Spoilers Why do they need Dilithium?

[Tim Thomason]

Discovery is outside of Saturn (not Jupiter, because of the classic Saturn ring system) at about 19:32 on my screen. Then they cut to inside the bridge where Book reacts to the jump ("Oh shit. You didn't tell me about the spinning." <- which incidentally implies that he could tell the ship was spinning or perhaps just saw some craziness out of the viewscreen). After Book's comment, the dialogue continues with no apparent break (but two more cuts...), and then Owo reacts to Earth at about 19:50. About 18 seconds, apparently, from DASHing into Saturn's high orbit to arriving at Earth's "visual range."

It's conceivable that the dialogue is "edited" (of course it is, it's a TV show...), and the immediate reaction of Book to spore spinning occurred 10-to-70 minutes before Owo's comment about how Earth was there, and we just didn't notice because we're watching with the uplifting music and inspirational camera angles.

 

[Midquest]

There were no cuts in the scene, it was appear at Jupiter from a spore jump, head to Earth, arrive in the same scene 10seconds later.

A cut is just a film term denoting one shot ending and another beginning. There were five cuts in this scene. The reality is that film time simply does not equal real-world time, even in a scene featuring continuous action. It's perfectly common practice to compress or expand time without any warning to the viewer. Otherwise, we'd all be going frame by frame through action sequences in some movies to figure out what we just saw, and we'd be sitting for whole days through others. You don't need a dramatic dissolve or fade out to denote the passage of time.

I mean, this shouldn't even be something we try to figure out. It's film time. Not real time. The use of music even hints that we're seeing time compressed.

...but if you want to be specific, at least use the actual length of film time it takes to get from Saturn to Earth in the episode rather than inventing one: 24-25 seconds.

Nope, that was Jupiter, hence the lack of rings.

It's Saturn, hence the rings.

 

[NCC-73515]

Nope, that was Jupiter, hence the lack of rings.

So those clearly visible rings weren't rings? XD
Jupiter looks like milk and coffee swirling around, not just yellow with faint stripes.

When we see Earth, it's at visual range. Doesn't mean we're there yet.

 

[Fateor]

It's a mistake. With it's warp core powered down Discovery should have had only impulse. Someone in production forgot or overlooked or simply didn't care what a "realistic" amount of time would be to get from Jupiter to Earth on impulse only and therefore the ship traveled at speed of plot and pacing. And travel at the speed of plot or https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScifiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale are time honored Star Trek traditions. It's a goof. Ignore.

Other than that: 1) Since this is likely a mistake how much the Federation improved it's fusion technology should be dismissible, because Discovery's speed is too high for the situation described and we would be comparing DS9 with literal nonsense numbers. 2) See number one. 3) That's one of those things that I would be very happy to see ignored and left to the likes of Dr Who, but if we have to handwave it, that technology was somehow one of the associated technologies to time travel and was lost with time travel technology. 4) The fusion reactor don't power the ship's warp directly. It just the first step. Federation ships, and the ships of most other species, need a warp core to reach faster than light travel. We know that the energy needed for sustained warp comes from controlled matter-antimatter reactions within the core by smashing deuterium and anti-deuterium together. And we know that dilithium is the stuff that can interact with and regulate the anti-matter used in warp cores and turn the resulting energy of the matter-antimatter annihilation into electro-plasma. It's essentially harnessed energy and can be transferred by plasma conduits (and eps conduits to other ship systems) and is what ultimately makes the ships go wroom wroom. The fusion reactors for impulse are also creating plasma and can propel the ship, but even in the TNG era max impulse was "only" a quarter of the speed of light, so I'm not sure if simply propping up some more normal fusion generators will do the trick here, since I'm assuming that the plasma it generates is not nearly as highly charged as a warp core output.

That's what they need dilithium for. You can get to at least warp 1 with normal nuclear fusion. Whatever Zephram Cochrane used to create warp plasma (from what BTS stuff I remember some repurposed warhead) got him there. But that was a one minute flight, and we have no information if the ship would have been capable to sustain that for any lengthy amount of time. What we do know is that Federation ships need warp cores, or a lot of plotlines from the older shows would have stopped after three minutes with, "Oh, warp core's damaged? Just hook up the impulse reactors and then onwards at warp 3".

Actually Impulse has been faster then light since some time in the Original Series.

 

[Timo]

Not really - in fact, there isn't a single instance of that happening in TOS.

In the episode at hand, it's clear there is no warping going on. After all, this is the very point of the exercise: it's Burnham's plan to arrive at sublight, it's Earth's belief that the heroes arrived at sublight, and only the Titan bunch knows the heroes reached Saturn by non-sublight because, despite lacking long range sensors and comms, they did notice the Discovery appearing on their front porch out of nowhere.

So there is zero chance that the Discovery actually warped from Saturn to Earth, regardless of what sort of power source would have fired up the warp engines. And if the ship traveled FTL without warping, UEDF would have been suspicious of her having warp and thus dilithium after all, because that's how you do FTL by default.

So we don't have to worry about the hero ship doing FTL without using dilithium, because the episode made it abundantly clear that this did not happen.

All we have to worry about is the hero ship going from Saturn to Earth in dialogue time. Which isn't a new problem at all: we often have to pretend that dialogue during corridor walks awkwardly goes on hold for long stretches of corridor, lest the left turn we see take the heroes through the outer wall and into space.

So our two options are

1) there was an awkward silence there somewhere, or perhaps a segue into the dietary needs of Grudge, or
2) traveling from Saturn to Earth at sublight takes about ten seconds.

And we already heard the argument that #2 is pretty easily achievable in theory. Our only showstopper there is that Jim Kirk needed hours for that, rather than seconds, in ST:TMP. And Kirk was in a hurry. Even if Detmer floored it, the DSC hero ship has never been a high performer: she's not seen in particularly high warp, her combat prowess is modest, and her crew considers Pike's ship superior.

The other issue would be with visuals vs. what high relativistic sprint would look like. But it's all on the viewscreen anyway.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[SJGardner]

Seriously, it should be really straightforward: if the episode doesn't treat it as FTL, then it's not FTL. Like I said, sci-fi writers have no sense of scale, and nothing actually takes place in real time. Imagine if the Enterprise went to Alpha Centauri at Warp 9 and we actually had to watch more than a whole day of footage until they arrived.

 

[Jackson_Roykirk]

Nope, that was Jupiter, hence the lack of rings.

Anyways, Saturn would have been almost twice as far away, so...

Right after the jump? I saw clearly visible rings, hence Saturn.

As for the time it took on screen to get the Earth: Yeah, I agree that it seemed they got there in the next 10 seconds, but while there were no apparent cuts in the flow of the scene, there were film cuts where these scene cuts might have happened, but less apparently.

Not all dialogue necessarily followed one line after the other time-wise. For example, the line "There she is" spoken upon arriving at Earth did not necessarily happen immediately after Book mentioned the spinning.--- although the way it was edited I can understand why anyone might think it did.

If it was the intention of the show-makers to have a the scene progress forward in time several minutes between jumping to Saturn and arriving at Earth, then they could have done a better job with the editing to make that more clear, such as cutting is a three-second scene of the Discovery cruising through space between Book's line and Owo/Detmer's line -- but that doesn't mean that the scene could not possibly have progressed several minutes ahead.

Edit to Add:
Another possibility is that maybe they magnified Earth on the view screen almost immediately after jumping to Saturn, and the "There she is" was in reaction to the magnified view of Earth on the screen. The next scene where we are behind Discovery watching it approach Earth could have been after some time had passed.

Seriously, it should be really straightforward: if the episode doesn't treat it as FTL, then it's not FTL. Like I said, sci-fi writers have no sense of scale, and nothing actually takes place in real time. Imagine if the Enterprise went to Alpha Centauri at Warp 9 and we actually had to watch more than a whole day of footage until they arrived.

Star Trek: Captain Jack Bauer

 

[BillJ]

Actually Impulse has been faster then light since some time in the Original Series.

Care to quote from which episode? Scott identifies the Romulan Bird of Prey as being powered by "simple impulse" in "Balance of Terror". But since we never see the ship go FTL, the Enterprise may not have been picking up its warp drive or it was dropped off near the Neutral Zone outposts by a warp capable ship.

 

[Timo]

"Balance of Terror" was a confused mess, but the one thing it never did was establish speeds. Save for the suggestion that the heroes could run rings around the villains, and even that ultimately failed to matter.

Right after the jump? I saw clearly visible rings, hence Saturn.

And even that one is established in the plot itself, rather than left for mere visuals to imply. The Titan colonists lack long range assets, yet they observe the arrival of our heroes at Sol system and are aware that their "no dilithium, we've been at impulse for ages" story is bollocks, whereas the UEDF is not. Which is because Stamets brought them out of sporespace at Saturn.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Muji]

Nah, he’s right. We should have had 27 episodes focused on Tilly looking out of the window waiting to arrive at Earth. Might have been a bit slow but integrity is integrity.

Oh, and I’m no astronomer but surely we should give NASA a call to inform them that Jupiter has shit out a giant ring?

 

[valkyrie013]

Maybe Io and Ganymede exploded 6 months after some one was left there and now has rings?

 

[Search4]

Maybe Io and Ganymede exploded 6 months after some one was left there and now has rings?

Sol 5 exploded and they confused Sol 6,.

 

[serabine]

I did a little math from https://www.phy.olemiss.edu/HEP/QuarkNet/time.html , and assuming Discovery was going at 99% the speed of light without warp, it would feel like 10 minutes for the Discovery crew on the ship due to time dilation even though it's really taking about 71 minutes to get from Saturn to Earth (Saturn is 71 light minutes away from Earth: https://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/venus/q89.html#:~:text=Mercury 0.387 193.0 seconds or,or 159.6 minutes Neptune 30.058 ).

So actually it works out just right for the characters on the screen that from their perspective it only takes about 10 minutes.

If you read my calculations above, it's actually not a mistake and follows time dilation from the theory of relativity rather correctly.

I'm a Physics major that worked with 2 Nobel laureates of Physics in my undergrad years. Yeah that was long ago and I'm a bit rusty, but I think my calculations are still sound. Anyone's free to correct me.

Honey bunny, people are correcting you left and right, down to what planet they jump to in the sol system. And I'm kind of puzzled why you come at me with your degree or who you worked with. Star Trek is not a documentary. You can't just go, "oh, it took 10 seconds on screen so I can calculate the speed of the ship". Screen time stretches and contracts depending on all kind of factors. That's what "speed of plot" means. Hence every instance in movies and tv where characters are racing a countdown and when you actually add everything on screen up it's either too much time (e.g. to add dialogue etc) or too short.

Your physics accolades aren't helping you here when you have trouble understanding storytelling mechanics.

 

[fireproof78]

Seriously, it should be really straightforward: if the episode doesn't treat it as FTL, then it's not FTL. Like I said, sci-fi writers have no sense of scale, and nothing actually takes place in real time. Imagine if the Enterprise went to Alpha Centauri at Warp 9 and we actually had to watch more than a whole day of footage until they arrived.

Given the sheer amount of technological analysis going on with this whole plot device of the Burn it is clear that Star Trek is expected to be harder than it actually is, with everything being clearly established as hard and fast rules, no matter what.

Never mind the warp scale changing several times. That's just a recalibration...yeah, that's it.

 

[Tim Thomason]

Honey bunny, people are correcting you left and right, down to what planet they jump to in the sol system. And I'm kind of puzzled why you come at me with your degree or who you worked with. Star Trek is not a documentary. You can't just go, "oh, it took 10 seconds on screen so I can calculate the speed of the ship". Screen time stretches and contracts depending on all kind of factors. That's what "speed of plot" means. Hence every instance in movies and tv where characters are racing a countdown and when you actually add everything on screen up it's either too much time (e.g. to add dialogue etc) or too short.

Your physics accolades aren't helping you here when you have trouble understanding storytelling mechanics.

Fateor was the one insisting on Jupiter, not Yistaan, who's only posted once and no one else replied to him. I'm pretty sure he was agreeing with you too, just from a semi-realistic standpoint. No need for the name calling.

 

[BillJ]

Given the sheer amount of technological analysis going on with this whole plot device of the Burn it is clear that Star Trek is expected to be harder than it actually is, with everything being clearly established as hard and fast rules, no matter what.

The story should have some consistency with the rest of the universe, and/or even not be so easily poked full of holes. Doesn’t mean that the story can’t be entertaining, but it makes it tougher because it seems the writer’s didn’t think it all the way through. I know they are going for an analogy of Earth’s resources drying up, but it is pretty sloppy so far.

Better way to go would’ve been to damage subspace to some degree. Where something happened to cause ships flying at higher velocities to go boom. Everyone stuck to some insanely low warp factor. Same general story, but not as easy to pick holes in.

 

[fireproof78]

The story should have some consistency with the rest of the universe, and/or even not be so easily poked full of holes. Doesn’t mean that the story can’t be entertaining, but it makes it tougher because it seems the writer’s didn’t think it all the way through. I know they are going for an analogy of Earth’s resources drying up, but it is pretty sloppy so far.

Better way to go would’ve been to damage subspace to some degree. Where something happened to cause ships flying at higher velocities to go boom. Everyone stuck to some insanely low warp factor. Same general story, but not as easy to pick holes in.

I'm not willing to call it sloppy when I haven't seen the whole story.

 

[BillJ]

I'm not willing to call it sloppy when I haven't seen the whole story.

Which is why I said, “so far”.

 

[fireproof78]

Which is why I said, “so far”.

Thus far I am sufficiently entertained and willing to wait and see.

 

[BillJ]

Thus far I am sufficiently entertained and willing to wait and see.

They release episodes weekly, so we all share our thoughts based on the material presented up to this point.