Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 1x06 - "Lethe"

Mind = Blown

Mass Effect: Andromeda is essentially "Dragon Age in space." It gets a well-deserved bad rap for its many bugs and faults, but it's an all around good game if you exercise some willing suspension of disbelief and/or snobbery.

 

Possible, but none of these were represented by stock footage; they were all "re-imaginings" of those same TOS locations. Plus, Lorca mentions the "Romulan Senate" building which, actually, isn't all that far from what we saw at that exact moment. So it's very possible that Lorca was toggling through the locations of places they had confirmed mycelium nodes existed but only mentioned a handful of them by name. Amerind could be one of them, or one of Andor's moons could have an oddly shaped obelisk that nobody has ever studied in detail.

They hadn't figured that part out yet, though. That transparent chamber is, on Discovery, being used as part of the navigation system: they pump the spores into the chamber, get them good and excited, and then try to push impulses into the chamber that induce them to drag the entire ship to a particular place. Apparently, the crew of the Glenn realized that this process works way better when you have a complex organism like Ripper in the center of it all to act as an interpreter for those signals.

More than likely, the chamber itself is where these experiments started, as Stamets and his buddy originally discovered the mycelium connection through subspace by interacting with the spores under these conditions themselves. They were probably planning to use it for something far less ambitious, like some sort of ultra-long range communication or personal transportation device, but Starfleet was all "Fuck that!" and forced them to develop the system to be able to transport entire starships.

In other words, if Stamets developed the chamber the way it was originally intended, it would basically be an unlimited range one-person transporter chamber. What Burnham was basically looking at was a poor man's iconian gateway, except the device hasn't been really configured to be used that way and it can't really send her anywhere (at least, not anymore) unless the entire ship goes with her.

Because she knows the difference between bad holographics and matter transfer. In this case, what she's seeing is light being funneled through subspace and into the chamber like images pumped through fiber-optic cables. She can't physically travel to these places, but she can see, hear and smell them in a way that is intimate enough that she knows she is being physically connected to them somehow. It's enough for Lorca to get his point across: Stamets has invented a teleportation booth, and his mission is to adapt the booth to teleport an entire starship.

 

...So stupid scent molecules can travel from B to A but Burnham (or Stamets, or a cute little robot) can't go from A to B?

I guess the chamber could be a failed teleportation booth, and perhaps it's at Engineering because it eats a lot of conventional power somehow (and Lorca probably already sent the saucer surfaces spinning when just running that demonstation, considering the looks of the controls). It's the part where the thing is sort of working and sort of not that makes this confusing: if the images are more convincing than 2250s holograms, how come there's no practical application?

Or is it just that Starfleet has fifty teams working on the spores, and thirty work on teleporting single agents, and twenty just concentrate on getting sharp images of the Klingon Chancellor's bedroom, leaving the two ships to experiment on just the special application of moving entire starships?

Timo Saloniemi

 

Some wild speculation related to this episode.

 

Not sure the writers thought of it as much as you do. They just want to have a character between a Vulcan and Seven of Nine who they can develop in the series. Because someone told them that in ST series you always have a Spock, or a Data, or an Odo or a 7 of 9 who gradually gets familiar with human way of life.
I just find her awkward. It is very possible the actress still trying to find they right way to portray her character and the writing / directing doesnt help her much.

 

FYI: Admiral Cornwell actress played Odo's BOSTON LEGAL daughter AND Maureen Robinson in the failed pilot that also starred ORVILLE's Adrienne Paleki as Judy Robinson.

 

Heh...you're likely right. I have a tendency to read deeply into shows for things that, in all probability, really aren't there. I fell into that trap years ago with NuBSG, trying to find hidden meaning in all the nuances that appeared to be intentionally thrown into that show. Then, when the final season came and went, one of the Blu-ray commentaries/documentaries mentioned how most of it was just kind of randomly thrown in there. Just "shit thrown against the wall" in the writers' room with no real inner meaning to the intent. I felt quite let down by that. You'd think I'd learn - but I am hoping that DISCO's writers are putting a little more thought into this production than Moore's/Eick's team did back then. They seem to be, anyway. Who knows?

 

But that's the whole thing about arts, Interpreting as you want them and "making them yours".
Isnt the same same about songs or paintings? They talk differently to everyone.

Btw, this is the worst thing about commentaries.. Maybe it is best not to know what the writer/composer/artist had in mind. Just enjoy it as you perceive it
I mean imagine if you learn that your favorite and very poignant song was composed by someone who felt really constipated that day..

 

In case nobody has realized it yet the Vulcan long range shuttle in this episode is a masked design copy of the Amaterasu from Starship Operators. Just another anime design that found its way into Star Trek.

 

Yeah...no:
https://www.google.com/search?tbm=i...&biw=1571&bih=1042&dpr=1#imgrc=w80oHeM-BTQM2M:

 

...The obvious reason for Eaves truncating the warp ring like that is that the upper ends now resemble pointed ears.

Perhaps this is the shape of an ancient Vulcan helmet?

Timo Saloniemi

 

Looks pretty logically in line with previously-depicted Vulcan designs in Trek, to me...

 

I see a VERY dodgy likeness. Minimal, at best.

 

BTW, people surprised about isotionalistic Vulcans are kinda forgetting that TNG two-part about group trying to re-assemble Stone of Gol and use it as a weapon against other species. Granted, that story was weird, but still...

 

Man, for being the way they are normally, Vulcans can be super-racist.

 

My biggest issues were more with how repetitive it was and the many tedious side missions.

 

Asking sci fi fans and gamers to suspend disbelief and/or snobbery is like asking water not to be wet.

 

Is it? YOU decide!

Is Water Wet?

 

It doesn't feel wet when you're in it.