Spoilers DSC Starships and Technology - Season Two Thread

[Timo]

Okay, a new trailer is up, with a new ship, and some new gadgetry.

Seems the ship spotted on the display when Spock is brought aboard is the Starfleet courier vessel that brings him aboard, flying neatly in formation and not being in observable distress or anything. An all-new design with a few items of note:

- Long nacelles tie to the Crossfield design. The same sort of taper and wraparound blue "field window"; no idea on the ramscoop arrangement or color yet.
- Big, open shuttlebay aft, perhaps for highlighting the transfer action where Spock possibly arrives in a medical shuttle and then Georgiou steps out of that shuttle as well. These wide, doorless bays aren't de rigeur for the 2250s, but they are common enough. As discussed in the trailer thread, it's a bit odd the users never seem to close the supposedly existing mechanical doors of the Discovery.
- Quite angular; the display shows a pointed nose that's difficult to spot in the actual shot. Commonality with ENT Warp Delta shapes (especially the aft mandibles flanking the shuttlebay) has been pointed out.

As we already saw in the earlier trailers, Pike's away team has faithful flying companions, personal drones with a vertical body and at least lights but probably also cameras and guns. Now we see Georgiou in her Lizard Woman costume enter the scene with a drone of her own, a saucer that immediately proceeds to lay down weapons fire. Note said costume, with holographic fake face. I'm fine with the holotech we have seen so far, especially in terms of TAS, but is its easily portable variant a closely kept S31 secret? Such tech is never hinted at in the 24th century, where it would be a much more convenient alternative to all the plastic surgery our heroes use even in quick'n'dirty forays.

The VFX is far more "conventional" now, and we get shots we can actually make sense of. I still can't tell where the photon torpedo (?) that knocks out a shuttle in that chase scene is supposed to be coming from. There are more and more shots of the four pods the away team uses, the apparently slightly curved Viper tubes they launch from, their movement between the asteroids (and potential remote control or other remote assistance by Tilly's team). But still no clear shot of where they actually emerge from?

What else is interesting in the tech sense, besides the doodad that gets the chip off Tilly's shoulder?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

I haven't been able to see the new trailer in detail just now, and didn't even notice that courier ship. Given its coloring though, and the placement of the dialogue over its clip, it's mildly suggested that the ship could be S31. It's certainly dark enough for it, though the coloration of Federation starships in this era is hardly a sure indicator. Still, I like the long nacelle look, which visually suggest speed or range. Otherwise, it reminds me a lot of the ol' SS Emmette warp ship from the ENT era.

Mark

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

Tangentially to Season Two technical discussion, the opening titles show a few changes. Spoilers maybe? Not really?

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The new scenes are largely symbolic or thematic: The S31 logo/badge turning dark, Vulcan salute + IDIC, etc. However, we DO see some new stuff that doubles down on the TOS linkage. In the transporter-esque sequence, the classic TOS shield badge deconstruct and "rematerialize" as the Discovery split badges . This echoes the TOS phaser exploding and re-integrating as a DSC weapon, which is still there, but replaces the shot of the TOS communicator that doesn't transform.

Most notably though, we see a new take on the TOS Enterprise command chair! It has an interesting semi-circular armrest which arcs around the back. We haven't heard anything specifically about seeing this Enterprise's bridge at all, but it's odd someone went so far as to DSC-ify the iconic furniture. With support struts and everything.

Wow, it's such fun analyzing new footage again. Just a warm up for the new season - bring it on!

Mark

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

Episode 2x01 "Brother". Spoiler warning for all Discovery episodes to this point.

Here are my comments covering the first seventeen minutes of the episode, to the point where Discovery warps away from the Enterprise. There's just so much to pick apart on the average episode of Discovery, I don't remember being this verbose when doing these for DS9 or VOY back in the day. Must be the HD resolution.

***


- I missed it on the original episode, but did Lorca die in the firey core of the Imperial flagship to the sound of a TIE fighter passing by?!

- When we come back to the present, alarms are going crazy and people are rushing to determine why the Enterprise isn't talking to them. This contrasts with the shock & awe we left everyone in at the end of the previous episode, which took place literally seconds before this.

- However long the flashback break was, it was time enough for Tilly to leave the bridge, replace the aft alcove with the new version, redo her hair bun, and burst back onto the bridge to pwn the comms guy on Morse code.

- The bridge! The aft alcove seems to be the only change. It does indeed feature two ways for people to get onto the bridge with it, since at one point an extra crosses from one side of it to the other without entering the bridge. Must be some awesomely important stuff to do on both sides to ignore the big room.

- Burnham scans the Enterprise with a complement of 203 lives, which matches what Pike established in "The Cage" and clears up decades of debate as to whether or not he was including himself in that count, or if he was counting the three lives recently lost at Rigel. However, with Spock missing..?

- Stamets has a former colleague who's an ethnobotanist aboard. Per Wikipedia, "Ethnobotany is the study of a region's plants and their practical uses through the traditional knowledge of a local culture and people". And it's not a shout-out to Sulu as I originally thought, even if it DID make me think of that one TOS episode where he was playing with muppet plants or whatever in the ship's... Plant room.

- And yes, Stamets' display shows a different model of the Enterprise than what's floating outside, straight nacelles and all.

- Okay, so THIS transporter room is WAY far away from anything. Saru and Burnham have an extended walk and talk to it, and then the expanded party have just as long a conversation on the way back. In basically every other iteration of this show, there has been a turbolift mere steps away from its main transporter room!

- Mind you, this ship seems way busier than usual. There are a LOT of extras buzzing about, more than it would suggest for a complement of 137 or so. They were all looking really busy working on parts of the corridors and such, maybe this portion was being refitted for some reason - leaving the primary transporter room down or something?

- This episode contradicts the previous DSC novel in suggesting that the Enterprise has "Exploratory" uniforms and everyone else wears the standard. This in turn contradicts the various "Cage" era uniforms and their dull palate of colors. But I digress.

- Still, the impression follows "Context Is for Kings" suggesting that Discovery is WAY newer than Enterprise, sequential NCC purists be damned.

- The doors on Discovery continue to exhibit random imperfections and dents in the shiny panels portion of the set pieces. You'd think that for some fancy spacey material....

- We see how the corridor set has changed and grown. We never really mapped out how the S1 set was laid out, but the whole thing seems to have been moved around slightly, mixing the "curved" sections with straight ones that also jig to the side at certain points before continuing on, adding more "hidden corners" and helping to convey a sense of size. There's even a new ladder going up, a large work table in a corner, and new wall plugs, all in addition to the talked-about ceiling greenscreen sections.

- The turbolift sequence is worth a post of its own. It does a LOT to show off how vast the insides of the ship are - practically to a JJ degree of internal volume. Whatever internal space they're lifting through, its' big enough for multiple worker bees to jet about AND for the rails of the lift to curve in different directions. What does this mean for the internal orientation of parts of the ship?

- As Discovery hits it, we notice that someone bothered to close the shuttlebay doors for once, as opposed to basically every aft view of the ship seen in this season's trailers.

Much more to come!

Mark

 

[Ithekro]

That's shipyards build with different hull number sets theory is looking better all the time (also potentially gives meaning to the hull number, like showing where it was built just on the hull.)

 

[David cgc]

- This episode contradicts the previous DSC novel in suggesting that the Enterprise has "Exploratory" uniforms and everyone else wears the standard. This in turn contradicts the various "Cage" era uniforms and their dull palate of colors. But I digress.

Huh? Desperate Hours just said the Constitution-class ships had gotten the new uniforms first, same as this episode, not that they were going to be exclusive forever.

- Still, the impression follows "Context Is for Kings" suggesting that Discovery is WAY newer than Enterprise, sequential NCC purists be damned.

Give it fifteen years, then the Enterprise will be, definitively, newer than Discovery.

Speaking of NCC numbers, there's an interesting moment when Saru identifies the Hiawatha as a medical frigate apparently from the hull number (since he didn't comment on it before he read it), before anyone pulls the ship's file.

 

[DEWLine]

Starfleet's still small enough in the late 2250's for someone like Saru to be able to keep track of this stuff in their brain.

"Medical frigate" is a contradiction of terms. If it's a hospital ship, call it that, please.

 

[Ithekro]

Medical frigate implies it was built was a combat ship and converted for medical use as its primary function, rather than a ship that was built to be a space going hospital (a hospital ship).

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

Or possibly a reference to Return of the Jedi, the only other Sci-fi reference to that designation.

And lo & behold, they ARE heading toward the medical frigate.
Mark

 

[Midquest]

The turbolift sequence is worth a post of its own.

No kidding. There's a lot to pull out of this. I've rewatched a few times, and I'm not sure the space is as impractically huge as I initially thought, so much as just really tall. Not sure I get where the party is coming from that they'd be traveling that far! But what really interests me is that the turbolift cab appears to be traveling on its side at first, as it then makes a right angle and continues on.

Question: did we know that the cab can travel on its side? How does this work? Fascinating.

 

[Timo]

- When we come back to the present, alarms are going crazy and people are rushing to determine why the Enterprise isn't talking to them. This contrasts with the shock & awe we left everyone in at the end of the previous episode, which took place literally seconds before this.

Sort of like the sudden buzz of activity when our TOS heroes fire on Gorkon's ship... Even heroes are capable of being taken by surprise and slow to react, I guess.

- However long the flashback break was, it was time enough for Tilly to leave the bridge, replace the aft alcove with the new version, redo her hair bun, and burst back onto the bridge to pwn the comms guy on Morse code.

...Or did somebody press a button that made a panel slide out of the way?

- And yes, Stamets' display shows a different model of the Enterprise than what's floating outside, straight nacelles and all.

If whatever Pike encountered was bad enough to bend the pylons, no wonder she's being hauled away as garbage.

I'd love to speculate that Pike started out straight, but encountered more adversity during his five years than just this angelic encounter, and had to get some nonstandard field repairs done. But I'll refrain for now.

- Mind you, this ship seems way busier than usual. There are a LOT of extras buzzing about, more than it would suggest for a complement of 137 or so. They were all looking really busy working on parts of the corridors and such, maybe this portion was being refitted for some reason - leaving the primary transporter room down or something?

The command to provide help to Pike's ship was issued before the walk, now wasn't it? The buzz would be for that reason; perhaps emergency transport of casualties or acutely needed stembolts would tie up primary transporter resources?

This episode contradicts the previous DSC novel in suggesting that the Enterprise has "Exploratory" uniforms and everyone else wears the standard. This in turn contradicts the various "Cage" era uniforms and their dull palate of colors. But I digress.

Well, colors are new, as we hear. And brighter than they were in the 2230s. Me likes.

- Still, the impression follows "Context Is for Kings" suggesting that Discovery is WAY newer than Enterprise, sequential NCC purists be damned.

Or then Pike's comment on where the money went spells out as "Into refitting this old tub with all these cool blinkies".

...all in addition to the talked-about ceiling greenscreen sections.

Fancy how this corridor is so much deeper below the dorsal surface, when a similar ceiling hole in "Context" showed Spore Engineering to be at most one deck below said surface. (In contradiction with the adjoining Mushroomroom ceiling height, it must be stated.)

- The turbolift sequence is worth a post of its own. It does a LOT to show off how vast the insides of the ship are - practically to a JJ degree of internal volume. Whatever internal space they're lifting through, its' big enough for multiple worker bees to jet about AND for the rails of the lift to curve in different directions. What does this mean for the internal orientation of parts of the ship?

I guess all bets are off unless we have portholes. But we are also missing interior scenes where the floor would suddenly corkscrew...

This much free interior space is fun and "acceptable" as such - but could also be taken as support for my pet theory, that these triangle ships were internally hollow to start out with (that is, carriers of something), and that NCC-1031 has been filled to about half capacity only.

- As Discovery hits it, we notice that someone bothered to close the shuttlebay doors for once, as opposed to basically every aft view of the ship seen in this season's trailers.

With all the Jaffa armor CGI activity going on, I'd expect the heavy-looking doors to be capable of slamming shut in about 0.068 seconds, so perhaps there's no harm in keeping them open in heavy asteroid rain?

Further down the episode, and in random order, because I'm still reeling from having forgone last night's sleep for this:

- The Sarek Mansion is sheer TAS in architecture, color scheme and feel! Absolutely fabulous! How come Vulcans here and in ENT seem to go for the sort of architecture that in Asia derives from use of wood as primary construction material? Where do Vulcans get their beams and planks?

- The fancy cluster of pop-down spheres is a telescope-camera. Perhaps Pike just has a dome covering his, though, despite our DSC heroes making special mention of the array and making it sound as if it's special to their ride.

- Okay, so the floor circles of the shuttlebay are turntable-elevators, even though the need for turning a shuttle that is shown doing agile turns of its own is ill founded. With more than two buttons for floors to boot. I wonder how far down they go?

- The landing pods are fine. The emergency spacesuits I'd have replaced with TAS belts rather than suffer through the Jaffa armor action, though. Then again, if the Klingons can do it, the Feds would look stupid if not following, well, suit.

- If Burnham's "emergency" suit engine can do that much delta-vee without killing the occupant, what did they need the pods for to begin with? Or the thruster suit of the pilot? Although Gerogiou may simply have been unable to secure regular spacesuits that would be halfway as advanced as modern emergency ones.

- I'm not opposed to the medical frigate designation after seeing the Hiawatha interiors. There'd be little sense in having that much open space in a flying hospital, crash or no crash. A clumsy conversion sounds eminently possible.

- Flying drones impress our heroes? Or at least the dialogue suggests their cobbled-together nature isn't the impressive bit, not solely.

- Any Trek precedent to non-beamable materials? That is, materials that refuse to be beamed? Dona Ragar must have been made of this stuff.

- Did I mention I hate Jaffa armor? The gravitic butterfly catcher could have been shown unfolding without making it paper-thin originally.

- The scene where the wreckers start towing Pike's ship away is a rare one of a ship being tractored by beams from below. DS9 did a couple where the beam went "appropriately" through the CG of the object being towed, along the towing vector; TNG tended to show beams locking on from above. I guess lack of continuity is the best continuity here: the beam is so non-Newtonian that none of this matters, exactly as we see.

- Do technicalities count as tech here? Starfleet procedures continue to astound. Why does Pike step down for the asteroid capture part of the mission? Nothing he did made the (extremely vague) threat to life, limb and the UFP go away, and he's no less superior to Saru when the sideshow mission to the medical ship draws to an end than he was when it started.

- The odd comings and goings of Sarek have never been as odd as here. Previously, failing to show him being dropped off at Vulcan was perfectly excusable. What happens here? He says he's leaving when the ship drops out of warp. But she does so in the middle of a crisis. Does Sarek nevertheless jump into a shuttlecraft and bail out, dodging the flying rock shards in a logical manner?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

- The Sarek Mansion is sheer TAS in architecture, color scheme and feel! Absolutely fabulous! How come Vulcans here and in ENT seem to go for the sort of architecture that in Asia derives from use of wood as primary construction material? Where do Vulcans get their beams and planks?

Either grown locally in special areas of Vulcan that can sustain Trees or imported from planets that can support it because of the value it brings to the vulcans?

Maybe there is a huge Earth -> Vulcan lumber trade path due to the value of lumber to Vulcans.

- The fancy cluster of pop-down spheres is a telescope-camera. Perhaps Pike just has a dome covering his, though, despite our DSC heroes making special mention of the array and making it sound as if it's special to their ride.

Maybe the dome is some form of RADAR or sensor and the pop-down camera clusters are a non-standard sensor array designed for use on Discovery. Discovery is specialized in research with 300 experiments going on-board the vessel. They might carry sensors that aren't standard issue.

- Okay, so the floor circles of the shuttlebay are turntable-elevators, even though the need for turning a shuttle that is shown doing agile turns of its own is ill founded. With more than two buttons for floors to boot. I wonder how far down they go?

How deep is the StarDrive section relative to the floor of the shuttle bay?

- The landing pods are fine. The emergency spacesuits I'd have replaced with TAS belts rather than suffer through the Jaffa armor action, though. Then again, if the Klingons can do it, the Feds would look stupid if not following, well, suit.

I find the Inspector Gadget pop up like suits to be silly and a lot of unnecessary moving parts that can screw up compared to using a "Transporter" like effect to materialize armor around the person, or just have the armor / suit on in the first place.

- If Burnham's "emergency" suit engine can do that much delta-vee without killing the occupant, what did they need the pods for to begin with? Or the thruster suit of the pilot? Although Gerogiou may simply have been unable to secure regular spacesuits that would be halfway as advanced as modern emergency ones.

The pods were for handling manuevers in heavy Gravimetrically distorted areas with the fuel / manueverability necessary to dodge lots of objects in a tight dynamic area. The suits might have enough fuel to counter the free fall, but I doubt it has the level of agility that the pods have. You saw how those suckers were weaving in and out of the many asteroids in that ultra tight field. I doubt the EVA suits can handle that level of manueverability / fuel for the speed / range.

- Flying drones impress our heroes? Or at least the dialogue suggests their cobbled-together nature isn't the impressive bit, not solely.

I think it's the build quality & feature set of the drones from random parts along with what it's capable of doing.

- Any Trek precedent to non-beamable materials? That is, materials that refuse to be beamed? Dona Ragar must have been made of this stuff.

There were certain materials that Federation ships can't beam through due to the nature of the material. That's the closest I can remember.

- Did I mention I hate Jaffa armor? The gravitic butterfly catcher could have been shown unfolding without making it paper-thin originally.

I'm with you on that, having all those mechanisms move in place on a piece of armor seems very inefficient / prone to failure. As the case with Pike has shown to be. I still prefer the Super Sentai / Kamen Rider method of just using energy to materialize the armor around the wearer and call it a day.

- The scene where the wreckers start towing Pike's ship away is a rare one of a ship being tractored by beams from below. DS9 did a couple where the beam went "appropriately" through the CG of the object being towed, along the towing vector; TNG tended to show beams locking on from above. I guess lack of continuity is the best continuity here: the beam is so non-Newtonian that none of this matters, exactly as we see.

As long as the towing doesn't cause further structural damage to the already damaged vessel, I don't care what angle they tow from in space.

- Do technicalities count as tech here? Starfleet procedures continue to astound. Why does Pike step down for the asteroid capture part of the mission? Nothing he did made the (extremely vague) threat to life, limb and the UFP go away, and he's no less superior to Saru when the sideshow mission to the medical ship draws to an end than he was when it started.

I think Pike's mission / Command Status of Discovery is contingent on assessing the Threat from the Red Thingies! Capturing a asteriod fragment isn't part of his mission requirement, ergo command falls back to Suru who is an official Temporary CO of Discovery. Protocol & such would dictate that and if there is no good reason to violate protocol, I don't see the harm in handing things back to Suru.

- The odd comings and goings of Sarek have never been as odd as here. Previously, failing to show him being dropped off at Vulcan was perfectly excusable. What happens here? He says he's leaving when the ship drops out of warp. But he does so in the middle of a crisis. Does Sarek nevertheless jump into a shuttlecraft and bail out, dodging the flying rock shards in a logical manner?

I think he probably would've stayed on board Discovery given the hostile environment they were in and wait for a better point in time to depart.

 

[Timo]

Points of agreement snipped, as usual.

Either grown locally in special areas of Vulcan that can sustain Trees or imported from planets that can support it because of the value it brings to the vulcans? Maybe there is a huge Earth -> Vulcan lumber trade path due to the value of lumber to Vulcans.

Well, Sarek has trees on his front yard. Perhaps he's flaunting his wealth and the fact that he lives in one of the lushest corners of the planet? Except he supposedly lives at the very edge of the desert. Perhaps he's irrigating like mad with his wealth?

How deep is the StarDrive section relative to the floor of the shuttle bay?

Easily the height of one shuttle at least, judging by the stern shots. But we didn't see the hangar yet when the lift descended enough to reveal the landing pod tubes. So it's a close call - a proper underfloor hangar would probably have to be located with its floor right where the very bottom of the ship is.

...or just have the armor / suit on in the first place.

Indeed, it seems quite stupid to fly shirtleeves when the heroes are supposed to leave their craft at the end of the flight anyway...

I think it's the build quality & feature set of the drones from random parts along with what it's capable of doing.

Might well be. Certainly the TOS heroes were less in awe of robotics - but they might simply have been jaded from all those years out there.

As long as the towing doesn't cause further structural damage to the already damaged vessel, I don't care what angle they tow from in space.

The "space" bit is the thing, though: if this were Newtonian towing, then pulling down would just make the ship move down. Tractors just do it differently somehow.

I think Pike's mission / Command Status of Discovery is contingent on assessing the Threat from the Red Thingies! Capturing a asteriod fragment isn't part of his mission requirement, ergo command falls back to Suru who is an official Temporary CO of Discovery. Protocol & such would dictate that and if there is no good reason to violate protocol, I don't see the harm in handing things back to Suru.

Well, Pike should have given up command the very second the Red Thing went away, then. Going to help the Hiawatha survivors had nothing to do with the already gone Redness as far as anybody could tell. Or conversely, the asteroid had everything to do with Redness and getting a sample of it was the next best thing to bottling some Redness.

I think he probably would've stayed on board Discovery given the hostile environment they were in and wait for a better point in time to depart.

Which makes it weird that we don't see him interacting with the heroes there. Some telepathy might have been helpful - but he doesn't even visit Burnham at her bedside!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

The "space" bit is the thing, though: if this were Newtonian towing, then pulling down would just make the ship move down. Tractors just do it differently somehow.

But it does apply a force onto the vessel to move it though, and if the structure is damaged in some way that isn't easily apparent on the surface, then towing it from it's strongest angle makes sense. Otherwise you might cause a crack in a critical bulkhead which could potentially cause longer repair times, and that would suck for everybody.

Otherwise you can literally just tow it anywhere if there is no structural damage.

And in that part of space, you don't know what gravitational forces are nearby having some affect.

It may be small, but it's not 0.

Well, Pike should have given up command the very second the Red Thing went away, then. Going to help the Hiawatha survivors had nothing to do with the already gone Redness as far as anybody could tell. Or conversely, the asteroid had everything to do with Redness and getting a sample of it was the next best thing to bottling some Redness.

Tell that to Pike, maybe he figured that the potential survivors might have Redness thingy info and decided to keep command until he can validate the survivors.

But anyways, in a critical situation like that, a experience Captain makes more sense than a 1st Officer who recently went through the trauma that Suru went through. Overall, I think Pike did the right thing in that given situation. I'm really liking this portrayal of Captain Pike.

Which makes it weird that we don't see him interacting with the heroes there. Some telepathy might have been helpful - but he doesn't even visit Burnham at her bedside!

Timo Saloniemi

Vulcan Telepathy is touch telepathy, so not as useful in that situation as a true Betazoid. But the whole visiting his daughter thing might be one of those things where his Vulcan emotional control restricts him from becoming a over doting parent over every little injury like us humans. Sarek understands that StarFleet is inherently a dangerous job, especially given the situation that they are in. A leg puncture that is healed in 2 hrs is something he doesn't have to go all "Doting Daddy" over his full grown ass adopted daughter is fine. He probably could've gotten the prognosis from the doctor and determined it wasn't necessary for him to be at her bed side.

Vulcan parenting might be quite different from human parenting, so a non life threatening injury like Burnham's might not warrent the bed side visit on screen.

 

[Timo]

But it does apply a force onto the vessel to move it though, and if the structure is damaged in some way that isn't easily apparent on the surface, then towing it from it's strongest angle makes sense. Otherwise you might cause a crack in a critical bulkhead which could potentially cause longer repair times, and that would suck for everybody.

The ship would still move down if pulled down by anything Newtonian, tho.

Otherwise you can literally just tow it anywhere if there is no structural damage.

But only those towing angles that go through the CG will move the ship. All others will merely turn the ship. Again with Newtonian towing systems, that is.

And in that part of space, you don't know what gravitational forces are nearby having some affect. It may be small, but it's not 0.

If it's of the same order of magnitude as the supposed forces that necessitate a certain angle so as not to damage the ship, though, they will tear the ship apart. But if they are weaker, they won't need to be considered at all.

Vulcan Telepathy is touch telepathy, so not as useful in that situation as a true Betazoid.

...Except in the explicit case of Sarek and Burnham, where hundreds of lightyears are no obstacle to conversation.

But the whole visiting his daughter thing might be one of those things where his Vulcan emotional control restricts him from becoming a over doting parent over every little injury like us humans.

Certainly possible. It's just odd that all his other scenes (that is, the ones where he wasn't absent) consisted of him fussing over his stepdaughter.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ronald Held]

Sarek's house is very old and so is the wood,although he is wealthy enough to get it from somewhere.
Away from Federation repair facilities, would Pike trust anyone to make that critical repair?

 

[David cgc]

Maybe the dome is some form of RADAR or sensor and the pop-down camera clusters are a non-standard sensor array designed for use on Discovery. Discovery is specialized in research with 300 experiments going on-board the vessel. They might carry sensors that aren't standard issue.

Burnham says they're for hull repairs, though (probably inspired by the cameras they added to the Canadarm on the space shuttle after the Columbia disaster), not that the arrangement makes much sense for that. I'd expect simple optical cameras and telescopes to be part of the general suite of technology that Star Trek boils down to the collective "sensors," but maybe there was something interfering with their regular sensors a la the jamming from the Klingon beacon in the pilot that required they dumb things down a bit. The arrangement doesn't seem to make sense for hull-inspection cameras, though, never mind the fact that they might not be that useful given that they are meant for zooming in on things that are close and small, not big and far away, but what are you going to do? I suppose they could be on arms and when they're used as-intended, they all pop out on stalks and rove over the hull.

The way they rotated and snapped suggested that each camera was different in some way, and they weren't identical ones arranged in a ring for coverage like a modern-day 360° camera.

There's something else interesting suggested about how optical cameras and viewscreens work in Star Trek, that Burnham said Saru's sharper eyes could make out details in the image they couldn't. Of course, in the modern day, if you wanted to read something small on a 4k or 8k display, you could walk closer to the screen, or zoom in on the image. So why wouldn't that work? Maybe they capture (and display) with some sort of light-field system rather than flat images that we generally use today, so it wasn't just a flat PNG file Burnham threw up onto the screen, but a holographic transposition exactly what you'd be seeing looking through the camera's lens, as if it were a naked-eye telescope. Then the question is, why would asking Saru to read the hull number be faster or easier than focusing the image on the computer? Maybe there was too much dust and debris in the way, and it'd confuse or muddy the image in a way a living being could ignore more easily, like looking through a dirty window versus trying to take a photo through it.

 

[Timo]

"Telescopic cameras" might indeed mean "cameras on telescoping booms", facilitating the hull inspection bit... Can we tell where the camera cluster(s?) emerge(s) from, exactly?

Something that caught my eye on second viewing: the Red Things are said to appear in amazing synchronization, which is what makes them so unnatural. Now, people complain about the lightspeed issue, as with the Light of Kahless. But in the graphic about the emergence of the Red Things (admittedly part of the folk tale intro rather than an actual bit of verified in-universe data), these light up in a sequence that might indeed be taken to show that non-simultaneous ignition tens of thousands of years ago plus lightspeed lag means synchronized lightshow on the skies of Earth (and Qo'noS) in 2257.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

The ship would still move down if pulled down by anything Newtonian, tho.



But only those towing angles that go through the CG will move the ship. All others will merely turn the ship. Again with Newtonian towing systems, that is.



If it's of the same order of magnitude as the supposed forces that necessitate a certain angle so as not to damage the ship, though, they will tear the ship apart. But if they are weaker, they won't need to be considered at all.



...Except in the explicit case of Sarek and Burnham, where hundreds of lightyears are no obstacle to conversation.



Certainly possible. It's just odd that all his other scenes (that is, the ones where he wasn't absent) consisted of him fussing over his stepdaughter.

Timo Saloniemi

Then it really might be the VFX folks messing up?

...Except in the explicit case of Sarek and Burnham, where hundreds of lightyears are no obstacle to conversation.

But didn't they already have a pre-existing connection due to a previous mind meld?

Certainly possible. It's just odd that all his other scenes (that is, the ones where he wasn't absent) consisted of him fussing over his stepdaughter.

Blame the writers. This is one of the few times where we get to see Sarek as a parent, so it could be just him as a parent, or a stereotype of Vulcan parenting.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Away from Federation repair facilities, would Pike trust anyone to make that critical repair?

Probably not, but they're heading toward Federation repair facilities, so that's all that matters.