What's Past is Prologue - S1-E13
Question: Why are Joann Owosekun and Rhys still wearing the Terran uniform while everyone else on the ship has switched to the Federation's as they were supposed to?
Star Trek: Discovery (2017)
1 question in What's Past is Prologue
Starring: Jason Isaacs, Doug Jones, Sonequa Martin-Green, Shazad Latif
Genres: Sci-fi
Plot hole: Michael uses herself as bait to trap her future self, putting her own life in jeopardy with the reasoning that her future self will come back to save her. All well and good, except they have a backup plan with the doctor to resuscitate her if needed, meaning her life isn't really at risk, or nowhere near as much as might be implied. And her future self would undoubtedly know that, having lived through it in the past, so not swoop in to save her. Or even if she did come, would also know it was a trap.
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Suggested correction: ***SPOILER ALERT*** But, as it turns out, The Red Angel that comes to save her is NOT Michael, but her mother, who would not necessarily have known about the backup plan.
***SPOILER ALERT*** That it was her mother doesn't stop it being a plot hole since they thought The Red Angel was future Michael, and future Michael would know that present Michael wasn't really in danger so they weren't presenting a situation, _according to what they believed_, that required future Michael to act. It being the mother was a plot twist that created a motivation to act that the present people had no reason to think would exist. Basically, unless they presume a split timeline (i.e. this present is a different past than The Red Angel lived through), making a trap for future Michael that present Michael is involved in makes no logical sense.
Alternatively, Michael would have to come back, KNOWING it was a trap, to prevent the timeline unravelling.
The point of the exercise is they were setting a trap. If it didn't work, then Michael wouldn't have to come back to "prevent the timeline unravelling (sic)", even if that were a thing - it presupposes a fixed, unalterable timeline, which goes against their attempt to send the data to the future to protect it, and thereby alter the future. Even with an unalterable timeline, it would only work if future Michael had chosen to allow herself to be trapped, but in that case why wouldn't future Michael just voluntarily come back to help? Since her being trapped wasn't a certainty, there was no reason to think she would be given that the current Michael, and therefore also future Michael, knows a trap has been set, but one that doesn't actually threaten current Michael. The whole premise of the trap, under their assumption that The Red Angel was future Michael, is completely flawed and made no logical sense.
The fact that The Red Angel was in the future, and that they had a backup plan meant that The Red Angel never should have come back in time, ever. Because the backup plan would be the recorded history, thus, she never would have died. Thus, nothing to save. Face it, everything in Discovery is a plot hole.
Will You Take My Hand? - S1-E15
Trivia: The end of the episode shows the USS Enterprise, captained by Christopher Pike.
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