Mayo?
Spoilers ST Lower Decks - Starships and Technology Season One Discusssion
- Thread starter Mark_Nguyen
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Mayo?
I relish the discussion. Hope people won't have to ketchup too much.
1x04 Moist Vessel
- So how does "Second Contact" work in this situation? Going by what was established in the premiere, the Cerritos' primary mission is following up on the "other guys" who do all the first contact stuff. So what happened here? Some Sovereign-class ship spotted the not-Lexx generational ship adrift, did a cursory scan and exploration, avoided a calamity of their own, and signaled Starfleet to dispatch a pair of lowly Californias to tow it to the nearest starbase? TNG "Relics" comes to mind.
- Captains Freeman and Durango address the command crew, including a blueshirt (who incidentally looks a lot like me). Is this the erstwhile science officer of the Cerritos? Or, given the TNG era's general avoidance of lead science officers on starships, the specialist of the week? We don't see this Mark-doppelganger after this; the show did a pretty good job of drawing additional crew members for the USS Merced and not just re-use the 30+ characters we've seen on the Cerritos so far.
- Rutherford is seen accessing the little storage unit next to his top bunk, which is closest to the window. However, in an earlier episode we see Mariner accessing "her" unit which is actually the one further from the window. What gives? Purposeful error to fit the shot blocking? Mariner actually co-opted both units to hide all her contraband? We haven't seen anyone in that bunk so far, maybe it's empty?
- While it's a gag that services the Trek trope of specifying the temperature of the ordered food, I can't think of a reason that anyone would want to replicate hot, cold or room temperature sand, colorful or otherwise. And why wouldn't the replicator present the sand in a container of some sort? We've seen it replicate stuff on convenient stands in the past, no?
- How does Starfleet treat ascension? I'm sure there are plenty of provisions for the pursuit of one's spiritual beliefs, but we're literally talking about someone whose goal is to leave Starfleet. Did O'Connor submit a resignation letter in advance of his announced ascension? I know he wasn't REALLY intending to ascend, but he was specifically saying he was going to ascend at that time. And wouldn't Starfleet have a vested interest in someone becoming one with the universe, and accessing all that life, the universe and everything STUFF that everyone in the Fleet is out here to discover?
- This is all disregarding the actual mechanics of ascension, which are all sci-fi nonsense to begin with. We've seen assorted episodes about ascension to pure energy before, but they're basically aliens. Ascension here is more like it's seen in Stargate SG-1.
- Is this the first time we've seen anyone actually access the "grid" in the holodeck wall? In TNG, when someone needs to fiddle with the holodeck, they usually access a panel or whatever in the arch. In Voyager, the grid itself seems to be reduced to generic metal grids that are actually those expandable, portable frames I've used to hang pictures and stuff from at work conferences in the exhibitor hall. DS9's holosuites have more greeblie stuff in their walls that are accessible.
- And why isn't the waste siphoned off to whatever plumbing that takes care of all the other usual waste on the ship? Is this another example of holodeck energy not being compatible with the rest of the ship's systems, per that ridiculous reasoning on Voyager for how they can keep holodecking across space while rationing food?
- What needs to be lubed in a turbolift car? The actual propulsion seems to be magnetically based.
- I've pointed out that Shaxs is promoted to Commander for the turbolift gag; but he's also at that higher rank elsewhere in the show, like in the long shots when Mariner gets promoted. At a subsequent shot in the same scene though, he's at his correct rank. Strange error to make, IMO.
- Mariner is cleaning the carbon filter in a workshop that doesn't seem to be the gang's usual hangout. There's still a nacelle-less shuttle in the corner, but is looks to be different and there are no nacelles stacked up against the wall. The "bendy straw" light fixtures that are doing all sorts of different things on Discovery sorta make an appearance here too.
- I've noticed this before, but haven't noted that the Cerritos' bridge aft stations are of equal size, but for some reason the "Mission Ops" header graphic is narrower than the other ones on the aft station bank, even if the station itself is the same size as the others. The Merced's green LCARS share this orientation.
- It's not mentioned that Mariner was effectively promoted TWO ranks here. I'm guessing that this is to make it seem more fitting for her to be hanging around the senior staff, but we've seen a fair number of Lieutenant Commanders on the ship in the background already. Also she makes a change of department, presumably to Operations given what she ends up doing. I wonder if the writers had a specific career path in mind, or if there was more simply an opening in the department for that position (the Cerritos doesn't have a senior staff member like Data or Kim) available to fill. No spoilers, but she DOES sit at the Ops position in the trailer for a future episode.
- It's already been pointed out that the Cerritos conference room's inside wall is patterned after the Enterprise-D's wall from seasons 5-7. Does this mean it's an artistic choice or the actual structural elements of starships of this era?
- It's not like Mariner had the opportunity to decorate her new quarters in the context of the episode, so why does it come with books? I man, PAPER BOOKS? Or is it again an artistic thing?
- New room: "Command Prep" is where much of the staff plus Captain Durango are found to discuss their findings of the mission so far (and audit the mission, whatever that means). This can't be done in the conference room like on any other ship?
- The "officers lounge" looks just like the regular bar set we've seen before. And if everyone on the Cerritos is an officer per Gene Rodddenberry's vision, shouldn't the officers lounge not simply be the... Lounge?
- "Executive Poker" happens in the same kind of room as the conference room.
- Tendi and Rutehrford are eating in a proper mess hall on the ship. It's the same set as the bar, but with the actual bar swapped out for a central replicator bank, which is pretty neat.
- As Tendi visits O'Connor in Engineering, we see an LCARS diagram of the warp core closer up, showing that it's probably no more than five decks tall, tip to tail. The room itself is shown to be smaller than it was shown previously, to the point where I'm more comfy believing it can fit into the secondary hull.
- The Merced's blue hull coloring is in different places than the Cerritos' yellow livery. I wonder if any of it is up to personal choice, or if it's different so that species that interpret colors differently can still tell the branches apart from their hull patterns.
- As the orange goo transforms the ship, we get a decent look at the space between two of the engineering decks, which sandwich corridors atop one another without much space between them. I wonder if this was built as a CGI set like the other ones, or was hand-drawn for the sake of this episode.
- Mariner states that they should "head down to the environmental controls" to resolve the goo crisis, but they end up in the transporter room instead. Aside from establishing that the transporter room is on a lower deck than the captain's quarters, if true. OTOH, it gives us a great reason to see that they can operate the transporter by SLIDING the classic slide controls, and not simply tap them as has occasionally been shown in other shows.
- As the orange goo dissolves, it returns most of the corridors to their previous inorganic state - but the gaping hole above Tendi and O'Connor remains gaping, conveniently leaving space for the latter's ascension.
- Remaining goo is cleared away by.. Starfleet issue leaf blowers, red visors and ear protectors? I guess the red visors check out, anyway..!
- Freeman and Mariner receive their medals in a rare instance of medals actually being pinned to their uniforms. In basically every instance of a medal being seen in Star Trek, it's in its case. Even dress uniforms are typically bereft of medals, TOS being the most notable exception.
Mark
1x04 Moist Vessel
- So how does "Second Contact" work in this situation? Going by what was established in the premiere, the Cerritos' primary mission is following up on the "other guys" who do all the first contact stuff. So what happened here? Some Sovereign-class ship spotted the not-Lexx generational ship adrift, did a cursory scan and exploration, avoided a calamity of their own, and signaled Starfleet to dispatch a pair of lowly Californias to tow it to the nearest starbase? TNG "Relics" comes to mind.
- Captains Freeman and Durango address the command crew, including a blueshirt (who incidentally looks a lot like me). Is this the erstwhile science officer of the Cerritos? Or, given the TNG era's general avoidance of lead science officers on starships, the specialist of the week? We don't see this Mark-doppelganger after this; the show did a pretty good job of drawing additional crew members for the USS Merced and not just re-use the 30+ characters we've seen on the Cerritos so far.
- Rutherford is seen accessing the little storage unit next to his top bunk, which is closest to the window. However, in an earlier episode we see Mariner accessing "her" unit which is actually the one further from the window. What gives? Purposeful error to fit the shot blocking? Mariner actually co-opted both units to hide all her contraband? We haven't seen anyone in that bunk so far, maybe it's empty?
- While it's a gag that services the Trek trope of specifying the temperature of the ordered food, I can't think of a reason that anyone would want to replicate hot, cold or room temperature sand, colorful or otherwise. And why wouldn't the replicator present the sand in a container of some sort? We've seen it replicate stuff on convenient stands in the past, no?
- How does Starfleet treat ascension? I'm sure there are plenty of provisions for the pursuit of one's spiritual beliefs, but we're literally talking about someone whose goal is to leave Starfleet. Did O'Connor submit a resignation letter in advance of his announced ascension? I know he wasn't REALLY intending to ascend, but he was specifically saying he was going to ascend at that time. And wouldn't Starfleet have a vested interest in someone becoming one with the universe, and accessing all that life, the universe and everything STUFF that everyone in the Fleet is out here to discover?
- This is all disregarding the actual mechanics of ascension, which are all sci-fi nonsense to begin with. We've seen assorted episodes about ascension to pure energy before, but they're basically aliens. Ascension here is more like it's seen in Stargate SG-1.
- Is this the first time we've seen anyone actually access the "grid" in the holodeck wall? In TNG, when someone needs to fiddle with the holodeck, they usually access a panel or whatever in the arch. In Voyager, the grid itself seems to be reduced to generic metal grids that are actually those expandable, portable frames I've used to hang pictures and stuff from at work conferences in the exhibitor hall. DS9's holosuites have more greeblie stuff in their walls that are accessible.
- And why isn't the waste siphoned off to whatever plumbing that takes care of all the other usual waste on the ship? Is this another example of holodeck energy not being compatible with the rest of the ship's systems, per that ridiculous reasoning on Voyager for how they can keep holodecking across space while rationing food?
- What needs to be lubed in a turbolift car? The actual propulsion seems to be magnetically based.
- I've pointed out that Shaxs is promoted to Commander for the turbolift gag; but he's also at that higher rank elsewhere in the show, like in the long shots when Mariner gets promoted. At a subsequent shot in the same scene though, he's at his correct rank. Strange error to make, IMO.
- Mariner is cleaning the carbon filter in a workshop that doesn't seem to be the gang's usual hangout. There's still a nacelle-less shuttle in the corner, but is looks to be different and there are no nacelles stacked up against the wall. The "bendy straw" light fixtures that are doing all sorts of different things on Discovery sorta make an appearance here too.
- I've noticed this before, but haven't noted that the Cerritos' bridge aft stations are of equal size, but for some reason the "Mission Ops" header graphic is narrower than the other ones on the aft station bank, even if the station itself is the same size as the others. The Merced's green LCARS share this orientation.
- It's not mentioned that Mariner was effectively promoted TWO ranks here. I'm guessing that this is to make it seem more fitting for her to be hanging around the senior staff, but we've seen a fair number of Lieutenant Commanders on the ship in the background already. Also she makes a change of department, presumably to Operations given what she ends up doing. I wonder if the writers had a specific career path in mind, or if there was more simply an opening in the department for that position (the Cerritos doesn't have a senior staff member like Data or Kim) available to fill. No spoilers, but she DOES sit at the Ops position in the trailer for a future episode.
- It's already been pointed out that the Cerritos conference room's inside wall is patterned after the Enterprise-D's wall from seasons 5-7. Does this mean it's an artistic choice or the actual structural elements of starships of this era?
- It's not like Mariner had the opportunity to decorate her new quarters in the context of the episode, so why does it come with books? I man, PAPER BOOKS? Or is it again an artistic thing?
- New room: "Command Prep" is where much of the staff plus Captain Durango are found to discuss their findings of the mission so far (and audit the mission, whatever that means). This can't be done in the conference room like on any other ship?
- The "officers lounge" looks just like the regular bar set we've seen before. And if everyone on the Cerritos is an officer per Gene Rodddenberry's vision, shouldn't the officers lounge not simply be the... Lounge?
- "Executive Poker" happens in the same kind of room as the conference room.
- Tendi and Rutehrford are eating in a proper mess hall on the ship. It's the same set as the bar, but with the actual bar swapped out for a central replicator bank, which is pretty neat.
- As Tendi visits O'Connor in Engineering, we see an LCARS diagram of the warp core closer up, showing that it's probably no more than five decks tall, tip to tail. The room itself is shown to be smaller than it was shown previously, to the point where I'm more comfy believing it can fit into the secondary hull.
- The Merced's blue hull coloring is in different places than the Cerritos' yellow livery. I wonder if any of it is up to personal choice, or if it's different so that species that interpret colors differently can still tell the branches apart from their hull patterns.
- As the orange goo transforms the ship, we get a decent look at the space between two of the engineering decks, which sandwich corridors atop one another without much space between them. I wonder if this was built as a CGI set like the other ones, or was hand-drawn for the sake of this episode.
- Mariner states that they should "head down to the environmental controls" to resolve the goo crisis, but they end up in the transporter room instead. Aside from establishing that the transporter room is on a lower deck than the captain's quarters, if true. OTOH, it gives us a great reason to see that they can operate the transporter by SLIDING the classic slide controls, and not simply tap them as has occasionally been shown in other shows.
- As the orange goo dissolves, it returns most of the corridors to their previous inorganic state - but the gaping hole above Tendi and O'Connor remains gaping, conveniently leaving space for the latter's ascension.
- Remaining goo is cleared away by.. Starfleet issue leaf blowers, red visors and ear protectors? I guess the red visors check out, anyway..!
- Freeman and Mariner receive their medals in a rare instance of medals actually being pinned to their uniforms. In basically every instance of a medal being seen in Star Trek, it's in its case. Even dress uniforms are typically bereft of medals, TOS being the most notable exception.
Mark
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-Even Second Contact ships might get to tow a thing if they found it first? It sounds like Captain Durango found it.
-Maybe some guys like the Horta or the ST:V rock monsters eat sand, but can't deal with bowls?
-Starfleet Academy graduates all sign ascension waivers- with a clause for who gets to keep your boots and whether or not you will come back with infinite insights.
-Holodecks- totally independent power and plumbing.
-Beckett's probably lubing the door swoosher. Nobody wants a squeaky swoosh.
-Standard Federation decor: everyone gets dusty old books, arcane sextant, space weather vane, holographic harpists, and a Rick Sternbach print.
-Ooo, I haven't seen any pipless crew! No CPOs, no Midshipmen, no Ensigns Junior Grade!
-That leafblower is probably just a modified Tribble vacuum.
-Maybe some guys like the Horta or the ST:V rock monsters eat sand, but can't deal with bowls?
-Starfleet Academy graduates all sign ascension waivers- with a clause for who gets to keep your boots and whether or not you will come back with infinite insights.
-Holodecks- totally independent power and plumbing.
-Beckett's probably lubing the door swoosher. Nobody wants a squeaky swoosh.
-Standard Federation decor: everyone gets dusty old books, arcane sextant, space weather vane, holographic harpists, and a Rick Sternbach print.
-Ooo, I haven't seen any pipless crew! No CPOs, no Midshipmen, no Ensigns Junior Grade!
-That leafblower is probably just a modified Tribble vacuum.
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Gonna wing it here, as I can't view the episode yet (or invent any other remotely culinary puns).
I'm pretty sure the heroic A team had a hair-raising adventure involving a zealous AI guardian of the slowboat, or an evil alien hitchhiker, or a Breen threat to the vessel, and called it a day after completing that part of the adventure...
Good question. Picard repeatedly let Worf go, without an official dossierful of instructions and tasks to complete. Perhaps Starfleet has learned the hard way not to expect or demand, either from Klingons or from Gods?
Well, humans are as much victims of the "The Chase" tampering with evolution into sapient and lustily crossbreeding bipeds as the next alien. No doubt the capacity for Ascension is built in, too, to keep the mortals from becoming too powerful in their own weight class. Or then there's a higher being, or jury thereof, doing picking and choosing - even the Q have a need for cuddly pets. It certainly would appear particularly doable in comparison with some other Trek stuff.
I gather this could be a rare case of security prudence. Separating business and pleasure is best done in andn around centers of pleasure; I think similar hands-on sanitation might be involved whenever a foreign dignitary is assigned quarters and replication privileges.
Might have to do with her having been there before already. A bit like Tom Paris, who'd go from zero to hero for services done and collect his full two silver coins, rather than just one or one-and-half. Mom's hand might have been forced by standing protocol there - or then said protocol made it technically possible for her to "reward past accomplishments" and make the promotion hurt twice as much.
...Again ballast from her previous life? Books of her own that were withheld when she got demoted, in the faint hopes that this would feel punitive?
TOS had "ribbons"/triangles corresponding to medals; I gather the medals themselves were originally pinned on Kirk's chest in a ceremony before being replaced by the more compact equivalents, mirroring RW practices. Thus, the same would happen to these ones eventually.
However, you can't replace a civilian or academic decoration with a ribbon; perhaps the TOS heroes had acquired some?
Timo Saloniemi
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Humor aside, no estimates as to the size of the Cerrito's crew?
Based on wild guesses, I think between 345 and 525 crew. How does 420 sound?
It's always 420 SOMEWHERE in the fleet...
I think it's somewhere in the hundreds for sure, but not close to the 855-1000+ of the big explorers. About 4-500 feels okay from what we see - but then again, there are analyses of the size of those bigger ships that conclude you could theorhetically walk around a Galaxy-class ship all day without bumping into anyone. In 1x03 we see the whole crew of headless chickens slamming into each other all the time, suggesting a high crew count, or that everyone was just put to work in the same part of the ship for added stress.
Here's some more for 1x04:
- Were the Cerritos and Merced towing the big slug at sublight? There seemed to have been no indication of warp speed hauling here. Were they already really close to that starbase and the first contact ship had already warped off to better adventures, perhaps dropping its charge at the edge of the system for the little ships to take her in?
- And after the loss of the Merced, did the Cerritos finish her mission? It seems that it took both ships working together to get the slug moving. Did they summon an unseen third vessel to help out after the goo had subsided?
- And, you know, NOW what? The Cerritos is seen leaving the starbase with their former charge. I guess they're okay leaving Durango alone to face the court martial for the loss of his ship? And they didn't really say what they were goign to do with the generational ship in the first place. Will they wake someone up? Figure out where the ship was bound in the first place and send it on its way? Examine the ship's computers, find out it was sent to terraform an already-inhabited world, and have a whole episode's worth of moral quandry because of it? I'm mostly thinking what Starf
I think it's somewhere in the hundreds for sure, but not close to the 855-1000+ of the big explorers. About 4-500 feels okay from what we see - but then again, there are analyses of the size of those bigger ships that conclude you could theorhetically walk around a Galaxy-class ship all day without bumping into anyone. In 1x03 we see the whole crew of headless chickens slamming into each other all the time, suggesting a high crew count, or that everyone was just put to work in the same part of the ship for added stress.
Here's some more for 1x04:
- Were the Cerritos and Merced towing the big slug at sublight? There seemed to have been no indication of warp speed hauling here. Were they already really close to that starbase and the first contact ship had already warped off to better adventures, perhaps dropping its charge at the edge of the system for the little ships to take her in?
- And after the loss of the Merced, did the Cerritos finish her mission? It seems that it took both ships working together to get the slug moving. Did they summon an unseen third vessel to help out after the goo had subsided?
- And, you know, NOW what? The Cerritos is seen leaving the starbase with their former charge. I guess they're okay leaving Durango alone to face the court martial for the loss of his ship? And they didn't really say what they were goign to do with the generational ship in the first place. Will they wake someone up? Figure out where the ship was bound in the first place and send it on its way? Examine the ship's computers, find out it was sent to terraform an already-inhabited world, and have a whole episode's worth of moral quandry because of it? I'm mostly thinking what Starf
Looking at the preview pictures for next week, the Vancouver is depicted as a larger ship on the graphic "Lunar Demolition" and one of her shuttles is named Fairview. On a lesser note, unlike the Cerritos' arrowhead logo and name which are in silver in the hangar bay, these things are in purple on the Vancouver.
The what now?
^^^ Shatner initially wanted rock monsters to chase after Kirk while he was escaping “God” towards the end of the film. They wound up looking horrible and cheap on film so the concept was scrapped in favor of “God”’s disembodied glowy head floating up the side of the mountain right before the BOP blew it away. I thought that looked kind of horrible and cheap, too, but watcha gonna do? 
Amusingly, there were a couple of creatures that bore a striking resemblance to those same rock monsters in one of the bars on Tulgana IV when Boims and Mariner were looking for K’orin in “Envoys”. You can see them about a third of the way down this page on TrekMovie.com.
Amusingly, there were a couple of creatures that bore a striking resemblance to those same rock monsters in one of the bars on Tulgana IV when Boims and Mariner were looking for K’orin in “Envoys”. You can see them about a third of the way down this page on TrekMovie.com.
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Voyager had 15 decks and about 150 people on board.
The Cerritos seems to have about 10 decks in total.... even with a saucer, I doubt that it has much more internal volume compared to the Intrepid class (never mind the Galaxy class).
203.
How much internal volume is for the crew versus equipment? That would give a better handle on the crew complement.
^^^ Shatner initially wanted rock monsters to chase after Kirk while he was escaping “God” towards the end of the film. They wound up looking horrible and cheap on film so the concept was scrapped in favor of “God”’s disembodied glowy head floating up the side of the mountain right before the BOP blew it away. I thought that looked kind of horrible and cheap, too, but watcha gonna do?
Which was the basis for the scene in Galaxy Quest where Tim Allen's character fights a giant CGI rock monster.
Great concept and it was executed well in that movie, IMO. I’ve always wondered what kind of movie TFF might have been had Shatner gotten the budget he wanted. The novelization was quite good, as I recall.
well there are over 900 windows on the darn thing.. so.. hopefully a good amount of quarters.
I wonder how they use the windows on the bottom of the saucer. With the saucer so flat, are they all floor panels?
I've never seen windows on the Ventral Flat side, only on the angled/curved sides that would lean out alot if you viewed it from the inside.
I was going off the fan art by @valkyrie013 https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/val...iors-pretty-women.297605/page-5#post-13508583
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