After a month of intense speculation the true identity of The Red Angel on Star Trek Discovery may have been discovered, and the possible identity opens up a whole galaxy of possibilities.
In a recent article we discussed a number of possible Red Angel candidates and tried to breakdown their methods, motivations and probability of being the real thing, but ultimately decided that they were all in fact Red Herrings.
While the list of likely Red Herrings includes the Iconians, Devidians, Preservers, Progenitors, James T. Kirk, Christopher Pike and even Michael Burnham the two things we’ve been able to say with the most certainty is that The Red Angel is NOT a time travelling Spock, and that she is almost certainly female.
Armed with this new information and clarity fans have taken to the task of coming up with a whole new list of candidates and theories, and out of them one holds water. So now we have a very strong possibility and the first character who might just do all the things the Red Angel has done.
Dance or Detain?
The second episode of the short format series, Star Trek Short Treks was an episode called Calypso, which was the only episode in the new series that has yet to tie in to the second season of Star Trek Discovery directly, or is it?
Calypso, a term that on the surface tends to be taken as a dance, and since the episode featured a famous dance scene from the classic movie Funny Face you could be forgiven for thinking that was the reason for the title, however there is also a mythological figure, a sea-nymph named Calypso (occasionally spelled with a K) who lured and detained Odysseus on an island for seven years. This was the inspiration behind Zora, the USS Discovery’s computer AI who wished that Craft would stay with her as she had been alone for a millennia.
Now drawing on Gene Roddenberry himself for inspiration we’re going to pull an idea from his playbook on the underfunded, quirky, yet somehow entertaining series Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda, a series in which starship captain Dillon Hunt is trapped on the event horizon of a black hole for three hundred years only to emerge in a future where his entire civilization has fallen and the universe plunged into anarchy. Early in the series his new engineer builds a body for his ships AI, named Rommie.
Assuming Zora, longing for the companionship she had with craft has decided at one point to build a real body as opposed to the holographic funny face we saw in the episode, and that 1000 years in the future she would have access to time travel this makes it at least possible that she is the Red Angel.
What is her motivation?
Most of these are pretty simple, she appeared to Spock to save the woman who’s arrival aboard Discovery would help win the war and perfect the Spore Drive, she saved Jet Reno who may go on to be an important engineer in her creation and she saved the Kelpiens which helped Saru, her one time first officer.
Now here’s the tricky one nobody has quite locked down and no other character has a reason for it take a leap with me here… is it possible New Eden changes its name over the next millennia, perhaps to Alcor IV? Home of the man she would come to know as Craft.
Take a quick look through the symbols she tries to match to Crafts tattoo, one brief flash appears to be an Angel. Coincidence? Perhaps.
The Angel appears and saves New Eden, they grow religious, the Angel never gives a name, is that why a thousand years later the people of Alcor IV only get names from their spouse once they’re married? Think about the evolution of our own religions and icons over a millennia, is it that far to stretch? Not really.
While it’s too early to be certain, it’s a strong possibility that the Red Angel is Zora, aka. The USS Discovery made flesh.