Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 2x10 - "The Red Angel"

They were probably repairing the damage from the Section-31 mine field from last episode.

 

Now I wonder if Control is going to seize the suit and do bad(er) things. The preview for next time sure has a lot of people pointing weapons in the S31 testing facility.

 

Maybe just a test of the tech

 

Wouldn't Leland being dead give away Controls return?

Yeah, I think he got injected with a computer chip of some kind and is now under Controls control.

 

I’m shipping Stanmets and Georgiou now.

 

Not Stamnets, Georgiou & Papi?

 

Well. First impressions: that was pretty bad.

First of all, the involvement of S31, and especially Georgiou, isn't getting any more tolerable as time goes by. In fact, Georgiou was at her most annoying in this episode. She sings the praises of totalitarianism, she gleefully enjoys making others personally uncomfortable ("what just happened," indeed?), and (in unexplained contrast to earlier in the season) she doesn't seem to be making the slightest attempt to hide the fact that she's from the Mirror Universe, even around people who didn't previously know it. Why isn't she safely locked away in a Federation penal colony at this point?

As for the rest of S31, the notion that Leland knew about the history of the Red Angel suit all along, yet never shared that information, renders him even less trustworthy than before, and compels the question of why Pike or anyone aboard Discovery would cooperate with his plan.

Second, the whole scenario reeks of "small universe syndrome." It's not bad enough that viewers were already expecting Burnham to be the Red Angel; now we're told that her parents were the inventors of the suit, and it was that project that led to their deaths. I've handwaved away earlier complaints from other fans that everything in this show is All About Burnham, since she is ostensibly the protagonist, after all, but this is really getting ridiculous.

Third, many of the emotional beats didn't ring true. In particular, Burnham's shockingly immature reaction to Leland's admission to her (which wasn't actually even the kind of plot-relevant information she was asking for, but never mind that) managed the impressive task of making me actually sympathize with Leland. The whole story isn't remotely the most reprehensible thing he's done; indeed it sounds like his motives at the time were good and the risk was unintentional, and yet this is the thing she goes off on him about? Hell, she should be grateful to know she's been blaming herself needlessly.

Beyond that, her rapprochement with Tyler was unconvincing, and had every bit as little chemistry as their relationship last season. Really the only sequence that worked was Spock's one-on-one with her... mostly due to Peck, whose take on Spock continues to evoke the original without imitating it. (The interlude with Culber talking to Cornwell was also almost a good moment, but on the whole it just came across as too pat. And the opening funeral for Airiam merely underscored all of the unearned emotion already discussed in re: the previous episode. Does every redshirt death get a full-crew funeral?)

Fourth—and this is the biggest and most multifaceted problem—the whole plot just made no damn sense. It makes no sense that the suit is a Federation time-travel experiment from nearly 20 years past; indeed, weren't we told in a recent episode that it was future tech? (And of course it has quite a lot of abilities beyond time travel — including instant healing, as seen in this very episode.) It also doubles down on the annoying Plot Devicium of "time crystals" from last season, making them something that's apparently been known and available for decades... which (logically) should have huge implications well beyond this story, and (in terms of continuity) completely undermines the new-ness of the Enterprise's pioneering time-travel discoveries in TOS.

Moreover, if the Red Angel really were Michael (as everyone was led to believe), the scheme to trap her was beyond stupid. It rests on the notion that she would protect her own existence in the past — but what does it assume about her future knowledge? Clearly the Red Angel is willing and able to intervene beyond just the "present" time frame of the seven signals (as demonstrated by the indirect rescue of adolescent Burnham on Vulcan), but just as clearly she doesn't always do that, as Burnham's life has been in danger multiple times (as recently as last season) without the Red Angel ever putting in an appearance. So there's no basis for assuming that putting her at risk now will necessarily do the trick. If her future self knows about the risk to her past life, then she would also know that the whole setup was a trap... but if her future self doesn't know about the risk, then she wouldn't come regardless. (And how does this explain her other appearances, including to Spock on some unnamed world for the mind-meld, when Michael was nowhere around?) Indeed, if they expect that her future self remembers this past, and has good intentions, then the most sensible thing to do would be simply to ask her to come back to that point in time and explain what the heck is going on. If her future self is unwilling or unable to do that for some reason, then, well... she has more information than they do, and the fate of intelligent life is at stake, so maybe capturing her and derailing her plans is kind of a foolhardy idea.

Meanwhile, In terms of precautions to "safeguard" Burnham, the whole scenario also made no sense. Why didn't her fellow officers in the watch chamber at least have their helmets on? Why didn't the ship have a transporter lock on her, before the tachyon radiation showed up?

Having the Angel then actually turn out to be Burnham's mother is piling nonsense on top of nonsense, just for the sake of a Shocking Twist (which has no impact for viewers, as we've never met the character before). Never mind the mystery of how she isn't dead... the reveal completely undermines information from earlier in the same episode about the "bio-neural match," which supposedly proved beyond any doubt that it was Michael in the suit. Mother and daughter would not be identical on that level.

On top of all that, there was never any basis for Leland's assumption that the future AI (which they're equivocating about now—is it a future version of Control, or only something that took over Control?) was hitchhiking through the Red Angel's wormholes; after all, obviously the threat existed even before the Angel undertook those trips, as it's what motivated them. Yet, regardless, that unwarranted assumption turned out to be correct—indeed, so correct that it happened before they could even act to prevent it, and it took over Leland's ship so effortlessly that one wonders why it had to use Airiam as a proxy before. (And why is the security eye-scanner on that ship in a different room off the bridge? And why does that scanner have a deadly pop-out blade built into it—unless we're to believe that hardware change was somehow made instantaneously by the AI's software upgrade?)

I think it's fair to say this was the worst episode of the season. Okay, it's not quite as hamfistedly awful as some of Braga's time-paradox plots from back in the day... but it's not far from it.

(And lastly , just as a side note... how does the timeline of all this backstory fit together? Leland says the time-trvel arms race with the Klingons began 20 years ago... so, say 2237 or '38. When were Burnham's parents killed? She herself was born c. 2226 (given that she entered Starfleet in '49)... and she doesn't appear to be more than 10 or 12 in the relevant childhood flashback scenes. In the schism with Spock, seen just a couple of episodes ago, she looks at most 13 and Spock is no more than eight or ten... so, say, c. 2239-40. Did the whole "arms race," including her parents' development of the miraculous time-travel suit, happen in the space of a single year?)

 

So you are upset that the setup of the character and the series and all these little nods and such are being actually explained? Shouldn't you be at least nodding that she gets her 'Weight of the world on her shoulders' from her mom?" Like most people do. This is exactly how a lot of novels are written, the slowly adding of information so that what didn't make sense before makes sense?

So instead, as the layers are unpeeled, your only defense, is "This is all nonsense!!" As for how do we know where or when Ariam got her information. Who's to say Burhnam isn't going to use the Red Angel suit in her future but in the show's past? And the whole point of the exercise is to kill Burnham so the Red Angel shows up. Spock knew this, which is why he held a phaser on them (and, honestly, this halfbreed sociopath has a history of suggesting killing people - its kind of his goto move - so its not out of character for him at all). Not to mention that an attempt was made to beam her up, but there was too much interference. Please do pay attention.

Lastly, about 'Time crystals'

A time crystal or space-time crystal is a structure that repeats in time, as well as in space. Normal three-dimensional crystals have a repeating pattern in space, but remain unchanged as time passes. Time crystals repeat themselves in time as well, leading the crystal to change from moment to moment. A time crystal never reaches thermal equilibrium, as it is a type of non-equilibrium matter, a form of matter proposed in 2012, and first observed in 2017. This state of matter cannot be isolated from its environment[citation needed]—it is an open system in non-equilibrium.

The idea of a time crystal was first described by Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek in 2012. Later work developed a more precise definition for time crystals. It was proven that they cannot exist in equilibrium.[1] Then, in 2014 Krzysztof Sacha predicted the behaviour of discrete time crystals in a periodically-driven many-body system.[2] and in 2016, Norman Yao et al. proposed a different way to create time crystals in spin systems. From there, Christopher Monroe and Mikhail Lukin independently confirmed this in their labs. Both experiments were published in Nature in 2017.

Yes, my good man, Time Crystals are actual science. And sure they are used about as realistically as dilithium crystals, warp drives, shields, transporters etc. that Star Trek uses, but yes, they are based on actual science.

 

Hipster Klingon: Want to get overpriced Raktajino that has to be brewed in a copper still then listen to my vinyl collection of Klingon opera? We can get craft Blood Wine after.

 

Klingon Opera? Please, everybody knows that Klingon hipsters are aficionados of Klingon folk-death-metal.

 

I don't see how that's immature, to be honest. Punching the guy who caused your parents' death and wasn't even going to take responsibility seems like a pretty human and, possibly, merciful reaction. Leland certainly seemed to think so in that he took the punches and didn't fight back or lodge a formal complaint, etc.

Much like the probe that came back a squid, doesn't it seem probably that the suit came back from wherever it's been with added abilities? This seems like declaring that something doesn't make sense while the story is still telling itself.

It hardly seems like a shocking twist, especially since none of us knew who she was on sight, and so said, "Who is that?" rather than, "Oh god! Her!" A shocking twist would have been, say, Georgiou in the suit. Burnham's mother means that the story is putting the emphasis squarely on character rather than shock value, to my mind. As for the bio-neural match, does it really seem plausible that the writers erroneously wrote that line knowing who was in the suit? Isn't it much more likely that we're only seeing part of a bigger, as-yet-unrevealed picture?

The basis was that the Red Angel came through a time rift, and a future AI came through that same time rift. And where exactly are they equivocating? Last week, they faintly suggested that the AI was Control. They never explicitly confirmed it beyond a doubt. This week seems to be in keeping with that.

 

TL;DR man. Does everything you post have to come across as a dissertation and a lecture?

 

Next episode, she'll probably get to choose which one to save. One has a series to star in...

 

That was exactly my sense and I mentioned that earlier in this thread.

 

But honestly, which would you choose if you were Michael?

 

Um hmm. T’Pring, anyone?

 

Exposition dump episode, it was just ok.

The overarching storyline this season started strong for me but it's beginning to drag.

Sonequa did a very good acting job this episode which was probably the highlight, she's got the chops for sure but sometimes they write the character poorly.

Next season I hope they go for am episodic approach, if you think about it all three stand out episodes from this season could EASILY have been bubble episodes. This red angel is no Xindi attack even less a Dominion war.

 

Me, I'm saving Georgiou.

 

While I don't agree with everything you said, you do bring up some points that have been bugging me.