Moving on to episode two!
- The Shenzhou flashback ties the actual look of the Shenzhou transporter room with a tiny plot point - as Burnham recognizes its outdated technology in a typically Vulcan passive aggressive statement. It's almost odd how a throwaway line in a script influences significant set design choices! The production designers could have gone for a thinly-veiled redress of the Discovery transporter room set, but instead have done a rather significant visual disguise. Good decision, as it more visually sets the two ships apart despite sharing a lot of the same sets (including this one).
- In any case, I'm thinking the use of lateral transporter technology is an example of something coming in, then being replaced by a newer level of tech, then being replaced in turn by a more refined version of the original tech. In this case, I've noted that the season 4 refit of the NX-01 included adding psychadelic designs to the walls of the transport chamber - which visually echo the big dishes we see on the Shenzhou, and in ENT "Daedalus" we actually see round dishes behind the wall panels. I'm thinking that there was some sort of progression in play here that refined the original NX-01 transporter (which looked more TOS-ish), to something that over time would be applied in larger scale, and ultimately refined back to what we see in TOS proper. Perhaps this is more evidence of early Vulcan anal-retentiveness in sharing their technology, until Earth figured it out on its own...
- As previously mentioned, my confusion about the turbolifts on the Shenzhou has to do with the camera trickery in this flashback shot. The turbolift we see in "The Vulcan Hello" has a second door along the back of the car. The one in the flashback does not, which confused me. Given the tracking shot seen in this flashback, which allowed them to edit two separate shots into a single unbroken-looking one as they panned around the lift car (the awkward silence in the middle of the turbolift ride is a dead giveaway), I think it would make sense to have made a custom set piece that could accommodate the two shots, or the lift itself was a CG construct. It made for a beautiful shot apparently showing the entire walk from the transporter room to the bridge, at the price of having a nonstandard turbolift for us nerds to catch.
- The lift features not one, but at least two high-mounted screens showing the lift progress through the ship from overhead and side views, suggesting that some rough deck plans exist somewhere. There's no handle to grab as in TOS, but there is a dedicated touchpad with TNG-esque directional commands built in. And is it just me, or do the lower wall panels look like they can fold out to become chairs? Are they looking a little like escape pods, or are some of the trips around the ship at not-quite-turbo speeds?
- Ooh! The turbolift display has a little notch at the bottom showing what decks they pass through. According to this, the bridge is on deck seven, and the Shenzhou has ten decks overall (and visually this makes some sense, as there are three decks worth of window lights readily visible on the lower hull behind the bridge). Later in dialogue though, she takes damage on decks thirteen through fifteen. Take THAT!
- And before they get into the lift, one segment of the corridor bulkheads does indeed look like it can close in the event of decompression. The thought that's gone into these sets is remarkable.
- More holocomm fun: Starfleet's has people appearing as washed out TV images on the Shenzhou. Klingons appear on the Sarco Ship as fuzzy, demonic green. But when Georgiou and then the Admiral appear to the Klingons, it's as full-color, true-color images! Who's managing the bandwidth on the cell towers?!
- As the shooting starts, the Shenzhou takes a direct hit to the port side, and inside on the bridge the robot headed crew person is accordingly blown up. Luckily the guy at tactical is safe - but, as robot head is taken away, he reports that "secondary tactical is offline", possibly looking back at where she was sitting before getting blown up. Is he referring to her station?
- Speaking of people's consoles getting blown up, we're treated to two of those happening. But in apparently response to the years of criticism, at least THIS time they're blown up with sparks AND debris! And later on, the communications and blue scaly guy in the starboard-side "pit" are lost in a display of fire and forcefields, and barely any sparks or debris at all!
- I'm wagering that the brig of the Shenzhou is the largest seen in Starfleet history, already a step bigger than the spacious digs that contained Khan in "Into Darkness" . It's arguably bigger than Burnham's own quarters, and there's two of them in this single room! There's plenty of space to lie down, stretch out, AND a full bed on the side of the thing. The hubris of this spacious design bites back in the end though, as the brig is reduced to maybe one quarter of its original size.
- The use of emergency forcefields here is also pretty extensive, showing most, if not all lost hull sections covered over by the things. This is far better than Voyager ever fared, and I'm not sure this sort of thing is ever really mentioned in TOS at all, until they are seen used on the Enterprise-B much later on. In the case of the brig, there are enough emitters to create a tidy cube around the remaining real estate Burnham has. Perhaps this is a consequence of needing to have forcefields everywhere around the brig to be truly effective? Similarly, the computer of the brig forcefields is quite intuitive, naturally calculating the optimal location of the hole Burnham needed to make it across.
- Europa to the rescue! And we see her rescue the Shenzhou with a tractor beam - or should that be beams? Here and in the trailer at the end, both starships use two beam emitters to snare their target, alien abduction style.
- Perhaps it's a modelling error, perhaps it's scratched paint, but the first "U" on the underside of the "USS EUROPA" most definitely looks like a "J".
- When Admiral Anderson appears on the Shenzhou bridge, he clearly takes a step up to the central dais (and even looks before he does). Still, unless he's actually VERY short, the Shenzhou comm system placed him lower than Georgiou in most shots and looking up to her (though in others, he's looking DOWN at her). We don't actually see his feet though, so either they just fade out, or are just sticking through the deck plates. Regardless, he's obviously on his bridge, and his communications officer must be sitting at the same-ish place as on the Shenzhou since he points in the correct direction. He's clearly pointing at his guy though when he gives the command to hail the Klingons, since by this point, the Shenzhou comms guy had stepped outside. :P
That's 20 minutes of the second episode. Next up, the Europa gets bisected for doing the right thing.
Mark
