In the final moments of Episode 9 of Star Trek: Discovery, Captain Lorca punches something on the control panel of his command chair. And in this small act, we can be 100 percent certain the Spore Jump at the end of the episode was what he planned to do and not an accident.
Spoilers head for episode 9 of Star Trek: Discovery, “Into the Forest I Go”
For those who haven’t seen the episode yet, this is your final chance to turn back before being ruined on the big twist. And for those who have seen it, turn back if you don’t want to know about the tiny spoiler which you could have easily missed because it passed by in the blink of an eye.
Here goes. By now, we know Captain Lorca is hiding something about his past, but what exactly that might be hasn’t been clear. Admiral Cornwell was pretty sure he was unfit for duty in the episode “Lethe,” and in the latest episode, “Into the Forest I Go,” he does a couple shady things and one final thing that outright reveals he’s got another agenda entirely.
First, he’s totally baiting Lt. Stamets into doing the dangerous jumps with the promise of cool scientific breakthroughs. For the first time ever, he reveals to Stamets that he’s been documenting all the jump data, and it reveals that possibility of traveling to “alternative parallel universes.” Stamets is super pumped about this and agrees to the dangerous task of doing multiple jumps to beat the Klingons, even though it nearly kills him. Later, when Stamets makes it clear that he’ll only be doing one more jump, Lorca seems to stifle his frustration, even though he kind of manipulates Stamets into doing it in the first place.
Lorca talks to Stamets and Dr. Culber about the dangers of the Spore Drive.
And then there’s the smoking gun. Just before the Spore Jump happens at the very end of the episode, Lorca punches in some coordinates and rasps “Let’s go home.” Why home? The starbase they’re headed to isn’t anyone’s home, exactly. Furthermore — and this happens in an instant — Lorca totally hits an override command when he puts in the coordinates for where they are jumping to next. Seriously, this happens fast but if you go back and watch it, and pause when Lorca is punching in the coordinates you’ll glimpse a list of Spore Jumps, and then a command that says: OVERRIDE, LORCA, G. SPORE JUMP 133— UNKNOWN.
And there you have it. Captain Lorca intentionally jumped the USS Discovery to an unknown location. Pretending like he’s confused at the end by saying “where’s our starbase?” is probably a lie. Where did Lorca send the ship? Based on all the previous evidence, probably some kind of parallel universe. And if that place is “home” to him, it stands to reason no one else on that crew will feel the same way.
The first nine episodes of Star Trek: Discovery are streaming on CBS All-Access. New episodes of the series return on January 7, 2018.
