Where No Guessing Has Gone Before!: Serious Speculation

[paigow]

Using the spore drive opens portals to one of many random Mirror Universes...must be why Discovery got shut down by the time TOS began....

[CanadaPhil]

Wow.... There is no topic yet for the mid-season finale, but I just checked out a trailer for Episode 9 and it looks intense!!

Though it didn't show anything about this specifically, I think we are going to probably have our questions about Admiral Cornwell answered one way or the other on Sunday.

[paigow]

How Discovery returns to Prime Universe....

Lorca: Stamets! Spore jump into that wormhole now!

Stamets: Can you be more specific? There are hundreds of them!

Lorca: The biggest one goddammit....

Stamets: The Devil's Anus???? No way!

[starri]

I know it's probably too much to hope for, but I wish that, if the ship is going to be hopping between universes for a while, we run into Georgiou again.

[paigow]

On 11/15/2017 at 5:05 PM, starri said:

 we run into Georgiou again.

Which version...Evil? Wimpy like Tapestry!Picard that refused to take risks and remained a low level Science Specialist? Insane like Garth? All of the above?

[xaxat]

From the preview, is that Culbert in the reflection? Did Tyler hallucinate his murder?

[paigow]

It is TOS canon that some things do not change across universal boundaries - e.g. The Halkons refused to supply dilithium to the Federation & Empire on pacifist principles- however, the idea that Mirror!Lorca successfully escaped certain death and wanted to go home again is nonsensical. 

[tpel]

5 hours ago, paigow said:

It is TOS canon that some things do not change across universal boundaries - e.g. The Halkons refused to supply dilithium to the Federation & Empire on pacifist principles- however, the idea that Mirror!Lorca successfully escaped certain death and wanted to go home again is nonsensical.

I was thinking the same thing. Why would anyone want to go back to a world where everybody wants to kill you, having failed to assassinate the emperor? The only explanation I can think of is that MirrorLorca is not acting out of self interest. Maybe he wants revenge on the emperor for killing his crew. Or maybe his attempt to kill the emperor wasn't just a coup to win the throne for himself, but an attempt to upend a vile system. 

[starri]

If the Lorca we know and love really is from the Mirror Universe, I'd lay good money he's with the rebels.

[paigow]

1 hour ago, starri said:

If the Lorca we know and love really is from the Mirror Universe, I'd lay good money he's with the rebels.

Not a good plan if you bring back a spore drive upgrade but burned out the only human interface doing it.

[Latverian Diplomat]

One thing about the Mirror Universe that's confusing is how Vulcans can be slaves and rebels and such, but Spock is an Imperial Officer 10 years from now. Maybe it's not the same Mirror Universe of course, but here's another guess:

Sarek is a double agent, and the intelligence that allowed the Emperor to track down the Fire Wolf came from him. This earns freedom/citizenship for Spock and/or all non-rebel Vulcans?

It's weak, but given Discovery's penchant for twists with lots of hand-waving, maybe?

Edited January 15, 2018 by Latverian Diplomat

[paigow]

Prime!Burnham will meet her Mirror!Parents and be outed as a fake

Mirror!Spock killed Mirror!Sarek to get the Enterprise job

[Nanrad]

Well, from what I understand, you only have to pay for your crimes if you’re unsuccessful. If Lorca successfully kills goergiou, he would be the new emperor. That’s assuming that prime Lorca is mirror Lorca and is only coming home to rule. 

I think everyone got their ranks by killing their superior officer. 

[tpel]

I'm grudgingly resigning myself to the likelihood that the Lorca we've known is MirrorLorca. I say "grudgingly" because I fear that, if this is true, we'll lose the character by the end of this season. I've been assuming that PrimeLorca went down with the Buran. But what if he didn't? I was contemplating a scene from "Despite Yourself" and it gave me a little hope. Burnham is filling Lorca in on their mirror counterparts and when she tells him of his failed attempt to assassinate the emperor he makes that really odd statement: "And here's me hoping I would run into a better version of myself." It's an odd thing for PrimeLorca to say, as one would be unlikely to find a better version of oneself in the mirror universe. But it's also a bit odd for MirrorLorca to say. Wouldn't he know that PrimeLorca is dead? Perhaps he even killed him himself. Unless MirrorLorca is genuinely in the dark about how exactly the switch took place (and, of course, he can't know anything happening in the MU after the switch). That is, he found himself in our universe by accident, maybe switching with his counterpart during transport a la "Mirror, Mirror". Just like the Discovery crew might wonder what the ISS Discovery is doing in the prime universe, MirrorLorca might wonder what his counterpart is doing in the mirror universe. And he might actually be rooting for him to have survived and gone on to do something interesting. Learning that the latest intel that the MU Klingon coalition has leaves off just after the assassination attempt means that PrimeLorca hasn't been very active in the last several months. Maybe that means he is dead. But maybe not. The only other support for this theory I can find is that Lorca seemed genuinely saddened that the Buran did not survive in the MU, perhaps indicating that his knowledge of the events surrounding the switch is incomplete.

[paigow]

The Mirror!Discovery has a lot of explaining to do if Cornwell makes a booty call for Lorca.  Where is Lorca?  Where is the spore drive? Why is Tilly in charge? Why are you dressed like that?

[DavidJSnyder]

Remember back before Discovery came out Bryan Fuller said “There’s an incident and an event in Star Trek history that’s been talked about but never been explored. ".   Do you think the Battle of the Binary Stars originally was supposed to be the Battle of Anaxar and ended up mutating, or after he left did they just never get to whatever he was talking about?

[paigow]

Pike & Spock visited Talos IV 3 years before Discovery meets them...Pike had flashbacks to sword fights in the Rigel system....maybe the details of those wars are what Fuller was thinking about. Game Of Space Thrones.

[KimberStormer]

OK y'all beat me to all the guessing last season but this time I'm ahead of the game.  Here's my fan theory:  the "Spock" in Discovery is actually Sybok pretending to be Spock

EVIDENCE?  He's searching for God/angels on some sort of vision quest but more importantly:  he's got a beard, and the mirrorverse is soooooo last season, QED

Edited January 18, 2019 by KimberStormer

[Kromm]

What's bizarre to me is that Spock goes mystical and religo-crazy again, before Star Trek The Motion Picture. So it's weird if this is all the same continuity that he'd go down the same road twice, that is if we're understanding his plotline here properly.

[starri]

10 hours ago, Kromm said:

What's bizarre to me is that Spock goes mystical and religo-crazy again, before Star Trek The Motion Picture. So it's weird if this is all the same continuity that he'd go down the same road twice, that is if we're understanding his plotline here properly.

I don't know if this is mystical, though.  I didn't get that impression from the log entry, at least not entirely.  And his journey prior to TMP was more about finally purging his human side.  Perhaps this is what sets down that path.

[starri]

So, the two most popular theories about the identities of the Red Angels are either the Preservers (from "The Paradise Syndrome") and the Iconians.

The Preservers seem more likely to me.  We've already seen one of their obelisks in S1.

[KimberStormer]

I'm so pleased Ash is coming back! 

[starri]

Bringing this over from "Light and Shadows."

Quote

If not Michael, then at least the shuttle's computer. It would've put up a big fat red warning message the moment she plotted the course, which leads me to believe Pike hasn't been there yet or at least GO7 doesn't yet exist.

Pike has already been there, so I wonder if perhaps whatever the Talosians' connection to the Red Angel, that, and not Pike, this is the reason why General Order 7 is a thing. 

[ottoDbusdriver]

1 hour ago, starri said:

Bringing this over from "Light and Shadows."

Pike has already been there, so I wonder if perhaps whatever the Talosians' connection to the Red Angel, that, and not Pike, this is the reason why General Order 7 is a thing. 

Has that Talos IV visit by Pike been stated in this series ?  Because I don't recall that,   Or is that based on the Talos IV details from TOS ?

Despite the producers dictates that this show is a prequel to TOS, there is so little continuity that it is basically it's own universe like the movie 'Kelvin Universe' -- I like to call this show's universe the 'Fungi Universe' , what with all the mycelial network stuff.

And if this is a separate universe, Pike may not have been to Talos IV .... yet.

[starri]

9 minutes ago, ottoDbusdriver said:

Has that Talos IV visit by Pike been stated in this series ?  Because I don't recall that,   Or is that based on the Talos IV details from TOS ?

It's specifically mentioned in "The Menagerie" that the records of Pike's visit that Spock views are 13 years old.  That episode, based on all the other chronology we have, is set in 2267.  Working backwards, the Enterprise went to Talos the first time in 2254.  The Battle of the Binary Stars happened in 2256.

All iterations of the PTBs have consistently said this is the Prime universe.  Aesthetic differences aside, I don't see any reason to doubt that.

[Kromm]

On 3/1/2019 at 7:26 PM, starri said:

All iterations of the PTBs have consistently said this is the Prime universe.  Aesthetic differences aside, I don't see any reason to doubt that.

We do have to swallow the big pill though that Spock is enough of a petty little bitch that he never even MENTIONS the existence of a sister in decades of Prime continuity.

There are plot holes too. of course, between this and "original prime", but Burnham goes far beyond a mere hole.

[Lebanna]

7 hours ago, Kromm said:

We do have to swallow the big pill though that Spock is enough of a petty little bitch that he never even MENTIONS the existence of a sister in decades of Prime continuity.

There are plot holes too. of course, between this and "original prime", but Burnham goes far beyond a mere hole.

Admittedly, if it hadn’t been that God wanted a starship that one time, it seems like Spock wouldn’t have ever mentioned his brother, either. So, yeah. He is canonically ‘enough of a petty little bitch’, and has been since 1989.

[Ceindreadh]

1 hour ago, Lebanna said:

Admittedly, if it hadn’t been that God wanted a starship that one time, it seems like Spock wouldn’t have ever mentioned his brother, either. So, yeah. He is canonically ‘enough of a petty little bitch’, and has been since 1989.

To be fair though, Sybok was IIRC, much older than Spock and didn’t seem to have been raised with him.

Michael on the other hand was his foster sister for a good chunk of time when he was a child so it makes less sense that she wouldn’t have been brought up in conversation. 

Then again, I don’t think that Spock mentioned that his father was the Vulcan ambassador until after he showed up in TOS. 

So maybe he is just that circumspect when it comes to his family. 

[starri]

Quote

So is he or is he not an alien in disguise?  Because you know... this franchise has done that before.

I don't know if I'm more into the idea of Book having a controller like Gary Seven did, or just an awesome cat.

[ahisma]

On 9/9/2020 at 4:42 PM, starri said:

I don't know if I'm more into the idea of Book having a controller like Gary Seven did, or just an awesome cat.

I don’t know anything about Book other than he looks gorgeous in the trailer. I’d be down with either awesome cat or cat is secretly his crime-fighting duo partner.

[Kromm]

The footage we see in The Ready Room Episode 5, for Episode 6 of the show kind of concerns me a bit.  It extends the concerns I had in the Episode 5 discussion thread about how hand-wavey the show is being in some matters.

In the preview we hear that the crew is getting "retraining" to cover technical advancements, but that's just nonsense and I already don't like it.  Take now, the 21st century vs. the 12th century, 900 years previous to us.  Does anyone really believe you could easily retrain Medieval people to handle cell phones, computers, cars, planes, television, The Internet, and tens of thousands of other advancements.  Heck, running water and insulation on houses alone would seem like miracles.

I get that for plot reasons we have to accept that the Discovery crew will be, has to be, more adaptable.  But the show needs to hand wave a bit less and probably won't.  Logically the crew needs to expand, be supplemented by current Starfleet Officers.  We know the ship was running on low crew and had plenty of room.  Even if the show uses the excuse that current Starfleet is understaffed, it should still be a few key people.

It also annoys me that they likely intend to keep the Discovery crew in their current uniforms. Which makes NO SENSE.  Unless they just didn't have time to create a new one for Saru, because he's... um... tall.  Yeah right. Like replicators aren't a thing.

Unless this is actually supposed to be a subtle plot indicator that the Admiral doesn't really trust them, even still, and wants to maintain a separation.  Which is nonsense, because if that was the case Starfleet should be PUTTING OTHER CREW on board with instructions to take over if necessary.

[starri]

17 hours ago, Kromm said:

Does anyone really believe you could easily retrain Medieval people to handle cell phones, computers, cars, planes, television, The Internet, and tens of thousands of other advancements.  Heck, running water and insulation on houses alone would seem like miracles.

In my mind, it's closer to going from UNIVAC to an MacBook as opposed to a monk illuminating a manuscript suddenly having to us an iPad.