“Into the Forest” is episode nine of season one of Star Trek: Discovery and the mid-season finale.
In the previous episode, “Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum”, the Pahvans, rather than modifying their transmitter to expose the Klingons, instead summoned the latter, presumably thinking that getting the Klingons and Federation together and talking would end the conflict. The Ship of the Dead is now incoming.
Admiral Terral is ordering Captain Lorca to retreat. Starfleet won’t risk the Discovery. Lorca states that the incoming Ship of the Dead can destroy the entire planet, as the Pahvans, from the point of view of the Klingons, have declared themselves enemies. Terral tells the captain that his mission has failed and that Federation scientists, including those on Discovery, will try to crack the secrets of the invisibility shield from within Federation territory. Lorca isn’t happy about leaving a peaceful species to be annihilated. Terral tells him the logic of the situation is clear; Discovery is to jump to Starbase 46 immediately.
On the bridge, Saru says the Pahvans are even more vulnerable than the admiral believes. Lorca orders a course set to the starbase. Using warp, not the spore drive. It will take 3 hours to get there. That gives them 3 hours, perhaps less, to find a solution to the cloaking shield. They need a reasonable explanation for Starfleet as to why they are not using the spore drive, the captain says, speaking to Stamets. Perhaps there’s trouble with his interface upgrade. Stamets should get a full examination immediately; Lorca wants Dr Culber to run every test, as they need a data trail. Stamets is less happy about that, because there is something wrong, and a full examination will likely reveal that.
The Klingons cloak emits a massive gravitational field that bends light and other radiation around the ship. There are small imperfections in the field, and the relationship between them will expose the position of any invisible ship. Unfortunately, detecting the imperfections requires placing sensors on the ship. By physically beaming over. Discovery can be used as bait to draw the Ship of the Dead away from Pahvo. Shields and weapons are offline when a ship is cloaked, so it will need to decloak to attack. There’s a brief time when they could beam aboard. Worse, it will take days to collect enough data. However, they do have the spore drive.
Lorca heads to sickbay and finds out that yes, there is something wrong with Stamets. What Lorca wants Stamets to do is perform 133 microjumps so they can gather enough data/ The Klingons will destroy everything and they can’t stop them without the spore drive, without Stamets.
Stamets says that is using the spore drive in ways never considered before. The captain says he is more than a scientist, though, for he could have stayed in a lab. He’s an explorer and Lorca has been collecting data from the jumps. Which appear to show connections to alternative parallel universes through the mycelial network. With more jumps, they could get more information and discover the pattern and possibly get to those other universes.
Lorca wants Tyler to take a boarding party of himself and one other. Tyler wants Burnham. The captain objects but Burnham argues that this has no logic to it and explains why. Tilly is in engineering with Stamets when Culber comes in. He wants to take precautions. Tilly assumes that Stamets told Culber about the side effects, and puts her foot in it.
A cloaked ship is detected entering Pahvo orbit and the Discovery uses the spore drive to jump back. Kol is told about this and tells his crew to prepare to drop their cloak and fire. They will storm the Discovery, take their weapon and destroy Pahvo.
Burnham and Tyler are preparing to beam aboard. They arrive and place the first sensor with no problems. Then Burnham detects a human lifesign, not far from the bridge. They head their first and find Admiral Cornwell, alive but she can’t move her legs. L’Rell is there as well and Tyler is affected badly, as her presence brings back memories of torture and other things. Burnham stuns L’Rell and Tyler snaps out of it to a degree, but the admiral says he’s in shock from PTSD. Burnham will have to make her way to the bridge herself.
Discovery is flying rings around the Klingon vessel until Burnham places the second sensor. With both placed, Discovery starts using the spore drive to jump all around the Klingon ship, wreaking havoc so that they will have to cloak. Once the ship is cloaked, they can start gathering data.
This is many, many jumps and it’s wearing on Stamets to say the least. Lorca orders Culber to keep going and keep Stamets alive. Admiral Cornwell is trying to talk Tyler out of his shock.
Not exactly a cliff-hanger ending but new threads and new problems for the next episode, “Despite Yourself”.