Spoilers Star Trek Discovery - Starships and Technology Season Five Discussion

5x06

- Following on SNW's premiere, transporter tech can beam subcutaneous comms (presumably meaning a whole tricom, since we see them use both functions) DURING transport. But NOT following SNW, Burnham and Tilly gear up in the local threads before beaming down.

- Answering my question of a few weeks ago, "retinal tricorders" CAN project a HUD-like interface directly onto the eyeball.

- OTOH, there's no indication that whatever comms they have are able to beam anyone personally, furthering the notion that tricoms need to leverage the ship's transporter system. Or perhaps the "comms" they were implanted with were only for speaking and seeing, not beaming.

- The Merian-class USS Locherer was mentioned here as being assigned to tail Moll and L'ak. She was seen but not referenced three episodes ago, yay continuity!

Mark

 

Good to see some more evidence, that tricom transporter function is only a control Device.

 

Which makes the most "Logical Sense" once you think about it.

Even in ST:Nemesis, the ETU (Emergency Transport Unit) that Data placed on Captain Picard only was able to beam him a distance ranging from (ten's to hundred's of meters to "Single-Digit Kilometers").

Remember, the Transporters for the Enterprise-E were down after ramming the Scimitar.

Who knows what state the Shuttle's Transporters were, even if they could access them.

Assuming that you have a tiny ass Transporter System inside the pin, it's Transporter distance is fairly short, no where near what the full sized regular Transporter can do, and who knows what other limitations are part of the system.

 

Wouldn't it have been nice if the Locherer had been the Antares.

 

Yeah, but I also like the idea of a big Starfleet and especially in this era when there should probably not be enough ships to go around. The Antares was probably already back out in her assigned sector with a new CO, while the Locherer, possibly at HQ for a refit or something, was free to get assigned the gig.

Mark

 

Agreed. Star Trek has enough "small universe" syndrome as it is without limiting the number of guest ships.

 

We see a Breen dreadnought. It is said to be the largest of the warship class.

We hear the name of a Breen vessel, the Tau Ceti. It is not named after the system, but after a particular nasty venomous animal.

Along with the Mitchell and the Locherer, who we see protecting FedHQ, we see four other Starfleet ships. I believe they are a Credence-type, a Constitution-class, a Dresselhaus-type, and another Merian-class. These four ships might have been named; however, the labels attached to the Starfleet logo were illegible.

For some unfathomable reason, the ISS Enterprise is referred to on several occasions as the ISS. Did someone forget the name of the ship? (We do not see the ship in this episode.)

Finally, we learn about a mobile library platform called the Eternal Gallery and Archive. It's last location places it in the Badlands.

 

That Breen Dreadnought seemed HUGE.

It dwarfed everything that StarFleet had.

 

Bigger iz badder.

 

Probably to distinguish it from whatever Enterprise is currently in service.

Exhibit A: the Galaxy Class.

 

And Exhibit F, the Odyssey-class. More notes:

- I don't know about scale in this episode, but at through S3 and a bit of S4 we did have numerous shots of Starfleet ships close to each other. Are there official lengths for all those ships? The smaller ones look WAY smaller than they used to for scale. And where's the spacedock? Moved off somewhere to refit the ISS, no bloody A, B, C, D, or "Enterprise"?

- Did they move HQ? Was the big ominous cloud there before, or was it manifested just so the Breen ship could be seen halfway into it, to exaggerate how awfully huge it was?

- We distinctly see a little metal whatsit on the user's right sleeve is the buffer or replicator or P-matter controller that produces hand weapons. So at least for THAT end of things, they don't have to be integrated into away team outfits and can be carried around with regular duty uniforms.

- Still haven't figured out how to lock out weapons that aren't keyed to a user's ID or DNA or something, eh? Unless Moll had tech that could override them, they mention she could've been equipped with implants that would keep her hidden.

- The Breen are xenophobic and genocidal, but still had no problems interacting with couriers for trade. I guess their beef is at the species level, not the individual.

Mark

 

Individuals are easier to control.

 

Are not the Akira's launchers also a rotary model? Last I had checked.
And as shown - on Star Trek: Prodigy, too?

 

They were Rotary Single Shot launchers.
So you rotated firing chambers, but you can still only fire one at a time.
They had multiple rotating chambers, but even then, that limits the amount of torpedoes you can fire simultaneously, but you would have greater continuous firing speed.

Which is different from what the Enterprise-D had, which is a single "Multi-Launcher" bay.

Spoiler: Venom Geek Media - Deep Dive into Enterprise-D's Multi-Launcher!!

The "Main Problem" with the Enterprise-D is that it completely depended on a Single Fore & Single Aft Multi-launcher Bay.

Notice how most other ships use at least Dual Single Launch Torpedo Bays.

If it was my choice, I'd have Multiple Multi-Launch Bays as a option with the Torpedo Capacity to back it up.

 

FederationHQ was in a new location.

No one would ever do what Burnham would do, by calling a ship by its prefix. Context and shared knowledge would help a person to know which ship she is referring to. Interestingly, the only two occurrences of this happened in one scene - did they have a different writer work on this scene? The reason I bring it up is that the third time the Enterprise was mentioned, it was correctly referenced.

 

When that Breen dreadnought warped away, all the Fed ships, including HQ, were "pushed" slightly, like they were caught in its wake. Woof.

 

So does the Breen have just as much dilithium as the Federation? How were they able to get such a large ship there so quickly? Also, the Breen have always been aggressive I am surprised they haven't tried to conquer the Federation in these hundreds of years.

 

That threw me off too. I'm assuming there is an active USS Enterprise, so Burnham just saying "ISS" worked well enough that people understood, rather than having to say the full "ISS Enterprise".

There definitely is something of a plot hole there. The Federation is in control of the primary source of dilithium. I'm sure the Breen have *SOME*. There is still dilithium out there, it's just in short supply. Although given the Federation collapsed, the Emerald Chain rose and the Breen appeared to still have a massive Empire... other powers may have had more resources to acquire dilithium.

I get the feeling that Pre-Burn Federation was pretty damn powerful, so the Breen were likely kept at bay... it's also possible that they didn't rise to their current level of power until the Burn. Perhaps they had access to a stockpile of dilithium and were able to field more ships than others?

 

Well, a couple of things here:
- There probably aren't that many Breen "Dreadnaughts" floating around out there. One per Primarch, at most, I would think. There may even be several "lesser" Primarch's who don't even have that, so there would likely not be that many to support.
- Remember that dilithium isn't "fuel", per se, but rather a catalyst for the M/AM reaction (TOS's loosy-goosy usages for, and rules about, the substance notwithstanding). Yes, it depletes over time but also remember that Book's ship has its own on-board recrystallization device. That technology has clearly not been lost (and most likely highly advanced by this timeframe) and, once a reasonable stockpile of dilithium has been re-acquired post-burn, recrystallization from seed fragments can get cranked up again. At the very least, to buy them some time to develop a successor propulsion system architecture and jettison dilithium-actuated M/AM tech altogether.

I have no doubt that, if the Breen can build huge-ass ships like that, crystal production and re-processing wouldn't even make them break a sweat.

I am curious now - what ever happened to Romulan tech that used an artificial singularity to power their warp drives? They didn't use M/AM or dilithium crystals at all to my recollection. However, the Ni'Var all seemed to be affected by the Burn and its attack upon dilithium. Were the singularity drives all broken as well? Something doesn't track there.