10 Times Star Trek Foretold The Apocalypse
9. It's A Control Thing
A.I.'s no longer science fiction, it's all the rage. Star Trek has always presented us with the potential benefits of very, very smart devices just as much as it has alerted us to the risks. One man's Data or EMH is another's Landru or M-5 multitronic! 'Control,' on the other hand, in its evolved and evolving form, was so apocalyptically evil, it put all of the self-aware megalomaniacal computers to shame!
You know that reopening of Starfleet Academy they were talking about? Nope! When Doctor Gabrielle Burnham was (first) pulled 950 years into the now overwritten future of 3186 in her Red Angel suit, there was no life at all left on Earth (or Vulcan, Andoria, Tellar Prime, or Deneva…), let alone any cadets. With a large dab of antimatter, Control had "wiped everything [in the galaxy] out". You certainly can't fault it for ambition!
Backed by some good old-fashioned nominative determinism and Section 31, this particular 'threat assessment system' was hardly likely to go on to do anything else. I mean, what's next? Tyrannikillicus? Oh yes, never mind! Fortunately, avoiding great galactic calamities was the Discovery's MO. By taking the Sphere data to the 32nd century, they lost and regained c/Control.