you don't need to scan that far away to figure out how far away it is.
We can measure the distance of bright objects in the sky today. Not with 100% accuracy, but by the 23rd century I'm sure they've found a way to measure more accurate distances.
What Era and Places Did Burnham's Mother Visit?
- Thread starter Dryson
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We can measure the distance of bright objects in the sky today. Not with 100% accuracy, but by the 23rd century I'm sure they've found a way to measure more accurate distances.
That's the conclusion of the season, the last scene of "Sorrow II". The signal supposedly comes from the vicinity of Terralysium, which was 50k ly away in "Brother". After all, this is the vicinity at which Michael and the Discovery aimed when they traveled to the future. And Michael didn't miss by much: she later says she was able to contact the future Terralysium, only to discover Gabrielle was not there.
In "Brother", they don't yet have to, but they talk about only having rough fixes on these distant targets. At the beginning of "New Eden", Michael's second sign lights up, and Michael and Tilly together quickly cook up a way to pinpoint it from across those 50,000 ly. It may be a fairly standard technique, and indeed surprises nobody much.
Thanks to the disjointed writing, we still don't know how one goes about creating a Red Sign. We never saw one up close in any of the adventures, after all. Even when Michael did her grand tour, lighting up Signs 8 through 14, we only ever saw the feeble red glow associated with her activities during the specific adventures - we never saw the supposedly more intense red glow that preceded those adventures and lured the heroes there (remember how Pike always was frustrated that they had missed the Sign by that much?).
Nothing we ever saw was intense enough to glow across the galaxy, of course. Not visually anyway, and we really wouldn't want that, because this would then involve lightspeed and Season 2 would take fifty thousand years... The brightest we got was when Michael was glowing in order to lead the ship through the timehole, and even that was really faint. Would anything like that have made Jacob on Terralysium look up in awe?
Supposedly the one who grabs the crystal to take it home is the one who "locks fate". I doubt Klingon monks would have any say on what Michael or Pike did with the second crystal - but perhaps Pike would have had a say on what Michael would do with it, had things happened a bit differently? (Perhaps Pike did - perhaps it was his psychic influence or whatnot that prevented Michael from going straight to the future and thus made her realize she had to do the predestination Signs 8 through 14 first?)
We simply don't know who first grabbed Gabrielle's crystal. Some Section 31 operative? A thief hired by S31? A well-meaning third party whom S31 robbed afterwards? Gabrielle herself didn't claim to have seen her own fate, so she probably wasn't the "owner" of that crystal...
Timo Saloniemi
After all, this is the vicinity at which Michael and the Discovery aimed when they traveled to the future.
Why would Burnham and Discovery aim to travel in the same vicinity as the Red Angel if their intent was to destroy it?
Such an explosion would obviously draw suspicious scanners to the area.
You would think Burnham would have wanted to put herself as far away from the Red Angel as possible and not within the same approximate vicinity.
We simply don't know who first grabbed Gabrielle's crystal. Some Section 31 operative?
From what I have read from Memory Alpha is that Section 31 / Gabrielle Burnham was given something that made the Klingons come looking for her to begin with.
Michael Burnham was given the Klingon Time Crystal by a scientist, if I am reading Memory Alpha correctly.
Especially since she was able to see multiple timelines where Michael dies.
Michael was given the Crystal by Pike who got it from Borath.
Have you even watched the season? Your posts read like you're just getting this second hand.
After Michael got to the future, she sent the suit back in time, had it send the signal then self destruct. So it wasn't in the same vicinity, at least date wise.
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The huge problem there is the act of sending that signal. Fuck Spock - why does Michael want to tell Control that they made it? Worse still if (and apparently when) she gives away the spot where they went, even if she doesn't make explicit the time.
("Self-destruct" is probably a misleading expression for "exploding all on its own", though. The explosion was always in the books: Po's crystal-charging contraption made sure of that. But yes, the dialogue more or less establishes that what Spock saw was the final Sign rather than the terminal explosion. And amusingly enough, this was the only Sign the audience ever got to see, and even then, not really...)
Timo Saloniemi
("Self-destruct" is probably a misleading expression for "exploding all on its own", though. The explosion was always in the books: Po's crystal-charging contraption made sure of that. But yes, the dialogue more or less establishes that what Spock saw was the final Sign rather than the terminal explosion. And amusingly enough, this was the only Sign the audience ever got to see, and even then, not really...)
Timo Saloniemi
Probably would have made more sense if there was just one signal at the beginning of the season instead of seven. Having seven at the beginning still makes no sense. This was because the story changed when the showrunners got fired mid way through the season right? Was there any indication of what the original story would have been?
Oh, I'm pretty sure it was always going to be the hunt for the Seven Signs - a nice magical number and all. But as per the layout of those seven, the heroes would always have been spore-jumping, rather than fidgeting with worlds right next door. And the first two adventures suggest the Quantum Leap thing where the arrival of our heroes immediately puts them in hot water, the act itself causing disasters that they have to undo on the course of the adventure.
What is clearly an all-new thing for the second half is Control. The interesting questions involve the exact role of Spock, and whether the Angel always was gonna be a human in a suit, and whether this always was going to be a Burnham, possibly even two Burnhams as shown. And it's quite possible the idea always was that Michael would do the Signs. She just ended up doing the wrong ones when the Control plot came to be.
Hunting for the Angel is fine and well for a season-long plot, but only if there's an underlying rationale to it all does it really become truly interesting. Control is one such rationale, even if it breaks the back of the season. There must have been another originally. I hope there was one originally. ...Perhaps the original storyline got dumped because there wasn't another originally?
Timo Saloniemi
What is clearly an all-new thing for the second half is Control. The interesting questions involve the exact role of Spock, and whether the Angel always was gonna be a human in a suit, and whether this always was going to be a Burnham, possibly even two Burnhams as shown. And it's quite possible the idea always was that Michael would do the Signs. She just ended up doing the wrong ones when the Control plot came to be.
Hunting for the Angel is fine and well for a season-long plot, but only if there's an underlying rationale to it all does it really become truly interesting. Control is one such rationale, even if it breaks the back of the season. There must have been another originally. I hope there was one originally. ...Perhaps the original storyline got dumped because there wasn't another originally?
Timo Saloniemi
In what sense?
Sure, the backstory is that S31 first builds the Angel Suit; then steals the time crystal so that the suit can be tested; then the Klingons come to reclaim the crystal, and Gabrielle B escapes in the suit and ends up ca. 950 yrs in the future. And only a couple of decades after these events (from the viewpoint of Michael B) do the Seven Signs light up, at some point during the final episode of the first season.
But the suit is a time machine. There's no limitation to where it can go, or how often, or at least Gabrielle never reveals one (all she bickers about is the nasty tendency to reset to Terralysium). So all the Signs presumably would be created exactly when the suit operator wants, and indeed Michael shows proficiency in achieving that on her first try.
So presumably somebody wanted the Seven Signs to flare up during the closing parts of "Will You Take My Hand?". It could have been Michael, in an unseen segment of her "Sorrow II" actions, if only to complete the predestination loop. It could have been Gabrielle, in order to actively engage her daughter in the quest to defeat Control when her own options became bogged down in multiple layers of repeating failure - even though she hotly (well, calmly) denied doing the Signs. Or it could have been some other Angel, since the suits are easy to build, individual suits can be taken on joyrides by people with the right genes (and Stamets can help if the genes aren't quite what they need to be!), and neither Gabrielle nor Michael is estabished as sterile so their great-grandchildren might dabble.
In the best tradition of the first half of S2, it could also have been a mysterious intervention by an unknown party. That the meddling kids and their dog reveal Bigfoot to be a man in a mask doesn't mean there isn't a real one out there, creating that eerie wail just before the closing credits. And that two Angels turned out to be women in suits doesn't mean there aren't real ones out there...
Timo Saloniemi
Sure, the backstory is that S31 first builds the Angel Suit; then steals the time crystal so that the suit can be tested; then the Klingons come to reclaim the crystal, and Gabrielle B escapes in the suit and ends up ca. 950 yrs in the future. And only a couple of decades after these events (from the viewpoint of Michael B) do the Seven Signs light up, at some point during the final episode of the first season.
But the suit is a time machine. There's no limitation to where it can go, or how often, or at least Gabrielle never reveals one (all she bickers about is the nasty tendency to reset to Terralysium). So all the Signs presumably would be created exactly when the suit operator wants, and indeed Michael shows proficiency in achieving that on her first try.
So presumably somebody wanted the Seven Signs to flare up during the closing parts of "Will You Take My Hand?". It could have been Michael, in an unseen segment of her "Sorrow II" actions, if only to complete the predestination loop. It could have been Gabrielle, in order to actively engage her daughter in the quest to defeat Control when her own options became bogged down in multiple layers of repeating failure - even though she hotly (well, calmly) denied doing the Signs. Or it could have been some other Angel, since the suits are easy to build, individual suits can be taken on joyrides by people with the right genes (and Stamets can help if the genes aren't quite what they need to be!), and neither Gabrielle nor Michael is estabished as sterile so their great-grandchildren might dabble.
In the best tradition of the first half of S2, it could also have been a mysterious intervention by an unknown party. That the meddling kids and their dog reveal Bigfoot to be a man in a mask doesn't mean there isn't a real one out there, creating that eerie wail just before the closing credits. And that two Angels turned out to be women in suits doesn't mean there aren't real ones out there...
Timo Saloniemi
Here's the complete timeline(s) of season 2, by Max Hagel
Here's the complete timeline(s) of season 2, by Max Hagel
See? Simple.
Meh. It still gets the "Michael's seven signals appear" blob wrong. 
Splitting the blue lines to five there is an approximation of the mess Gabrielle caused; her repeated attempts at stopping Control would have created a spaghetti of hundreds if not thousands of blue lines instead. Although we never got a good explanation as to why she kept failing.
Why was that? She said that time was cruel. Yet we know time isn't cruel towards those who want to change it for the better in the general case (say, when the time traveler is named Kirk or Kira or Archer). Time villainy seems simple enough, too - until the heroes intervene and undo it. Is this what Gabrielle is talking about? Is there another time traveler undoing her great work, an Evil Angel with comparable or superior abilities yet with the odd inability/unwillingness to remove Gabrielle from the equation altogether?
Nothing Michael did with the other suit would have undone Mom's work, supposedly. And Control was not shown time traveling within the confines of the season - would it gain that ability after the climatic battle and apply it to defeat Gabrielle but again oddly fail to apply it to defeat Michael and win said battle?
Even the future force that sent the probe carrying the Red Dots entity that Control so much coveted did not appear capable of / interested in time travel on its own, but merely exploited Gabrielle's timeholes. Not a great foil for Gabrielle, then.
Timo Saloniemi
Splitting the blue lines to five there is an approximation of the mess Gabrielle caused; her repeated attempts at stopping Control would have created a spaghetti of hundreds if not thousands of blue lines instead. Although we never got a good explanation as to why she kept failing.
Why was that? She said that time was cruel. Yet we know time isn't cruel towards those who want to change it for the better in the general case (say, when the time traveler is named Kirk or Kira or Archer). Time villainy seems simple enough, too - until the heroes intervene and undo it. Is this what Gabrielle is talking about? Is there another time traveler undoing her great work, an Evil Angel with comparable or superior abilities yet with the odd inability/unwillingness to remove Gabrielle from the equation altogether?
Nothing Michael did with the other suit would have undone Mom's work, supposedly. And Control was not shown time traveling within the confines of the season - would it gain that ability after the climatic battle and apply it to defeat Gabrielle but again oddly fail to apply it to defeat Michael and win said battle?
Even the future force that sent the probe carrying the Red Dots entity that Control so much coveted did not appear capable of / interested in time travel on its own, but merely exploited Gabrielle's timeholes. Not a great foil for Gabrielle, then.
Timo Saloniemi
It's a suit with unlimited access to time and space.
You mean the start of Season 2.
I swear there's dialogue in the final episode where Michael says she can only make a certain number of jumps.
Absolutely not. The Seven Signs appearing was what motivated Pike to go study the nearest one. This got his starship fried, which is why she had to limp to the heroes - at the end of the final episode of Season 1.
The Seven Signs appeared on the skies either while Michael was speechifying in Paris, or when her team was traveling towards Vulcan during the final moments of "Will You Take My Hand?" - the explicit expression is "over the past 24 hours" before Pike's beam-over.
Which is weird. Those signals were supposedly a big deal. How come our intrepid sciencey heroes in their flying laboratory never noticed them?
There is no fixed number. What the tech doubletalk is about is Po's method of charging the time crystal: it will allow for jumps to be made, but since the charging will never stop, the crystal will eventually explode. It's not a matter of how many jumps - it's a matter of how many minutes, subjective time.
And of course Michael cuts it unrealistically close. She just barely manages to do the second set of six signs in the time allotted before she crashes on Hima and then has only a minute or two before she needs to send the suit alone to do the final, fourteenth sign and then explode. Which makes it pretty silly that she initially wasted precious minutes doing pillow talk with her brother on top of that piece of S31 wreckage...
Timo Saloniemi
Probably got an email from SFHQ saying "don't worry Enterprise is on it."
Every jump Michael makes goes via Stardate pre-S02E01. Just because they didn't explicitly say it doesn't make it fit just fine in a suit with unlimited access to time and space. It's no continuity error, it's pedantics.
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. And the other signals aren't even the same as the original seven. That's the plot, not some interpretation of it.
Fortunately, there is no need to claim that it "would fit". The heroes themselves don't claim that Burnham would have made the initial Seven Signs. They just proceed to help her make the different follow-on set of seven. The initial seven are left as a total mystery, which is fine, too.
Timo Salobiemi
Fortunately, there is no need to claim that it "would fit". The heroes themselves don't claim that Burnham would have made the initial Seven Signs. They just proceed to help her make the different follow-on set of seven. The initial seven are left as a total mystery, which is fine, too.
Timo Salobiemi
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