Let me preface this by saying I'm kind of pissed we have to play this game, and that I hope the writers yank the rug out from everyone and point out this was a stupid game. We started with this mysterious, archetypal vision, rife with speculation, on screen and off, about Clarke's Law-powered aliens, actual divinity, and the deep uncertainty about the border between the two, and as soon as anyone mentioned 'time travel' everyone started playing Clue.
Which needn't have been the case- we've become inured to time travel plots, especially in a universe where we know the status quo must be substantially upheld, but a real time machine would be just that sort of Clarke's Law magic-by-another-name, and to their credit, they have at least one conversation (between Pike and a petulant, freaked out Ash) where they note that dealing with this time traveler is a properly Lovecraftian moment of staring into the abyss, with knowing the capabilities of a being that knows literally everything about them and can remold their reality at will. This time traveler could be from a billion years in the future, six galaxies to the left and three universes over, with a black hole brain and neutronium heart, and what's happening to our heroes could be an experiment, an art project, imperialism, philanthropy, or minor housekeeping in the wholesale reorganization of the universe...
Nah. It's human, it has a personal interest in our heroes, and it's here to save the day from evil robots, and with the current fashion for outsize twists, of names left unmentioned to be decoded by message-board Sherlocks gathering up the scattered breadcrumbs, odds are unfortunately good that it's someone we know.
In case you hadn't figured it out, this annoys me, and I hope that there does turn out to be something novel and inscrutable about the Angel. I was a big fan of the Last Jedi giving the finger to the quasi-mystery of Rey's parentage in The Force Awakens and pointing out the irrelevancy of the question, and I'm rooting for a similar outcome.
I will almost certainly be disappointed. So, with that in mind, allow me to present my surly, wild-ass guess for the identity of our traveler. Well, not guess, precisely. I don't think I'm right, but I think it would be an interesting.
It's female. It's human. It has a personal interest in Spock- and appeared to him at a moment of childhood trauma without the galaxy-alerting song and dance of the Signals. It inspired a wobbling, twisting turn away from the rigors of Vulcan logic, soothed by childhood recollections of a surreal journey down the rabbit hole. The only other person we know it personally appeared to (and perhaps aided?) is Burnham.
It's Amanda.
It doesn't explain how she ends up in the future (500 years from 'now'? A thousand? That's unclear) or how she gets a super suit- but that's hardly been answered in any of the formulations that say it's Burnham, Kirk, Airiam, or Ben Sisko. We know from 'Calypso' that the whole ship is getting to the deep future one way or another, so let's just put a pin in that.
In the meantime, we have a character whose capability and willingness to go off task to do the right thing has been unparalleled, even among our crew of mutineers and spies. She's already had it out for Section 31, has made cagey tactical choices, and would clearly have cause to enlist and trust Spock above all other people in the galaxy, which has thus far been a mysterious choice. We've had this repeating Alice in Wonderland motif, which we learn was Amanda's intentional effort to get her children to think in less linear terms, and which was helpful in Spock's recovery from his temporal confusion- we can of course speculate about whether that was part of why she chose him, or if she's sent herself a message to prepare him, or if she is from the future to begin with. She's female, human, compassionate, resourceful, and has cause to try to sooth young Spock's bad day without announcing to the galaxy a great happening worthy of Starfleet's attention, which has been another puzzle.
This is of course almost certainly wrong. It doesn't explain the WWIII church rescue, or the interest in Kaminar, and a half dozen other hitches- though nothing else does, and it's easy to imagine a sort of 'Prisoner of Azkaban' situation where someone has to step up to the plate to do the time travel day-saving they've worked out in necessary, and Amanda jumps into the fray because she's unflinchingly good and tough as nails. Regardless, I find it more interesting than the rest of the crop of bad ideas, just because I think she'd be a neat sort of hero. Spock has pointed out that Michael's messiah complex is exhausting and self defeating, so I would hope that, if this is a situation where someone has to 'angel up', that it's not her- and who would be more likely to take her place? She's not an action hero, but I sure wouldn't want to get in her way. She's a mama bear whose love crosses blood and biology and isn't afraid of the Powers that Be.
What do you think?
Submitted March 20, 2019 at 02:14AM by queenofmoons https://ift.tt/2Oh2XuF
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