Michael sent that last final red signal to let Spock know all was well, He saw that on the Enterprise during the closing minutes of the final episode. BUT...................... Wouldn't anyone else looking in that direction also have seen the red signal starting the whole ball rolling again? Starfleet knows what they are so someone surely would have spotted that wouldn't they? Also multitronic vs duotronic, the M5 was multitronic and is that why Starfleet banned AI because multitronic systems could develop like the M5 where duotronic computers more or less stayed put?
Well the original intention was for Discovery to go into the future and end up at Terralysium. If that is the case then the final signal was 51,000 light years away and too far for any starfleet ship without a spore drive to reach.
The Red Signals... Ah. For starters, there weren't seven of them. There were fourteen. Let's number them, say, A1 through A7 and then B1 through B7, with B standing for Burnham and A standing for... Darned if I know. But neither did the writers. Who also came in categories A and B: those with the original idea for the second season and the Signs, and those who took over when the first set was shown the door, apparently never getting any notes from the first set, or then using those for office basketball practice. Sigh. So, this is roughly how it goes. At the start of the second season, Signs A1-A7 suddenly flash into existence across the galaxy. They flare for a brief moment, too brief for anybody to get a fix on them, and only one of them, A1, flares anywhere near the Federation. Pike's Enterprise is ordered to dash to A1 to study it, but for some unexplained reason the starship suffers a total breakdown and Pike is forced to confiscate Saru's Discovery instead. In the meantime, A1 through A7 have disappeared. Now B1 flares up. It's at the exact same spot as A1, at the interstellar asteroid where the Hiawatha has crashed. Pike flies there, this time utterly without problems, but his arrival pushes the asteroid into a collision course with a nearby pulsar. A predestined event? A sinister design? Pure coincidence? Who knows. The adventure unfolds, and then the heroes find out Spock knew about A1-A7 in advance. Then B2 flares up, on the other side of the galaxy. The heroes never say whether it matches any of the A signs. For convenience, we may say it is indeed the same as A2, as a local guy refers to there having been a red thing on the sky some time prior (but was that really A2, some days or weeks ago, or just B2, some hours ago?). Again the arrival of the heroes triggers a disaster they have to undo. Then B3 flares up, at Kaminar. This obviously cannot be any of the A Signs, because those were scattered all across the galaxy: anything as close to Earth as Kaminar would not show up as a distinct Sign but would merge with A1/B1. Again the arrival of the heroes messes up everything, and they sorta undo their own damage. And then they learn that the Red Angel is for real, and is doing Red Tricks such as blowing up the Ba'ul pylons and whatnot. But does she also make the Red Signs? Suddenly everything the first set of writers did is thrown into a wastebasket, and the story ceases to be one of the heroes Quantum Leaping to undo their own damage and achieve some good on the side. Instead, it's now the hunt for the Red Angel, who turns out to be Michael's mom, and the story about young Michael seeing her Klingon-slain corpse suddenly becomes a bizarre lie. Also, it turns out Momma Burnham has been jumping to all sorts of timespots and trying to alter the past, the present and the future in order to outsmart the evil Control. It's not the heroes messing up the universe on a leash, it's Gabrielle. Although she admits to nothing, and indeed hotly denies she ever did any Signs, rude or otherwise. Then B4 flares up, at Boreth. Obviously this can't be any of the A Signs, because if a Red Sign had previously been lit above the Klingon holy planet, there would have been Klingon holy hell. And it would overlap A1 anyway. And there is no chain of events the heroes would inadvertently initiate, just a mission of their own to be accomplished. Then B5 flares up, at Xahea. Again, this would overlap A1. Again, no disaster, only a mission. Then Michael decides it has been her all along, firing up these Signs. So she flies to the past and creates B1, B2, B3, B4 and B5. Which means she also can be held responsible for A1 and perhaps A2 - but not for A3 through A7! Unless she did those when we weren't looking, for some bizarre reason (perhaps she initially just had phenomenally bad aim?). Then we skip straight to B7, which is the "Hi Spock, look at me doing the Sign!" thing that proves nothing because a time traveler can't exactly prove she's alive and well at time T by showing up at a different time T'. Only by that time, Red Signs are old news and people just shrug. I mean, they were always sort of irrelevant, happening at the other end of the galaxy and all; only A1/B1 ever mattered to the usual players, somewhere in the former war zone, and it went away (twice!) without much impact. What happened to B6? Did Michael make a Sign during the battle with Control, and if so, why didn't we see it? Isn't the point of these Signs that they are spectacular to look at? (I mean, we hear that the one above Terralysium was impressive enough to the naked eye and all.) Also, who made A1 through A7, and why? Just making B1 would have launched Starfleet into a frenzy that would have led Pike to the Hiawatha and set the things to appropriate motion. And who crippled the Enterprise and why? It would have been logical for Michael to do that, so that she could get Spock involved and would move the action from the snail-paced Constitution class ship to the jump-capable hero vessel. But this she never confesses to. On the other hand, Gabrielle is worse, involving young Spock in the mess for no discernible reason whatsoever. Time travel is messy, and perhaps attempts to undo earlier mistakes make it messier still. So perhaps the utterly confused writing of the second season is in fact an appropriate description of what would happen... Still, the "explanation" we got in the final episodes is worse than none, in only making things more confusing. Timo Saloniemi P.S. The multitronic thing... A nice idea indeed: perhaps Control relied heavily on multitronics, a decade before M5. Since it soon became independent of hardware and became a purely software-based menace, though, capable of hijacking any and all platforms (from standard duotronic starships to human bodies), this was not considered a sufficient reason not to do M5 and to persist with multitronics. Did Starfleet stop multitronics after M5? Did it stop AI research? There's no evidence for either. Nobody ever says AIs would not exist or indeed be in heavy use throughout TOS, the TOS movies, TNG and so forth; indeed, Data being one is ignored with a really loud shrug. And by TNG, everything is optronic anyway, including all those computers that spontaneously sprout noncorporeal AIs. Timo Saloniemi
It all got deleted from the official record, treason to speak of. Anyone who saw the final signal would just identify it as "unknown signal of possible alien origin." It goes up the chain of command to the Faceless Admiral at the inquiry in the finale, who knows exactly what it is, and therefore knows not to bother investigating. The final signal is itself erased from the records, forbidden to speak of under penalty of treason. Kurtzman pats himself on the back for fixing Canon.
How public could these things have been in the first place? All our heroes were completely ignorant of them before Connolly briefed the lot! Timo Saloniemi
No, the fourteenth signal - the final one that Burnham for some reason never got 'round to making, even though she said she was going to do seven, on top of the original seven. Although hers only ever amounted to three, the others being repeats of the originals... Or, conversely, the others not being part of Spock's Seven. Basically, it's even less constrained or coherent than "now how many lives does the Doctor have left?". Timo Saloniemi
As I said in the other thread, the mid-season veer involving the signals was in some ways so completely odd that I wondered if there was some legal or contractual reason they couldn't go forward with at least the broad-strokes plan that Berg and Harberts hatched. I mean, there were basically two whole episodes (The Red Angel/Perpetual infinity) given over to expository technobabble which wasn't particularly entertaining, but meant to somehow square the circle.
51,000 light years away, the galaxy would see it but nobody be able to reach it and nobody but Pike's crew know what it meant. Discovery's season 2's Control storyline makes "The Ultimate Computer" seem especially dumb when you try and put them into the same continuity. Starfleet should definitely know better by then.
If I remember right, Michael said she'd trigger a flare ahead of her in the time-wormhole so Discovery wouldn't lose track of her during the trip to the future, and that was B6.
But isn't the final signal Spock sees on the Enterprise in the future? So how can they see it in the present?
Wasn't the explanation the holographic viewscreens that Pike had ordered ripped out or whatever? God, I want to see the original ideas and outline. I like the idea of Quantum Leaping to fix their own bad choices and divert a disaster much more than I like "not-Borg / not-Skynet attacks." Both concepts could use Burnham in the R.A. suit, but the plots are nothing alike....
And the fact that it appears at all puts the lie in the silly idea that Burnham's trip to the far future would be a one-way one. Not only do we see her doing multiple jumps, we see her doing one of those supposedly well after the first one, from her own point of view (that is, not right away after emerging in the future, but only after reaching Terralysium and deciding that sending a signal to Spock serves some purpose), so the "time crystal overflows and blows" concept is contradicted whether on the basis of passing time or accumulating jumps. 1) There was plenty of ruckus originally when the signals first appeared and nobody knew what they meant. 2) Most of the original signals were unreachable, too, and still Starfleet panicked and Klingons went to their Great Worrier mode. 3) Control would see it, too, and would know exactly what it meant - way to defeat yourself there, Burnham! That is, unless Georgiou stomping on Control's Leland incarnation somehow negated the whole threat already. But if so, why did the Discovery fly to the future at all? I still wonder why Pike and only Pike saw the original seven signals. If they appeared during the ship's supposedly very short deployment flight from Earth to Vulcan, why did Burnham, Saru, Owosekun, Detmer, Rhys, Sarek and all the whachernames fail to see them? Does their ship have inferior sensors? If they appeared before the ship left Earth, why did nobody there see them? Too many clouds over Paris? Ah, good point, and thanks! Another epic fail, then - not only does the ship in fact lose track of her, but we never see enough of a phenomenon to convince us that these could be seen across the galaxy or anything... Timo Saloniemi
The Klingons, the Enterprise and Control all knew what the red signals were by the end, so why would it cause the same fuss again? I think Control was aware of the Iron Angel time suit, and is smart enough to know that cause doesn't necessarily preceed effect when dealing with time travel (after all, Control's own uplifting was due to interference 500 years hence) So, the rest of the galaxy wonders what that red thing is, but the important people don't need to fuss.