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Spoilers ST Discovery - Starships and Technology Season Three SPOILER Discussion

That doesn't cover all the bases, of course. Earth is supposedly still somewhat important to the Terrans, even if their unseen Emperor doesn't appear to frequent the place. And Risa isn't all that far from Earth, as evidenced by Archer's travels in the first two seasons of ENT; in "Two Days and Two Nights", a distance of some 90 ly is stated outright. So the "nowhere" that Risa is the middle of shouldn't really be 200 ly across (or 100 ly, if we read "no ships within 100 ly" generously), but perhaps more like fifty at most; Earth should be allowed a dense cloud of activity around her.

Khan was originally found at what might have been a distance from Earth in that ballpark, an uninteresting region that Earth's expansion into space had left behind. Risa could be part of that, and only get a mention thanks to its reputation as the Pleasure Planet. And if its Mirror reputation was that of the Agony Planet instead...

Timo Saloniemi
 
Standing conceit re: the "Mirror" universe is that their counterpart-worlds are in the same spots relative to each other, right?
I'm still assuming this about the Risa scene: "no ships within 100 lightyears" was meant to include "...that we can't otherwise account for."
 
...Naturally, this could be by Imperial Decree. "Warp out immediately. Are you really waiting for the 'or else' part?"

Duggan might just as well have overheard this, even if it were only directed at ships under direct Terran control (which might be the same as all ships, especially if those that were then would destroy any nearby vessel that wasn't). But it's not as if he could really run, in that old shuttle of his. And the whole idea might have been for him to wait for his ally Burnham to arrive and spring a trap for the Emperor. Although he could have been an ignorant patsy, too.

Timo Saloniemi
 
So, what's techni'kal in "Su'kal"?

Spoilery things first: we get a future holodeck... malfunction. Of a perfectly excusable sort, since the machinery is bombarded by what gets called "ionizing radiation" in refreshingly uncomplicated technodialogue (although there's also "subspace density interference"). There's visual glitching and looping, but the Vulcan in (Burn-era-appropriate?) Starfleet uniform hiccups in an informative manner, explicating the mechanics of skipping and accessing necessary to arrive at a desired subroutine.

We learn nothing specific about the functionings of the holodeck, as our heroes either lose their tricorders or are fooled into thinking they lost them. Is it forcefields and light shows, or replication, or programmable matter, or what? We don't see glimpses of a grid, or user interfaces, or anything of that sort yet.

Where is this holodeck? We see a split-obelisk shape on Bryce's display, probably the outline of the Khi'eth. Is the ship still that intact, or is that archived information on her and the reality is more gruesome?

Since everything down below on the ship/planet is make-believe, the tech meat is in the way Osyraa captures the hero ship. Physical tentacles plus penetrating transporters do the trick all right. I can see the defenses failing, but how come there is no intruder alert?

Key technologies involved in the capture: a mind control cap for Stamets, an alleged means of analyzing and tracking the "signature" of the spore jump (something the heroes themselves seem to believe in, even if Osyraa in fact is operating on data from sinister agents and infiltrators instead), and perhaps something in those tentacles to make them couple the Viridian to the Discovery so that both jump in unison (is that what automatically happens, or did Osyraa need to acquire special technology for it?). The Emerald folks exclusively sport the familiar folding guns also seen on Zareh's goons in "Far From Home". Why are only the two who grab Stamets wearing helmets? (And do those come with mind control caps built in, considering the detailing?)

The Discovery now has a cloak, and even the Emerald Chain can't penetrate that one. The interfering nebula might have something to say on that, too, although to helpful or hindering effect, we can't readily tell. Osyraa's camouflage may be cloak-based, too, or at least has telltale neutrino activity á la ST6:TUC. Her ship now has lots of extra texture compared with the previous appearance, and lots of portholes lit in the "darkness" of the nebula.

When there's a mini-Burn, and the warp core is in jeopardy, Stamets is the boss of the emergency response - the de facto Chief Engineer after all? If Reno had any sort of status, she wouldn't hold back there. Instead, she just acts. And Nilsson is... Somewhere. Probably donning a new alien head, while many of her colleagues appear without their usual ones.

The response involves locking down the magnetic constrictors and purging the dilithium chamber, both of which sound like sensible things to do, but also like things that wouldn't make a difference unless implemented in a picosecond...

The Viridian gets affected, too. Oddly, Osyraa positions her bow first to the heroes, even though she arrived edgewise and turned her turrets to execute a broadside. Perhaps she's drifting there and thus having to choose this less than optimal angle?

The McGuffin world is V-Class on the displays. A so far unused letter - appropriate for dilithium spheres like the one from "Pen Pals", or for planets that are no longer completely there / no longer quite spherical?

What did Detmer manage to punch in to her console before being stopped?

Timo Saloniemi
 
A holodeck for a child should have no accessable controls nor indication that it is not reality.
Halkan is not Class V?
 
Right. Hard to tell with that font. And too bad!

Stamets having the skill isn't the problem. The ship not having an officer with the ultimate authority is. If anything, Stamets should be forbidden from messing with the warp core so that he doesn't get fatally distracted from his spore-flying duties, or from his mission-specific troubleshooting and miracle-making. Does the ship also lack a Security boss, too, with Nhan absent? Would help explain the poor response to boarding. Although it's a general failure on the part of the crew, really: they probably simply aren't trained to repel a modern transporter boarding yet.

Bernd Schneider once again points out the perils of using midget-size nebulae in Trek. The dilithium planet really oughtn't be mere 200 kilometers into the Verurbin Nebula - the distance basically establishes that the planet is actually outside it! Of course, we can argue that the heroes first flew a couple of hundred million klicks into the thin and harmless nebula before reaching the visible, stormy core, which indeed is just the atmosphere of the planet, torn a bit out of shape like everything else.

Timo Saloniemi
 
Except nuPike and later nuKirk did give those positions to those people. Saru's an epic fail there: nobody but Tilly actually has a position, and even hers is an acting one.

The latest ep is a prime example of what happens: in a crisis, people down at Engineering act without leadership, not knowing who does what and what is being or not being done. Nhan's absence might account for something there as well.

But the nuCaptains had something like a thousand people to choose from. Saru has less than a hundred. And perhaps he has grown to accept that dysfunction is the team, and that Engineering works best when nobody is in charge? This is a ship of eccentric scientists, often on rogue missions...

Timo Saloniemi
 
Based on the schematic seen in the episode, the KSF Khi’eth is either a modification of the Ba’ul sentry vessel, or visually the same. It appears the hull is segmented compared to the sentry vessel in flight mode. But the sentry vessel also segments its “obelisk” in “attack mode”.

I have no problem with the design of a ship from a particular planet basically staying the same for a thousand years.
 
I see Ba'ul design language there, but not necessarily any particular design. What we see could be the small fightercraft turned vertical, or one of the sentries simplified, or a couple of random shapes thrown together. It's a very simple design, but no doubt distinct enough if need be.

Perhaps we'll see more in the next episode; this one had the perfect excuse not to show the ship, quite regardless of whether there was appropriate CGI art available or not.

I wonder about the scale. We see half a dozen crew in the drawing; the very last survivors, or the whole bunch? A science ship could be immense but with a small crew (say, the hero ship!), or compact but jam-packed (such as the Tsiolkovski). But our heroes are notorious for fumbling ship designations, flip-flopping between assorted implausible ones such as in "Choose Your Pain", or sticking to an even less plausible one such as the Vulcan "cruiser" that turns out to be one of 'em glorified shuttles... So we have leeway here. And an excuse, since our heroes are fish out of water in the 32nd century, much as they may have been with Klingon ship designations in the 23rd.

Timo Saloniemi
 
You'd think.. by the 32nd and a half Century.. that they'd have better intruder countermeasures?
Have automatic phaser turrents?
Transporter inhibitors that activate in the event of Red Alert so noone can beam into sensitive areas?
Beam crew to an area then space the other areas?
Gas?
Auto lockout of command functions?
Beam command crew to an alternate command center then initiate intruder procedure?
 
You would think Tilly went through a command refresher or similar on the job training. That take over seen was painful to watch. You would expect more from a crew that had recent war experience be more quick in that situation. Perhaps this was written with Star Trek Prodigy in mind.
 
So, did we ever find out the full registry number of the USS Yelchin?

Is the Cuyahoga one of the "new Constitution"-class ships?
 
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