Introduction

“Through the Valley of Shadows” is the 12th episode of season 02 of the American television series Star Trek: Discovery, which is set roughly a decade before the events of the original Star Trek series and follows the crew of the USS Discovery as they investigate seven mysterious signals.

The season was produced by CBS Television Studios in association with Secret Hideout and Roddenberry Entertainment, with Alex Kurtzman serving as showrunner.

Sonequa Martin-Green stars as Michael Burnham, along with the returning Doug Jones, Anthony Rapp, Mary Wiseman, and Shazad Latif; they are joined by former recurring guest star Wilson Cruz as well as Anson Mount as original Star Trek captain Christopher Pike. Ethan Peck recurs as another original series character, Spock. These characters and their starship, the USS Enterprise, were included as part of the series’ attempt to explain its connections to the larger Star Trek franchise.

The season was officially ordered in October 2017, and filming took place in Toronto, Canada, from April to December 2018. Gretchen J. Berg and Aaron Harberts, the first season’s showrunners, returned for the second but were fired during production; co-creator Kurtzman replaced them.

The 14-episode season was released from 17 January to 18 April 2019, on CBS All Access. A third season was ordered in February 2019.

Outline

A new signal appears over Boreth, a place sacred to Klingons, where a Klingon monastery is located and where monks guard time crystals.

Tyler and L’Rell left their son to be raised by these monks.

Pike visits the monastery to retrieve a time crystal and finds the son is now a fully grown adult named Tenavik. Tenavik explains that life on Boreth is affected by the crystals and that if Pike takes one he will not be able to change the future that it shows him.

Pike sees a future where he is severely disabled in an accident, but chooses to take the crystal to serve the greater good.

Meanwhile, Burnham and Spock investigate a Section 31 ship that had checked in ten minutes later than usual, and find all of the crew dead except for one, Kamran Gant, an old colleague of Burnham who has been possessed by Control and attempts to take over Burnham.

Spock is able to stop Control with magnetism and they escape back to Discovery.

The Section 31 fleet soon arrives, forcing Pike to order Discovery be destroyed to keep the sphere data away from Control.

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Production & Filming Details

• Director(s): Douglas Aarniokoski.
• Writer(s): Bo Yeon Kim and Erika Lippoldt.
• Release Date: 04 April 2019.
• Running Time: 50 minutes.
• Country: US.
• Language: English.