Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 3x11 - "Su'Kal"
- Thread starter Commander Richard
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I don't think it's an either/or scenario that you either have 23rd century technology or you can have wishing things into existence. There's a fair bit of wiggle-room in between the two.
Honestly, as you note, I am trying to figure out how to do without making it too magical. But, unfortunately, I think it gets to the point that it is so unbelievable it makes any problems seem ridiculous that they can't solve them.
But surely Star Trek technology is virtually magic already? People appear and disappear out of thin air, as does food and drink. Inertial dampers, gravity plating, shields, warp drives?
I don't think you need to go that far, but some things I would have liked in this setting:
- Complete blending of biological humanoids, synthetics, and holograms. Like, someone could be 1/4th synth and 1/4th holo, and it would be completely unremarked on.
- Humans living for hundreds of years due to advances in biology, cybernetics, etc.
- End of death due to widespread mind uploading
- Creation of large-scale "virtual worlds" as expansive as the Federation, where many people reside full time.
- Completely sentient starships which contain human minds
- Almost everyone human-seeming has a little alien back in their family tree
- Humanity exploring all of the different "ways of being" by altering its own mentality - not so much to be superior, but just to be different. So, for example, changing the experience of the flow of time so that everything was experienced within a "present" like the Prophets.
A 900 year comparison between today and the past is unfair because the rate of the current technological progress is unique in human history.
If you compare an ancient Greek vessel from 400 BCE and a Roman ship from 500 CE there's practically no difference.
I imagine a rate of progress between the 23rd and 32nd centuries more akin to the 400 BCE - 500 CE rate, than between the 12th and 21st centuries.
If you compare an ancient Greek vessel from 400 BCE and a Roman ship from 500 CE there's practically no difference.
I imagine a rate of progress between the 23rd and 32nd centuries more akin to the 400 BCE - 500 CE rate, than between the 12th and 21st centuries.
Why?
I mean, I guess you can argue that within the Trekverse, it doesn't seem like much of anyone is appreciably more advanced than humanity even if they have a headstart of centuries like the Vulcans. Thus I guess maybe there's an arbitrary "maximum tech level" in the Trekverse, and you just don't get past it without ascending into energy being status?
It is, which is why adding more to it is quite difficult. @eschaton has some interesting ideas with the transhumanist elements but even those don't feel very Trek like in their approach. So, at some point in time technology is going to slow down in development, where steps are more incremental, but still look familiar. I mean, my smart phone I had 3 years ago looks the same as the one I have now. Tech grows, but can look the same.
And, even with that progression in tech, there is still the human factor. People are not always going to rush out and embrace every single new technology, or that it will be universally accepted. There are societal values, including the Federation being overly cautious over technology that would be considered dangerous, including genetic engineering. It sounds odd but even their society has its own limits.
I've seen some fans use the "technological slowdown" theory to explain why TOS technology often looked the way it did and to a degree it makes sense. Just a century after the birth of the Federation Starfleet slowed down in order to acclimate to the technologies brought into the Federation by new members and thus didn't leap too far ahead during that period so as to give everyone time to catch up.
Su’Kal made no sense
Way too much content that they tried to compress and make sense of in 45mins.
Just as starterts.
Am I the only one who is annoyed by the storyline? I would expect a bit more effort?
Ever since discovery has landed in the 32nd century the storylines are just way to convenient.
Way too much content that they tried to compress and make sense of in 45mins.
- Osyraa can track Discovery? (Do we have a leak at Federation?)
- Osyraa can just transport through shields? (That used to be only possible if the ship has far inferior tech)
- Osyraa knew exactly where to beam into and how to hit it? (Again leak at Federation?)The cause of the burn?
- And don't get me started on the cause of the burn. The child has magic powers? How convenient? Why is only “active” dylithium affected? What is the difference between active/inactive dylithium anyway?
Just as starterts.
Am I the only one who is annoyed by the storyline? I would expect a bit more effort?
Ever since discovery has landed in the 32nd century the storylines are just way to convenient.
It's not the dilithium that was "active", it was the ships.
ALL dilithium within range of the Burn (whether or not it was installed in a ship's engine) went inert. The ships that were destroyed, were because their warp cores were online and working. And since dilithium regulates a ship's M/AM reaction, those ships lost antimatter containment and thus...BOOM.
Conversely, if a ship's warp core was powered down, nothing happened. The dilithium itself didn't explode, only the ships whose engines were running. (If there was a piece of dilithium just sitting on a desk, for example, it wouldn't have done anything at all.)
As for Su'Kal being the cause: They did say that his cells were affected by the radiation (and the dilithium on the planet) before he was even born. So that's why he could do that much damage.
I got that part. But the engineers on Discovery saw the instability and we're able to shutdown.
It wasn't an instant thing, like it was implied before.
I think also not well explained was, that shutting down warp-drive wasn't enough, but they had to reroute power, and shutdown the cloak, to do what?
Maintain forcefields prevent AM from reacting? But why extra power?
Anyway, just so many 'conveniences'
Okay...now just so we're clear, you're wondering why Su'Kal didn't cause another Burn that would have destroyed Discovery, amirite?
Yes, the crew would have been able to take precautions, like shutting down the warp engine (assuming it was ever online in the first place...since whenever they go anywhere in this future, they always use the spore drive). But also, the psychic shockwaves that Su'Kal was sending out in this episode, weren't anywhere near as powerful as the one that caused the Burn.
Remember in Voyager when Braxton's shuttlecraft was able to do pretty much whatever it wanted to Voyager?
Not really. Voyager defeated it with a burst of technobabble and sent it into a time vortex.
I think Osyrra engaged with Tilly first along to give her crew time to figure out Discovery's shield harmonics so they could beam through.
At the same time they realized that the shields were barely functioning and that is when they activated the grappling arms.
So, it was a game of cat and mouse.
Unfortunately, Tilly didn't realize until it was too late that she was the mouse.
At the same time they realized that the shields were barely functioning and that is when they activated the grappling arms.
So, it was a game of cat and mouse.
Unfortunately, Tilly didn't realize until it was too late that she was the mouse.
I do yeah. And that was 500 years difference. Discovery is now looking at 930 years.
By which you mean the shuttlecraft knocked out voyager's shields with a single shot of it's weapon, which was noted to be a subatomic disrupters not a phaser.
Also the vessels shields were immune to phasers.
Yup, the Discovery Writers really need someone both versed in canon and critical thinking on their team who can over ride them when they start just throwing stuff out that makes no sense within the larger setting that is Star Trek.
Looks like we haven't seen the same episode because as I recall Voyager DEFEATED Braxton's timeship and that idiot neglected to put a coded lock on its functions which is why the 20th-century guy was able to steal it. Braxton was a poor excuse for a time cop and useless too. With all his knowledge he couldn't do better than being a vagrant!!! What an idiot!
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