What Era and Places Did Burnham's Mother Visit?

[fireproof78]

In retrospect considering how confusing I and a lot of other people found the red angel business, I'm wondering now if my fan theory that the red angels were connected to young Sybok and his hunt for God would have been so bad.

As much as I love Discovery, and dislike small universe syndrome, the unevenness of Season 2, largely the abandoning of the science vs. faith theme, makes this sound more interesting. Maybe it is a grass is greener type effect. It might have been horrible. But, I'd be willing to try it.

 

[F. King Daniel]

No, it's a huge continuity error to claim that it "would fit" - the plot logic dictates that there are seven signals first, and then seven other signals

When you can time travel, the same signal can be emitted at 2 times simultaneously

 

[Timo]

Sure. And perhaps that happened, after a fashion.

But the gigantic plot point there is that the mystery set of seven is different from the seven that get spotted during the Season Two adventures. That is, the initial seven do NOT offer any sort of a map for predicting where these things would pop up. Only one of 'em "Will You Take My Hand?" signals actually assuredly coincides with a S2 signal, namely the Hiawatha one in "Brother". Of the others, two S2 ones might coincide with one of the initial seven - the ones from "New Eden" and "Sorrow II"/"That Hope is You I" both appear around Terralysium, it seems, and in theory one of the originals might have been shining there as well. The rest are nowhere near the initial seven, and indeed various people there establish that no signs were previously shining on them before the relevant S2 episodes!

Heck, the heroes can't even predict that there would be seven for them to hunt down. And in the end, there are not. They only ever spot FIVE signs. Burnham then uses the sixth to guide them to the future, and the seventh to tell Control that they went there.

So the initial seven remain a mystery. Why would Michael make them when their connection to the relevant five she actually makes is so tenuous?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tuskin38]

and the seventh to tell Control that they went there.

The final signal was to tell Spock she made it fine.

 

[Timo]

Which really didn't work worth squat, because using a time machine for signaling doesn't really support the causality of attempt --> success...

However, the seventh Michael-created Sign sure did tell Control what had happened and where. Assuming the reference to 51k lightyears, the same as for Terralysium/Hima, wasn't just a coincidence.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[XCV330]

I'm trying to figure out when she had time to become a well traind Romulan Truth Space Nun. PIC gave the impression it wasn't easy to be one, and that it took years or even a lifetime of training. Maybe they're hard up on numbers and just Shanghaiing anyone that stops in their side-business deli and looks like they can handle a sword, now. The 32nd century is rough.

 

[Timo]

I gather Gabrielle's CV helped there: she had been a secret time-tampering agent for a big chunk of her life, and learned all sorts of useful QM stuff there. Including utter, honest humility in face of the total failure in her task.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[F. King Daniel]

I'm trying to figure out when she had time to become a well traind Romulan Truth Space Nun. PIC gave the impression it wasn't easy to be one, and that it took years or even a lifetime of training. Maybe they're hard up on numbers and just Shanghaiing anyone that stops in their side-business deli and looks like they can handle a sword, now. The 32nd century is rough.

Do we know exactly when she appeared in the future? IIRC she wasn't even in her suit so it probably wasn't a very controlled trip back. She may have had a few more years than Michael, who came out the same wormhole as Discovery a year earlier.

 

[Dryson]

I gather Gabrielle's CV helped there: she had been a secret time-tampering agent for a big chunk of her life, and learned all sorts of useful QM stuff there. Including utter, honest humility in face of the total failure in her task.

Did Burnham's mother actually change the course of history in any of the places that she traveled to?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Timo]

She sure tried - that was the whole point. She had seen the future where Control triumphed, and wanted to undo that.

Why she failed was never made quite clear. There should have been obvious venues, including erasing Starfleet and mankind from existence if nothing else worked. Another time traveler fighting her would explain the failure - but we have every reason to think Control did not travel in time during S2 yet. Perhaps it gained that ability later on, subjective time, and therefore will always triumph and neither of the Burnham ladies has actually achieved anything yet?

In theory, Gabrielle could have tried to meddle, then decided to undo her meddling at every specific spot since it didn't pan out. In practice, he did save Michael's life at least once (in the shrubbery outside the Sarek mansion) and probably wouldn't have been strongly motivated to undo any of her other tricks, either. So the sum total of all her meddling is the timeline where regular Trek takes place.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dryson]

She sure tried - that was the whole point. She had seen the future where Control triumphed, and wanted to undo that.

Why she failed was never made quite clear. There should have been obvious venues, including erasing Starfleet and mankind from existence if nothing else worked. Another time traveler fighting her would explain the failure - but we have every reason to think Control did not travel in time during S2 yet. Perhaps it gained that ability later on, subjective time, and therefore will always triumph and neither of the Burnham ladies has actually achieved anything yet?

In theory, Gabrielle could have tried to meddle, then decided to undo her meddling at every specific spot since it didn't pan out. In practice, he did save Michael's life at least once (in the shrubbery outside the Sarek mansion) and probably wouldn't have been strongly motivated to undo any of her other tricks, either. So the sum total of all her meddling is the timeline where regular Trek takes place.

Timo Saloniemi

She sure tried - that was the whole point. She had seen the future where Control triumphed, and wanted to undo that.

If Control triumphed, then that was the natural order of life, thus making Burnham's mother and Michael guilty of changing the future to suit both women's personal needs.

As far as we know, Control didn't destroy the entire galaxy, all we have to go off of is the limited data collected by Gabrielle.

I doubt if Control really destroyed the galaxy like Gabrielle said, otherwise we would have heard more about Control in TNG, Voyager and DS-9.

Perhaps Control wasn't trying to destroy the galaxy but was making the galaxy better.

 

[Timo]

We don't quite know when exactly Control would blast Earth, Vulcan etc. to bits. Might be long after TNG and PIC and the like. Indeed most probably was.

What Control achieved in that reality, and in umpteen others, is also a bit unclear. After the Talosian-assisted sharing of vision with her brotheroid, Burnham refers to "barren" planets, as if all life had already been eradicated before those planets were blown up. Perhaps Control was trying to contain a horrible plague that made planets barren?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tuskin38]

I doubt if Control really destroyed the galaxy like Gabrielle said, otherwise we would have heard more about Control in TNG, Voyager and DS-9.

The timeline where Control was destroyed is the one we seen in TOS+

You have to remember that Discovery was prequel to all the other series in Seasons 1 and 2. So any events and timeline changes done in those seasons leads us to the events we see in TOS+.

The timeline changes Gabrielle and Burnham did as the Red Angel, plus the defeat of Control at the end of Season 2, shifted the timeline to the one we see in TOS+.

Give or take any time travel in TOS+ (and maybe SNW if they do any time travel stories) that aren't predestination paradoxes that is.

 

[Timo]

We don't really know yet if Control was destroyed, defeated, or just put on hold. Perhaps the current timeline still concludes in Control killing everybody, some time after the events of the third season?

However, when the second season concludes, time supposedly indeed smoothly proceeds to TOS, then TNG, then PIC and so forth. There never was timeline in which Control would have devastated those eras, AFAWK, so we really couldn't tell the difference.

Timo Saloniemi