No, there's definitely habitable zone Halo shit going on inside that ring. It is that big.
Discovery starship discussion [SPOILERS]
- Thread starter Cpt. Kyle Amasov
- Start date
Now is it the largest ship in the Terran Empire?
The Charon is about ten times larger.
There may be advanced Defiant-based tech in the Charon but I highly doubt there are any actual components in there from the Defiant herself.
Not so big as her Captain, I think.
Not convinced we’ll ever see the Defiant in this arc. I think that wireframe we see is actually off a hand-drawn sketch due to the proportions of the nacelles, among things; and as such there isn’t a CG model of that graphic, let alone a full-fledged version. It WOULD be nice to be pleasantly surprised by a tiny Defiant suddenly appearing to combat our gargantuan hero ship, but narratively i don’t really see this happening.
Mark
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The modded Defiant and ISS Enterprise are not the same size and basic shapes?
Okay, perhaps we can do this without spoiler tags...?
Naah.
Timo Saloniemi
Naah.
Good closeups of the Charon this week. Yes, there's an inner Palatial Garden or whatnot on the big ring. And I gather the Mirrorians aren't extra sensitive to the glow of that big ball of fire as such, merely to sudden changes in light levels.
Okay, so the ball is a mushroom furnace that is ruining the universal climate. Early on, we learn the stakes are high: if not stopped, the furnace will make "all life" impossible. So it can't be our reset button where merely the mushroom network would be gone and DASHing around would have to stop.
We also get technobabble on the ball creating e.g. its own gravitic anomaly, so we can get a cool freefall scene later on, and an excuse for containment, etc. (And speaking of the freefall, we get forewarning in a delightfully Lorca scene where the relevant hatch gets to strut its stuff.)
Enter Lorca, exit Georgiou. The fight for the Throne goes as it should: two people have logical access to the ruthless resources of the deathtrap Palace, and use them against each other much as they should. In the end, this probably amounts to a true palace coup, with relatively small numbers of troops actually involved/killed.
And then we get a Boss Fight where everything again works right by the numbers. Highlights:
+ Initial surprise. Two heavily guarded individuals manage it thanks to suitable diversion. I mean, direct bombardment by a starship at point blank range should suffice, right?
+ We also saw Burnham do the exact same thing once already in the episode, dropping two guards who stand way too close and then taking cover in the nooks and crannies of the throne room. Who knows, perhaps the assorted Emperors built the place with exactly this sort of thing in mind?
+ Suitable use of resources overall. It may be headed for an obvious knifefight like a runaway train, but guns aren't inexplicably shunned, or conveniently kicked out of hands immediately. It's just that a single body can act as phaser armor for another. (But why's that?)
+ As per every dramatic convention, the main characters (for the purposes of this fight) get to fight each other, while the sidekicks have their own fight. But the Evil Sidekick sensibly escapes and returns with reinforcements, which never happened to James Bond.
+ Henchmen don't attack one by one. Dissimilar weapons clash. There is even blue-on-blue there. Good direction.
+ Both the bosses have Imperial combat training, obviously. But logically, Georgiou is the better kicker, while Lorca is the stronger puncher, who logically ought to win in the end, and does.
+ But why doesn't Lorca beat the crap out of Burnham, who's a featherweight and less armored (her kunckles must really be pulp after that!)? Well, thankfully, she's Burnham and he's Lorca. Which is a single dramatic conceit to decide a fight that otherwise went as it really should.
Meanwhile, our good team figures out how to save the day. Which is fine and well for once - the Discovery is very much supposed to be a concentration of exceptional eggheads and resources, unlike, say, Kirk's ship. No, they don't invoke the Navigational Deflector. But they do use the warp field as a shield, which I think is actually a first.
And then we return home, with the m-network manifested on the main viewer for the first time (courtesy of extra resources flowing through Stamets, perhaps?).
What else techno-related? We get to see the ISS Buran in a flashback, yay! She's the pretty four-naceller. We see lots of MU phaser action, and it's evil, but apparently not evil enough as the effect doesn't propagate from body to body. We have Burnham MacGyvering Palace hardware like a pro, which is a bit odd. We get a tactical use of holograms.
And now our heroes, plus one villain, are stuck. And supposedly without a single spore left. I like the way every one of these MU episodes is a cliffhanger unto itself...
Okay, so the ball is a mushroom furnace that is ruining the universal climate. Early on, we learn the stakes are high: if not stopped, the furnace will make "all life" impossible. So it can't be our reset button where merely the mushroom network would be gone and DASHing around would have to stop.
We also get technobabble on the ball creating e.g. its own gravitic anomaly, so we can get a cool freefall scene later on, and an excuse for containment, etc. (And speaking of the freefall, we get forewarning in a delightfully Lorca scene where the relevant hatch gets to strut its stuff.)
Enter Lorca, exit Georgiou. The fight for the Throne goes as it should: two people have logical access to the ruthless resources of the deathtrap Palace, and use them against each other much as they should. In the end, this probably amounts to a true palace coup, with relatively small numbers of troops actually involved/killed.
And then we get a Boss Fight where everything again works right by the numbers. Highlights:
+ Initial surprise. Two heavily guarded individuals manage it thanks to suitable diversion. I mean, direct bombardment by a starship at point blank range should suffice, right?
+ We also saw Burnham do the exact same thing once already in the episode, dropping two guards who stand way too close and then taking cover in the nooks and crannies of the throne room. Who knows, perhaps the assorted Emperors built the place with exactly this sort of thing in mind?
+ Suitable use of resources overall. It may be headed for an obvious knifefight like a runaway train, but guns aren't inexplicably shunned, or conveniently kicked out of hands immediately. It's just that a single body can act as phaser armor for another. (But why's that?)
+ As per every dramatic convention, the main characters (for the purposes of this fight) get to fight each other, while the sidekicks have their own fight. But the Evil Sidekick sensibly escapes and returns with reinforcements, which never happened to James Bond.
+ Henchmen don't attack one by one. Dissimilar weapons clash. There is even blue-on-blue there. Good direction.
+ Both the bosses have Imperial combat training, obviously. But logically, Georgiou is the better kicker, while Lorca is the stronger puncher, who logically ought to win in the end, and does.
+ But why doesn't Lorca beat the crap out of Burnham, who's a featherweight and less armored (her kunckles must really be pulp after that!)? Well, thankfully, she's Burnham and he's Lorca. Which is a single dramatic conceit to decide a fight that otherwise went as it really should.
Meanwhile, our good team figures out how to save the day. Which is fine and well for once - the Discovery is very much supposed to be a concentration of exceptional eggheads and resources, unlike, say, Kirk's ship. No, they don't invoke the Navigational Deflector. But they do use the warp field as a shield, which I think is actually a first.
And then we return home, with the m-network manifested on the main viewer for the first time (courtesy of extra resources flowing through Stamets, perhaps?).
What else techno-related? We get to see the ISS Buran in a flashback, yay! She's the pretty four-naceller. We see lots of MU phaser action, and it's evil, but apparently not evil enough as the effect doesn't propagate from body to body. We have Burnham MacGyvering Palace hardware like a pro, which is a bit odd. We get a tactical use of holograms.
And now our heroes, plus one villain, are stuck. And supposedly without a single spore left. I like the way every one of these MU episodes is a cliffhanger unto itself...
Timo Saloniemi
Makes tons of internal sense, yes.
But as regards warping in general, Burnham seems to think it protects against boarding. Does it really stop transporters at this time and age?
Also, did Saru warp out after grabbing Tyler, or did he just keep on hiding using whatever stealth had allowed him to sneak up to the Shenzhou in the first place? That is, why is the Discovery flying towards the Palace at warp for what seems like the better part of an hour at the very least?
Timo Saloniemi
But as regards warping in general, Burnham seems to think it protects against boarding. Does it really stop transporters at this time and age?
Also, did Saru warp out after grabbing Tyler, or did he just keep on hiding using whatever stealth had allowed him to sneak up to the Shenzhou in the first place? That is, why is the Discovery flying towards the Palace at warp for what seems like the better part of an hour at the very least?
Timo Saloniemi
I got the impression they were warping around the vicinity, ready to drop out when they got the signal. There's nothing to stop them warping around in a circle like a plane stacking above Heathrow - unless that Voyager "warp only in straight lines" episode is taken as gospel.
A ship at warp has always been seen as pretty safe. I don't remember transport happening at warp in TOS or the films, and in TNG there are references to "matching warp velocity" before beaming at warp. It's never seemed like a routine thing.
Unless the ISS Charon had future Scotty's transwarp beaming formula, the Discovery would probably be pretty safe at warp. And they'd have to be able to track them first.
I think making hard turns in high warp will cause the stress fractures that Paris mentioned. Like Tomalak said, warping around in large circles is probably pretty safe.
Hell, remember when the TOS-E warped in reverse to get out of the way of the Romulan disruptor "cloud" in "Balance of Terror"? How exactly did that work when there was nothing in the front of the ship (like a forward-facing impulse engine) to propel it backwards once the warp field was established? Yeah, stranger things have happened. Warping in circles isn't anything of real concern, IMO.
Hell, remember when the TOS-E warped in reverse to get out of the way of the Romulan disruptor "cloud" in "Balance of Terror"? How exactly did that work when there was nothing in the front of the ship (like a forward-facing impulse engine) to propel it backwards once the warp field was established? Yeah, stranger things have happened. Warping in circles isn't anything of real concern, IMO.
Might have to be a large circle to protect the integrity of the ship. Maybe instead a long warp segment,drop to impulse turn,and retrace that segment?
I don't think there's much reason to think impulse engines are needed or involved in warp. Way back in "Obsession", Scotty went to extreme warp straight from orbit for chasing a baddie, forgetting all about the maintenance he was doing on the impulse engines, and leaving a plot-relevant valve open. If impulse engines were needed for warp, this would be the time for Scotty to pay extra attention to them if anything!
On the other hand, impulse engines don't need to be in any particular spot of the starship. Indeed, smack in the middle will usually do, with the glowing bits facing in an arbitrary direction, and not even towards open space at that. Those bits are supposedly likened to tailpipes rather than jet exhausts anyway.
On the third hand, did Kirk really go backwards? There would have been plenty of time to do that pivot-at-warp thing even if Sulu didn't have the presence of mind to do the pivoting at the very start. Naturally, the camera would keep on following the plasma cloud.
Timo Saloniemi
On the other hand, impulse engines don't need to be in any particular spot of the starship. Indeed, smack in the middle will usually do, with the glowing bits facing in an arbitrary direction, and not even towards open space at that. Those bits are supposedly likened to tailpipes rather than jet exhausts anyway.
On the third hand, did Kirk really go backwards? There would have been plenty of time to do that pivot-at-warp thing even if Sulu didn't have the presence of mind to do the pivoting at the very start. Naturally, the camera would keep on following the plasma cloud.
Timo Saloniemi
Re: Burnham as featherweight. She grew up on Vulcan - definitely less oxygen so improved cardio, plus isn't Vulcan higher gravity (hence Vulcan strength)? If she's used to working out in those conditions then she's no featherweight even if she can't quite match Vulcans. And may have been taught Vulcan disciplines to ignore pain for punching Lorca in his armor (though logically she would mainly target - and does - his less protected areas).
Even in TNG, they needed to match warp velocity precisely for transport. They COULD do a quick drop to sublight and beam (The Schizoid Man) which may explain Discovery's pickup of Voqler.
Vulcan females seem disadvantaged - T'Pol could neither punch nor wrestle down her opponents, much less throw them around. So a purely "geological" basis for the strength of Vulcan males sounds unlikely, and Burnham thus wouldn't be a recipient of such, either.
We previously see Burnham thrown about by Kol, who doesn't come from a superstrong species and isn't much larger than Lorca. She can't return the courtesy. Hence my "featherweight" - that's her factual body mass, but it's also apparently reflected in her muscular strength.
What Burnham seems to be is lightning-fast. She gets in five punches to an Imperial Guard's one; she slides to Third Base when the goons are still targeting First. And she acquires targets for her sidearm like River Tam and Lara Croft's long-lost love child (or should we attribute most of this to her skill with the necessarily existing Starfleet phaser autotargeting system?).
This could all come from Vulcan training...
Timo Saloniemi
We previously see Burnham thrown about by Kol, who doesn't come from a superstrong species and isn't much larger than Lorca. She can't return the courtesy. Hence my "featherweight" - that's her factual body mass, but it's also apparently reflected in her muscular strength.
What Burnham seems to be is lightning-fast. She gets in five punches to an Imperial Guard's one; she slides to Third Base when the goons are still targeting First. And she acquires targets for her sidearm like River Tam and Lara Croft's long-lost love child (or should we attribute most of this to her skill with the necessarily existing Starfleet phaser autotargeting system?).
This could all come from Vulcan training...
Timo Saloniemi
Klingons are typically considered a "super"strong species. Humans have to employ double-arm blows to take them down and Worf can heft tritanium girders.
Of course, Vulcan strength isn't always consistent. A half-Klingon female is able to beat a Vulcan male (Torres vs Vorik). And Picard can punch out two Klingon males, so could arguably take on a Vulcan...