No need to direct this toward anyone individually, since many have raised it...
I see no reason to think Nhan's EV suit would come pre-loaded with anything other than the same standard oxygen-based mix as everyone else's. That's what Nhan customarily breathes on duty, as seen both shipboard and stationside, so why would she be breathing something else when in the suit? Whether her tubes are adding in an exotic element, filtering out one toxic to her, or both, or neither—hey, for all we know, the issue isn't actually the atmospheric composition itself so much as a congenital defect of the upper respiratory system common among her species—
they're what she requires, suit or no suit.
It's her own personal one, yes, but there's no indication it's specialized in any way beyond standard-issue.
Could a suit theoretically be prepared beforehand for use by a Barzan
sans additional apparatus? Surely. But do we imagine any party member could mid-mission merely say "adjust suit environment to Barzan parameters" and it would happen just like that, on the fly? If that were possible, I bet there would be people here complaining about how it's too advanced for this timeframe and too convenient to this plot! And that would of course be a whole different debate...yet one which is thankfully beside the point here, as when Airiam throws Nhan against the wall her suit cam goes offline, so it's plausible that other suit functions could readily be malfunctioning, too:
As for the purported "plot hole" regarding the transporter, it was stated that lifesigns aboard the station could not be detected from outside by design, due to its former function as a prison, so perhaps in the absence of this measure being defeated they would have had to return to the beam-in coordinates to be beamed back? But here again, whether the act of transporting Airiam to
Discovery could be accomplished or not is ultimately a matter immaterial (no pun intended) in context.
As far as Pike knows, beaming Airiam back onto
Discovery only means beaming her back to continue doing Control's work for it. This would represent a direct threat not only to the safety of his crew and their vessel, but to the present and future Federation, galactic community at large, and apparently potentially even the entire
timeline. It had already proven itself superior in capability to his resident expert in hacking Airiam to begin with, and
now it had further received a full quarter of the data it was after. Who knows how fast it might evolve itself just based on that? Pike is not about to bring it back on board to find out, handing it a second bite at the rest of the apple in the process.
It's a situation somewhat akin to "Where No Man Has Gone Before" (TOS), and as
@IMC Headquarters pointed out somewhere back in depths of this thread, Spock's advice here falls along similar lines:
SPOCK: It is the only possible way to get Mitchell off this ship.
KIRK: If you mean strand Mitchell there, I won't do it. That station is fully automated. There's not a soul on the whole planet. Even the ore ships call only once every twenty years.
SPOCK: Then you have one other choice. Kill Mitchell while you still can.
KIRK: Get out of here.
SPOCK: It is your only other choice, assuming you make it while you still have time.
KIRK: Will you try for one moment to feel? At least act like you've got a heart. We're talking about Gary.
SPOCK: The captain of the Valiant probably felt the same way, and he waited too long to make his decision...
Kirk opted to try containing Mitchell, but again and again, he proved more powerful still, and ultimately Kirk ended up having to kill his friend anyway.
For all we know, Airiam's fate could have been far
worse than the death she asked for, had she not been granted it then. Her willing sacrifice of herself to save her friends (not to mention all else at stake here) reminded me somewhat of Spock's in TWOK. Remember,
she's the one who initially suggests this course of action in the last rally of free will she can muster; the agency is hers, even though she can't pull the plug unassisted. Despite Burnham's protestations, no one had thus far demonstrated any better ability to resist Control's hold on her than Airiam herself, and her own efforts were proving insufficient. Who would want to go on being the arms and legs of a murderer, locked in a futile struggle to prevent one's not-self from inflicting pain on those one loves, and many more beyond that? Not Airiam, if she has any choice about it.
We
know that Pike is not a callous or unfeeling captain, but one who agonizes over
"deciding who lives and who dies," and is willing to go great lengths for an individual member of his crew, if he thinks it warranted. He may not have said the words out loud, but it seems obvious to me that he must feel going any farther in this case would be unwarranted and irresponsible given the situation, or else he wouldn't have ordered Burnham to open the airlock. And everyone
except Burnham—who, as ever, still wants to try it her own way, and could be quite right in persisting, or might just as easily be entirely wrong, but in either case fails in her only concrete plan of action, and can offer no other beyond the platitude
"we can fight this"—clearly
concurs with Airiam's analysis as to the best option in the moment, or else they'd be suggesting otherwise. Pike already asked them for ideas. Open the airlock it is, then.
If you're saying you'd have liked the prospect of a "Hail Mary" along the lines of transporting her into a containment field,
hoping that it would hold Control until
hopefully they'd be able to find some other workaround, to be verbalized and
shot down as too risky and/or impracticable, I suppose that's fair enough. It could well have detracted from the urgency of the scene, but on the other hand, maybe it would have been a worthy inclusion too...who can say? However, if you're suggesting that should have been the
actual outcome? I can't get behind
that at all, neither in terms of drama nor story logic.
-
MMoM
