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Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 4x02 - "Anomaly"

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Hate to break it to you, but Star Trek isn't about science and technology. It's about people and ideas. It's been so since TOS. There's been no "dumbing down". Drama, especially human drama will take precedence over one tech the tech line in one episode filmed last year, last decade or last century. The balance will always be weighted towards drama and "feelings" and always has been

Most Star Trek fans would write something so steeped in technobabble, pseudoscience, what they think is continuity and lacking in heart as to be incomprehensible,
You're completely missing the point that most fans don't want that.

They just want internal consistency.

You know... The minimum standard most writers should aspire to meeting?
 
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humour
well, until that point everyone accepted that the enterprise and Starfleet ships in general had a limited supply of shuttles...

Depends on the ship. Its possible they had spare materials to make more. Also, they paid a visit Xahea.. the queen could have supplied some matter which both Disco and Enterprise could have used... and as I said... most of those small ships were limited in size... they were probe sized really... barely larger than a person.

And we saw how huge a supply of Dilithium Disco alone had.
Maybe that applied to their probes and torpedoes (plus the Enterprise was out on an exploratory mission to begin with... they probably still had large amount of probes onboard.. and Disco is a science vessel... makes sense both would have each about 100 probes... or able to make 100 probes... or even repurpose torpedoes to act as probes.

come on, we’re talking about ships with a warp drive!

Yes... and Trek already established that SF doesn't like using Warp drives inside a solar system (sure they used it before, usually if there was no other option, but they generally seem to avoid it).

Heck, even at Warp speed it would take a while to travel through SOL.
There was an interesting speed comparison done on Youtube of TOS vs TNG ships in how fast they would traverse a distance inside SOL using different Warp speeds... it still took time even at Warp 9.

Light alone takes a long time to reach Earth from the sun... imagine travelling at 74 000 km/s. That's very fast, but still not 300 000 km/s (speed of light).
 
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You're completely missing the point that most fans don't want that.

They just want internal consistency.

You know... The minimum standard most writers should aspire to meeting?
Nah, most fans don't give a fuck about that. They want to be entertained for an hour. It's just the Minutia Militia that gets up in arms about some minor inconsistency. The type that hate watch a show they don't enjoy for four years.

That's probably pretty low on the list of thing writers worry about..
 
Again, "Relics(TNG)" violated one of the oldest in-universe rules about Starfleet shields and it still entertains, thrills and touches my heart with its Scotty storyline. I can forgive the implausibility of them being rescued at the very last second in exchange for getting to see Scotty survive and go off into space in his own 24th century shuttlecraft.

As Scotty himself said in the final line of the episode: "Aye!"
 
Nah, most fans don't give a fuck about that. They want to be entertained for an hour. It's just the Minutia Militia that gets up in arms about some minor inconsistency. The type that hate watch a show they don't enjoy for four years.

That's probably pretty low on the list of thing writers worry about..

Honestly, I did't mind Disco Season 1... I actually enjoyed it. When they started with AI wants to destroy everything in S2, things started getting 'questionable' in terms of entertainment because its such a stupid thing to do in Trek (otherwise, various parts of S2 were pretty good) ... and then they went and did it again in ST: Picard by introducing an extra dimensional synt race that's apparently hostile to biological lifeforms because its somehow 'inevitable' that sentient machines are going to be persecuted - basically 'Control' in a pocket dimension of sorts... stretches credibility and quite frankly insults Trek as a premise (on a level).

In s3, they had an awesome potential of showcasing advanced technology and moving things forward based off what came before by writing stories that fit that setting.
Instead... we got 'the burn' and basically handwaving away everything that came before to make their drama work making the setting barely any different compared to what came before.

Now its pretty much yet ANOTHER galaxy ending threat... which is getting a bit tiresome if we're being fair... and others expressed a similar disdain for this kind of repetition.
Its fine to have these threats... but don't do them every single season... and for crying out loud make them fit better continuity wise - its not that difficult.

I'm allowed to criticize if I want to. There are still aspects of the show I like... I just find many other parts sometimes difficult to watch (I actually have to skip some of them at how BORING they are).
 
IMHO, the feels in this episode - other than the great interactions between Book and Stamets - were a bit too one note. Basically, character A expresses vulnerability, and character B is supportive. This is fine in small doses, but I prefer a more dynamic emotional range.

I didn't mind, but this deserves a like for being stated so civilly. I wish more critiques were akin to yours. :)
 
It amuses me greatly that the people on Discovery are so dense they can't even think to just have a couple monitoring probes follow the anomaly around and announce it's location.
I'm thinking that the anomaly jumps around instantaneously, so it might not be as simple to trace it's movement with probes. Also there was talk of how hard it was to maintain contact with DOTs or ships sent into the anomaly, so I'm guessing probes would likewise have a hard time maintaining contact with the mothership.

The episode was much better than the first. Good emotional moments with Book, Burnham and Staments without being overly melodramatic. Also some good scenes with Adira/Grey, Tilly, and Culber. I hope I'm wrong, but I'm getting the sense this anomaly is not natural, but man-made. Can't tell if its creation was intentional, though.
 
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...Is this the very first time Trek reuses an episode name in full?

That is, it's not even "The Anomaly" to separate it from the ENT episode. And, say, the movie with the name First Contact or Nemesis also technically comes with the preceding words Star Trek while the episode does not.

Or is my Trek-Fu particularly weak before my third morning coffee?

Timo Saloniemi


It has never happened before. It would seem to be... an anomaly.

I'll show myself out...
 
And yet from their own scans, they were the only new physical variable that was next to the anomaly.
I know they aren't supposed to make assumptions... which is actually good science, but its a correlation at the very least... its odd they would completely ignore it or not see it (a good scientist would take note of that and suggest it as a possibility at least)... especially when in the past SF crews were able to pretty quickly discren the fact that they might be the cause of larger changes or the problem itself (even if they weren't... they at least proposed the possibility).
They probably did. They made that comment in passing, not one of those meetings/debriefings. I suspect there will be such a meeting once Stamets, Tilly, Adira, and Reno (if she finally pops up) goes through the data.

But Nerys Myk is right. Most fans aren't too concerned about the realism of this.
 
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Yes... and Trek already established that SF doesn't like using Warp drives inside a solar system
nope. They “established” that it was risky for the enterprise in that particular instance in that very movie and proceeded to ignore it in plenty of consequent mo vies and episodes.

There was an interesting speed comparison done on Youtube of TOS vs TNG ships in how fast they would traverse a distance inside SOL using different Warp speeds... it still took time even at Warp 9.
it’s barely a few seconds, minutes at most, at warp 9. Do the math.

Light alone takes a long time to reach Earth from the sun...
I wouldn’t say 4 minutes is a long time.

Now its pretty much yet ANOTHER galaxy ending threat... which is getting a bit tiresome if we're being fair...
totally with you here and on the missed opportunities in season 3.

I'm thinking that the anomaly jumps around instantaneously,
That could be, but it’s not the impression I got so far.
Also there was talk of how hard it was to maintain contact with DOTs or ships sent into the anomaly, so I'm guessing probes would likewise have a hard time maintaining contact with the mothership
here, solved why they couldn’t send probes.
 
1 point should have been Turkey. I watched it after stuffing my face which capped off hours of cooking. It's interesting that this season has some similarities with the Doctor Who plot.

So is this thing driven by someone? It changed direction which indicates some type of propulsion at the very least.
 
So what is the point of the flame thrower at the back of the bridge?
it’s probably part of the upgrades and automatically goes online with the red alarm.

LDS jokes aside, I hope they realize how stupid it looks and tons it down. Console exploding every episode is more than enough already, we don’t need heavy metal concert flames on the bridge as well.
 
Yeah the Flux does seem like entropy on steroids, while this anomaly seems to have a definite shape and size (5 light years across). But still, both shows are dealing with anomalies that will end the world as they know it, even if Discovery's anomaly is limited to the Milky Way Galaxy.
 
So is this thing driven by someone? It changed direction which indicates some type of propulsion at the very least.

Changing direction doesn't need to indicate a type of propulsion or artificiality in general... since this thing is a gravitational anomaly (based off info we and the crew have now), it could be attracted to, or react to large enough disturbances in gravity or subspace.

Subspace technology can influence gravity and vice versa (at least from what we know of past Trek - unless the writers decided to ignore that too).

There are numerous TW conduits throughout UFP space it seems... that could be affecting it too.

If its analagous to climate change, then its possible something within UFP space is generating this type of anomaly.

Criticize all you want. No one said you couldn't.
If you find watching a TV show painful, you might want to consult your doctor. Or maybe change the channel.

Its only painful in the metaphorical sense... because some excessive drama and emotions bore the heck out of me on this show... that's why I feel the need to skip those parts... if its done in smaller doses, then its easier to watch.
 
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