Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 5x10 - "Life, Itself"
- Thread starter Commander Richard
- Start date
Let's call it what it is, "LAZY WRITERS" who don't care about the in-universe applications of technology and how it affects the World Lore.
They only care about writing about "Feelings" of their characters.
In all fairness to StarFleet HQ, it looks "CRAPILLY Armored / Defended" relative to other StarBases in the past.
It looks like a Art Piece instead of a Star Base with minimal defenses.
The New Space Dock we see in PIC S3 Finale looked better armed / defended relative to what we see.
It took on a FLEET of Federation StarShips for hours at a time before going down.
The fact that this futuristic Fed HQ "Shivers" at the sign of 1x Dreadnought compared to Thousands of Cruisers in formation shows me what I need to know about it's "Relative FirePower/Defense".
If it can't take on a Fleet of ships or several Dreadnoughts simultaneously for several hours, it's not well armed/shielded enough relative to the equivalent firepower of the day.
Remember that StarFleet HQ was hiding during most of "Post Burn", that giant Distortion Field hiding Fed HQ was what I really loved, I can make ALOT of good use for that in my 26th Century Head Cannon.
The Fleet LineUp we saw in the Series Finale seems "PUNY" compared to what a real Super Power should have.
There shouldn't have been a single shuttle lined up, it should've been full blown StarShips.
But UFP is still weakened to the point where they can't have "Thousands of StarShips" ready for a important parade ceremony
The writers were also confusing methods of propulsion with power source - equating them to be one and the same.
The Protodrive AT THE TIME required exotic material dilithium matrix to power the Protostar containment, but there's no reason to think this would continue to be the case if better power generation methods were invented (which UFP and SF both researched and encountered) - also the protocore itself could have served as a massive power source to maintain its own containment - but it appears that SF's power transfer conduits (or EPS grid) of the era simply might not have been potent enough to handle a protostar level of energy to be used as a main power source throughout the ship, so naturally, they resorted to exotic material dilithium matrix because at the time that was the most viable option and shunt that power directly into the Proto Warp itself.
The Quantum Slipstream didn't need dilithium to work at all... at least the first version of the drive didn't. The second version of QS was heavily modified (and far faster) which needed benemite crystals, and they were initially stated to decay relatively quickly... but in the 24th century, they could synthesize more (its just that Kim initially said that the process could take years) - in fact, Starfleet and UFP could have easily set up synthetic production of Benemite crystals across the Federation on planets, starbases, and even ships to ensure continuous supply... and their decay issue would have likely been resolved a LONG time ago via means of something similar that recrystalizes dilithium - the principles are probably similar enough (but it appears that none of this happened).
In fact the whole Burn shouldn't have happened because Dilithium would have likely gone the way of the dinosaurs fairly quickly after the 24th century if all the encountered knowledge and technologies were actually put to use (but it seems instead certain technologies were used for brief periods while relying on existing power generation, and there have been no advancements in power generation it appears that would remove the need for Dilithium, which in itself was dumb if you ask me).
Taking the scene at its face value (which is pretty much what most characters did etc.), it doesn't appear there was any ulterior motive. At any rate, its moot now because Burnham chose not to use the technology anyway.
If you recall, the infiltration team on the Dreadnought lowered the main shield so Discovery would have access to the shittle bay in the first place.
Additionally, Discovery did fire everything it had onto that shuttlebay containment field... but none of the weapons penetrated the field (they probably weakened it though)... the ship itself did that when ramming through it
So, from what we saw, Discovery did NOT have the firepower to destroy the Dreadnought. Spore driving them away is a different matter all together, and even that needed the ship to separate and place the pieces on the opposite sides of the dreadnought. A method which only worked because the Dreadnought's own weapons were temporarily disabled from when Disco rammed through the containment field in the first place (or the infiltration team disabled those main weapons).
It depends whether it's fully aware for that whole period of time, and whether it can experience boredom.
Why would they use anything but a small portion of their local fleet for this??
There are a lot of other incorrect and odd assumptions in this post but since you didn't bother to pay attention to the episode why should I bother?
There are a lot of other incorrect and odd assumptions in this post but since you didn't bother to pay attention to the episode why should I bother?
Yes, it's a sentient AI but I'm sure since it's still a machine it could turn off or go on standby at times. The drones could maintain the ship.
I thought this was a huge positive, and keeping with idea that there were too many easy roads to abuse this technology. L'ak would've been essentially a sophisticated clone it seems, but with no memories. Some may say a soul, though that's not my interpretation. Sometimes you can't and shouldn't have what you want the most. Sad for Moll, but maybe she gained a family while in a rehab center?
I also loved that Book planted the root naturally on another planet, and restocked Molly's family on it. Returning to his original work. No Progenitor tech required.
Last edited:
When the Breen send in their Dreadnought class ship, you need to take it seriously.
In what way did I not pay attention to the episode?
Please elaborate.
Or they would have figured out how to make Synthetic Dilithium Crystals that work just as well as the natural ones.
Similar to how we can make artificial diamonds on Earth.
Then it wouldn't be a problem because you manufacture the Dilithium Crystals to have the shape / properties you want.
Which is the more likely solution.
The Benamite Crystals would've been "Mass Produced" and they would've figured out a way to either pause the degradation or slow its decay down due to the applications of basic temporal technologies if they can't stop the decay if it functions like Radioactive Half-Life.
V1 of QSS would still be in common used while V2 would be saved for "Emergency Use" if they need to go real fast and they would insert the Benamite Crystal into the QSS system to allow them to go faster. It's not that QSS didn't need "Dilithium", it's that their M/A-M reactor wasn't powering the Warp Nacelles when they entered the QSS. All that energy was concentrated on their Deflector, and that's it.
Last edited:
Not too fond of the "too much power for one person" trope but I liked it and thought it was a bittersweet ending.
Think of how much trouble it was for the allies when they had to deal with the "Jem'Hadar".
They get made / grown so fast and are very competent for how little time / training they have.
Now imagine similar or faster growth speeds but each one is equivalent to X-Men Mutant levels of power.
Now imagine facing several armies filled with those types of soldiers with super powers.
How would normal sentient / sapient beings cope on the ground?
Or create creatures with superior intellect who can R&D your way over time to be technologically superior to your enemies.
There are countless ways that this kind of High Level Genetic Engineering & Manipulation could be abused.
^ Maybe, maybe not. I'm just tired of the cliché of the noble hero giving up something that could be useful because it's too much or whatever. It might be nice to see someone else with a different attitude and to see where they go with it or how far they can take it before everything collapses, assuming it does. Things can go in a number of directions. Maybe things don't turn out bad and you're simply left with new challenges.
Yup. And Star Trek repeatedly demonstrates if a tech is dangerous then not pursuing it or not using it is their way.
No amount of speculation on what an imaginary 32nd century technological profeaa should look like matters. The Starfleet way is status quo, risk adverse, cautionary tales.
I asked almost the exact same 2 questions upstream. On a rewatch she tell Zora that she will park her at coordinates, and then she and her crew will depart. Though it doesnt answer who the Spore drive navigator is.....
They had 3 decades to solve the issue and make it so that a navigator isn't needed. Data and Geordi could have done it in a week.
It wasn't shown, so just a guess, but if there was a skeleton crew, they could have left in shuttle craft (leaving one behind for Calypso).
Last edited:
The UFP logo in the epilogue was slightly different, it has more stars
https://x.com/gaghyogi49/status/1797323544029966642?s=19
https://x.com/gaghyogi49/status/1797323544029966642?s=19
Trying to think of instances when that trope was straight up ignored, can only think of Elder Scrolls (where the Tribunal took godlike power anyway and while they eventually went mad, it took thousands of years) and Mortal Kombat (MK11 ended with Liu Kang becoming a straight up god, and MK1 reboot is supposed to be his attempt at a kinder, better universe but it still goes wrong)
I don't mind feelings being portrayed in characters, as long as its done appropriately (Disco on the other hand is all over the place with emotions during duty - I mean, past Trek also did this, but SF officers as a whole behaved in a professional capacity for the most part... Disco however went way overboard with the emotional overload).
That said, do you recall that Daniels said in Enterprise at one point how they had Time portals (all of which were destroyed when Archer was brought into the future)?
See, what I don't understand is, tons of technologies that were used for time travel could have been repurposed for regular (aka, non Time travel use).
So, instead of removing the time portals technology all together, they could have repurposed them to not lead to the past or the future (ok, maybe 1 second into the future for just 'transit' purposes), and just have them connect all UFP planets or all other planets in the galaxy.
The principle of time travel tech makes distances insignificant in that retrospect... so just limit their use on a hw level to basically make Iconian style portals.
Same applies to that Rift generating technology the USS Aeon used from the 29th century.
The thing could have been modified to simply cut out the distance as a travel factor and transport a vessel say 1 second into the future (which would be indistinguishable from real time transit of crossing a line) to a designated location.
Instant travel with distances being a non-factor - and simply hw limit the tech to not be able to time travel in what one would call 'standard capacity'.
I have to agree with you there.
While I don't mind the more 'artistic' look of the thing in the 32nd century... nothing says that such an artistic form can't be deadly (during tough times).
Armour would have been more apparent in the 24th and 25th centuries mainly because the hulls would be made from different materials.
Its been suggested however that 32nd century employ a wide variety of options ranging from Neutronium fibres, to holo plating and also organic substances.
I mean, making a composite of all 3 of those would make for something ridiculously OP.... and since by this era SF can make hulls out of this, I just figured that they used ultra powerful substances that act like their hulls (however, Disco chose to show us that ships are still easily damaged from space phenomena despite much more advanced hull materials - in fact, they seem to be even MORE susceptible than their 23rd to 25th century counterparts).
This is yet another thing that was ignored by the writers - especially because Neutronium was initially portrayed like this amazing and essentially impenetrable substance... and yet, in the 32nd century, one tiny burp of a space anomaly ends up nearly shearing off the ship.
I am aware that SF was in hiding for most of the post Burn... I meant more along the lines of why didn't the Breen simply decide to attack Fed HQ when their first dreadnought was there.
Weakened is something it shouldn't be by this point. Heck, even during the Burn, they still had replicators, programmable matter, most planets were left intact in the Burn... they mostly lost ships in space.
With programmable matter, replicators and transporters, it should have been dead easy to continue making new ships even at Fed HQ while it was hidden... and with what was left of the Federation (fully developed advanced planets - Osyraa and the Emerald Chain shouldn't have been able to pose any kind of realistic threat what with them holding underdeveloped planets hostage).
Yeah, I'm more about "Professionalism while on the job", if you want to emotionally dump, do it off the clock when you're not in the middle of hostile territory.
No amount of Hardware/Software locks will prevent it from being misused / stolen / reinvented.
You know that there are most likely plenty of "Hackers" and "Tinkerers" who will bypass all that hardware and turn the "Locked-Down Non-Time traveling" devices/tech into Time-Traveling devices and go mess around in time again because they want to.
Imagine how bad hacking is today, now imagine them mucking around in time, thousands of individuals who arbitrarily mucking around the timeline in past/future or even multi-dimensional hopping.
Imagine how dangerous that can be if somebody screwed up something important in time.
That's why Time Travel tech needs to be government regulated, no private entity or individuals should have access to it via threat of "Lawful Imprisonment & Death Sentence".
I think they sacrificed "Durability of Hulls" for rapid hull repair.
What used to take a significant amount of time to repair in the past, seems to be repaired much faster.
They depend on their shields alot more, even though they are stronger than in the past, should anything go wrong, you're in trouble.
Kind of like how we don't have super thick hulls in our IRL modern warships compared to what we had in the past during WW2.
We depend more on Point Defense, Stealth, and Anti-<Target> Missiles IRL.
The design philosophy/doctrine of the 32nd century seems to focus primarily on:
- "Speed & Agility", ergo the floating Nacelles paradigm
- "Shields & Rapid Hull Repair", Stronger Shields & quicker repair thanks to Programmable Matter
- "Stealth & Sensors", advent of various options of Stealth & even better sensors seem to be normal
- "Offense" is better, but that's expected, but it's never a primary focus compared to what we've seen elsewhere.
Aren't they in a battle for a "Six-Way" internal faction fighting for dominance?
Adding in one more enemy, especially from outside would be un-wise.
You're forgetting the human / man power issue. When "The Burn" happened, ALOT of people were lost, very talented people.
With the fractioning of StarFleet & the UFP, they had a HUGE man power shortage.
Don't forget all the member worlds they lost along with access to their man power, economic power, & resources.
The Training pipeline for new Cadets was broken and only recently did they open up StarFleet Academy again. They went from the "Pass down the knowledge" from Master to Apprentice style training to large school training again.
I'm sure there are many "StarFleet Isolated" groups out there that need to be found & reintegrated.
Remember, "Pre-Burn" they were everywhere across the Milky Way Galaxy.
There must be so many fragments of StarFleet all over the place with their own mini "SF HQ".
Re-joining everything is going to take time, maybe a "Life-Time" of work.
That could've been what Admiral Burnham dedicated the rest of her career to, fixing the broken pieces of the UFP/StarFleet.
The only things we know that were made out of a Neutronium alloy were the power transfer fibers of Starfleet Headquarters.
The actual hulls were mentioned as being either "organic" or "holographic".
Wouldn't synthetic dilithium crystals pose a similar problem of the Burn like natural ones?
They'd have to have same or similar properties to work, so not exactly the direction I would take... but I would agree that SF/UFP would have been able to create a synthetic form of Dilithium that works just fine long before Dilithium ever runs out.
I'm more concerned that UFP/SF actually researched their own new power generation technologies and even encountered/scanned advanced forms of power generation (such as the Tetryon reactor and even Thermionic generators from Species 8472 - while the episode in question didn't specifically indicate they shared this tech with SF, the Delta Flyer took extensive scans of the habitat and 7 of 9 was able to identify thermionic generators as a power source - meaning she knew what they were, and most likely had an insight into how they might work - that alone would have spurred some research into the technology and it probably would have allowed SF to develop their own a few decades after VOY got back - even if they only had a few hints that the tech exists).
[qipte]
The Benamite Crystals would've been "Mass Produced" and they would've figured out a way to either pause the degradation or slow its decay down due to the applications of basic temporal technologies if they can't stop the decay if it functions like Radioactive Half-Life.
[/quote]
Pretty much how I saw it. They didn't have to ban all aspects of time travel tech... they could have easily just kept some aspects of it in use and limited it on a hw level to not induce time travel but merely slows/stops degradation in the benamite crystals.
But I still think this issue would have been fundamentally resolved by the 25th century at the latest and using a form of Dilithium Recrystalization technology.
That's definitely how I imagined it.
QS v1 tops out at 300 Ly's per hour which is still VERY fast. But, its 'cruising' speed seems to be much lower, since it was said VOY would have to spend 3 months inside Slipstream to cross 60 000 LY's (aka, about 27.777 Ly's per day). This could easily serve as a replacement for standard Warp drive as its not 'ridiculously fast' but it IS fast enough to traverse large distances in a shorter time frame while using it for exploration purposes.
QS v2 tops out at 10 000 LY's per minute - this can be used (as you said) in emergencies and also as a means to cross the void between Galaxies - Andromeda is only about 4 hrs away at those speeds... not to mention the much closer dwarf galaxies.
Similar threads
- Poll
- Poll