back in the 23rd century, according to discovery, even shuttles had transporters, by the late 24th century handheld ones were possible, it wouldn’t make sense for the protostar to be without them.
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Spoilers Star Trek: Prodigy 1x04 - "Dream Catcher"
- Thread starter Commander Richard
- Start date
Hallucinations happen in the mind
Has anyone mentioned that it was an illusion? Yeah, but the kid's not exactly living up to the title of the show...he puts on a space helmet to block out the planet's atmosphere, then doesn't bat an eyelash at smelling food.
I have a feeling that with Tellerites, FOOD is an overwhelming urge that their young need to learn to control as they grow older.
That and poor Pog has been eating slave gruel for God knows how long, anything else he comes across must seem like manna from Heaven.
(especially if it's something he grew up eating)
Did you read the rest of my post where I said that spacesuits of the future ought to allow smelling of the atmosphere? The inability to smell is only a limitation of current technology, but future spacesuits will probably developed around this.
Especially for a Tellarite, which I presume to be biologically reliant on their sense of smell.
Transporters are a major distinction between Star Trek and Star Wars. There will be a big reveal! Gotta rope in the kids and clearly much of this is about cool-ness.
Even the NX-01 near the dawn itself of transporter technology had at least one transporter pad. The Protostar will, too. They're not producing a Star Trek series wherein the hero ship doesn't have a transporter.
Wow, good cliffhanger! I gave it a 9, as there was so much going on this week.
Rok-Tahk is such a sweetie! I love her amazement at everything she sees, as it plays very well into Star Trek exploration. In fact all of the crew on the planet this week were good fun.
We also heard this was taking place in Hirogen space, which is interesting. I mean they really could be anywhere, as when Seven tapped into the Hirogen Communication Relay, she traced it all the way back to the Alpha Quadrant.
Rok-Tahk is such a sweetie! I love her amazement at everything she sees, as it plays very well into Star Trek exploration. In fact all of the crew on the planet this week were good fun.
We also heard this was taking place in Hirogen space, which is interesting. I mean they really could be anywhere, as when Seven tapped into the Hirogen Communication Relay, she traced it all the way back to the Alpha Quadrant.
The point of a spacesuit however is to ISOLATE the wearer from the environment with its own life support system. Given the number of harmful substances that can be found in Trek M planets atmospheres, smelling of the atmosphere would be counterproductive.
The point is the spores which affected the kids to begin with shouldn't have been able to enter his suit so he could smell the environment (unless Jankom put the helmet on incorrectly, or the suit itself was damaged off the rack or breached for whatever reason - but this doesn't seem likely as the Protostar is bound to create new fully functional suits and technology for the kids as the need arises [meanwhile, the old ones are put back into the replicator to be converted into energy for later use], so I'm guessing that Jankom incorrectly put on the suit due to his lack of experience).
Quite possibly.
And if you recall, transporters and replicators were technologies that simply didn't exist in some sections of the Delta Quadrant early on in VOY. It wasn't until the crew crossed Borg space that they started encountering more species with those technologies.
So, its possible the transporters will be a 'pleasant surprise'.
Its also possible that Janeway didn't introduce the kids to transporters yet because of their extreme lack of experience. You really don't want them being beamed into space or misusing the technology.
Gwyn seemingly wasn't even aware of a technology such as the replicator.
I'm assuming the illusions are telepathic in origin, although they weren't able to penetrate the ship, so there may be a combination thing going on here. The vines did eventually persuade Jankom to remove his helmet, which I assume was a hindrance to furthering its own motive (possibly to eat them?).
Smell is just another sense like sight or sound, and spacesuits do not block people from seeing things (although they ideally filter harmful radiation) or hearing things (although they may offer noise-dampeners). But my presumption of a good Star Trek spacesuit, would be perfectly isolating, as they do today, but replicating or imitating harmless outside smells for the benefit of smell-reliant creatures, like Tellarites or Vulcans or Bolians.
Smelling things in a futuristic spacesuit should be as natural as seeing or hearing things in a modern spacesuit. I imagine their sense of touch is likely less limited and they are attuned to tactile sensors throughout the suit.
did they mention spores? I missed that.
"The spores we came into contact with clouded our minds and senses." - Zero
It suggests that Jankom came into contact with the spores somehow, and that's how the illusions happen. Zero might be wrong (Zero is also wearing a spacesuit, but probably less isolated).
I wouldn't be surprised if the transporter reveal were coming as soon as the next episode. This episode was kinda conspicuous in going out of its way to show us every way of getting on or off the ship except for the transporter.
Actually that is also a subtle clue that his mind/senses are compromised (I'm giving the writers a lot of credit on that one if it's indeed the case, because older kids should have been able to ask that same question - and yes, the asumption would be inconsistent writing - but actually not, in this case.)
Overall, this one gets an 8 from me. It still was a bit of a trope fest, but I will at least give them credit that all the characters are staying true to their natures, and the 'idiot ball' isn't getting tossed around to much - although yeah, there's the ONE time Dal decides to take off, and can't hear the communicator precisely when Holo-Laneway is trying to alert him to Gwen stealing the ship.).
If Jankom was wearing a space suit, then he shouldn't have come into contact with the spores.
One way around this is that he never sealed it correctly... but to be fair, this would seem like a very stupid mistake for an ENGINEER to make.
He can fix a ship but doesn't know if his helmet was on properly? In fairness, UFP suits could be different compared to what he grew accustomed with... so we 'could' attribute this with lack of familiarity with UFP designs.
You make an interesting point with Zero... and the fact a Medusan was affected by the spores didn't hit me until now for some reason.
Zero is non-corporeal and is effectively in a sealed suit (so the spores shouldnt' have really affected him either way).
This raises a question: how could the spores affect a Medusan?
Zero couldn't even smell Jankom's gas earlier on (which the tricorder detected).
Spores are corporeal... Medusans are not (being noncorporeal implies they don't have a biological system to be affected by the spores - but seemingly DO have the ability to interact with the physical world, which allowed Zero to build the suit).
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I'd like to be given an explanation for this, because it looked like the spores are a conductive mechanism for the planetary organism to establish a connection to living beings so it can lure and eat them.
Telepathy... wasn't established as such here... but it could be a factor. We won't know until we get to the second episode.
Also, I'm still not convinced the Proto core Zero saw in the labyrinth wasn't real. It was still there when the Medusan was rescued... and as we saw, usually when a person snaps out of it, only the vines remain (the core was still there).
I can see where you're coming from, but I still don't think there would be much of a point for smell-reliant creatures to be able to smell the environment they are strolling in.
Realistically, you'd want the space suits to replicate their homeworld's native atmosphere in the suit itself to maximize comfort and appease the senses.
For everything else, they DO have tricorders (to scan and analyze the environment so they could determine if its safe - and possibly pleasant to breathe)... and SF would be pretty big on safety.
No point in smelling vacuum if you're in vacuum.
As for hearing sound in a vacuum... lack of this can be disorienting to the wearer, so its possible this would be reproduced to a degree... but again I doubt it.
SF would likely TRAIN its cadets to be able to COPE with lack of senses when you think about it, depending on how inhospitable an environment is.
I would imagine that the training would be adapted to individual species, and if some are more sensitive than others, they would go through a process of progressive 'de-sensitation' untile they can cope).
Which is one of the reasons why the space suits might not come with the ability to reproduce the smells from the environment... even if they are harmless.
There is no telling how smell sensitive creatures could react to different smells (and even a 'harmless reproduction' could potentially create a mixture which could impact a persons physiology negatively - though, you'd think an internal computer would monitor the person's physiology and determine whether those reactions would/could take place), so its possible SF would want to keep them in a neutral setting inside a space suit which is isolated until the environment is investigated and ensured that its safe.
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Did you make this? I *adore* it!
Yup. Gwyn even said so:
All this time, my father taught me starship mechanics, astrophysics, linguistics, information technology, and I never questioned why. He was preparing me for this ship.
As for Daddy Diviner and his chamber, I'm wondering if it's some kind of life support or life extension tech. When we saw him in her illusion, he had some kind of tubes all over his suit, which made me think of life support. IF he was on the Protostar originally, perhaps he got seriously hurt when whatever happened happened.
OR, maybe he learned about the ship from one or more Starfleet personnel. Speculating here... what if the Protostar visited wherever the Diviner happened to be and he toured the ship, learned from the crew, and then tried to steal the ship? Then, perhaps, the crew took off and stashed the ship where our kids later find it. Then the question is, where's the crew???
I agree that Gwyn is a clone or something similar. Her illusion of her "father" showed that 1) she has to bow and call him My Diviner like everyone else, 2) he calls her My Progeny, never "daughter", 3) he's never shown her ANY affection.
I was too caught up to realize what time it was, so I literally screamed when it ended on a cliffhanger!
Hmm... I hadn't thought of that. I was fascinated by the fact he doesn't remember his parents. He's 17, so I'm guessing he was separated from them at 3 or younger. Under the cynicism (which reminds me of myself at his age), Dal *is* still a kid.
LOL! I admit, I thought that would end up putting him in the "saves everyone" role.
That's exactly it. They know nothing of the Federation or Starfleet other than what HJaneway has told them. Plus, they "stole" the ship, so they (Dal especially) thinks they'll be punished or the ship taken away from them. Given they've been slaves most of their lives, it's not surprising they expect harshness and punishment from adults.
Good points! We know Jankom Pog was on a Tellarite sleeper ship, so probably a colony ship. Wikipedia lists him as 16, but we have no way of knowing how long he was in cryo. We do know he recognized "home cooking", so he was awake with his own people at some point. He's the most likely to be older than his physical age.
Rok-Tahk is listed as 8, but hasn't known any other food than what she got on Tars Lamora, so, like Dal, I think she was separated from her family at a very young age. But we have no idea where either of them came from.
Or Zero! They built their own containment suit *and* can't read the Diviner's mind. Two big "whys"! However, this episode showed beautifully how insanely curious they are - a perfect Science Officer.
I was wondering about transporters too. IF the ship has them, I think you're right. If it doesn't... it could be because it's a training ship, but it could also be because it's small enough to land on a planet (or both). This is the first episode I felt like I got a sense of the size and scale of the ship.
Overall, I (again) really enjoyed this episode. I was expecting something like "Shore Leave" and instead got something creepy and scary, which was great. Again, the show is *gorgeous*. I love the new tricorders. The writers are continuing to do a great job with "show don't tell" in their character development. I can't wait to see how they get out of this - which is my personal standard for A Good Show. And I laughed loudly at "hold-onto-your-butts grab handles"!
To nitpick, if you are actually in space, you can't hear anything in a spacesuit. Sound doesn't travel in a vacuum after all. The only way that astronauts can speak to one another without radio is to touch helmets so the sound can transfer though the glass.
While your idea of a "smart spacesuit" that allows smells through is interesting, I don't think it would be very useful. First, it would require a lot of processing power to determine what is harmful vs harmless, given the human nose can distinguish 1 trillion different odors. Not only that, but plenty of harmless things would be harmful in a spacesuit (do you want to throw up inside of one?). When you add to this most of the time when people would be in a spacesuit it would be in a vacuum (no odors at all), and when on an alien planet smells could be very random compared to earth (dangerous things could smell nice, flowers could smell nasty), I have a hard time seeing what the practical purpose of "smell-o-vision" would be.
If you were going to go to the trouble of making a spacesuit that could produce odors, it might make sense to "translate" them from whatever is in the external environment TBH - sort of like a universal translator for smells.
