So far this season on It Started With Trek…my blogging ambitions have flagged miserably. But after “Project Daedalus,” the motivation is strong. Because holy shit, that was so good but so upsetting.
Poor Airiam. We hardly knew ya. And I mean that quite literally. As much as I liked this episode, it commits a sin that really, really bugs me – painting a character’s backstory in broad strokes immediately before killing them. This would have been so much better if her story had been revealed gradually throughout the season. But oh well, I still cried. Once again, proof that Jonathan Frakes is better behind the camera than in front of it. (But am I the only one who thinks Sonequa Martin-Green's stage-fighting always seems fake?)
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk Red Angel. I imagine everyone has a theory. Mostly, I’ve avoided them, but I have run across the most obvious: that the Red Angel is Michael herself, presumably from one possible future. And TBH, it’s hard not to go with this one, because:
a.
Michael is the protagonist, so it makes sense for the Big Thing to be All About Her.
b.
The Red Angel is clearly stalking Michael’s ship.
c.
Spock says it’s human.
d.
It seems to be benevolent. But mostly…
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| Archangel Michael Defeating Satan, by Guido Reni, 1636 |
e.
The name. Michael. Y’know, the archangel? In the Old Testament, Daniel (Spock) has a vision of Michael (Michael), which he alone can see. It's an apocalyptic vision, and it leaves him very shaken up. Something about him battling something terrible in the End Time. Like maybe when all life in the galaxy is going to be wiped out? And in Revelation, Michael fights Satan (evil Georgiou?). I can’t be the only one who’s noticed this.
f.
It’s mentioned that Michael Burnham "died" in the bombing of the Vulcan Learning Center by the Logic Extremists (OMG Logic Extremists! More on them later). So she’s been resurrected. Did I mention that the big battle led by the Archangel Michael involves resurrection?
NB: I’m always amazed by how many sci fi writers crib their stories from the Bible.
But with all that said…maybe Michael is more red herring than Red Angel? (HAHAHAHAHA. See what I did there?) Maybe Spock is the Angel. He says the angel is human, and he is acting awfully emotional and human at this point. Maybe future-human-identifying-Spock is trying to warn now-Spock that he mustn’t go down that path because it will lead to the apocalypse. The upshot is going to be that Spock must reject his human half and live as a Vulcan to save everything, resulting in the Vulcan-identifying Spock we see in TOS. And that’s why he never talks about his sister, Michael – because it was his childish love and worship of his big sister that led him down the human path, and it’s too painful for Vulcan-identifying Spock to think about her.
I feel compelled at this point to mention Sybok. I mean, Sybok had visions. Sybok rejected logic. Sybok wanted to make Vulcans more…well, human. OK, granted, I really have no idea how this would fit in with Sybok as we meet him in ST V (or as I like to call it, The Movie That Shall Not Be Named). But there’s too much religious mumbo-jumbo about Sybok to dismiss his relevance to the religious mumbo-jumbo here. Does it seem likely that Sybok is explicitly part of this story? Not really. But he sure is a flashing neon question mark in the background.
But anyway, the Michael = Red Angel theory does seem to have the most going for it. If I were a betting Trekkie, that’s where my money would be. And certainly, whoever the Red Angel is, they are trying to make sure Discovery achieves certain specific things. The kinds of things that will keep a time line chugging along as it should.
Hey...maybe the Red Angel is Crewman Daniels?
Back to the Logic Extremists. Who are they? What are they? Why are they? A reactionary backlash against the Syrannites, of course! I mean, I really, really hope so. Firstly, because it makes so much sense. The Syrannites of ENT were all about reintroducing ethics, mysticism, and spirituality into the Vulcan way of life. The cold, pragmatic logic-extremist Vulcan admiral Parr is such a throwback to the Vulcans of ENT. And secondly, because this would be the perfect way to bring T’Pol (and dare I say, possibly even Trip?) into Disco. PLEASE MAKE THIS HAPPEN!
One more thing: I need to resurrect a season 1 theory here. When it was revealed that the Section 31 HQ is a former penal colony, the alarm bells in my head were deafeningly loud: “Dagger of the Mind” was set in a penal colony for the criminally insane. Pike says that Section 31 is going to torture Spock at this location with some infernal device (sorry, I don’t have time to find the exact quote). In the TOS episode “Dagger of the Mind,” a “neural neutraliser,” supposedly a therapeutic device, is used to manipulate, read, and wipe minds. The thing is, in season 1, I was already seeing echos of “Dagger of the Mind.”
I’ll just quote myself here and let you draw your own conclusions:
“Disco gave us an episode named "Lethe," which dealt a lot with Admiral Cornwell, prompting fans to speculate that she might somehow become the Lethe who was a character in the TOS episode "Dagger of the Mind" -- a woman on a penal colony for the criminally insane who describes her former self, before treatment with the neural neutralizer, as malignant and hateful. Seeing Emperor Georgiou snatched by Burnham and brought along for the ride to the Prime Universe, I speculated, mostly facetiously, that she, not Cornwell, seems more likely to become Lethe. Certainly, the words malignant and hateful describe MU Georgiou pretty well.
And then something hit me -- something I somehow had never noticed in my four-plus decades as a TOS fan.
The penal colony in "Dagger of the Mind" is on Tantalus V. The Mirror Universe device used by Kirk to destroy his enemies in "Mirror Mirror" is the Tantalus Field.
Tantalus is a figure from ancient Greek mythology -- he invited the gods to a feast and cooked up the body of his own son to feed them. ("Here, have my ganglia. You deserve a treat.") This offended the gods, causing Zeus to hang him forever above a stream for which he eternally thirsted, but of which he could never drink.
Also from ancient Greek mythology, Lethe is one of the rivers of the underworld across which the dead were ferried by Charon. Emperor Georgiou's palace-ship is the ISS Charon.
That's a whole lot of coincidence going on right there, unless it's not. Could Emperor Georgiou actually become Lethe, and somehow her Tantalus V experience find its way back to the MU in the form of Kirk's Tantalus Field?
Crazy, right?”
Other random stuff:
1.
While it makes no sense that Tilly would have gotten as far as she has without a bit more self control, I love her outbursts. When Admiral Cornwell appears on the bridge, and Tilly takes it as an opportunity to vent her anxieties and make it known that she is NOT a rule-breaker…I just want to give her a squeeze. (Tilly reminds me so much of one of my own kids.)
2.
When Cornwell reassures Pike that he’s what’s good about the Federation, that he’s what they need to preserve, it’s endearing because it’s so rare to see the Man In Control look that insecure. In that moment, you can see him “let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding,” as the fanfic would say. He needed that reassurance from a powerful woman. So refreshing.
3.
The fact that they have the Stamets/Culber relationship on the back burner in such a tense, unresolved state makes me so sad every time I see Stamets. Like, how does he keep showing up for work?
4.
Cannot end without taking a moment to react to the “Previously on Star Trek” opening of “If Memory Serves.” SQUEEEEEEEEE. Sometime in the mid-1970s, having only just learned that the original pilot had been turned into the two-episode “Menagerie,” teenage Me sat in a NYC hotel meeting room with a bunch of other colossal nerds for a screening of “The Cage,” which had almost never been seen before by the public. Last week, I got just that excited about it ALL OVER AGAIN.
