“Labyrinths” clocks in at a little over an hour in length, and while it isn’t notably longer than other episodes this season, those few extra minutes give this week’s story a leisurely feel, even when the action is intense. Given the subject and also the setting, this isn’t a bad thing, however; even when you’re in a hurry, rushing through a library would feel wrong.
 
Before heading into the Badlands for the next and final clue, Discovery hails the Archive and is greeted by someone named Hy’Rell (Elena Juatco), who is so precise in her greeting that I thought at first she might be a holorecording of a docent. She’s not — she’s very real and she’s great — and she’s more than happy to welcome Captain Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and the rest of Discovery to the Archive, but not before she rattles off a few more legal disclaimers. The Eternal Gallery and Archive is not responsible for any death or dismemberment which may occur while traveling through the Badlands, thank you for visiting.
 
It’s a rough trip and Hy’Rell’s “helpful” attempts to provide directions aren’t actually all that helpful at all, but Discovery gets there in one piece. The Archive is a huge Emerald-City-like structure floating in an oasis of calm — though maybe Azure City is more like it given the Cherenkov radiation that bathes the whole region in a blue glow.
 
Burnham and Book (David Ajala) beam over to the Archive; while the captain wants to take a look at Dr. Derex’s manuscript, while Book follows a request from Hy’Rell to examine a rare Kwejian artifact in their collection.
 

I want to be clear that I love the Archive — as a concept, as a physical space, as a place to work and study and just be. I want to visit the Archive, I want to work at the Archive, I want six seasons and a movie about the Archive. That said, I do have a question. This place has been around for a thousand years or more and serves half the galaxy, so why is it exclusively filled with regular books?

Every item on the shelves looks like something produced by western Earth bookbinding techniques. Maybe the section our characters are walking through is the Earth section, but even so where are the clay tablets and the scrolls and the accordion bindings? Why does a Betazoid manuscript from the 24th century use the same binding techniques and have the same physical appearance as something created at a medieval European scriptorium?

I understand that all else aside, Discovery is a television show that needs to use visual language to quickly communicate concepts to its viewers, all of whom reside on Earth (or very near Earth, it’s possible astronauts aboard the ISS are watching Discovery, I don’t know). So on that level I get why the library is filled with regular old bound folios — plus, of course, it was filmed at a real library at the University of Toronto (more about that below).

But this is also Star Trek, and if there’s one thing Star Trek loves to do it’s to take everyday objects and make them look silly and futuristic — Burnham’s 23rd century copy of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, for example, had noticeably translucent binding. Sometimes those efforts can result in props and art direction that end up being a little distracting, but in this case it was the lack of them that I found to be so.

Turn it up. I love that Star Trek portrays a future where physical books are still read and published and valued, but I wanted to see a little more. Show me what a Cytherian bookshelf would look like. Maybe they store all their soup recipes as holographic text floating in transparent cubes or something.

As Burnham begins her examination of “The Labyrinths of the Mind”, Hy’Rell leads Book to a different reading room to take a look at the Kwejian artifact. It’s a carved wooden box containing two cuttings of his homeworld’s Worldroot, the expansive tree system that once encompassed the entire planet. As it is essentially the last physical remnant of Kwejian, the planet and its culture, and as Book is one of the last remaining Kwejian people, Hy’Rell and the Archive as a whole offer the artifact to Book, and he gratefully accepts.

Hy’Rell’s characterization leading up to this moment has walked such a fine line — bubbly and customer service-y and unconcerned about urgency or danger — between interesting and potentially annoying, but between the writing and the performance I actually think they nailed it. She is peculiar in a way that seems realistic for someone who’s lived their whole life as sort of a wizardy space monk, but without going to the expected stereotypes of quiet sage or uptight librarian.

Hers is a temperament we don’t see much on Discovery and as such it immediately stands out; it’s nice to meet a new character and not immediately know what character trope they’re going to fill. Stopping to correct her own joke about throwing the Breen in the dungeon — “It’s really more of an oubliette” — and being the only person who even gets that it’s a joke in the first place? Love it.

Over in her reading room, Burnham finds an inscribed metal card tucked into the binding of the manuscript. Touching the card knocks Burnham out via a nucleonic beam (I love Star Trek) that puts her in a sort of mind palace where she must pass a test in order to find the next clue. She finds herself in a distorted, almost kaleidoscopic version of the Archive, and the caretaker of this mindscape is a program that, for Burnham, has taken the face of Book. He’ll answer Burnham’s questions – but not too many – and he’ll tell her if she’s passed the test but not what that test is.

I enjoyed David Ajala as the cool, unflappable proctor of Derex’s test. Unlike Wilson Cruz’s portrayal of Jinaal earlier this season, this performance is still similar enough to the real Book that it doesn’t feel like we’re seeing an entirely different character, but an alternate take on him. This Book is calmer but also sassier in a way, not rude by any means but also not as concerned about being diplomatic in how he speaks with Burnham. I wonder how much of the proctor’s personality is the program itself, and how much is brought by the person generating it; how much of this Book is created by Michael’s perceptions of the real one?

Burnham tries a few different tactics with the test, first thinking that the clue will be hidden in the history section of the library because learning from past mistakes is how one avoids repeating them. No dice though. She then takes the “labyrinth” part if the clue literally and suddenly the Archive expands itself out into the maze that it’s always been. With the help of some sand to track her path, Burnham methodically and intellectually tackles this too. And again she fails. Or, not so much fails but simply succeeds at the wrong task.

The light in her mind palace is fading, and she begins to understand that she may die in here, stuck in her own mind, if she can’t figure out what the real test is. Outside in the real world, the Breen are on their way — and Rayner (Callum Keith Rennie) and Culber (Wilson Cruz), who’d beamed over to the Archive after Burnham fell unconscious, can only afford to give her five more minutes before waking her up.

Aboard the Breen dreadnought, Primarch Ruhn (Tony Nappo) has been taking full theatrical advantage of having a dead scion at his disposal, making speeches and acting like he’s already got the imperial throne in the bag. And Moll (Eve Harlow) has made a few speeches of her own, to Ruhn’s surprise and disgust, attempting to remind the gathered crowd that the scion — her beloved L’ak — can do more for their cause alive than dead. It appears that spending just this small amount of time around Ruhn has made her realize how truly bloodthirsty and out for himself this guy is, which doesn’t bode well for her but also doesn’t bode well for the currently-dead-but-hopefully-not-for-long L’ak.

When Ruhn threatens to destroy the Archive if they don’t hand over the clue, Moll looks quietly horrified, which provides some new insight into a character who up until now has projected a tough exterior and, aside from when she was with L’ak, not much else. We see this again later when Ruhn threatens to destroy Discovery.

The Breen manage to tunnel through the Archive’s shields and get a few troops aboard, but Rayner and Book quickly dispatch with them and things honestly seem pretty okay for a Breen showdown, as far as these things go.

In Burnham’s mind, the Archive has gone completely dark, only the lamps on a single table lit. Burnham, frustrated with the puzzle (and with herself) and sad that she’s about to fail the mission, has a spark of realization that this clue which was hidden by a Betazoid might require some emotional reflection to find. So she psychoanalyzes herself, again methodically and intellectually, while “Book” looks on, endlessly patient but also a little bored.

It’s not until she begins to really look at her own fears — and how they drive her to pull away from things (and from Book), and make her feel small and weak and inadequate — that she earns the clue. The program had to know that whoever came looking for it would use the technology that it led to with good intentions. Honesty and clarity about one’s weaknesses was the test, both question and answer.

Now that everyone’s awake and back aboard Discovery, and with the puzzle finally complete, it seems that the best way to deal with the Breen is to see what the puzzle says and then simply hand it over. The puzzle displays a holographic map of star systems that Tilly (Mary Wiseman) is able to quickly decipher, giving Discovery a destination for a quick escape jump that’s configured to make it appear as if they’ve been destroyed, and boy they nearly are!

Unfortunately, the jump doesn’t quite land them on target and Discovery needs some serious repairs, so their head start might not end up being quite as big as it could have been.

OBSERVATION LOUNGE

• With her long pale hair and contact lenses, Hy’Rell appears to be an Efrosian, an alien race seen in Star Trek IV aboard the USS Saratoga, and more notably as Star Trek VI’s Federation President.
• One of the titles checked out by Marina Derex was “The Comprehensive Guide to Talaxian Hairstyles”, which I have to assume is only about three pages long as there’s not a whole lot of variety there.
• For “Labryinths,” Discovery filmed on location at the new rare books section of the University of Toronto’s Robarts Libary — with the help of some digital set extensions to fill out the massive Archive.

The University of Toronto has a new addition to its Robarts Library called Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library pic.twitter.com/8dqoCFW6Tz

— Timothy Peel (@timothypeel1) May 16, 2024

• The Betazoid mindscape was zapped into Burnham’s mind using a nucleonic beam, the same technology which sent Captain Picard into his life on Kataan in “The Inner Light.”
• The holographic star map from the completed puzzle appears to include a pulsar map similar to the one first engraved on the Pioneer 10 plaque (and then repeated on Pioneer 11 and the Voyager Golden Records) which uses very precise information on pulsar rotation speeds and relative distances to allow the user to triangulate a specific point in space.
• Discovery actor Patrick Kwok-Choon (Commander Rhys) shared on social media today that while he was sitting in the command chair aboard Discovery playing 32nd century make-believe, his wife was in labor with their first child.

Captain's log, Episode 508: Labyrinths. While I commanded the ship, my wife was bravely in labor back home! A day of dual adventures I'll never forget.🖖❤️🐣 #startrek #startrekdiscovery pic.twitter.com/cBJmfDrnHA

— Patrick Kwok-Choon (@KWOK_ROCK) May 16, 2024

• Jett Reno mentions a visit to the party-loving planet Hysperia, which just happens to be the Ren Faire-like homeworld of one Andy Billups of the USS Cerritos.
• Looks like Discovery’s last stop-off for repairs involved refilling the bridge’s propane tanks. It was like Truckasaurus back there with those huge open flames shooting around while they made their way through the Badlands! Whatever subsystem that is could maybe use a redesign.
• How cool was that new visual effect shot of Discovery spore jumping out of their diversionary explosion?!

Back at the Archive, Ruhn shows just how ruthless he is and decides to destroy it anyway — regardless of the oath he’d sworn not to. Moll can’t just stand by for this and tries to foment a quick mutiny, killing Ruhn in the process. She seems fully aware that she might have pushed things too far this time, but her reminders about the scion and the fact that Ruhn didn’t care about any of them anyway are enough to get the ship on her side. That was a close one.

It makes complete sense that despite her bravado, Moll wouldn’t actually be supportive of the man who made L’ak’s life miserable and, at least indirectly, led to his death. But her naked concern for the wellbeing of the Archive and the apparent destruction of Discovery is something I wasn’t expecting. Up ‘til now she’s seemed perfectly comfortable with leaving as many bodies in her wake as necessary to achieve her goals. But now? It appears that maybe Moll has started to grow a conscience. She’s still desperate, but no longer quite so indifferent.

Next week we head into the final stretch. Where exactly that’ll take us we don’t know, but the Progenitor’s technology will, hopefully, still be there waiting when Discovery gets there.

Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 continues on Paramount+ May 23 with “Lagrange Point,” followed the next day on SkyShowtime in other regions.