Star Trek - Discovery - 2.07: Light and Shadows

[Dave]

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Spock actually appears. Temporal Rift. Section 31 lies and Talos IV.

So, I didn't think it was clear last episode that the red angel was from the future, but more of a suggestion. The voice over in the introduction confirmed that, so maybe they hadn't made it very clear.

Burnham finally tracks down her brother to home on Vulcan. Where else would you expect to find him? He has actually been hidden by Amanda in a remote cave. He is found mumbling and muttering, and obsessed with the Red Angel. Burnham takes him away for medical attention, and Section 31’s Captain Leland wants to give him a neural scan. Georgiou warns Burnham that the “scan” is actually a memory extractor that will destroy Spock’s brain. Burnham escapes with Spock in a shuttle. She works out that the string of number muttered by Spock is a course heading to the Talos IV planetary system and off they go. Starfleet General Order 7 is a directive that forbids any contact with the Talos IV planetary system. It specifically stated, "No vessel under any condition, emergency or otherwise, is to visit Talos IV" and is the only Starfleet regulation that carried the threat of capital punishment if broken. It's the one that Pike and Spock visited in The Cage.

Meanwhile, Pike and Ash take a shuttle into a temporal anomaly. Time travel on Star Trek again.... Zzzzzz! But was there ever a better Master Class in Techno-babble than we saw here? The probe that went to future and was altered and came back. That is more than a little like Nomad or V'ger, another Star Trek staple. Ash and Pike seem to think that if the probe is antagonistic then the red angel must be too. I don't see the logic there. The probe may have been sent to stop the red angel or vice versa. It makes no sense. You wouldn't say that as the Xindi came from the future and are bad, therefore everyone from the future is bad.

And finally, Lt. Cmdr. Airiam

Spoiler: Spoiler for The Orville

Can anyone now watch Airiam without thinking of Isaac from The Orville?

It is such a great shame that we know so little about her. I guess that is going to change now.

 

[ctg]

I find it strange that Burnham claims that Saru was able to identify The Red ******* as a temporal encounter. It is clear from that shot that the Angel is female. But when you think of it, it might be one of those timy-wimy incidents, where the quantum realm is playing tricks and the Angel is actually someone we know, leading to the egg-and-chicken, which-one-was-first type of situation.

Cpt Pike claimed that maybe the Angel showed Mr Spock a future that he couldn't process. If it would be a case of Burnham doing a series of temporal jumps then sure, it would drive a man insane and possibly drive him to conduct a search outside the normal parameters.

Ensing Tilly claimed that the temporal disturbance had left behind "5000 (tachyon) parts per cubic micron," only to be bar with "a super-nova event," which in itself is a rare occurrence. So how did Burnham know that Saru was going to investigate temporal event?

Thing is, if you do extreme range teleportation, like the stuff Scott managed to pull in JJA's movie, you're going to do a time-jump, not only in space, but time itself. So, to do a time-jump, all the StarFleet vessels that are equipped with transporters can already do time-travel. They just haven't figured it out, yet. Not even in the infamous Section 31

I love that they made the temporal disturbances really real, as first Captain Pike got caught and then the probe launch already played the event, even though nobody had launched anything. I believe that is entirely the case, when ever humanity start to encounter temporal disturbances in the nature. We SFF and some Horror writers has been writing for a long time about the cases like these and every iteration draws us close to whatever it might be whenever it happens.

I'm certain that it's not just our imagination as our greatest minds has spent time and tried their best to mathematically proof that TT is a real thing.

It surprised me slightly that Pike and Tyler were lost in time drift, and then Tyler tried to pull rank on the Captain. It created a wonderful scene that totally played in the favour of this episode. The StarFleet is full of people who don't trust each other and in the case of Pike vs Tyler, it was the Experience vs Stupidity. I know that sometimes it hard to believe that the experienced people know what they to do, but when you're first time doing something, you better yield on the rank battle then try to escalate it.

I think Section 31 made a bad mistake when they assigned Tyler to be a political officer. In the real term, inside the ship or in any military vessel, his rank means nothing. He is just a show piece and not a real deal.

In my mind I can explain the probe coming back as an known temporal event that maybe StarFleet had logged down, it got read 500 years in the future, and the probe was installed with the technology that helped the lost couple to find a way back in the normal space ... and time.

The only reason I can think for it try to extract Discovery's data archives is that in future they've lost the Sphere database, and the probe wanted to stay in the drift to be able to send back the payload package.

Vulcan looks so much better as planet that is wrapped under perpetual cloud cover rather than an arid planet that was seen before. But I do wonder if those trees were planted there to make Amada more homey, as looking day in day out the deserts of Vulcan must be boring.

The house where Spock and Michael grew up is even more amazing and it unlike the Spartan culture that Spock and T'Pol showed in their quarters. I get that in the ship culture, everything is Spartan, but if you look at the amazing indoor garden that Saru has made his place, the culture goes with the occupier.

I don't know if Sarek brought many of the memoribilia with him on his treks to known space, but overall their house is like a museum dedicated to everything wonderful and somewhat oriental. I also noticed that Vulcan's doesn't have many old books. No paintings. Not even scrolls anywhere visible.

I was bothered by Amanda's betrayal. How can she show Michael daddy being in meditative state, while knowing that she had hid Spock in the monestary? I get that Mum's are the best thing to finding lost childs, as they somehow have a sixth sense for these things, but doing that to husband is frightening, in my honest opinion.

Saru commited to Tok'mar when Burnham was lost in space. And it strained him. Doing that for days for the first born must be super exhausting. Yet Amanda showed no love. No care. It was as if Sarek was a foreigner. She even claimed that if she would have told Daddy, Sarek "would have weight the needs of many, against one individual," as if she'd been through the same conversation time and again.

Michael had exactly the same reaction to it as I would as she demanded that Spock has to be hospitalised. Luckily Daddy isn't fool and he was able to pull out from the deep meditative state to find his son in gave, he'd tried to reach telepathically.

I hated that Sarek in his anger seemed that it's logical to send to Spock to be interrogated by the infamous Section 31. He could have yielded and allowed Vulcan scientist to help Spock before subjugating his first born to a torture.

The Emperess was pleased that Burnham had showed to be more cunning than her. But I don't understand why Captain Leland showed restriction on doing the harm, even though they were essentially going to forcefully interrogate Spock. All happening in a classified ship, somewhere in the universe, far away from anything that Federation could do.

In Michael's shoes I would have tried to get Spock out from the custody and escape. I guess the writers had to use the Emperess to install the idea. Well, at least they made the escape look cool and believable.

Starfleet General Order 7 is a directive that forbids any contact with the Talos IV planetary system. It specifically stated, "No vessel under any condition, emergency or otherwise, is to visit Talos IV" and is the only Starfleet regulation that carried the threat of capital punishment if broken. It's the one that Pike and Spock visited in The Cage.

Interesting. I went to checked it out, because I couldn't remember, and it turned out to be a planet for a species that is telepathically highly sensitive. Maybe the Starfleet don't want their secrets to be read without their acknowledgement. But they don't tell anyone, "Don't go there, it's full of teebs. You'll get mindraped!"

So, I didn't think it was clear last episode that the red angel was from the future, but more of a suggestion. The voice over in the introduction confirmed that, so maybe they hadn't made it very clear.

It's interesting that we both draw the same conclusion.

And finally, Lt. Cmdr. Airiam

No. The other one is more like classical android, where as Airiam is more like a biomechanoid, living being. In other words, she's a highly evolved silicone being.

 

[Dave]

No. The other one is more like classical android, where as Airiam is more like a biomechanoid, living being. In other words, she's a highly evolved silicone being.

Yes, they are physically different, but they could both affect the same end result to the ship.....
...but then you didn't mention the three red dots and her subsequently enlarged red irises, or what it might mean. I thought that was one of the biggest crumbs left for us yet, and just like the spore landing on Tilly's shoulder, those crumbs always mean something important.

 

[ctg]

but then you didn't mention the three red dots and her subsequently enlarged red irises, or what it might mean.

I know. I didn't wanted to spoil the ending. I think it was her either realising something or then she'd caught a virus and become enemy.

 

[Anthoney]

I'm glad Captain Pike feels the same way about Ash as I do. Bad Penny indeed. Like a bad penny mixed with poop and some gum that I just can't scrap off my shoe.

I can really feel those time distortions. Pike uses the engine flare method that Spock will later use in "The Galileo Seven". At the end of the episode we find Spock and Michael on their way to Talso IV. This is the planet from The Menagerie or The Cage if you want old school. By the official timeline Pike and Spock made their visit to Talos IV one year before the Klingon war started. This means that both Pike and Spock already know about the big bulb headed aliens and their mind powers. Which is probably why Spock wants to go there.

Section 31 continues to grow by leaps and bounds. Now they have at least 3 ships of their own. They are not Starfleet Intelligence. There is already a Starfleet Intelligence. They are a COVERT arm of the Federation not their own branch of the military.

 

[Narkalui]

Ok, I'm finally caught up. Up until I saw that the Red Angel appears feminine in its form, I was convinced that it was going to be Picard

 

[Dave]

I thought it would be someone we know, but 500 years (or was it 400?) in the future, and female?? Picard would have made some sense. Sisko might make even more sense given his Emissary status. Looks too young to be Janeway. If it were a Starfleet officer though, wouldn't they come in their Timeship rather than some designer leather spacesuit?

 

[Narkalui]

I think you're right, timeship sounds more likely

 

[Dave]

I think you're right, timeship sounds more likely

But they're not. They are in a spacesuit, a space suit with wings, and seemingly on fire! So, does that mean they aren't Starfleet? Or, is there another explanation?

 

[Narkalui]

I wish I knew

 

[Narkalui]

Mayhaps the Red Angel is the holodeck simulation of Professor Moriarty from the Next Generation?

 

[Dave]

Alright, I did some Googling to find the current best theories, adding in our own, threw in some more offbeat theories from myself, and here we have them - the definitive SFFChronicles List of the Top 16 'Who in hell is the Red Angel?' theories.

1. Picard from the future, Prime Universe
2. Sisko from the future, Prime Universe
3. Janeway from the future, Prime Universe
4. Michael Burnham from the future
5. Michael Burnham from the Mirror Universe
6. Spock from the future from the Kelvin Universe
7. Gary Seven, Prime Universe
8. Zora, the Discovery's A.I. from the 33rd century (established in a short trek episode "Calypso")
9. Gabriel Lorca from the Prime Universe, from the future
10. The "real" Ash Tyler
11. Pike from the future, Prime Universe
12. Number One from the future, Prime Universe
13. An Iconian
14. Captain Braxton of the timeship Aeon
15. Berlinghoff Rasmussen
16. Professor Moriarty Holodeck Simulation

 

[Anthoney]

I would enjoy watching a number of those options play out.

 

[Narkalui]

Yay! I made the list!