Spoilers A list of bad scientific errors in Discovery
- Thread starter ISS_Einstein
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I think you're realllllllyyyy stretching there...
Really?
I actually think that is pretty much uncontroversial.
Fantasy being the supernatural, and science fiction being the natural is a pretty widely-accepted definition, and obviously science fiction has to project things that haven't been invented or discovered yet, pretty much by definition - but they can still be intended as natural developments.
To paraphrase Ray Bradbury: "fantasy is the genre of the impossible, science fiction is the genre of the possible". i.e. the natural vs the supernatural.
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Supposed errors:
Holodeck getting people wet - it's actually stated to be a replicator too by TNG.
Q reanimating corpses - Federation doctors can also do this too, regularily do so.
Q being supernatural - stated to just be an alien with a power source beyond Earth science.
Dilithium being a magic rock - not actually being supernatural in any way shape or form.
Iconian Gateways - passages through some kind of theoretical hyperspace dimension.
Subspace radio - again a well trodden use of a theoretical hyperspace dimension in sci-fi.
Trek is about on-par with Babylon 5, Dune, Stargate, etc.
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Data cannot use contractions.
I’d still like to know why space mushrooms are more absurdly “unscientific” than space rocks.
Do not assume the transporter converts matter into energy. If it did, then it is killing people and recreating them; not cool. My head-cannon: the transporter uses transtator technology to put a energy field around the object, moving it into subspace or some other non-universe dimensional state (dematerialized), transporting it in said dimension from one point to another point in our dimension, and rematerialize it out of the other dimension at its new position. Chambers help with safety. The transporter buffer is where the dematerialized object can be stored for a limited time. During the process, people are (semi)conscience, so, we know, people stay people and are not killed/recreated.
The real magical technology is the transtator.
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Pretty much. If DISCO said its fancy new engine employed "quantum transwarp filaments" instead of spores nobody would blink a eye. To my mind, however, this is not necessarily a mark against DISCO: insisting that technobabble gibberish is somehow more scientifically accurate than a "mycelial network" makes me roll my eyes a bit.
And, no, I don't necessarily expect DISCO to be more hard-SF than classic STAR TREK.
I was hoping for better science, but I can't hold it against the show for using what has worked for the last fifty-plus years.
@Greg Cox - Agree with you, except I think that is a knock against DISCO - one is immersive language, like Tolkien inventing some Sindarin for something - the other takes me out of the story.
P.S. I'm calling them Quantum Transwarp Filaments™ from now on, that sounds so much fucking better
Can we make that official? lol
P.S. I'm calling them Quantum Transwarp Filaments™ from now on, that sounds so much fucking better
Can we make that official? lol
Its gibberish that sounds right because it uses words we recognize.@Greg Cox - Agree with you, except I think that is a knock against DISCO - one is immersive language, like Tolkien inventing some Sindarin for something - the other takes me out of the story.
P.S. I'm calling them Quantum Transwarp Filaments™ from now on, that sounds so much fucking better
Can we make that official? lol
Not just that @Nerys Myk - but also because the words make some sense - internal or otherwise:
Quantum - evoking concepts like string theory and quantum superposition.
Transwarp - faster than warp.
Filaments - a path or string.
Now, spores, muchrooms and mycellial networks are things that exist in soil, physically linked together by atoms, on the planet Earth - and the fungi part of the tree of life, to our knowledge, does not exist in other dimensions or possess any relation to quantum mechanics.
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Interesting experiment - let's replace them:
After a month of successful operations, Lorca is ordered to protect the spore drive until it can be replicated for other Starfleet ships. As he returns to the Discovery, Lorca is taken captive by the Klingons.
After a month of successful operations, Lorca is ordered to protect the Quantum Transwarp Filament Engine until it can be replicated for other Starfleet ships. As he returns to the Discovery, Lorca is taken captive by the Klingons.
Yup, way better
Quantum - evoking concepts like string theory and quantum superposition.
Transwarp - faster than warp.
Filaments - a path or string.
Now, spores, muchrooms and mycellial networks are things that exist in soil, physically linked together by atoms, on the planet Earth - and the fungi part of the tree of life, to our knowledge, does not exist in other dimensions or possess any relation to quantum mechanics.
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Interesting experiment - let's replace them:
After a month of successful operations, Lorca is ordered to protect the spore drive until it can be replicated for other Starfleet ships. As he returns to the Discovery, Lorca is taken captive by the Klingons.
After a month of successful operations, Lorca is ordered to protect the Quantum Transwarp Filament Engine until it can be replicated for other Starfleet ships. As he returns to the Discovery, Lorca is taken captive by the Klingons.
Yup, way better
I still don't see it? There's shit-ton of garbage science in Trek prior to Discovery. Whether they use quantum filament drive or spores doesn't make it any more plausible.
Really.... quantum mechanics is ...no more plausible than mushrooms.
Damn, did I manage to convey sufficient levels of sarcastic drollness there? Cos that was droll as fuck, let me tell you
Damn, did I manage to convey sufficient levels of sarcastic drollness there? Cos that was droll as fuck, let me tell you
Which doesn't change the fact that it's gibberish that sounds right.
We can easily apply that to mycellial networks. Which have been compared to the internet. Yeah it's leap to go from using the network to transfer carbon from one tree to another to transferring a ship from one point in space to another, but that's how science fiction works. The everyday pumped up to extraordinary.
They aren't any more plausible the way Star Trek uses them.
Gibberish means something like "meaningless", but as I demonstrated, the words do imply meaning.
Only if you know what they mean. To anyone else they'd be gibberish.
Internally, they called it technobabble during the Berman years. They called it that for a reason.
