So, this week we find out, although it's not yet battle time. - The decision to evacuate and scuttle has been made, the Enterprise has been summoned, and she's there, wherever "there" is (no sign of Boreth or Klingons - presumably Pike met his XO halfway). But S31 isn't. What's keeping them? - Emperor Georgiou is there, too, having arrived by a pumpkin pulled by hormonal space rats, apparently. But the rest of S31 isn't. What's keeping them? - The two ships hard dock with forcefield-walled gangways emerging from Hammerspace. Why not with regular gangways? Or with the tops of the saucers touching, as they do before the rendezvous maneuver is conducted, for some reason. Echoes of Hyams' 2010 there - create a maximally flimsy means of docking to evoke danger...? - The four gangways emerge from spots on the Discovery that have no hatches, and meet with the Enterprise where there are no hatches. Until there are, that is. The Enterprise hatches are at satisfactory locations, though - two close to their TMP spots, two more aft where Kirk had ion pod launchers and whatnot. - We then see four thoroughly satisfactory Enterprise sets: a corridor redress with red overlays and TOS grillework, a round turbolift with TOS handles and indicator lights, and the bridge without the red alert lights and with a thousand details that will no doubt see future use. And Admiral Cornwell is there. But S31 isn't. Where are they? - And then a round briefing room but against an outer wall with nice round portholes, with the Chairs and the tri-display and all. Paintings and diagrams of the DSC version of the ship on the briefing room walls, not of any other versions. Alas. - Grabbing the time crystal gives Burnham certainty that the attempt to scuttle the ship will be thwarted by the Sphere Data, and we see this happen - Pike even tries with a pair of photorps and still fails. So apparently the Enterprise is no match to the shields of this science vessel after all. Not much of a battlewagon, then. I wonder where her strengths lay? - The heroes decide to build another Angel suit and open a wormhole to the future with it, accepting that Burnham junior was destined to be the Angel after all (and no doubt the force behind all the Signals, too). With this, lo, a fifth signal appears and takes the heroes (some with a spore jump, the others by warp) to Xahea, where Tilly introduces everybody to Queen Po and her engineering genius that helps them put together a supernova-free charger for the crystal. Reno is aboard, too. But S31 isn't. Have they stopped for snacks? - The charging process incidentally deprives them of the spore drive, setting the stage for a conventional battle. Good thing Number One jumped the gun and armed all the shuttles and workbees and even activated some spanking new tactical craft (looking like hoverbikes). We also see some of the Discovery landing pods flying around. No need for shields - there isn't a hole wide enough in that swarm of defenses for a S31 phaser beam to fly through! But S31 isn't there yet. Apparently Xahea lay in the other direction, and Pike's ship is faster than theirs, because she's there at Xahea now, too. - And so are Sarek and Amanda! So apparently their little skiff is faster than everything S31 can muster, too. Or perhaps Leland is fighting back, Locutus style, and secretly pulling on the handbrake? - Good thing they are all there to say goodbye to Burnham, who's doomed to stay in the future after playing pilot (in the nautical sense) to the ship because the poor time crystal can't take Po's supercharger for more than one hop. - No need for the goodbyes, though, as all the DSC heroes plus Spock decide to sail to the future with Burnham! No telling how many hundreds of belowdecks personnel they ordered to volunteer at gunpoint to keep the ship in flying condition... And then S31 finally deigns to arrive. Some 31'ish ships on a display, forming a 2D ring around the two hero ships to block all escape routes... At least four designs there, all with triangular hulls and two with four and two with two nacelles (direct primary hull pylons vs. a short secondary hull are the two choices there, for each number of nacelles). Fade to black. Loving the new Enterprise so far. Wondering whether Po and Reno will tag along our heroes in the nth century, as suggested. At least Georgiou will, although Tyler and presumably Cornwell will not. As per plan, that is. But no doubt they will all keep on arriving and disappearing at random moments anyway... But... Wo bleibt die Luftwaffe? That is, where the hell is Starfleet? Comms jamming is a poor excuse when every random visitor is aware of the heroes' plight anyway... If Starfleet chose to provide the Enterprise with an Admiral for this simple mission of taking aboard evacuees from a ship about to be scuttled, why didn't they also provide her with, oh, fifty fellow starships? Timo Saloniemi
The Enterprise is frequently the only ship in the sector available for whatever is needed. This is true here too. I'm starting to think that everyone else just stays out of her way for some reason, making her the only ship around by default.
The Enterprise and her interiors are stunning. It would be a shame to only see them in these two episodes...
Does everybody just decide to meet in the middle of no-where far outside Federation Territory & Comms Relay Networks? The only way they could be faster then S31 is that they are really far away from the beginning and on the move.
Logically, the episode ought to open halfway between Boreth and Earth - or a bit closer to the former if the Enterprise is the faster ship, and departs from Earth Spacedock at the same time Pike leaves Boreth. I mean, yes, Stamets could also jump, but supposedly he doesn't like doing so, and his friends come to pat him in the back every time he does. No patting this week. The deep Klingon frontier might be a place where S31 has a strong presence and Starfleet currently does not - they won the war basically by surrendering and letting L'Rell reap the glory, so keeping their heads down would appear wise. But Control commandeering the local comm relays is futile in DSC where small craft move a zillion times faster than big starships. Or, indeed, rumors. And it's an utterly moot point anyway, since Pike did contact Earth already, and reached Number One just fine. That Sarek would beat everybody to Xahea is not an issue, as we already know it was paranormal Vulcan mumbo-jumbo. He would not just have sensed Mike's distress, he would have had a premonition about where to go, launching long before our heroes did. Which incidentally would make it more difficult for Control to recognize the utility of tailing him. Pike again takes major revelations in the stride. The other heroes gasp at everything Tilly tells them about Xahea and Po, though, suggesting not only that Tilly failed to report all the events of "Runaway" - but also that the ship never ever went to Xahea in the first place! Which is actually said out loud in the short already... Tilly first says "You are Xahean? You are really far away from home!" and only then adds "You have boarded a Federation starship". Apparently, Po spent quite a while in that container! And wasn't beamed down to Xahea, either, but to some other location that would allow her to reach home in a day, in time for the coronation. So some distance/time data after all... Timo Saloniemi
I was a bit confused by Sarek and Amanda, because I thought he said it was the Katra connection, like we saw last series. I was totally on board with it being a three-way psychic Skype call via mind meld, until we saw Sarek's little ring ship zip away.
Yeah, this was quite possibly first written as telepathy, and only later filmed featuring the actual characters for supposed greater impact... So, did they meet with Spock, too, and if so, why do the two men both lie about it a decade later? If not, why on Earth not? Spock would be gone forever, too. Sarek would at least wish to admonish him for that piece of illogic, and Amanda would give a hug. We don't see the couple arrive, which is nice - they may have done so days before the episode for all we know. I guess what bothers me the most about the 'sudden arrivals' mannerism is that the heroes really ought to treat every arrival as a new Gant. Sarek being Control is massively more probable than Sarek being Sarek! Timi Saloniemi
The line from Sarek about respecting that Spock doesn't want to see him seemed to be a perfunctory way to explain that. But would Amanda really travel all that way and not say hello to her son? Perhaps she did, there was plenty of time.
That Inspecter Gadget Extendable Boarding Path Ways with Force Field side walls. -_- Something about that rubs me the wrong way.
...Say, their placement? Two completely differently shaped ships have their boarding hatches in the exact same places. Why would that be, when those places could never work for any of the other starships seen in DSC? Had the gangways snaked their way from one ship to another like so many drunk adders, the setup would have made so much more visual and dramatic sense, adding to the emergency feel. Perhaps only the old Enterprise has hatches, while the new Discovery can morph random parts of its hull into gangways and hatches, to match any ship pairing situation? Timo Saloniemi
I dunno about "random". Those extensible gangways ought to be tied to specific airlocks on the Crossfields. Which ones they use depend on which ship of which class they'd be docking with.
It would make sense to have airlocks at the same intervals on all Starfleet ships for this kind of emergency situation. Logically they'd be the same on Starbases too.
The two ships we see are the only ones in the 2250s Starfleet with necks, though. Or with hulls that have sides, as opposed to edges. So standardization to the pattern we see is out of the question. If OTOH the heroes can choose which gangways to deploy, depending on the opponent, this sorta implies fifty gangways per side, when we can see the actual number is zero - there are no ports on the sides of the ship at all. Which is a good thing, because it implies the gangways are freeform magic, perhaps a piece of machinery that crawls out of the shuttlebay and then along the hull to the desired location, tears loose a wall segment there, and deploys... Things that stand out in the barrage of technobabble here: - Instigating a supernova is a bad thing because it kills folks across lightyears. Well, supernovae do that to stupid and unprepared lifeforms, regardless of whether they are artificially triggered or not. What is the moral dilemma in lighting up the supernova today, as opposed to letting it happen a century from now? It's not as if Starfleet would lift a infer to help the victims in either case. - When Reno reads Po's air squibbles, is the UT translating them to Diracian notation for her? How could she read alien notation, that is, tell it from poetry? - "Speed of wavelength"? What the heck? - Apparently the Discovery serves as a refitting center for incoming and then outgoing small craft. Better equipped for that than the Enterprise? Did #1 not have the means to complete her conversions? Seems the shuttles gain extra girth around the stern, bulging out so that there are slits on the forward ends of the bulges and a horizontal cylinder in the lower part, one or both of these things being the bigger and better phasers, supposedly. Random musings about the Enterprise: - Why the zoom-in to a bag labeled Engineering when Burnham is supposed to carry the time crystal to the Enterprise in a metal carry-case? I sorta suspected a clever switcharoo to fool Control, but apparently not. - Also, anybody spot the actor credited as Yeoman Colt and see what she's wearing? - Any screencaps of the Section 31 ship graphic? Burnham obscures the left half that might include ship class identification; the right half seems to tell that the warp speed and armaments are classified and the torps have a range in millions of kilometers (even though hundreds of meters would already be overkill, considering). But there's something there about ship class or somesuch behind Burnham (and later Cornwell). Timo Saloniemi
I haven't been keeping up with Discovery but looking at some of the promo images for the new Enterprise interior sets I spotted some Burke 115 and 116 chairs on the bridge and conference room. The only thing there were missing were the M (or was it W) prop on the backs of the chairs Do these old school chairs appear on the starship Discovery?
Apparently not - outside the bridge, only the mess hall has chairs, really... But there's tons of TOS references on the Enterprise, including brightly colored gel push-buttons, textile textures, shapes, grillework walls... It's actually pretty neat. And largely off focus, for all the detail, so one suspects intensive future use rather than just this cameo at the S2 conclusion. Timo Saloniemi
I really would've rather they went saucer-to-saucer like in the Enterprise days, or even just used the transporter. If they really wanted to thrill me, they could raft up the ships port saucer to port saucer, referencing the TMP-era gangway and also solving the "how to keep the engines from hitting each other" problem without having people walk a quarter-mile through space.