He validates her concerns and offers a suggestion. Saru joins Burnham in her ready room, and she talks through her decision with Saru. Gray asks Culber to remove a mole from his hand, explaining that during his first transition, he had other things on his mind but wants to make this body perfect. Gray admits to feeling guilty for his happiness, but Culber explains that life must continue, even in the face of such horrific devastation. Culber all crowd around the body Culber has constructed for Gray. He’ll go whether she wants him to do so or not.

Book asks to speak with Burnham privately and informs her that as he isn’t a member of Starfleet, he’s not bound by her decision. Book suggests taking his ship into the accretion cloud to collect the data, and Burnham, worried about Book’s mental state objects. However, while the anomaly still presents as a black hole, the gravitational Doppler shift is more powerful than it should be, which renders their initial plan for data acquisition unworkable. Having ascertained that the anomaly should appear in the Riscot system next, Discovery jumps into place in order to scan it for more information. Later, Discovery’s brain trust attends a briefing featuring President Rillak of the Federation, President T’Rina of Ni’Var, and at least one other head of state and offers their theory that the anomaly responsible for the destruction of Kwejian is a pair of binary black holes. He asks if she’ll take him as her first officer, and she happily accepts. Later, in her Ready Room, Burnham greets a returned Saru with pleasure. Michael Burnham attempts to offer comfort, but Book remains unmoved.

The screen flashes to images of Kyheem and Leto as Book appears to be reliving his experience of Kwejian’s last moments. “Anomaly” opens with Book sitting in his ship, drowning in grief and shock at the loss of Kwejian. Star Trek’s best story telling focuses on its people and how they work together, and “Anomaly” takes that tradition and pushes it forward by allowing its characters to be people in a way we’ve never seen before. Star Trek: Discovery has received more than its fair share of criticism for going entirely in the other direction, and while I don’t think a lot of that is deserved, I do think “ Anomaly” represents a true exploration of grief on a level we’ve never seen from the franchise before. Grief, unfortunately, doesn’t work that way, no matter how much we wish it did. Despite attempts by the show to deal with it (I’m looking at you, “ The Bonding“), these stories tend to be one and done, meaning that the characters spend precisely one episode navigating their grief process before moving on to the next adventure.

The portrayal of grief forms the basis of my greatest ongoing complaint with 90s Trek.

Anomaly game of go