I'm just covering the battle today, because hey, who doesn't love dissecting a space battle?!
- Hum. The Gargarin bridge set is a thin makeover of the Shenzhou set. I originally thought it was just a quick re-use of Discovery, but they applied the Discovery's "golden" lighting setup to the Shenzhou set to make it look more modern, I guess. In any case, they seem to have borrowed some of Discovery's glass projection consoles to replace the free-standing stations that they had on the Shenzhou. Also, the captain seems to be sitting on a chair, but we don't see a large padded back to it like the ones we've seen so far.
- Starfleet has never been good in this department, but the Tactical station overhead view of the Gargarin is using a Walker-class ship. But on the Gagarin herself, a Vulcan (?) crew member is seen in front of the correct 3/4 diagram of a Shepard-class ship, and a top view also graces one of the glass projector stations. The show's art department has a few communication lines to straighten out, I believe.
- Still, John Eaves recently posted that there are 50-60 ship designs made for the show's first season (not all of which we may see, and this probably includes non-Federation designs), so it follows that there's a LOT to choose from and make mistakes with.
- When Discovery spores in during the battle, her saucer continues to rotate for longer than usual before it stops. Also, this is arguably the first time we know the ship goes in and out while leaving surviving ships to report back about its capabilities, right? Are we just not worried about leaving witnesses behind at this point?
- Both Saru and Burnham are away, and yet there's no one to replace Saru at his station (there's someone at the other one). Airiam is the likely second officer and she's busy, but in terms of chain of command shouldn't someone be at Saru's station? There have been non-speaking people there before when he wasn't.
- This is a production thing, but four of Discovery's bridge set support pylons flash a bright white when the ship is hit or is firing weapons (you can notice this during the shot looking forward and Discovery is firing away). There's little practical use for this, but it does reflect nicely off the actor's faces without requiring a dedicated lighting rig for every camera shot. In combination with VFX it's much less noticeable but it's still there.
- At one point Discovery is hit, and the external shot features a strange sort of 1980s video game sound effect. Not sure what's going on there.
- Though we don't see the front part of the Gagarin's bridge, the model of the ship shows that it has three large forward viewports, just like on the Shenzhou, but canted in the opposite angle (for obvious reasons). I guess they were intending to re-use the Shenzhou set from the beginning, and should we see this ship design again, it's a great reason to revisit the existing set again.
- In my observation, Discovery does show her limitations as a warship here. She's in pitched battle for less than two minutes, does take at least one direct hit, and has her shields pummeled below ten percent after it (it was around 32% before). She manages to destroy two of the BoPs (unless they cloaked immediately after getting hit), and that seems to be mostly because she caught them by surprise. Afterwards, she is not seen to destroy any targets and seems to be most useful when she makes one of herself. It's increasingly clear that her best use is in surgical or surprise attacks, as in a straight up slug fest she's at a disadvantage, at least as far as this episode's writing is concerned.
- The unseen and unfortunately lost USS Muroc could be named for one of two things: The Muroc Air Force Base in California, which was subsequently re-named Edwards AFB, or more likely this guy:
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Muroc
Mark
)
