Star Trek: 10 Disturbing Side Character Backstories

Even though Airiam was seen frequently since the beginning of Star Trek: Discovery, we never learned much about her until just before her death in the episode Project Daedalus.

Immediately after seeing Airiam for the first time, fans were sure her backstory was going to be interesting. She appeared to be somewhat cybernetic, so speculation online went wild. Some fans guessed she was a robot. Others thought she was a member of a cyborg species similar to the Borg. As Project Daedalus showed us, her cybernetic enhancements were actually the result of a horrific shuttle accident.

The accident was so severe that Airiam's partner was killed, and a large amount of her body needed to be replaced technologically. We never learned much about how Airiam's physical and mental abilities were affected by her cyborg parts, but we are shown that her enhanced brain was unable to forget memories unless they were manually deleted. This meant that Airiam had to sort through her memories to decide which ones to keep and which to discard, as her Human mind wasn't able to hold all of it.