Discovery enters the hyperfield to communicate with 10-C.
Tropes:
- Awesomeness by Analysis: The captive Reno is able to deduce the calculations of Tarka's plan just by looking at them from a distance.
- Cathartic Scream: Saru and Burnham cut loose with a couple as stress relief.
- Crazy-Prepared: Reno managed to stash a backup communicator when she caught Tarka sneaking around engineering, just in case she was captured.
- First-Contact Math: 10-C develop a method of communication using patterns of light to convey mathematical equations and their pheromones to convey intent. Once the crew figure out how the two sets interact, they're able to build a device to communicate back.
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: 10-C create a replica of Discovery's bridge as a place to talk.
- Heel–Face Turn: Any willingness that Book had about wanting to stop the DMA goes out the window when he learns that Tarka's plan will inevitably put Discovery, the 10-C, Earth, and Ni'var at far greater a risk than with the DMA being functional.
- It's All About Me: Tarka's plan to disable the DMA will likely collapse the hyperfield and kill everyone within, while causing the DMA heading toward Earth to leave behind a destructive anomaly nearly as dangerous. Tarka rationalizes that everyone will have time to escape and possibly fix the problem, but it's clear his only real concern is that he gets the DMA's power source.
- I've Come Too Far: Tarka fully commits towards turning off the DMA, no matter how dangerous it will be to everyone else, since he's so close to getting the power source.
- Legacy Character: Book reveals that he is the fifth in a line of couriers to be known as "Cleveland Booker".
- MacGyvering: Reno uses some chewed licorice to fix a communicator.
- My God, What Have I Done?: When it's conveyed to them that the DMA is considered terrifying, 10-C express great sadness.
- Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: For all of Tarka's talk about wanting to stop the DMA, it's clear that he has no care about the effects of shutting it down, or how much damage it will cause in the process (to either Earth, Ni'var, Discovery, or the 10-C), so long as he gets what he wants.
- Obliviously Evil: Confirmed here. 10-C recognize that an isolytic weapon was used to disable the DMA, but they don't understand why. When the DMA is likened to terror, they're horrified.
- Properly Paranoid: Tarka installed defense systems on Book's ship just in case things broke down between them. When Book objects to Tarka's plan to take out the DMA upon learning it will cause a lot more damage than intended, his attempts at stoping him are thwarted by Tarka's shields. It even manages to reflect phaser blasts!
- Spanner in the Works: The diplomatic team come close to convincing 10-C to disable the DMA, but Tarka's escape from the containment orb immediately sours talks.
- Shown Their Work: Decoding the language is in fact grounded in real-world math and science; for example, Burnham likens the math-based language the delegation decodes to the real-world Lincos, a type of constructed language posited in 1960.
- Starfish Alien: These have to be some of the downright weirdest creatures that have ever existed in this franchise, beings whose language the universal translator has no idea how to handle. Their technology is also far beyond anything that the Federation and Starfleet has access to, even in the super-advanced 32nd century.
- You Are Too Late: Tarka's sabotage is uncovered, but not before he's implemented his plan to escape the orb.
