Choose Your Pain

Starfleet wants the spore drive protected until it can be copied, but on his way back from a briefing Lorca is captured by L'Rell. In a Klingon prison he meets Starfleet officer Ash Tyler and the scheming Harry Mudd. L'Rell tortures Lorca for the drive's secrets, and Lorca admits he once destroyed his own ship, and crew, rather than let them be captured. Aboard Discovery, Saru takes command and pushes the creature, now nicknamed Ripper, to its limits. Burnham and Dr Hugh Culber argue that it is suffering, and Stamets agrees to look for another way to run the drive. Lorca and Tyler break out, leaving Mudd behind, and escape in a Klingon ship. To bring them home, Stamets injects himself with the creature's DNA and makes the jump himself. Burnham releases Ripper into space, but Stamets' reflection does not quite follow him.