Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 2x05 - "Saints of Imperfection"

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"Burnham and the crew navigate a dangerous alien landscape in a race against time to save Tilly’s life, but Stamets is not at all prepared for what they find in the process. Section 31 is assigned to help track down Spock, much to Pike’s dismay." - Memory Alpha

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OK ... that's just creepy.

 

That picture is kind of disturbing.

I hope this episode is the end of the Spore arc, and maybe this is the one Culber comes back.

 

Well, the spore drive could be a necessary evil, with this Red Angel stuff. They might not be able to shelve it so easily until this ordeal is done with. Keep in mind it WAS a necessity for one of the episodes of the season.

 

And a probable trigger for the whole Redness - the phenomenon appears exactly when humans start to fly on mushrooms. I don't see them hurrying with either the spore drive or the remaining Red Things, and I fully expect to see a major spore reference/revelation as well as a final Red Thing in the last episode of the season.

But whether the entire S2 is customized for purging S3 through 7 of the spore drive... "Saints" will probably give us a fair idea.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Yeah. If they're going to continue to explore the seven "red bursts" they will have to use the Spore Drive - considering Discovery can't travel a span of 30,000 light years without it.

 

Indeed, looking at Spock's map, it would not be possible to reach any of the six spots that were not right next to the heroes by using conventional warp drive. Whether Terralysium counted as one of the six, despite being called a "new signal" and being 50k rather than 30k away, is still unclear. But once Pike got over the initial shock of the spore drive existing, he is now quite ready to use it to brush his teeth: it's his go-to solution in "Obol", too, for escaping the clutches of the Space Spider. Losing the drive would be a major blow to him here.

Timo Saloniemi

 

I wonder if the signals are subspace or some other "Trek magic" FTL signal.

If they were plain old visible light, it would have taken 30,000 years for a signal 30,000 LY away to be seen. So if they see the visible light now, the signal happened 30,000 years ago.

...Unless, as I mentioned, the signals are moving at some magical FTL speed, like Trek's subspace communications do.

 

The one in "New Eden" appeared on the skies of that planet right when the adventure took place, not 50k years prior.

Unless it did both. But Klingons also saw seven simultaneous lights, which only works if their empire is one lightyear across and centered at Pluto. Or then these "signals" (the word our heroes use) indeed are high FTL...

Timo Saloniemi

 

The likely answer is that Discovery - unlike any of the earlier Treks - doesn't have a science advisor, and no one knows how the speed of light actually works.

But feel free to use in-show headcanon to argue that they're only visible in subspace or something.

 

Which is probably the case. It is Star Trek after all.

 

I don't think they "see" the signals in the sky. They have subspace telescopes and observation probes all over the place which can report back immediately (via subspace radio) when anomalies occur within their range.

These seven or eight red lights appeared within a few days of each other at best, and the Feds learned about it through their probes and probably probes of spacefaring friendlies, while the Klingons learned of it from spying on the Federation (they certainly haven't stopped that).

It might not be directly connected to the spore drive. It could just be the Red Angels going "Cool, the humanoids finally figured out how to use spores. Here's a few cleanup projects they can help us out with now."

 

Don't know that I'm going to get to this one tonight. It is Valentine's Day and my wife, ya know, likes to be together on these days.

I don't get it.



I am excited, however, about...

Spoiler: Saints of Imperfection

... the return of Culber.

 

Discovery isn't the only series to do faster than light.. uh light.

 

I'm sure you're right, but care to name a few?

 

The supernova in Star Trek Generations for one.

Except they've already demonstrated knowledge of the speed of light in the same episode.

 

Oh please, this isn't the first time in Star Trek we've had ridiculous sensor abilities. How else do you explain (since the TOS era) sensors that can ping and give an immediate reading on ships and objects Light years away in less than a second. Obviously all warp capable ships have sensors that can send and receive data virtually instantaneously from great distances.

Star Trek has NEVER BEEN 'Hard' science fiction despite what some fans would like to believe <--- And that's been from day one.

Any Science Advisor would immediately bring up that the long range sensors as depicted on ANY Star Trek series are absolutely scientifically impossible EVEN WITH the postulated FTL forms of energy/particles modern science believes may exist, but still can't prove.

Again, singling out ST: D for something EVERY Star Trek series and film has been guilty of since day one is just ridiculous.

 

Yeah. As "Noname given" mentioned above, Star Trek has never been real science fiction, but rather "sci-fi lite".

I mean, they just handwave over the non-explanation of how their communications are instantaneous by just saying "it's subspace" -- whatever that means.

But it's not just communications. Think of the all of the places other than our own "realm" that other beings can live. We have beings who were described (with a wave of the writer's hand) as living in subspace (TNG Schisms). And beings who lived in the same space as us, but were simply "out of phase" from us (TNG: Time's Arrow). And then there's fluidic space where species 8472 lived.

I'm sure there are others (and I'm not counting Worf's "Parallels" Universes or the MU), but none of these other realms were given complete explanations, and were often mentioned in a wave-of-the-hand blasé manner that made me think it was all pretty routine stuff to have all of these different "realms" in which beings lived. Other realms? Sure -- no problem!

Granted, I don't necessarily want a detailed explanation, because that isn't what Trek is supposed to be. It is not a science documentary.

 

The longer I read Star Trek fan postings the more I think that's exactly what is expected of the tech. I think that is what gave rise to the technobabble.

 

I agree that Star Trek isn't "hard science fiction" (I'm not sure any sci-fi TV except maybe The Expanse counts) but neither do I think "sci-fi lite" is the proper thing to call it, because it's right around the middle of the bell curve in terms of scientific rigor when it comes to TV/movies (though way less than that when written works are considered).