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Its a bit like that in every show/movie i ever watch i think...
Spoilers The game changing Voq theory
- Thread starter SJA
- Start date
I'm sold on Tyler being Voq - nothing we saw or he said actually precludes it, especially if he's had some memory surgery as well, to be sure Starfleet wouldn't spot him lying.
I like old Sixties and Seventies comedies, there was a kind of hokey charm to them, though the sexism was pretty eye rolling. Anyway in "Bewitched" the main character Samantha is played by Elizabeth Montgomery. She also did the portrayal of cousin Serena. The actress who takes credit for that role (I understand from Season 6) Pandora Spocks was simply made up, like an inside joke.
No. People take a phony credit for all kinds of reasons. As well as the Bewitched example above, Dustin Hoffman went by Sam Etic on The Simpsons, Alia Shawkat took a fake credit on Arrested Development season 4 to help hide a storyline surprise, and probably many more. And remember when Donald Kaufman co-wrote Adaptation even though he didn't exist?
^And they used to use various anagams of Anthony Ainley's name when he would appear as the Master in disguise as other characters on Doctor Who, too.
One of the possibilities I was entertaining was the psychoanalytical concept Identification With The Aggressor, a defence mechanism. Think Stockholm Syndrome and you're less than a standard deviation removed.
What we may have seen was the subjective impressions of two sets of experiences comingled and separated by an indeterminate chronological period.
One set=Tyler. In particular, his early period, wherein he was subjected to torture of a most horrific kind.
One set=Voq. In particular, an attempt to infuse or, to use a psychoanalytical term, introject his consciousness into Tyler.
We also see sequelae, following whatever occurred between the two.
Roughly, I’m thinking something like this happened, chronologically:
1. Tyler is tortured, possibly in preparation for the Voq Introjection (pain likely being needed to loosen the human mind’s natural defence mechanisms). During this time, L’Rell also becomes sexually attracted to Tyler.
2. The Voq Introjection either wholly or partly succeeds, something which, if the Klingons are using a mind sifter, probably physically destroys Voq (hence “everything”). Whatever is left of Voq—whole or, likely, partial engrams—exists in Tyler. These engrams are also repressed, just as traumatic memories sometimes are within humans. L’Rell apparently has a method of surfacing them; she awaits the right moment to do so but probably has no idea how successful she will be (the implication of her discussion with Voq on the Shenzhou was that, whatever her House did, it was pretty cutting edge and likely experimental).
3. L’Rell continues to torture Tyler/Voq, but only until Tyler breaks. She then rapes him repeatedly over the course of his captivity. Since Tyler looks nothing like Voq, as I hypothesised earlier, it seems clear to me that her attraction was to the human Tyler. This makes her abuse all that much more twisted.
So what we are seeing are, like many flashbacks, partly recalled moments of trauma. Since two beings were traumatised, we are seeing muddied, subjective reflections of both those traumas. That is why we briefly see albino skin and what looks like an outline of Voq. When Tyler/Voq’s focal presence is on “Tyler,” we see the partly-merged, wholly confused narrative memories in details that “Tyler” would find familiar (human skin, his face, etc…). When Tyler/Voq’s focal presence is on “Voq,” we see those two shots, one of the albino skin getting cut and one of Voq in silhouette. The narrative whole is a kind of compromise formation, only very much an artificially created one.
Should this be the case, “Tyler”—as separate from Tyler/Voq—is still a salvageable character. One would need to remove the Voq engrams and whilst that sounds rather extreme, I think it’s less extreme than thinking what we observed was a surgical transformation of one completely alien physiology to another.
Just a thought.
That is if someone actually cares about Tyler. I personally couldnt care less if he was accidentally ejected from the airlock. Even with all the Klingon stuff he's still a boring character.
Even more proof he’s a Klingon sleeper agent. Almost all the Klingon scenes in DSC bore me to death. Thank goodness humdrum Kol joined tedious T'Kuvma in Sto-vo-kor!
I do find Tyler to be a really dull character even though he is clearly Voq. tbh I never found Voq that interesting either. I also don't understand how he became security chief when the previous one was a commander. It seems to be a plot contrivance too far.
Hi All,
New here. May beam in from time to time. Anyway, not going to read through 34 pages of comments on this subject to see if this has been raised before but has anyone proposed the wild idea that...
Not really a spoiler but left it in there just in case people don't want to know my theories! I'm usually miles off with theories so take that with a pinch of salt!
Energise.
New here. May beam in from time to time. Anyway, not going to read through 34 pages of comments on this subject to see if this has been raised before but has anyone proposed the wild idea that...
Lorca may be Voq?! It's too easily being telegraphed that Tyler is. Could they really throw a twist into the tail that Lorca is still being held prisoner or was killed after being captured and the person that went into the cell with Tyler was a reconstructed Lorca-lookalike Voq? I'll go through a few of the episodes again since they escaped to see if there are any signs
Not really a spoiler but left it in there just in case people don't want to know my theories! I'm usually miles off with theories so take that with a pinch of salt!
Energise.
I found his acting in the scene where he was recounting his torture and sexual assault to Burnham to be compelling and authentic, and besides that I find him to be a likeable and admirable character. I hope when he recovers his memories of being Voq that he has a crisis of conscious much like the memory-wiped characters on Dark Matter did when they found out who they really were, and he resists getting fully mind-Voq'ed and instead chooses a new path alongside Burnham where they try and end the war they helped start.
Been thinking similar for a few weeks now. Tyler just seems far too obvious.
Something's up with Lorca, to be sure, but I doubt that Tyler/Voq is a double bluff. Even though the signs seemed obvious to many of us all along, there were also far too many people who didn't pick up on them at all for it to have realistically been intentional misdirection, methinks. But we'll see, won't we...
No. People take a phony credit for all kinds of reasons. As well as the Bewitched example above, Dustin Hoffman went by Sam Etic on The Simpsons, Alia Shawkat took a fake credit on Arrested Development season 4 to help hide a storyline surprise, and probably many more. And remember when Donald Kaufman co-wrote Adaptation even though he didn't exist?
Also:
- In 2010, Candice Bergen did the voice of the SAL 9000 computer, but was credited as "Olga Mallsnerd"
- Leonard Nimoy was credited as "Frank Force" for the voice of the Excelsior's computer in ST III
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But when could Voq have possibly been converted into Lorca? Lorca was never away from the ship long enough for something like that to have happened, and he wasn't imprisoned with Mudd & Tyler for as long a time as the conversion process (that's currently associated with the Voq/Tyler theory) would have required.
^ The Klingons could have had Voq-as-Lorca already converted and ready to use, as soon as the real Lorca was captured.
If Lorca has been compromised by the Klingons—not that I'm saying I believe he has—then it could have happened as far back as the Buran incident, and in "Choose Your Pain" he was being brought in for debriefing and to allow "Tyler" to join him as an additional asset.
"Getting out of here was always a two-man job..."
"Getting out of here was always a two-man job..."
