Spoilers SFA Ships & Tech

[Mike McDevitt]

If Professor Tilly is teaching third years, it suggests the Academy was operating in addition to the War College for at least two years before the Athena returned to San Francisco 209 days ago, though the exact year isn't something I've caught anyone mentioning. Memory Alpha is leaning toward 3196 for stardate 869372.1 (Ah, yes, seven digits, totally normal number to be living in!). If so, Tilly may have been teaching starship captain's skills such as statecraft, oration, and Theatre for six years now.

Also if so, The Doctor has been in operation somewhat closer to 825 years than the 900 years mentioned in episode 8, notwithstanding the strong probability of his involvement in the Temporal Cold War or other tempura shenanigans. It has me realizing he may easily have served in the 29th Century Federation Timefleet and this could have been the reason those meddlers never came back to take his paradoxical mobile emitter from him!

YouTube essayist Sci-Finatics called Kasq a potential "Dyson Hexagon", and it turns out that the world itself was depicted on their planetary crest in episode 5.

SAM does, seemingly, have a mobile holo-emitter, and looking something like a programmable matter blue diamond. Very cool!

 

[Mike McDevitt]

If Professor Tilly is teaching third years, it suggests the Academy was operating in addition to the War College for at least two years before the Athena returned to San Francisco 209 days ago, though the exact year isn't something I've caught anyone mentioning. Memory Alpha is leaning toward 3196 for stardate 869372.1 (Ah, yes, seven digits, totally normal number to be living in!). If so, Tilly may have been teaching starship captain's skills such as statecraft, oration, and Theatre for six years now.

Also if so, The Doctor has been in operation somewhat closer to 825 years than the 900 years mentioned in episode 8, notwithstanding the strong probability of his involvement in the Temporal Cold War or other tempura shenanigans. It has me realizing he may easily have served in the 29th Century Federation Timefleet and this could have been the reason those meddlers never came back to take his paradoxical mobile emitter from him!

YouTube essayist Sci-Finatics called Kasq a potential "Dyson Hexagon", and it turns out that the world itself was depicted on their planetary crest in episode 5.

SAM does, seemingly, have a mobile holo-emitter, and looking something like a programmable matter blue diamond. Very cool!

Actually, in this very episode the Doctor references his previous "lifetime" on the similarly rapid world with the chewy tachyon core. During 'Blink of an Eye' he told Captain Janeway he was stranded there for 3 years while 18 minutes passed for her. Maybe he went back there for 72-odd years at some point and he's 900 when he meets SAM's makers after all. And post-Kasq, 917 years old!

I'd say I can relate, but I don't feel a day over 200.

 

[Mike McDevitt]

Hoshi Sato used a sonic toothbrush that cast a bright blue light in 2152, and T'Pol had her dents coated in trifluorinate compound back in 2128, so it's baffling that the technology has not budged much in a thousand years. Not to mention toilets that can't even put up their own forcefields to block accidental dropping of tooth sharpeners or tricorders!

Moving to 1x08:

- They take a shuttle (here called a transport) to Kasq on what should be an urgent mission. Travel times and distances mean even less in this era, so I'm guessing in general that a shuttle can be used for high-speed requirement missions instead of say a runabout or dedicated courier (or Warp 9 probe or whatever) form centuries past. They're not going anywhere unexplored per se, and there were only three of them, so I'd say in general every ship, shuttle or conveyance all have pretty much the same upper speed limit for this era. Unless you're Discovery.

- We haven't ever had a statement of any warp factor in this century, right? Even a closeup of the helm console from "Kids These Days" shows their maximum speed as a percentage (unless the warp scale has been recalibrated to 100). I suppose warp is more like Star Wars hyperspace now, no real speeds mentioned and travel time being a direct correlation to the dialogue that needs to happen along the way.

- There's a lot of to-do about a toothbrush that fell into a toilet. Every character has emotional attachments to objects in this show, but a toothbrush? It seems something so basic can be replicated to replace at any time, or indeed EVERY time it's needed, even an electric one with no bristles. The last (and I think previously, the only time) we've seen a toothbrush is in the 23rd century where Stamets and Culber use some 21st-century looking analogs.

- Tarima returns this week with a new assignment and a unique uniform to match. One wonders if this was made simply to complement her actor's figure (even more than the uniforms already in use for everyone else), as we see no one else in them so far.

- Are the War College facilities back in order now? There aren't any such cadets visible this week, though that's just as easily to play into Tarima's arc this week.

- So the cadet quarters are made for four people per room? Having spent some time in dorms, I gotta say that we had more personal space than these rooms despite having much less open space, but at least the bunk rooms I've seen still had handrails and guardrails. I'd be worried for Tarima not being able to make it up no her bunk with nothing to grab onto, and then for her to tumble to the floor in a stupor even if she did make it.

 

[NCC-73515]

- There's a lot of to-do about a toothbrush that fell into a toilet. Every character has emotional attachments to objects in this show, but a toothbrush? It seems something so basic can be replicated to replace at any time, or indeed EVERY time it's needed, even an electric one with no bristles. The last (and I think previously, the only time) we've seen a toothbrush is in the 23rd century where Stamets and Culber use some 21st-century looking analogs.

In the very first scene in the 32nd century, the lonely guy gets his teeth brushed by a beam

 

[Tuskin38]

While it made sense in the 22nd century for Starfleet, the Academy, and the Federation government to all be Earth given they were the neutral lynchpin holding the other founders together despite their bad blood, I agree with the decision that the new Federation should be more decentralized.

Honestly, I think they should of kept the capital on the Starbase, and just moved to different planets every couple years.

Tarima returns this week with a new assignment and a unique uniform to match. One wonders if this was made simply to complement her actor's figure (even more than the uniforms already in use for everyone else), as we see no one else in them so far.

I think the normal uniform would have been brushing up against her inhibitor.

If Professor Tilly is teaching third years, it suggests the Academy was operating in addition to the War College for at least two years before the Athena returned to San Francisco 209 days ago, though the exact year isn't something I've caught anyone mentioning. Memory Alpha is leaning toward 3196 for stardate 869372.1 (Ah, yes, seven digits, totally normal number to be living in!). If so, Tilly may have been teaching starship captain's skills such as statecraft, oration, and Theatre for six years now.

The stardates the show has been using translate to, 3176 (Episode 1 Prologue) 3191 (Episodes 3 and 4), and now 3192 for Episode 8, if you're using the TNG Stardate format.

Memory-Alpha bases their dates strictly on dialogue or visuals, and they take all numbers in dialogue at face value and rarely convert stardates to real dates.

Memory-Alpha is going with 3195 and 3196 because some math I'm not 100% sure of, I think from some mention about The Burn being X many years ago.

The 32nd Century stardates have been messy since Discovery S3 though.

In Season 3 Burnham arrived in 3188, and Discovery arrived a year later, so in 3189. The only stardate spoken aloud in Season 3 was in a Burnham flashback, and it does convert to 3188 which is correct.

However, all the Stardates in Season 4 also come out to be 3188. I think whoever was doing the stardate work forgot to account for the time skip in Season 3.

Season 5 did advance the Stardates by a year to 3189, but dialogue in that season says it takes place in 3191, which is the correct year if one presumes each season advances by one year.

So most of Season 3 was 3189, Season 4 was 3190 and Season 5 was 3191.

So if the third years Tilly is teaching is the same first class from DSC Season 4, then SFA would be set in 3193-94

I'm wondering if SFA is intended to be 3 years after DSC Season 4 (hence Tilly teaching third years), and whoever did the star dates just added 3 years from those ones.

Also if so, The Doctor has been in operation somewhat closer to 825 years than the 900 years mentioned in episode 8

The Kasq say 900 years, but the Doctor himself says 800 years.

Or was it the other way around, either way there was an in consistency in the dialogue.

 

[Ronald Held]

SAM has a mobile emitter, but does the Holodoc have one?

 

[tenmei]

SAM has a mobile emitter, but does the Holodoc have one?

Yes, fairly sure we saw it this week.

Memory-Alpha bases their dates strictly on dialogue or visuals, and they take all numbers in dialogue at face value and rarely convert stardates to real dates.

Memory-Alpha is going with 3195 and 3196 because some math I'm not 100% sure of, I think from some mention about The Burn being X many years ago.

We also get how old Lura Thok is and her DOB of 3145 and age of 50 on screen which I think is another place where we get the 95/96 date.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

This puts it commensurate with her actor's age. But that does raise a question on how the hybridization works in this era... Assuming genetic compatibility based on Progenitor shenanigans (or other shenans), have the Jem'hadar been suitably un-scrambled from Dominion tampering to allow an adequate lifespan? Dominion Jem'hadar are famously quick to grow and are relatively short-lived (the "honored elder" in "One Little Ship" was twenty-one years old), while Klingons living and fighting for over a century were commonplace.

And is the little stone thing the Doctor handles, Sam's "lightbee" or mobile emitter? If so, how does the medical scanning thing he uses on her hand able to read it? How much of Sam's body is a projection - is it just imagery, or are there holographic bones or muscles under there? She probably wasn't "wearing" the fancy away team stuff everyone else was, given her armor seemed to fritz with the rest of her, but at the same time she DID activate the force fields (or whatever those were) with the same effects.

Either way, I'm not sure how the writers seem to think a patch would be easy. Whatever programming went into her would surely be whatever proprietary code language the Kasqians came up with, but would she be "open source" enough for the people of Denver to be able to effect a fix?

Mark

 

[Mike McDevitt]

The Makers said something to the effect that SAM took two centuries to create (possibly while 120 days passed for the rest of the Milky Way). Caleb accesses her programming much more casually than might seem reasonable, even assuming his abilities outstrip all his teachers. Very likely Kasq uses exactly the same programming language(s?) as the 3190s Federation, and that the entire history of their photonic civilization might have occurred in the short years since Caleb learned to type. But if that's true, Kasq's origins may not be shrouded in mystery to the holo-spa programmers, EMH Mark One, or, indeed, the audience.

Contrariwise, Captain Freeman is immediately adept at updating alien programming she's just encountered for the first time in 'The Cradle of Vexilon', so... who knows?

 

[Tuskin38]

we see starfleet officers in probably every series being able to use completely alien tech pretty quickly, except when the plot requires them not to be able to.

 

[drt]

we see starfleet officers in probably every series being able to use completely alien tech pretty quickly, except when the plot requires them not to be able to.

I guess it's not particularly exciting TV if our heroes actually have to spend hours figuring out how to use something instead of seemingly randomly pushing buttons and it just works.

That's something I always liked about "Contagion", Data had to actually had to try and learn how to use alien tech and wasn’t exactly successful.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

1x09 and an expected cliffhanger! Quick notes:

- The Athena is presumably ferrying the entire student body to Betazed, which may explain why it looks so crowded this week (hall partying aside). What about the War College students? We don't see any of them, do they have their own ship(s) after all?

- The Omega Molecule returns as a weaponized, synthetic variant. What's "pure" Omega in this context, though? The ones we saw in "The Omega Directive" are presumably all synthesized.

- The moving background of the VERY SLOW turbolift is strangely asymmetrical. Not that anything needs to be in the turbolift shaft, but IIRC when we see it from the outside in 1x06 there wasn't anything directly against the wall, at least in that part of the interior.

- At one point Chancellor Kellrec is planning stuff with Ake in her office as a hologram. He's leaning on the table, brushing up against her, and otherwise behaving as though he was there. Where IS he anyway? On the WC ship or Betazed? I'm sure he wasn't sitting the inauguration out on Earth.

- The main shuttlebay on the Athena is at the bottom aft of the neck. We don't see any other obvious places for shuttlebays on the ship (yet).

- The rebels take their shuttle through a transwarp corridor which JUST HAPPENS to be right where they drop out of warp, and which JUST HAPPENS to dump them in proximity of Ukeck. The shuttle also looks like it warps INTO the conduit, which hasn't happened before... Maybe the abnormal event horizon of the transwarp aperture has something to do with all this? The corridor isn't ACTUALLY where they enter and exit it, but because they warp into and out of it, it looks different as they enter and exit?

- Ake wisely tells the Doctor to get the newly reunited Mirs down to a secondary sickbay on Deck 2, presumably one deck down from the bridge. Still, everyone physically moves off the bridge instead of beaming off. Had the transporters been knocked offline by that point?

- The three Venari Ral ships tractor the Athena on the "halo" section and the nacelles, leaving the central saucer to separate and get away. These other sections are not physically connected, but are treated as such even when the saucer gets away.

- The saucer warps away with the help of "reserve nacelles", which is an interesting nomenclature. The ship isn't designed to fly in separated mode routinely like the Prometheus, but presumably all the components can move at FTL speeds independently. I'm only surprised Ake didn't detonate the rest of her ship and the Venari Ral ships along with it.

- The depiction of the Omega-47 "barrier" doesn't really make any sense. If they're mines, they're points on this scale and not a wall of any sense. What's creating the red barrier? And at a scale of hundreds or thousands of light years, any observable portion of it from the ship would be a solid flat surface without curvature.

- Not to mention that unless these mines can be set off by various transits through FTL methods not in regular space, then anyone using a transwarp conduit, spore drive, dimensional shift, time travel, etc. should be able to blink past the thing. Just saying, Starfleet should have options.

 

[David cgc]

Anisha's sensor jammer made the same sound as McCoy's brain-bleed-fixer in TVH. That probably doesn't mean anything, but it's a pretty distinctive sound effect that I don't remember hearing anywhere else before now. Maybe just a throwback to the early days of DSC when legacy Trek sounds were used all willy-nilly.

Ake wisely tells the Doctor to get the newly reunited Mirs down to a secondary sickbay on Deck 2, presumably one deck down from the bridge. Still, everyone physically moves off the bridge instead of beaming off. Had the transporters been knocked offline by that point?

Yes, Reno said they lost transporters after the first hit, right after everyone was beamed on board.

- The depiction of the Omega-47 "barrier" doesn't really make any sense. If they're mines, they're points on this scale and not a wall of any sense. What's creating the red barrier? And at a scale of hundreds or thousands of light years, any observable portion of it from the ship would be a solid flat surface without curvature.

It's illustrative and not literal.

- Not to mention that unless these mines can be set off by various transits through FTL methods not in regular space, then anyone using a transwarp conduit, spore drive, dimensional shift, time travel, etc. should be able to blink past the thing. Just saying, Starfleet should have options.

I'm sure Braka is going to give very specific terms of his blockade for what kind of actions will lead to him setting off the mines, including the detection of Federation ships that somehow managed to sneak past it. The DASH drive may or may not be able to slip through without setting off the mines, but the mycelial network is part of subspace, so the omega dead-zones will probably sill render it ineffective.

 

[tenmei]

- The moving background of the VERY SLOW turbolift is strangely asymmetrical. Not that anything needs to be in the turbolift shaft, but IIRC when we see it from the outside in 1x06 there wasn't anything directly against the wall, at least in that part of the interior.

When Terima gets in the Turbolift with Caleb, the Academy Levels are listed towards the door on our left, and away from the door on our righr. Terima gets on at Deck 33. It also clearly shows the lifts moving up the decks but not the Academy levels. Terima gets off on Deck 16.

- The main shuttlebay on the Athena is at the bottom aft of the neck. We don't see any other obvious places for shuttlebays on the ship (yet).

The shuttles seem to back onto an "Airlock" within the Bay - this seems similar to the Hangar of the Donnager in "The Expanse". Whilst 1x01 suggested at least seven shuttlebays, could this refed to the "Airlocks" in the Hangar rather than literal shuttlebays.

- Ake wisely tells the Doctor to get the newly reunited Mirs down to a secondary sickbay on Deck 2, presumably one deck down from the bridge. Still, everyone physically moves off the bridge instead of beaming off. Had the transporters been knocked offline by that point?

Curiously when Jay-Den and Tarima get sent to sit out the action in Ake's Ready Room (why not keep them on the Bridge to man stations), you can just see the info-screen in the Turbolift, which appears to indicate the Bridge is on Deck 2.

Reno says transporters are down just before they get sent to Auxiliary Medbat on Deck 2, presumably as its closer (and on the same Deck).

 

[Mike McDevitt]

Ake's "Well, that's a design flaw." earned a guffaw. The airlock has a specific pressure at which it DOESN'T REGISTER OCCUPANTS!?! I'll say! Screen door on a submarine.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

That instantly stuck out. Also, under what circumstance did Tarima discover this, and why the heck wasn't this reported? My headcanon instantly told me that setting the airlock pressure at a specific, out-of-ordinary pressure will trigger a diagnostic cycle that can be looped and thus avoid transmitting occupancy data up the chain. Or something. :P

Mark

 

[David cgc]

That instantly stuck out. Also, under what circumstance did Tarima discover this, and why the heck wasn't this reported? My headcanon instantly told me that setting the airlock pressure at a specific, out-of-ordinary pressure will trigger a diagnostic cycle that can be looped and thus avoid transmitting occupancy data up the chain. Or something. :P

Has Tarima been given any, what do they call it, menial duties as punishment? Doing maintenance on an airlock by hand seems the time you might notice a glitch like that (I was thinking a short-circuit, myself).

 

[Tuskin38]

then anyone using a transwarp conduit, spore drive, dimensional shift, time travel, etc. should be able to blink past the thing. Just saying, Starfleet should have options.

Well time travel is illegal, transwarp and the spore drive still use subspace just like the warp drive.

These other sections are not physically connected, but are treated as such even when the saucer gets away.

There are physical connections to the ring and wings, but I can't figure out the logic of when they decide to use them or not.

The saucer moves in sync with the wing when not physically connected, so there must be some sort of invisible energy field that keeps them together. Same with the other ships with detatched nacelles.

 

[valkyrie013]

So.. the Venari Ral has made "The Frontier" from Last Starfighter.. cool. not really.. Why in the hell would the Federation create a synthetic omega? When the have a standing directive to destroy all omega?

 

[137th Gebirg]

Sounds like the work of…

Shit… I hate to say it.

Section 31.

My guess is that they were looking for an alternative power source post-Burn and they got desperate.