Discovery starship discussion [SPOILERS]
- Thread starter Cpt. Kyle Amasov
- Start date
I'm guessing it's the opposite. Moving the Discovery transporter platform out of the middle of the set is probably more work than changing the wall panels to put up those big dishes, especially if they'll be going back and forth.
Agreed. They simply put up the old big dishes and made the central toadstool slightly more evil-looking. Between that and the lights, for such a brief scene it was more than enough. Also, the way Frakes shot it pretty much telegraphs that they were using the same set.
Mark
Mark
Part of his AR/VR display?...Oh, only realized today:
"Despite Yourself" features the first-ever Star Trek case of a laser beam glowing in vacuum.
Discuss.
(I mean, it could be a hologram to aid Tyler in his work.)
Timo Saloniemi
So, "The Wolf Inside"... Little in the way of tech references, surprisingly enough.
Timo Saloniemi
We meet Andorians and Tellarites, only subtly different from their ENT versions. The pointed eyebrow things on the Andorians are quite handsome, and hardly a deviation worth writing to the Regular Universe about. Tellarites... Are a diverse bunch, always were even in TOS ("How many fingers am I holding up?"). Klingons aren't: all follow the DSC pattern here.
No new ships, save for an invisible one in the end. And I guess we don't need to guess much to figure out her identity.
New humanoid-portable guns of all sorts. The Andorian ones are hyperappropriate for the species, not the ENT design but clearly from the same school of design. And it's fun to see a Vulcan logically bring a bazooka to a phaserfight...
More death. I failed to see the rank on the badges of the two medics who rush to Stamets' aid, but the blonde is probably the one who was tending to him in the previous episode. They do the "Clear!" thing even when their defibrillators can stick to the patient and nobody need stand anywhere near to begin with? The spore cure sounds logical enough, and Stamets having a private moment inside the network was sort of expected...
Burnham recognizes the cloaking system over the rebel camp as "active camouflage", rather than the sort of Klingon cloaking she has become familiar with in the past few months. How, exactly?
Starship maneuvers here are troublesome. Burnham boarded the Shenzhou with Imperial orders to do - what? Nothing? She's supposed to go meet the Emperor, right, to deliver Lorca? Presumably on Earth. She instead just putters along for a couple of days, while the Discovery remains behind in the debris field (despite having aligned with the other ship at the end of the previous ep, as if planning on flying in formation). Then Burnham gets new orders, flies to the rebel base - and manages to invite the Discovery to meet her there, somehow unseen by the Shenzhou sensors. Is the Discovery so fast that she can in what looks like less than an hour cover the ground the Shenzhou had traveled in those two or three days at seemingly constant warp?
No new ships, save for an invisible one in the end. And I guess we don't need to guess much to figure out her identity.
New humanoid-portable guns of all sorts. The Andorian ones are hyperappropriate for the species, not the ENT design but clearly from the same school of design. And it's fun to see a Vulcan logically bring a bazooka to a phaserfight...
More death. I failed to see the rank on the badges of the two medics who rush to Stamets' aid, but the blonde is probably the one who was tending to him in the previous episode. They do the "Clear!" thing even when their defibrillators can stick to the patient and nobody need stand anywhere near to begin with? The spore cure sounds logical enough, and Stamets having a private moment inside the network was sort of expected...
Burnham recognizes the cloaking system over the rebel camp as "active camouflage", rather than the sort of Klingon cloaking she has become familiar with in the past few months. How, exactly?
Starship maneuvers here are troublesome. Burnham boarded the Shenzhou with Imperial orders to do - what? Nothing? She's supposed to go meet the Emperor, right, to deliver Lorca? Presumably on Earth. She instead just putters along for a couple of days, while the Discovery remains behind in the debris field (despite having aligned with the other ship at the end of the previous ep, as if planning on flying in formation). Then Burnham gets new orders, flies to the rebel base - and manages to invite the Discovery to meet her there, somehow unseen by the Shenzhou sensors. Is the Discovery so fast that she can in what looks like less than an hour cover the ground the Shenzhou had traveled in those two or three days at seemingly constant warp?
Timo Saloniemi
She wasn't under orders to deliver Lorca - she was presumed dead then showed up with him as her "bounty", so she presumably has some leeway in the timing of informing the Empire she's back and has him in custody, particularly if she's looking to parlay a reward for his capture. In fact, rather than demand she return to Earth with Lorca, the Emperor's first command is a "test" of her by giving her the rebels to deal with. Obstensibly, this is to check she hasn't "gone soft" but I do wonder if Emperor Georgiou suspects the dimensional transfer... if MU Stamets exists and is familiar with the spore network and unsurprised to see "our" Stamets, then they may already have been working to use the spore drive to access other dimensions. Certainly, they are more familiar with the possibility due to the Defiant.
Some weird plotholes related to the stuff you guys mentioned. I was under the impression first that the debries field is in the system with that rebel planet. Maybe their mission was to destroy the rebel base all along, they just didn't knwo where it is. But then, if they clearly have the ability to just obliterate the entire planet, why didn't they do that? (I'm not talking about Burnhams detour her, just the general logic: if they have the capabilities, why would they need the exact coordinates of the camp?)
Also, yes, that beaming. Even if they beamed him to the edge of their transporter range, and Disco was at the edge of her transporter range, Disco would still be on their sensors. Unless they were still in the same system. But then, someone would clearly notice the transporter signature, right? It's not necessarily plotholes, just... lots of question marks. I didn't really get a "sense" of what what happening. It's like one of those Transformers movies, where you are pulled out of the narrative once you actively try to make sense of what is going on. Not as severe, though.
By the way, I don't think the Emperor is flying Defiant. They referred to the flagship, which I suppose is something like the Regent's Neghvar. Also, preview for episode 12 has a brief view of her "palace", which appears to be some kind of massive spaceship.
Also, yes, that beaming. Even if they beamed him to the edge of their transporter range, and Disco was at the edge of her transporter range, Disco would still be on their sensors. Unless they were still in the same system. But then, someone would clearly notice the transporter signature, right? It's not necessarily plotholes, just... lots of question marks. I didn't really get a "sense" of what what happening. It's like one of those Transformers movies, where you are pulled out of the narrative once you actively try to make sense of what is going on. Not as severe, though.
By the way, I don't think the Emperor is flying Defiant. They referred to the flagship, which I suppose is something like the Regent's Neghvar. Also, preview for episode 12 has a brief view of her "palace", which appears to be some kind of massive spaceship.
Definitely a problem with the dual transports short of laying a string of cloaked transporter repeaters.
I don't think there's any precedent for ships noticing other ships' transporter activity, unless it's directed at something they are already looking at (the beam-down site of their own landing party, the innards of their own ship).
Also, nobody ever keeps tabs on people deliberately beamed out into space for the purpose of being left there, because what would be the point? Nobody noticed that Lore remained alive in the aftermath of "Datalore" (although obviously because he wasn't supposed to, until the writers changed their minds).
So it's not a matter of Trek firsts or anything - just of odd timetables. There's a time window for Burnham to call Saru and for the Discovery to sail to Harkal. The window isn't very broad, but the issue is alleviated if the Discovery is already tailing the Shenzhou now that Burnham has completed her data-stealing mission. And at this point, the establishing shot of the Discovery in the debris field "near Organia" is already in the distant past, so such tailing is plausible (especially as we don't get Discovery scenes in windowed rooms that would show warp streaks or their absence.
But the Discovery in the previous episode was able to locate the Shenzhou across random, supposedly considerable distances easily enough. Surely the Emperor is also keeping tabs on all ship movements, then, and should be wondering about both Saru's pointless lingering and Burnham's aimless warping. I guess we're just not hearing their clever cover stories...
As for the transports themselves, how realistic or dramatically satisfying are they? These people beam out and then sort of instantly "freeze solid". I grok that there would be surface frost, but obviously the innards would take hours to freeze - my problem is with the victims not flailing about at all. Would you deliberately remain immobile if in this situation? It should take a lot of effort!
Tyler wouldn't have been hurt much by those few seconds of exposure, but shouldn't he have major problems hearing and seeing? Nothing the greenest paramedic aboard couldn't fix, of course (do they have Orions?), but his eardrums probably would have popped and the surfaces of his eyes (which he kept open) would be frozen.
Timo Saloniemi
Also, nobody ever keeps tabs on people deliberately beamed out into space for the purpose of being left there, because what would be the point? Nobody noticed that Lore remained alive in the aftermath of "Datalore" (although obviously because he wasn't supposed to, until the writers changed their minds).
So it's not a matter of Trek firsts or anything - just of odd timetables. There's a time window for Burnham to call Saru and for the Discovery to sail to Harkal. The window isn't very broad, but the issue is alleviated if the Discovery is already tailing the Shenzhou now that Burnham has completed her data-stealing mission. And at this point, the establishing shot of the Discovery in the debris field "near Organia" is already in the distant past, so such tailing is plausible (especially as we don't get Discovery scenes in windowed rooms that would show warp streaks or their absence.
But the Discovery in the previous episode was able to locate the Shenzhou across random, supposedly considerable distances easily enough. Surely the Emperor is also keeping tabs on all ship movements, then, and should be wondering about both Saru's pointless lingering and Burnham's aimless warping. I guess we're just not hearing their clever cover stories...
As for the transports themselves, how realistic or dramatically satisfying are they? These people beam out and then sort of instantly "freeze solid". I grok that there would be surface frost, but obviously the innards would take hours to freeze - my problem is with the victims not flailing about at all. Would you deliberately remain immobile if in this situation? It should take a lot of effort!
Tyler wouldn't have been hurt much by those few seconds of exposure, but shouldn't he have major problems hearing and seeing? Nothing the greenest paramedic aboard couldn't fix, of course (do they have Orions?), but his eardrums probably would have popped and the surfaces of his eyes (which he kept open) would be frozen.
Timo Saloniemi
With a paranoid empire, no ship should be able to sneak up another,regardless of whose it is.
Tyler being Klingon might last longer than a few minutes without oxygen for a human.
Tyler being Klingon might last longer than a few minutes without oxygen for a human.
Good point, though it took a pretty deep scan for Culber to work out he wasn't totally human, and even then he didn't know Tyler was Klingon. It seemed like his internal organs were rearranged or borrowed from the real Tyler.
Are you sure? A line like "we're detecting transporter activity" sounds... oddly familar. Does my mind start making up fake technobabble?
Anyway, someone on Facebook mentioned that Shenzhour and/or Discovery were not I.S.S., but back to U.S.S. in this episode. Did anyone notice anything?
A quick search of the transcripts (http://scriptsearch.dxdy.name) shows that most of the time the crew have to go looking for transporter activity - they are not alerted to it automaticallyAre you sure? A line like "we're detecting transporter activity" sounds... oddly familar. Does my mind start making up fake technobabble?
Conversely, there are many feats of covert transporter infiltration in all the shows. Sometimes the heroes manage to board actual enemy starships without triggering any apparent alarms, most infamously in "The Enterprise Incident".
It's easy to have hindsight, it seems: transporters leave a "trace". But it's probably more akin to fingerprints than to a smashed window, and won't trigger alarms in itself.
Hiding an entire starship from enemy attention is always tricky, though. Does Saru know some Klingon secrets by now, perhaps? Or is a science ship full of 'em scientists automatically better equipped to hide than a brute-force vessel? Burnham was able to manipulate the hero ship's quantum signature with a few keypresses; making the ship look like an asteroid or a space whale to the ISS Shenzhou sensors at a distance might be even easier going.
Or is Burnham somehow actively sabotaging the Shenzhou efforts at situational awareness, and now paying the price by having the Emperor pounce her? Sure, Security would be paranoid, but Burnham only need try the sabotage just before Saru warps in to recover Tyler and the data.
Timo Saloniemi
It's easy to have hindsight, it seems: transporters leave a "trace". But it's probably more akin to fingerprints than to a smashed window, and won't trigger alarms in itself.
Hiding an entire starship from enemy attention is always tricky, though. Does Saru know some Klingon secrets by now, perhaps? Or is a science ship full of 'em scientists automatically better equipped to hide than a brute-force vessel? Burnham was able to manipulate the hero ship's quantum signature with a few keypresses; making the ship look like an asteroid or a space whale to the ISS Shenzhou sensors at a distance might be even easier going.
Or is Burnham somehow actively sabotaging the Shenzhou efforts at situational awareness, and now paying the price by having the Emperor pounce her? Sure, Security would be paranoid, but Burnham only need try the sabotage just before Saru warps in to recover Tyler and the data.
Timo Saloniemi
Sensors do not work that way. Strictly speaking, the maximum range of any sensor device is the edge of the observable universe. Discovery is in within range of every sensor device ever made in the history of the universe, if someone just happen to point a sensor beam in its direction at the right time. But being able to see something is NOT the same thing as knowing where to look; if you stand on the skydeck of the Sears Tower with a telescope you can probably read the numbers on my license plate from two miles away, but finding a particular license plate in a city the size of Chicago would be one hell of a difficult task.
It turns out the PRACTICAL range of a sensor device depends on the sensitivity of the instrument, the environment around it, and the size of the signal it's looking for. The closer you are to that device, the smaller the signal you have to emit for the device to pick you out of the background. This is what "sensor range" effectively means in space; a ship with a very small electronic signature (or going out of its way to hide that signature) can go undetected at a distance, and can easily track YOUR ship unobserved if it already knows where you are and can focus its sensors on you and nothing else.
Range would also be dictated by speed of signal: if information takes more than T to travel from target to you, it no longer is tactically useful (insert different values of T for when it becomes useless in telling whether the target is there at all; in telling where it is; or in helping do something about it).
Classically, Trek ships get near-realtime data on things up to a dozen lightyears in each direction. But not necessarily on things as small as starships, unless they are actively emitting, i.e. running their warp engines or shields or other high-signature stuff hot.
This doesn't help in sneaking up to within transporter range, though. A different set of sensors, perhaps ones limited to lightspeed, would have to be the ones failing to see the hero ship in time. We do get the odd instance of "maximum sensor range" being about the same as weapons range, even if not often; perhaps there are circumstances where FTL sensors will be down or blind, and perhaps the heroes are within their rights to assume (and correct in assuming) that the Shenzhou ones are STL at that particular time.
Timo Saloniemi
Classically, Trek ships get near-realtime data on things up to a dozen lightyears in each direction. But not necessarily on things as small as starships, unless they are actively emitting, i.e. running their warp engines or shields or other high-signature stuff hot.
This doesn't help in sneaking up to within transporter range, though. A different set of sensors, perhaps ones limited to lightspeed, would have to be the ones failing to see the hero ship in time. We do get the odd instance of "maximum sensor range" being about the same as weapons range, even if not often; perhaps there are circumstances where FTL sensors will be down or blind, and perhaps the heroes are within their rights to assume (and correct in assuming) that the Shenzhou ones are STL at that particular time.
Timo Saloniemi
Similar to my Emperor Georgiou speculation, Burnham has MU Shenzou's command codes ("Tyler" comments he knows her regular universe codes as Head of Security and her MU codes are identical) so she could possibly spoof Shenzou's sensors with regard to Discovery.