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Spoilers Star Trek: Lower Decks 2x10 - "First First Contact"

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  • 10 - Excelsior!

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as I wrote already, the science here is extremely shaky. To play the devil advocate, however, in several instances in past trek we’ve seen subspace effects moving at faster than light speeds due to planetary/solar explosions, the most notable one being Praxis (but not the only one), so perhaps that happened, knocking out their warp drive and making warping in impossible.

been wondering the same. Perhaps whatever subspace disturbance made warp impossible dissipated by the time the other ships arrived.
Or, even simpler, the other ships used their impulse engines to go around the debris field, something that would have worked for the Cerritos as well but would have taken to long to save the Archimedes.

To say the science is shaky is putting it mildly.
It never made sense why warping around the debris would have been impossible - what's even worse, nothing was said that there is a subspace disruption which made Warp drive inoperable (and LD was up until then quite good at giving 'some' kind of reason for a given problem).
But yes, I get what you're saying.
It wouldn't be the first time if a subspace event played a part which pushed debris to travel at FTL when involving a star... we know supernovae release subspace shockwaves for one thing and can easily disrupt warp drives before the said shockwaves even hit the ship (which would be more like a massive gravitational distortion).

In this case, this was a simple flare and nothing was mentioned about the Cerritos Warp drive being non-functional - in this case it seemed more like a 'back off with the logic, we have DRAMA to focus on' moment (it could also be a throwback to all those instances where a ship seemingly never went along the Z axis or around the anomaly to just bypass an obstacle in live action).
 
On the contrary: the idea of using warp drive was brought up and everyone agreed emphatically it was not a viable idea. The reason is probably obvious for people familiar with warp theory, so no explanation was needed.
 
Yeah, if they were going to hijack the Excelsior there would have had to have been a plan to get all her officers and crew off the ship, keep them off with some sort of security measure and get out of Spacedock with the most advanced and newest ship in Starfleet with just five people - only one of whom had any experience with her systems and technology. They were better off stealing the Enterprise since she was already abandoned and headed for the scrapyard.
 
the Excelsior had a crew, the enterprise was abandoned.

Also, they tried to get another ship: that’s why McCoy was arrested.

Admirals do appear to have the privilege of appropriating a ship if they have a need of one though. All Kirk needed to do was effectively make up a story about a convincing survey mission to Genesis and have the fully crewed Excelcior to take him and McCoy there.
Couldn't that have worked?
 
I get the impression that SFC wanted Kirk reigned in after the Genesis incident. Morrow said "In your absence, Genesis has become a galactic controversy". A controversy, to be fair, that was caused by Kirk's mishandling of Khan. The mere existence of Genesis was exposed to the quadrant, in a most uncomfortably public way, leading to increased Klingon aggression.

Morrow wanted Kirk behind a desk, the Enterprise sent to Qualor II, and the crew disbanded/retired. There's no way they'd have given Kirk a ship under any circumstances (certainly not their shiny new experimental prototype). That is, until he and his crew saved the planet (again) from the Whale Probe.
 
Admirals do appear to have the privilege of appropriating a ship if they have a need of one though. All Kirk needed to do was effectively make up a story about a convincing survey mission to Genesis and have the fully crewed Excelcior to take him and McCoy there.
Couldn't that have worked?

No, he's already tried to get permission from the CnC and found out the Federation Council ordered that no one but the Science team on the Grissom go there. He'd have to petition the Federation Council and they would have to vote again, to go there legally.
 
On the contrary: the idea of using warp drive was brought up and everyone agreed emphatically it was not a viable idea. The reason is probably obvious for people familiar with warp theory, so no explanation was needed.
Well, the show's science advisor was literally named dropped into the narrative as saying it can't be done when the idea of warping around the debris was brought up, so that's a pretty damn convincing argument that it can't be done.
Admirals do appear to have the privilege of appropriating a ship if they have a need of one though. All Kirk needed to do was effectively make up a story about a convincing survey mission to Genesis and have the fully crewed Excelcior to take him and McCoy there.
Couldn't that have worked?
Considering only the Grissom was allowed to go to Genesis by ruling of the Federation government, I'm not sure how that could have worked. Besides, Kirk beaming to the Enterprise was enough of a red flag to Mr Adventure that Uhura had to pull out her phaser and order him into the closet. If beaming onto a decommissioned starship got one guy that worked up, imagine the chaos that would have been generated if Kirk strutted onto the Excelsior's bridge and tried ordering them to the planet they couldn't legally go to.
 
Nice ships, nice new marine crew members!

The Archimedes looks great, I always found the Sovereign and the Excelsior to look similar.
Boims seems to use laser scissors XD
Odd: The yacht is a type 6A shuttlecraft (?!), and one console has uncompressed numbers that disappear behind buttons.
Would've liked to see more of that ballroom competition!
Cute that Rutherford has been saving 3 copies of memories, Tendi must be really special to him.
There we have it: Not using a viewscreen is old-fashioned ;)
The panel release controls in FC were much simpler to use, and that was manual override. Here it's a more complex sequence for not even manual override. Perhaps ditching the dish is supposed to be much simpler than ditching the outer hull XD
People still wear year glasses at new year's (2381 here) XD
Of course Ransom models for art classes!
Something for S3: Rutherford's implant was forced on him!
Both an Oberth and a Nova in the same scene is nice (the Nova is the Oberth's successor).
Nova seems to be docked to the Cerritos, perhaps they don't trust transporters when transferring prisoners?
And why would SF security use a science vessel?
The best part was of course how the belugas squeaked. Can't get cuter than that :luvlove:

Looking forward to S3.
 
I always found the Sovereign and the Excelsior to look similar.

I agree. I think it's the giant fantail undercut paired with the long nacelles. The ventral curve of the secondary hull is also quite similar, as are the overall proportions between components.
 
Back when some Klingon Academy preview video came out, we thought there'd be a Sovereign in it, but it was an Excelsior XD
 
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And why would SF security use a science vessel?
It's my understanding the Nova class is more a generalized scout ship rather than a science specific ship. At the very least, we know the USS Rhode Island is a combat capable Nova class that can hold its own against a Klingon Negh'var, while the class's prototype the USS Nova was part of the task force the Enterprise E was supposed to rendezvous with in Nemesis to fight the Scimitar. The novels have also shown the Nova class to be used by Federation Security as prisoner transport ships, which could be relevant here given a novel author is a creative consultant on this show.
 
How about dear captain being a borg
To be fair that only lasted about three months, not a full year. My one question about the episode though is how did the Archimedes crew survive without power 20 for hours? You can't tell me that a Starship has enough life support for a full crew complement for 20 hours with no power.
 
To be fair that only lasted about three months, not a full year. My one question about the episode though is how did the Archimedes crew survive without power 20 for hours? You can't tell me that a Starship has enough life support for a full crew complement for 20 hours with no power.
Space suits, shuttles and stasis would all probably be viable options in an emergency.
 
To be fair that only lasted about three months, not a full year. My one question about the episode though is how did the Archimedes crew survive without power 20 for hours? You can't tell me that a Starship has enough life support for a full crew complement for 20 hours with no power.

Oxygen candles rely on a purely chemical reaction. And you can also use chemical reactions to generate heat. Ration packs are a thing too.
 
To be fair that only lasted about three months, not a full year. My one question about the episode though is how did the Archimedes crew survive without power 20 for hours? You can't tell me that a Starship has enough life support for a full crew complement for 20 hours with no power.

Unless the atmosphere has been vented, a SF ship should have enough oxygen for the crew to last quite a few hours.
Another possible problem you encounter is a lack of heat - but we already have materials which can passively store heat and release it to maintain a given temperature for a long time.
Obviously, this won't last indefinitely if there's no new heat, but its possible the Archimedes inner hull stores enough oxygen and heat so efficiently that it would last them 24 to 48 hours, or longer (possibly a week) in case of a ship-wide power loss (quite possibly longer).

Its over 400 years in the future also... and technology and science evolve exponentially for just 1 species... nevermind what would happen to UFP which is comprised of over 150 species in the late 24th century (technically speaking, the UFP should have been portrayed as FAR more advanced than what we saw on TV).

So, taking this into account, I would imagine that SF would design many passive technologies to work in case of ship-wide power loss to ensure crew's survival - even moreso after VOY returned.
 
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It took Khan and his Augments a while to render the bridge of the Enterprise unbreathable and Kirk and the other officers there unconscious. In 2267 there may have been a limit to how quickly you can cut off all life support to a certain area of a starship or even across the entire vessel. Kang's Klingons attempted a similar tactic in "Day of the Dove(TOS)" and it wasn't an instantaneous emergency.
 
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