For episode 33 of The Star Trek Discovery Podcast, Ruthie and I discuss Season 2 Episode 8 of Star Trek: Discovery, which is titled, If Memory Serves. This episode was written by Dan Dworkin & Jay Beattie, and it was directed by TJ Scott.

We begin the podcast with feedback from the previous episode. We get into this episode at 13 minutes 41 seconds.

We have been blessed yet again with pics chosen by Fred from The Netherlands, including the cover image. We will show them throughout this blog post. To that end, SPOILER ALERT! If you haven't watched If Memory Serves, you may want to stop reading here!

In an unprecedented move, that many people say was brilliant, our "Previously on…" segment at the start of the show had something we have never seen before. It was "Previously on" from another Star Trek show! In this case, of course, it was "Previously on Star Trek". We saw some classic images from the first pilot episode of Star Trek, titled, "The Cage", which was also featured in the two-part TOS episode, "The Menagerie".

For me, this was very unexpected but very welcomed. It also signaled something I already knew but it was good to have the evidence: This show takes place in the same prime timeline as The Original Series, TNG and all the rest of the series that followed. It's just a visual and technological update to bring it to a 2019 standard, but it follows the same story canon as all the other shows. The success or failure of what the producers did was discussed at length. I loved it, understood what it meant, and was so happy to see them do this. Ruthie, on the other hand, was confused by it, and she talks about why at length during the episode.

When Burnham and Spock arrive in the Talos system, they encounter a black hole, or is it? Of course, it's just a projection from the Talosians. Spock comes out of his state to take control of the shuttlecraft.

When they land on Talos IV, they are greeted by Vina, the same woman Pike and the Enterprise encounter there a few years before.

When they were on Talos IV, the connection Pike had with Vina, though the Talosians tried to force them to mate in captivity, was very real. The powers they have to project communication across light years is quite impressive. I thought it was cool that they could do this and go undetected by Section 31.

The Talosians say that Spock's mental breakdown happens because he is experiencing time as a fluid rather than a linear construct. It wasn't very obvious how the Talosians fixed Spock in this episode. Sure, they showed him his visions, his escape and how he didn't kill the personnel on Starbase 5, but what did they do exactly? That much is unclear. We both had some problems with what they actually did to him, but Ruthie had a bigger issue with it than I did.

As payment, the Talosians want to experience the rift between Spock and Burnham that occurred in their childhood that we had heard about all season long. Some thought that the scene that ended in Burnham calling Spock a "half-breed" a disappointment, but we both thought that it was just the cherry on top. The things she said to Spock were hurtful, but they also made him realize that his emotions could cause damage, and they were the cataly