Spoilers DSC Starships and Technology - Season Two Thread

Discussion in 'Trek Tech' started by Mark_Nguyen, Oct 3, 2018.

  1. KamenRiderBlade

    KamenRiderBlade Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    The Camera Array seems to be designed to have one rig that houses multiple cameras in a circular array that could potentially rotate to point the camera at the target. That being said, IRL sensors can get only a specific WaveLength of the EM spectrum at one time. Visible Light sensors are different from IR, different from NIR, different from X-rays, etc. Ergo the rotation of the rig to point a different sensor at it if you're relying on capturing IRL existing EM Wave Lengths constantly being spread about through space.

    TL;DR = My theory is that all the different camera's have a different sensor in each dome, to capture the various spectrum, rotate & point to target capture the full set.
     
  2. KamenRiderBlade

    KamenRiderBlade Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Yes, but the near simultaneous lighting up is what triggered the Federation.
    Plus I bet they have sensor networks spread throughout the nearby Alpha/Beta quadrants, they can probably extrapolate and re-merge the timing with when signals from farther away sources light up. Ergo validating the near simultaneous lighting up of the same "Red Light sources"

    That being said, given how long it takes light to travel, I'm not surprised that the target destination has no "Red Thing". It's probably long gone by the time it arrives to a Federation sensor outpost. Processed for timing & location with other "Red Things" lighting up near simultaneously, and then a mission is setup for Pike to go figure it out.
     
  3. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    And I'm saying that if we accept that graphic as the true story of how these things ignited, then non-simultaneous ignition plus lightspeed means simultaneous lighting up from the UFP POV.

    We're talking about delays of tens of thousands of years here, though. If these things ignited simultaneously (and shut up, Einstein, nobody wants to hear about the fact that "simultaneous" does not really exist), and light from just one happened to reach Earth now while others were seen thousands of years ago or won't be seen for thousands of years, who'd even know to scan for those past or future phenomena (with FTL telescopes or whatnot)?

    No, the dialogue would be best matched if seven spots of red were visible to the naked eye (with binoculars if need be) on the skies of Earth at the same time.

    But supposedly Pike knew going in that there was no Red Thing anywhere any longer - even the first one that had wrecked the Enterprise was but a location where a red light had brightly glowed and then gone dark again. Pike was chasing ghosts or shadows. But if those were thousands of years old, what could he expect to find? And why would he bother? If the Red Blink had had no effect on the universe in those thousands of years, Starfleet could safely ignore it and its sisters.

    Hopefully we'll learn more about the synchronicity issue in the next couple of episodes. And hopefully it won't be a jumbled mess. But perhaps we should hope for as little information as possible, so that we could avoid contradictions...

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  4. KamenRiderBlade

    KamenRiderBlade Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I blame the writers for coming up with such a silly scenario. I bet most of the writers don't understand Astro Physics well enough to come up with a good premise. Ergo the situation that they setup has so many flaws.
     
  5. Ronald Held

    Ronald Held Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Weren't they seen with subspace sensors, which do FTL detection?
     
  6. Ithekro

    Ithekro Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Reminds me of Praxis exploding and its subspace wavefront that hit Excelsior in Federation space.
     
  7. KamenRiderBlade

    KamenRiderBlade Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Could be.
     
  8. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Who saw them? Apparently not Burnham or Saru. And their sensors are supposed to be good - Saru even has better eyes than most, we now hear.

    So these might not be actual red dots on the sky, not even of the blink-and-you-miss-it type that ignited and went out while everybody was listening to Burnham's speech in Paris. Instead, they'd only trigger certain special sensors used by people who don't immediately go to Twitter with their findings.

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  9. Mark_Nguyen

    Mark_Nguyen Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I dunno - there have been several examples of Starfleet noticing things and declining to tell the public for one reason or another. Or, given how little people knew about it, they could had a huge but quiet project going on to learn more about this, and it would show up at most as a benign footnote in a galactic missive somewhere until one of them short-circuited one of the fleet's finest.

    Further random notes - I'm not likely to be able to post a full writeup as I have in previous episode due to timing, bur darned if "Brother" wasn't dense with tech stuff. :)

    - The not-VISOR isn't the first time we've seen wearables in a transporter room - but is it a nod to TNG, the JJ movies, or both? It's not like the transporter operator NEEDS the gear as we've seen it operated multiple times without one, but OTOH they seemed necessary to the JJ-Prise.

    - Looking at the transporter room in the secondary hull again, it seems clear that Burnham and Saru look the long way from the front of that deck to the aft of the interconnecting dorsal, met up with Pike and his contingent, and then led them BACK to the lift before the crazy hamster tube sequence.

    - Between this and the shuttlebay sequence later on, I'm starting to wonder if Discovery was actually still carrying out repairs from the last few operations, which took out their primary transporter room and the shuttlebay (the latter of which MAY have been modified to launch the spore drive jumpstart missiles and needed to be put back in place again). Tilly being put in charge of resourcing and reallocating things after the war seems to suggest a lot of ongoing operations to upgrade, repair, or reconfigure what they got.

    - Haha, it's been pointed out that commander Nhan was a Barzan! Cute reference for a one-off species (and a non-Federation one at that, as of the 2360s). Interesting world building there.

    - Pike was apparently awarded the Carrington Award that Dr. Bashir would later NOT be awarded for advances in the field of medicine. I really don't see him as that sort of person, so maybe he partnered with someone on this? What would Boyce say? Maybe he got infected with something that got named after him?

    - Stamets' going over old letters while on duty - that's one thing. He's finally found time to mourn, I understand. But let's talk about the actual video - what is he looking at? It's a two-dimensional image of Culber, but he's also in a three-dimensional replication of another room (it's not specific, but could be sickbay or their quarters or wherever Culber was at the time). All of this is apparently being fed directly to Stamets' brain through the not-USS Equinox synaptic stimulator. I know we're not supposed to think THAT deeply into it (it's almost certainly a writer's visual cue to say THIS IS A MEMORY), but if this were a holorecording, why wouldn't the whole thing be in 3D? We know that other recordings are in 3D, and even live conversations across space aren't necessarily limited to flat panel.

    - The engineering set has been expanded without anyone being told, recalling how the TOS and TNG sets got make overs by their sophmore seasons. I thought they were going to replace the shroomroom door with a new wall, but it's still there; instead a formerly blank wall next to the spore drive chamber is now home to a workspace beyond, visible through glass doors. In all of Trek only one engineering set has been properly symmetrical (VOY), so this is just furthering the original trend IMO.

    - When Pike asks for his roll call, he misses, and apparently cares not for, the minimum of three extras also on the bridge. This is a mistake; at least one of them can teleport, as she's seen walking from port to starboard behind him twice during the cute sequence. :)

    - Wherever those nifty spinny cameras are, it's not the saucer's ventral dome. I wonder where it is - because wherever it is, it's not about to get much coverage of the hull from there. Maybe there are several scattered around the hull that would work in concert to get a 3D image of the hull? Maybe those little spheres can pop off for remote use?

    - The EXTREMELY Gerry Anderson-esque launch sequence of the landing pods raises more questions than answers for me. Aside from looking really cool, is there any reason the pods couldn't simply be released from the shuttlebay? They emerged launching aft between the nacelles, so it's not like they'd be going in any other direction. There's also no specific port on the Discovery model to match where they popped out from. And is there no other way for people to board the pods than through the shutlebay elevator?

    - The landing pod party have the same design of suit, but different color, even though Burnham and Connolly are from the same Sciences department AND Nhan is in Red instead of the Disco-standard Bronze for her department. Did the Enterprise crew beam over their gear separately before they left? Given how a lot of gear is custom-fitted today, it wouldn't be a stretch. Maybe they replicated it aboard from the pattern they'd use on Enterprise? Or did someone spend a while spray-painting their gear to stand out more?

    - As the pod party crew enters the shuttlebay, someone announces for all non-essential personel to clear out of the bay. Clearly everyone in there IS essential, because NO ONE LEAVES through the big primary door that everyone uses!

    - Is there ANY need for the turntable to actually turn as it descends?

    - So when are there particular windows for Burnham to have been a test pilot for the landing pods? Most logically this was done at some point during her time on Discovery under Lorca, before their trip to the upside down. But conceivably it could have been done at some other point in her career. the Shenzhou could have had them aboard, or it could even have been during a stint she did elsewhere... I've always been skeptical that she'd spend her entire pre-DSC Starfleet career on one ship, without training or postings elsewhere, despite credits with the VSA or wherever.

    - The big wreckage room of the Hiawatha (which cleverly covers up the concrete floor and walls of the disused-factory location much better than spaceships of some other sci-fi shows I won't mention) includes those funny bent lighting props that we first (?) saw as part of Discovery's not-holodeck. They were also seen in the mirror-universe, among places, but unless this big wrecked room were a holodeck I'm wondering if they're simply lamps in-universe.

    - The crate that Reno keeps her kids in abbreviates her ship's name to "HIA". Have we seen a similar thing on stuff for Discovery, aside from those very marketable T-shirts from last year, and I guess the shuttles?

    - The Hiawatha's transporter room splices the Shenzhou's lateral vector transporter dishes into an otherwise mostly painted over DSC set. I know they're both the same set anyway, but SHZ's original set had a completely different pad and console array. I'm thinking they couldn't have made it work with all the stretchers for this scene but would otherwise have refit it that way.

    - Burnham asks Reno to see if she could get the other transporter console working as she worked on the first. How would they both be used in regular operations? This is the first time we've really seen a dual console setup, even though at least on TOS their one console is usually manned by two people (though ENT, and the TNG era shows nominally have one).

    - I swear to God, Tilly's asteroid capture device transforms open with a hint of the 80s Transformers cartoon SFX cue.

    Mark
     
    Last edited: Jan 23, 2019
  10. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I have no problem with this. The part I sort of worry about is that the folks of Discovery apparently never saw these red things. Does this tell us something about the nature and visibility of the phenomena?

    I'd chalk up most implants and wearables as prosthetics for war invalids. Then again, Georgiou's Tactical wore an apparent VR helmet - perhaps as of the late 2250s and on, this is outdated tech that some old-fashioned people can't do without for psychological reasons?

    And they changed floors at least once, because Burnham and Saru took a right turn after walking alongside the port wall of the neck and didn't end up breathing vacuum.

    Possibly primary hull transporters were reserved for dealing with Pike's casualties or something? (The long camera run obviously wouldn't have anything to do with there now being this expansive set with all-new nooks and crannies.)

    Good point - although I suspect flexibility is one of the key assets of the ship, and connected to the interiors being an "unfinished" cave full of roller coaster turbotracks. And yes, I'm still riding the hobbyhorse of the Crossfields being former shuttlecarriers with interior space to burn...

    Also, a soulmate for Saru, as Barzans still lacked warp a century later; Nhan probably can't go back home, either, if the same PD concerns apply.

    Or is this "We have no crewed spaceflight, we depend on others" business one of those "We bombed ourselves back to stone age after a glorious Golden Age of interstellar contact" things?

    The rules regarding the award may have changed, of course. ITRW, it's been 100 years since the death of Mary Edwards Walker, the only female recipient of the Medal of Honor - not for valor in combat as the requirements today go, but for practicing medicine beyond the requirements of her contract.

    Perhaps Carrington left a wealthy foundation that has been forced to scale down to medicine after so many heroic feats of more general nature tapped into the funds?

    There's also that Cardassian award with the word Legate prominent in its name. But not the word Cardassia, so we can plead mere convergent evolution of terminology.

    I'm pretty sure we're seeing a third-person view of Stamets reminiscing on the day he watched a 2D message from Culber. I mean, there's a whole range of options there already: 2D as in Lorca's Ready Room, semi-3D as between Stamets and Straal at the Engineering console, full 3D in low or moderate quality.

    Well, it is off to port - this is where the camera emerges when pulling back and up from Lorca and Burnham in "Context" after the spore demonstration. There might be another one to starboard.

    And yanking out the mushroom conservatory would make it possible to "restore" the workspace we now see.

    A great way to avoid attention, this...

    ...Perhaps these people have learned the lesson on never volunteering, but not all of them can avoid the glare of Pike's stare?

    I'm all for multiple clusters, and for these being "telescopic", that is, on telescopic stalks.

    Again I'd argue the ship is an extremely flexible work in progress. There's this launching system for generic things beneath the shuttlebay floor, a bit like the chutes flanking Kirk's shuttlebay that can fire Ion Pods but also probes and maintenance hardsuits and garbage cans and whatnot. It can be loaded by using the common elevator-turntable, and many of the ordnance types absolutely require the acceleration tubes even if the pods do not. But this is a good place to store the pods, as the shuttlebay proper is chock full of supplies and gear already, no doubt due to the flexibility thing again - due to akl the ongoing work, there's no proper route for transfer of consumables, so the bay has to do triple or quintuple duty like no other bay in Starfleet.

    One might assume spacesuits to be the one thing that would be brought along, in addition to a compact selection of personal effects and the like. I agree they'd be custom-fitted even when less critical wear such as Burnham's uniform can be fabricated at the push of a button.

    But it's also possible that Starfleet changes uniforms by issuing its personnel a new pattern to their personal fabricator cards. So when Burnham inserts hers, she gets the old-fashioned white gear, but when Pike's folks use theirs, they get the newest fashion.

    Then again, the place must be full of other doors, considering. Where do all those crates and barrels go? The extra shuttles disappear to their hangars effortlessly enough, so mere people should have it easy there.

    If the thing normally brings shuttlecraft down two levels to their compact little hangar, it may be programmed to position them correctly for that. I mean, no, I don't want to believe in a corkscrew mechanism here!

    I'd be glad to accept the pods as an old thing, from years back. It's only Burnham's non-royal "we" that bothers me there. The "we" who built these pods for that mission aren't the three people Burnham is talking to, obviously. Is she referring to her new Discovery family or the old sisterhood of the Flight Test Range?

    Or lamps and more. Just today I read an article of coding information into the light from LEDs used primarily for illumination of rooms - a wi-fi of sorts. Every fancy lamp in Star Trek might be a display device secondarily, a data and power virtu-socket tertiarily, and so forth.

    I don't recall any TLA crates, but I gather they will be a thing from now on. And then we can re-ignite the TLA wars: will they say DIS or DSC, or perhaps abbreviate "Starfleet To Discovery"?

    Might be handy for moving of patients - perhaps they "risk" intraship beaming like so many latter-day medics, and there are separate consoles for inbound and intraship?

    I wouldn't wonder a bit!

    Timo Saloniemi
     
    Last edited: Jan 23, 2019
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  11. Tomalak

    Tomalak Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Yep, it just confirms how awesome Pike is, cementing his status as the anti-Lorca. Whilst a couple of decades later Spock would profess he has no ego to bruise, Saru most definitely does, and Pike spots that from the off.

    Stepping aside is a tactful act, as well as fully appropriate within the bounds of the captain's discretion. Saru knows the ship and the crew, and is more than capable of collecting an asteroid.

    Pike obviously suspects he will be around much longer than he suggests, but this simple act allows him to demonstrate he fully trusts his temporary Number One. Smart guy.
     
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  12. Mark_Nguyen

    Mark_Nguyen Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Indeed. I wonder how smart it is though for just him to stick around, though. As legendary as he is, wouldn't it make a certain amount of sense to transplant a little more of his command crew with him? Their science guy is dead, but was Conolly the only one versed in the Red Things they were after?

    We saw when Jellico took over the Enterprise-D, was because of his specific skills and experiences for the mission at hand. Here, while Pike is a REALLY AWESOME GUY, it's not like his skills and experience uniquely qualify him to look for the Red Things. And if they want to send Starfleet's finest after it, would it not make sense to reassign some of those people from Starfleet's finest ship to the task while that ship's out of order?

    This extends to exactly why the Enterprise was kept out of the war - would they have left the ship out there but recalled some of their most experienced fighters? We're being led to believe that she was busy on a 5-year for much of the two years of the war's duration, too far away to have made a difference. But Burnham also suggests that ships like the Enterprise are a sort of nuclear option, too - that bringing the biggest guns back from the rim would be a signal that they would be pulling out all the stops to finish the war. One wonders that by the point in the war when Discovery returned from the upside down - when they were literally on the brink of losing, according to the Admiral at the time - that the order to recall everyone out on deep space duty would have been issued.

    I wonder if Discovery will be sticking to its 137 crew count this season. In all the new corridor scenes and the shuttlebay scenes, the place is abuzz with activity... During most of it the ship is under crisis conditions but I feel like the ship got a heck of a lot more crowded in this one episode. I counted nearly forty people clustered around Tilly's new pet rock a the end of the episode. That's nearly a third of the crew! If what Timo suggested is correct and they may have actually absorbed some of the Enteprise's crew for this mission, I wonder if someone will note a larger crew in dialogue. The ship certainly has enough space to support a much larger crew, and now that the singular focus on spore drive + combat is no longer necessary, will we have a higher crew count mentioned as Discovery works her way up to the record 300 separate science missions possible?

    Mark
     
  13. Mark_Nguyen

    Mark_Nguyen Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Another note - has anyone concluded yet that the two tugs hauling the Enterprise away as garbage are indeed nods to the Ptolemy tugs of Franz Joseph fame? The size is all wrong, no cargo pods are visible, but the general shape and nacelle orientation are there...

    EDIT - Ah yes, in a thread in the DSC forum. One wonders how they happened - given how randomly the visual cues are on this show compared to the relatively consistent nature in the TNG era, I'm guessing that the VFX guys saw "Out the window, Bunham witnesses the Enterprise being towed away by another Federation starship", then looked online for Starfleet tugs and went from there...

    Mark
     
    Last edited: Jan 24, 2019
  14. Ronald Held

    Ronald Held Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Isn't Pike there solely because the Enterprise is inoperative?
     
  15. KamenRiderBlade

    KamenRiderBlade Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    That and the Many near Simultaneous Red Thingy mission. Plus, I bet StarFleet HQ cares that they screwed up with leaving Lorca in charge for so long and all the Trauma that they've encountered that they decided to pair the super experienced, not War Torned Captain Pike to help heal the crew of Discovery.
     
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  16. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Why would the size be all wrong? These babies could have 127 m saucers, while our assumed size of NCC-1701 is the bit we always got wrong.

    Whatever Burnham says about Pike missing the war need not be particularly truthful. She's just trying to console the man, after all, and is just about as good at it as any Vulcan.

    As for why Pike stays... The next episode should already be decisive in that. After all, the red things were specified as being far away, save for the one in the first episode. The only way Starfleet could get to the others is the spore drive. And the spore drive is supposedly a secret. If the red things are, too, then it makes sense not to bring in any people from the outside: pair the keepers of the drive secret with the keeper of the thingie secret for best possible secrecy.

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  17. Ithekro

    Ithekro Vice Admiral Admiral

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    The first mission was simply because Pike needed a ship to investigate due to Enterprise have some sort of systems failure. But now that the first inspection didn't get them a Red Thing, Starfleet likely still wants Pike to investigate. Enterprise is down for a while, and Discovery does have a jump drive that can make a 30,000 light year trip much faster than other starships. So its the perfect ship (more or less) for this task, and Pike's pretty much Starfleet's top exploration captain right now.

    Though I wonder what Matt Decker was mostly known for? He was on the list of most decorated Starfleet captains with Pike, April, Georgiou, and Archer. A list that will probably add Kirk and Sulu by the end of the 23rd century.
     
  18. Ronald Held

    Ronald Held Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Maybe Decker for military campaigns?
     
  19. 137th Gebirg

    137th Gebirg Admiral Premium Member

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    Getting back to this one, it appears to be possibly a Section 31 ship that delievers MU Georgieau to the Discovery.
     
  20. Mark_Nguyen

    Mark_Nguyen Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Addendum: The "Airport Code" TLAs for starships do indeed include DSC, SHN (from "The Brightest Star") and now HIA.

    Mark