Regarding Fed ships appearing in the new Picard series

Well, I mean we could. One thing you should know about me is I will keep on discussing even when I disagree with people. To me, discussions are not to change people's minds, so I see no reason to stop at the point of disagreement.

That aside, I was more curious as to what you think the producers should have done?

 

I don’t see how they’re insulting your intelligence

 

About what specifically? Because I could make up a general list pretty large, but it would probably derail the thread topic.

 

In the specific instance of the Klingons and their "half-ass" explanation. What should have been done differently?

I know that we could all post about what we would want DSC to do differently,

 

The “half-ass” explanation I was referring to was about why they didn’t have hair in season 1 but do in season 2. But since @Tuskin38 pointed out that that explanation wasn’t mentioned in the show, it’s not canon and therefore it’s moot.

 

Ah, I see. I thought you were referring to what they said outside of the show. Hence my confusion and curiosity.

 

"Starships... that's what this topic's all about!" -- Kirk in a TrekBBS take on "Return to Tomorrow".

I want to get back to the Shenzhou. A starship in New Trek, if that's okay. Back in 2017, my reaction to the Shenzhou was, "Okay. I like it, but it seems out of place." Then I thought about it, after reading threads here, and thought, "Okay, I can sort of see how this can look like it's an offshoot of the NX-01."

It's an overly elaborate offshoot of the NX-01 but that's when I think back to cars. From the late-1930s to 1950s cars had a certain body style that was abandoned around 1960. 1950s cars could get extremely elaborate-looking. Couldn't make those fins big enough. Or those curves curvy enough. By the beginning of the 1960s, they did away with all that, and drastically simplified designs into something sleeker.

I see the Shenzhou as the equivalent of a car from the 1950s whose design looks overdone. And then most of the ships in Discovery would be like cars that came from after that.

Let me pin it down further. I'd say the Shenzhou is like a 1954 Buick Skylark. Looking back to the '30s but with an eye for what was to come. Here's a link to some other stylish cars from the '50s right here.

 

What genius thought it was a good idea to mount twin torpedo launchers in the Warp Nacelle next to the Bussard Collectors?

 

Huh?

 

Probably the same one who keeps forgetting to close the Discovery's back door.

 

Look carefully at many of the ST Discovery era design ships and watch S2 of STSC. They literally mount the forward Torpedo Launchers in the Warp Nacelle, it surrounds the Bussard Collectors. They literally have video evidence of it in ST;DSC.

 

That part always bugged me.

 

I think the Season 2 one was just an FX error, and none of the other ship designs have torpedo tubes on their nacelles.

 

There's no need to pretend, whether you like it or not, Discovery is canon. It's a TV show produced by CBS so that automatically makes it canon no matter how some people might feel about it.

Sorry to go back to this for just a second, but the producers who were in charge of the show are in Season 2 are not the ones who "fucked up", that was Bryan Fuller, he's the one who decided the Klingons had to look different in Discovery. If anything what the producers did in season 2 was an attempt at damage control.

 

Sorry, I should have said:
"if we're pretending DIS is in continuity"

DIS is definitely canon under the current rules. What's questionable is weather it's in continuity with TOS. I mix up these two a lot.

(Personally, I believe TOS is in continuity with DIS, but DIS is not in continuity with TOS - if that makes sense? As in: When watching DIS, TOS definitely happened with Spock, Kirk, Pike and Co. But not the other way 'round - when watching TOS, Spock has no (in-)famous mutineer (later classified) human half-sister that's in Starfleet, started the last war with the Klingons and who's real parents built a time-traveling super-suit and who is travelling the universe instantly on a plane of mushrooms.)

 

Considering the scimitar made a window at the front of the Enterprise's bridge with it's disruptors in Nemesis, it seems pretty irrelevant whether there is a window there or not. Also there are giant windows all over the ships in star trek all of which are potential safety breaches.

 

I would think almost any shot strong enough to go through the window would be strong enough to go through regular hull material.

In my mind the most logical explanation for having windows over viewscreens would be some form of electronic warfare. If you rely completely on sensors then they can be hacked or jammed by various methods. Heck or just radiation in a random nebula when you're hunting a pirated Mirada class vessel...

 

Oh, yeah I can see where there's more of a question there.
I have kind of mixed feelings in that regard, on one hand I do like what it adds to TOS and the overall universe, but it is so different from TOS it is a bit hard to think of all of this happening 10 years before what we got in the '60s.

 

There's no preferred launch point for torpedoes in any of the fight scenes for any of the ship designs, because there are no sufficiently prominent exterior features in any of the ships for the VFX artists to associate with torp launch (compare, say, with the prominently red-lit phaser turrets that are unerringly used). The hero ship fires torpedoes in "Into the Forest" from basically everywhere - when we get the head-on view from behind Kol's controversially bald head, some torps come from below the Discovery saucer, some from above; some from the centerline, some not so much. It is no consolation, really, that none come from the nacelles or their pylons there.

Perhaps we're best off thinking in TOS visual terms: torpedoes are not "fired from tubes" as much as they emerge quietly from the ship by unknown means and then light up some distance from the hull, possibly at fairly arbitrary locations following the actual deployment from a non-arbitrary deployment doodad.

Might be this is how you fire a volley: you deploy masses of torps from a couple of chutes and have them spread out, and then they all separately ignite some distance from each other and the ship, so as not to mutually disrupt each other or the ship. As technology progresses, you can light 'em up with less and less delay, until ultimately they glow right after emerging from the tubes, making the tubes themselves stand out as the points of emergence.

In any case, if these things are charged with antimatter, having the launchers close to other antimatter-reliant machinery might actually be a good idea: you can concentrate your protective measures, or banish the kaboomables to a small number of peripheral locations. I don't think there are tubes in the nacelles of NCC-1031, but there might indeed be tubes in the pylons right next to the nacelles.

Will PIC do any differently? Depends on whether the hero and villain ships are designed with prominent weapons emplacements. If the torpedo tubes are nondescript dots on the hull, they probably will go unused or misused. If they are giant barrels the camera is keen on zooming at in the pilot episode already, later misuse is unlikely.

Timo Saloniemi

 

That's a good way to look at it. I see it kinda similarly.