Synopsis: Lt. Commander Stamets and Cleveland Booker travel to Ni’Var on a scientific mission, Captain Burnham and her mother are sent to capture a Qowat Milat nun, while on the U.S.S. Discovery the consciousness of Gray Tal is integrated into a new body.
This episode can be seen as various illustrations of what can happen when two oppositional forces are brought together in an individual.
In “Choose to Live” after a Qowat Milat nun, J’Vini, kills a Starfleet officer, Captain Michael Burnham and her mother are sent on a joint mission to bring her to justice. Once they locate her, they discovery that her lost cause was to protect the last members of an alien race until they could reach their new home. Meanwhile, as part of his research on the anomaly, Lt. Commander Paul Stamets, accompanied by Cleveland (Book) Booker, go to Ni’Var. Stamets’s theory is found incorrect, but in a mind meld Booker is able to relive a memory that brings him some relief from the grief of losing his home world. Meanwhile, aboard the U.S.S. Discovery Trill Guardian Xi performs a ritual to unite the consciousness of Gray Tal with a new synthetic body.
In this episode, while the integrating of Gray Tal into a new body is the most obvious of the integrations of opposites, in that case psyche and soma, all the other scenarios that played out in “Choose to Live” also dealt with the union of opposites or the balancing of opposing powers. The need for both logic and emotion, psyche and soma, justice and mercy, are all a part of life. And the ongoing process of balancing out the opposing archetypal powers within ourselves is exactly the mission we take on when we choose to truly live.
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