Spoilers DSC Starships and Technology - Season Two Thread

Discussion in 'Trek Tech' started by Mark_Nguyen, Oct 3, 2018.

  1. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Oooookay, tonight's episode is real Old School, and light on tech. Which may be saying the same thing twice.

    So, what to pick for closer examination?

    1) Spock's doodle on the Red Things is identical to an official Starfleet graphic on them, even though paranormally sketched two months in advance of the actual sensor readings. And I mean identical - it's not just a graphic on the Red Things, it's the graphic, with the same weird additional elements, some sort of aiming or scaling aids consisting of two semicircles. So Spock had a vision of a Starfleet graphic, rather than of the red things?

    2) Pike is confronted with the fact of the Spore Drive existing, and we can't tell whether he knew! I mean, he takes it in the stride, but only because his Awesome rating is somewhere in the high nineties; at the end of the barrage of the eldritch information, he just goes "If it worked against the Klingons, by all means go ahead". So we'll have to wait for additional dialogue to define how classified the Drive really is.

    3) Tilly toys with handheld antigravs and VR glasses, but what's that with her "personal shield"? She isn't wearing a TAS belt, but what is she wearing?

    4) When our heroes beam down, the ship is oriented the TOS way, portside down. Is there a tech reason for that, perhaps?

    5) The low-tech place, built out of the contents of a single flying church and the gear of a few infantrymen, expands to a mighty global'ish series of settlements. The heroes zoom in on the original site and the original church, thanks to the radio SOS. The most amazing bit is the one where they find all-new stained-glass windows! I mean, how does the community proceed with creating all-new stained glass? Transforming the original bits with 100% efficiency by "simple" (hot and complex!) melting won't work. But creating additional flat glass panes like that is an industry unto itself...What items found inside the flying church would facilitate the industry?¨

    6) Pike gives the standard transporter-tech-for-dummies explanation to Jacob, with the "transfer to energy" bit even though "energy-only beaming" in early TNG is super-rare, phased matter, yadda yadda. My question is, do the current tech writers believe in the energy stuff or not?

    7) If a small lump of once cubic centimeter or whatnot sucks like tons, the big rock sucks like millions to billions. Still not enough to create the pull we saw, though. But we can plead extra weirdness with fries and Coke here easily enough. So, what so suddenly displaced these radioactive rocks in the first place (and, from the sounds of it, for the first time in a million years or so)? Back in "Brother", the hero ship pushed the asteroid into the pulsar, or Detmer made it sound like that at least. Here, they may have destablized the ring. Is this true Quantum Leap, then, with Sam chiefly having to solve self-inflicted problems?

    8) Yes, yes, we know Tilly acts more or less concussed even when she's not. But here she strongly indicates she doesn't know every crew member aboard personally. So, more than 130'ish people aboard now?

    9) And the Franz Joseph UFP Seal returns.

    Timo Saloniemi
     
    Last edited: Jan 25, 2019
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  2. Tomalak

    Tomalak Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Yeah, I was surprised with point 9 after the apparent fuss that was made last season. If it was another oversight, someone is in trouble. And yet weren't those tugs last week awfully reminiscent of Ptolemy-class ships? Maybe there is a deal of some sort...
     
  3. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    That'd be Good.

    Also, correction: the ship beams down her top officers flying starboard side down. Violation of Gene's vision! Or then our heroes are in the Terran Universe all.

    Timo Saloniemu
     
  4. Ithekro

    Ithekro Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Need to beam in Captain Archer via temporal beaming to deal with it than.

    As for the ship being port or starboard to a planet while in orbit, perhaps that's where they have most of the main and redundant transporter emitters, making it safer to transport people due to the increased safety margin.
     
  5. Mark_Nguyen

    Mark_Nguyen Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Re: Tilly not knowing everyone, perhaps there have been so many transfers since the end of the war and Tilly hasn't had the chance to meet them. Wait till she gets to Gilbert and Sullivan. Also she does quickly identify May AS May, despite not remembering from where she knows this ghost.

    Re: Stained glass, who knows what could have come along with the flying church - its library? An artisan from 2053 with that sort of knowledge? The priest of said church who'd just watched a how-to on 2053 Youtube? Lots of possibilities there IMO. And they're on an alien planet, and who can deny that there are perfectly uniform thickness crystal shards in the North that can be used for such things?

    My notes:

    - Tilly's workspace on Burnham's co-opted console was not about "calibration modeling programs" but instead had a ton of notes and reminders pertaining to the Command Training Program. We see that Saru is her director for this program (makes sense, Riker was in charge of Wesley later on), and contains a multitude of to-dos like "Bridge tour with Capt. Pike", "Study for exam", "Get deodorant", and "Remember to always be thankful for a roof over your head, food in your stomach and a good heart". :D

    - Hum, so the earlier reports WERE correct and Pike has taken over some other space as his ready room / office / whatever, possibly the actual conference room of this ship. I'd hesitate to CALL it a ready room, but seeing as how it has functionally the same size and content as the Shenzhou's ready room (including desk, separate conference table, and Captainly accoutrements) it certainly seems to fit the bill. I do then wonder if the old Lorca RR will indeed be seen as Burnham's personal lab after all.

    - But WHERE on the ship is Pike's new sanctum santorum? The main door leads to a turbolift, and there is a second door on the side of the room with the conference table. Given the slant and curvature of the external wall, we're led to believe that it's on the upper saucer. I was thinking it'd be directly under the bridge and using the same turboshaft, but there's no corresponding space with windows that could match.

    - However, if the three windows of Pike's ready room match the three topmost aft windows on the model of the ship, maybe this room is ABOVE the bridge proper and therefore a hike UP from the main room? Then the bridge is on Deck 2, with windows on the model that could match Lorca's ready room (port side aft) and of course the main window up front. I know we're still debating the scale of the ship somewhat, but this makes a whole lot of sense IMO in terms of fitting everything in there.

    - But I'm still okay locating the bridge on Deck 1 anyway, since the room up there is basically all there is room for. I know there's no hard rule that says that Bridge = Deck 1, but keeping to tradition anyway, it means the ready room is therefore on Deck 0. Yeah. Sure.

    - Moving on, we haven't got a date for when this happens, but Pike has sure made himself comfy in his new ready room. There's a ton of his stuff there, like pottery, an indian throw rug on his sofa, etc. There's also a big vertical screensaver in the sofa area that moves and changes. Kudos to the set designers on this one.

    - For all the talk of keeping to General Order One (have they even said Prime Directive in this show yet? I'm guessing no, and there must be something in the writer's bible about this), our trio beams down into an empty space in the MIDDLE of town, at DAYTIME. Sure, there's no one around (so I'm guessing they scanned / timed it just right) and no one finds them until after they've entered the church, but you'd think they could put them down outside of town just in case.

    - But on the subject of playing fast and loose with regulations, Pike breaks regs no fewer than three times in this single episode: by telling Burnham that The Search For Spock won't be that tough, by unilaterally approving the use of the spore drive and expecting that Starfleet would be okay with it, and then the whole tech swapping thing at the end of the episode. Guess it pays to be as awesome as he is - and where Pike's last portrayal in the JJ movies was defined by his relationship with Kirk, even as independently awesome as he is here, you'd think TOS Kirk could crib something from this Pike's rulebook too.

    - Looking up the use of metreon particles and radiation throughout Trek, its use here is fairly consistent with other appearances in canon, especially with its interactions with dark matter and how explosive it can be. I'll digress at this point and refer curious nerds here instead:

    https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Metreon

    - Risa is given a shout-out here. Tilly likes their Mai tas. And also improv comedy, if you were able to catch the reference like me. :)

    - In this episode Stamets both enters and leaves the bridge from the starboard fore door. We still don't get a great view of what lies beyond, but going by the model there SHOULD be a corridor behind there. Especially when he runs off to prep the ship for the doughnut maneuver, and there SHOULD be the empty lift that Tilly had just emerged from, why didn't he just use that? Perhaps they have an express lift to Engineering from one deck below the bridge, presaging a similar express lift in starships to come?

    - What setting did that kid accidentally set the phaser to? Minor overload? We know that REALLY setting a phaser to overload in a few years can cause catastrophic damage. Maybe it has a grenade mode, necessitating Pike throwing himself atop it as if it were one?

    Mark
     
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  6. Mark_Nguyen

    Mark_Nguyen Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Regarding Discovery's top speed: doing the Math, Pike and Burnham's numbers suggest that the maximum number on the ship's spedometer is 51,450 ly / 150 yrs = 343c. This happens to be exactly Warp 7 on the old warp calculation scale of Wf^3, or 7x7x7.

    Coincidence?

    Mark
     
    Last edited: Jan 27, 2019
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  7. Tomalak

    Tomalak Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Ah, I was thinking Pike's room was his quarters. Was it the set used to keep Emperor Georgiou under house arrest at the end of last season? I'll have to go and watch again.
     
  8. matthunter

    matthunter Admiral Admiral

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    And seven red bursts...

    Bungie had a similar obsession with the number 7 in the Halo games.... is one of the DSC team a fan?
     
  9. Mytran

    Mytran Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    This stood out to me because TOS (and Trek in general) has NEVER been consistent with the WF-cubed formula. To hear it used now represents a total lack of familiarity with Trek lore, not to mention a failure to consider just how SLOW this formula really is.

    For example: In Pike's hitherto only other Prime appearance (The Cage) they set off for Talos-4, which is 18 light years away. That journey (at Warp 7 using the WF-cubed system) would have taken them 19 days.
    There are numerous other examples available from the rest of Trek as well.

    The best lesson to learn from previous series is to keep warp vague. It just works so much better.
     
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  10. Ithekro

    Ithekro Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Interesting that is Discovery's top speed is Warp Factor 7, that still leaves the likes of Enterprise as faster at warp, with her pushing it at Warp Factor 8 (the point where Scotty starts to have conistant complaints), yet the hull can make it to Warp Factor 14.1 before flying apart. Both are up from Archer's Enterprise eventually braking past Warp Factor 5.

    We don't know how far Discovery's hull can be pushed, but that's what they have a Spore Drive for...to not need to push their warp drive and hull frame to that level of stress.
     
  11. Mark_Nguyen

    Mark_Nguyen Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I'm sure specific references to how fast any given ship is will be sparse except in times like these - for which only we nerds would ever get bent out of shape for. Even in this case, while we nerds have almost certainly identified how the WRITERS have come up with these numbers, it's not like Pike is a math whiz (that we know of). At best, he'd likely have an idea of just how many C the Discovery can max out at, and then he'd divide it roughly into how many ly the red thing was away.

    There's still some room there for interpretation, and more importantly, from a story standpoint all the casual fan needs to know is that it's so far away as to be impossible to get there except for Discovery

    As a related topic, 50,000+ ly from the rough vicinity of the UFP's core systems, and in the Beta Quadrant, means that the red burst is pretty much on the outskirts of the galaxy along the dividing line between the Beta and Delta quadrants. This, if you accept that the Milky Way is roughly 100,000ly in diameter and the UFP at this time lies about on the dividing line between the Alpha and Beta quadrants, about 2/3 of the way from galactic center. There's 10-15% of wiggle room, but it's still about half a galaxy away.

    Moreover, we re-establish that there's really no practical upper limit to the range of the spore drive, at least within the galaxy. And that whatever happens, the spore drive tech will be lost and generally forgotten, or still classified, or else someone from the TNG era would certainly have wistfully remembered how Starfleet once plied the galaxy at the push of a button...

    Mark
     
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  12. KamenRiderBlade

    KamenRiderBlade Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    My theory is that the enemy attempts to kill all existence of the spores needed to power the spore drive and destroys any spares on board Discovery somehow, ergo crippling the Spore Drive, making it impossible to use without fuel.

    At the end of last season, there was one moon that had the spores needed and somebody is going to destroy that little moon and infiltrate Discovery to destroy the stockpile by the end of the series, ergo limiting the usefulness of the tech due to it being impossible to find more spores in the Alpha/Beta quadrant and the tech will get classified / largely forgotten.

    Stamets will try to save his lifes work by taking the data, some samples to regrow it, and somehow (plot driven) go to the future where he can be safe from whomever is trying to destroy his tech.
     
  13. Ithekro

    Ithekro Vice Admiral Admiral

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    The tech will be lost at some point. Either the spores needed to make it work go away, or Stamets dies and they never are able to produce a functional interface without a DNA match to preform the navigation work....than the drive becomes basically an oddity that doesn't work all that well. It does work, but in very limited range jumps prior to the loss of USS Glenn. And without the spores it won't work at all.

    Could we assume we saw USS Discovery in Spacedock in Star Trek III? After a major refit that replaced its older Warp 7 drive system with something faster, but also removed the Spore Drive? (Basically retcon the old proposed Enterprise design that inspired USS Discovery into being the refit of USS Discovery in the 2270s)
     
  14. KamenRiderBlade

    KamenRiderBlade Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    343c would be between Warp 5 & 6 on the TNG era WF scale.

    To be precise, it would be: WF 5.7621987779513096652496717155946
     
  15. Henoch

    Henoch Rear Admiral Premium Member

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    On her own without external forces:
    Cage (circa 2254), Enterprise hit warp 7. (No one complaining.)
    TOS Season 1, Enterprise hit warp 8, twice. (Scotty complaining on the first one.)
    TOS Season 2, Enterprise hit warp 8, three times. (Scott, no complaints.)
    TOS Season 3, Enterprise hit warp 9, four times (9.5 one of those), and warp 8 one other time. (Scott, no complaints.)

    Maybe Scott learned he was wasting his time complaining to Kirk after that first one.
     
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  16. Tomalak

    Tomalak Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Or the ship got upgraded? The season three engine room is quite a bit different.
     
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  17. Henoch

    Henoch Rear Admiral Premium Member

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    My point. I just wanted the readers reach their own conclusions based on the steady increase in speed and reliability from Season 1 thru Season 3.
     
  18. Mytran

    Mytran Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    The Enterprise also covers distances in considerably time than the WF^3 formula would allow for in those episodes.

    It also means that freighters (at a max of Warp 2) would take 6 months to reach the nearest star from earth and TWO YEARS to reach somewhere like Vulcan.

    It's just not a good match for the journey times depicted throughout Star Trek and as such really has no place outside of the 1967 Writer's Guide IMO
     
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  19. David cgc

    David cgc Admiral Premium Member

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    That was my first instinct. It'd be more era-appropriate to have Pike using his cabin as his office, as Kirk did, but I didn't see a bed or any non-office furniture.

    The computer game this episode reminded me most of was actually Obduction, the recent spiritual successor to Myst. It's premise is that aliens have been abducting people from four planets when they're in danger of imminent death, by teleporting spherical scoops around them to safety. The main setting is an old-west desert town, but there are several structures that were brought over later and are just plopped into the landscape—a train depot, a house, a gas station, stuff like that (though the inhabitants eventually figured out how to tell a new arrival was coming and set it up so they'd pop in out of the way).

    It was a little more believable than this episode, since the total population was lower (a few hundred), and more had been brought over originally. I don't know how many people could fit in that church, but it seems hard to believe they could've expanded to ten settlements, even if they all consisted of only a few buildings each.

    Also, I'm calling it, the Red Angels are the Preservers.

    Nobody in TNG wistfully recalled how Starfleet once traveled beyond the physical edge of reality as we know it in a moment but once, and they were there for it. They weren't big on nostalgia in the 24th century, except maybe on Voyager.
     
  20. Ithekro

    Ithekro Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Well it would explain why Spock is versed on the Preservers.