Spoilers DSC Starships and Technology - Season Two Thread

[Timo]

The previous PADD would have been the one Voq snapped in half after marooned in Georgiou's dead starship. That one was generic DSC, with lots of blue glow action and fancy surface grooves and a low-res holoprojection functionality to its display screen.

As #1 beams in, the transporter operator says "teleporter incoming". Not often we hear "teleport" in Trek in any capacity, IIRC they wanted to distance themselves from the more common nomenclature.

That one was nice. Is "teleporter" the customer in transit, or a reference to the technology itself, I wonder? But relating directly to that...

Commander Nhan's stealthy reappearance comes with a "welcome BACK aboard" from Burnham, suggesting she left at the end of her previous adventure aboard and came back here. This sorta answers my question about what they'd do with a starship full of Starfleet's best and brightest while the Enterprise was laid up.

Considering the timeline and the observed states of motion of the ship, it should probably be assumed Nhan got back concurrently with Number One, and from the same assignment, too: saying their temporary goodbyes to the Enterprise at Spacedock, and leaving it in the hands of Chief Engineer Louvier. Who by all rights ought to be Nhan's successor/temporary replacement, not her superior officer, all things considered (Nhan's high rank, Pike's small crew, the fact that Pike took Nhan with him to the Discovery to begin with, in a situation where Kirk assuredly would have taken Scotty).

Okay, so Pike knows what Louvier is like, despite himself not having been to Spacedock to see the ship. Then again, Pike thinks it worth commenting what Louvier is like, as if this were news to both him and Number One.

It very much seems as if the ship sailed all the way to Earth/Spacedock, so Number One and Nhan could beam aboard separately and at their leisure (unlikely in the case of a courier ship), and Pike could have a chat with Louvier by whatever means but couldn't quite spare the time to see the ship for himself. And then the ship went to warp, to chase Spock, a logical move after a brief period of idle sailing when new leads into Spock or the Reds had been lacking. Too bad we didn't quite see Spacedock... But we didn't see its absence, either, which is good for these continuity musings.

Discovery certainly comes off as top-heavy in the brass department compared to her predecessors.

The closest point of comparison, in terms of crew count, would be Voyager. And while Cavit was but a LCdr, we did get a lot of early casualties and the potential departure of department heads. We saw the LCdr medical chief but not the chiefs of engineering or sciences or ops, and that infamous casualty list Seven views features one full Commander and two LCdrs who aren't surviving characters.

Then again, Janeway was running an "ordinary" ship. Lorca might have had a bloated medical division for mission-specific reasons: medical experiments, accident-prone scientists, an exceptionally diverse crew requiring a broad range of species-specialists... Possibly even a special triage complement for the Lone Ranger act where the Discovery would be the only Starfleet asset at a crisis spot and wouldn't interact with other ships even if those were available.

It remains to be seen what status Reno really holds aboard - so far, she's just a helping hand or two. But she, too, probably got back on board for "Obol", at Earth/Spacedock, because it would have made zero sense for her to remain aboard at the conclusion of "Brother" where she'd have to walk the doctors through the things she did to her patients. Plus, had she remained aboard, why would Stamets not know who she is?

As for shifts, five is a lot. But perhaps not for deckhands and stevedores working in the shuttlebay? The top brass might work in three shifts, but the logistics department could have six.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[matthunter]

As for the telescope, I remember Burnham gave it to Saru back in S1's "Choose Your Pain", as she didn't feel worthy of it and felt Georgiou would have been proud of Saru's first command outing. I can't find any reference to him having given in back to her?

 

[gerbil]

Discovery having a small regular crew would make sense if Discovery’s primary purpose as a science ship includes rotating experiments with temporary experimenters.

 

[Timo]

...It would be fun to be able to tell for certain, reference by reference, whether there are 135 or so lifesigns aboard, or just 135 crew and then an untold number of people who don't matter because they can't fly the ship or otherwise help the CO with the plot of the day. Saru's "Choose Your Pain" reference was certainly of the former sort. But are there any other references?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Retu]

As for the telescope, I remember Burnham gave it to Saru back in S1's "Choose Your Pain", as she didn't feel worthy of it and felt Georgiou would have been proud of Saru's first command outing. I can't find any reference to him having given in back to her?

Looks like Saru still has it. On the left, from "An Obol for Charon":

 

[matthunter]

Looks like Saru still has it. On the left, from "An Obol for Charon":

Yes, I was explaining the likely reason why it wasn't in Burnham's quarters as someone asked upthread.

 

[USS Triumphant]

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.

Or the changes to his body caused by the infusion of spore DNA continue, he becomes one with his life's work, and becomes The Traveler.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Or the changes to his body caused by the infusion of spore DNA continue, he becomes one with his life's work, and becomes The Traveler.

Oooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

 

[137th Gebirg]

Hmmm... Hadn't thought of that angle. And it works! Or, at the very least, A Traveler, if not The Traveler. Nothing saying there can't be more than one.

I wonder if the writers actually considered that.

 

[matthunter]

Hmmm... Hadn't thought of that angle. And it works! Or, at the very least, A Traveler, if not The Traveler. Nothing saying there can't be more than one.

I wonder if the writers actually considered that.

Does The Traveler puff his chest out, grip his lapels and proclaim himself "The original, you might say!"?

If Stamets does become the Traveler, would Culber be the Passenger? And whose ribbed backside are we on about?

 

[Ronald Held]

With the network soon to be shut down, what happens to Stamets when he is cut off?

 

[Henoch]

If Stamets does become the Traveler, would Culber be the Passenger? And whose ribbed backside are we on about?

So, how does Wesley become one, too? Did he do 'shrooms in college, too (oops)?

 

[Timo]

So, the newest episode is heavy on spore tech, lighter on other sorts.

- Tilly gets kidnapped into the spore realm by a biological transporter: a two-terminal setup where a cocoon at one end digests and another cocoon at the other reconstitutes. This is less weird than regular transporters.
- Our heroes deduce that Tilly has been teleported rather than merely eaten because every single bit of her is missing. Wishful thinking, but correct: Tilly's molecules ended up in the spore realm.
- Which is a mushroom forest not unlike Stamets' conservatory. Okay, so perhaps this is a symbolic, abstract representation of the weirdness Tilly is going through?
- Nope - our heroes access the very same forest by dipping their starship halfway (port side, to be specific) into the realm. Which then allows Tilly to walk in through a door (or more exactly a topside hatch represented by the same ceiling lift that released the tardigrade).
- It isn't that simple, though: normal folks can only go into the spore realm through the wobbly 'tween-realms surface if the stretch they use for transit is within the aquarium booth thing that Stamets normally uses for spore-flying the ship (and now we learn for good that this place indeed is on the port side of the ship, not at the exact centerline, as we see where the realm surface intersects the ship's hull!). Anywhere else, it kills (reputedly the Glenn way, even though Stamets gave a different description of the reason for those deaths in "Butcher's Knife") those who attempt transit.
- So a ship half sunken into the spore realm is like a ship half sunken in acid, meaning hilarity ensues for everybody else but Stamets and Burnham who use the aquarium chamber for making their acid trip.
- The analogy goes deeper: the spore realm starts eating the ship, which is what May's people do for a living. They digest normal matter, and start chomping on the tritanium of the hull. Eventually they "penetrate 78% of the exposed hull", which sounds like a very bad thing for a ship supposed to hold together and remain airtight, but apparently isn't. Perhaps they "really" said "seven to eight percent"?
- The spores don't eat Stamets and Burnham yet, though, even when odd stuff starts leaking into the ship where the heroes search for Tilly. They find Tilly, and May, and May's speciesmates who are fighting a monster covered in material poisonous to them - a monster that moves in the wake of the ship that Stamets flies.
- Turns out the monster is, ta dah, Culber's soul, which has been given shape by the network (not by May's folks, who are a just one species out of no doubt infinitely many living in the network), and has cleverly covered itself in not just an all-new type of Starfleet uniform but also the poison from a local tree bark in order to survive May's hungry sisters, and to try and catch Stamets. Well, now he does, and there's a happy reunion where May doesn't shoot Culber with a confiscated Type 3 phaser rifle after all.
- But Culber is made of spore stuff and won't survive transit into our realm, even through the aquarium at the engineering. Which makes no sense - Stamets and Burnham survived the opposite transit despite being made of our stuff, so why the asymmetry? (And how is the aquarium booth thing, or "reaction cube", special in this respect anyway?)
- So they try the biotransporter instead, using the very matter of the biotransporter for reconstituting Culber on our side. For some reason, Culber's DNA plays some nondescript role, which is never made clear; we might argue the spores read the DNA (which is currently made of spore stuff) to learn how to turn the biotransporter terminal into Culber's body, but then they need to use Culber's soul-whatever to give the body all the memories and whatnot anyway - and supposedly Culber was originally built in the spore realm wholly out of "soul data". So it's a confused mess, but then again, May is a confused mess and our heroes are not at their best, either, so the doubletalk can probably be excused.
- Turning the transporter terminal into Culber is a splendid success, but it severs the connection to May's people, leaving Tilly at loss of means to keep her Pinky Promise to stay in touch.
- The ship moves back to our realm, apparently without Stamets' help and merely at Airiam's keypress, and the spore side of the adventure is over.

Now, on the other side...

- The Search for Spock culminates in our heroes intercepting the shuttle, but for some reason they can't or won't use tractor beams. The shuttle does have shields up and weapons hot; from what we see, it's not at warp any longer, but there's no comment on this slowing down.
- The shuttle tries to evade the starship one final time by igniting nebula gases and slipping behind the heroes while they are blinded. But it doesn't go to warp (which would probably be hopeless anyway) and instead tries to fly into the nebula. Pike calmly orders a torpedo to be fired at it, detonated 100 m off; the shuttle is nicely disabled and tractored in. Good touch, Pike! This could have ended differently, you know. How about 110 m or 90 m?
- Turns out there's no Spock, just Georgiou, who claims she boarded the shuttle to search for the fugitive but found nobody aboard. She gives no excuse for continuing to fly the shuttle.
- Section 31 is a well-known secret organization: we learn of no character so far who wouldn't recognize the black badge for what it is.
- Although Pike almost gets a stroke when he learns what that badge is - namely, a TNG style communicator!
- We see the regular three operatives: Leland turns out to be an old buddy of Pike's (with plausible interaction and a nice subversion of our expectations on how Pike would view S31 or Leland this squeaky-clean side of Starfleet), Georgiou turns out to be an old drinking buddy of Pike's (with major implications on Pike's age to be debated later), and even Tyler turns up as a S31 liaison to Discovery.
- The nameless S31 ship does have more crew than that, nameless all, but we don't see many.
- The ship stalks Discovery in the holo-guise of an asteroid, and when it seems the heroes will sink into the spore realm acid, she "decloaks" or shuts down the asteroid surface simulation segment by segment and extends all her folding bits. So, perhaps the folding is for the camouflage?
- The S31 ship then launches three small craft from her aft bay (looking like regular workbees to me, with stowed arms) that clamp onto three spots on the hero ship hull, and then tractor beams lash out from the S31 ship to these small craft and start pulling. We never learn why the special arrangement would be needed, or superior to normal beams.
- Tyler calls for this assistance by saying "Control, do you read?" into his chest communicator, and Leland responds "Copy, agent Tyler!". So Leland is Control after all? Or the ship as an operational unit is?
- Pike and Leland shake hands in the end, after some prodding from Admiral Cornwell who is aboard the S31 ship. Which is weird - she chides Leland for hiding behind the asteroid camouflage rather than openly being at Pike's disposal, but if she herself was aboard all along, doesn't she bear the responsibility? There's little chance of her arriving later on. Unless she's our first-ever example of a holocommunicator mirage that is as high-res as the holomirrors (she's not revealed to be one, but S31 tech might allow for that).

All in all, I loved this one to bits. Not at all what I expected: the adventure in the spore forest had absolutely nothing to do with the no doubt approaching ban on spore flight, the role of S31 was quite straightforward rather than shady, the three S31 agents all had a dramatic punch to deliver (with different axes to grind with the regulars, but with a sympathetic side to everybody), and the whole thing kept wobbling like the spore realm wall, from shuttle chases to spore acid nightmares to male lead pissing contests to a concluding Burnham Monologue with Dramatic Music and the Faith Thing.

Oh, and the Pike Age Issue:

Pike: "We met at the Academy. Been a couple thousand light-years since then."
Georgiou: "Indeed."
Pike: "You were a force to be reckoned with. Sharpest tool in the shed. And despite being able to drink any of us under the table, you had every regulation down by week two."
Georgiou: "You're tactfully asking why I didn't identify myself when you hailed."

So, were Pike and Georgiou classmates or not?

1) Teachie could drink the students under the table, too. And perhaps she had "every regulation down" in the minds of her students, despite being this Dead Poets Society style teacher?
2) If Georgiou instead studied alongside Pike, a birthday of 2202 (now promoted at Memory Alpha!) might indeed be implied for the latter. He'd be 52 in "The Cage", then... Which in turn means that Mendez saying Chris was Jim's age would have to be interpreted as the former being about 33 back during the meeting mentioned in the dialogue, the one where Pike got promoted to Fleet Captain. Which then hopefully would precede the other meeting mentioned, the handoff of the Enterprise from Pike to Kirk, by at least a decade. Which then would mean that the |:| rank braid stands for Fleet Captain, which is just a fancy way of saying Captain-by-Starfleet-rank, as separated from other sorts of captain (such as Captain-of-hero-ship-while-wearing-but-one-braid). Oh, the implications...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

I have a Hypothesis about why they needed the bits attached to Discovery's hull for tractoring.

Given Discovery's spinning saucer section, it needed 3 solid points on the non moving parts to be tugged on.

If the wide area tractor beam tried to grab the spining Saucer section, it might slip and cause that section to spin, ergo not being able to grab onto it correctly.

The 3 bits were needed as anchoring points.

Or the 3 bits offer a stronger tractor beam since it's 3 areas with more energy going back & forth in concentrated form instead of a wide area of effect.

 

[Timo]

Multiple, fairly narrow beams have been the DSC norm from the beginning, though, without the need for these extra bits.

Perhaps S31 was preparing for the possibility of the ship going totally under, and some tech doodads in the anchorpoints would have helped with maintaining tractor lock even across the border between the realms...

Fundamentally, the act of launching the three things was pure drama, of course: the heroes ask for help, and Leland instead gives them an ominous countdown (while none were ever needed for tractor work) and then launches stuff (is he trying to destroy the heroes with missiles?). There need not have been any specific writer or VFX people intent that would involve technobabble and relate to future plotlines. But logically, there ought to be a rationale nevertheless. Perhaps S31 just has access to alien/futuristic tractor beam technologies they consider superior?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ronald Held]

Is S31 tech a century more advanced than Starfleet?

 

[Timo]

Not demonstrably so - a compact communications device doesn't exactly impress, hovering drones were cobbled together out of junk by Jett Reno on her spare time, and holographic trickery is downright commonplace in the Federation of the 2250s as per the show itself.

It generally boils down to Star Trek technology plateauing: we already saw it all in ENT in the 2150s, even if some of it was still exclusively in alien hands. Starfleet has just made certain choices on which aesthetics to pursue, but others in the Federation (Vulcans, S31) have chosen slightly differently.

It's sort of inconvenient that it's so difficult to visibly shake our heroes. We can't readily tell what they think about ships that pretend to be asteroids, or about agents who possibly manage to board a potentially shielded shuttle at warp. All we can tell is that the commbadge makes Pike lose his cool at a really tense moment...

...Is this because chest-mounted, slap-activated communicators are a characteristically Klingon thing (I mean, they aren't that we'd know of but they might just as well be), and Pike already worries about Tyler's three-way-split loyalties? Personally, I just see a James Bond moment there, with a cool yet not impossibly magical spy gadget taking a character by surprise.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[David cgc]

- So they try the biotransporter instead, using the very matter of the biotransporter for reconstituting Culber on our side. For some reason, Culber's DNA plays some nondescript role, which is never made clear; we might argue the spores read the DNA (which is currently made of spore stuff) to learn how to turn the biotransporter terminal into Culber's body, but then they need to use Culber's soul-whatever to give the body all the memories and whatnot anyway - and supposedly Culber was originally built in the spore realm wholly out of "soul data". So it's a confused mess, but then again, May is a confused mess and our heroes are not at their best, either, so the doubletalk can probably be excused.

I gave a moment's thought to this, that Stamets' mind being yanked into the network by his counterpart could explain how how Culber's soul/katra/neural pattern was snatched rather than going to heaven/being reincarnated to a new form based on his degree of enlightenment/discorporating into nothing as his brain decomposed, but while it could be handwaved that the mycelial realm is a place where thought and matter overlap to a greater degree than in our reality (like another blue sparkly place reached through exotic methods of travel in Trek I could mention), and a body formed by Culber's self-image makes sense there (and explains where he found clothes), it probably shouldn't have been good enough for the pod to grow a new body in our reality under our rules, unless Culber's mind came along with a tissue sample suitable for cloning.

Then I realized that was probably Stamets' fault, too. Or, if you want to be a little less juvenile, they had a sample on file in Culber's records (or found a strand of hair on a comb or something) and fed it to the pod off-screen. Or, I suppose, that while Culber's new body looks like his old one, it's extrapolated from Tilly's genetics, so he'll have all her wacky allergies that she's never mentioned after her first episode.

 

[Henoch]

Is S31 tech a century more advanced than Starfleet?

I thought Section 31 was really a time traveling organization from the 31st century. Did Agent Daniels lie to Archer?

 

[Tuskin38]

- Section 31 is a well-known secret organization: we learn of no character so far who wouldn't recognize the black badge for what it is.

Well when Tyler saw the badge he mentioned he had heard rumours about them, so he didn't 100% know they existed

(now promoted at Memory Alpha!)

And now removed.