Slight note but Surak didn’t have godlike powers and it was scientifically grounded.
The issue was that a child was mutated while in utero and born on a planet that is majority made of dilithium, a material that is connected to subspace, that sits inside of a massive cloud of radiation, cosmic gasses and other exotic compounds.
The childs mutation was to his vocal chords or whatever is used in Kelpians to produce sound. It was able to hit frequencies outside of the normal vocal range as well as being louder than normal. The frequency he was screaming was the resonance frequency of dilithium. The planet, made of dilithium that was being activated by the radioactive cloud, started a chain reaction where the frequency was passed through it. The frequency was blasted through subspace and any active dilithium that was connected to subspace (which it is when being actively used as evidenced in other Trek) was hit with the same frequency and detonated.
If you remove any single thing from that chain of events then nothing would have ever happened. Get rid of the child then everything goes as normal. Get rid of the cloud and the planet can’t transmit the scream. Get rid of the dilithium and there wouldn’t be anything to reverberate through.
People keep thinking that he had some magic scream but he didn’t. It’s just that he lived a life where screaming wasn’t common. He saw his mother die, the first scream, but after that all the holograms were taking care of him. He lived a quiet and rather mundane/simple life until the crew of the Discovery appeared. Then they introduce more stresses, as well as the holos breaking down, that push Surak to a point where he starts screaming again. But the loud, sustained scream caused by overwhelming emotional pain just never happened again. It really is as simple as that. Now, if the crew of the Discovery didn’t step in then the Burn would have eventually happened again. The holos would have crashed, he would have been left on a planet alone and life support eventually failing. He’d also likely see his mothers corpse again without any support which would further break him. At that point… yeah he’d probably scream a second time and destroy what little remained of Starfleet.
They even mention in Season 4 he isn’t a threat to anyone because he’s no longer on that planet. My guess is that they’d keep him away from active dilithium, but he’s not likely a threat to anyone anymore. I mean… dude could go terrorist on an insane level if he did so wish though.
If I remember right, it wasn’t sonic, but a psychic blast. The scream was just the usual “a telepath hits breaking point and explodes while screaming” Due to his biochemical links to the dilithium, it acted as an amplifier, and was momentarily rendered inert, which is extremely bad news when you have a bunch of stuff on the verge of constantly exploding, relying on a specific property of dilithium.
For us, it’d be like Q briefly snapping away the neutron absorption features of nuclear moderator rods. Things would go south extremely quickly, especially if no-one was expecting anything like that to happen.
Dude. I literally just explained what happened because you said that he was a God child. He was not. In any way. You are remembering completely incorrectly. There was never any mention of anything psychic being involved. They did, however, specifically layout frequency of the scream being the reason.
Slight note but Surak didn’t have godlike powers and it was scientifically grounded.
The issue was that a child was mutated while in utero and born on a planet that is majority made of dilithium, a material that is connected to subspace, that sits inside of a massive cloud of radiation, cosmic gasses and other exotic compounds.
The childs mutation was to his vocal chords or whatever is used in Kelpians to produce sound. It was able to hit frequencies outside of the normal vocal range as well as being louder than normal. The frequency he was screaming was the resonance frequency of dilithium. The planet, made of dilithium that was being activated by the radioactive cloud, started a chain reaction where the frequency was passed through it. The frequency was blasted through subspace and any active dilithium that was connected to subspace (which it is when being actively used as evidenced in other Trek) was hit with the same frequency and detonated.
If you remove any single thing from that chain of events then nothing would have ever happened. Get rid of the child then everything goes as normal. Get rid of the cloud and the planet can’t transmit the scream. Get rid of the dilithium and there wouldn’t be anything to reverberate through.
People keep thinking that he had some magic scream but he didn’t. It’s just that he lived a life where screaming wasn’t common. He saw his mother die, the first scream, but after that all the holograms were taking care of him. He lived a quiet and rather mundane/simple life until the crew of the Discovery appeared. Then they introduce more stresses, as well as the holos breaking down, that push Surak to a point where he starts screaming again. But the loud, sustained scream caused by overwhelming emotional pain just never happened again. It really is as simple as that. Now, if the crew of the Discovery didn’t step in then the Burn would have eventually happened again. The holos would have crashed, he would have been left on a planet alone and life support eventually failing. He’d also likely see his mothers corpse again without any support which would further break him. At that point… yeah he’d probably scream a second time and destroy what little remained of Starfleet.
They even mention in Season 4 he isn’t a threat to anyone because he’s no longer on that planet. My guess is that they’d keep him away from active dilithium, but he’s not likely a threat to anyone anymore. I mean… dude could go terrorist on an insane level if he did so wish though.
If I remember right, it wasn’t sonic, but a psychic blast. The scream was just the usual “a telepath hits breaking point and explodes while screaming” Due to his biochemical links to the dilithium, it acted as an amplifier, and was momentarily rendered inert, which is extremely bad news when you have a bunch of stuff on the verge of constantly exploding, relying on a specific property of dilithium.
For us, it’d be like Q briefly snapping away the neutron absorption features of nuclear moderator rods. Things would go south extremely quickly, especially if no-one was expecting anything like that to happen.
Dude. I literally just explained what happened because you said that he was a God child. He was not. In any way. You are remembering completely incorrectly. There was never any mention of anything psychic being involved. They did, however, specifically layout frequency of the scream being the reason.