Discovery starship discussion [SPOILERS]

[Timo]

...Another fine candidate for the "guess the event mentioned but not described in TOS" contest. (Perhaps Burnham is Uhura? The name is almost an anagram, after all.)

A minor tech point that we might be able to answer at this stage: do the business ends of those phasers rotate? And do kill and stun blasts emerge from different knobs?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

I'm guessing they don't rotate. As it stands, phasers of ALL eras have shown a remarkable ability to hit their target regardless of how off the mark the wielder/actor is pointing it, so there seems to be SOME element of off-axis compensation going on.

Ah! In the previews for the next episode, it's confirmed that the chairs on the Discovery bridge ARE on their own little rails sunk into the bridge decking! So when (if?) this ship is ever really hit hard enough to send the crew flying, the chairs won't go flying with them, TOS style..!

Mark

 

[Timo]

Ah, the good old days of ENT when we could freeze-frame a shot to properly see where the nice and clean beam emerged from - this doodad or the other two centimeters from it. Now the blasts themselves hide whatever can be discerned from all the motion blur and shaking and darkness and fancy focusing and framing and whatnot.

Does the starmap on Lorca's wall really change as the war progresses? I could spot nothing much.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[137th Gebirg]

Inverse has been referring to some interesting points about the series, such as:

https://www.inverse.com/article/37820-star-trek-discovery-original-series-lethe-corwnell-theory

If this is so, then it's possible that we might be looking at some interesting developments for the show.

Interesting theory indeed. Some compelling evidence in the article.

 

[Timo]

Of course, we have only Dr. Adams' word that Lethe came in as a rehabilitation patient. Perhaps Adams had several colleagues, all of whom disagreed with his extreme pursuit of a cure for the incurably criminal, and Lethe is what he hoped to do to van Gelder, too?

Doesn't mean it couldn't be Cornwell. Perhaps she retires, returns to a career of therapy in the civilian world, and has the misfortune of getting Adams as a colleague? Perhaps she'd be especially interested in the world of clinical criminology, if DSC ends with Lorca in jail and she thinks he could be rehabilitated by Adams?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ronald Held]

By the end of DSC, the cloaks of Kol will be detectable and dropped until they get different ones from the Romulans?

 

[Timo]

Or Klingons keep on cloaking and remaining undetectable, explaining how they can pounce the Enterprise at the start of "Errand of Mercy".

Mind you, there's no benefit to briefly having the cloaks fall into disuse before TOS, because Kirk is already in Starfleet in the 2250s. He should be perfectly aware of the existence of practical invisibility technology, and retain that awareness for the next ten years. Brief disappearance of Klingon cloaks does not restore continuity in this case.

It should be noted that when cloaks were introduced in "The Vulcan Hello" and more dramatically in "Battle at the Binaries", the heroes did not consider them a complete novelty or a theoretical possibility. They took them on the stride, just as they had taken the lesser visual obfuscation technology shrouding the Sacred Torch of Kahless at the very start of the adventure. Quite possibly, they had good, solid, accurate records of the Suliban cloaks, but there was no story point in which they could have mistaken their invisible foes for the Suliban!

Invisibility is novel to Star Trek heroes in only two episodes of the franchise: "Balance of Terror" and "Unexpected". The full implications of Suliban invisibility, already a factor in "Broken Bow", only gradually dawn on Archer's team. But this set of heroes is fully justified in not being familiar with invisibility in the 2150s even if the technology is ages-old and thoroughly familiar to the Vulcans, say.

"Balance of Terror" has no such justification. Our heroes should know not only that certain foes can make themselves invisible, but also that Romulans very specifically can do that. This in sharp contrast to "Vulcan Hello" where the specific fact that Klingons can now cloak might indeed be news.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Avro Arrow]

Inverse has been referring to some interesting points about the series, such as:

https://www.inverse.com/article/37820-star-trek-discovery-original-series-lethe-corwnell-theory

If this is so, then it's possible that we might be looking at some interesting developments for the show.

Interesting theory. But note this quote from Wikipedia:

In Classical Greek, the word lethe literally means "oblivion", "forgetfulness", or "concealment".[1] It is related to the Greek word for "truth", aletheia (ἀλήθεια), which through the privative alpha literally means "un-forgetfulness" or "un-concealment".

This seems to tie-in directly to the Sarek plot in the episode (the "concealment" / "un-concealment" part), so the title may not have anything to do with the Cornwell plot at all.

Interesting development if it did, though.

 

[DEWLine]

Does the starmap on Lorca's wall really change as the war progresses? I could spot nothing much.

I'm not entirely sure yet. I know there's someone maintaining a DSC screencap archive, so there's a realistic hope of tracking this particular set of details, but I can't remember the URL at the moment.

 

[Ronald Held]

Or Klingons keep on cloaking and remaining undetectable, explaining how they can pounce the Enterprise at the start of "Errand of Mercy".

Mind you, there's no benefit to briefly having the cloaks fall into disuse before TOS, because Kirk is already in Starfleet in the 2250s. He should be perfectly aware of the existence of practical invisibility technology, and retain that awareness for the next ten years. Brief disappearance of Klingon cloaks does not restore continuity in this case.

It should be noted that when cloaks were introduced in "The Vulcan Hello" and more dramatically in "Battle at the Binaries", the heroes did not consider them a complete novelty or a theoretical possibility. They took them on the stride, just as they had taken the lesser visual obfuscation technology shrouding the Sacred Torch of Kahless at the very start of the adventure. Quite possibly, they had good, solid, accurate records of the Suliban cloaks, but there was no story point in which they could have mistaken their invisible foes for the Suliban!

Invisibility is novel to Star Trek heroes in only two episodes of the franchise: "Balance of Terror" and "Unexpected". The full implications of Suliban invisibility, already a factor in "Broken Bow", only gradually dawn on Archer's team. But this set of heroes is fully justified in not being familiar with invisibility in the 2150s even if the technology is ages-old and thoroughly familiar to the Vulcans, say.

"Balance of Terror" has no such justification. Our heroes should know not only that certain foes can make themselves invisible, but also that Romulans very specifically can do that. This in sharp contrast to "Vulcan Hello" where the specific fact that Klingons can now cloak might indeed be news.

Timo Saloniemi

Sounds like a retcon to TOS

 

[Timo]

TOS was one big retcon of itself. "Balance of Terror" is in contradiction of, say, "Charlie X" where the heroes confront an opponent who materializes out of thin air right next to their ship. Unless the heroes have a specific reason to think Romulans can't do that, they shouldn't feign surprise. But no such reason is posited.

The less we hear of "Balance of Terror", the better. But contradicting that episode happened within TOS itself already, and has never not happened in a Trek spinoff, be it a TV series or a movie series.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

Discovery 1x07 Ships and Tech: What to Look For: Lightning Round!

- Alien helmets?
- Biological spacecraft?
- Life aboard ship: rave edition
- How the war's going?
- Discovery's first real temporal adventure, and 2009 nonwithstanding, arguably Trek's first standalone time travel story since the end of Voyager.

And for those looking to see how the battle lines may or may not have changed since 1x03, here's a pic of what they look like as of now. I'm not sure they've changed at all. Lorca may need to hit refresh on his browser more often:

http://trekcore.com/blog/2017/10/ne...-sanest-man-episode-photos-and-video-preview/

Mark

 

[Timo]

...Okay, that was fun. Not much on the tech front this time, save for Captain Mudd's very special McGuffin with fries and kaboom. All the best time loop tricks Doctor Who never dared try and pull, done with Doctor-like panache nevertheless.

Stardates, at last. The adventure begins with 2136.8, which is some time before the party, and the time loop ends with 2137.2 or thereabouts. The .4 units cannot mean more than one full day, and that would be a crazy day if Burnham woke up really early and the party began very late. If a thousand units mean 365 days or thereabouts, then one stardate is 8 and 3/4 hours or so, and 0.4 units is three and a half hours. Not a contradiction yet, though: Burnham may have woken up three hours before the party just fine.

...The last one was 1207.3 for the first half of the pilot. Are we now about a year into the war? Could very well be.

Stamets has a doodad on his wrist, supposedly tied to the spore drive interfacing somehow. Or is that a sham, to keep Mudd confused for a few more loops?

More talk about money, wealth and debt in this episode than in all of TOS put together, including the movies.

Massive site-to-site transport of ST4:TVH style, with a space whale this time. Said whale grazes on helium - I wonder if these things suck up to starship impulse engines often?

Many ways to die, 836 or whatever specific ones "in space", whatever that means. The basic Type 2 phaser can kill by vaporizing, poking holes, or just plain dropping you dead. No, the phaser head does not rotate to achieve all this. Alas.

I wonder how Mudd fools the initial intruder alerts whenever he steps aboard the ship, the first-ever loop notwithstanding? Supposedly, he beams aboard, but from within the ship - perhaps that alone is enough?

Anything else of importance? A cool ship for a weapons merchant.

Oh, and the Federation is winning this war. And hands down, it seems: Tyler refers to about ten thousand casualties. The 2,000 extra wouldn't fill more than a dozen starships even at the DSC time and age. Again a case of the writers going all Schroedinger on their cake - now we can say there was a war with Klingons, and that there never was a serious war with Klingons. That there were major fleet battles, and that the Discovery won it solo. That the borders did move, but Starfleet had no trouble restoring them to the way they were, and never coveted more. Etc.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Timo]

Oh, I missed the classic Groundhog Day question: how many loops?

Mudd kills Lorca 53 times, and we see him not kill Lorca three times. That's 28 hours of nonstop action for our intrepid villain at the very least (no wonder he's yawning towards the end). What's the maximum? A hundred loops before he runs out of stims?

How many loops does it take to learn to take over the ship? Does Harry do risk analysis and believe in a soft upper limit where the crew is likely to find a way to fight back? How far off is he with that analysis?

What other limiting factors do we have?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

It certainly seems like Mudd took a few loops expressly with the purpose of killing Lorca or otherwise getting his jollies before blowing up the ship and starting over again. I'm sure we missed a few loops even before the first one we saw, with Mudd trying - and perhaps even failing miserably - before us seeing the one where he got far enough to take off his helmet and viciously declare his intentions. We then see a loop at least one more down the line where Stamets has finally realized that something is up and that he's the only one that is remembering stuff, and then we skip several more before we see Stamets kill Mudd in Engineering.

As for how rested Mudd is or isn't, I'm also willing to bet that he also took several loops off to take a cat nap or something. Or who knows, perhaps the loop for HIM starts several hours or longer before the half our or so Discovery goes through, plenty of time for him to reassess his plan, have a meal, take a nap, and get back to work. In that sense it's almost the inverse of the loop in "Cause and Effect", which lasts hours for the Enterprise in each loop but only a couple of minutes for the Bozeman.

Mark

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

Okay, I'm breaking with tradition on this one and skipping to my analysis of the last neat tech thing we saw in this episode: Mudd's Wife's Dad's ship!

We see it for only a couple seconds, but it bugged me all night and I only just figured out why.

First off, it's weird. It is curvy and blocky and feels really old fashioned sci-fi. It has underslung nacelles and a block up top that makes it look unbalanced. It's got a freakin' HOOD ORNAMENT.

Then I realized: intentional or not, it's a Y-class freighter!

I'm now wondering if this is a deliberate homage or not, because it REALLY looks to me like someone sawed off everything of a Y-class freighter behind the forward nacelles and remodeled the rest...

If it is on purpose, whoever designed it may have mistaken the forward boxy structures for actual nacelles, since ENT wanted you to think it was the more TOS-ey tubes out the back that made the ship go. If I'm right and the Stella family yacht is of the Y-class lineage, it's a really cool nod to continuity and gives us a lot to dissect on how non Starfleet space travel works. Neat!

Mark

 

[F. King Daniel]

Okay, I'm breaking with tradition on this one and skipping to my analysis of the last neat tech thing we saw in this episode: Mudd's Wife's Dad's ship!

We see it for only a couple seconds, but it bugged me all night and I only just figured out why.

First off, it's weird. It is curvy and blocky and feels really old fashioned sci-fi. It has underslung nacelles and a block up top that makes it look unbalanced. It's got a freakin' HOOD ORNAMENT.

Then I realized: intentional or not, it's a Y-class freighter!

I'm now wondering if this is a deliberate homage or not, because it REALLY looks to me like someone sawed off everything of a Y-class freighter behind the forward nacelles and remodeled the rest...

If it is on purpose, whoever designed it may have mistaken the forward boxy structures for actual nacelles, since ENT wanted you to think it was the more TOS-ey tubes out the back that made the ship go. If I'm right and the Stella family yacht is of the Y-class lineage, it's a really cool nod to continuity and gives us a lot to dissect on how non Starfleet space travel works. Neat!

Mark

I immediately thought of the ECS cargo ships from ENT when we saw that ship.

 

[Timo]

I'm not sure Stamets should require any time at all to realize time is looping. I mean, he can see he's reliving the same events again, and we don't hear of any "dizzy spells" or the like.

The first time around, Mudd just blasts his way through the ship, not getting particularly far. I doubt the blasting served any particular purpose: the real point probably was to hook a doodad to a whachamacallit and get some readings on how to thwart the transporter alarm, which took Mudd about two minutes of his stay. And remember he has already done practice runs: he must have looped through the Bank of Betazed quite a few times to clear all the obstacles there.

It's after this one that we get Stamets who's clearly lived through several loops already, but I'd say three is likelier than thirty because otherwise he'd have figured out how to convince Burnham, or given up on her and chosen somebody else.

No in-universe problem with building warp coils into the bow nacelles of a "Y-related" ship, and replacing those workbee bays with ramscoops or deflectors. It's just a ship of Theseus then, when it comes to being Y-related...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[137th Gebirg]

I'm now wondering if this is a deliberate homage or not, because it REALLY looks to me like someone sawed off everything of a Y-class freighter behind the forward nacelles and remodeled the rest...

If it is on purpose, whoever designed it may have mistaken the forward boxy structures for actual nacelles, since ENT wanted you to think it was the more TOS-ey tubes out the back that made the ship go. If I'm right and the Stella family yacht is of the Y-class lineage, it's a really cool nod to continuity and gives us a lot to dissect on how non Starfleet space travel works. Neat!

Mark

I think you may be right about the ship's lineage here. Very similar lines.

Although the bridge area for the Y-class looks more like a Cylon to me.

 

[Ronald Held]

For those with sharp eyes:. In the starmap, is the boundary line moving but there is no change to the earliest displayed systems and objects?