Diving into the finale and 1x10!
- The Doctor's mobile emitter has the same shape, but the details are slightly different - the "window" that used to contain a circuitry-based look is now larger and only has a different pattern to it. I guess SOME adaptation and improvement has been made over the years, especially given that it's now three hundred years out of date (instead of five hundred years ahead of its time).
- Is the emitter made of programmable matter to begin with? It disassembles itself as it merges into the computer systems. Also, unlike his effects on Voyager, the Doc's image is clearly projected by the emitter before he grabs it and puts it inside his holo-jacket (versus any number of times a Voyager crew member would just hold it about where his arm would be).
- We confirm that the spore drive is indeed linked to subspace use, so they aren't sure if Discovery would set off the mines. Still,
she briefly shows up at the end, which is a nice touch.
- We also confirm here that Starfleet weaponry is blue/green and has been for some centuries. In "Kids These Days" the torpedoes fired by Athena are blue-white, and in "Vox In Excelso" the fire from the Starfleet ships are blue-green bolts, while the Klingons have green beams. The various shooty scenes in "Discovery" have more like thin whitish beams, though frustratingly we haven't seen much in the way of actual weapons ports on 32nd-centrury starships.
- In this episode we see that the Athena saucer's "reserve nacelles" are covered by doors when they drop out of warp in the gas cloud. Between this and the last week though, I don't know if the ship has enough room in the hull to accommodate the doors for these nacelles and the shuttlebay. (EDIT: The doors covering the reserve nacelles deploy outward and then retract into the hull around the nacelles, no hammerspace needed. Not sure if the same can be said of the shuttlebay.)
- The personnel that transport into the atrium to arrest Braka and his gang are all wearing the lit-up armor we saw the cadets wear this season, but with different underlayers.
- Boy, the Athena cleans up with Voyager levels of efficiency. Maybe the ceremony at Betazed was delayed to clean up the overall mess from this event, but the Athena saucer docks just as everyone gets into formation in orbit, so perhaps they've just finished after some time of repair and relocation.
- Also, after getting everyone OFF the ship at Betazed in the previous episode, all the students are aboard AGAIN to get off for the festivities. I'm guessing this status is related to the time that's passed.
- I don't know if it's the lighting for this series in general or for the Betazoid sun, but this is the first time I've actually been impressed by the "look" of the guest starships in this era. Prior to this episode, the ships all looked really "flat" in texture and detail. But the fleet scenes of the ships in orbat of Betazed looked flat-out incredible.
- Most of the 32nd-Century Starfleet inventory shows up in this episode, with the notable exceptions of the 32nd-C Connie, Angelou (the "flying rain forest") and Tikonov (seed ship). A pair of Antares types are visible in the final fleet shot, which is cool.
(Edit: No Creedence-type either.)
- Caleb starts his personal log by identifying himself as "Cadet Second Class", which is a first for this ranking system. In the US Air Force, first-year cadets are actually "Cadet Fourth Class", and they progress "upward" from there to where a fourth-year cadet is a "Cadet First Class". I'm guessing the Starfleet implication is that Mir is now a second year cadet, so it's the opposite of the USAF. In the US Navy Academy, students are called Midshipmen and not Cadets, but the decreasing number schema is the same.
Mark
