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Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 3x11 - "Su'Kal"

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I completely agree that future FUTURE technology is a hard thing to portray without it being virtually akin to magic, but speaking personally I don't see the galaxy of nearly a thousand years in the future as drastically different technology-wise than what I've observed before - transporters, shields, phasers and torpedoes, holograms, ships needing dilithium for their warp drives. Honestly if they'd said they'd jumped fifty years beyond the Picard era I'd have had no qualms believing the level of technology shown in this season of Discovery.

When Discovery was at Earth it shrugged off a 32nd century torpedo hit with its 23rd century shields. I'd have imagined this would have been like a Viking longboat going toe-toe-toe with a modern Navy destroyer.

Obviously it's just a personal observation and technology could well have plateaued after the 24th century, but somehow I'd have thought a thousand years into the future would have felt a bit more...futuristic?
With regard to the torpedo hit at Earth; It didn't just shrug it off - the ship was heavily damaged. The only reason the ship survived was the fact Earth didn't follow up quickly with another attack.
 
I have no problem with the technological power levels sort of stagnating even over a thousand years.

there are serious limits to how far technology can progress.
At some point you will simply run into a wall called physics.
Extrapolating unlimited progression is a fallacy.
Especially it comes to terms of raw power and energy.
Stars cannot grow to infinite sizes or become hotter than a certain limit.
Black holes cannot be created above a certain size. Supermassive ones are the result of countless merges of smaller ones.

Similarly, the energy output of a particle beam might just have an upper limit.
A photon torpedo uses a matter/antimatter reaction for near perfect energy efficiency.
For a higher yield, you simply have to use more.
Thus you need a bigger torpedo.
Quantum torpedoes, or transphasic torpedoes probably are just types of photon torpedoes. Not exceeding them in yield, but modifying them with a more fancy delivery system.

where Progression happens is in thinking up new applications and combinations of technology.
But they ain’t gonna change the laws of physics.
You realize that even just by the TNG era the Federation was able to alter the laws of physics in localized area's?
 
Su'Kal
The eleventh episode of the third season. Discovery jumps to the source of the Burn after finding a survivor aboard the ship. However, the Emerald Chain is making it's move. Despite the Chain moving on Kaminar, Discovery goes to the nebula. Saru is concerned but Vance assures him that Starfleet would be able to protect his home planet. That Osyrra would try to draw out Discovery that way makes sense. It is also good set up for later. (And not just that Saru hadn't seen other Kelpiens since he arrived.)
Going into the nebula, they find that radiation is very intense. The scenes where Discovery was trying to get to the crashed ship were appropriately suspenseful. That Book's ship has a better time of it makes sense. A bit surprising that Vance allows Saru to go on the Away Team, but maybe the policy about Captains not going on them was changed again. Then there is Stamets being concerned for Culbur. More on that below. The Away Team beams into the ship and find themselves in a holographic environment.
Culber and Burnham appearing as a Bajoran and Trill respectively were a surprise, but it was done very well. Saru as a Human was a good choice too. But the main thrust of this aspect of the episode was Su'Kal, the Kelpien who was left alone to be raised on the ship by the holographic programs after his mother died. The quest by the three crewmembers as they tried to piece together what happened was done very well. The worldbuilding about Kaminar, including the Elder hologram and the Federation Admission Hologram, was also good.
The Holodeck episode aspect was surprising, but even so the revelation that Su'Kal was responsible for the Burn was a let down. (But there may be more there.) But there also the other aspect of the episode, where Discovery had to confront Osyrra. That Discovery had a cloaking device didn't come out of nowhere given that the headquarters was cloaked when they first arrived there. However, the crew should have put up more of a fight when the ship was boarded. So, Osyrra almost effortlessly taking over the ship was also a let down.
But it was still enjoyable and I'm eager to see what happens next. 8.3/10.
 
Having re-watched parts of this episode again, I have a question, which I hope might be answered in a future episode. Why did the "monster" say to Su'Kal, "See me."?
 
I absolutely loved this episode.
The visual effects were just breathtaking.
I wasn't disappointed to learn that Su'Kal, as a child, was responsible for the Burn. It worked for me. But I guess I never expected there to be some kind of evil mastermind behind it all. If there ever was one, after 125 years, they would probably have revealed themselves a long time ago now.
 
Some of my additional thoughts on the episode:
1. The ticking clock is an issue in this episode. Several episodes back, we learned that Dr. Issa and other Kelpiens survived for six months on Theta Zeta. We know from the latest episode that Kelpiens have the same reaction rate to radiation as Humans. So, for me, it doesn't work for me when the doctor says that they have a day tops before they are killed by the radiation.
2. The marks on the forehead. Wouldn't have Saru corrected his acting first officer for making a statement that was not true? Tilly described them as the signs of radiation poisoning.
I think the first two might be attributed to various causes behind the scenes.
3. Are we sure that the Discovery had shields when the ship was boarded? The boarding action took place immediately after the ship had been caught in a mini-Burn, requiring the crew to purge the dilithium core. This action might have turned off the shields.
4. One-focus mind. Throughout the process of boarding, Tilly had her mind focused on engaging the spore drive. Earlier, in the episode, Tilly told a bridge officer one crisis at a time. A capable and competent captain can multi-task many crises at once. This is probably what Osyraa was doing aboard her ship. It is clear that Tilly has not mastered the ability of multi-tasking and, with her suffering from tunnel vision, she couldn't adapt fast enough to the situation.
 
But they can bend them...
They bend them already plenty in the 24th century.
It’s still believable that we do not see anything totally new now than we’ve seen before.
Except programmable matter, which we already have in a very rudimentary form today with memory materials and programmable nano robots.
On top of everything the whole galaxy went through a resource crisis throwing everything out of whack.
Outside of the god like beings we have not really seen any species that managed to progress beyond previously seen Fed technology.
Not the 1000 year old Dominion, not the Borg, not the Space Dinos.
They just had refined and perfected stuff, but not totally new tech.
 
I think the monster is a representation of his dead mom, and seeing her dead when he was about 5 caused The Burn.
He suppressed that memory and doesn't wanna be reminded of the time on the ship before the simulations, the monster wants him to see it, he runs away whenever confronted with the monster, the before, or the outside.
 
I think the monster is a representation of his dead mom, and seeing her dead when he was about 5 caused The Burn.
He suppressed that memory and doesn't wanna be reminded of the time on the ship before the simulations, the monster wants him to see it, he runs away whenever confronted with the monster, the before, or the outside.
Sounds legit.
Why did the monster chase Burnham though?


Another topic. What was up with the weirdly armored bad guys who put that kind control device on Stamets ?

have we seen them before anywhere?
 
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I have no problem with the technological power levels sort of stagnating even over a thousand years.

there are serious limits to how far technology can progress.
At some point you will simply run into a wall called physics.
Extrapolating unlimited progression is a fallacy.
Especially it comes to terms of raw power and energy.
Stars cannot grow to infinite sizes or become hotter than a certain limit.
Black holes cannot be created above a certain size. Supermassive ones are the result of countless merges of smaller ones.

Similarly, the energy output of a particle beam might just have an upper limit.
A photon torpedo uses a matter/antimatter reaction for near perfect energy efficiency.
For a higher yield, you simply have to use more.
Thus you need a bigger torpedo.
Quantum torpedoes, or transphasic torpedoes probably are just types of photon torpedoes. Not exceeding them in yield, but modifying them with a more fancy delivery system.

where Progression happens is in thinking up new applications and combinations of technology.
But they ain’t gonna change the laws of physics.
THANK YOU! Someone gets it.
Yup. The Future can't be SuperOhMyGodSoAdvanced!!!!! With the Federation also completely intact.

If that happened and Discovery ended up 930 years in The Future, it would be decommissioned on the spot once it reached Starfleet Command. Assuming it would've made it there in the first place because it probably would've been destroyed in "People of Earth".

Limits had to be put in place and major powers have to fall (like they always do) just so we could even have a series.

Otherwise, if Discovery somehow did make it, the crew would be taken away from the decommissioned Discovery and studied like specimens by historians, psychologists, and scientists. "Look at these people from this other time!" Not the type of series I'd be interested in watching...

And it was a masterstroke to make time travel illegal. It served the purposes of both ENT and DSC at the same time. On the ENT end, it makes sense that after the Temporal Cold War, time-travel would be banned to keep whatever nonsense happened from happening again. On the DSC end, it answers the question of: "Why can't they do anything about The Burn?"
 
Certainly there will be times when one side will have technological advances over the other. Currently, intruders have the advantage in cyberspace. I know many experts in cybersecurity who are alarmed at the growing hacking technologies, which I am sure is partly reflexive on their part. On the other hand, many, especially in the US, consider efforts to protect public and government networks to be a nuissance, even at the highest levels of government, and governments that sponsor extensive hacking, like Russia, see it as a low risk activity specifically because of public apathy. That can change.

The writers can decide for themselves what outcome they want and what role the established technology will play in the explanation. My question with regard to this episode is whether the way the takeover was present made for good storytelling. After watching the episode, I don't find many problems with Tilly's decision: she was certainly better than Troi in Disaster. She waited, she bluffed, perhaps she could have shroomed away, but that would also have entailed risks.

My own complaint about the ease of the takeover is in how precisely the Emerald Chain was not only able to beam into the spore drive room, but also identify and surround the chief engineer and have the proper mind control tech in hand without hesitation. When Tilly called red alert, did not security guard key locations? When Earth forces beamed in earlier in the season, they had to identify the purpose of the systems in the room. Perhaps we will learn that Grudge or someone passed information to the Emerald Chain: I would find that a cheap explanation at this point. (And maybe that burr unter the arm should have been a lockout button.)

ETA; Certainly something that I wanted from the episode was a sign that the crew was willingly sacrificing itself. Put up a fight to show that you care.
 
Otherwise, if Discovery somehow did make it, the crew would be taken away from the decommissioned Discovery and studied like specimens by historians, psychologists, and scientists. "Look at these people from this other time!" Not the type of series I'd be interested in watching...
Which tells you there's a basic problem with the premise, not that you should try to make it work anyways.

And it was a masterstroke to make time travel illegal. It served the purposes of both ENT and DSC at the same time. On the ENT end, it makes sense that after the Temporal Cold War, time-travel would be banned to keep whatever nonsense happened from happening again. On the DSC end, it answers the question of: "Why can't they do anything about The Burn?"
Except it wasn't because ban's are toothless without an enforcement structure in place to punish people who actually do the illegal thing.


My own complaint about the ease of the takeover is in how precisely the Emerald Chain was not only able to beam into the spore drive room, but also identify and surround the chief engineer and have the proper mind control tech in hand without hesitation. When Tilly called red alert, did not security guard key locations? When Earth forces beamed in earlier in the season, they had to identify the purpose of the systems in the room. Perhaps we will learn that Grudge or someone passed information to the Emerald Chain: I would find that a cheap explanation at this point. (And maybe that burr unter the arm should have been a lockout button.)
With a crew of ninety Discovery doesn't have enough crew for Security.

And for some stupid reason Saru didn't request additional personal from Starfleet Headquarters during the month long refit.
 
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