Spoilers ST Discovery - Starships and Technology Season Three SPOILER Discussion

[Timo]

For the latter, would this be her? Dramatically, the use of this graphic fits (although any of the obscured ships could also be her):

https://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/epics/DSC-S3/S3E6/DSC-S3E6-261.jpg

The general shape is right, although all sorts of ships could fit this blurry form where we can't see the saucer sectioning or the longitudal strakes. And thankfully we can't read any sort of a class name - heck, it even looks as if the text there is in the nonsense (Emerald?) lettering Booker's ship uses on her interfaces.

I seriously hope the "new Constitution class" isn't actually named Constitution class. I mean, what would the odds be? Owo says "hey, this looks like it could be the modern equivalent of the Constitution", with zero knowledge of the 32nd century - and then it turns out that...

...But they did give the "new Intrepid class" the name Intrepid class in the same episode.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Timo]

Incidentally, do you think the Emperor's transport from "Terra Firma I" and Duggan's Class A shuttle from "Terra Firma II" could be the same design?

https://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/epics/DSC-S3/S3E9/DSC-S3E9-244.jpg
https://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/epics/DSC-S3/S3E10/DSC-S3E10-222.jpg

The angular cowlings on the sides are more or less of the same shape and position. This would make Class A a rather big vessel, but her upper deck could still (just barely) clear the ceiling of the ISS Discovery shuttlebay.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Lakenheath 72]

Spoiler: New ship name & registry

In the latest episode, we get a new name and registry for one of the ships at Fed HQ. The name is partially "U.S.S. (?)ONG" and the registry is NCC-325084.

 

[NCC-73515]

Spoiler: New ship name & registry

In the latest episode, we get a new name and registry for one of the ships at Fed HQ. The name is partially "ONG" and the registry is NCC-325084.

Song

 

[Lakenheath 72]

Thank you.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

Doctor Who reference, I wonder. Non-hero Federation starships in this show are largely named after people...

Mark

 

[DEWLine]

Could River's misadventures take her back and forth between "clusters" of universes? :-)

 

[NCC-73515]

The black boxes were from the NCC-4774-E, NCC-316608, and a Cardassian Federation ship!

 

[DEWLine]

So that settles registries for six ships named Yelchin, and one named Giacconi.
Gav'Nor is civilian, registered out of Cardassia or one of its affiliates whilst Cardassia was Federation-affiliated, so that ought to have its own non-Starfleet registry number.

 

[Timo]

Yay, this week's episode is essentially one of them apology ones! And with Frakes directing, so that nobody even need bend the knee for the apology.

I mean, it's chock full of innocuous little lines that cover bases formerly left open. In the first act, Vance and Willa have half a dozen scenes of sheer competence porn in dealing with the situation; the HQ cloak is also a potent shield; we get to see how Osyraa got to the nebula in the first place, and why exactly transwarp shortcuts and the like aren't good choices even for daring Couriers; there's good use of the morphing ability of the Nautilus, making a pure visual gimmick a practical one; and it's largely consistency city from there on.

Taking back the ship from a bunch of goons has always been a breeze, and Osyraa's bunch don't possess any supertech that we'd know of. Which is a pity, since we are in the far future and all. But then we get dialogue to the end that the TOS-TNG era is viewed as the golden age of science, by a reasonably educated scientist of the 32nd century. No doubt there's bias there, but still... Things might have gone downhill long before the Burn, and even before the dilithium dearth that preceded the Burn by a century.

The scientist character is fun: we get another variant of the hovering wheelchair, now more Professor X style than Pike or Jameson. And we learn of the good that the Chain can do, to individuals like him at least. And then Burnham shoots him in the head.

It's especially amusing that Burnham has to tell Stamets "I only stunned them". She's got quite a reputation as a homicidal maniac nowadays. And adds to that this week when she carries a potent stun gun and demonstrates mastery of the Neck Pinch yet chooses to McGyver a fatal fire suppression trap for three of her enemies, after strangling another. There's definitely a sadistic streak to her.

When arranging for the evacuation of Stamets, Burnham pierces a porthole on the wall of a chamber that has one of them elevator thingamabobs. Rather an absurd setup, that, a corner room that borders on the top of the saucer rings or the secondary hull but also on a vertical flank, and yet has an elevator rather than a door.

Burnham uses her gun at self-destruct mode to pierce the porthole. A classic feature to the unconventional gun. Cynthia "Two-Hand" Tilly makes both sense and nonsense in this context: since the weapons materialize on command, she could be packing a dozen without taking up her valuable hands, but OTOH there is no reason for her not to simultaneously operate two pistols which supposedly auto-aim anyway.

So the bots are still called DOTs, model 23 specifically. How's that for "enduring"? Will computers a thousand years from now still have Intel inside and operate on Windows Neo Classic or whatnot?

And finally we get an adventure where a starship takes herself back...

Contrary to last week, where the dilithium planet was right behind the veil of the nebula (200 kilometers!), Booker here makes a convincing argument that it's difficult to find a planet inside a hostile nebula without his expert help. It's odd for Book to go for that gamble to protect Ryn, though, because they both come from the 32nd century: even if neither of them saw Osyraa's folks enslave Stamets with that cap, they should be aware that things like that can be done, and that there's no blackmailing Osyraa when she can simply take what she wants. Even if it in this case requires truth serum (which doesn't even come in a bottle, but needs to be concocted by Aurellio on the spot) rather than the handy cap.

Osyraa also needs to work on her containment techniques. Why hold her hostages at gunpoint when sedating them would be so much more practical? There's also some incredibly unconvincing bondage there. When Burnham "secures" herself against being blown out by applying a leather strap around a pipe, she isn't really attaching her wrist at all, even though all it would take would be a quick twist; she now has to hold on to dear life to maintain the grip, lest her thumb slip. And the manacles on Stamets aren't capable of holding him if he opts to move his thumbs, even though they are nicely cushioned and could have been applied on a more realistic manner without inconveniencing Rapp.

When storming the Ready Room, Zareh's goons don't apply as much as a simple flash-bang. Sure, they triumph in the end, but incompetence is ill fitting of the goons in a competence-driven episode. Perhaps Zora is preventing Osyraa's team from fully using the ship's intruder control features against our heroes...

Vance's future tech isn't significantly better. He has a lie detector (named Eli! And with a cute bowtie!) but the detector merely points out when the subject is lying. In order to be helpful, Eli really should be giving percentages: "Yes, she's telling the truth, with 47% conviction, and there are signs of her omitting something of significance value 6 or higher; she's fully at ease with that bit about the crew being unharmed, though." Yet it's fun to see a Trek Admiral character on the roll. "It's made of our shit, you know?"; we learn how (32nd century) replicators do work from "base material" that's broken down to "atomic level" and rearranged. Also, DS 253 name-dropped.

Set oddity of the week: when launching onto her campaign to take the ship back, Tilly tells her crew to breach the side door to the Ready Room, as it leads to a "maintenance shaft". And sure enough, behind the double pocket doors is a blank utilitarian wall. A rather festive type of doorway for such utilitarian access, is all...

Random starship fact: there's a Wanderer class in the transwarp conduit. Do we see her? Is she a FASA reference appropriate for the Orion context?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Timo]

...What is the ship on the background holo-consoles of F/SF HQ when Vance finally decides to let the Discovery in, at 5:18 or so?

Looks like we could be watching a ship facing to the right, with a nacelle on the foreground, a secondary hull behind it, and a saucer set rather far back on top of the secondary hull. It's not immediately obvious how this could be the Viridian or the Discovery, or even any of the future ships seen so far, although she might be related to the Nog.

When Book crashes his ship into the shuttlebay, we see a view in through the windshield, and a square cross section shelf has descended from the ceiling and is visible behind the duo. Moments later, we get a view from the inside and the shelf is just descending. After the crash, it's again back up a bit, and other shelves or racks are visible, too (although not in the close shots).

Is this the ship malfunctioning, or was there a purpose? The shelf is not where Book gets the medicine or the jammer. But perhaps those things give access to machinery that Book would wish to repair if he had the time?

When Osyraa and Zareh march towards the crash site, they "correctly" walk past Engineering so that the warp core is to where they came from, as per the recentish interior diagrams...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ronald Held]

They use Intel Core. i1000 running Windows 10 build 1000000?

 

[DEWLine]

I'm still wondering where Discovery 1031's deuterium and anti-deuterium tanks ought to be.
Did the refit shave off decks 16 + 17?

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

I'm pretty sure that the transwarp corridor (?) B&B are screaming through contained a fair-sized chunk of a Magee-class ship.

The underside of the 1031-A now seems to have two decks of lit windows where there were none before. I'd commented previously on how much the ship's insides would have changed to get extra or less windows, especially around the neck section where the ship had gained some bulk. Perhaps these areas are the equivalent of where Stamets, Reno and company were gaping at the Voyager when they first arrived?

Mark

 

[DEWLine]

Has the condition of the transwarp corridors worsened across the centuries?

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Has the condition of the transwarp corridors worsened across the centuries?

Nobody's bothered to clean up all the rubble in the TransWarp Corridors from all the StarShips that went boom.

 

[DEWLine]

Assuming that they had the means to go do that clean-up work after the Burn, yeah...

 

[Go-Captain]

Interesting how Vance's description of the replicator fits the Tech Manual more than the TNG season 1 descriptions, as well as some in Voyager. It's also interesting Osyrra doesn't seem to have familiarity with replicators despite professing greater technical sophistication. That sophistication is backed up by Book's subspace amplifier, and Osyra's scientist being able to do a simple DNA reconstruction when the Federation can't.

In TNG and VOY, replicators are explicitly energy to matter (TNG), matter to energy (VOY), using transporter patterns (TNG). That should mean they can create matter from scratch, such as when Thomas Riker is created (giving us two beamed Rikers from one source Riker) and such as when they make a new Picard body from his pattern, but need his energy for his mind, or to make him alive. That whole no replicating life thing.

Vance in DIS says replicators are low resolution, atomic level (explicitly), matter recyclers as shown with, "it's made of our shit, you know?" (like a fancy ENT style protein resequencer).

Personally I like to think the DIS replicators might be a resource optimized variant for the Peak Dilithium period. Alternatively, the instances of transporters and replicators making things in the TNG period do all come down to feed stock materials with no alchemy. Transporters are perfect resolution, and replicators (and pre-ENT transporters) are low resolution. Except it doesn't fit.

In Voyager, Chakotay replicates Janeway a gold watch as a gift. Months later he gives it to her and she says to dereplicate it for the power. If we were dealing with a matter reorganizer there would be no power to recover. Breaking down the item would cost energy and return gold (plus other materials) nothing more. Harvesting energy from the process also implies a sub-atomic scale of manufacturing.

Substantially I think we are dealing with the same system applied differently. Transporters in TNG aren't scanning a person, vaporizing the person, and recreating them from fresh energy at the destination. ENT shows us the matter is actually being converted into some sort of subspace state of being, and that state fades away at the destination if working correctly. The scanning, storing, energy to matter, matter to energy stuff are layers added later, but not the primary mechanism.

At its basis the transporter, and therefore replicator, is a non-alchemical matter shuffler, with side abilities to make forms from memory and atoms from scratch.

 

[Timo]

The "Year of Hell" dialogue is fortunately ambiguous. Janeway telling Chakotay to "recycle" the watch could be purely punitive: "You wasted precious resources, you now need to lose what you criminally gained, even though recycling will not recover any major fraction of the losses, and might in fact just waste further resources". Also, recycling need not be done via the replicator, and might just recover the substances that Chakotay created, without turning them into generic raw goo for the making of boots or meals.

But the idea that recycling is relevant is desirable as such. The ship can't be short on energy, not even in "Year of Hell" - pennywise decisions on replication have never affected the poundwise realities of warp travel or weapons firing etc. So if recycling nevertheless happens, it must involve recovering of the materials themselves, thus establishing that the ship has use for materials even when her replicators continue to work just fine.

If replicators created sandwiches out of pure energy, Janeway could simply spend a nanosecond less at warp eight. But if they consume raw matter in addition, and struggle more when having to transmute than when simply having to reassemble from existing elements, then recycling the watch is relevant, and everything Vance says is verified, too.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[valkyrie013]

Remember in Voyager with the Subspace corridors and them being littered with junk? and the old aliens saying they kept up "maintenance" in keeping it clean.
I find it convenient that there's a corridor it seems like 100 miles from Starfleet headquarters!