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Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 4x09 - "Rubicon"

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Has Book always had that?

Not four episodes ago.

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I love the consistency of Star Trek Discovery's writing.

- We can't jump while cloaked!

Six months later:
- Yes, we can!

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That's some well researched nitpicking, but I do have some ways to possibly explain that.

Book's ship might have more security measures now because he's got a dude on board adding new security measures. And Discovery's just gone through another major overhaul, this time after Starfleet's had time to study and improve upon the spore drive.
 
400+ years later and we still use weapons that use a small explosive charge to propel a small piece of metal at high velocity to kill someone...why? Because it still works...;)

Not really comparable.
As a species, we had a pretty stagnant period of development up until the industrial revolution (which is when things started getting more... interesting).

We are at a proverbial 'beginning' of changing every aspect we are familiar with... so, this kind of comparison wouldn't work for Trek and UFP which is a collection of FTL capable societies that have been experiencing fast technological and scientific breakthroughs on a continuous basis.

The main reason we stuck with something for a long time is due to a few reasons:
1. cost efficiency and profits.
2. technology and science hadn't progressed to the point where we could surpass the use of small explosive charges to propel smll pieces of metal at high velocity.

Well, actually, this isn't necessarily the case... we DO have maglev technology which could probably be used towards this, but the economies of scale hadn't reached the point (just yet) where we could scale down the technology to use it like that efficiently.

For humanity in real life, technology and science evolve exponentially... we are literally experiencing an acceleration of acceleration.
In Trek, sticking to something for extended periods of time wouldn't be viable. In fact, in a society that has access to replicators and can easily disassemble matter into base elements and reconstitute them into something else (which we can technically do too, albeit differently and slower), it would be a proverbial piece of cake to replace say somethign which has been created and used for 4 or 5 years (maybe 10) with something else by using the harvested materials from the older piece of technology (its also known as technical efficiency - the ability to produce more with less).

Adaptive algorithms and AI can be used to integrate new technology into pre-existing systems far faster than humans ever could (by hundreds of thousands of times or millions of times faster).

So, this wasn't really accurately depicted in Trek... and I think it would need to change.
 
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That's some well researched nitpicking, but I do have some ways to possibly explain that.

Book's ship might have more security measures now because he's got a dude on board adding new security measures. And Discovery's just gone through another major overhaul, this time after Starfleet's had time to study and improve upon the spore drive.

Its likely that Starfleet was able to improve upon existing things in the 6 months since the Burn what with Osyraa and Emerald Chain not causing problems.
Its also possible that Booker installed a scattering field on his ship because of that incident with the Quwat Milat.

Although, it still pains me to see SF is NOT using automation [adaptive algorithms] for R&D which would literally do this type of thing in the background and implement it instantenously [again, via automation such as programmable matter and DOT's] once its done - this way, progress would have occurred during the Burn and inspite of it... I guess its one of those things Trek writers don't really think about (much like they ignore the fact that research and schematics on a working next gen Spore Drive would be in their database and they could just replicate it at will and not make a huge fuss as if someone stealing the prototype would prevent UFP from making another one... I mean come on... who the freaking heck wrote that nonsense?
 
That's some well researched nitpicking, but I do have some ways to possibly explain that.

Book's ship might have more security measures now because he's got a dude on board adding new security measures. And Discovery's just gone through another major overhaul, this time after Starfleet's had time to study and improve upon the spore drive.
I would imagine, especially in light of recent events. Book would be updating that security measure. Much in the same way that I would not expect SF to update their security measures.
 
It needs to obliterate a known Federation homeworld. Tellar Prime. Denobula. Something.

Because Book's planet, while tragic in-story, had almost no emotional connection for the audience.
please no. I understand where are you coming from, but Romulus andKelvin Vulcan were depressing enough, I really don’t want to see that happen again.

I'm confused... Why does Book's tiny little ship have anti-transporter fields but the big super advanced starfleet vessels don't?
perhaps maintaining a field like that on a larger ship is not viable.
 
please no. I understand where are you coming from, but Romulus andKelvin Vulcan were depressing enough, I really don’t want to see that happen again.

Me neither. I think we had enough UFP planet busting.

perhaps maintaining a field like that on a larger ship is not viable.

We've seen that in the 24th century that wasn't a problem on larger ships. Transporter inhibitors existed back then (on large ships no less). And technology was supposed to advance radically by this era... so its probably just lazy writing to fit the drama.
 
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Is there no security since Naan left?
The shuttle should have had a tactical team in tac gear .. Not 3 people in there standard uniform. .. None of them security..

And I agree.. The shuttle looks like crap in and out.
 
They sent their first officer, tactical officer and the guy who answers hails over. In the 24th century that'd be a Riker and two Worfs or a Chakotay and two Tuvoks.
 
We are at a proverbial 'beginning' of changing every aspect we are familiar with... so, this kind of comparison wouldn't work for Trek and UFP which is a collection of FTL capable societies that have been experiencing fast technological and scientific breakthroughs on a continuous basis.
We’ve seen stagnant technology in Star Trek before, though: the 24th century isn’t that much more advanced than the 23rd, as even pointed out in the show by Geordi. Just because technology is improving exponentially now it doesn’t mean this growth couldn’t slow down again at a certain point.
We've seen that in the 24th century that wasn't a problem on latger ships. And technology was supposed to advance radically by this era... so its probably just lazy writing to fit the drama
true. But perhaps transporter technology improved more than scattering one.
 
It needs to obliterate a known Federation homeworld. Tellar Prime. Denobula. Something.

Because Book's planet, while tragic in-story, had almost no emotional connection for the audience.

I've been waiting for this.

I did wonder - is anyone considering evacuation from systems with higher-than-usual levels of boronite?

Maybe they could dangle a list of Federation worlds that have high boronite level next episode - including Sol of course!
 
How is Burnham still anywhere near the BMA issue? She brought her boyfriend to top-level officer-only meetings, he then co-stole top-secret Starfleet technology and helped in building a weapon of mass destruction... the contortions they're having to jump through to get around her lightyear-wide conflict of interest is really stretching credulity to breaking point here. And we know there won't be any consequences for any of them, because the crew of Discovery (including the civilian boyfriend who's along for the ride, in every sense) can do whatever they want, because the entire universe pivots about them. Seriously, it's only a matter of time until Burnham succeeds Laira Rillak as Federation President.
 
Did I miss why they couldn’t just jump outside of the galactic barrier and knock on the door of 10C?
you didn’t.

Also I’ve been wondering: didn’t they agree on stopping using the spore drive unless in cases of dire emergency in season two to avoid further damage to the micelial network? They seem to be using it quite a lot lately.
 
We’ve seen stagnant technology in Star Trek before, though: the 24th century isn’t that much more advanced than the 23rd, as even pointed out in the show by Geordi. Just because technology is improving exponentially now it doesn’t mean this growth couldn’t slow down again at a certain point.
true. But perhaps transporter technology improved more than scattering one.

The thing is we have no frame of reference for comparison purposes (at least not from the perspective of looking at technologically advanced societies).

But the way I see it, once technology and science start evolving exponentially, there is really no way to stop that from continuing (short of a massive planetary disaster from wiping all our infrastructure and majority of the people with the know how as is before we take precautions that would protect us and our knowledge).

In Trek, nothing like that happened, and it would be extremely difficult (if not impossible) to do so because, copies of UFP databases exist in every ship, station, outpost, member planet, etc.
It's like tens (or hundreds) of thousands of copies spread throughout 8000 Ly's of space (by the late 24th century).

We are using automation and adaptive algorithms (and AI) sporadically in R&D as is, and this trend will only continue.
Even if Humans stopped developing things themselves, automation would continue.

In Trek, it would be utterly ridiculous this would actually stop from occurring given the technology they have.
And in fact, we HAVE been introduced to potent time travel technology to be fair... which was of course banned, but that doesn't mean every other technology would fall out of favor.

The main reason we've seen stagnation in Trek was because the writers usually cannot think too far ahead and have little or no exposure when it comes to bigger concepts (at least this seems to be the case for Disco writers) or how to WORK with advanced technology (despite numerous other works of scifi literatures can).

Also, the writers are seemingly AVOIDING introduction of automated R&D or are still under erroneous impression you need live people for that. Either way, UFP had both of those during the Burn and access to programmable matter which can upgrade ships easily (though transporters and replicators could probably already do that anyway).

Clear progress has occurred in 75 years since the 23rd century... and we have seen even more improvements in the 24th century where development has been accellerating steadily.

So, no, I don't think that within the confines of Trek, what we've seen is an accurate representation whatsoever that makes sense for the universe in question.
Numerous species managed to progress well beyong UFP level in the 24th century... and for the UFP to be unable to reach and surpass those levels 800 years later is quite frankly absurd.
They would have likely 'cought up' in much less time given the fact UFP has the benefit of over 150 different member planets and species contributing in the 24th century.

Trek really needs to do away with the practice of introducing new technologies and then conveniently forgetting them.
 
The U.S.S. Mitchell??? Starfleet named a ship after Joe Don Baker??? It's easier to fathom than naming a vessel after the possessed officer who survived the trip through the Galactic Barrier only to get killed by James R. Kirk. Hmm...

Nhan's new breathing apparatus has a fantastic new range owing to its ability to give Burnham and Booker breathing room...

T'Rina and Saru need a standard "shuttle-they-were-traveling-in-together-crashed-and-we-can't-locate-them" episode all to themselves.

Nhan's last resort seemed overcomplicated. All she had to do was point a phaser at Grudge, tell Book to stand down, and Book would have folded like origami.

Grudge. Curiously absent this episode. Could she be a Changeling with amnesia???
 
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