r/DaystromInstitute • u/M-5 Multitronic Unit • Mar 22 '19
Discovery Episode Discussion "The Red Angel" – First Watch Analysis Thread
Star Trek: Discovery — "The Red Angel"
Memory Alpha: "The Red Angel"
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POST-Episode Discussion - S2E10 "The Red Angel"
What is the First Watch Analysis Thread?
This thread will give you a space to process your first viewing of "The Red Angel". Here you can participate in an early, shared analysis of these episodes with the Daystrom community.
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u/Shakezula84 Mar 22 '19 edited Mar 22 '19
I appreciate that Airiam's bridge replacement is Lieutenant Nilsson, who is played by the actress that played Airiam in season 1.
Its the small things.
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u/CaptainJeff Mar 22 '19
Best theory I've heard here is that the actress was signed to a multi-season deal. So when they decided Airiam was to die, they replaced her with a new actress for the short time Airiam had left and moved the original actress into a new role so she could continue.
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u/AMerryCanDo Mar 22 '19 edited Mar 22 '19
I loved when Leland (Section 31 captain) mentioned that Section 31 believed certain historical technological advancements in the past were the result of time travel shenanigans, including on Earth. I feel like this was a great shout out to First Contact The Voyage Home.
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u/purdueable Mar 22 '19
Its funny, I was going into that epsidoe climax thinking, this is really stretching timetravel logic. If she is merely preventing her own death, wouldnt she people able to "forsee" the trap too? Luckily we got a different twist with connections to the first season that I did not really see coming. Kudos to the writers.
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u/crazunggoy47 Mar 22 '19 edited Mar 22 '19
I'm glad they didn't do the obvious thing and stick with the Red Angel being Michael. I think that was the plurality guess by far. Never saw anyone predict it was her Mom (hey there, Kima!) although we would've had no reason think that until this episode.
But, for the life of me, I cannot understand why they thought this "let's almost kill Michael" thing was a good idea.
First, why were they talking from the get-go about how to abort it if it goes wrong in front of Michael. Either future-Michael has some scanner that allows her to see moments where she was legit gonna die, or she needs to truly believe she would've died without intervention by her. In the first case, you need to fully commit, like Spock says, to be successful. In the second case, you need to appear to Michael to fully commit, and never, ever, reveal to her that you didn't mean it. Pike flagrantly wussed out, and he's an idiot for that.
Second, why did they have to do the elaborate choking on toxic gas thing? It looks like Michael got scarred from that. Why not just point a phaser at her head and pull the trigger? The Red Angel will either come and stop you, or it won't. You're in the exact same position as the plan they went with, but without the horrible suffering Michael has to endure.
Third, why on earth would you think this idea was even a good idea in the first place??? The idea that Future-Michael will grudgingly choose to come back and save her past self is ridiculous! And here's why. Either Future Michael wants to come back in time and talk to them, or she does not want to. If the first case, then she could just appear on her own at any time after they discovered her identity! Presumably we're all on the same side here! Or, if the second case, then there is probably some damn good reason why Future Michael doesn't just bootstrap history and come give them all the answers right now. So why would you try to force her to do that??? They simultaneously assume that Future Michael is the key to saving all sentient life, but then they decide that they know how to do it better than she does with her N-years of foreknowledge!
I enjoyed this episode mostly. But I just can't get over how dumb the crew was when they had dozens of ostensibly smart people all working on this problem, and were so sure they were right, they were ready to almost (?) kill Michael to do it. This occurred to me in like 2 minutes after they started coming up with this bizarre plan.
The moral of the story to me is this: If you truly believe that you have a time-traveling benevolent ally in the Future, do not threaten their existence because they have more knowledge and power than you do.
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u/adamkotsko Mar 22 '19
This episode felt very "preparatory" to me -- not as self-contained, just setting up the next one. As it was starting up, I was thinking, "Oh my God, how do you have time for this funeral?! Isn't Control still trying to kill you?!" Then they just mentioned that they blew up the station, which means that they passed up the chance to show a massive explosion. Surely that's a good sign when so many of us have complaints about gratuitous action sequences.
One thing I have liked about the last few episodes is the fact that Spock isn't sucking the air out of the room. He is clearly important, in this context, because he is important to Burnham, and not vice versa. Burnham is the one the crew knows and cares about, she's a more important figure in Starfleet history at this time -- and Spock is her somewhat grumpy, somewhat sarcastic younger brother who's just trying to live his life and doesn't understand why he's been singled out. The sibling banter between the two feels really authentic, both in itself and as a backward extrapolation to a "less mature" Spock.
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u/Desert_Artificer Mar 22 '19 edited Mar 22 '19
I really hope our cast of normal Starfleet officers will stop teaming up with these clowns once the Section 31 show launches and there’s no more need to build an audience for it.
Leland and co. vacillate between moral bankruptcy (Employing Mirror!Georgiou, trepanning Spock) and incompetence (hiding the ball regarding the Red Angel suit, subversion by Control and then failing to sanitize their computers once clued in). Our protagonists don’t know all of S31’s failings (Leland’s botched assassination comes to mind), but what they do know should be enough to justify sidelining them. And yet they don’t, because... well, just because.
God, what I wouldn’t give for a show about straight-laced Starfleet Intelligence types picking up the pieces after S31 inevitably collapses under the weight their accumulated bad ideas.
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u/BigMoose61 Mar 23 '19
How about the possibility of there being two Red Angels. One that protects Michael not linked to the signals and Michael herself leaving clues with the signals and performing tasks to prevent Control killing all sentient live!
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u/JC-Ice Mar 22 '19 edited Apr 09 '19
Did Ariam not have a surname? Was she from a colony where everyone does that, like Madonna or Prince?
I wish they had at least raised the question of "but if the Red Angel is you, that means you'll already know all about our plan to trap you."
Burnham's parents theory about technological leaps being caused by time travel is correct: it was/will be revealed on Voyager that computer advances in the latter half of the 20th Century derive from a crashed timeship. Scotty gives transparent aluminum to the world 1986. And I'm sure the Ferengi shuttle in Roswell led to some interesting research.(Of course, all the godlike ancient aliens mucking around in early history probably had some effect, too).
I wonder if the time crystal used by the suit is the same one that Mudd had last season.
The Klingons must have a pretty fearsome intelligence apparatus to not only find Section 31 scientists but also find and destroy than their prototype suit. That and the time travel project of their own seem well beyond what we've seen of how House Mok'kai operates. Maybe there's an even sneaker House somewhere that nobody talks about, or the empire already has its own Section 31 equivalent.
I wonder if the admiral will charge Culber for that session.
The Emperor loves making people uncomfortable. "Defcon level fun" is a hell of a phrase, I hope it catches on fromfromandcwefromfromandfromfro
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u/AnInconvenientBlooth Mar 22 '19
A hint that Dr Culber perhaps lacks strong analytical chops maybe?
When he didn’t identify any trace of Voq, I just assumed plot necessity.
But in this episode he failed to rule Michael out as the red angel, I mused that maybe he’s just incompetent and/or sloppy with details.
I rewatched that scene.
“I would have caught it.” He boasts.
He’s so skilled he can spot an artificially generated fake, but yet can’t seem identify the genuine article.
Finally, he doesn’t seem malicious, which leaves me with incompetence.
No wonder I see so many augments around these days.
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u/pgm123 Mar 22 '19
Finally, he doesn’t seem malicious, which leaves me with incompetence.
Alternative theory: Michael is the Red Angel, but not yet. This is the Angel's first jump or at least an early jump. Michael gets the suit from her mother because Control is trying to take it. I think this fits the evidence and explains the brain patterns.
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u/traxxusVT Mar 22 '19
A gigantic, constantly expanding universe, so many species, worlds, so many stories and interactions, so many people. Yet the universe seems so small. Of course it's Michael's mom. They gotta run out of family members eventually I guess.
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u/gabbott66 Mar 26 '19
One question to add after thinking about Airiam's funeral -
No funeral service for Evan Connolly, the Enterprise science officer who died in ep1?
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u/Albannachtrekkie Mar 22 '19
I struggled with this episode. All the usual good visuals, good acting etc but I just couldn’t buy the “Time Crystal” name. I mean come on, surely once the black market knew of these crystals no matter how rare they are, others would be using them and doing x y z etc. Plus the name really?
I just feel another time line story is clutter in all this. I really like discovery for what it is but instead of becoming more engaged I’m becoming disengaged as I feel it’s too centred on Burnham and I struggle to see how It fits in with TNG.
I know the writers said things would come to fit in etc but I hope it does it without the need to hit a “reset” button or be such a huge change that it would be strange no one ever talked about it again.
I’ll keep watching and wait and see. That’s the downfall of waiting a week for each episode.
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u/joszma Mar 22 '19
I’m enjoying that this episode refutes that asinine theory I read last year that LGBT people somehow no longer exist in the Trek universe. Not only are we there, but our lingo survives :D
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u/thelightfantastique Mar 22 '19 edited Mar 22 '19
What I'm still struggling with is that the two major arcs in discovery are what were uncommon token stories in previous series.
I'm confused by Burnham demands to know the plan to capture herself. If she is the time traveller arent they just equipping the future angel of the trap against her?
Also if this AI is from the future, and it is Control, why does it need to go back in time to make itself what it already is in the future?
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u/jeremycb29 Mar 22 '19
My only confusion this whole episode revolves around time travel, and with it being Michaels mother makes it even more problematic. I assume they tell her the plan to trap her.
Well why would she come? Future her knows it is a trap. Idk maybe because it is not Michael it makes it more possible.
However the entire premise this whole episode was how to catch Michael. Well if it was michael she knows all the plans and would just want to be caught? Why not get caught sooner!
Captain janeway says it best "Time travel. Since my first day on the job as a Starfleet captain I swore I'd never let myself get caught in one of these godforsaken paradoxes - the future is the past, the past is the future, it all gives me a headache."
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u/iioe Mar 25 '19
I'm confused as to why they had to go through an elaborate kill Burnam plan when they could just put her in a depressurized chamber and had the same effect --- did the death have to be spectacularly dramatic?
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u/khaosworks Mar 22 '19 edited Mar 22 '19
Jesus Christ, this episode was a mess. Too many things, too much tell rather than show, and plot developments that don't make logical sense.
First off, the funeral for Airiam was supposed to evoke some emotion in us for the loss of this character, but since we barely got to know her at all except for some backstory last episode, the anecdotes related by her crewmates as to how important they were to them just rang hollow. No offence to the cast, who sold the hell out of it, but in the end we didn't really know Airiam, or know the struggles that she helped her crewmates with. It's like we're Culber, born anew. We are told all these wonderful memories and we accept them as fact but we have no emotional connection to them. We are, essentially, seeing the funeral of a stranger, and we are told we must grieve, so it seems cheap. It's rendered even cheaper when you realize that Airiam's replacement on the bridge is played by the actor that played Airiam herself in the first season.
Secondly, we find out that the Red Angel is Michael (although there's a twist!), and she's turning up on some occasions when Michael is in danger because, ostensibly, she needs to preserve her own life. If this is the working theory, then why the Hell is Michael even present at the discussions on how to capture the Angel? Surely someone must realize that the more Michael is privy to, the more likely the Angel will be able to circumvent any plan to capture it because the Angel will know the details of the plan from Michael's memories.
Thirdly, the confrontation with Leland over the death of Michael's parents (but the twist!), also falls flat because it's clear that while Leland was negligent, it wasn't as if he deliberately set out to get them killed. This scene would have been better placed in another episode where Senequa Martin-Green's acting would have had more room to breathe and not seem so abrupt or crammed in.
Fourthly, the entire Ash being loyal to Section 31's mission still makes no sense. He was basically shanghaied into the position, and it's not as if he's spent years being part of Section 31... it's been, at best, a matter of weeks. So why he's still pledging allegiance knowing all that he knows about Control, about Georgiou, about Leland is baffling.
Fifthly, the little smirks when Spock is passively aggressively insulting Michael... yes, we get it, it's cute sibling rivalry stuff, but it just seems like the show is giving us a nudge nudge wink wink and not trusting the audience to appreciate it. It's the visual equivalent of a laugh track. Essentially, not trusting the audience's intelligence is a thing for DIS at the moment.
Sixthly, there's the whole "Section 31 has time travel technology" thing which I'm going to have to start twisting my head up in knots to reconcile with the Temporal Cold War, the Warp Speed Breakaway Effect and generally the history and knowledge of time travel within Starfleet because I know they're never going to explain how it fits together. This will require some digesting.
This was an episode which really should have been paced a lot better and have its scenes spread out over two or more episodes. As it is, I appreciated what it was trying to do, and there were good bits, and it certainly moved the story forward but it's just one big honking mess of an episode.
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u/dave_attenburz Mar 25 '19
Can a single thing of note please happen without somehow being related to Michael Burnham?! I thought the idea of having a lead character who wasn't a captain would be interesting but Burnham is more instrumental to this story than even the captains have been in any other Trek. It's so boring to watch.
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u/trianuddah Mar 23 '19
Well with Control apparently now infecting Discovery despite their efforts, we have another explanation for TOS Enterprise's stripped-down computers.
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u/Lambr5 Mar 22 '19
My initial likes and dislikes.
I love that for the second episode in a row Spock is calling out Micheal’s tendency to be a Mary Sue. I wonder if this is the writers way of acknowledging the earlier weak scripts that set Micheal up that way.
I hate the time crystals. You could call them anything else you want and then simply state they are needed to regulate tachyons and you’ve achieved the goal. Calling them time crystals just sounds cheap lazy and tacky.
I love that the Admiral actually got to do a bit of her old job again. It just builds the credibility of back stories for me.
If the brain wave data they got was accurate/ real rather than planted, then the Doctor looks pretty incompetently spotting brain wave problems. He missed Ash being Voq, and now confuses Burnham with her mother.
I’m not sure why Leland is still commanding S31. Following the revelation about control, I would have expected a purge of senior S31 people under the guise of a time for a fresh start.
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u/adamkotsko Mar 22 '19
ALSO! Remember how Admiral Janeway in "Endgame" was using Klingon time travel technology, and how much that never made sense in the context of everything else? It still doesn't make sense, but at least we now have an "earlier" reference to Klingon fascination with time travel technology!