A unified Discovery-Picard theory

At this point (post Picard episode 7, "Nepenthe"), I find the theory in this article (click and read; I’ll wait) to be pretty convincing: Discovery and Picard are part of a unified canon dealing with Control, a malevolent AI that evolves from a Section 31 system. Now that we’ve seen the vision Commodore Oh shares with Jurati in a mind-meld, which resembles Spock’s apocalyptic visions, that’s not very farfetched. But I think the theory as presented in this piece might be wrong about at least one thing.

In considering how the Romulans of the past might have developed the mythology of a future AI apocalypse, the author theorizes that it has something to do with the supernova that destroys the Romulan homeworld and, in the first Abrams movie, throws Spock and Nero into the past. But if we're looking to explain information being transmitted through time, why look any further than the method established in Discovery: the Red Angel? We know that Michael Burnham acts as the Red Angel, jumping through time to guide Discovery and make sure events develop in a way that will ultimately defeat Control.

In Discovery, Control is after data from an ancient sphere that is now stored in the ship's computer -- data Control will somehow use to become fully sentient, or all-powerful, or something. At the end of S2, Discovery jumps into the distant future in order to keep that data from Control. But there’s a gaping logic hole in that resolution that's been bothering me ever since S2 ended: Control is immortal and doesn’t care how much time passes. (I keep thinking of Marvin waiting a billion years at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe). Control will eventually catch up to Discovery and go after the sphere data again. How does jumping to the future solve the problem? All they’ve really done is buy some time.

But for what?

My theory is that Picard is beginning to answer that question. Maybe the Red Angel spreads a vision through time of a future synthpocalypse in the hope that, with multiple civilizations working on the problem over millennia, a solution might evolve organically, a way of defeating Control that Discovery’s crew couldn’t hope to devise and achieve in the limited time available to them. The universe is a quantum computer, and the Red Angel feeds it a problem that it works on in the background for millennia.

How better to defeat an AI than with another AI? Maybe there’s something about the work AI developers have been doing for centuries – something in the work of the Daystroms, Soongs, and Maddoxes, which they may not even have been consciously aware of – that addresses the problem of Control. Maybe the impulse to create an AI with empathy for sentient organic life, an AI that actually emulates sentient organic life, is sentient organic life's inevitable response to the threat of an AI bent on its total annihilation. That kind of AI would serve as our defender. What if Ramdha’s reaction to Soji, calling her the Destroyer, isn’t referring to the destruction of the Romulans, but to the destruction of Control? If Control created the Borg (which Discovery hints at with the subtlety of a falling anvil), that might very well be what Ramdha, an ex-Borg, means.

So that’s my theory of the day: Soji is the anti-Control, or at least, a step toward the development of one. With my track record, though, I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.

Disco Daystrom

With the Disco S2 finale just days away, I'm thinking about a Star Trek episode that aired just over 51 years ago.

I've seen a lot of speculation that Disco's Control might be the Borg origin story – but I never see mentioned the TOS episode that this story line resembles even more: “The Ultimate Computer.” That’s the one where the experimental M-5 computer is tested on the Enterprise, only to go berzerk and kill people in self defense. Sounds familiar, right? (This is one of those classic episodes where it turns out Kirk can defeat the crazy AI by talking to it, a dramatic choice that doesn’t really fit with the more action-packed, contemporary approach.)

When you get right down to it, the Control story line in Disco owes as much to “The Ultimate Computer” as Star Trek: The Motion Picture did to “The Changeling.” No doubt many current fans and critics don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of TOS – but some surely do. Yet now, instead of generating the kind of criticism for unoriginality that the movie did, Disco's obvious parallels to a TOS episode don’t even come up. I guess the passage of time and all the additional Star Trek that’s been created in the interim have made the reworked story seem more like an homage than a rip-off. TOS episodes are no longer individual stories so much as progenitors of entire genres.

But anyway, at Disco’s point in the Star Trek timeline, Doctor Richard Daystrom, creator of M-5 and namesake of the Daystrom Institute (which, the Memory Alpha wiki informs me, is actually mentioned in the Disco episode “Choose Your Pain,” so it already exists), is somewhere between his duotronic breakthrough and the rollout of M-5. He is undoubtedly considered one of the Federation’s preeminent AI experts. Right about now, he’s probably in the process of developing the technology to program an AI with human engrams (unfortunately, as it turns out, his own, which tend toward instability and paranoia – hence the M-5 debacle).

So as we head into the S2 finale, I’m hoping for, at the very least, a significant Daystrom mention, if not an actual appearance. That would be a very cool piece of canon continuity.

OTOH, it's damn near impossible to explain Spock’s failure to mention Control when M-5 comes along. So either this will just remain a big canon continuity problem (and hey, what would any extensive sci fi franchise be without big canon continuity problems?), or it’s another clue that there is a huge reset coming, with events of this season entirely erased from the timeline, probably as a result of Discovery's imminent trip to the future (which I speculated about in my previous post). We’ll find out soon enough!

I can't let any discussion of "The Ultimate Computer" go by without mentioning one of the most touching Kirk/Spock moments in all of TOS, and here it is.