How does the Talosian's "illusion power" work?

[1001001]

DO NOT post spoilers for Season 2 of Discovery without spoiler tags.

https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/hey-you-spoiley-spoilerson-listen-up.299514/

 

[Search4]

Understood.

 

[Steven P Bastien]

It bothers me that the Talosians couldn't put Vena together better than they did. Their anatomy, at least on the outside, was not very different from her and they surely must have understood the concept of "symmetry", - i.e. don't make her a lopsided hunchback.

I sometimes wonder if they did not in-fact make her perfect and just gave her the illusion that she was flawed to better control her behavior. Or, did they deliberately screw up her body, again to better control her?

 

[Henoch]

It bothers me that the Talosians couldn't put Vena together better than they did. Their anatomy, at least on the outside, was not very different from her and they surely must have understood the concept of "symmetry", - i.e. don't make her a lopsided hunchback.

I sometimes wonder if they did not in-fact make her perfect and just gave her the illusion that she was flawed to better control her behavior. Or, did they deliberately screw up her body, again to better control her?

Interesting take on Vina; is she really the beautiful woman we see, and her ugly looks are the illusion? Probably not.

My take: we learn that the Talosians are technologically regressing. Their medical skills were probably just deficient.

 

[johnnybear]

I wouldn't want to stay on Talos with the new gal to be honest but Susan Oliver as Vina might just sway me...
JB

 

[Timo]

I just don't get this "symmetry" thing. At all.

Earth today is full of asymmetric hunchbacks, despite fully human skilled doctors having worked on them and perfectly well knowing what they hoped to achieve. They just couldn't achieve it, despite all the trying. Surely the Talosians would be entitled to even less success!

OTOH, I'm quite ready to think that Vina either was in perfect health (and thus fit for the breeding project) - or had never existed at all, making it all the easier for the Talosians to modify the illusion as needed to push all of Pike's buttons. As the episode unfolds, we lose all our initial confidence that the records mentioning a "Columbia expedition" and its "crewman named Vina" could be considered reliable...

Timo Saloniemi