Rewriting episodes for the modern day a.k.a how to solve them in 5 minutes

[Mooch]

Agreed that it is just one ship and a file for one ship may be small. But Starfleet has thousands of ships in service at any given time, never mind the tens of thousands that were in service previously... just look at the number of Voyager's registry, 74656. At the time of its commissioning, it was at least the 74,656th ship Starfleet made.

And consider having a file on ALL the crew of the Olympia. Whether it's a dozen or 500, that's still a lot of memory to keep for one ship. All the way back to "THE SEARCH, PART I", Bashir laments to Sisko about how tiny the medical database is on the Defiant. If something as critical as a medical database for sickbay has minimal storage capacity, I don't think it's a stretch to say the main computer won't have information on a lone ship from a decade ago that was outside Federation space.

I think people (and Trek writers) are vastly overestimating how much space this kind of data would take up. Given reasonable advances is storage density in the next 200-300 years, a Wikipedia sized database on every planet in the federation and records of every starfleet ship and crew member who ever served should easily fit on a PADD. It would certainly be a drop in the bucket on the Defiant.

 

[Farscape One]

You're forgetting that the Defiant is basically a pure warship, and a vast majority of its computer space is just for that purpose. (Engine programs, weapon programs, etc.) Even Bashir lamented that the medical database was laughable... even a warship needs a properly equipped sickbay. Especially if you are a warship, because of battles and casualties.

I think everyone is underestimating just how large of filespace you'd need on just current service Starfleet ships, let alone those from a decade ago.

 

[Deks]

You're forgetting that the Defiant is basically a pure warship, and a vast majority of its computer space is just for that purpose. (Engine programs, weapon programs, etc.) Even Bashir lamented that the medical database was laughable... even a warship needs a properly equipped sickbay. Especially if you are a warship, because of battles and casualties.

I think everyone is underestimating just how large of filespace you'd need on just current service Starfleet ships, let alone those from a decade ago.

Again, that doesn't matter.
Whether the Defiant is a warship or not wouldn't matter that much.
Sure, it would be limited in terms of stoarge compared to the Intrepid and Galaxy class ships that can simply stack on more storage capacity... but, the Defiant is still starting up with 24th century technology which is a combo of over 150 different planets technology and science.
This kind of information on the Olympia might occupy the same space as a single book... and even today a book with pictures would be 'nothing' in terms of actual space on a modern portable storage unit.

Bashir being irked at the lack of medical database was a problem because the ship was basically mothballed during testing because the Borg threat became less urgent - presumably, at the time, there was no need to load up the full medical database on the Defiant while it was being tested for other things - the medical database would have like been fully installed had the testing continued and the ship wasn't sidelined.

If you recall, he had to transfer files from his DS9 medical database and there was 0 mention of digital storage being limited (and therefore wasn't the problem)... he was more concerned about the physical size of the sickbay itself (which was small even for on a vessel of that size) compared to a proper sickbay or infirmary.

 

[Farscape One]

Bashir downloaded all the files he could, which pretty much says the storage capacity for files in Sick Bay is not large.

The dialogue may not be explicit, but it certainly heavily implies it.

 

[Weyoun 251]

44444

Bashir downloaded all the files he could, which pretty much says the storage capacity for files in Sick Bay is not large.

The dialogue may not be explicit, but it certainly heavily implies it.

Could the limiter have been time rather than capacity? I've not seen the episode in a long while but maybe with time of the essence there just wasn't the download speed to do it in time?

 

[Deks]

Bashir downloaded all the files he could, which pretty much says the storage capacity for files in Sick Bay is not large.

The dialogue may not be explicit, but it certainly heavily implies it.

I disagree.
Given the episode in question, along with the context, the real limiter here was TIME because they were scheduled to leave for the Gamma Quadrant rather quickly.
Even O'Brien and others were tasked to 'patch up' the Defiant and implement a whole slew of things in the short time frame they had before departing for their mission to locate the Founders.

 

[at Quark's]

Even so, it's silly that there would not be a medical database pre-installed on board (as Bashir complains it's practically non-existent) when there is a (small) sickbay. I would at least expect a minimalistic one, focusing and prioritising heavily on combat-related conditions (broken bones, effects of radiation poisoning, phaser burns, etc.. They could leave things like symbalene bloodburn out, unless perhaps they're expecting to do combat with an enemy with bio weapons).

 

[Deks]

Even so, it's silly that there would not be a medical database pre-installed on board (as Bashir complains it's practically non-existent) when there is a (small) sickbay. I would at least expect a minimalistic one, focusing and prioritising heavily on combat-related conditions (broken bones, effects of radiation poisoning, phaser burns, etc.. They could leave things like symbalene bloodburn out, unless perhaps they're expecting to do combat with an enemy with bio weapons).

Silly? Yes.
Stupid? Probably... but bear in mind we saw SF being portrayed as downright INCOMPETENT at numerous occasions, so this was a minor thing and probably a low priority to boot.

At any rate, downloading the UFP medical database into the Defiant was probably low priority for testing the ship's overall structural capabilities... as the ship was primarily design to 'fight and defeat the Borg'... and during testing, the engines basically threatened to tear the ship apart... which means, it had severe flaws that SF had to iron out in regards to structural integrity - aka, the ship probably never left its testing grounds in SOL (or whichever system it was built in) in the first place. So there was probably no point in giving it any medical staff because there are probably tons of ships in SOL at any given time that could render a ship conducting testing on the go.

The Defiant was for all intense and purposes in testing phase and never moved past that point.
It makes sense that you'd only have minimal systems in place... even the USS Prometheus (which was highly experimental) as seein VOY 4th season was equipped with a BARELY functional medical hologram that was prone to destabilization.

VOY was a fully completed ship and launched with only 36 photon torpedoes due to the nature of their original mission.

Heck, remember the Enterprise-B in the 23rd century and the fact none of the major systems were even scheduled to be installed until Tuesday?

At any rate, Defiant's digital storage capabilities were a non issue... the main problem was time as Sisko needed a ship to locate the Founders in the GQ, and therefore decided that this would be his chance to take a fairly untested and flawed ship which he helped create out into the field and prove it can work.
The whole thing reeked of being hastily cobbled up together.

 

[Tuskin38]

Possibly - my memory isn't what it used to be.

I'm picturing Voyager being pursued and someone firing on them but with 7 x 26 episodes to rewatch through to confirm it I'll take your word

'Message in a Bottle', the Prometheus is fired upon by a Nebula class at warp.

'Timeless' IIRC the Challenger attacks the Delta Flyer at warp, but we don't see what they fire, so it could be torpedoes.

 

[Farscape One]

Indeed, a Nebula class was firing at warp in "MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE".

But we never saw the Challenger in "TIMELESS" at warp... they were near the ice planet where the Delta Flyer was orbiting.

 

[Weyoun 251]

I disagree.
Given the episode in question, along with the context, the real limiter here was TIME because they were scheduled to leave for the Gamma Quadrant rather quickly.
Even O'Brien and others were tasked to 'patch up' the Defiant and implement a whole slew of things in the short time frame they had before departing for their mission to locate the Founders.

Great minds

 

[Weyoun 251]

'Message in a Bottle', the Prometheus is fired upon by a Nebula class at warp.

'Timeless' IIRC the Challenger attacks the Delta Flyer at warp, but we don't see what they fire, so it could be torpedoes.

This is the image I had in my head when discussing up thread.

Couldn't place it at all!

 

[at Quark's]

Silly? Yes.
The whole thing reeked of being hastily cobbled up together.

I suppose it's possible, but then the question is why Starfleet would even release a ship to Sisko that was so unfinished. And I suppose the answer would be that Starfleet appreciated the urgency of the situation. After all, they had gone GQ with a Galaxy class starship (so one of their big guns) only to witness its prompt and swift destruction. They then conducted a set of simulations on DS9, and the result of each and every one of them is that Dominion could fully overtake DS9 in two hours in a surprise attack, not even giving them time for reinforcements from Bajor. So that would mean that the Defiant was possibly intended to be bare as a battleship, but not this bare.

Also, in that situation...

(A console starts beeping.)
DAX: Some kind of large subspace surge has just activated our security sensors.
KIRA: Where is it?
DAX: Bearing one four eight mark two one five. Distance three hundred metres.
O'BRIEN: Three hundred metres? That's almost inside our shield perimeter.
DAX: From the intensity and the harmonic signature, it could be a cloaked ship, but I've never seen an energy dispersal pattern like this.
KIRA: It's too close for comfort, whatever it is. Red Alert. Raise shields, energise phaser banks, stand-by to lock photon torpedoes on
DAX: The energy signature's fluctuating. It's decloaking.
(It's Starfleet, NX 74205, which makes it a prototype for its class.)
DAX: It's definitely a Federation starship but I've never seen that design before.
O'BRIEN: A Federation ship with a cloaking device?
DAX: It's hailing us.
KIRA: On screen.
SISKO [on viewscreen]: Hello, Major. Sorry to startle you, but I wanted to test the Defiant's cloaking device.
KIRA: The Defiant?
SISKO: I've brought back a little surprise for the Dominion.

Yeah, great tactical decision, Sisko, to try it without announcing it when everybody is already extremely on edge and fearing a Dominion attack. What if Kira had lost it and had thrown all DS9 had against this unknown threat?