Perpetual Infinity

A horrifying prospect just occurred to me. Many of us have been scratching our heads at how far this show has gone in selling out to propping up the supposedly upcoming Section 31 show. It hasn't seemed to matter to the franchise-runners that Section 31 is a very strange setting for a Trek show or that it seems to indicate taking the brand into ever "darker" stories. They're good with their show lead being a gleeful cannibal genocidal dictator as long as she's "cool." After all, she has maternal feelings. <eye roll>

Given this, is it possible that this whole Leland and Control plot exists to set up a permanent enemy for the Section 31 show? I imagine the writers wanting a way to make Section 31 (as represented by Georgiou and Tyler) into good guys. They have to do that, right? In order to do this, the easiest (laziest) way to do this is to come up with a worse baddie for them to fight against on the new show, so they look good in comparison. Leland and/or Control could serve as this kind of permanent foil.

Time travel, knowledge of all galactic events future and past and spatial travel between locations occurring instantly have all been shoddily established by Discovery. This means our heroes Ash and Phillipa could jet around the galaxy week to week shooting down the plans of evil Control, as it tries to ferret out the lost time suit and locate the elusive sphere data.

This sounds so much like something this crew would write, I almost want to put a bet on it.

Was thinking about that tonight. What if she has, like her little detachable cameras, little detachable “time charges” that she placed around the church that extends the range of the suit. If I was to write a flashback that’s what I’d do.

On a lighter note, I'm 100% unbothered by the space/time travelling capabilities of the suit. It never even occurred to me to question how a time-travelling suit would also allow you to travel arbitrarily through space. I guess I just intuitively figured that travelling through space is "relatively" (har) much easier than through time, so if you can manage the harder one you can probably easily manage the former.

The thing I really don't get about the suit is the transporting of that whole church from Earth to Terralysium. I never quite picked up from the episode that Terralysium was Dr Burnham's "home base" but instead took her mention of it to be saying that she was definitely the one that had transported the people from WW3 to the Beta Quadrant. Even with pretty generous technological assumptions, I don't see how the suit could do that.

Content warning…

Ever since the appearance of Burnham's mother, I have been really bothered by the "rape question" about Burnham's memories. As you guys mentioned in the podcast, maybe they will come around to explain the discrepancy between the memories and what was shown this week. I hope so, because if the rape of her parents just turns out to be a "mistaken" childhood memory, that's the last thing we need in our culture right now.

This season coincides with the advent of the MeToo movement, and American culture is already deeply suspicious of rape claims, even though (as far as I understand) all credible research indicates that rapes are vastly underreported and almost never falsely so. Yet the idea that false rape accusations are routine is pervasive thanks to a few high-profile cases that always get sensationalized.

I'd hate for a liberal cultural institution like Star Trek to, however indirectly, contribute to this narrative with a cheap "oh man, I thought it was rape but it wasn't" story just to play on the audience's emotions for a few months.

I'm just now starting to listen to the podcast, but I thought this DSC episode was ever so slightly better than the last one. Maybe it's because I've given up on anything making sense. So, when Culber is again the only medical staff or they triple-down on the Burnham DNA confusion or there's yet another randomly cobbled together plan that's immediately, absolutely agreed upon to be the most streamlined, least dangerous and highest chance of success plan possible... Well, the confusion barely registers. The constant sound of "But, why?" echoing in my brain has been reduced to background noise, I suppose.

I'm unfamiliar with her other work, but I did think Sonja Sohn gave a good performance as Burnham's mother. So, there's that.

There's a lot of problematic stuff though. I guess mystery nanobots can be used to create invincible cyborgs now. Timesuits that can navigate both space and time can now be cobbled together by a couple of independent scientists with black market parts.

More significant are the unexplained character inconsistencies, which were on display again. Burnham's mom seemed super motivated to keep up a stony facade, until she didn't. Spock's been a jerk to his sister this season, until he wasn't. Georgiou was a cartoonish and evil character, until they decided she wasn't. Culber was ready to sever all human connection, until a quick talk with Cornwell changed his mind. I'm all for character evolution, but there should be some kind of long-form arc or violent catalyst to the changes if the viewer is going to accept them. On Discovery, traits and motivations are just thrown up on the screen, whenever the writers like and we're left being unable to connect with what's going on. It's part of why most of the characters on the show seem so wafer thin to many of us.

And how about Michael? Again, I felt like the show did her character no favors. She amounts to nothing but crazy extremes at this point. Too often, it seems like she's either condescending to someone or lecturing or yelling - or she's a puddle of tears with her mouth agape. As the plotlines for the show almost entirely run through her, and they insist on a breakneck pace of epic tragedies as the basis for the story, this character is in danger of becoming nothing but a collection of tics. The miseries continue to pile up both for Burnham and the viewer. At the very least, it has me wondering where the joy and fun is in all this.

OK OK, I'm back to the suit again. I watched City on the Edge of Forever again last night (watched a bunch of TOS actually and I want to do a thread on some things I thought of while doing so in comparison to Discovery coverage in general). What strikes me is Spock's comments on one theory of time (which apparently is the foundation of this story and true).

SPOCK: There is a theory. There could be some logic to the belief that time is fluid, like a river, with currents, eddies, backwash. KIRK: And the same currents that swept McCoy to a certain time and place might sweep us there, too.

If one thinks about this, there are also currents like rip tides, which are deceptive and pull you away. (Forgive me if I don't get current/tide/water theory right but some of this is just my watching water observation and some just on the bits I know). Like you can get close, you can see, you can get near and then be yanked away.

The suit was in development. Yet to be tested. Not "perfected". Plus I do believe there is another factor involved, that we just do not know yet and I reaaaaally wonder if it is connected to Calypso. At any rate, Dr. Burnham is yanked away from her intended destination, which she had to have programmed as she intended to go back one hour, and tethered to a specific time, to which she is always pulled.

In some regards, I think she is throwing herself at the "present" time because that is one of the whorls of currents the suit can get to or near, over and over, but cannot exactly land. I think the reason she could interact was the whole containment trap. Otherwise, it was almost like (in my simple mind. Remember I'm no scientist or writer) she was interphasic in some regards. Without being held *out* of the suit, she couldn't interact at all, except with Spock (and I would suppose, if he was involved with Michael all her life instead of the last year, probably Stamets).

I suppose too, that because we are always talking about "time space" (and this is simply not new to Trek, whether or not it is a thing) is this maybe a feature of the suit that is a by-product, not an intended feature. And the more she used the suit the more she figured out how to move both in time and time space. Isn't that kind of the nature of some wormholes? (thinking of the micro wormhole in that VOY episode where they contact the Romulan in the Alpha Quadrant but then find out not only is he 70000 light years away in space but 20 years different in time). So these little wormholes she makes can be both time and space traveled. I personally, depending on how this season is resolved, think it would be a great short trek to spend some time with mama Burnham in learning the suit.

Hmmm. I may be getting way from my "time currents/fluid time" original point but I don't have ocean experience, but I used to spend a lot of time in my youth Zoning out at creeks and rivers and one thing I noticed, especially along the edges, are not only to currents and eddies and such sweep into an area and carry things there, sometimes you can watch debris circle and circle and circle a spot but not ever (seemingly) get carried to the center. Is this suit handling time like that? Can Dr. Burnham get near but rarely exactly to areas? Is this how she appeared so late to Burnham in her death instead of moments before?

OK that is probably way too much effort and thought into this, but ...... I actually can accept all the vagaries around the suit and Dr. Burnham's efforts when I think about this current, fluid time theory Spock talked about in CotEoF. (oh and one last thing. It kind of makes sense to me that small, non-structured Spock could receive a message more easily than adult, trying to make all things in his mind fit logically and it messes him up Spock. Children are just so much less complicated and accepting in a lot of ways as opposed to we adults -see above mental stream of analytic consciousness- at looking past all the extraneous details and explanations to the point. :D )