Spoilers Discovery and the Novelverse - TV show discussion thread

I headcanon they're all on stun.



Mind you, I think getting rid of the MACO teams was silly.

 

It's been many years for me, too, but it does connect to (though perhaps not directly) the Rihannsu books, which don't fit with post-original series depictions of the Romulans, for example.

 

Some things you have to ignore as they're only there for gameplay reasons.

 

Is it? I remember the USS Vancouver from season 1 was said to be a specialized engineering ship or something, but I don't remember the Cerritos being specified as one?

 

Each of the ships have a stripe depicting their role with the Cerritos and Vancouver both having the Yellow Engineering one.



http://blog.trekcore.com/2020/08/st...undup-cerritos-design-new-posters-ready-room/

The ship is in great condition. It’s a California-class ship, which has always existed in Starfleet — [this is] what we’re saying — that they’re the utility support ships. In the California-class [line], there are three types of hull painting: there’s blue, red, and yellow.

We’ve extended the visual metaphor of the uniforms to the ships, and the Cerritos has yellow on the hull because it’s primarily a second contact engineering ship. They show up to planets that need engineering stuff done on them in order to be able to communicate with the Federation.

There’s also, you’ll see in the show, blue-hulled California class ships, which are usually deployed to places where there has to be more medical expertise, and red-hulled ships that are like for moving around ambassadors and doing more command-level stuff.

Mind you, there's a difference between an Engineering ship and a member of the Starfleet Corp of it (or maybe there isn't)

 

In an FPS shooting is the whole gameplay

I think Trek was a great fit for those old point-and-click games, and if the forthcoming VR game Discovery: Away Team plays like a Trek version of Red Matter, it'll be the best Trek game ever.

 

It's already out. It's not a PC game, it's a game you need to go somewhere physically to play.
https://sandboxvr.com/experience/startrek

 

Oh that's a shame, I thought it was going to be a commercially available game.

 

I think of Time for Yesterday as kind of a "finale" for the 1980s novel continuity, though The Lost Years books and Probe were still to come. If I remember correctly, Ann brought in a bunch of minor characters, like security guards and doctors and such, from other authors' novels (I particularly remember a few from The Entropy Effect turning up) when Kirk assembled the crew for the mission to the Guardian planet. They're really just cameos that don't amount to anything, but they served to show that the novels all co-existed.

Chris Claremont does something similar in Debt of Honor, bringing in a bunch of classic series characters for cameos on the Enterprise-A that don't amount to anything.

I've read the third book, which I'm not really comfortable talking about because Ann's not with us anymore, and it reads like she was trying to write something that worked with the Duane books and the Sherman/Shwartz books. Ann was a Star Trek fan, and why couldn't the toys all work together?

 

Just keep telling yourself your phaser's set to stun...

 

I mean, the Hazard Team was organized as a threat response team - their involvement is an indication that diplomacy and dialogue have already been tried and gone out the airlock, that the situations they'd be brought in for are combat scenarios first. And we have characters like Chell and Jurot whose main purpose on the team are engineering and medical tasks, respectively, so we do see that the Hazard Team has alternative uses than JUST pew-pew. It’s just those aren’t as engaging gameplay when you come looking for an FPS.

 

They were also fairly good about the fact that both the major enemies were bio-engineered biological murderbots.

Which means that it avoided some of the cognitive dissonance you get when Nathan Drake murders 300 people, bad ones or not, to get some treasure.

Or Star Trek Online.

I actually liked the fact Bridge Commander and Elite Force 2 also went the extra mile that neither the Cardassians or Romulans were behind the baddies but renegade terrorist groups within them.

 

On a PICARD related note, given there's only ten episodes, I think any follow up that is going to happen to the events of Season 1 for that show are probably going to have to happen in novels and I think that's something that will give a pretty ample supply of things I'd liked to have seen dealt with.

* Narek given he's been arrested by the Federation.

* How the Romulans respond to the fact that their version of Qanon killed 900 million of their people.

* How Starfleet is going to react to the fact General Oh carried out a genocide of their oldest colony world.

* Whether they went to fetch all of those flushed out Borg given Borg can survive in space or frozen in ice for centuries.

* How Raffi's family is going to react to the fact the conspiracy theory that destroyed their family turned out to be right.

Some of this may be covered in the upcoming Raffi novel but I'd love to see all of it dealt with.

 

Y'know during the season plenty of audience members wagged their fingers at Picard for hubris-ly showing up to Fleet Admiral Clancy's office expecting support. What do they say now when it turns out Clancy was gullible enough to approve the Tal Shiar mole responsible for everything as her head of security? Professional expertise, my ass.

 

I expect someone to say, "This is the worst intelligence disaster since those disgusting tummy aliens!"

"ADMIRAL!"

"Not you, Captain Dax."

 

OBVIOUSLY Oh was put in the position by Clancy's predecessor. You know how that goes, bureaucratic inertia, holdovers from the prior administration, etc.

 

Damn that Janeway!

 

Sorry, I'm still on Clancy's side of that argument, mainly because your assumption that she "approved" Oh's posting is based on no evidence whatsoever (Starfleet's a big organization, and there's no reason to assume that that admiral was responsible for that commodore's posting), but also because that doesn't change the fact that Clancy was right and Picard was being an asshole.

 

I was never on Clancy's side because her argument is A+B=Q. She's upset at Captain Picard for the fact that he trashed them on television but this is a matter unrelated to said television trashing. Yes, Clancy decides to have someone else investigate the subject matter but it's a matter of personal dislike influencing someone who did save the universe multiple times and is making a offer to build bridges to try to resolve something critical.

I also am now trying to figure out where Starfleet Corps of Engineers twists out into Lower Decks via retcon. Maybe she's only temporary captain of the Archimedes.

 

It's not JUST the interview. Oh, by no means is that NOT a part of it, it certainly is, and like the day after calling Starfleet out for failing to be the organization he believed in, he walks into her office and asks for a ship like nothing has happened, which is definitely not a good look. It doesn't help that he is asking for this when he has nothing to offer as evidence of what he's saying, making his actions come across as the raving of an old man attempting to reclaim some of that old glory.

But it is ALSO the fact that Picard WALKED AWAY. He used his position as leverage, had his bluff called so he had to follow through, and then withdrew entirely. He abandoned Starfleet at this test of their values and ideals. He walked away from Starfleet, gave up on bringing those decades of experience in an effort to make Starfleet and the Federation to hold to their ideals and beliefs, and now, here he is, coming to one of the many, MANY officers in Starfleet who saw him as abandoning Starfleet - abandoning THEM - at a time when Starfleet needed SOMEONE who was trying to push them to do better, to be better, to be the example.

From where she sits, Picard threw a temper tantrum when Starfleet decided that the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few - that the Romulans COULD have, say, turned their military apparatus to evacuating their own people from the homeworld, so the Federation was better off appeasing the various races who were threatening to leave than to give their resources, time, and effort to a long time enemy of the Federation who already resented the idea of needing help as it was. That Picard, in realizing that Starfleet as an organization wouldn't bend to him specifically, put his pride first and walked away, when Starfleet honestly could have used the voice and views he offered as guidance, even if they didn't follow his opinion - his voice was needed, and he chose to go silent.

Clancy had every right and reason to refuse Picard that ship he was asking for. It is to Clancy's credit that, while she did not indulge him by giving him what he wanted, she still made the decision to investigate, even if she turned the investigation over to the mole in the organization. Likewise to her credit is the fact that she doesn't hesitate to offer help when Picard DOES come to her with proof.