What's superhuman about buying yourself some time to do what you need to do, especially in a dangerous situation?
It implies that they must make the perfect decision no matter what their emotional state. That's expecting super human.
It's their job! They literally went to school to do that! Burnham and Saru wouldn't be in charge if they hadn't demonstrated an ability to think sensibly under pressure, even in extremely emotionally compromising situations.
Even the best falter is my point. I regard them as human, as people, capable of great ability as well as frailty. In your example of the Kobyashi Maru it quotes Spock. Yet, even Spock hit his emotional limits. I'll not call it a plot hole on this basis alone. YMMV.
Still, you'd think that upon learning Section 31's entire fleet was travelling at Disco at high warp and was hours away the first option should have been use the Spore drive to get well out of their range instead of "screw it, we're blowing the ship up." I anything, I would think the Sphere Data would try to nudge the crew to making that decision, so invested in self-preservation that it was.
Or just spore jump to another galaxy or something. Can you track a spore jump? What if they went 5 galaxies and 2 universes over? Same result. And going to the future only makes sense of Control is omnipresent (like if in the novels, it exists in ever piece of Federation software) and can never be fully defeated.
These questions are academic in the end, and never mind the academic credentials of the heroes. What happened? First there was the (as such harebrained) Plan A where Sphere Data was supposed to be amenable to being moved from place to place even though it refused to be erased. It took time and effort to attempt this plan, which Control subverted to its needs and got a good chunk of the data (but did the corresponding chunk really disappear from the ship's files?). Then the heroes understood that Control would be breathing on their necks if they tried that again, so they went for the (very sensible) Plan B of simply blowing up the ship, no effort or hurry or risk involved. But then the data refuses to be blown up, and our heroes realize it is resourceful and essentially immortal and best not antagonized further - one hostile AI is already plenty. So their next plan is A again, and no doubt they will buy time with diversionary jumps if there's a need. But what happens at that point? Our heroes decide that Season 2 has unfolded for a reason. They decide that the fact they possess a time crystal dictates that they time travel. And when they sensibly debate whether this is a prudent way to deal with the curveballs the universe throws at them, or mere insanity, they get a Red Sign. It would be pretty silly not to believe in divine guidance at that point. So they go to the Sign, and get obvious help to go with the divine plan. And while there, they get a second ETA for the arrival of Control's dispersed assets, so they can actually be pretty confident in their ETAs. And then they have to decide whether the hiatus on jumping dictated by the divine plan is a dangerous liability when the ETA already allows them to proceed without further jumping. So this, the orbit of Xahea, is the first true time of choosing. I) A giant leap to the other side of the universe so that the plan can be executed away from Control's prying nanites? (But that would be a jump to the unknown, possibly to even greater danger. And that would be danger to the crew and perhaps mankind, but not to the Sphere Data which, lamentably, is immortal.) II) Another short and controlled leap, again resetting the ETA for an extra day or so? (The dangers would be better known, but this would still mean leaving the Enterprise behind.) III) A leap to Earth, where Starfleet could provide protection while the plan was executed, or perhaps modified with help from UFP's foremost experts? (But that would expose Earth to this deadly game, and the heroes to S31's supposed strong presence at Earth, and thus perhaps serve the enemy, just like the original attempt at Plan A did. The whole point of asking the Enterprise alone to pick up the Discovery crew before scuttling was that Pike couldn't trust anybody else.) To go for II, the middle road, might be playing it safe. But it's not the on-the-spot decision our heroes would be making, not when they have so much reason to put their faith in divine guidance. At best, it's hindsight and armchair quarterbacking, which of course is what the audience always does by the very definition... So, "none of the above" is a fine decision, and it's too bad Queen Po couldn't keep her promise on finishing before the known ETA. Timo Saloniemi
And then what? Disco is now away and can't go anywhere in Federation space since they can't let Control reach the Data and don't know how widespread and high up Control is at this point. Control's fleet meanwhile attacks the Enterprise which is now entirely on it's own and is a big target anyway because they know that Control exists and can't be permitted to tell anyone. They are either destroyed completely, or any survivors might be turned into meat-puppets to infiltrate even more of Starfleet. So, would the Discovery stay away forever, even knowing about that threat and that people are likely killed and replaced back home? Or would they try to warn people and help, putting the data back into Control's reach? Instead they gave the Enterprise a fighting chance, fake their death (so to speak) to remove some of the urgency that had driven Control to move so aggressively forward even to the point of revealing itself, and put the Data at a point in time where it becomes obsolete and Control is hopefully defeated already, allowing them not to spend the rest of their life running or in hiding.
Yeah, I can't disagree more with the "jumping through space is better than blowing up" concept. The former solves nothing, the latter solves everything. And it's two separate fights: a dangerous AI at large, and dangerous information available to any villain willing to exploit it. It's in the heroes' interests to separate those two, not to combine them. Without the data, Control might be more controllable; it's already clear enough that with the data available, no bargaining is possible, and the enemy will just get more inventive and cruel to get what it wants. The fault here is in proceeding with the "escaping to the future is better than jumping through space" strategy even after Georgiou has rendered Control's offensive moot for the time being. Both the jump to the future and a jump to a distant point would have been delaying actions (and, thanks to Po's choice of time crystal charging tech, mutually exclusive ones), and now the enemy has been delayed by other means. Then again, it is also a "Caretaker" situation, if not better: choosing to be stranded is not all that fatal, when the heroes know how to build time machines and how to obtain time crystals and how to recharge time crystals, and when they are best buddies with a time traveler, and... The bottom line is, they can get back home if they really want to, preferably after Control has been brought under control for good. No real harm in going to see what the world might be like a thousand years in the future. Timo Saloniemi
That's exactly what it is. And it seems to be geared towards finding the perfect answer at the expense of engaging with the characters in the story.
The Sphere Data is like a living being but not like an intelligent being. It takes steps not to be erased or destroyed but it doesn't reason beyond that, otherwise, it would realize (given that it basically senses what the ship senses and knows what the ship knows) that defeating Control was in its own best interest. For one thing, what purpose would serve a Data, there to be remembered, if there isn't anybody left to remember it?
None of its actions result on Control triumphing, though. For all we know, it's so smart it doesn't need to do anything obvious in order to secure the victory... It clearly works on a need to know basis, after all, only revealing its survival skills when the heroes challenge them, one by one. The heroes in turn are smart enough to realize there will be more if they persist with, say, photon torpedo barrages! Timo Saloniemi
True. For one thing, Disco could very well fire back!! It would have been funny if in mid-battle the SD had said:"Damn, you guys are too slow!" and taken over the ship completely, firing at Control itself or if the SD, once Control was on board, would have been the one hiding from it!
Or jump away. And the fact that she didn't might already tell our heroes that it's not the best possible strategy, when a competing AI is so blatantly dismissing it... So many good things to pad the two-parter with, instead of what we got! Timo Saloniemi
Why didn't the Red Angel suit overload after the first jump to the past? More important;\ly why wasn't this plot point made more clear by the writers?
The way the final version of the episode was written, the time crystal would overload as a function of time, not as a function of use. That is, it would keep on acquiring more charge until it blew. For all we know, doing multiple jumps with it would actually delay the kaboom, by bleeding off that excess charge. Why Burnham thinks hers would be a one-way trip is unclear, then. And obviously it wasn't, as we get that final Red Sign that Spock optimistically interprets as a "Hi there, I'm fine!" message from her. The suit's time travel abilities still (that is, subjective "still", since the final Sign would have been sent after Burnham completed the other jumps of this episode) remains available to her, or to some other wearer. Although perhaps with all-new limitations stemming from Season 3 events? Timo Saloniemi
Isnt there a second suit? Who has it? Couldn't they follow a billion years in the future snatch the data and return?