Spoilers ST Lower Decks - Starships and Technology Season Two Discussion

Well, obviously those were space lice. Perhaps they forgot to wear their goggles?

Did Mariner serve on that ship, or merely witness what happened to her? Perhaps in the role of member of a slightly late exterminator team?

Timo Saloniemi

 

I still haven't heard an on-screen California-class crew complement or Cerritos crew numbers specifically, but Dr. T'ana says Cerritos has over 100 species for her to treat. That may include pets or dog-like beings that crewpersons are making themselves, but if she's specifically talking about crew... we've seen or heard of 28-ish types of sentients, so we can add 73 so-far-unseen non-humans to the 177-ish crew who've been spotted. And yet, some may look so human as to make no difference. Now with Kzinti!

 

Best species cameo yet. I'm guessing we'll never hear them refered to as Kzinti for ongoing (?) legal reasons, but it's good to know they're still around, and are now Starfleet-friendly! But probably not as nice to T'ana, given that it seems to be a tiger vs. housecat sort of comparison.

Mark

 

For what it's worth, canonically we know of two Atlantises. One could be glimpsed from the "Conspiracy" [TNG] mission orders and has the registry NCC-72007. The other was listed on the starship status display in "The Measure of a Man" a season later, though curiously with a lower registry in the 32XXX-range (Memory Alpha says NCC-32710 but IMHO I'm not very confident about that; the screencaps I've seen of that display are certainly blurry enough).

Anyway, if we accept the existence of one or both of these ships, they're too old to be an Intrepid. Unless, of course, Mariner's Atlantis is yet a newer one...

And is it just me, or did they really went all-out with the VOY sound effects this episode? At least moreso than usual, though I don't usually pay much attention to details like that.

 

WHAT??? How did I miss a Kzinti??

 

Fin-headed cat guy in red, standing in the bar establishing shot during the opening credits just after the info-dump about Frylon IV.

 

I doubt T'Aana's statement would refer to pets. First, if there are any on the Cerritos, I think they would be called animal companions (as 'pets' seems demeaning considering that animals ARE considered sentient)... but setting that aside, we hadn't seen 23rd and 24th century crews with much (or any) of those to begin with.
Sure, if the crew has animal companions, this would likely refer mainly to a few people onboard, but probably not majority of the crew (and possibly not dog like pets).
We know O'Brien had a pet spider on the Enterprise-D... so think something like that or turtles even... possibly fish (like Picard had) - though those are fairly low maintenance and not sure if they would specifically fall under T'Ana's statement (but its possible since UFP doctors also seem to be capable of treating animal companions too).

Depending on how large California class ships are, and if the saucer is mainly where the crew quarters are (which seems likely)... then its possible T'Ana's statement would refer to mainly humanoid type species (and a few animal companion ones)
In essence, the Cerritos might have a more diverse crew than what we previously saw on other ships... plus its an animated series, so it can easily feature more alien species from UFP than a live action series.

The Cerritos saucer seems to have 11 decks, 10 of which might be in use for the crew quarters if you don't count the bridge.
Now, if the saucer is roughly similar to the Galaxy class in size (but obviously smaller), then it could easily have a crew compliment of about 200.

Given the overall shape of Cerritos saucer, it would have more internal volume compared to Intrepid class saucer section... so at the very least, you're looking at a crew compliment comparable to the one on Voyager - and since UFP in late 24th century has over 150 member planets... you can easily have that many alien species of that crew size (but the number of overall crewmembers is probably larger than 150).

 

I googled about 3 seconds later. Awesome cameo.

 

What species have we seen/heard of in the crew so far? Human, Vulcan, Andorian, Caitian, Orion, Phylosian, Bajoran, Trill (if joined the doctor may be counting the symbiote separately), Napean, Kzinti, Tamarean, Catulan if the fan conjecture on Boimler is correct...whichever species are in Cetacean Ops...we had an Exocomp briefly but no longer...

Data had Spot and Archer had Porthos...and the CMO herself was examining Spot while she was pregnant.

 

Have we heard the term "Tractor Factor" anywhere else to refer to the power settings of the tractor beam? If not, cool that LDS came up with something that makes sense and is funny at the same time.

 

Its a shame Peanut Hamper decided to jump ship. Would have been nice to have more AI's in Starfleet.

Yes, but we saw Spot on a ship with over 1000 crewmembers for example (and Archer was seemingly the only one on board at the time who had an animal companion - save for Phlox, but those were mainly for his medical procedures)... my perception is that while some of the crew would have animal companions in the 24th century, most might not as they would be focused on their careers, and I don't think they would necessarily want to worry about them in case of a combat situation.

The civilians on board Starfleet ships may have more pets though.

The Cerritos doesn't seem like it would house too many civilians (if any). Its more akin to Voyager when it comes to crew composition vs say the Ent-D.

 

Well, for the next six or seven years or so, anyway…

Also, Peanut Hamper! You may be confusing them with the noble and decorated officer of the early 21st century NYPD.

Mark

 

Yup.
For whatever reason, I wrote Butter vs Hamper (and also, I never ate peanut butter).

 

Don’t forget the Estes Rocket USS ATLANTIS

 

Also 2 engineers with “Blue Paws”, a bar worker with pink hair and “Yellow Eyes”, a female individual with “Goat Eyes”, a guy who looks a bit Klingon (I nicknamed him “B’Elandy”) some Andorians only seen during the zombie virus in ep 1 who might be Aenar when they are healthy, a Benzite, a Bolian, a guy with forehead horns who’s maybe Ktarian, an Antaran, a couple of Haliians, some purple people who may be Violacean, a Rigelian, Migleemo’s Avians, and a little dog, too!

 

From 2x05:

- The VIP dining room of the Cerritos is on the port side of the ship, probably on the upper superstructure close to the bridge. We see the stars whizzing by right to left while at warp.

- From where Tendi was pointing at the Cerritos model, the bar is facing aft on the ship, either in that little cutout "pit" on the dorsal side, or on the topmost of the three saucer decks.

- There's more reference here to the Cerritos not being a "capital ship". I do wonder how fine a line this is. I mean, it's not like we'd ever assume the Oberth class is a capital, but where would that put other ships we've seen in not-so-glamourous functions? It can't be a matter of size or capacity, otherwise Voyager wouldn't be a capital ship... Or would it?

- Going against any sort of size argument, the only other Federation starships docked at Starbase 25 seem smaller than the Cerritos. I'm sure that lots of the visiting ships may not even be docked and are simply orbiting elsewhere during the party...

- Similarly, it seems that to get into the party, you had to be "Luna-class or above". Does that mean that the Luna is the smallest / lowest ranked among capital ships? Or at least of the capital ships that were invited to the party?

- We see the second Cerritos dress uniforms here. It seems like they do exist concurrently, and that they are just used according to taste in fashion more than anything else. They DO fit in well against the known FC-era dress whites.

- Moving onto the station, they are at least obliquely showing how an older Starbase can be seen running after more than a century of service. What we see is largely like a mall, but with a LOT more room inside, to the point that shuttle-sized craft are flying around inside the mall even when Blue Brothers-esque car chases aren't happening.

- There's a ship floating around outside with the aft end of a Delta Flyer, but a distinctly NOT A DF front half. Still, it could still suggest to me that Paris didn't build Voyager's stalwart shuttle from scratch but instead started somewhere.

- If it's the casino that M&B crash through is that Quark's, then the decor looks modeled after the original at least a bit. This is the third Quark's franchise we've seen!

- The aviary seems to be a dome-like structure but with a sky projected against the inside wall. I do wonder if they had an option to have a fully holographic sky without a visible wall, but didn't want to have any avians crashing against it like a robin against my patio window.

- The whole episode is somewhat predicated on a "captain's conference", followed by the Lit AF party. Freeman doesn't seem concerned with the former event, though IMO if anyone's qualified to speak about the Pakled threat, it's her...

Mark

 

I'm wondering how they're Starfleet friendly, but that's with Ringworld/Known Space backstory which may be a little different in Trek

Spoiler: Ringworld

Kzinhome is occupied by humans, since left to their own devices they'll just launch another war they have no chance of winning.

 

In that backstory, it was a big deal that the Kzinti and humans were bit players in a game of higher stakes, being part of an eugenics project where the urge to fight was being bred out of the ratcats and the quality of luck was being bred in to the monkeys. We don't have Puppeteers/Vulcans breeding the fighting spirit out of the Kzinti in the Trek context as far as we can tell, nor do the Vulcans in general have much interest in pulling the strings (except when it comes to the matter of Romulans and unification).

The Trek cats might need to be less (self-)destructive from the get-go, in order to survive till this era and some sort of a cooperating role.

Timo Saloniemi

 

And the Trek versions will have to have sentient, sapient females. That's going to be Required.

 

No, we already got the nonsentient or at least not particularly sapient version in Trek.

The actual thing required of the females that would be contrary to Niven's intentions is boobs.

Timo Saloniemi