Wowah, did anybody experience a Star Wars flashback when Michaels mother came out of a mighty powerful masked suit just as Michael is near death? Like, “Luke, I am your father” moment?

(S2E10)

I’m really glad they dumbed the show down a little bit and let us realize section 31 ship was an AI… so let’s see, the AI probably put Michael’s bio marker into that file, so that they would capture the red angel in the past, so that future AI can prevail.

Thinking a bit more, this Control AI suffer from some problems of today’s AI systems. It’s objective to control terror in the world, to analyze risk, is probably overly greedy and it failed to take into account all of our values, like existence, life, liberty, happiness, freedom from secretive manipulations of events of our lives, in its pursuit of control of interstellar power.

The way it happens is if one subscribe to extreme dogma, such as the fictional logic extremest. But the real sad part is that really, the problem is that politics, the political system, of this future, allowed this travesty to take place. I wonder what humans have thought about the power to manage entire populations. It’s kind of hard to see the where Trek is going with this? Do we expect some kind of revelation about how to fix this?

Anyways, did anybody notice that Saru welcomed Admiral Cornwell onboard? Seems this is usually reserved for the Capital or the most senior officer admitting the new arrival?! Man, Pike’s like, gotta be feeling the balls crushed here… admiral onboard running the mission, Saru, Burnham, Spock!, man… these are not a easy combination for a leader… like I wonder what kind of conversation Pike would have with Saru about this? “Oh, btw, usually the real captain welcomes esteemed guests, not the former acting captain.” Or “Saru, I’d like to be the one giving permission to come aboard and welcoming guests.” “But I’d just assumed the Admiral had permission to come aboard…” he’d answer defiantly.. post-evolution.

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Yay for minority engineers!!! Inventor of the transporter, inventor of the red angel, all African Americans! This is heartwarming diversity for me to see in the 2010’s.

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After watching the show for a third time, I finally caught the other theme of Federation versus section 31. It seems the show espouses two very very polar believes. Those that believe in the principals of Federation and those who believe in keeping Federation around by all means necessary.

The argument made most by the Federation people is that section 31 should not exist… because of small violations it takes liberties on: espionage, murder, sabotage, genocide, etc. for the purpose of keeping Federation alive.

The argument made by section 31 is that without it the Federation does not exist, and plus it’s kind of fun and sometimes advances Federation agendas too.

Personally, I think the good guys are fighting a losing battle. I mean section 31 has time traveling technology. Power struggles against section 31 have never and will never succeed. The failure, however, of personal persuasion to convert one person from section 31 adherent to Federation torch bearer is very concerning. Both in that Federation has nothing noteworthy to offer said person and that section 31 does have something to offer said person. It troubles me to see that even in our imagination of the achievable future utopia, we believe that there will just be those that do not fit in the whole society that they have to be in their own secret society. This idea disturbed me a lot.