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What was "The Burn" and what caused it?

Just texture and things not meaning what they appeared to at first.
Common trope now in shows. I blame Lost
It should have been “All Along The Watchtower”. :p
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All of this has happened before all of this will happen again
 
But how were people hearing this music? A distress call is sent as a distress call; whether it be manipulated into beautiful music, or white noise, or whatever sound, it's still a distress signal in origin- it's not like people just randomly 'hear' things traversing the universe. Were they just randomly monitoring subspace channels and heard this music? If so, then surely someone somewhere would have put two and two together to question why there was music flying about the galaxy.
 
But how were people hearing this music? A distress call is sent as a distress call; whether it be manipulated into beautiful music, or white noise, or whatever sound, it's still a distress signal in origin- it's not like people just randomly 'hear' things traversing the universe. Were they just randomly monitoring subspace channels and heard this music? If so, then surely someone somewhere would have put two and two together to question why there was music flying about the galaxy.

It really doesn't make any sense if you think about it, which is why I question the whole point of putting this into the story to begin with. The idea that a nebula could turn a distress signal into music is improbable enough. The idea that this music became so prevalent in multiple societies, enough for Burnham to notice, is equally absurd. If a single distress call can transmit across the galaxy like that then there would literally be trillions upon trillions of signals in subspace at any given point. So to your point, yes multiple societies would need to have been monitoring sub space, find the needle in the haystack, and then found a way to make the music popular enough that it permeated their culture.
 
I just watched the ENT episode "Oasis" and all I can think of is how derivative "the Burn"'s explanation was. Child, in a crashed ship, growing up with few companions, mostly holograms, whose technology is slowly deteriorating.... hmm.m
 
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I just watched the ENT episode "Oasis" and all I can think of is how derivative "the Burn"'s explanation was. Child, in a crashed ship, growing up with few companions, mostly holograms, who's technology is slowly deteriorating.... hmm.m
That's OK. TMP was a rip off of "The Changeling" so it's a tale as old as time.
 
I just watched the ENT episode "Oasis" and all I can think of is how derivative "the Burn"'s explanation was. Child, in a crashed ship, growing up with few companions, mostly holograms, who's technology is slowly deteriorating.... hmm.m
And Oasis was a remake of DS9's Shadowplay. What's your point.

Furthermore, was it really necessary to resurrect a thread that hasn't been active for the past four months just for that hot take?
 
Four months is far from necro. I just saw the episode for the first time and wanted to post my thoughts on its similarity to the burn. This seemed to be as good a place as any. I never finished DS9. Do you have a point? I did. Definitely no reason to be rude.
 
Reminds me as much of the Cage as anything else. There are few stories that are purely original and Star Trek definitely isn't known for its originality.
 
As for the music, we don't have to think it came to be because of the Burn. Rather, it's probably vice versa: the music was common and prevalent, which is exactly why it, and not some less common piece of music, ended up being superimposed on So'kal's cry.

All the 32nd century people treated the music as of no significance, and they were right. But Burnham was unfamiliar with it, so she was mightily surprised to meet it in the de-noised distress call, although she failed to draw any conclusions from it. And in the end, there were no conclusions to be drawn, other than the ultimately irrelevant fact that (part of) the Burn signal originated from an entity that liked to listen to music.

Timo Saloniemi
 
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