Nah, that's to guard from the splatter in case any pig-things you beam up happen to turn inside out and explode.
We can only hope. As it stands, at least on the Shenzhou they have touchscreen controls for the lcassic sliders, which I really miss. If there's anything that would do with a tactile control, I'd like to have seen that. Heh, while I was at it I looked at the brief scene that redressed the transporter room set as the Shenzhou's engineering. I see now that they mostly took away the walls covering up those wierd rectangular shapes, but left the actual transporter platform on the sides of the room intact. I thought it weird that they created such a full-featured room for the Shenzhou specifically only to abandon it after the second episode, but it really does look like they're getting their money's worth out of the set, in true Trek production fashion. Mark
Quick thoughts on landing party tech: -Getting it out of the way: an important strategic mission vital to the outcome of the war, and they send three people down. Not a dozen, and only one security guy. Is this suggestive of the oddly low crew count on Discovery? I guess they don't NEED a bunch of people for what they wanted to do, but if it were that important, I'd suggest multiple teams, or hell, just give Saru the damn transmitter and let him run it in alone. - Saru may be the only one equipped with a rifle, but he's also got a different, larger backpack than Burnham or Tyler. Someone was carrying the transmitter in their pack, perhaps it was him? Burnham was shown with her usual pack after she snuck out. The bigger pack seems to be the same one the unfortunate security guy was wearing on the mission to the USS Glenn. - Specking of packs, in 1x03 at least Burnham and Tilly were wearing these very small pack pouches or soemthign on their armor's upper back. We haven't seen it before or since, and it served no purpose we could see in that episode. - Besides that, the only equipment of note that we see is a simple foam mattress and head rest (I hesitate to call it a pillow), which are common to them all. This means that Saru's hooves are sticking off the end of his mat. Oddly though, while they don't seem to need it for comfort, would they have proper blankets? Or even those foil sheets we use today, should they run into a cold evening? - I hadn't realized until this episode that the uniforms under the armor is actually a one-piece jumpsuit different from the others seen on the show (even Burnham's one-off blue jumpsuit from 1x03 before she got a position). I guess the uniform itself has certain properties that the average shipboard uniform does not, otherwise people would simply be strapping the armor atop their usual outfits (although Burnham does just this in 1x03, short sleeves and all). - So what ARE the shoulder bumps on the armor for? I thought they were some sort of LED lamp, but so far they've not been shown lit - especially on the USS Glenn, where it would have been useful. It's clearly not some built-in connection point for the backpacks. - These Phaser 2 stun barrel is the largest one on the bottom. I wonder how long this will last. Last week we saw Mudd use all three main settings, but the barrel was facing away each time so it was tough to see just where the beam was coming from. In 1x02 and 1x03 we see the "kill" pulse come from the upper left barrel (relative to the user), making the leftover one obstensibly the disintegroray. Mark
If Discovery had the capacity for "200 separate experiments", one may (possibly incorrectly) that there were at least that many scientists and personnel to carry out said experiments. Maybe half, not including ship command and support staff. Let's say 150, ballpark. They couldn't spare a few more people to undertake such a critical mission for the war effort as this? The three selected landing party members (a mere 2% of the crew, maybe less) seemed incongruous to the importance of the task at hand to me. And needless to say, based on his performance, I do hope that Saru is NEVER put in charge of an away mission ever again. I really do hope there are some consequences to what he did, but there probably won't be.
To be fair, and regardless of how he epxlained / justified his actions, he DID have alien mojo all up in his head. That said, Saru would not have made first officer without having demonstrated some form of command competence. Despite Lorca's habit of picking up strays, I'd think that he has the wherewithal to have chosen an XO who could get the jobs he needed done, at least the more routine jobs that needed doign while he was off violating directives and stuff. Mark
Maybe actions like this are why there is a generation of starship captains that go down and do it themselves.
I have seen pictures of the away mission packs on Twitter. Starfleet and the UFP are anal retentive about labeling. On the pack, it is mentioned not once, but twice that the pack is the property of the UFP. It has its own serial code and is said to be registered with the UFP. And, there are the ubiquitous Starfleet Command insignias. On this, I miss the old days, when there was some thinking on where the insignia should go and the frequency of its appearance. Everything is labeled with the insignia. Yes, we get it. Thinking about it, I had memories of this scene from Red Dwarf.
Loving them all. This is great stuff, figuring out the in-universe implications of on-set or propmaking decisions in a show where the Makers are also apparently doing a lot of figuring out (and keeping Memory Alpha on the verge of crashing). ...Stealth? It seems the mothership abandons the team right after beamdown, not minding they missed the mark by thirty klicks. Perhaps a drop-and-scoot mission is vitally important because the planet is close to the Klingons (as evidenced by Kol being able to get there fast and unopposed)? Might be Saru is uniquely equipped for hauling the unique equipment, and OTOH the only one needing the ego-extender, due to his combination of great physical and not-so-great psychological strength. Looking forward to seeing more away missions. And hearing the term used interchangeably with this week's landing party. ...Breathing masks? The latter can be packed into the space of an average hanky, and they do look impressive when applied, so probably yes. If they have no "real" application, I say cameras or comparable sensors for recording the missions. Why the records are made no use of, the (unknown) reason from TOS, TNG and ENT obviously applies. OTOH, perhaps that's where the gravi-glider attaches to? FWIW, that's the one Tyler (the blonde one) used in desperation when the second-thickest, second-tallest used by everybody initially failed to cut through the door that stood between them and captain Pike... But we never learned the exact role of rotating the barrel assembly in the selection process, and we never saw beams emerge from studs other than the initial "cutting" (second largest) and Tyler's "desperation" (largest), so we can't, say, tell which stud Pike chose for his invisible jailbreak beam despite clearly seeing the positioning of the rotating assembly. Perhaps the better-shaven Tyler just fumbled his settings against the door? But then there's the choice between kill and stun, and the choice between pulse and beam. Disintegrating might be a matter of twiddling those settings rather than selecting a barrel.
It certainly saves Starfleet paperwork when all the crazy decisions are made by the CO directly on the spot - no more squabbling about whether this is mutiny or not! Timo Saloniemi
Last chance at Trek tech discussions for a while... But hey, it's BEEN so long in the first place! Again the trailer shows very little, but for the fall finale, we're gonna look out for: - Discovery vs. Sarco dueling tactics. From the trailer, we see multiple jumps via spore drive, and fire coming from Discovery's saucer AND secondary hull, it seems. - A reprise of the boarding party scheme Georgiou and Burnham did? - Saru getting better and back into the chain of command - if there are any consequences. Dunno what else to expect, but I'm hoping the rest of the fleet will be along soon..?
Okay, the half-season ends with a bang and then a whimper... And then a bang. The cloak is described much as in "Balance of Terror", with gravity explicated as the force that selectively bends the light. The solution: sneaking sensors onboard by a "boarding party", yay. The ailing Stamets is tasked with 133 microjumps. Not yay. But pretty warp streaks behind a window provide a background for a conversation on Mirror Universes, as a deliberate target of exploration... Burnham tries to make herself indispensable for the boarding mission, claiming she knows the lay of the land of Kol's bridge, and Lorca preempts her with a simple "teach it to somebody else". For once, something that isn't rocket science is given the appropriately blunt treatment. Lorca confirms he turned a crew of scientists into soldiers. And that the Ship of the Dead killed "thousands" in the pilot battle (meaning the 8000 dead quoted earlier is more and more likely to be from the Battle of Binaries only). And then they mushroom straight from warp. Yay. Boarding party has two people and two targets. They beam to a single location. WTF? Tyler has memories of Cyberman conversion, brainsawing and all. Or then of standard Klingon torture. Ah, the ambiguity. The hero ship has torps, and uses a volley of them for "making just a scratch"... But later uses roughly the same number for utterly destroying the Klingons, who may or may not have their shields up. First proof of adjustable yield here? Also, seems like the launchers are in the saucer (the fancy boxes that spin with the spinners?), but the image is deliberately blurry. Trillions of lives are at stake in this war, just as in the Dominion one. So, no quantum leap in UFP size? The UT, in the communicator, momentarily uses the "mic and speaker, two voices" routine, but only momentarily. Probably because Burnham wants to demonstrate that one. Klingons initially don't recognize the device as being responsible for Burnham speaking Klingon (which we of course hear as English, and the adjoining Klingon voices switch to English for the time being, too), and Burnham herself seems to believe Klingons don't know how to make UTs. A map of Pahvo neighborhood reveals nothing of real note. There's a KL8A there - a Klingon signature? And then nonsense digits. Tyler confirms memories of 227 days of imprisonment, in a scene inside a cabin that expicitly has windows looking out through the outer rim of the inner saucer ring, and windows looking out through the inside wall of the inner saucer ring... Seems that fake windows are a thing aboard this ship, and the impossible sets are merely an in-universe feature favored by the architect. Also, the shuttlebay is used for stargazing. Does Lorca open the mechanical doors just for that purpose, or are they kept open as a matter of routine? New set: brig. Three cells labeled on a display, but only one wall is flat (and hexagonal, so the other two walls must consist of awkwardly canted upper and lower halves) and has a cell door. L'Rell wears what looks like restraint bands, to be activated if needed (Arik Soong's remote handcuffs, anyone?). Lorca personally punches in a spore-jump destination, which we never saw him do before. And then Stamets gets "white matter hyperintensity", manifesting as white (not silver!) eyes, and the ship - splits? A classic cliffhanger that sort of makes dramatic sense, leaving open both the whodunnit and the whatthe. Timo Saloniemi
Sometimes game changing technology will do that, change, or seemingly change the course of the war. Until its figured out and either countered, or discovered to not be as effective as its shock value deems it to be. In this case, the Klingons seem to have either better ships, more ships, or just were ready for war, where Starfleet was not early in the war. Spore Drive enters the picture. Starfleet starts to win the war thanks to USS Discovery alone conducting missions and raids. Enter the cloaking device. Seemingly wide scale use starts to render Starfleet ships useless and the Spore Drive, while still effective, can't deal with large numbers of cloaked ships at once effectively. Enter a cloaking device countermeasures and new Spore Drive jump tactics. Plus cut off the head of the new Unified Klingon Empire's offensive.
Think WWII. Nazis start out with no subs; Atlantic convoys keep Britain afloat. Nazis get the subs; convoys no longer afloat. Allies get air patrols, Avengers, Flowers and hedgehogs; subs no longer afloat. What took me by surprise that the rust bucket that T'Kumva's dad crashed and the son subsequently covered in coffins was a badass fighting machine, responsible for thousands of dead in the BotB. In contrast, the supposedly more businesslike battle cruisers and destroyers don't seem to make much impact on shielded Starfleet ships, unless outnumbering those six to one. Supposedly, size does amount to something. But what is it? Firepower? Caliber or number of guns? Resilience to fire? It may also be speed, but probably not agility. The fight above Pahvo: with the Discovery dodging, what does Kol do? He's there to destroy the planet (why?) and his ship seemingly is too clumsy to catch the nimble science ship (because if it could, Discovery should be toast) - so why doesn't he just stop chasing Lorca and start bombarding the planet? Granted he's not the sharpest oddly shaped knife in the tingling torture tool rack, but still... Generally, it's disappointing how Pahvo is not discussed further. So they were simpletons who invited the two warring sides to shake hands and nothing more? They cannot be further talked with and asked pretty please to do the cloak-defeating thing (better to have the cloaks defeated twice over, so the Klingons stand no chance)? Timo Saloniemi
....Screencaps seem to show the Discovery keeping her hangar doors open pretty much all the time now. Including in combat and at warp. Did they get stuck? Did Landry accidentally reverse a shuttle through them? Did Lorca jettison them as dead weight? Or do those barrels have "do not store indoors" stickers to their sides? Timo Saloniemi
The newly-unified Klingon Empire just lost the one guy and symbolic ship that was unifying it. So... big victory, but whether they can regroup or not remains to be seen.
Starfleet supposedly was regrouping defensively in a fashion that would allow it to at least somewhat oppose a cloaked attack (say, putting all the ships next to planets so that the Klingons will decloak right where the starships are). The Klingons under Kol supposedly were regrouping to perform a major attack reliant on cloaking. Which of these regroupings would be outdated by the events? Klingons don't need Kol to lead them, but they do need cloaks in the original plan, and now they no longer have them. And if the Feds thought they stood a chance against cloaks originally, they now stand a much better chance when there are no cloaks. I could see Klingons totally stalling, not expecting the sudden Starfleet ability to see through cloaks - and the Feds slightly stalling, because regrouping defensively prevents them from performing immediate attacks, but not being surprised in the slightest which gives them an advantage. But an advantage to do what? Mounting an attack takes more planning than mounting a defense, because the latter is more passive and probably preplanned anyway. Timo Saloniemi
I think a lot of the outcome of the war depends on what either side would consider victory. The Klingons surely want to either exterminate or break apart the entire Federation, which probably means laying waste to or at least capturing the key Fed worlds and occupying the rest. I'm not sure the Klingons have genocide in mind, but they want to remove the perceived threat the Federation has against their culture and history. If we would equate them to certain caliphate ideas in today's world, I'm not sure they have THAT much of an endgame planned other than killing anyone who stand in their way, taking the territory they feel they deserve and converting the rest to their frame of mind, which would likely mean some form of subjugation. For the Federation, I'm guessing capturing Kronos is not on the plate. What would they consider victory? Pushing the borders back (ish) to where they were? Establishing a neutral zone? Getting someone to write on paper (in Klingon blood?) that the Empire is really sorry for what they did and that they'll never do it again? It's odd that they were talking a lot about the end of the war this week without really going into what it means from a military or geopolitical point of view, and only seemed to interpret it as "the fighting will stop". That's great for the average scientist-cum-warrior, but not really for us who love to tear apart the actual worldbuilding. Mark
And back on topic, before I delve into the tech of the episode: I WAS RIGHT, THOSE THINGS ARE LED LAMPS!!! Now, why the heck was no one using them on the Glenn or in other situations where it wouldn't be a bad idea to blind your enemy as the average jerk on the highway could easily do with their high-beams? Mark
They haven't done a bubble type shield at all in this series, have they? I hope they keep it that way, for consistency's sake. So when they went back to Pahvo, they got there ahead of the Ship of the Dead, and could detect its incoming warp signature even though it was cloaked. How consistent is that with other series? I'm remembering the tachyon detection grid to pick up the Romulans in TNG, so I'm thinking this cloak is less refined than the TNG Romulan version. So that debris field at the end.... anything recognizable? I thought I saw part of one of the Klingon cruisers, but I couldn't be sure. Personally, I was kinda hoping to see something like part of a TOS D7.