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Where are the sentient synths? [spoilers]

JirinPanthosa

Admiral
Admiral
So far in Disco season 3, all the AI have either been tools lacking sentience or our friend the sphere.

Where are the synths? We’re they part of the Federation before the Burn? Will we ever visit their homeworld in the 32nd century? Was there some future falling out post-2399, or are they maybe being left out just to avoid Picard’s lane?
 
We have seen fairly little of this brave new world, so machine life is certainly an option. But it's probably for the better that our specific set of heroes first gets exposed to Zora only - they have had a formative experience with one other AI, and it wasn't fun.

I wonder... Is synth == sentient? That is, sapient? I mean, synths were positronic offspring of Data rather specifically: it was positronic tech that was banned and led to the death of Thad Riker. The special word would be warranted if the tech were special; otherwise, one could keep on saying "android" or "robot". Or "droid" and "bot" if one wanted single syllables.

Holograms weren't banned, despite Rios' being plenty sentient/sapient. It wasn't a Frankenstein Complex in general, but a specific fear of the specific Synths. Of which Data and the isolationist ones were again plenty sentient/sapient, and the jury is still out on the likes of F8.

We might wonder whether there are androids of other sorts around. I mean, Starfleet has mechanical bots despite also having holographic starships. Sentience could be installed in either. But the Federation has seldom been big on robots - Norman in "I, Mudd" declared the Feds lacking in robotry in the TOS era, and Kirk agreed, even though his cadet years would have involved exposure to the DOTs. Possibly robots are to be neither seen nor heard, but are supposed to do their servitude elsewhere and unnoticed, and only Starfleet on occasion allows them to make a public appearance. Until along comes Soong who uses an android or nine for demonstration purposes, or Mudd for criminal purposes. So the tech exists but is uncommon and probably unpopular.

Are we back to Frankenstein Complex after all, then? Noonien Soong blamed the Omicron Theta colonists of such. If that's how things roll, then a Milky Way dominated by the Federation might still take a dim view on the PIC Synths, too, and those and others would remain in hiding.

Timo Saloniemi
 
They had a few dilithium-coated components inside their positronic brains which made their heads explode when The Burn happened.

I've spoken to the writers and this is true.
 
Just because we haven’t seen any doesn’t mean they aren’t around. They just haven’t been a part of any story told so far. There are probably some around, maybe doing their own thing somewhere else.
 
So far in Disco season 3, all the AI have either been tools lacking sentience or our friend the sphere.

Where are the synths? We’re they part of the Federation before the Burn? Will we ever visit their homeworld in the 32nd century? Was there some future falling out post-2399, or are they maybe being left out just to avoid Picard’s lane?

Sentient synths in the 32nd century likely DO exist... we just don't know in what kind of shape/form.
To be fair, the writers didn't mention a lot of this new future, and with the lackluster attention to details in regards to technology which existed 800 years ago (in the 24th century), there is very little in terms of writer imagination that allowed them to 'extrapolate' how things would vastly change in all those centuries.
Honestly, their ideas of 'progress' included programmable matter and changes in materials mostly (thus far)... all of which would technically occur within a few decades to maybe 100 years after Voyager returned home (it certainly wouldn't take centuries).

They pushed the show too far into the future and then completely failed to give us a semi-realistic extrapolation of the future technology (which in some cases looks even less capable than what the 24th century had).

I wouldn't be surprised for their lack of including sentient synthetic life, but to be fair, SF was managing the situation with relatively small resources (even though access to the technology that was shown in the 32nd century would likely compensate for a lot of losses after the Burn and allow the Federation and those seceded worlds to recover for the most part 125 years later and keep the Emerald Chain in check with little effort) and then Discovery suddenly managed to also find out the point of origin for the Burn along with its cause (honestly, Vance could have done the same thing if he just assigned one or two ships to do that... or out of those 2 ships, you'd have a team or two work on it - not the whole ship obviously - similar to what happened in Season 2 when Disco was tasked to NOT interfere with Spocks investigation and to focus on something else, whereas Pike cleverly said to Tyler that they were doing exactly what was ordered and had some spare personnel to look into Spocks' situation as well - seemingly the writers conveniently forgot about this approach, or the fact that SF already had the ability to automate a huge portion of things back in the late 24th centurty, nevermind the 32nd).

At any rate, we don't even know (fully) of which planets and species is the Federation entirely comprised of... heck, 38 planets that remained in the Federation post Burn have barely been mentioned in passing.

So, its possible Seasons 4 and 5 will deal with these (and other) subjects. I suspect that a lot of the stuff will be revealed once SF re-establishes its long range sensors/communications as well. Perhaps we will see previous Federation worlds which managed to recover fairly well post Burn on their own but had no way to know where the Federation/SF HQ was to get in touch.

We'll see.
 
Don't worry, I'm sure season 4 will rundown all the parties season 3 "neglected" and will provide the long awaited answers of how they're faring in the 32nd century. Klingons, Borg, Breen, Synths, Pakleds, Vidians Suliban, hell we'll even catch up with the folks from TNG Thine Own Self who thought Data was an Iceman. Have patience, the writers know we care about these pillars of the franchise and regret the anxiety they've put us through by not delving into their fates as quickly as we would have preferred.
 
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Don't sure, I'm sure season 4 will rundown all the parties season 3 "neglected" and will provide the long awaited answers of how they're faring in the 32nd century. Klingons, Borg, Breen, Synths, Pakleds, Vidians Suliban, hell we'll even catch up with the folks from TNG Thine Own Self who thought Data was an Iceman. Have patience, the writers know we care about these pillars of the franchise and regret the anxiety they've put us through by not delving into their fates as quickly as we would have preferred.
I see what you did there ;)
 
Don't worry, I'm sure season 4 will rundown all the parties season 3 "neglected" and will provide the long awaited answers of how they're faring in the 32nd century. Klingons, Borg, Breen, Synths, Pakleds, Vidians Suliban, hell we'll even catch up with the folks from TNG Thine Own Self who thought Data was an Iceman. Have patience, the writers know we care about these pillars of the franchise and regret the anxiety they've put us through by not delving into their fates as quickly as we would have preferred.
I hope we get ' up the long ladder II'. Need to find out what happened to the irish people.
 
They ditched the galaxy for the Synthetic Lifeform Dimension where all the Apocalypse synths were hanging out and reciting cat poetry at the resonance frequency of photon & quantum torpedoes.
 
They could just make themselves look very Human so they will not upset the other races, the Federation admiral himself might be a synth since he could be a pre burn admiral and live for a very long time.
 
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