The age of the antihero

Discussion in 'Star Trek: Discovery' started by Refuge, Dec 5, 2017.

  1. Crazy Eddie

    Crazy Eddie Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Which, since no one anywhere had any way of predicting what specific part the Klingons would just happen to need, remains irrelevant.

    I was saying that the Ship of the Dead is not the Klingon flagship, which it isn't. Starfleet, who has no idea what the hell is going on right now, is in no position to know this.

    But the Klingons evidently know it, which is why none of them provided Voq with supplies or resources needed to get the ship working again. It certainly isn't the "flagship" of anything since no one on either side thought bringing it into the war would matter to anyone until Kol decided it would.

    ... and is quite possibly the only shot this vessel even fires in this entire battle.

    They WERE.

    He felt he needed it in order to escape, once discovery started literally flying circles around him with the Spore drive. That same battle demonstrates that the ship of the dead is NOT notable for its maneuverability, as demonstrated by Kol's frustration with their inability to actually land a shot on Discovery.

    He specified earlier in the episode, when he mentioned "there are no birds of prey within range."

    The key word there might well be "in range," as T'Kuvma is also talking about the orbits of various objects. It's possible that the other ships he could have used for salvage were simply too far away and Discovery was nearby just by accident of orbital mechanics.

    That remains unlikely, given the other wrecked Klingon and Federation vessels in the area.

    Unless, of course, the dilithium processor is one of those scifi components that's made of explodium and will tend to self-detonate if the ship takes a direct hit to the engine room.
     
  2. Crazy Eddie

    Crazy Eddie Vice Admiral Admiral

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    The processor was. The warp core, not so much.

    ... from the warp core, which itself was non-functional.

    Because, again, you seem to be drawing inferences from second or third hand sources and have basically admitted you have never actually seen the episode. So you quite literally do not know what you're talking about.
     
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  3. AlanC9

    AlanC9 Commodore Commodore

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    It's a convenient position since it puts the burden of proof on the other side. And you're playing with house money anyway; what's one plothole more or less when Trek has been crammed with them forever?
     
  4. Prax

    Prax Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Apparently they couldn't fly circles around the ship of the dead, because that would have gotten all the data they needed much more quickly. They used Stamets to navigate 100+ micro jumps. This seems like a "work smarter, not harder" scenario.

    Speaking of which, why use Stamets at all. They should have just operated the spore drive the old fashioned way. He should've been dead.
     
  5. fireproof78

    fireproof78 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    [​IMG]
     
  6. Prax

    Prax Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    They don't need a Tardigrade(or whatever Stamets now is) to make short jumps. According to Stamets, the problems come in when trying to jump light years away.

    They didn't need to put poor Stamets in the agony booth, but the whole plan might have been accomplished simply by flying once or twice around the Klingon ship.

    All this, because no one on Discovery knows about hugging the donkey.
     
    Last edited: Jan 2, 2018
  7. cultcross

    cultcross Postponed for the snooker Moderator

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    They needed precise navigation, which is what the tardigrade/Stamets provided.
     
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  8. Captain of the USS Averof

    Captain of the USS Averof Commodore Commodore

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    Exactly.
     
  9. fireproof78

    fireproof78 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I agree with @cultcross. They needed to be able to make precise and rapid calculations for their jumps. I highly doubt the plan would have been successful if they couldn't randomize their attack pattern.
     
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  10. Crazy Eddie

    Crazy Eddie Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Yes they could, using the spore drive, which is exactly what I was alluding to in that post.

    Probably because they needed to be able to calculate all of those jumps very very quickly. Calculating them with computer only would have taken too long.
     
  11. Prax

    Prax Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I was referencing your post. What if they flew around the Klingon ship, without using the spore drive, and set their computer to ping the devices that Burnham set up every 50 milliseconds. A few "hugs" would give them a far greater abundance of data, and much more quickly, right? And it would save poor Stamets from the booth.
     
  12. Crazy Eddie

    Crazy Eddie Vice Admiral Admiral

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    It would have taken weeks, which I'm pretty sure they actually SAID in the episode.

    The visuals don't really reflect this, but it seems like they needed to get data on the ship actually ENGAGING the cloaking device to figure out what the phase shift frequency was. That means they weren't scanning the ship from 132 random points around it, they were outrunning the ship's light curve and literally photographing the cloaking event from 132 different locations, successively farther and farther from the ship. That this took a little over four minutes tells us that each jump took about two seconds to pull off, but that also means the light cone expanded to about 4 minutes, or half an AU.

    Do the math: at warp 2, it takes one second to cover the distance to the next point, then -- because the light cone is still expanding -- four seconds to reach the next, then eight, then sixteen, then thirty two, then sixty four, etc. It's a sigma function I am in no mood to actually calcualte right now, but if there is a nonzero travel time between points, the time to complete the scan increases exponentially until you have SEVERAL MINUTES between warp jumps, and then several HOURS between jumps. And that doesn't even include the time it takes to drop out of warp and turn the ship's main sensors to face the Ship of the Dead's position, take a few seconds of readings, and then jump again. All in all, a series of maneuvers that takes four minutes might take days, which is long enough for Kol to figure out what they're doing and either call in reinforcements or maneuver to interrupt their readings. In the mean time, Burnham and Ash are still trapped on board and definitely won't survive that long.

    Nope.
     
  13. Refuge

    Refuge Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Stamet's is expendable in Lorca world. He did that last jump and it would seem Lorca could override the co-ordinates so whoever is the 'pilot' with the spore drive is almost redundant. It's who sets the direction.
     
  14. ralfy

    ralfy Captain Captain

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    I was referring to understanding character motivations.
     
  15. ralfy

    ralfy Captain Captain

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    I saw that episode and others. What I remember seeing is a glowing, cylindrical device, and one Klingon pointing out that it will be difficult to extract it because of crystal residue. There is nothing mentioned about it being non-functional, and neither was it disabled. And yet the telescope was for some reason retrieved. There's your plot hole.
     
  16. fireproof78

    fireproof78 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    In Star Trek world, people are expendable until they are not.
    And I'm trying to understand them as people in their context.

    Captain's last wishes.
     
  17. Prax

    Prax Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    If Stamets died, or if Lorca let him walk away like he planned, the following would have happened:

    (First, Stamets wouldn't have died, they just would've had him go into a coma.:ouch:)
    -Then, Lorca would (successfully)talk Tilly into taking his place. Burnham would throw a fit, and we would get some conflict and backsnapping between the three. Burnham would offer(I mean try to convince Lorca) to do it herself in Tilly's place.
    -Lorca would say "No. Absolutely not."
    -Burnham would do it anyway.

    BTW, can I just say.. This is one the best thread titles right now. It's simple, relevant, and a play on "Age of Heroes." Often times, great thread titles last a page or two then suddenly die without some click-baity words to add longevity, yet this one is successful.
     
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  18. Crazy Eddie

    Crazy Eddie Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Yes. That is the "dilithium processor." It's a device used to hold a dilithium crystal in proper alignment within the reaction chamber. It is not a "power core" or anything similar, as this particular device is a component of the Shenzhou's warp core. The warp core as a whole is non-functional and damaged beyond repair, which is precisely the reason Shenzhou was abandoned to begin with.

    "It" meaning the warp core. This was mentioned in the previous episodes, where Saru points out explicitly that their ship is incapable of performing an attack; warp drive and impulse engines are both offline, and they don't have enough power to even keep their shields up.

    It's not a plot hole at all. The dilithium processor IN PARTICULAR was valuable to Voq only owing to his extraordinary circumstances. It wouldn't NORMALLY be valuable to anyone else, especially to the crew of the Shenzhou, who would have no particular reason to remove that specific piece of technology. As it stands, the processor was the only thing on the entire ship that Voq had any use for.

    The telescope, on the other hand, has value to the crew in that it was their dead Captain's priceless heirloom. Considering they failed to recover her body from the Klingon ship, it's probably the only thing they have left to remember her by and may be meant as part of her funeral arrangements.
     
  19. Refuge

    Refuge Vice Admiral Admiral

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    The plot hole with the telescope is probably less about who collected it and even when. THOUGH that does make you wonder. It's more that it was something physically considered of importance and taken. Time was required for it to be removed and transported. There was a window of opportunity to do so. Yet other procedures were not. Security and military ones. Come on that is ludicrous that in a time of war that if you don't scuttle your ship you are going to be that stupid you don't render anything within useless? What there has to be a regulation for you to do so? Where was the starfleet regulation to take the blessed telescope, yet it was taken. So we have this touching scene later on involving the telescope. We also have these eye-rolling scenes of Klingons on the Shenzhou looking for parts!
     
  20. AlanC9

    AlanC9 Commodore Commodore

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    Did anyone claim that there was a regulation ordering someone to take the telescope? You have this habit of making up arguments that we've never actually seen anyone make, and then arguing against them. I'd call it strawmanning if I didn't suspect you were genuinely not following the discussion

    And that telescope was almost certainly the most valuable thing on the Shenzhou. In an era with replicators heirlooms are even more valuable than they are today, since they can't be replicated.
     
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