DSC Starships and Technology - Season Three Thread

[Mark_Nguyen]

And here we go with season three! As with last season, I'm counting the "Short Treks" we got last year as part of the upcoming season, as production-wise they were likely commissioned after the second season.

[Spoilers for EVERYTHING Discovery up through Season 3]

The upcoming "Short Treks" are not universally available on YouTube that I can see. Here's what I've been using to source notes from:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/video/star-trek-short-treks-comic-con-trailer-1226101

I think we are seeing scenes from four of the six shorts here: Number One and Spock stuck in the lift, Pike captured / interrogated, the tribble episode, and whatever's going on with the bumpy-headed kids. Technical notes follow:

- The trailer opens with a fuzzy view of what may be the only newbuild set we've seen for this swath of shorts. I thought it was a redress of the transporter room but the overhead central doodad is completely different.

- It's implied that Spock started on the Enterprise as an Ensign. What we see doesn't contradict any potential assignments to other ships as an Ensign, but the implication is that his entire career was on two ships of the same name, the latter of which he got by association with one awesome, well-connected crew.

- This, however, seems to contradict Pike's comment that they "got the new uniforms", if everyone was wearing them before "The Cage".

-Spock materializes on this version of the Enterprise's transporter room set, which is heavily refitted from Discovery. All the red paint aside, they've built a sort of inner shell around the pads to make the walls vertical instead of angling out. This makes the room smaller AND gives them a chance to add some familiar psychadelic wall patterns.

- The new Enterprise turbolifts have gained a computer display just above some, but not all of their switch handle thingies, which people still refuse to hold on to when the car is in motion, anachronistic as they are. I'm guessing they're there for #1 or Spock to try to contact the outside world, before resigning themselves to learning climbing songs.

- There's a lot to imply in the tribble episode. Pike seems to be wishing the CO well as she takes command of the ship ("they'll eat you alive") before she beams off the Enterprise, possibly to the USS Bauman / Bowman / whatever (implying some of these episodes are loosely connected).

- Accordingly, she's wearing an Enterprise command uniform for the duration of her story, while other characters seem to be wearing a variant of the colorful uniforms without a black collar, or more interestingly still, a simpler long sleeve top that's fairly close to the "Cage" uniform style. I'm liking where that's going already.

- The tribble ship has two main redressed Discovery sets seen here... Sickbay sees duty as the conference / ready room (there's a violin in the corner implying it's the latter with a table in it, as Pike and Georgiou had), and the corridor set is redressed as a lab in one of the "junction" spaces without a door to the hallways beyond (even though we know such doors exist in other set configurations). I'm sure we'll see the outside of this ship (yay!), but I don't think we'll see the bridge, as the three standing bridge sets are pretty distinctive and would need a heck of an overhaul to look significantly different. That, or they'll keep to really tight shots on the crew's faces (as they did with the USS Gagarin in S1).

- In all this time, we've never seen a tribble actually reproduce - they're just sort of THERE when people encounter them. Here, it seems that newborns are kinetically expulsed from the parent tribble. I am VERY glad that wasn't the case when my daughter was born.

Mark

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

- In all this time, we've never seen a tribble actually reproduce - they're just sort of THERE when people encounter them. Here, it seems that newborns are kinetically expulsed from the parent tribble. I am VERY glad that wasn't the case when my daughter was born.

Imagine having to be there, ready to catch your daughter as she comes out at a similar speeds!

 

[David cgc]

- This, however, seems to contradict Pike's comment that they "got the new uniforms", if everyone was wearing them before "The Cage".

The novel Desperate Hours had a slightly more detailed version of the "new uniforms" handwave, that they were allocated to Constitution-class ships first, and would eventually become Fleetwide. Four or five years is a long time to have a provisional uniform variant but, well, this is Star Trek. We're about to have a twelve-car-pileup of different uniforms in the last twenty years of the 2300s. Then there's all the changes from TNG through FC, with the TNG and DS9 uniforms being used in parallel for years without any rationale why some groups used one, some used the other, and one used both (it's non-canon, but, heck, if you look at the Star Trek: Borg video game, the DS9 uniforms were around since BoBW. They may well have existed in parallel with the collared TNG uniforms for the entire span of that design. Maybe there was even a spandex crewneck version of the DS9 uniform that goes back even further).

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

Sure, but Spock's outfit as he beams aboard for the first time suggests that this short happens BEFORE "The Cage", so assuming they're not handwaving THAT away completely, it means that the "new uniforms" introduced in "Brother" were actually introduced several years before that episode. And then, everyone changed to the actual "Cage" uniforms and then BACK to the "new uniforms" after that episode. Obviously we're not meant / asked to think THAT hard about this, and that Star Trek canon is hardly a single inviolable continuum of universal consistency, but dammit, we're nerds.

As for the cacophony of uniform choices in various other historical periods, I get that Starfleet isn't today's military and that there's nothing to say that uniforms HAVE to be absolutely uniform across thousands of lightyears and personal preferences, but it's still something we have to apply our current mentality to. After the hundreds of episodes that have been published, it gets to be a sort of "Simpsons" sort of reality - the most we can ask for, is for the episode to remain consistent WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF THAT EPISODE, and get the most enjoyment while we're watching it. If we're lucky, stuff will be consistent within the duration of that season, at least. TV is hard!

But canon discussions are long and never, ever end well, so I digress. I'm sticking to tech observations and at least a passble attempt at noting things for consistency and/or fit into the larger technological zeitgeist of the franchise, because it's fun.

Mark

 

[Ronald Held]

If Spock is an Ensign, this is pre Cage. Too costly to make two Cage uniforms????

 

[Timo]

Remarkably, Ensign Spock is met by Lieutenant Commander Westilldonknowhername (see rank braid), even though in "The Cage" we see Lieutenant Spock interacting with Lieutenant WeneveraregoingtogethernameIguess (see rank braid and hear dialogue). Why did she get a demotion?

The apparent Tribble Ship Crew all seem to wear the single solid braid familiar from "The Cage", even though some of the characters are obviously superiors and others are underlings. If this held true for the apparent Elevator Minisode, too, I'd still have complaints, but only of the "it's idiotic for Starfleet to briefly adopt a system that hides rank, but I guess that's their fictional privilege" sort, not the "they caused an inconsistency that breaks the fictional universe into nasty shards that make my heart bleed" sort...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

Bumping to the top, and counting "Q&A" as part of this (even though other Short Treks may NOT be part of this thread, interestingly enough!).

- Spock beams up from what is apparently the transporter room of Starbase 40. He does stand under a specific doodad, but the platform he's on is devoid of the traditional glass platforms.

- The SB40 transporter room set is actually cannibalized from the Section 31 bridge set. The overhead thing is the same as the one here, as is the flooring. They built or more likely borrowed the wall segments from somewhere and arranged them around the floor, lowered the ceiling segment containing the doodad, and voila - instant transporter room seen for just a few seconds, that no one will pick apart except us.

- The Enterprise sets are basically what we've seen before, except for the new CG rollercoaster and turbolift car. I'll hold my tongue for the rest of THAT.

- Engineer Upjohn is clearly Welsh (as if the name wasn't a giveaway). Is this somehow a Futurama in-joke?

- The ultimate solution to get Una and Spock out is to rappel down the tube (sic) and lift them out with a painted-white version of Batman's grapnel. But there's a parallel "tube" RIGHT NEXT to where they're stuck. Why not just park a functioning lift next door, pop the lid, and hop across? Similarly, while the open space around them isn't as ridiculously spacious as the version on Discovery, you can see worker bees flitting around inside. Why not use one of those?

Next short's trailer: confirmed that Captain Salazar (sic) 's new command is a Magee-class starship like the USS Shran. I still doubt we'll see the bridge of this ship, but the model suggests it's about the size as the Shenzhou's, complete with three big windows. Gads do I miss that bridge.

Mark

 

[Tuskin38]

For the uniforms, they probably don't have a budget to design and create all new ones for a couple 15 minute shorts.

 

[Markonian]

Next short's trailer: confirmed that Captain Salazar (sic) 's new command is a Magee-class starship like the USS Shran. I still doubt we'll see the bridge of this ship, but the model suggests it's about the size as the Shenzhou's, complete with three big windows. Gads do I miss that bridge.

Mark

We get to see the ship from the outside? Woot! Hopefully we'll learn the USS Cabon's (?) registry this time, unlike the still-unknown De Milo's.

 

[DEWLine]

USS Cabot.

 

[Timo]

- Spock beams up from what is apparently the transporter room of Starbase 40. He does stand under a specific doodad, but the platform he's on is devoid of the traditional glass platforms.

I really doubt he beamed from SB 40, as Ms Una asks her about the trip from there, and Spock doesn't faint from the effort of lifting his eyebrow through the ceiling. Rather, Spock is likely to be beaming from a platform that made a not-insignificant trip from SB40 to the current location.

For shits and giggles, we might argue that the smaller S31 ships are based on a generic courier ship, which normally has a transporter pit in the middle, just like the S31 variant conducts its beamings from that pit...

- The ultimate solution to get Una and Spock out is to rappel down the tube (sic) and lift them out with a painted-white version of Batman's grapnel. But there's a parallel "tube" RIGHT NEXT to where they're stuck. Why not just park a functioning lift next door, pop the lid, and hop across? Similarly, while the open space around them isn't as ridiculously spacious as the version on Discovery, you can see worker bees flitting around inside. Why not use one of those?

I could really see this as a sadistic training exercise Ms Una subjects the new arrivals to. But Spock should be agreeing with you on the sensible way to deal with the predicament anyway.

Next short's trailer: confirmed that Captain Salazar (sic) 's new command is a Magee-class starship like the USS Shran. I still doubt we'll see the bridge of this ship, but the model suggests it's about the size as the Shenzhou's, complete with three big windows. Gads do I miss that bridge.

The Cabot has more lights on than the previous Magee appearance (all those years ago!), leaving us two choices: either those lights on the saucer edge are window rows, in which case the ship is likely to be much larger than the suggested 225m length, or then they are sensor lights or funny little holes at the very upper and lower edges of a rim corridor wall, allowing for a small ship like Oberth (as might be fitting here). It's basically the very same issue as with the lit "windows" (?) of the Oberth!

Also, big glowing white surfaces at the aft ends of the nacelles, where I (and apparently STO, which customized the CGI model it got from DSC that way) thought there might be rolling doors instead. Or does the skipper of the Cabot also prefer to fly with her shuttlebay doors open, only she never was from the Mirror Universe and therefore has the lights up full?

As for the uniform question, Pike's set was supposed to be new in compensation for the innards of the Discovery being new. This probably defines "new" as "before Pike set out on that five-year mission that kept him out of the war", and thus well matches "Q&A". (I'm still miffled Q doesn't make an appearance!)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

Ooh, the flashy blue wall panels of the "transporter room" are the same ones as the Enterprise set, so it is indeed meant to be an actual transporter room IMO. As to whether this is another ship or actually Starbase 40, Una's dialogue does indeed inquire about Spock's trip out TO Starbase 40. So IMO it's actually SB 40 where he begins, even if you can see the S31 bridge set peeking out beyond the blue wall panels.

Regardless of the location of this transporter room, its configuration is fairly odd. The way it's set up is such that the chamber is very long and not so wide, such that people are tasked to effectively line up in single file to step forward and underneath the ceiling doodad. There have been lots of non-circular transporter pads in the past, but perhaps this is an inadvertent foreshadowing of walk-through transporter tech?

And about the Enterprise's transporter room, as with Discovery in "Brother" we're again made to believe that the one that Spock arrived on is miles away (or something) from the bridge and not merely 4-5 decks away in the saucer, depending on who you ask. The Willy Wonka turbolift moves at least ten decks in one direction in the three seconds we see it, and the conversation inside goes on for considerably longer before they get stuck.

Mark

 

[Timo]

A long and narrow transporter would be great for emergency evac - it's impossible to crowd one of those even in panic. A tube into which you dive head first would be even better, precluding you from carrying any luggage or having second thoughts... But this limiting corridor is fine for combating lesser rushes. The perfect commuting tool for a vast orbital city? Also explains the lack of personal touch (such as, say, an operator).

A trip TO the starbase? I guess that settles it pretty nicely.

...Or perhaps does even better. Possibly the action is at the starbase, easily allowing for miles-long lift rides before the cab reaches the ship proper, let alone her bridge.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ronald Held]

Which it the first DSC episode with the theme park designed turboshafts?

 

[valkyrie013]

As a I do VFX for work kinda guy.. the Enterprise, Cabot orbit scene is all kind of F'd up..
1. It starts in the planets shadow.. Fine.. But the Enterprise doesn't have her Running Lights on
2. The Cabot also doesn't have her running lights on, and apparently the crew is trying to get a suntan because the lights out the windows are dialed to 13!
3. The Cabot must also be painted black.. because you can see S$%t.. I know the real world reason, this particular model was designed without much detail as the others so its a "20 Foot Model" .. and not designed for closeups.
4. Even when the Enterprise and Cabot zoom into sunlight.. still can't see Crap.. Simple TMP Like sunburst and then Tada.. you can see the Enterprise would have been nice..

 

[David cgc]

As a I do VFX for work kinda guy.. the Enterprise, Cabot orbit scene is all kind of F'd up..
1. It starts in the planets shadow.. Fine.. But the Enterprise doesn't have her Running Lights on
2. The Cabot also doesn't have her running lights on, and apparently the crew is trying to get a suntan because the lights out the windows are dialed to 13!
3. The Cabot must also be painted black.. because you can see S$%t.. I know the real world reason, this particular model was designed without much detail as the others so its a "20 Foot Model" .. and not designed for closeups.
4. Even when the Enterprise and Cabot zoom into sunlight.. still can't see Crap.. Simple TMP Like sunburst and then Tada.. you can see the Enterprise would have been nice..

It looks a little like someone was going back to the high-contrast, high-specularity/low diffuse season one look in layout part of the pipeline, but with a season two level of compositing embellishments (restrained bloom, no CA, no saturation boost).

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

- "The Trouble with Edward" starts on Stardate 1421.9, and ends some two weeks later. The date puts it approximately ARGH WHO CAN KEEP TRACK ANYMORE?!?!

- Although to be fair, this COULD happen after the end of Discovery S2, since the Stardates in that season were relatively consistent.The last Stardate in that season was in the 1200s.

- And as a plot device, the departure of Lucero opens up a gap in the ranks of science nerds/officers that Spock could easily fill in the preceding episode. If that could have been originally intended, those two could easily dovetail together - but one wonders what one Number One would think of a younger science nerd getting a command before her.

- The USS Cabot looks roughly analogous in size, but seem to have a slightly larger saucer than the Enterprise. the saucer rim is two decks thick, the rim itself having an uncharacteristic corridor running along the rim of the saucer, where most other starships will have rooms on the edge.

- The conference room seen at the opening briefing is not a specific redress of the Discovery's sickbay, but does use pieces of it. Oddly, between two walls with windows to the outside that meet at a right-ish angle, there's an exit door with a lateral corridor that wouldn't geometrically fit if that room actually had two walls of windows. I guess that sometimes the windows must just be viewscreens after all, or that side corridor is just a small closet or rest room that someone left open. Where on the ship could this be, anyway? The exterior model doesn't show any of the distinctive "rabbits tooth" shaped windows on the outside, as Discovery does.

- The conference room has a couple of TOS-esque chairs in the corner.

- The same set is redressed later as Lucero's office, where I presume she had all her stuff beamed before she herself beamed over from Enterprise. Or, the opening scene was when she'd already moved in and had come back to say goodbye, like O'Brien did before he left the E-D once and for all (though he had the forethought to change his uniform back to TNG standard). Anyway, we see at that point that this particular (and hopefully one-off that we're not asked to think too much about) room has windows on THREE sides, including behind Lucero's desk.

- We don't see the bridge, but the three windows where an upside-down-ish Shenzhou bridge could be are seen filling with tribbles.

- The mess hall is a significant redress of Discovery's and has a few interesting affectations, notably that the replicator doors have iconography of stuff like burgers, soups and ice cream. The inner wall has also been replaced, and instead of featuring glass tributes to ships lost in battle, it's the reverse side of the rabbits-tooth walls.

- The interior of the escape pod that Lucero takes out off ship is a thin redress of the airlock set, with no seats or anything added. The pod (as it was called in dialogue) hopefully wasn't the only one, as there weren't many people in it and none of the people seen rushing towards it. Also, it's seen launching from the lower front of the saucer, where there aren't any visible places on the model. No biggie though, we've seen lots of escape pods launch from blowaway panels on an alternate NX-class ships, so we're covered.

- Practically the entirety of the episode happens as the Cabot is already in orbit of Pragine 63. We assume that enough of the ship survives a crash landing to spread tribbles everywhere, and during the evacuation the Klingons get infected. The rest, as they say, is history.

- We see a dark-skinned Trill as part of the Cabot's crew. I forgot that they were technically around during this era, as one of Dax's previous hosts hooked up with a young Leonard McCoy back in the day (and oddly enough, revealed in another tribble episode).

Mark

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Ah, Tribbles, the ultimate sneaky method of causing ecological and environmental harm to a species.

What a unique/covert sneaky weapon to bring upon your enemy.

You'd introduce a pest into their planetary/space based environments that would eat through all their food supplies, get into all sorts of machinery, cause environmental damage, and spread like a virus.

Such a devious weapon that is cute on the outside.

Most species who are unaware of what they are can be introduced to them and you can take out a rival species by letting it out grow / over populate everything.

Truly a covert weapon worthy of Section 31

 

[Ronald Held]

Why has no one thought of using Tribbles to ruin a planet's ecology before?

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Why has no one thought of using Tribbles to ruin a planet's ecology before?

Because eradicating the Tribbles after you ruined the local planetary ecology is a very resource intensive issue.

Imagine a planet covered in ever growing Tribbles, the amount of wide area phaser fire, even on low / stun settings needed to sweep the planet is very time intensive.

Then the clean up of the bio matter / caracasses is another laber intensive issue.

But if you have no plans on using the planet for it's ecology / facilities, then you don't care that it's ruined.