Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Discovery Season 4, Episode 3 - "Choose To Live".
In Star Trek: Discovery season 4, Lieutenant Paul Stamets (Anthony Rapp) and the crew of the USS Discovery have failed to learn the truth about the gravimetric anomaly because they keep forgetting one of Star Trek's oldest mission statements. The mysterious anomaly destroyed Book's (David Ajala) home planet of Kwejian in Star Trek: Discovery's season 4 premiere. Despite the best efforts of Discovery's finest minds, the Starfleet heroes are no closer to unlocking what the anomaly truly is.
The USS Discovery is a ship full of geniuses who are the best in their respective fields. The combined brainpower aboard the Discovery is what helped Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) stop the rogue A.I. called Control from wiping out all life in the galaxy in Star Trek: Discovery season 2. After the Discovery's one-way trip to the 32nd century, Burnham and her crew solved the galaxy's greatest mystery and learned what caused The Burn. Their success restored the United Federation of Planets and brought back interstellar space travel after a century. But Star Trek: Discovery season 4's gravimetric anomaly presents a new challenge that Stamets, Lt. Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman), and the Discovery's biggest brains can't seem to crack.
The reason Stamets keeps failing to decipher the gravimetric anomaly is that he's failing to consider the impossible. In Star Trek: Discovery season 4, episode 2, "Anomaly," Stamets and Tilly worked under the hypothesis that the anomaly is a roving binary black hole. Some of the science fit their guess but after Book piloted his ship into the anomaly to gather more data, Discovery's brain trust was dumbfounded to learn that the anomaly could change direction at will, which cancels the idea that it could be a roving black hole. In Star Trek: Discovery season 4, episode 3, "Choose to Live," Stamets was almost sure the anomaly is a primordial wormhole, except that it lacked tachyons. But the Vulcans of the Ni'Var Science Council debunked Stamet's theory because President T'Rina (Tara Rosling) found no tachyons in Book's memories of Kwejian's destruction during their mind-meld.
After multiple failures, Stamets and Discovery's crew need to remember the core tenet of Starfleet's mission: to seek out new life. In short, Stamets needs to consider the possibility that the gravimetric anomaly may be alive. The cosmic event's behavior denotes an ability to course-correct and even make decisions. This means the anomaly may either be thinking independently or is being controlled by some sort of intelligence. Instead, Stamets nicknamed the mystery the "DMA," or "Dark Matter Anomaly." Discovery's crew are trying to 'science' the problem of the anomaly and it frustratingly keeps defying their science. This is because Star Trek: Discovery's characters have yet to consider the impossible and instead are trying to make the anomaly fit into boxes, which isn't working.
Star Trek: Discovery's fans have an advantage over the show's heroes because the ending of "Anomaly" pulled back the camera to show that the massive space phenomenon resembles a giant eye. Whatever the gravimetric anomaly is, it almost certainly is not a naturally occurring cosmic event. Instead, it must be something new and strange in the universe, like V'Ger in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the whale probe in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, or the Nexus in Star Trek Generations. Attempting to apply known science to the gravimetric anomaly isn't working because it is the very definition of the unknown. The anomaly may even be a new life form.
To paraphrase Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Burnham's adoptive brother, Stamets and the USS Discovery's scientists need to stop thinking inwardly and consider the possibilities. The smartest move Discovery's heroes can make is to put aside what they think they know about the anomaly and make a leap of imagination. Until Star Trek: Discovery's top minds remember that Starfleet isn't about reaffirming what they already know but facing and understanding what they don't know, Stamets, Burnham, and their team will keep failing to unlock the mystery of the gravimetric anomaly.
Star Trek: Discovery Season 4 streams Thursdays on Paramount+.