Discovery Made A Bloody Star Trek VI Klingon Reference

Section 31's forward operating base that intriguingly echoes that infamous moment from Star Trek VI.

In Star Trek: Discovery season 2, Section 31 has been a thorn in the side of the U.S.S. Discovery and the tension was exacerbated in the previous episode, "If Memory Serves", when the Discovery and the black ops agency raced to artificial intelligence threat assessment program, which is seeking to evolve and wipe out all sentient life in the galaxy.

The Discovery's gambit was to take the fight to Section 31's headquarters, where Commanders Michael Burnham, Nahan, and Airiam beamed aboard to take out Control. The base's environmental controls were deactivated and lacked artificial gravity so the away team wore EV suits and gravity boots. As they explored the base, the Starfleet Officers found floating corpses belonging to the Starfleet irals who were in charge of Section 31, including iral Patar, a Vulcan logic extremist - all of them were murdered by Control. The away team also encountered pools and globules of blood floating in the Zero-G environment.

All of this cleverly harkened back to the similar scene in Star Trek VI - which is set in 2293, 36 years after the events of Star Trek: Discovery season 2 - when an assassin's phaser almost doomed the chance of peace between the Klingons and the Federation.

How Star Trek: Discovery Homaged Star Trek VI

In Star Trek VI, there was a secret conspiracy by Starfleet, Klingon, and Romulan agents to prevent a détente between the Klingon Empire and the Federation. Two Starfleet assassins wearing EV suits and gravity boots beamed to Kronos One, the Klingon flagship, to kill Chancellor Gorkon. A cloaked Bird of Prey hiding beneath the Klingons' pink blood to burst out of their bodies and free-float in pools around the ship - which looked just like the corpses and blood Burnham and her team encountered in Star Trek: Discovery's homage.

In "Project Daedalus", not only is there also a secret conspiracy, but the away team's gravity boots landing on Section 31's base were purposefully emphasized as an extra ode to Star Trek VI: Spock and his protégé Valeris were trying to save Section 31's forward operating base is a converted former prison, which is another nod to Star Trek VI, since Kirk and McCoy were sentenced to life imprisonment on the Klingon prison planet Rura Penthe (known throughout the galaxy as "the aliens' graveyard").

The Star Trek VI sequence that Star Trek: Discovery honored was especially memorable thanks to it being an early use of CGI in a Star Trek movie. Prior to Star Trek VI's release in December 1991, the most famed use of computer-generated effects was the liquid metal T-1000 in James Cameron's Star Trek movies by the CBS All-Access prequel.