“Light and Shadows” is the 7th episode of the 2nd season of the TV show “Star Trek: Discovery” and follows “The Sounds of Thunder“.

Note. This article contains spoilers about “Light and Shadows”.

The USS Discovery is still orbiting planet Kaminar when a time rift pops up with consequent distortions. While Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) begins a close investigation, Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) returns to Vulcan in the hopes of finding new information on Spock.

Spock finally arrived! One of the fundamental characters of the whole Star Trek saga remained in the background in the first part of the second season of “Star Trek: Discovery”, the center of attention without ever appearing. The story centered around him was really stretching too far so it’s a relief that finally Spock (Ethan Peck) appeared.

It’s appropriate that Spock appeared in an episode based more than ever on the characters and their interactions. There’s the whole family of Sarek (James Frain) and there’s Section 31 and this offers a number of possibilities to various characters to interact to show new facets of their personality and their relationships.

The complexity of relationships within Sarek’s family is hardly a surprise but so far Amanda Grayson (Mia Kirshner) had appeared in different episodes than her husband in the course of his own independent efforts to find Spock. In “Light and Shadows” the family reunion helps to show the relationship between husband and wife.

Perhaps the relationships within Section 31 are even more complex or at least in this episode Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) seems to have her personal agenda that doesn’t match Captain Leland’s (Alan van Sprang). At this point it’s not clear whether the developments will be shown in this show or in the recently announced spinoff.

The investigation about the so-called Red Angel in “Light and Shadows” is limited to a subplot in some ways predictable, especially in the vision of the future that Captain Christopher Pike has at the beginning of his approach to the time rift, used to give him some personal moment in his flight together with Ash Tyler (Shazad Latif). In the end, luckily there was also some surprise that will be reprised in the next episodes.

In the end, “Light and Shadows” is useful not only to finally have Spock appear but also to give a precise direction to his story to boldly go where it all began over 50 years ago. It’s a very short episode considering all that has happened, especially in a season in which the episodes so far were often longer than 50 minutes but the pace was really fast. I hope it’s not yet another trick to prevent the audience from having the time to reflect on the developments regarding Spock and his mental state to which they added a kind of dyslexia. The story-arc with the intertwinements between Spock and the Red Angel has become really complex, they will have to handle it well to avoid a trivial and disappointing resolution.