{"id":13171,"date":"2019-02-10T10:22:36","date_gmt":"2019-02-10T18:22:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/?p=13171"},"modified":"2019-12-24T11:11:36","modified_gmt":"2019-12-24T19:11:36","slug":"a-theory-about-saru","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2019\/02\/10\/a-theory-about-saru\/","title":{"rendered":"A Theory About Saru (ST:DSC) &#x1f596;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[]'><\/div>\n<p>I\u2019ve come to a theory about Saru on Star Trek: Discovery. Obviously, spoilers ahead (at least, if you haven\u2019t seen all of ST:DSC to this point, and if I\u2019m correct).<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Most of what we know about Kaminar and its inhabitants comes from Saru himself, who is probably not an impartial observer. What he\u2019s told us is that Kaminar has two primary\/sentient species: the Kelpians and the Ba\u2019ul. The Kelpians are a prey species, somewhat analogous to sentient cattle; the Ba\u2019ul are a predator species, occasionally \u201cculling the herd\u201d by gathering groups of Kelpians and taking them away.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve seen that the Kelpians are a technologically primitive society, while the Ba\u2019ul are technologically advanced, if not warp capable, then likely on their way there, as they appear to have developed some form of transporter technology (as evidenced by the \u201cculling\u201d seen in Saru\u2019s Short Treks episode).<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve also seen that though a prey species, Kelpians can be rather formidable themselves, able to run quite fast and to defend themselves with strong kicks of their feet\/hooves.<\/p>\n<p>In the most recent episode of ST:DSC, \u201cAn Obol for Charon\u201d, we learn that Kelpians aren\u2019t chosen randomly to be culled by the Ba\u2019ul, but are selected after a biological process begins, part of which involves the threat ganglia swelling. At this time, the usual Kelpian fear\/threat response becomes heightened to the point of outright paranoia and what Saru describes as madness; this is the point at which the Ba\u2019ul remove the affected Kelpians from their communities.<\/p>\n<p>(In Saru\u2019s Short Treks episode, this process was presented as a stylistically religious ceremony, with a group of Kelpians all proceeding to gather around a levitating Ba\u2019ul device, after which they all disappeared simultaneously. Whether the biological process that starts this chain of events is triggered environmentally or remotely isn\u2019t yet known, but given that Saru\u2019s change was apparently triggered by the sphere artifact, and given that environmental triggers might make it difficult to get an entire group of Kelpians all ready to be gathered by the Ba\u2019ul at the same time, I&#8217;m leaning towards the Ba\u2019ul having some sort of control over the initiation of the process.<\/p>\n<p>In Saru\u2019s case, however, once the process was triggered, he wasn\u2019t able to be gathered by the Ba\u2019ul, and eventually his threat ganglia withered and fell away. Once this happened, he not only recovered from the flu-like symptoms he had been exhibiting, but described himself as not having the omnipresent sense of fear that he was used to, and even feeling a \u201csense of power\u201d that he had not had before.<\/p>\n<p>My current theory: There are no Ba\u2019ul. Or, rather, the Kelpians and the Ba\u2019ul are two stages of the Kaminarian primary species\u2019 life cycle, similar to a caterpillar becoming a butterfly (only without the cocoon and drastic physiological shift). The Kelpians are the first, \u201cchild\u201d stage, with an overdeveloped sense of self-protection to keep them safe as they develop; the Ba\u2019ul are the second, \u201cadult\u201d stage, more able to protect themselves.<\/p>\n<p>During this most recent episode, Saru went through the process that normally results in \u201cculling\u201d \u2014 only instead of being culled from the herd by the Ba\u2019ul in the process, he completed the change himself. The culling process might not be the \u201cdeath\u201d that it has been assumed to be, but instead, is the Ba\u2019ul taking those Kelpians who are ready for the next stage away from their still-developing peers.<\/p>\n<p>(Just why Kaminarian life is set up this way, complete with two separate societies at vastly differing levels of technological development, and with the more primitive society having entire religious myths and traditions built up around the system, is still a big question, of course, if this theory is even true.)<\/p>\n<p>This could also help to explain (in part) how Saru was able to understand and work with the Ba\u2019ul tech he found and eventually adapted to send out the message that Starfleet received. While it seemed pretty far-fetched that he\u2019d be able to gain that much understanding of an entirely alien advanced technology in an apparently short time, it could be easier if that technology was simply advanced, and not actually alien. Technology based on entirely alien viewpoints and approaches would likely be nearly impossible to understand, let alone adapt, but if the Kelpians and the Ba\u2019ul are two stages of the same species, then they would share many of the same basic thought process and assumptions, which could help when trying to understand technology of a different level of development.<\/p>\n<p>I might be entirely off base with this, of course. But I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a bad theory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve come to a theory about Saru on Star Trek: Discovery. Obviously, spoilers ahead (at least, if you haven\u2019t seen all of ST:DSC to this point, and if I\u2019m correct).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2047],"tags":[3857,4097],"class_list":["post-13171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-star-trek","tag-dis","tag-star-trek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13171\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}