so, clearly a benevolent race
Spoilers Mid-Season: The Pieces Put Together So Far
- Thread starter Lord Garth
- Start date
That's just it - the Discovery was the cause of one of those disasters and merely undid her own damage ("New Eden"). Terralysium needed nothing from the rest of the universe, and the planet had been safe from radioactive rockstorms for millennia (because our heroes were quick to point out that if such a thing happened, it would devastate the planet for a long time, yet there it was, undevastated), but then our heroes arrived and nearly destroyed the whole place.
The other alternative is that this astronomically unlikely rockfall was bound to happen at the exact year when the rest of the mankind learned how to fly across 50k lightyears. And the inevitable corollary to that is that the Red Angel picks and chooses its disasters, meaning zillions suffer and perish purely so that Discovery could be the one and only savior. That is, the Angel deliberately refuses to send out signals during other disasters before the Discovery gets built, so all those other benevolent starfarers out there miss out on the chance to do good.
The Hiawatha survivors are sort of neutral: there was no great hurry until the Discovery created hurry by kicking the asteroid. Somebody, anybody, could have picked them up; it need not be our heroes as such. But any moment other than the one prompted by the Red Angel would have been better, because then the starship would not have kicked the asteroid into the pulsar. So, cruelty for cruelty's sake? A test for our heroes? A simple miscalculation on the Angel's part?
Whether the interference in the Ba'ul/Kelpien affairs was for the better or worse remains to be seen. But it was 100% caused by our heroes, at the prompting of the Angel. Nothing would have happened on Kaminar had the Angel not intervened.
Timo Saloniemi
Timo is right, discovery following the signals has been the cause of all these problems.
Well, wait, did discovery’s arrival cause those rocks to fall?
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I've corrected what I typed about the report at the end of "The Sound of Thunder".
I'll also edit in the notable points about "Light and Shadows" to the original post once that episode is up, so we have an account of the season's entire first half. I wanted to do the leg-work of getting the first six episodes out of the way beforehand.
I'll also edit in the notable points about "Light and Shadows" to the original post once that episode is up, so we have an account of the season's entire first half. I wanted to do the leg-work of getting the first six episodes out of the way beforehand.
I smell predestination paradox about all of it...
(We hate those.)
(We hate those.)
Connolly's spirit lives on in dark matter. He becomes the Dark Angel and seeks revenge against the red angels in the climax of the season. The Wrath of Connolly.
I think it's a little more complicated. The red angel appearance followed by Discovery's arrival sets a series of events in motion that ultimately turns out to be what was needed at that place and time. It's like when a doctor has to re-break a bone in order to set it correctly.
Kor
Kor
Predestination, IMHO, is one of the best scifi films of the last decade. Time Lapse is also pretty damn good as well. If you haven't seen those films because you hate the concept they utilize, then you are making yourself miss out on some very good cinema, IMO.
My maxim: There are no bad ideas. There is only lousy execution.
I'm reasonably confident in the writers here that we aren't going to get another 'Times Arrow' level story out of all this when its said and done.
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Orrr, bear with me, the sloppy writing is offering half-baked/unearned explanations to dismiss legitimate problems and that's not satisfying a lot of people.
This show has a lot going for it -- the characters, the effects, the direction, the acting, etc. But jesus the writing. It's like an adderal-addled parody of typical Star Trek tropes half the time.
I agree with Kenny and find it more worthwhile scanning the narrative for answers to my Why? questions than flatly assuming they can't be there. Funnily enough, Discovery hasn't disappointed me when I do so.
Counterpoint: The writing is the worst thing about the show and could be used as an example of what not to do, with some exceptions of course.
I never said the explanations didn't exist -- I said that they are often unsatisfying.
I find the answers I uncover quite satisfying and aren't the product of the sloppy writing, as that is not my #1 goto. Quite the opposite. I guess I agree to disagree with you.
Looks that way! I'll reiterate that I really do like a lot about this show. Glad you're enjoying it too, even if we don't agree on the details! :-)
Timo:
While I am with you on Discovery inadvertently causing the asteroid to change course towards the pulsar, the Hiawatha still needed to be rescued otherwise Jet and her remaining crew would have eventually died, with Starfleet not knowing their fate.
I don't recall anything at Terralysium which indicated they'd caused the debris from the rings to fall towards the planet. Saru didn't say it was their fault. They'd only detected the impending disaster and then resolved to intervene even if it technically was against General Order 1.
As for the situation on Kaminar, it's hard to know yet whether it was a positive encounter for the natives of that planet. Nevertheless, both Saru and Siranna have new hope for their people who were being systematically oppressed and murdered for 2000 years.
While I am with you on Discovery inadvertently causing the asteroid to change course towards the pulsar, the Hiawatha still needed to be rescued otherwise Jet and her remaining crew would have eventually died, with Starfleet not knowing their fate.
I don't recall anything at Terralysium which indicated they'd caused the debris from the rings to fall towards the planet. Saru didn't say it was their fault. They'd only detected the impending disaster and then resolved to intervene even if it technically was against General Order 1.
As for the situation on Kaminar, it's hard to know yet whether it was a positive encounter for the natives of that planet. Nevertheless, both Saru and Siranna have new hope for their people who were being systematically oppressed and murdered for 2000 years.
The Terralysium bit is in all likelihood something the writer didn't quite understand he had just written.
The heroes arrive at this planet where nothing is amiss, but where intricate interweaving rings astound our team. Then there's this sudden instability, and we get the following:
1) "Sensors detecting a massive spike of ionizing radiation in the upper atmosphere."
2) "..a disruption in the gravitational stability of the planet's outermost ring."
3) "In 64 minutes, the radiation will reach the upper atmosphere, causing an extinction level event."
4) "62 minutes before nuclear winter becomes irreversible."
So this planet that has seen at least 200 years of perfect stability is suddenly facing "irreversible" nuclear winter, and a rain of "radioactive" and thus easily detectable debris. It's thus firmly established that this is a unique event, one that has not happened for thousands of years at the very least, and probably not for hundreds of thousands or the radioactive signs on the surface would be easily detected.
What can disrupt "gravitational stability"? The heroes think it might be the Red Menace. But they themselves have this weirdly behaving rock inside their shuttlebay, the one with the defining quality of gravitational instability.
So it is their fault. Or, rather, the fault of the Red Angel for inviting them in, before first prompting them to pack a ring disruptor.
If the writer didn't intend this, he's screwed anyway. After all, the only other interpretation of the events is that the Red Angel invited the heroes in during an astronomically rare natural event - directly meaning the Angel is letting countless others suffer and die because their disasters aren't astronomically compatible with the Angel's schedule of coupling exactly seven things in a nice package.
The timing with Reno was relatively lax: she could have held the patients together for another few months if need be, or conversely, she probably lost quite a few before the Red Angel deigned to call for help. The timing with Kaminar was laxer still: things could have continued the way they were for centuries at the very least. But the Hiawatha quest appears to have been part of the greater quest, directly influencing the Terralysium quest. These two don't appear to have directly influenced the Kaminar quest, which was the doing of the sphere alien - and what drew our heroes to that alien was Spock's shuttle, not the Red Angel. Or are Spock and the Angel working in cahoots? (Was the shuttle already under S31 control and it's S31 and the Angel that work together?)
All the seven quests no doubt are intended to be interrelated. What the writers are probably overlooking is the fact that every quest location gets two visitations. First, there's the simultaneous appearance of the seven Red Signals. And then there's the re-ignition of the signals one by one, to mark the onset of a specific quest. Now, Lucas only mentions one red flash on his skies in "New Eden", and of course Reno would not have seen anything in "Brother" anyway. How many flashes were there over Kaminar? And shouldn't our heroes just put out a call to everybody, asking them to tell if they have seen a red flash recently? After all, their problem is one of pinpointing the signals; they might have been off by as much as 20,000 ly in the "New Eden" case initially, considering Pike spoke of a spread of the seven across 30,000 ly but Terralysium was 50,000+ ly away.
Then again, Spock's/Starfleet's map of the initial seven flashes is dubious to begin with. No two Red Signs are right next to each other on the map - yet the Hiawatha and Kaminar necessarily must have been, as they both are within easy warp reach for conventional Federation vessels. Does this mean there were in fact eight signals, with these two degenerated into each other, and all the others at Spore Jump distances?
Timo Saloniemi
The heroes arrive at this planet where nothing is amiss, but where intricate interweaving rings astound our team. Then there's this sudden instability, and we get the following:
1) "Sensors detecting a massive spike of ionizing radiation in the upper atmosphere."
2) "..a disruption in the gravitational stability of the planet's outermost ring."
3) "In 64 minutes, the radiation will reach the upper atmosphere, causing an extinction level event."
4) "62 minutes before nuclear winter becomes irreversible."
So this planet that has seen at least 200 years of perfect stability is suddenly facing "irreversible" nuclear winter, and a rain of "radioactive" and thus easily detectable debris. It's thus firmly established that this is a unique event, one that has not happened for thousands of years at the very least, and probably not for hundreds of thousands or the radioactive signs on the surface would be easily detected.
What can disrupt "gravitational stability"? The heroes think it might be the Red Menace. But they themselves have this weirdly behaving rock inside their shuttlebay, the one with the defining quality of gravitational instability.
So it is their fault. Or, rather, the fault of the Red Angel for inviting them in, before first prompting them to pack a ring disruptor.
If the writer didn't intend this, he's screwed anyway. After all, the only other interpretation of the events is that the Red Angel invited the heroes in during an astronomically rare natural event - directly meaning the Angel is letting countless others suffer and die because their disasters aren't astronomically compatible with the Angel's schedule of coupling exactly seven things in a nice package.
The timing with Reno was relatively lax: she could have held the patients together for another few months if need be, or conversely, she probably lost quite a few before the Red Angel deigned to call for help. The timing with Kaminar was laxer still: things could have continued the way they were for centuries at the very least. But the Hiawatha quest appears to have been part of the greater quest, directly influencing the Terralysium quest. These two don't appear to have directly influenced the Kaminar quest, which was the doing of the sphere alien - and what drew our heroes to that alien was Spock's shuttle, not the Red Angel. Or are Spock and the Angel working in cahoots? (Was the shuttle already under S31 control and it's S31 and the Angel that work together?)
All the seven quests no doubt are intended to be interrelated. What the writers are probably overlooking is the fact that every quest location gets two visitations. First, there's the simultaneous appearance of the seven Red Signals. And then there's the re-ignition of the signals one by one, to mark the onset of a specific quest. Now, Lucas only mentions one red flash on his skies in "New Eden", and of course Reno would not have seen anything in "Brother" anyway. How many flashes were there over Kaminar? And shouldn't our heroes just put out a call to everybody, asking them to tell if they have seen a red flash recently? After all, their problem is one of pinpointing the signals; they might have been off by as much as 20,000 ly in the "New Eden" case initially, considering Pike spoke of a spread of the seven across 30,000 ly but Terralysium was 50,000+ ly away.
Then again, Spock's/Starfleet's map of the initial seven flashes is dubious to begin with. No two Red Signs are right next to each other on the map - yet the Hiawatha and Kaminar necessarily must have been, as they both are within easy warp reach for conventional Federation vessels. Does this mean there were in fact eight signals, with these two degenerated into each other, and all the others at Spore Jump distances?
Timo Saloniemi
I was quoting Dulmer and Lucsly from Trials And Tribble-ations....
It's like this conversation was predestined.
Random musings: I have a hunch that the Red Angel might be orchestrating events to ensure it's future survival / creation, through positioning of key individuals:
- First red pulse / Hiawatha: Jet is rescued from aboard this starship, just before it is destroyed, and the angel appears to Michael. I have a feeling Jet is crucial to the creation of either the suit the Angel is contained within, or perhaps the AI which the Red Angel may be turn out to be (please refer to Zora is the Red Angel theory).
- second red pulse: New Eden - this is tricky: why was a bunch of humans rescued by the / an Angel, and then transported to the other-side of the galaxy? Was this done due to one of these survivors being key to the Red Angel's survival / existence? This seems unlikely to me, as there doesn't appear to be any reoccurring characters ongoing from New Eden (not unless one is reintroduced in a later episode, which I think has a slim chance of happening). The other possibility is that the New Eden events setup was done so to change a character's perspective on things, an epiphany of sorts, which the Red Angel requires a certain character to have, which may have a direct bearing of it's existence. Admittedly, almost all the main characters in Discovery have an epiphany of sorts, or perhaps a better word choice would be realization, either about themselves or their perspective / beliefs / Galactic world-view, etc.
Third red pulse sighting: The dying organism with thousands of years worth of galactic history / encyclopedia galactica, so to speak. Perhaps buried within the realms of data is information regarding tech which the Red Angel needs known to the crew of the Discovery, for reasons of ensuring it's creation occurs. As a vast repository, who knows what gems of science are waiting to be discovered...
Fourth red burst: Saru's home planet: this event unfolds with direct intervention from the Red Angel, and ensured that Kelpiens evolve beyond what they are known to have done, effectively opening a new chapter in their development.
Okay, that's all I got for now (must go to sleeeeeeeeeeeppppp!!) :P
- First red pulse / Hiawatha: Jet is rescued from aboard this starship, just before it is destroyed, and the angel appears to Michael. I have a feeling Jet is crucial to the creation of either the suit the Angel is contained within, or perhaps the AI which the Red Angel may be turn out to be (please refer to Zora is the Red Angel theory).
- second red pulse: New Eden - this is tricky: why was a bunch of humans rescued by the / an Angel, and then transported to the other-side of the galaxy? Was this done due to one of these survivors being key to the Red Angel's survival / existence? This seems unlikely to me, as there doesn't appear to be any reoccurring characters ongoing from New Eden (not unless one is reintroduced in a later episode, which I think has a slim chance of happening). The other possibility is that the New Eden events setup was done so to change a character's perspective on things, an epiphany of sorts, which the Red Angel requires a certain character to have, which may have a direct bearing of it's existence. Admittedly, almost all the main characters in Discovery have an epiphany of sorts, or perhaps a better word choice would be realization, either about themselves or their perspective / beliefs / Galactic world-view, etc.
Third red pulse sighting: The dying organism with thousands of years worth of galactic history / encyclopedia galactica, so to speak. Perhaps buried within the realms of data is information regarding tech which the Red Angel needs known to the crew of the Discovery, for reasons of ensuring it's creation occurs. As a vast repository, who knows what gems of science are waiting to be discovered...
Fourth red burst: Saru's home planet: this event unfolds with direct intervention from the Red Angel, and ensured that Kelpiens evolve beyond what they are known to have done, effectively opening a new chapter in their development.
Okay, that's all I got for now (must go to sleeeeeeeeeeeppppp!!) :P