Star Trek Discovery confirmed that Alien 10C was at least a level 2 civilization on the Kardashev scale.

This week, Star Trek: Discovery will finish up its fourth season. I've enjoyed all the seasons of Discovery, but this one has been a stand out, mostly because it has been a real treat to watch what they are doing with "Alien 10C." In practically every other iteration of Star Trek, aliens have been presented as humanoids with different foreheads. I realize that this is more than likely a decision that was made in order to keep the budget of the show in check. That being said, there are a few notable exceptions. Some of the Xindi were really interesting looking in Enterprise and in Voyager, there was Species 8472 which went to war against the Borg (they were most definitely not humanoid). And then there was "Armus" in the "Skin of Evil" episode of Next Generation that saw the death of Tasha Yar and the strange jellyfish alien from "Encounter at Farpoint." But overall, from Andorians to Klingons, to Romulans...all the aliens from Star Trek have different foreheads.

Alien 10C is the first time we have seen a Star Trek crew encounter a living civilization that has reached Level 2 of the Kardashev scale. If you aren't familiar with the Kardashev scale, it was proposed as a method of measuring a civilization's technological advancement based upon the amount of energy it is able to use. It was proposed by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev in 1964.

The Kardashev scale has three designated categories, these are:

1) A Type 1 civilization, also called a planetary civilization, can use and store all of the energy available on its planet.

2) A type 2 civilization, also called a stellar civilization, can use and control energy at the scale of its planetary system. Examples of this kind of civilization would be the successful completion of a Dyson Ring (a hypothetical megastructure), which would mean the construction of a ring of matter that entirely circles a sun at the orbit of Earth and captures all of the energy falling upon the ring while spinning to maintain gravity and atmosphere.

3) A type 3 civilization, also called a galactic civilization, can control energy at the scale of its entire host galaxy.

With Alien 10C, the Discovery's crew is now making first contact with an alien race whose technology is so advanced, that communication between them is "barely possible," even with their brightest brains and most advanced computer systems working on the problem. And in this way, it is delivering quite well on the stated goal of creating something unique and going where no one has gone before. The aliens themselves have more in common with gargantuan kaiju than they appear to have in common with the humanoids who have come to say hello. And taking a cue from the movie Arrival they communicate with molecules associated with emotions and math. After much consternation and puzzling, the crew manages to communicate to the 10C that DMA (the name of the destructive phenomenon that the 10C are using to mine boronite) + them = terror. And this happens right before Tarka once again does something stupid and launches an attack against the 10C that has the potential to be catastrophic to both the alien civilization and Earth.

All in all, I'm really looking forward to this week's season finale. There's been so much build-up to Alien 10C and the payoff has been worth the wait. The thoughtfulness with which the crew has approached First Contact, the incredibly high stakes of getting it wrong, and what this all means for Trek going forward is exciting. I've loved the hard science fiction elements, like seeing the Dyson rings that alien 10C used to inhabit before moving onto something better, which is a civilization that exists within a hyperfield that is as large as the planet Mars's orbit around the sun. The aliens themselves are these huge floating things that live within the atmospheres of gas giants. There is so much to see with these new aliens that it is a treat to have this storyline in a television series.

I have one musing that I'd like to share. The last episode of the series is called, "Coming Home." This sounds a lot like "Voyage Home" which is the title of the fourth movie in the Star Trek franchise. It came out in the 80's, and featured a really powerful probe that was sent to earth to communicate with the whales in the ocean. I have a sneaking suspicion that Alien 10C was behind the creation of that probe, and that we are going to find out that these huge floating aliens might be friends with the whales living in Earth's oceans. It "seems" plausible. I just hope that Michael figures out a way to stop Tarka, but I think she will. That is what Burnham seems to be really good at doing.