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Spoilers Discovery and the Novelverse - TV show discussion thread

Christopher said:
Again: in alphabetical order. Not order of importance or number of decorations. If Garth were on the list, he would be between Decker and Georgiou, not after Pike.
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I'm sorry, I'm conveying myself poorly, What I was saying was I imagined Garth would be on the list if it was longer.

Come to think of it, Pike shouldn't even be on the list. As of 2256, he shouldn't have been a captain long enough to have accumulated as many decorations as Archer surely did over the course of his long career.
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Yeah, that was a bit of fanservice which wasn't quite correct timeline wise. Decker would also be at the height of his career now rather than someone who is a legend.

He's already made his mark. Kirk said Garth's exploits were required reading when he was at the Academy. Kirk graduated from the Academy in 2254, two years before this episode. Garth is already a legend.
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I'm not trying to argue with you about Trek lore, Christopher, as that's a losing proposition but it's possible he might be famous as a writer here in terms of being "literal" required reading versus his accomplishments as an explorer or a battlefield commander. He could, for instance, have been a Starfleet Academy Captain before transferring to the front lines during the war and becoming famous as a tested tactician.

But yes, you're better at making sense of these things than I am.

The only other idea I can think of is that Garth is controversial in some way even before his let down and Kirk has a reason to revere him but he doesn't quite represent that pure perfection of Starfleet ideal which Saru is looking for. Perhaps he was someone like Captain Lorca and they should have seen he was a ticking time bomb.
 
Christopher said:
Come to think of it, Pike shouldn't even be on the list. As of 2256, he shouldn't have been a captain long enough to have accumulated as many decorations as Archer surely did over the course of his long career.
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Yeah, that bugged me, too. I mean, sure, I totally get needing to cater to the majority of your viewing audience who've probably only ever watched the TV shows and nothing else, but putting Pike on that list still just seemed gratuitous. Would've liked to have maybe seen a captain or two that we've never even heard of before, since Starfleet is presumably now a huge organization with lots of other starships out there accomplishing all sorts of different stuff, but it makes the universe seem awfully small when you do something like this.

Pike is actually much better-known to us as a starship captain in the "real" world than he presumably is in the Star Trek universe at this point in the timeline (even if he is captaining one of the top-of-the-line Constitution-class vessels).
 
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Charles Phipps said:
I'm sorry, I'm conveying myself poorly, What I was saying was I imagined Garth would be on the list if it was longer.
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Yes, I get that that's your hypothesis, but my point is that the hypothesis is ruled out by the evidence, i.e. the fact that the listing is alphabetical. Imagining something is just the first step -- testing it against the evidence comes next. And this idea doesn't pass that test. Sure, there could be a second page of the list, but it would have to be for captains alphabetically later than "Pike." (Like maybe Reed, sh'Prenni, Shumar, or T'Pol...) Since Garth was called "Garth of Izar" and "Captain Garth," it seems likely that "Garth" is either his surname or his only name, and thus he would be between Decker and Georgiou if he were on the list at all.
 
Christopher said:
Again: in alphabetical order. Not order of importance or number of decorations.
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While Charles did clarify what he meant, on another point: To be fair, while we know that the names were in alphabetical order, we don't know that they were alphabetized. It's possible that the first five captains on the list just coincidentally happened to be in alphabetical order. 1/120 isn't all that unlikely. :p
 
Idran said:
To be fair, while we know that the names were in alphabetical order, we don't know that they were alphabetized. It's possible that the first five captains on the list just coincidentally happened to be in alphabetical order. 1/120 isn't all that unlikely. :p
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No, it's not impossible, but of course the more likely hypothesis is favored over the less likely one unless there's evidence to support the latter. The burden of proof is on the less likely hypothesis.
 
I suppose my point is for whatever reason they chose to stop at those names.

Why five names?

Is this a common question? Why did the computer choose them and only them? Is there an honor roll? What criteria is being used?

Garth of Izar is off the list but why was the list so limited to begin with? I was thinking "He's probably a runner up" but that just raises more questions.
 
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I wonder if there's a specific "Medal of Honor" equivalent which all of them have which Garth never got.

I'm spending way too much time on this.
 
Charles Phipps said:
I suppose my point is for whatever reason they chose to stop at those names.

Why five names?
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I thought we were both stipulating that this was just the first page of the list. For whatever reason, the computer used too big a font for the rest to show up on the screen without scrolling down.
 
I haven't watched the episode in a while so I don't remember it very well, was it established that Garth was a big deal for all of Starfleet, rather than just a hero of Kirk's?
 
JD said:
I haven't watched the episode in a while so I don't remember it very well, was it established that Garth was a big deal for all of Starfleet, rather than just a hero of Kirk's?
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As I've mentioned, Kirk said (twice) that Garth's exploits were required reading at the Academy. He also said "You were the prototype, the model for the rest of us."
 
Christopher said:
I thought we were both stipulating that this was just the first page of the list. For whatever reason, the computer used too big a font for the rest to show up on the screen without scrolling down.
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No, my idea was that was the list and I was thinking Garth may have just been left off because he didn't quite fit the top 5.
 
Christopher said:
A mycelial network isn't fluid, though. It's more like a root structure made of filaments of fungal cells.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycelium

And this one is explicitly in a domain of subspace, the part of this universe that starships travel through. It's not an entire universe, just a segment or layer of one. And it allows instantaneous travel, which fluidic space does not.
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Look I don't know how solid the science is but I temporarily merged my DNA with some mushrooms while out dancing on Friday night and I can confirm that you do become connected to the entire universe.
 
Charles Phipps said:
I suppose my point is for whatever reason they chose to stop at those names.

Why five names?

Is this a common question? Why did the computer choose them and only them? Is there an honor roll? What criteria is being used?

Garth of Izar is off the list but why was the list so limited to begin with? I was thinking "He's probably a runner up" but that just raises more questions.
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Maybe Garth's last name comes after Pike, alphabetically speaking.
 
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