Spoilers DSC: Wonderlands by Una McCormack Review Thread

Strangely, I'm mildly surprised that I was surprised by Sahil not being totally alone. I made assumptions from the broadcast material that were not properly rooted in any evidence.

 

One thing I was bound to focus on...Donatu. That gives us an anchor for mapping the action, right? On what we've been used to calling the Federation-Klingon border...but in Book and Sahil's time, maybe not any more.

 

I also got the impression he was alone. That's certainly the sense his scenes conveyed, that he was an ascetic living in solitude in his lonely watchtower. But I suppose there's nothing to preclude there being other people that he just didn't interact with much.

 

This burn story doesn’t make much sense to me. The idea is that they’re too far away from Earth but surely warp speed is faster than it was than in the 23rd century. Their ships still use dilithium when they use warp travel. They never probably explain it.
I mean the Vulcan ships could get to Federation base within an hour and Vulcan is very close to Earth, relatively speaking.

The story was alright. It was mainly a series of mini adventures but it was enjoyable. I think some of the more interesting stories were rather rushed in some areas.
I would have liked for more Star Trek lore in the book.

 

...there was a day care facility on the Yelchin-E. They really went all in on long-term mission tours by the time of the Burn. But, by that point, did they have a choice?

 

Think of it like The Road Warrior. It's after the fall of civilization, and the thing that makes the vehicles run has become very scarce. So no matter how fast the most advanced vehicles were before the fall, not a lot of people can get hold of those vehicles in the post-apocalypse or afford much of the stuff that makes them go.

 

I found the season itself was somewhat sloppy about where everything was supposed to be. Starfleet Command is said to be within range of Kaminar, and according to computer displays they are within range of Cardassia as well. But then computer displays also indicate they are keeping tabs on the Jem'Hadar and the Kazon, meaning their reach extends into the Gamma and Delta Quadrants as well. Gamma Quadrant I suppose is plausible, if Cardassia is in range, Bajor likely is as well, and from there they have access to the wormhole and can keep tabs on the Gamma Quadrant. But the Kazon are in the far reaches of the Delta Quadrant, seems odd post-Burn Starfleet has reach that far.

 

The Kazon are a nomadic people who have had 800 years to wander the galaxy since we last saw them. They could be in every quadrant by now.

 

I get that but it’s still the 32nd century. The ships should still be more advanced than anything we have seen before. I just wish they were clearer with the warp thing and the speeds they could do.
Your example has me imagining a guy with a guitar flame thrower on top of a ship now.

 

They are more advanced in a lot of ways, as we've seen. Book's ship can reconfigure itself. The controls are programmable matter. And so forth. But that doesn't do much good if there's not enough dilithium for most of them to go very far. It's not about technology; it's a resource shortage. It doesn't matter how fast or advanced your car is if you only have enough fuel to drive it a few miles at a time and it's hard to get more.

Plus it's the post-apocalypse. Technology tends to regress in such times. Advanced technology gets old and can't get repaired or replaced, so people end up having to settle for more basic or antiquated stuff. Surely you've seen post-apocalyptic movies where the population had regressed to medieval times or the Stone Age. Heck, I cynically think that's the main reason post-apocalyptic science fiction is so common -- because it's a way for writers to avoid having to imagine futuristic advances and just write historical fiction instead. Although I'm impressed at how much technological progress Discovery has shown, with things like programmable matter and portable transporters and reconfigurable ships.

The speed isn't the issue. The range is. Dilithium is scarce, so they have to ration their use of warp drive.

Also, they can't be sure a second Burn won't happen, so there's probably a lot of reluctance to risk using warp drive at all. People might save it for emergencies only, or swear it off altogether, like the builders of Adira & Gray's generation ship.

 

Dilithium isn’t a fuel though. It’s something that fine tunes the reaction to allow high speed FTL travel. The technology by then should be a lot more efficient to allow higher speeds for a longer time. Dilithium should last a while before it de crystallises.
Now if they said they were traveling at warp without Dilithium, that would make more sense as they would only be able to go a very low speeds without it.

 

Yes, obviously, but the principle is the same -- it's a scarce resource without which travel is impossible. If you prefer, imagine a world where there's plenty of gas but spark plugs are extremely rare.

Maybe it does, but they still don't want to use it any more than they have to. Again, this is not about technology or speed, it's about scarcity. It's about rationing the use of a finite resource that they can't be certain they'll be able to replenish in the future. One that, indeed, they can't even be certain it's safe to use, because another Burn could happen at any moment and blow up any active warp drive. That's a very strong incentive not to use warp drive without necessity.

 

Perhaps but it still feels like a flawed premise. I would have done some natural disaster, that disrupted subspace making fast FTL travel dangerous. Similar to when a Omega particle explodes.
That way you could have other FTL drives like slipstream and transwarp around, but can’t be used because of this event.

 

Have you actually seen season 3? They addressed other drive systems. They mentioned in the season premiere that benamite is even scarcer than dilithium and thus slipstream drives are very hard to come by (which is consistent with what Voyager portrayed about benamite's rarity and instability). And transwarp conduits do exist here and there, but not widely.

Again, I think the threat of a possible second Burn is enough to explain why warp drive use is limited. People don't want to take the risk any more than they have to. They never actually stated that in the show, but it stands to reason. People didn't know how the Burn happened, so they couldn't rule out a recurrence.

 

They mentioned a few and came up with reasons but I imagine there would be many more since Voyager. Hell, the Relativity could go anywhere in space and time instantly. Just remove the temporal part

 

I like to think that the Relativity's ability to move in space at will is vaguely based on how the Enterprise moved in space while being slingshotted back in time in "Tomorrow Is Yesterday". But since that technology was temporal, it was outlawed after the Temporal Wars and shortly before the Burn, thus not leaving enough time to develop new tech.

 

It didn't, though. As Spock said, "We were on a general course in this direction when we were pulled in by the star. Apparently the breakaway threw us on in the same direction." So their spatial course was explained through "normal" means rather than as an arbitrary effect of the time warp. They wouldn't have ended up at Earth if they hadn't been heading in that direction already.

 

Post Burn, the oldest ships might have survived while the newest blew up. Plus, as was mentioned , older tech was easier to maintain, but harder on Dilithium useful lifespan.