everything looks great as always, but the hour could’ve used less action and more character interplay and emotion to really center the resolution to the mystery of The Burn. Here’s hoping next season mines the complexities of the new world Burnham and the crew have landed in, and finds ways to mirror our world along the way, as the best of Star Trek does.

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Star Trek Discovery: Black Alert

Purchase options and add-ons, about this item.

• WORK AS A TEAM ~ Race to return U.S.S. Discovery to the prime universe while the I.S.S. Charon rushes to infiltrate it and claim its unique spore drive in this high-stakes team-based game!
• GAME PLAY ~ Play as the crew aboard the U.S.S. Discovery or Charon. Players can play one on one, or teams of 1 or 2 with each person playing a different crew member. Each has their own unique ability to help or hinder the Discovery.
• EXPLORATION AND ESPIONAGE ~ Tensions will run high as each team hurries to thwart the others’ plans! Traverse the tile-grid map and stop the Discovery at key mission locations.
• WHAT YOU GET ~ Game Board, Rulebook, 19 Network Tiles, 10 Character Standees/ Cards, 2 Ship Standees, 2 Fleet tokens, 6 Mission Cards, 12 Corruption/ Terran Fleet Cards, 49 Command Cards, Character effect tokens, location references.
• CLEAR INSTRUCTIONS, EASY TO LEARN, and HIGH REPLAY VALUE ~ Whether playing with a team or against one another, there are many characters and locations to explore. this game offers substantial value with replayability, fun decision-making, and interesting strategies.

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Technical details, additional information, warranty & support, product details.

• Is Discontinued By Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ No
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 3.94 x 1.97 x 0.5 inches; 2.2 Pounds
• Manufacturer recommended age ‏ : ‎ 14 years and up
• Item model number ‏ : ‎ WIZ87583
• Date First Available ‏ : ‎ June 7, 2023
• Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ WizKids
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0C718P2ZM

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Star Trek Black Alert

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Product Description

Race to return U.S.S. Discovery to the prime universe while the I.S.S. Charon rushes to infiltrate it and claim its unique spore drive in this high-stakes team-based game! The U.S.S. Discovery has traveled into a mirror universe! You must complete missions to discover how to use the spore drive to make it back to the prime universe. But beware, or the I.S.S. Charon will chase and infiltrate the Discovery to capture and study the spore drive. Send your crew members to locations on either ships (if you manage to sneak onto your opponent’s) to advance missions, sabotage the other ship, and repair your own. Which universe will prevail? Play as the crew aboard the U.S.S. Discovery or the mirror universe’s I.S.S. Charon. Players can play one on one, or they can form teams of 1 or 2 with each person playing a different crew member. Will you be the Discovery’s Saru, Michael Burnham, Paul Stamets, Keyla Detmer, or Cadet Tilly, or the Charon’s Philippa Georgiou, Gabriel Lorca, Captain Killy, Ellen Landry, or the mirror Paul Stamets? Each crew member has their own unique ability to help or hinder the Discovery. Regardless which side you represent, players will activate locations to advance their goals, teleport to the other ship to sabotage it, navigate nodes on the network, and more! Tensions will run high as each team hurries to thwart the others’ plans! Traverse the tile-grid map and stop the Discovery at key mission locations. The Discovery can travel on the spore network, which they can also manipulate by rotating tiles, while the powerful Charon has to move one tile at a time creating a tense game of cat-and-mouse. Crew members can teleport into the other ship for offensive measures! Some locations activate challenges where crew will clash. Other locations can damage the enemy’s ship or detain their crew, causing them to spend precious time in recovery or risk leaving the location inoperable. If any ship takes too much damage, the other side can quickly claim their vic

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Star Trek Discovery: Black Alert

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The  U.S.S. Discovery  has traveled into a mirror universe!  You must complete missions to discover how to use the spore drive to make it back to the prime universe. But beware, or the  I.S.S. Charon  will chase and infiltrate the  Discovery  to capture and study the spore drive. Send your crew members to locations on either ships (if you manage to sneak onto your opponent’s) to advance missions, sabotage the other ship, and repair your own. Which universe will prevail?

Play as the crew aboard the  U.S.S. Discovery  or the mirror universe’s  I.S.S. Charon . Players can play one on one, or they can form teams of 1 or 2 with each person playing a different crew member. Will you be the  Discovery’s  Saru, Michael Burnham, Paul Stamets, Keyla Detmer, or Cadet Tilly, or the  Charon’s  Philippa Georgiou, Gabriel Lorca, Captain Killy, Ellen Landry, or the mirror Paul Stamets? Each crew member has their own unique ability to help or hinder the  Discovery . Regardless which side you represent, players will activate locations to advance their goals, teleport to the other ship to sabotage it, navigate nodes on the network, and more!

Tensions will run high as each team hurries to thwart the others’ plans! Traverse the tile-grid map and stop the  Discovery  at key mission locations. The  Discovery  can travel on the spore network, which they can also manipulate by rotating tiles, while the powerful  Charon  has to move one tile at a time creating a tense game of cat-and-mouse. Crew members can teleport into the other ship for offensive measures! Some locations activate challenges where crew will clash. Other locations can damage the enemy’s ship or detain their crew, causing them to spend precious time in recovery or risk leaving the location inoperable. If any ship takes too much damage, the other side can quickly claim their victory! Use your time wisely as the  Charon  advances on the  Discovery  before they can slip away back to the prime universe. Will the crew of the  Discovery  return home, or will the crew of the  Charon  catch them first?

Components:

1 Game Board

19 Network Tiles

10 Character Standees

2 Ship Standees

2 Fleet tokens

10 Character Cards

6 Mission Cards

12 Corruption/ Terran Fleet Cards

49 Command Cards

12 Damage Cards

4 Wounded/ Detained Cards

12 Corruption Tokens

2 Current Player Tokens

36 Resource Tokens

2 Location References

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Star Trek: Discovery – Black Alert Review

We review Star Trek: Discovery -- Black Alert, a board game published by WizKids. Pitting the Terran Empire against the crew of the U.S.S. Discovery, each side has a unique objective to complete: either dominate the galaxy or escape!

When I saw that WizKids was doing a game based solely on the first season of Star Trek: Discovery, I was therefore quite interested. Star Trek: Discovery – Black Alert is the first of its kind as far as I am aware. I’m hopeful it will get things off to a good start. It is a game for 2-4 players, and it takes about 90 minutes to play.

Gameplay Overview:

This is a competitive game, with one side taking on the role of the crew of the Discovery, and the other taking on the role of the Terran Empire of the Mirror Universe (if you are unfamiliar with Star Trek lore, this universe would be where Spock with a goatee comes from, because a goatee makes a character 50% more evil, naturally). The two sides have different win conditions: the Discovery is trying to complete a series of missions so that they can return home to their proper universe, while the Terrans are trying to capture the Discovery… for evil maniacal reasons. Each side has also has a secondary win condition which is the same but opposite for both (you might say, they… mirror each other), which is damaging all 5 locations on the opposing ship. Lastly, the game can end in a loss for both sides if the spore network on which the Discovery travels is completely corrupted.

While both sides have different objectives, different actions, and different abilities, there are a few similarities. There are 5 characters for each faction. In a 3 or 4 player game, both sides get to pick two of these characters. Each of these characters have a once per game ability. It does not have a huge impact on the overall game, but can come in handy at a crucial moment, so the decision is important. Both factions also have a deck of Command cards, which are used for various purposes throughout the game, a standee representing their ship’s location, and a set of locations on their ship that their characters (and opponents’) will use to achieve their goals.

You have a limited number of things to do on each of your characters’ turns, so play proceeds quickly. Each turn, you begin by drawing up to 3 Command cards. After this, you can perform any free actions you have available during any of the remaining steps of your turn. Free actions are typically limited to using a Command card or using your character’s special ability. You can play one Command card for its effect during each turn (and your character ability is limited to once per game).

The steps in which you can do your free actions are the Move step, Action step, and Clean Up. Moving is optional. You can move to any location on the ship your standee is currently on, or if both ships are on the same space on the board, you may move to any location on either ship. During your Action step, you can either use the action on the location you are in, repair that location if it has damage and you have enough resources to do so, or return to any location on your home ship (regardless of the ships’ positions). Lastly, in the Cleanup step, depending on what cards were played, the spore network may be further corrupted, and it is checked in this step. Play then passes to the next character.

Game Experience:

The basic rules are quick to explain, but there ends up being a lot going on at times. Your goals are simple, but completing them is a multistep process. Seeing what you need to do in the right order can be a bit opaque at first. The ships are moving around a hex grid with paths connecting different “nodes” (i.e., systems) on the spore network. Discovery is able to move more quickly, but must follow the paths of the network, which makes navigating somewhat difficult. The Terran flagship, the I.S.S. Charon, and the lesser members of the Terran fleet hunting the Discovery, are not restricted to the spore network’s paths, but only move one hex at a time (usually). Your location matters, as certain Starfleet missions will require being on specific nodes, and every node has different resources available. Resources can be used to enhance your actions, and are even needed for some cards. Each side is going to want them.

This adds up to needing to maneuver your way around to board to either engage or avoid the enemy, while collecting resources that you need to complete your missions and infiltrations for Discovery and the Terrans, respectively. Resources can be a big boost on your normal actions (for example, Discovery’s cargo hold allows you to collect the resource at your current node, but if you have a Tritanium resource to spend, you can collect 3 of that resource instead). It is easy to forget about them and tunnel vision on your current objective, or escaping your foe, but they tend to be worth taking the time to fit into your team’s plan.

The biggest piece to everything that you do throughout the game is ultimately the Command cards. Command cards can be used for their free actions, which are generally powerful and can circumvent your opponents’ expectations. However, that is not all they are used for. Each card has a number on them, called Resolve. At first glance, this looks like a cost in most games, but it is misleading. This value is used to pay costs for other things, not the card itself. Completing missions will often require paying Resolve; repairing a location can require it as well. And so on. Whenever you are instructed to pay Resolve, you discard a card or cards from hand equalling or exceeding the amount you are told to pay. Change is not given if you pay more!

Similarly, the Resolve on Command cards is used for Challenges, which are involved whenever the two sides come into direct conflict (either combat or otherwise). Challenges are described as a “bidding” process, which is somewhat apt. Each side has an opportunity to play Command cards facedown for each character. They are then flipped face up, and a card from the top of each Command deck is added, with the total Resolve added together to determine the winner of the challenge. Some Command cards do have bonus effects when played as bids, so holding such cards in your hand for the right challenge can be impactful.

The other piece of this gameplay puzzle is the ability to get onto your opponent’s ship. It creates an additional degree of interaction, as your opponent has unique actions on their side of your location. This can be a good way to try to sabotage the enemy ship and slow them down, or even work towards the alternate win condition of crippling the enemy ship. However, characters can be captured and sent to the Brig, which earns them a trip back to their own ship on their next turn (at the cost of their Action step).

Final Thoughts:

There is a lot to Star Trek: Discovery – Black Alert , and it took a while to understand and see the different strategies to pursue. That’s both a blessing and a curse. It does have the depth that you want to see to keep a game interesting, but getting there is a learning curve that can be a struggle to get through. There are a lot of good ideas in the game, but everything going on at times gets in the way and can make it a bit confusing until there’s a good amount of familiarity with the game. The rulebook doesn’t necessarily help with this, as it can sometimes be a challenge to figure out where information is, as the organization doesn’t always put rules where you might expect. Rulebooks are hard to write, so it’s not unusual, but I would have liked it to be a bit better.

All that said, I think the gameplay works, even if it could be a bit simpler. Once you’re a little more aware of how everything works, you have a little more direction in what you’re doing. Moving around the hex board, avoiding or engaging the enemy, gathering resources, and trying to manage the actions you have available based on location is interesting. The Challenge mechanic is I think often a place where games fall a little short or make things too convoluted (the challenges/combat in Star Trek: Away Missions comes to mind), but once you’ve seen it in action here, it feels good. There’s a degree of randomness with adding the top card of each Command deck to each side’s total but that’s small enough to be a benefit rather than a detraction. There’s a certain skill in the bidding, as it opens up the potential for bluffing with a bunch of low Resolve cards, or even a single really high Resolve card.

Something that isn’t unclear and the game really delivers on is the theme. There’s a lot of attention to the source material. As a fan of Star Trek: Discovery, there haven’t really been any opportunities to see a game based on it or the other newer shows yet, so I was a little concerned that the theme might be a little slapped on. That trepidation ended up being unfounded, however, as focusing specifically on the Mirror Universe arc of Discovery’s first season really helped focus the theme and make it work. Discovery is outnumbered by the Terrans, but have their Starfleet ingenuity, so have a chance of making it home before they are overcome. It feels right in this regard.

Final Score: 3 Stars – A welcome, but slightly convoluted take on Star Trek: Discovery that rewards you for taking the time for sticking with it and figuring out the strategies.

Misses: • The path and strategy to achieving your goals is not clear until you’ve put some time into it. • The rulebook could use better organization and clarity. • With everything going on, it is possible to get a little overwhelmed with your options.

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Here’s the official description from Wizkids’ website:

In Star Trek: Discovery – Black Alert , players divide into teams, and each team represents key members of either the U.S.S. Discovery or I.S.S. Charon crew. Players take turns activating locations on their ship, navigating through the network, and attempting to accomplish missions. One crew is trying to return home, while the other wants to capture their ship. Which team will emerge victorious?   The U.S.S. Discovery has traveled into a mirror universe! You must complete missions to discover how to use the spore drive to make it back to the prime universe. But beware, or the I.S.S. Charon will chase and infiltrate the Discovery to capture and study the spore drive. Send your crew members to locations on either ships (if you manage to sneak onto your opponent’s) to advance missions, sabotage the other ship, and repair your own.   Play as the crew aboard the U.S.S. Discovery or the mirror universe’s I.S.S. Charon. Players can play one on one, or they can form teams of 1 or 2 with each person playing a different crew member.

Will you be the Discovery’s Saru, Michael Burnham, Paul Stamets, Keyla Detmer, or Cadet Tilly, or the Charon’s Philippa Georgiou, Gabriel Lorca, Captain Killy, Ellen Landry, or the mirror Paul Stamets? Each crew member has their own unique ability to help or hinder the Discovery. Regardless which side you represent, players will activate locations to advance their goals, teleport to the other ship to sabotage it, navigate nodes on the network, and more!   Tensions will run high as each team hurries to thwart the others’ plans! Traverse the tile-grid map and stop the Discovery at key mission locations. The Discovery can travel on the spore network, which they can also manipulate by rotating tiles, while the powerful Charon has to move one tile at a time creating a tense game of cat-and-mouse. Crew members can teleport into the other ship for offensive measures! Some locations activate challenges where crew will clash.

Other locations can damage the enemy’s ship or detain their crew, causing them to spend precious time in recovery or risk leaving the location inoperable. If any ship takes too much damage, the other side can quickly claim their victory! Use your time wisely as the Charon advances on the Discovery before they can slip away back to the prime universe.   Will the crew of the Discovery return home, or will the crew of the Charon catch them first?

Back in April, one game enthusiast was able to get a preview demonstration of the new game at the 2023 GAMA Expo.

Star Trek: Discovery — Black Alert can be preordered now at the Wizkids website for $54.99 USD, expected for public release in the third quarter of 2023.

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Board's Eye View

News, reviews and 360º views of board games

• Oct 22, 2023

Star Trek Discovery: Black Alert

So far, there have been 10 official TV iterations of Star Trek. After original Star Trek there was an animated series involving the original crew. Star Trek: Next Generation, Deep Space 9 and Voyager all ran for seven seasons. Enterprise was a prequel set a century before original Star Trek. Lower Decks and Prodigy are both animated series in the Star Trek universe that are still running, and we are currently two seasons in to Strange New Worlds: an immediate prequel to original Star Trek, set on the USS Enterprise under Captain Pike, Jim Kirk's predecessor, and with younger versions of many of the characters from the original series. Strange New Worlds tho' was a spin-off of Discovery, which started off as another prequel series. Star Trek Discovery revolves almost entirely around a single central character, making it stylistically different to other more ensemble Trek series, and it has had a mixed reception; not least because, despite being a prequel, it introduces technology way beyond that in series set more than 100 years in its future. In USS Discovery has access to a revolutionary 'spore drive' that allows it to transport instantaneously to any point in the universe: how useful that would've been to the stranded crew of Voyager!

WizKids' Star Trek Discovery: Black Alert is notionally a 2-4 player game, tho' primarily, it's a game for two teams of two players. In season 1 of Discovery, the ship finds itself in the 'Mirror Universe' first seen in the original Star Trek episode 'Mirror, Mirror' and revisited in subsequent Trek series; notably, DS9 and Enterprise, and the game focuses on the events of the latter part of Discovery season 1. In the four-player game, one team represents the crew of USS Discovery and the other represents the crew of the Terran Empire ship ISS Charon. The teams have asymmetric aims: Discovery is trying to complete missions and return home; the Terran Empire tho' wants to infiltrate Discovery to take control of the spore drive. Alternatively, either team can claim victory by crippling the opposing ship by damaging five stations. Certain actions trigger cards that can place corruption tokens out on the spore network; if all the corruption tokens are placed out then both teams lose.

Each team picks two of five characters from their crew. The characters all have a single-use special ability that can be taken at any time as a free action. Players also have a hand of cards, replenished up to three at the start of their turn, and you also have the option to play one of these as a free action. Players' main action tho' will be to move to a location and take the action indicated on that location's card, but it is possible in particular circumstances for characters to beam onto each other's ship. The action available at any location is different for each of the two factions, and if a location is damaged it is only the home ship's crew that is affected - characters from the opposing ship can still take the action for their faction if they are on the enemy ship.

Discovery's spore drive is represented by the different way in which Discovery can move (between nodes on the mycelium network formed through the connections between the randomised hexes that make up the board) as compared with the Charon, which just moves between adjacent hexes.

There are resources to collect. These are needed for certain Discovery missions but also to enhance card and location effects. Throughout the game, cards are also used for their (0-4) 'Resolve' value. Certain actions trigger a 'Challenge' for which the active player contributes cards face down. An opposing character at the same or a specified location can also play cards. Team members on the same ship can contribute an additional card. Once the cards are revealed and Resolve totted up, taking account of any modifiers in the card text, each side flips a card from their draw deck to add the Resolve number to their total. It's the Challenges that are central to the game, so hand management can be crucial to success.

With Black Alert, the Lynnvander Studios team of Dylan Birtolo, Josh Derksen, Peter Bemis and Thomas M Gofton have managed, in a medium-weight game, to conjure much of the flavour and atmosphere of USS Discovery's sojourn in the Mirror Universe. The design and immersion is supported through WizKid's use throughout of screenshots from the TV series. Tho' there's inevitably a luck factor over the cards you draw, there's scope for bluff and some push-your-luck gambles in those all-important Challenges, and canny players will try to time their Challenges for when opponents have already used some or all of the cards in their hand...

Many of the members of the Board's Eye View team are lifelong Trekkies, tho' not all have unreserved love for Discovery. Star Trek Discovery: Black Alert tho' has gone down well with everyone who's played it - including those who've never even seen or heard of the Discovery TV series!

#StarTrek #StarTrekDiscovery #Discovery #BlackAlert #TVseries #sporedrive #WizKids #handmanagement #pushyourluck #bluffing #MirrorUniverse #MirrorMirror #Saru #MichaelBurnham #Stamets #Tilly #Georgiou #Lorca #teamgame

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Ghost Hunter

‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Reveals Moll & L’ak’s Backstory — Plus, What’s Next?

Spoiler Alert

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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for  Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 Episode 5 “Mirrors.”]

It’s far from a meet cute and in no way the start of a rom-com, but  Star Trek: Discovery does offer a look at how Moll ( Eve Harlow ) and L’ak ( Elias Toufexis ) first crossed paths and what led them to become Captain Michael Burnham ( Sonequa Martin-Green ) and her crew’s foes in the latest episode.

“Mirrors” takes Michael and Book ( David Ajala ), who has realized Moll is the daughter of his mentor, into a pocket of interdimensional space and onto the abandoned  ISS Enterprise , where they try to get through to Moll and L’ak with both pairs after the same thing: the next piece of the puzzle that will unlock the ultimate power everyone’s after this season. Book tries to get through to Moll, and L’ak ends up injured. But rather than turn themselves in, as Michael and Book try to convince them to do, Moll and L’ak set off as soon as they get the chance.

Read on for insight from Ajala, Harlow, and Toufexis about this episode, filming on the  ISS Enterprise set, and more.

When L’ak Met Moll

As flashbacks detail, Moll was a courier who met L’ak on one of her deliveries; he was the primarch’s nephew who’d been demoted to shuttle bay duty and ultimately took her side, leading the two to flee and now there’s a blood bounty on them. Both Harlow and Toufexis had hints about their characters’ backstory, but it wasn’t until the script for this episode that they got the full picture.

“I was bugging them for the script to 505 because they told me [the backstory] was [that episode],” Toufexis tells TV Insider of what he says is his favorite episode he’s in. “They gave me a little bit of background so I could play it in the other episodes, but when I saw the episode, I was so happy because I play a lot of bad guys on TV, and more often than not, you don’t get to find out why they’re bad or why they’re doing what they’re doing—not that these guys are bad inherently. The fact that we get to go back and literally show and play everything, almost everything, at least for the reasoning why they’ve made these decisions and why they are who they are—that combined with the love story was my favorite thing about these characters for sure.”

Playing a love story as an antagonist was different for him, he explains. “They very rarely have a counterpart,” he says. “I was really happy that I have this to play, this reason to go on is Moll for L’ak. And that love story is the most interesting part of it for me, just being in love. Especially in sci-fi, it’s really rare, especially for antagonists. I just want to be in love and free is original, I think.”

'Star Trek: Discovery' Stars Tease How Series Ends for Their Characters

Harlow, too, enjoyed getting to “run around being in love” as what she calls her favorite character she’s played. She recalls that the sides she auditioned with, while fake scripts, are situations like in Episode 5. “Every episode that came out was really exciting because we didn’t know what we were getting and [we were] seeing it unfold in such an interesting way and getting more layers,” she says. “These characters are nuanced.”

Can Book Get Through to Moll?

When the episode begins, Book thinks Moll can turn things around and he might be able to reach her, and he does try to do so when they’re split off from Michael and L’ak. But while her father was his mentor, to Moll, he was just the person who left her and her mom.

“It’s like Moll has now offered a bit of a lifeline, someone who’s known Cleveland Booker, who was this Cleveland Booker’s mentor, to kind of understand more about his character, which Book assumed would have been positive,” says Ajala. “But then to hear Moll speak so negatively about Cleveland Booker gives him pause for thought.”

Book wasn’t able to get through to Moll, and Harlow doesn’t think he stands a chance of ever doing so. “Anyone who has mommy or daddy issues knows, it’s years of therapy. I think that those parent relationships are really difficult and I think that always the knee jerk reaction is, ‘No, I don’t want to face it,’ until you’re forced to face it. It’s her own resistance and the way that Moll has survived is with this hatred and pushing away of her father. It would require a complete 180 [and] years of therapy,” she says with a laugh. “Spinoff of Star Trek: Discovery – Moll in Therapy .”

But even so, is that connection to Book something that L’ak might be worried about? Toufexis admits it’s not something he had to consider. “L’ak is very untrusting of anybody, especially people that show particular interest in Moll,” he shares before teasing, “The trust grows more between Moll and L’ak because of her decisions towards Book.”

John Medland / Paramount+

Still, Book isn’t willing to give up on Moll. “This season is all about second chances,” Ajala points out, adding that his character has received one. “He now wants to afford the same grace to Moll. It does get more challenging as the season progresses and it gets more complicated, but I feel that Book just has to try and see it through to make it worth it.”

For Book, the best-case scenario is this ends with “Moll finding favor amongst Starfleet and not going sown a destructive path,” says Ajala, but just because he wants this to work out doesn’t mean that it necessarily will—or that he doesn’t have a line when it comes to her. “If she makes a decision that she would never be able to come back from, that would be really, really sad.”

What’s Next for Moll & L’ak?

Last we saw the two, they were heading off with medical supplies and L’ak was injured. You’ll have to watch to see exactly what’s next but, “he’s fine,” says Toufexis.

As for the next time Book encounters Moll, “there will be drama,” Ajala teases. “It’s a very nuanced, complicated situation, and I think they’re both in very unfamiliar territory, but it’s going to be very important that they make the right decision or it will have a dramatic effect.”

What he’ll probably have to keep in mind is that there doesn’t seem to be anything that could make Moll or L’ak turn on the other and there isn’t a limit to how far they will go for one another. “This sounds so corny, but we only have each other,” says Harlow. “It’s us against the world.”

But that doesn’t necessarily mean they wouldn’t surrender. At one point, Michael tries to convince L’ak to do just that, and he asks if he and Moll would serve their time together.

“I remember specifically playing that and thinking, ‘Okay, he’s looking for at least a way out, recalls Toufexis, “but the end result has to be they’re free and together, or at least they’re together and safe. There are some rules that they both really need people to accept if they’re going to give in, and I don’t think they are.”

Harlow agrees that it would take “freedom and safety” for them to surrender, “and no one’s giving us that, so we have to get it ourselves in whatever way we can.”

Marni Grossman / Paramount+

Filming on the ISS Enterprise

Most of this episode takes place on the  ISS Enterprise , and as a big Star Trek fan, Toufexis was thrilled. Before getting the script for Episode 5, “I had heard a props guy or maybe a set deck guy talking [about] the Enterprise , and I was like, ‘I’m sorry, what was that? We’re going to the Enterprise ?'” he shares, admitting that he did take photos on the set that he will never publish. “I love being on that ship. I was texting my family, ‘Can you believe this? I’m on the freaking Enterprise . This is crazy.’ There’s footage of me at 15 years old doing a Star Trek TV show in my friend’s basement where we built an Enterprise out of cardboard. So the fact that I’m on the actual Enterprise now, that’s pretty crazy.”

Harlow chimes in to share that Toufexis surprised people on set by knowing what all the props were in the first episode of the season (see photo above).

Ajala chose to wait until he stepped on the set to film to see it. “I was quite intentional about that because I didn’t want to become too familiar and take this wonderful set for granted,” he explains. “I literally laid eyes on it when the camera was rolling. One would say that’s a slightly unorthodox way of working, but I found it really, really informative and it was a super special moment to just be in that space.”

What did you think of Moll and L’ak’s backstory? Let us know in the comments section, below.

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'Star Trek: Discovery' season 5 episode 4 uses time travel to remember the past 5 seasons

It's pretty obvious watching this episode that the cast and crew, at the very least, strongly suspected that this was going to be the last season of "Discovery" when it was written.

Warning: Spoilers ahead for "Star Trek: Discovery" season 5, episode 4

With the news that "Star Trek: Lower Decks" is ending after its current season, that really only leaves "Strange New Worlds" as the last remaining Nu-Trek series currently airing on television. 

And, a word to the wise: If you're a die-hard fan of " Discovery ," make sure you have your own physical media, 'cause no one likes being at the mercy of whatever an overpaid television executive thinks. You're welcome. Moreover, after this final season of "Discovery," we're going to have until wait until next year for the next season of " Strange New Worlds ." It's all starting to feel a bit like "Game of Thrones" all over again.

Episode four, entitled "Face the Strange," is without a doubt the best entry so far in the fifth season, and one can't help but wonder after watching exactly when the cast and production crew were first informed that this would be the last season, because it was definitely before this episode was actually written. The reason? It is, for all intents and purposes, a 60-minute, time-travel-powered, postscript-style reminiscence of all elements of all five seasons — or as much as you can cram into an hour — and what a rollercoaster ride it's been.

So when Alex Kurtzman or Michelle Paradise or whoever it is that actually has authority in the writer's room entered said room, put down their grande iced sugar-free vanilla half-double decaffeinated half-caff latte with soy milk and a twist of lemon in their Paramount-branded 40oz Stanley Clean Slate Quencher H2.0 Flowstate™ Tumbler and announced, "Wouldn't it be great to revisit chapters from seasons one, two, three and four?" no doubt everyone cheered. "And how will this be possible?" asked Kurtzman, to which an eager-beaver intern no doubt excitedly thrust their hand up into the air and exclaimed, "Why, time travel , of course!"

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"Quite right," replied Kurtzman (in our imaginations, at least), adding, "But it can be for one episode, so it has to be an isolated, self-contained form of time travel." Thus was conceived the "Time Bug," and with it came a ton of technobabble to precisely explain its parameters. Although quite why Zora didn't detect it was not addressed. Also, you know, transporters. 

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But this clever Time Bug, which can manipulate time in just about any way that's convenient for the writers to overcome any potential chronological complications — like life-changing paradoxes — came onboard the USS Discovery by way of that shifty Malinne "Moll" Ravel (Eve Harlow), who managed to infiltrate the Trill homeworld undetected, as we saw last week .

As a result, we get reminder glimpses of Michael Burnham's first coming aboard the USS Discovery way, way, way back in season one, complete with appropriate uniforms and everything. We get a fleeting reminder of the Red Angel and the battle with Control , naturally The Burn gets a mention, and there's even a not-very-subtle nod to the short-Trek " Calypso ." It's all a little bit like a Greatest Hits album that doesn't include any of the tracks that you actually liked, being played at 45 instead of 33. Remember vinyl?

Since it's now obvious that this season was written after the cancellation announcement had been made to the cast and crew, the single most important question is, Will the show benefit from that, or will it suffer? Are the remaining six episodes going to be a drawn-out epilogue, tied loosely together with a mostly lame plot? Or, will advance knowledge of the show's future actually serve the writers well, allowing them to produce something above and beyond the normal level of writing? 

There's even a very entertaining scene, in which 23rd-century Burnham must fight her 32nd-century self. Of course, the illudium Q-36 explosive space modulator fitted to the space bug prevents any changes from affecting the timeline, so you know, phew . 

Most of the original Discovery bridge reappear, as close to how they looked seven years ago as possible, and even Lt. Cmdr. Airiam (played by Sara Mitich in the first season and Hannah Cheesman in the second) makes a cameo, so that's nice. Also, we can really see as Sonequa Martin-Green flips between her two Burnhams just how effective that dreadlock hair piece that she wears through this season actually is. Half the show's budget probably went to that. 

 —   Watch the bittersweet trailer for 'Star Trek: Discovery's final season (video)

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It's a fun filler episode, and, even if it doesn't advance the plot an inch, it does allow character development to take place, particularly between Burnham and Captain Rayner (Callum Keith Rennie). Arguably the biggest surprise was that the writers were able to resist putting Captain Pike (Anson Mount) into this episode. 

The fifth and final season of "Star Trek: Discovery," and every other episode of every "Star Trek" show — with the exception of "Star Trek: Prodigy" — currently streams exclusively on Paramount Plus in the U.S., while "Prodigy" has found a new home on Netflix.  

Internationally, the shows are available on  Paramount Plus  in Australia, Latin America, the U.K. and South Korea, as well as on Pluto TV in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland on the Pluto TV Sci-Fi channel. They also stream on  Paramount Plus  in Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. In Canada, they air on Bell Media's CTV Sci-Fi Channel and stream on Crave.

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When Scott's application to the NASA astronaut training program was turned down, he was naturally upset...as any 6-year-old boy would be. He chose instead to write as much as he possibly could about science, technology and space exploration. He graduated from The University of Coventry and received his training on Fleet Street in London. He still hopes to be the first journalist in space.

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Screen Rant

Stamets has tardigrade dna star trek: discovery’s spore drive navigator explained.

Commander Paul Stamets' tardigrade DNA is an essential part of USS Discovery's spore drive navigation system, and comes with interesting side effects.

• Commander Paul Stamets has tardigrade DNA thanks to combining his own genetics with a tardigrade named Ripper.
• Stamets' tardigrade DNA lets him navigate the USS Discovery through the mycelial network.
• Stamets invented the USS Discovery's spore drive, and he is unaffected by temporal disruptions thanks to his tardigrade DNA.

It's true: Commander Paul Stamets (Anthony Rapp), the inventor of the spore drive on Star Trek: Discovery , has tardigrade DNA. Discovery's displacement-activated spore hub drive is a classified propulsion system unique to Star Trek: Discovery , and an alternative to the warp drive that's usually seen on Star Trek 's starships. Rather than warping space-time to travel faster than light, the spore drive actively displaces the USS Discovery from normal space into another plane of existence, the mycelial plane. During a jump, or "black alert" , Discovery travels along the mycelial network, an interconnected structure that branches through space-time organically.

Spore drives were installed on two Crossfield-class starships in the 23rd century, with Stamets assigned to the USS Discovery and Stamets' research partner, Straal (Saad Siddiqui), assigned to the USS Glenn. Discovery operated its spore drive with cultivated spores, but was only capable of short jumps, whereas the USS Glenn could make much longer jumps. A disaster aboard the Glenn in Star Trek: Discovery season 1 , episode 3, "Context is for Kings", proved that a failure to navigate with complete precision through the mycelial network could result in space-time twisting through organic matter, causing fatal "helical trauma." The only survivor was a huge tardigrade, which attacked Discovery's away team, and was brought aboard the USS Discovery.

Star Trek: Discovery’s Anthony Rapp & Paul Stamets Explained

Why commander paul stamets has tardigrade dna in star trek: discovery, it's better than making the tardigrade be discovery's navigator..

Commander Paul Stamets' tardigrade DNA is essential to navigating the mycelial network that the USS Discovery's spore drive uses to jump through space. Star Trek: Discovery season 1's Captain Gabriel Lorca (Jason Isaacs) appreciated the savage nature of the angry tardigrade, nicknamed "Ripper", and demanded that Specialist Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) make Ripper into a weapon. Burnham's workaround to Lorca's request was working with Stamets to find that Ripper the tardigrade had a symbiotic relationship with the spores, and could independently navigate the mycelial network to make longer jumps, like the USS Glenn had done. However, the jumps were painful for Ripper, who couldn't consent to being used as a tool.

Tardigrade DNA gave Stamets the ability to co-exist with the mycelial network itself.

Paul Stamets' solution was to combine Ripper's tardigrade DNA into his own, so Stamets could navigate the mycelial network directly, instead of subjecting Ripper to a lifetime of pain as the spore drive's unwilling navigator. Tardigrade DNA gave Stamets the ability to co-exist with the mycelial network itself, a dream come true for Star Trek: Discovery 's astromycologist, but it came at a high cost. The pain that Ripper felt was neurological damage that Paul also sustained when navigating the mycelial network. Although Stamets took the pain on willingly, repeated exposure to long jumps along the network pushed Stamets' mind to the limits, and warped Stamets' perception of reality.

Genetic engineering was outlawed by the United Federation of Planets following Star Trek 's Eugenics Wars, but the USS Discovery's spore drive was one of Starfleet's only advantages in the Klingon War, so the Federation gave Stamets a wartime pass for tampering with his own DNA.

Why Commander Stamets’ Tardigrade DNA Lets Him Live Outside Of Time

Reality is all gooey in the mycelial network..

Star Trek: Discovery 's Commander Paul Stamets is no longer bound by the constraints of time, thanks to the tardigrade DNA that lets Stamets navigate the USS Discovery through the mycelial network, which exists outside normal space-time. Because Stamets' tardigrade DNA biologically connects Stamets to the mycelial network, Stamets' own perception of time and space is more aligned with the quantum nature of the mycelial plane. Paul Stamets is aware when something isn't right with time; when Discovery is caught in a time loop in Star Trek: Discovery season 1, episode 7, "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad", Stamets is the only person who can break it.

Stamets' ability to exist outside of time made him crucial to solving Star Trek: Discovery season 5, episode 4, "Face the Strange's" time loops.

Commander Stamets' connection to the mycelial network can go even further, altering Stamets' relationship with space-time. When repeated jumps push the USS Discovery closer to Star Trek 's Mirror Universe , Stamets confuses the two timelines and becomes entangled with Mirror Stamets' memories. Stamets' memory of his husband, Dr. Hugh Culber (Wilson Cruz), exists physically within the mycelial network after Culber's Discovery season 1 death, allowing Paul to resurrect Hugh in Star Trek: Discovery season 2. Once just a navigational necessity on Star Trek: Discovery, Commander Paul Stamets' tardigrade DNA makes Stamets naturally aware of the flow of time and space, and able to spot abnormalities within it.

Star Trek: Discovery is streaming on Paramount+.

Star Trek: Discovery

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Star Trek: Discovery - Burnham and Rayner vs The Emerald Chain

Black Alert!

SPOILER WARNING: This clip contains spoilers for Star Trek: Discovery Season 5's "Face the Strange"!

In this clip from Star Trek: Discovery 's Season 5 episode, "Face the Strange," Captain Burnham and Rayner are cycling through time loops and find themselves facing the Emerald Chain.

Star Trek: Discovery Seasons 1-4 are streaming exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S., the UK, Canada, Switzerland, South Korea, Latin America, Germany, France, Italy, Australia and Austria. Seasons 2 and 3 also are available on the Pluto TV “Star Trek” channel in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. The series streams on Super Drama in Japan, TVNZ in New Zealand, and SkyShowtime in Spain, Portugal, Poland, The Nordics, The Netherlands, and Central and Eastern Europe and also airs on Cosmote TV in Greece. The series is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.

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This Week’s Star Trek: Discovery Is a Time-Hopping Marvel

“Face the Strange” is a deceptively simple episode on the surface, and a bold move for a show on its last lap: instead of accelerating the chase between Discovery and Moll and L’ak as they hunt for more clues to the Progenitor tech, it almost literally slams the brakes on everything to deliver a wonderful little character piece, not just for Michael Burnham, but to give time to explore Discovery’s crew, and even its newcomer in Commander Rayner, who is still struggling to adapt to Discovery’s more personable approach to hierarchy. After leaving Trill with Adira unknowingly tagged by Moll, the Discovery heads to coordinates where it expects to find the next piece of the puzzle, only to find… nothing. But what Adira was tagged with, it turns out, wasn’t a tracking device, but a “Time Bug,” a piece of Krenim technology held over from the Temporal Cold War (another great bit of using Discovery’s handling of time, in this case the passage of it, for a fun Voyager/Enterprise nod!). The Time Bug infiltrates Discovery’s systems, and locks them down—not by disabling the ship’s systems, but by trapping them in a spiraling series of time loops.

Burnham and Rayner—who were busy arguing in the ready room over Rayner’s abrasive mood—are partially unaffected by the bug’s looping, having attempted to beam back to the bridge at the precise moment it activated. While they’re caught in the same looping, being shunted backward and forward in Discovery’s timeline, they remain aware between each loop that something is wrong—and that if they don’t put aside their differences and disable the bug, Discovery will be shut down while Moll and L’ak solve the clues to the Progenitor tech and doom the galaxy (to the Breen, of all people, we learn in one of the loops!).

This is already a really fun idea, because as we previously said—Discovery knows how to do a killer time loop story already, and has known how to do that for a very long time. But what crucially sets “Face the Strange” apart from “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad” (god bless the show also toned down its love of long episode titles) is a context that the episode itself ultimately plays with: one of these episodes came just seven stories into the show’s existence. The other is the 59th, and in the time between them Discovery has done so much, changed so much, and developed in its own confidence, that it can use a similar structure and format like this again not to say “hey, look Star Trek fans, we can use the same tropes as the shows you loved,” but to instead say “hey, how do we use this trope to make a Discovery story?”

The answer is in both its characters—of course, particularly Michael—but also in the masterful way “Face the Strange” uses the concept of time looping to revisit a bunch of key moments from Discovery’s metatextual past, giving Burnham, who went through it all, and Rayner, as the newcomer, (and eventually Stamets, who thanks to the spore drive tardigrade DNA, can’t be affected by time loops—a delightfully clever nod back to “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad”!) a chance to see just how far this crew has come through and how much it’s changed them all along the way. Through Michael and Rayner’s eyes as they puzzle out the pattern of each loop, and what they need to do to stop the bug, we get to go through so much of Discovery’s past—from it being built in drydock in San Francisco, to the moment it jumped to the 32nd century, to fighting off the Emerald Chain in season three, and, most crucially, climaxing back in the early days of season one when Michael was still just a downtrodden turncoat barely given a second chance by Starfleet after the start of the Federation-Klingon war. And with that perspective, and the carried awareness from loop to loop, both Michael and Rayner alike come to understand what Discovery has been through all the better.

It’s an episode that’s perfect for a final season—standalone enough that it is also simply just a great time loop scenario, but also vitally informed by Discovery’s history over the last four seasons to deliver a really touching moment of acknowledgement for the series as it looks back on how far it’s come. It’s fun seeing the old blue metallic uniforms again, or seeing Stamets realizing that a) he’s a little worried he can quickly empty engineering of officers with a totally fake spore breach warning, or b) he used to be able to do that even quicker by being a massive asshole. It’s just as fun to see Rayner, who’s still resistant to connect to Discovery’s crew, soften as he sees everything they went through to get to where they are now, and slowly but surely use the things he’s picked up about them to his advantage. It’s both extremely fun and extremely good that, in the last time loop set during Discovery season one, we not just get to see how cold and distant the bridge crew were back then, but that Discovery finally does justice to its former cyborg crewmate, Airiam (the returning Hannah Cheesman), making her belief in Michael key to saving the day—three seasons in the making, but a far more fitting farewell to the character after her clunkily unceremonious death in season two.

But above all, “Face the Strange” is Michael’s episode, and her journey is the one examined most of all. Because if you’re going to narratively go back in time to Discovery’s first season, well, as much as she doesn’t want to, you’re going to have Present Michael face Past Michael. Sonequa Martin-Green plays the encounter to perfection: two determinedly stubborn women with things they still want to prove to both themselves and the world, pushed in each other’s faces. That it becomes a knock-down mirror match punch-up is deeply funny—fitting the aggression if Discovery’s original wartime setting while also just making it the inevitable outcome of putting two unstoppable forces in each other’s way. But Martin-Green sells just how much of a difference there is between Michael’s past and her presence in these moments with incredible charm and subtlety. The show really hammers home that while there are still things about Michael that are still Michael, the young woman petrified that she had no place aboard a starship in season one and the undeniably heroic captain of season five represent a remarkable journey the character has been on.

Crucially, however, while Burnham vs Burnham ends with her current self Vulcan neck-pinching her past self, the actual moment the day is saved is done not by Michael, but Rayner, finally learning the keys to understanding what makes the Discovery crew tick. After Past-Michael wakes up and, being so eager to prove her worth, takes the Rayner and future-Stamets on at phaser-point in Engineering as they prepare to finally destroy the Time Bug, it’s Rayner who steps in to get her to back down, making a connection—by leaning on the things Michael had told him about herself in their argument at the start of the episode—and getting Michael to see that one day she’s going to prove herself on a long, painful, but rewarding path ahead of her… if only she stops being so stubborn for a damn second and let them save the future. Even if she doesn’t remember it, it’s the exact perfect advice season one Michael needs—advice she’ll learn the hard way through Lorca’s betrayal. And in having it passed onto her from Rayner, a man who Michael herself has begun to help grow and connect to others again after all his own frustrations and hurts, really hits home just how far she’s come.

“Face the Strange” is an episode Discovery could only pull off once, as its journey comes to an end—and it does so almost perfectly, an incredibly compelling use of a time-and-tested Trek format to examine the metatextual and textual journey it’s been on these last seven years. While there’s still more adventures to go on just yet—with the Time Bug stopped, the race between Discovery and Moll and L’ak is now tighter than ever—this was a great chance to take a moment and have its heroes and the show alike take stock of how much it’s grown: and how ready it is to bid farewell.

Eruption of mega-magnetic star lights up nearby galaxy

While ESA's satellite INTEGRAL was observing the sky, it spotted a burst of gamma-rays -- high-energy photons -- coming from the nearby galaxy M82. Only a few hours later, ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray space telescope searched for an afterglow from the explosion but found none. An international team, including researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), realised that the burst must have been an extra-galactic flare from a magnetar, a young neutron star with an exceptionally strong magnetic field. The discovery is published in the journal Nature .

On 15 November 2023, ESA's satellite INTEGRAL spotted a sudden explosion from a rare object. For only a tenth of a second, a short burst of energetic gamma-rays appeared in the sky. "The satellite data were received in the INTEGRAL Science Data Centre (ISDC), based on the Ecogia site of the UNIGE Astronomy Department, from where a gamma-ray burst alert was sent out to astronomers worldwide, only 13 seconds after its detection," explains Carlo Ferrigno, senior research associate in the Astronomy Department at UNIGE Faculty of Science, PI of the ISDC and co-author of the publication.

The IBAS (Integral Burst Alert System) software gave an automatic localisation coinciding with the galaxy M82, 12 million light-years away. This alert system was developed and is operated by scientists and engineers from the UNIGE in collaboration with international colleagues.

A curious signal from a nearby galaxy?

"We immediately realised that this was a special alert. Gamma-ray bursts come from far-away and anywhere in the sky, but this burst came from a bright nearby galaxy," explains Sandro Mereghetti of the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF-IASF) in Milan, Italy, lead author of the publication and contributor of IBAS. The team immediately requested ESA's XMM-Newton space telescope to perform a follow-up observation of the burst's location as soon as possible. If this had been a short gamma-ray burst, caused by two colliding neutron stars, the collision would have created gravitational waves and have an afterglow in X-rays and visible light.

However, XMM-Newton's observations only showed the hot gas and stars in the galaxy. Using ground-based optical telescopes, including the Italian Telescopio Nazionale Galileo and the French Observatoire de Haute-Provence, they also looked for a signal in visible light, starting only a few hours after the explosion, but again did not find anything. With no signal in X-rays and visible light, and no gravitational waves measured by detectors on Earth (LIGO/VIRGO/KAGRA), the most certain explanation is that the signal came from a magnetar.

Magnetars: mega-magnetic stars, recently dead

"When stars more massive than eight times the Sun die, they explode in a supernova that leaves a black hole or neutron star behind. Neutron stars are very compact stellar remnants with more than the mass of the Sun packed into a sphere with the size of the Canton of Geneva. They rotate quickly and have strong magnetic fields." explains Volodymyr Savchenko, senior research associate in the Astronomy Department at UNIGE Faculty of Science, and co-author of the publication. Some young neutron stars have extra strong magnetic fields, more than 10,000 times that of typical neutron stars. These are called magnetars. They emit energy away in flares, and occasionally these flares are gigantic.

However, in the past 50 years of gamma-ray observations, only three giant flares have been identified as coming from magnetars in our galaxy. These outbursts are very strong: one that was detected in December 2004, came from 30,000 light-years from us but was still powerful enough to affect the upper layers of Earth's atmosphere, like the Solar flares, coming from much closer to us, do.

The flare detected by INTEGRAL is the first firm confirmation of a magnetar flare outside of the Milky Way. M82 is a bright galaxy where star formation takes place. In these regions, massive stars are born, live short turbulent lives and leave behind a neutron star. "The discovery of a magnetar in this region confirms that magnetars are likely young neutron stars," adds Volodymyr Savchenko. The search for more magnetars will continue in other extra-galactic star-forming regions, to?understand these extraordinary astronomical objects. If astronomers can find many more, they can start to understand how often these flares happen and how neutron stars lose energy in the process.

INTEGRAL, a key instrument in a race against time

Outbursts of such short duration can only be captured serendipitously when an observatory is already pointing in the right direction. This makes INTEGRAL with its large field of view, more than 3000 times greater than the sky area covered by the Moon, so important for these detections.

Carlo Ferrigno explains: "Our automatic data processing system is highly reliable and enables us to alert the community immediately." When unexpected observations like this are picked up, INTEGRAL and XMM-Newton can be flexible in their schedules, which is essential in time-crucial discoveries. In this case, had the observations been performed even just a day later, there would not have been such strong proof that this was indeed a magnetar and not a gamma-ray burst.

• Black Holes
• Space Telescopes
• Astrophysics
• Solar Flare
• Cosmic Rays
• Gamma ray burst
• European Space Agency
• Solar flare
• Compton Gamma Ray Observatory
• Globular cluster
• Spitzer space telescope
• Space observatory

Story Source:

Materials provided by Université de Genève . Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Related Multimedia :

• Artist's impression of a magnetar

Journal Reference :

• Mereghetti, S., Rigoselli, M., Salvaterra, R. et al. A magnetar giant flare in the nearby starburst galaxy M82 . Nature , 2024 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07285-4

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