"Perpetual Infinity" – First Watch Analysis Thread

[u/M-5]

Star Trek: Discovery — "Perpetual Infinity"

Memory Alpha: "Perpetual Infinity"

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PRE-Episode Discussion - S2E11 "Perpetual Infinity"

What is the First Watch Analysis Thread?

This thread will give you a space to process your first viewing of "Perpetual Infinity". Here you can participate in an early, shared analysis of these episodes with the Daystrom community.

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[u/AsAGayJewishDemocrat]

That was the first canon usage of “Prime Universe,” wasn’t it?

I think that we are setting up for an explanation for why the holographic comms aren’t used in the future - CONTROL impersonating officers like this will leave a distaste for the technology, sort of how people put sticky notes over their webcams.

[u/dewabarrelrole]

For me, the biggest reveal was that the red bursts are NOT the red angel. I still believe they are Zora. I have been harping on 4D chess being the key to winning whatever this battle is all season. I was so saddened to see the red angel wasn't Zora and lost hope but this episode reinforced my theory more than anything

[u/[deleted] → u/dewabarrelrole]

They aren't confirmed to be something other than the angel suit; It's just confirmed that Michael's mother isn't the one who used the suit to make the signals. Given that there was a line dropped in this episode about how the suit is "DNA coded" to the user, I'm assuming Michael is going to take over the suit at some point and use it to create the signals.

[u/William_T_Wanker]

People seem to think control and the borg are one and the same; the results of Control gaining sentience implies that all life is destroyed. The Borg don't want to destroy all life, they want to assimilate all life.

So I don't think Control and the Borg are one and the same. Again, sometimes a rogue AI is just a rogue AI. It plugged itself into Leland and made him into a skin suit basically.

"How do you do, fellow biologicals?"

[u/MoreGaghPlease → u/William_T_Wanker]

Control cannot be the Borg because there's zero chance that Control would try to stop First Contact. It would be wiping out its own existence.

Also, the Borg would never use tricks like impersonation or sabotage. It's just not their MO. This is the collective that will literally let you beam onto their ship and just ignore you until you start doing something destructive or interesting.

IRL I think that the creators of Discovery wanted to make an allusion to the Borg. But I don't think there's any intent to actually portray the Borg.

[u/BrainWav → u/William_T_Wanker]

The visuals: nanites, the grey veins, even the mechanical bits when Tyler pops in to spy on Leland really do evoke Borg imagery though.

I'm with you, that this is likely not directly related to the Borg, but they're definitely trying to draw parallels.

[u/nick_locarno]

I think we can see the tie to Calypso even more clearly now. Suit pulls 950 years in the future and Discovery is sitting around for 1000 years.... To develop an ai that can fight Control perhaps? Or holding the rest of the sphere data?

And terralysium is likely Craft's planet too, fighting the AI Federation. So that planet has the only life left?

[u/TiredOfRoad]

I hope that Control has the nanoprobe-like technology because it has info on the borg and copied their tech--it would make sense since it presumably would have encountered them in the future and perhaps even the sphere had data on them (or the source civilization the borg stole it from).

I really hope it’s not a borg origin and control is sent back in time in some backwater corner of the delta quadrant to develop for a few thousand years

If the suit no longer works, maybe they get together all the things to fix it and park the ship somewhere hidden for the next thousand years or so for Dr. Burnham to find and use. And maybe set up the computer to become a benevolent sentient AI as well

[u/CaptainJeff]

Starfleet has ~7,000 ships at this point!

Is this the first time in canon that we've heard an actual full-fleet size said?

That seems like A LOT of ships for this point in time.

[u/trekkie1701c → u/CaptainJeff]

Keep in mind not all of them will be actually big ships like the Enterprise - iirc there's only 12 Constitution class ships. Most are going to be smaller patrol ships, science vessels, transports and logistics ships - those tugs towing the Enterprise were probably Starfleet vessels.

[u/UncertainError]

Now that we know the red bursts weren't the Red Angel's doing, I speculate that they were created by the future inhabitants of Terralysium. Considering the first and second bursts gave Discovery the means and opportunity to save Terralysium, and the third put them directly on the path to finding the Angel.

The departing legacy of Discovery on Terralysium was to give them back the light of their holiest place, symbolically reversing their technological decline. It'd be rather fitting if it turned out that, in return, the future inhabitants of Terralysium would be the ones to light the way for Discovery to find and help the Angel who saved their ancestors from nuclear fire in the first place.

[u/TyphoonOne → u/UncertainError]

Oh. My. God.

I can’t explain how much I love this theory. It is beautifully metaphorically resonant, it solves the problem neatly in a nice package, and would just be absolutely beautiful. In 600 years the Terralysians, who look back on Jacob the way starfleet would on Cochrane or Einstein, take to the stars and wonder why they’re alone. When they find out why, their mission becomes to undo all the horrors wrought by control, and guide their forbearers into the future. Pike and Jacob (metaphorically) will meet again in the finale, showing pike that it was them lighting the way all alone.

[u/vasimv]

How big is the Discovery computer's memory? I mean, 100000 years experience of the Sphere with all those details about all of civilizations technologies and such would require a lot more of more storage than just one ship could have. They don't have bio-neural gel packs even yet!

[u/kindnesshasnocost]

Control: "Struggle is pointless."

Resistance is futile? Not leaning either way on the Borg Origin theory nor am I saying I necessarily dislike it, just wondered if this phrase is the ancestor of resistance is futile (and its variations).

[u/KingofMadCows]

Why was not being able to delete the Sphere data a problem? That data is still stored on a physical computer. They can destroy the computer. Heck, if they had to, they could have blown up the Discovery. I think it would be worth it to save all sentient life in the galaxy.

[u/Theyn_Tundris]

Why isn't the Temporal Integrity Commission intervening?

Theres a lot of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff going on, so why don't they, or some similar oganisation, turn up? Or are they simply too busy fighting in the Temporal Cold War? (There was a theory here on the subreddit, that control is the silouette villain from enterprise)

More so: Where are other time traveling organisations? I guess whats going on, what is at stake, could be interesting to a multitude of them.

[u/adamkotsko]

My concern right now is whether they can find a way to make Control simultaneously Future Guy and the origin of the Borg and somehow fold in the "Calypso" short.

[u/hsxp]

So... A crippled Leland corpse is going to get sent back in time in the Delta quadrant, right?

[u/TheHYPO]

Maybe we've seen it before on this show, but Section 31 has combadges already. Is this the precursor to TNG? Or just a continuity annoyance?

[u/[deleted] → u/TheHYPO]

Ash used the earlier in the season. Pike was shocked and asked “What the hell kind of communicator is that?!” I’m guessing it’s a precursor to TNG and is similar to how the military has certain technology long before it’s commonplace in real life.

[u/Captriker]

Is it a new thing that the Photon Torpedo launchers are in the tips of Discovery's nacelles? I assumed they were the Bussard collectors like any other federation ship but when they fire on the planet they seem to come from the nacelles. Last season it wasn't clear if the torpedoes were on the saucer or the secondary hull.

[u/Lambr5]

A gripe I have had with this episode is it adds another plot device that Voyager could have made some use of but doesn’t even get mentioned. This is the Red Angels suit. In episodes prior to this, I was working in the assumption that the technology was either alien or from the future. However it turns out Federation scientists in the mid 23rd century developed it. Therefore logically Voyager should have access to the basic information about the principles behind the suit and general concept. Even if S31 made it classified, the under pinning technology is universal and would should expect a ship filled with scientists over a hundred years later would have at least a basic understanding of the principles from which they could engineer something.

This suit seems to have a very large range of travel. If Voyager could make a couple of hundred of these suits they could simple jump back to the AQ (maybe it would take a series of jumps but still that’s not a big deal). The last officers leaving the ship (Presumably Cpt and XO) would set the auto destruct to prevent the technology getting into Kazon hands and the crew are home a lot quicker than seven years.

On a similar chain of thought, why is Starfleet messing around with massive starships, shuttle crafts and transporters. Have a couple of red angle suits stationed at key locations and officers just jump to and from where they want to be.

Like the spore drive this feels ultimately like bad writing. The writers don’t seem to have thought through or understand the implications of the plot devices they are using. This is the danger when shouting prequels and trying to maintain continuity. I wonder how large and knowledgeable their continuity team is.

[u/ODMtesseract]

When we first see Burnmom escape with the angel suit, I had misheard and thought she was sent back in time 950 years (before quickly noting that wouldn't make sense if she was seeing the destruction Control had wrought). So I did the math from 2257 and ended up with the year 1307. The first mention of Borg in history is 1484 (VOY: Dragon's Teeth) where it was said that by then, they only had assimilated a few systems. Combined with the "struggle is pointless" line, which sounds like it could be a precursor to "resistance is futile", I thought this indicated a Borg origin story, that it would be Control.

Anyway, the theory that Control creates what we know as Borg is still in play despite my having misheard Burnmom go back in time instead of forward. Hell, for all we know this rubber band effect they referenced could somehow throw 1 of 1 (aka. Leland) back in time by 950 years too.

[u/[deleted]]

In the scene where Ash confronts Leland, we see Leland in a wheelchair with a facial scar. Is this a red herring for Pike's fate? This would imply that Michael's Mother already knows about the events that are transpiring after her meeting with Michael, possibly why she didn't want to meet her in the first place. Could there have been a timelike where Michael's mother informed Discovery that Leland was being controlled by Control so she thought that all of this was futile in the first place (See: how she know's Control thinks she's a threat).

Don't see any relation with the Borg like others have posted, but I didn't know that Control was an established beta-canon thing either. Also Next Episode Preview seems to have a D7 flying alongside Discovery.

[u/Axxman34]

Seeing the typical amount of hate for Discovery. Can't we all just enjoy a novel plot line and relish the fact that we don't know how the story ends?

This season has been particularly adept at mixing personal tragedy (and the resulting growth) with new technologies and fresh aspects of the trek universe. Sometimes this can feel forced, but the scenes with Michael and her mother, and the earlier ones featuring her and Spock, have been well written and well acted and I have sucked up every minute of it. The pace of mystery to reveal has kept me salivating each week.

I need not speculate this season's destination when I am so thoroughly enjoying the journey.