Ambiguity on the final status of Discovery villains

[Timo]

Then what is your alternative interpretation for the dialogue where Cornwell's death (and that of "Captain Georgiou") is the causal reason Tyler becomes the next boss? Is Tyler getting the promotion because they think he successfully assassinated both?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Campe]

I did rewatch the scene in question from the season 2 finale. Cornwell oversaw Section 31. Just as she likely oversaw other projects. Cornwell was not the director. If that’s your definition of a boss, fine. Point taken. However, she was never presented as a villain and the conspiracy theory-esque presentation of how she might have survived seems pretty ludicrous.

 

[Garak234]

3. Admiral Cornwell disappeared in a big flash. After which it was revealed that she was one of the top bosses of S31, her death (and those of four other admirals, a lowly Captain and one freelance agent) paving way for the lowly Tyler to assume the command. She specifically volunteered to die that way. Soooo.... For real? Or a flashy exit strategy?

4. Said lowly Captain became a meat puppet for a vicious AI. Said freelance agent destroyed that meat puppet. Did the vicious AI go down in that process (basically invalidating the whole concept of the heroes needing to escape into the far future), or is it still around?

5. Somebody sent possessive programming from the supposed future that corrupted Airiam, manifested as three red dots, and generally did evil stuff. Is that somebody still around? Was it a later iteration of the AI above, and if so, how does #4 affect its fate?

6. Somebody lit up seven Red Signs at the end of the first season. It sure as hell wasn't Mike Burnham, who only ever lit up signs in the second season and did it in different spots, and her mom denies having done it. Is there an evil Red Angel out there?

DIS is all about loose ends, some left flapping due to mid-season course changes, some due to between-season ones. But DIS is also all about backpedaling, and about personsplaining what previously happened. So there's still hope...

...Even if only for further ambiguous ends or non-ends!

Timo Saloniemi

Michael Burnham’s dad.

 

[Charles Phipps]

DISCO's Section 31 is objectively the black ops version of Starfleet Intelligence and clearly not the rogue paramilitary unit that it is in the 24th (and 22nd) centuries.

Basically, it's the OSS of Starfleet.

It existed as a legitimate agency then wasn't.

 

[Timo]

And for all we know, it's a prime candidate for this thread: did it get reined in / disbanded / renamed / just declared something we don't discuss with outsiders at all now? At which point does it cease to be a legitimate SFI office exactly?

(I rather like to think the SFI office in the 2250s chose the name of a notorious cabal of recent history as its nom de guerre for self-ironic/humorous reasons, even if SFI indeed comes divided into Sections of various sorts. And that the cabal of the 2370s did the same, but with the added twist of fondly remembering the days it was legit.)

Cornwell being or not being a villain is one of the better debatable things about DIS S1/2. She was the one to advocate blowing up the Klingon homeworld (bad gal?); to hand spore drive over to her supposed lover (sucker?); to run the spore show for Starfleet thereafter (shady character?); but also the one to initially oppose the hiring of the Mirror Emperor (level-headed officer?) and to give Pike lots of leeway with fighting supposed Starfleet assets (daring rebel?). She also readily worked with Klingon factions during the war, showing flexibility perhaps unbecoming a regular over-the-counter Admiral. We can call that intriguing character multifaceting. Or then inconsistent writing...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[the Sisko]

1. Ossyra In the final battle between Ossyra and Michael Burnham it isn't definitely established in dialogue that Ossyra is dead and that Michael had the phaser at stun setting,Ossyra being tried in UFP custody cannot be ruled out. Ossyra's knowledge might be strategic for the UFP or there might be attempts by her to break out of the 32nd century brig.

Commander Burnham briefs the crew "Ossyra is dead... I have a plan..." before assuming command from Tilly.
The only question is whether her dead body remained in the computer room or was beamed to space with the others.

 

[Enterprise1701]

Oh ffs.

Michael was the Red Angel. You see her leaping though time and creating the seven signals at the end of the season. All the crap about massive story direction change is Youtube TreQanon bollocks.

And Ariam was corrupted by a future version of Control (from the timeline where it's wiped out everything), which no longer exists. This is not rocket science.

No, you do not understand what you are responding to what the rest of us are talking about. The suit jumps to one place at a time. How did six appear simultaneously and faraway concurrently with the initial signal on the Hiawatha's asteroid investigated by Discovery?

Pike even said the initial set was scattered across 30,000 light years, but later Discovery jumps to the signal at Terralysium 50,000 light years away from Federation space.

 

[Galaxy]

No, you do not understand what you are responding to what the rest of us are talking about. The suit jumps to one place at a time. How did six appear simultaneously and faraway concurrently with the initial signal on the Hiawatha's asteroid investigated by Discovery?

Pike even said the initial set was scattered across 30,000 light years, but later Discovery jumps to the signal at Terralysium 50,000 light years away from Federation space.

Plus there was the one where the Enterprise was severely damaged when she went to investigate. That plot point the writers completely disregarded when Michael became the creator.

 

[F. King Daniel]

No, you do not understand what you are responding to what the rest of us are talking about. The suit jumps to one place at a time. How did six appear simultaneously and faraway concurrently with the initial signal on the Hiawatha's asteroid investigated by Discovery?

Pike even said the initial set was scattered across 30,000 light years, but later Discovery jumps to the signal at Terralysium 50,000 light years away from Federation space.

"The suit can jump to pme place at a time"

It's a TIME SUIT. It can literally be in multiple places at once, with unlimited access to time and space. Even so, I disregard the 30/50k lightyears as a script error, believe all the signals appeared twice in the same places. First time, all 7 were concurrent in the event that started everything and second, as we saw in the epsiodes. I believe Michael was all of them, and that all her 6 jumps also briefly visited the date of the first signals, so she set those off too. It's not made very clear (apart from literally seeing her set off the first signal, and then showing her in the room watching Pike as he says "this is the only one that'll let us know where it is...") but enough is there for it to make sense.

 

[Timo]

The "twice in the same place" is pretty damning. It must have happened with the Hiawatha (because they say so) and may have happened with the first time at New Eden (because that Jacob guy does refer to the heavenly light show "the other day"), but it's flat out impossible for it to have happened twice over most of the other places, where the "second", "Michaelian" appearance gets noticed but is considered a novelty.

Its quite possible that the map Spock sees is dead wrong: after all, Terralysium was dead wrong, and no, that wasn't necessarily a script error, as it was a plot point that they had onscreen trouble establishing the exact distance so Connolly had every excuse of having gotten it wrong originally. But clearly the writers weren't originally intent on having the entire map be totally useless, like it eventually turned out to be. And clearly only Terralysium was difficult to spot in the end, while only Hiawatha was within intercept range originally; it would be pretty unthinkable for Starfleet to fail to properly localize an initial Red Sign over Boreth if they could do the hospital ship and Kaminar and Xahea with ease and without any of the hassle of "New Eden".

It can all be made to make sense if we totally ignore both sets of writer intent, and allow for some of the stuff (such as the Initial Seven Signs) to remain unexplained after all is said and done. A mysterious Third Archangel is always an option, and since both Michael and Gabriel are available in both timeframes, our Raphael could easily make an appearance in the 32nd century if need be, for hilarity and hijinks.

But the contradiction of double Signs is the biggest hurdle. There's no harm in having a Sign light up over Terralysium and Hiawatha twice, as the latter is actually required. But there is major harm with all the other places we saw Michael do - and she did Terralysium twice herself (even if the second time was more like Hima than Terralysium, Spock certainly thought it was the latter), which means she only ever did six discrete Signs even with everything else ignored. Seven is both too much and too little, which sucks, because elementary math is what the writers might be expected to handle successfully here.

Timo Saloniemi