9 Ups & 1 Down From Star Trek: Discovery 5.8 — Labyrinths

Of all the books in all the galaxy in all this itinerant Archive — and it seems Dr Derex was quite the bibliophile — you chose Comprehensive Guide to Talaxian Hairstyles?! Well, everyone, they say, has a kink. At least it wasn't Cooking with Neelix, a Culinary Tour of the Delta Quadrant (if that ever did get published)! Being a little less mean to the whiskered and quiff'd of the Delta Quadrant for a moment, the reference was genuinely hilarious — another fine example of Star Trek: Discovery's adept balance of tone this season.

The works housed at the Eternal Gallery and Archive (the real version, not the Mindscape one) weren't as alien as they perhaps could have been, with some notable exceptions nonetheless, and, even by the 32nd century, there was still no copy of The Winds of Winter on the bookshelf (I am told that is a very funny joke)! The Archive scenes were filmed at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, part of the University of Toronto Libraries. Above and beyond any CGI changes, I doubt very much the production team were allowed to go around popping in lots of fake books in a very real library. If you typically get shushed for a slight raise of the voice, I don't think you'd be allowed The Audio Guide to Klingon Opera!

Dr Derex's original manuscript of Labyrinths of the Mind, housed in the Archive and found for Captain Burnham by Hy'Rell, was equally notable from a canon perspective. This was the first time we'd seen Betazoid writing on screen, and as Burnham turned the pages, there were copious amounts of it for all of us language geeks to pore over!