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.