Spoilers Star Trek Discovery - Starships and Technology Season Five Discussion
- Thread starter Mark_Nguyen
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Actually no, I already spoke about a solar system wide shield back in S3 of Disco when we saw the ship go to SOL.
I said I was expecting to see a Dyson Sphere or a Swarm at least and a solar system wide energy shield which would have blocked Disco's entry to SOL as soon as the ship existed the mycelium network (and the fact that Earth should have detected them instantly), not when they just approached the planet (because FTL subspace sensor tech has a massive range in tens of LY's... in 32nd century, we know that the short range sensors of a semi-damaged outpost was 600 Ly's... on a planet such as Earth, they'd have both short and deep space sensors).
They employ a wide array of magnetic fields to keep the independent ship parts close to the ship - and I suspect that they are done to such a degree where they are almost a passive type technology (almost like gravity plates in the 24th century that practically never go off - even during ship-wide power failure).
I guess it eradicates the need for nacelle pylons and necks on ships [for those that had them], which I suppose is a good thing (because you can reduce the amount of matter that goes into starship construction).
For Warp travel, we've seen that Disco's nacelles do get recombined with the main hull prior to jumping to Warp at least.
But other SF ships are configured differently. Its possible they don't need to do this when using Warp, but maybe they do?
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Think it's still possible that there are UFP created Dyson Spheres or Swarms in Federation space. It's possible that we just never heard about them or seen them. Especially if they are cloaked.
Possible... but its not very likely.
And if they do, I suspect it would mess with the Burn story too much - because that just opens a whole other can of worms as to how badly the Burn fits into canon, the lack of technological progression, and of course the succeeding story of 10-C's DMA,
When Disco encountered 10-C, they couldn't really do anything to counter their technology... if the UFP had Dyson Swarms or Spheres in its space, SF ships would have likely been better prepared to counter the technology they encountered, but they were BARELY able to affect the DMA and had to destroy their Spore drive to break free of the hyperfield.
The characters always spoke about the level of energy needed to create such a field and technology was 'way beyond them'... so, my guess would be 'highly unlikely' to 'firm no' on the premise the UFP has its own Dyson Swarms or Spheres in the Disco 32nd century future (an alternate timeline UFP likely them, and I'm secretly hoping that one becomes actual canon and Disco's 32nd century is proclaimed to be an alternate future with very similar pasts to the Prime Timeline).
They have had the technology for a LONG time to make Swarms (not spheres), but never went into that direction (unfortunately).
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People like living on Planets / Space Stations orbitting planets.
Making a Dyson Swarm sounds cool, but we evolved from species who came from Planets, so did most of the other species.
I think we're inclined to want to live on a Planet or near a Planet on a Space Station that is nearby so we can easily beam down for shore leave.
Not necessarily. In fact, some people are projecting that making a Swarm from orbital habitats would be the next step for humanity as a whole seeing how living on Earth you are subject to a variety of potential issues that can destroy life on it.
In space, you have more control over that.
Yes, in Trek, they generally have the technology to prevent a lot of issues, but UFP is able to build orbital habitats with same conditions like on planets really easily - in fact, SNW starbases have those biospheres where they have whole massive mountain ranges and others (plus the Yorktown starbase in 2009 timeline has a blend of architecture and greenery combined).
In fact, most Starbases and habitats in space are easily big hubs of activity - so I think the thing is that if you provide similar or same conditions as on a planetary surface, there wouldn't be issues for most people.
Besides, as I said, it doesn't need to be for living space... but mainly for power generation purposes - because if the UFP made Dyson Swarms around every UFP member planet star (home system) in the late 24th century... things would have probably been different - plus the possibilities for telling stories with this are quite few - I'm just saying its a missed opportunity.
Maybe UPF relied on antimatter power, and not so much for solar?
It is also possible that with the breakup of the UFP they lost the infrastructure for a lot of that sort of technology. If the majority of the antimatter reactors exploded and dilithium is rare and considered dangerous they might have abandoned a swath of technologies for a century or more. Plus, there is no real way to know what damage the Temporal Cold War left on the UFP before time travel was galactically banned. Some of their techology might be temporal based and then abandoned. Or the various timelines scrapped a bunch of stuff due to "worse" outcomes.
We see a new ship of the Merian-class - the USS Locherer (NCC-325062). The name and registry are seen as a shuttlecraft flew over the starship. The ship might be a homage to J.P. Locherer, a camera operator for Star Trek: Discovery who died in 2022. J.P. Locherer - IMDb
NCC-325501, that I can see at about 18:42 of 5x01.
Mark
Mark
This is the same registry I posted to MA on my viewing. Little hesitant on it as I cannot make out the middle number 100% correctly and seems to be the highest number we have so far.
I remember a similar difficulty with the Sitak. It's registry was on only one side - a side we didn't see all that much. Luckily, there was no flared lighting getting in the way of making attempts to read the registry. Is there a way to cut out all the noise and be able to "trace" the registry?
My notes on 5x03:
- The Christmas tree light strings around Fed HQ are set to "off" this week.
- There are apparently no civilian vessels arranged around HQ during the West Wing segments. Did all the other delegates get there by Starfleet? Beam there? Live there?
- We see the Ready Room space for the first time this season, for one brief scene. It was left largely unused last year and much of its purpose got repurposed to Burnham's quarters / office, to the point that I was wondering if they had taken it apart for the show.
- Lt. Cmdr. Nilsson has transferred to the USS Voyager (-J, I assume). She left her pet tribble to Lt. Christopher, which may explain the furball seen on the ship for the past two premieres. She was often left in command on Discovery when the command crew left, last season. Prior to that she was most often seen in Spore Ops or Engineering, which suggests to me a move to Command Division. Lt. Rhys to follow, perhaps.
- Phasers here have a dermal regenerator setting - just point and heal! And I'm not sure if they've been shown to be carried when the crew are out of their usual away gear. Today Burnham and Booker both use them in their usual garb (Culber doesn't, but that becomes a plot point). Maybe it's carried / synthesized in the tricoms?
- Tricom beaming is starting to get on my nerves. How do they work? Is there a mental / telepathic component? This week numerous transports which just HAPPEN without any programming or sort of real interaction with the technology - AND it's done on the fly without any apparent planning. People just tap, and then they just appear where they wanted to go.
- Even Saru and the Vulcan guy do their West Wing walk by strolling into a transporter booth with the intention of going somewhere away from the crowd, and they just beam up one deck where they can keep walking and talking, with no tapping or interfacing witnessed.
Mark
- The Christmas tree light strings around Fed HQ are set to "off" this week.
- There are apparently no civilian vessels arranged around HQ during the West Wing segments. Did all the other delegates get there by Starfleet? Beam there? Live there?
- We see the Ready Room space for the first time this season, for one brief scene. It was left largely unused last year and much of its purpose got repurposed to Burnham's quarters / office, to the point that I was wondering if they had taken it apart for the show.
- Lt. Cmdr. Nilsson has transferred to the USS Voyager (-J, I assume). She left her pet tribble to Lt. Christopher, which may explain the furball seen on the ship for the past two premieres. She was often left in command on Discovery when the command crew left, last season. Prior to that she was most often seen in Spore Ops or Engineering, which suggests to me a move to Command Division. Lt. Rhys to follow, perhaps.
- Phasers here have a dermal regenerator setting - just point and heal! And I'm not sure if they've been shown to be carried when the crew are out of their usual away gear. Today Burnham and Booker both use them in their usual garb (Culber doesn't, but that becomes a plot point). Maybe it's carried / synthesized in the tricoms?
- Tricom beaming is starting to get on my nerves. How do they work? Is there a mental / telepathic component? This week numerous transports which just HAPPEN without any programming or sort of real interaction with the technology - AND it's done on the fly without any apparent planning. People just tap, and then they just appear where they wanted to go.
- Even Saru and the Vulcan guy do their West Wing walk by strolling into a transporter booth with the intention of going somewhere away from the crowd, and they just beam up one deck where they can keep walking and talking, with no tapping or interfacing witnessed.
Mark
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The delegates could have been brought there by one of the starships seen near the FedHQ, see for example, the USS Enterprise transporting ambassadors and their staff to the Babel conference in "Journey to Babel"
Indeed, and post-post-Burn there may be many members who still don’t have substantial home fleets to spare for milk runs.
Additional:
- Discovery’s hallways continuing to be abuzz with activity even after the refit is still a little weird. You’d think that whatever they’re doing would have been replaced by now. Unless it’s not just maintenance and the corridors are simply where the crew do their sciencey work.
- Trill symbiotes living more than 800 years are rare but not unheard of. This one in question was active during the Dominion War, and instrumental in keeping the tech we’re after out of the hands of the belligerents in that conflict.
-The Ferengi barkeep sports a yellow uniform but without a collar. We have we seen this before - new enlisted outfit? Something to denote the barkeep position?
- Invest in Slug-O cola!
Additional:
- Discovery’s hallways continuing to be abuzz with activity even after the refit is still a little weird. You’d think that whatever they’re doing would have been replaced by now. Unless it’s not just maintenance and the corridors are simply where the crew do their sciencey work.
- Trill symbiotes living more than 800 years are rare but not unheard of. This one in question was active during the Dominion War, and instrumental in keeping the tech we’re after out of the hands of the belligerents in that conflict.
-The Ferengi barkeep sports a yellow uniform but without a collar. We have we seen this before - new enlisted outfit? Something to denote the barkeep position?
- Invest in Slug-O cola!
The tricom transporter function was preprogrammed?
Could be for simple things like "beam me back to the ship", but in this chase Book embarks on a crazy sequence of transports that puts him atop rocks, then further away, and ultimately in the EXACT right place to push Michael out of the way (and with some pre-existing momentum) before she got lawn darted. All this by double tapping the tricom.
I *could* buy that some sort of eye-tracking system was in play, allowing the tricom to detect where someone wanted to beam according to where they were focusing. This in turn could be activated or sequenced by hand gestures (which there weren't) or an eye-projected HUD (which invalidates why they have a big free-floating display in tricorder mode). We only really know that the tricorder mode is activated with a specific hand gesture, and the phaser is here called into existence with similar means.
Mark
I *could* buy that some sort of eye-tracking system was in play, allowing the tricom to detect where someone wanted to beam according to where they were focusing. This in turn could be activated or sequenced by hand gestures (which there weren't) or an eye-projected HUD (which invalidates why they have a big free-floating display in tricorder mode). We only really know that the tricorder mode is activated with a specific hand gesture, and the phaser is here called into existence with similar means.
Mark
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Or he can have a pre-programmed short-cut for "Beam me next to my Sweet Heart". Activated it.
The computer on the Tricombadge will do a quick local search before going further up and asking the starship, if answer found, calculate target landing destination, and teleport.
If you work closely with somebody in the field, especially a lover/significant other.
I wouldn't be surprised if they have short-cuts to get to each other quicly.
