Spoilers ST Lower Decks - Starships and Technology Season One Discusssion
- Thread starter Mark_Nguyen
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Assorted Musings on 1x05 and 1x06
- The Vancouver's bridge has one notable difference - the forward port door, which leads to the conference room on this Parliament-class starship (we haven't seen it used yet on the Cerritos), has a single large door featuring a window, whereas on the Cerritos it's the standard double door. It's only there so Ransom can casually peek into the room later on; you'd think they wouldn't HAVE a window, such that you wouldn't let anyone in conference haphazardly look at any sort of sensitive information being displayed or drama happening in the next room. Windows on aboard-ship doors aren't new (Ten Forward and Voyager's mess hall had them), but those were more decorative than functional - you'd never see any of them peeking through.
- While the shuttlebay sets are identical between the two ships, the Vancouver's floor lining, shuttle livery, shield and lettering are in red. I was thinking for a sec that this could have been indicative of the ships' specialties even though Vancouver is detailed to big engineering missions, but it could easily be a way to differentiate, say, primary and secondary shuttlebays or something like that.
- Rutherford and Tendi are scanning away in the Vancouver's Jeffries tube set, which is jut like the Cerritos' except extended downwards to be big enough to stand in. There is actually precedent for this: in VOY "Good Shepherd" they took the top half of their tube set and extended it to full deck height, to stand in for the utilitarian corridors of Deck 15.
- When Bradward goes to replicate himself the coolest outfit in the world, he uses the replicator prop unit he'd been working on since the pilot. It's PROBABLY another one, no? Or maybe he's still working on it as it replicates inorganic stuff just fine but makes banana's in hot mode only?
- I don't know how big the typical Olympic-class ship is meant to be, but here the USS Quito is pretty massive against the docking pylons of DS9. This is hardly the first time that a ship docked up there has looked sized wrong compared to how big it SHOULD be.
- While the Quito, Vancouver and Cerritos all seem to use the same mess hall set (itself a modification of the bar set from the first few episodes), each of them have difference tables and chairs / benches, which is a nice touch.
- Despite having at LEAST 39 orbital platforms to deploy (I counted thirteen groups of three around the moon), none of them are visible on the Vancouver's MSD, even though they see fit to show like eighteen trucks and nine shuttles. I suppose they could be combining their platform complement with that of the Cerritos.
The Vancouver MSD itself seems to copy and paste a lot of the stuff from the Cerritos, including the big room that looks like Astrometrics, and the fact that it has deck above the bridge! Then there's its own turbolift shaft running the length of the warp nacelle, even though there's nothing down at the other end they should need to access - unless that's where they keep their nacelle tube control room?
- These orbital platforms are cool and all, and they also feature a glass panel which shows... something related to the operations of the ship. This is the first time we've seen something like this in a while, with other notable times being all over the JJ-Prise and on an alternate Enterprise-D bridge. The one where Boimler was intending to make love to his lover also has the more yellow LCARS versus the Vancouver's more orange version on their bridge, so this may be a platform from the Cerritos.
**
- On the assorted Lower Deckers knowing what a starship's ambient thrum SOUNDS like, the participants know what the Enterprise-D, Cerritos, AND Voyager sound like. What can we infer from this? Are the other two ships the subject of Academy simulations perhaps?
- The episode-long faceoff with not-Martok is in a debris field featuring several Antares-class freighters from TAS. In their TAS appearance they were robot ships, so are we implying here that these wrecks aren't packed with the corpses of 23rd century unfortunates? Or if they're like the ships that showed up on occasion in TOS-R, and we're just assuming they're long dead? Dialogue doesn't support any crews or recovery thereof.
- Under what circumstance would anyone need to replicate something at the top of the replication chamber, to fall into something as we see the puree drop right into Fletcher's mouth?
- Both Antares-class ships tractor-tossed at the Cerritos share the NCC-502 registration number. I suspect temporal replication or parallel universes.
- Im going to assume that wherever the Cerritos' captain's yacht is berthed, it's not on the direct underside of the saucer as it would be on the Enterprises-D or E (or Voyager, if you want to go there), since that's where the forward-facing tractor beam emitter is.
- Delta shift has their own bunking corridor, going by the bunks' number scheme of 13xxx versus the 12xxx of our heroes. Would it also be on Deck 11?
- Is this the first time we've seen actual zero-G on the holodeck? We had orbital skydiving on Voyager, but that's not really a case of microgravity. Point being, I'd imagine microgravity to be a challenge to simulate, as it can't be as simple as turning off the gravity plating underneath. How would that work against the grav plating in the adjacent rooms?
- When they go digging for their "scanners" (tricorders) later in the episode, Boimler and Fletcher go into their lockers further away from their window, while Mariner pops open the lower locker closer to it. I guess she really does have three lockers to her name!
- I realize that Fletcher could be being somewhat facetious when he's talking about being "fired", plus Boimler also expresses the common "we are SO getting fired for this" dialogue. Can anyone BE fired from Starfleet? Are we really talking more about being convinced to resign their commission, or otherwise being discharged? I know that we're talking about people behaving like they really shouldn't be in Starfleet to begin with (at least from what we know of other ships), but I'm thinking that even in a paramilitary outfit like this, you can't really be "fired" in the traditional sense. Right?
Mark
- The Vancouver's bridge has one notable difference - the forward port door, which leads to the conference room on this Parliament-class starship (we haven't seen it used yet on the Cerritos), has a single large door featuring a window, whereas on the Cerritos it's the standard double door. It's only there so Ransom can casually peek into the room later on; you'd think they wouldn't HAVE a window, such that you wouldn't let anyone in conference haphazardly look at any sort of sensitive information being displayed or drama happening in the next room. Windows on aboard-ship doors aren't new (Ten Forward and Voyager's mess hall had them), but those were more decorative than functional - you'd never see any of them peeking through.
- While the shuttlebay sets are identical between the two ships, the Vancouver's floor lining, shuttle livery, shield and lettering are in red. I was thinking for a sec that this could have been indicative of the ships' specialties even though Vancouver is detailed to big engineering missions, but it could easily be a way to differentiate, say, primary and secondary shuttlebays or something like that.
- Rutherford and Tendi are scanning away in the Vancouver's Jeffries tube set, which is jut like the Cerritos' except extended downwards to be big enough to stand in. There is actually precedent for this: in VOY "Good Shepherd" they took the top half of their tube set and extended it to full deck height, to stand in for the utilitarian corridors of Deck 15.
- When Bradward goes to replicate himself the coolest outfit in the world, he uses the replicator prop unit he'd been working on since the pilot. It's PROBABLY another one, no? Or maybe he's still working on it as it replicates inorganic stuff just fine but makes banana's in hot mode only?
- I don't know how big the typical Olympic-class ship is meant to be, but here the USS Quito is pretty massive against the docking pylons of DS9. This is hardly the first time that a ship docked up there has looked sized wrong compared to how big it SHOULD be.
- While the Quito, Vancouver and Cerritos all seem to use the same mess hall set (itself a modification of the bar set from the first few episodes), each of them have difference tables and chairs / benches, which is a nice touch.
- Despite having at LEAST 39 orbital platforms to deploy (I counted thirteen groups of three around the moon), none of them are visible on the Vancouver's MSD, even though they see fit to show like eighteen trucks and nine shuttles. I suppose they could be combining their platform complement with that of the Cerritos.
The Vancouver MSD itself seems to copy and paste a lot of the stuff from the Cerritos, including the big room that looks like Astrometrics, and the fact that it has deck above the bridge! Then there's its own turbolift shaft running the length of the warp nacelle, even though there's nothing down at the other end they should need to access - unless that's where they keep their nacelle tube control room?
- These orbital platforms are cool and all, and they also feature a glass panel which shows... something related to the operations of the ship. This is the first time we've seen something like this in a while, with other notable times being all over the JJ-Prise and on an alternate Enterprise-D bridge. The one where Boimler was intending to make love to his lover also has the more yellow LCARS versus the Vancouver's more orange version on their bridge, so this may be a platform from the Cerritos.
**
- On the assorted Lower Deckers knowing what a starship's ambient thrum SOUNDS like, the participants know what the Enterprise-D, Cerritos, AND Voyager sound like. What can we infer from this? Are the other two ships the subject of Academy simulations perhaps?
- The episode-long faceoff with not-Martok is in a debris field featuring several Antares-class freighters from TAS. In their TAS appearance they were robot ships, so are we implying here that these wrecks aren't packed with the corpses of 23rd century unfortunates? Or if they're like the ships that showed up on occasion in TOS-R, and we're just assuming they're long dead? Dialogue doesn't support any crews or recovery thereof.
- Under what circumstance would anyone need to replicate something at the top of the replication chamber, to fall into something as we see the puree drop right into Fletcher's mouth?
- Both Antares-class ships tractor-tossed at the Cerritos share the NCC-502 registration number. I suspect temporal replication or parallel universes.
- Im going to assume that wherever the Cerritos' captain's yacht is berthed, it's not on the direct underside of the saucer as it would be on the Enterprises-D or E (or Voyager, if you want to go there), since that's where the forward-facing tractor beam emitter is.
- Delta shift has their own bunking corridor, going by the bunks' number scheme of 13xxx versus the 12xxx of our heroes. Would it also be on Deck 11?
- Is this the first time we've seen actual zero-G on the holodeck? We had orbital skydiving on Voyager, but that's not really a case of microgravity. Point being, I'd imagine microgravity to be a challenge to simulate, as it can't be as simple as turning off the gravity plating underneath. How would that work against the grav plating in the adjacent rooms?
- When they go digging for their "scanners" (tricorders) later in the episode, Boimler and Fletcher go into their lockers further away from their window, while Mariner pops open the lower locker closer to it. I guess she really does have three lockers to her name!
- I realize that Fletcher could be being somewhat facetious when he's talking about being "fired", plus Boimler also expresses the common "we are SO getting fired for this" dialogue. Can anyone BE fired from Starfleet? Are we really talking more about being convinced to resign their commission, or otherwise being discharged? I know that we're talking about people behaving like they really shouldn't be in Starfleet to begin with (at least from what we know of other ships), but I'm thinking that even in a paramilitary outfit like this, you can't really be "fired" in the traditional sense. Right?
Mark
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Re: Fired
Huh. Didn't know that. It's still not "fired" in the office comedy sense that this show is in, but I'd always thought that assuming you made it through training, you were basically in for as long as they needed you or that you wanted to be needed. I have a couple stories from college buds of mine who enlisted in the military and couldn't really hack the physical requirements, but their superiors basically moved mountains so they could keep them in, shuffling them between roles and specialties in the hopes they'd find a place to thrive. They ended up opting out anyway, but it was more their choice over anyone "firing" them.
Mark
Huh. Didn't know that. It's still not "fired" in the office comedy sense that this show is in, but I'd always thought that assuming you made it through training, you were basically in for as long as they needed you or that you wanted to be needed. I have a couple stories from college buds of mine who enlisted in the military and couldn't really hack the physical requirements, but their superiors basically moved mountains so they could keep them in, shuffling them between roles and specialties in the hopes they'd find a place to thrive. They ended up opting out anyway, but it was more their choice over anyone "firing" them.
Mark
Between port and starboard, perhaps? The ship has no centerline feature appropriate for a bay door, but both the impulse blocks have inset trapezoids that could be rolling doors (and would nicely match the trapezoid interior shape at that).
The TOS-R appearance specifically introduced a crew module at the bow; it's missing from both of these ships. Which, incidentally, are both registered NCC-502. Not a ship identifier after all, then, but a formation ID or something? (Perhaps even a mothership ID, with the drones slaved to an unseen and possibly surviving NCC-502.) Helps with building up a credibly sized fleet of the things with just a couple of hundred registry numbers available for the purpose.
It's pretty clear that these are supposed to be tugs, with long rows of containers in evidence, spilling those hexagon cross section sub-containers whichever way. Makes plenty of sense. Hauling grain without towing any containers, perhaps less so. Then again, the grain in "More Tribbles" was not for consumption, but for genetic improvement...
BTW, I assume no "Antares class" is actually mentioned in this episode. We still don't know what the class of ships of this ilk might be called. (Or what the oft-mentioned Antares class in turn looks like; "Face of the Enemy" is our one canon pairing of a visual with the name, but lightyearage on that might vary.)
I think we have seen a couple of instances of Cardassian and also Voyager replicators doing this: first creating the vessel (or through malfunction failing to do so, for comical effect), then pouring in the contents. Might be several Starfleet-standard drinks are prepared this way, too, at least when so selected.
Well, the E-D had a space jellyfish energizer there; the E-E had a q-torp launcher. I don't see a tractor emitter as a showstopper...
...Actually, I'd like to see any yacht as an option rather than a feature, to be carried instead of another type of payload at the CO's discretion. The E-E would have had none in ST:FC, say. And the E-D possibly none, like, ever.
Gravity everywhere in the ship is being fine-tuned anyway, and it being one gee means something is taking away five hundred and eight gees whenever the ship is accelerating. Taking away just enough to give zero gee doesn't appear to be much of a trick in comparison. I mean, yeah, we could argue that Riker in his cabin or Torres in her workplace is constantly swaying gently from microaccelerations that would ruin a space simulation - but we never see any such swaying, say, on liquid surfaces or whatnot.
Timo Saloniemi
I missed that the TOS-R Antareses had a crew / command module attached, among several other differences (no forward sensor / deflector, windows in other places, etc.). Could there have been a lead, manned ship commanding a bunch of drones?
Also, both the robot ships in "MT,MT" had the same registry as well, even when they were flying alongside each other - so there's precedent. I like the notion that the reg number was not for the single cargo ship, but for the squadron thereof, at least in that era of Trek. OR, like the infamous Prometheus, all these ships somehow Voltron themselves into one big NCC-502!
Mark
In "Ultimate Computer", the TOS-R model apparently omits the crew module, thus matching the dialogue on lack of crew. Although by "apparent" I refer to aft quarter views that sort of do their best to hide that very fact.
It would be a logical distinction to have the ship always omit the crew module when running on drone mode. And the Woden clearly had no command ship associated, or Kirk would have tried to contact that one, rather than just SF Command.
Yet the Woden is explicitly stated to originally have been a crewed type, "converted" to drone running, so this should be our overall interpretation of the TAS drones, too. But it then makes little sense that the "original type" Antares would have the registry NCC-501 assigned to her specifically, while a bunch of conversions would share NCC-502 between them.... So I might go as far as postulate that there once was a crewed freighter (tug!) class that was converted to drones in its entirety, and individual drones would later be retrofitted with a crew module for special missions, perhaps indeed including serving as a control node to a swarm. And never mind that the specific mission of the Antares, involving this odd diversion to a desolate planet that held nothing of known interest but nevertheless had already attracted Charlie's original ship, too, would be unlikely to feature swarms.
With the crew pod:
http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x02hd/charliexhd001.jpg
Without?
http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/2x24hd/theultimatecomputerhd0629.jpg
Good catch, I never realized that!
Perhaps, given the ease with which pennant paint is altered in DSC, Starfleet has a system where drones running under remote (that is, proximity) control have G registries, while drones operating autonomously have "straight" registries. Which then would suggest that Starfleet trusts automation more than live teleoperators, feeling the need to warn bystanders of the latter rather than of the former. Or perhaps the G-warning was only issued after the M5 debacle, and the NCC-502 swarm was lost before that?
Aaaand if possible, I'll pretend that Starfleet's grossly outdated Saladin class destroyers, age-mates to the geriatric Constitution class, were all relegated to drone control duties by the 2260s...
Timo Saloniemi
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Could you simulate zero G with a couple of tractor fields in the holodeck ceiling? The tech manual talks about treadmill effects, but maybe also it can be set up like a theater's flying effects rigs?
As to the puree pouring steadily from the top of the food slot, I saw it happen with some pink liquid in "Evolution", but in that adventure it was a malfunction. Maybe the ensigns play with the broken ones for fun?
I'd rather listen to Badgey's warning tips and not stick my head in a replicator.
Soft serve ice cream is no fun if you can't build your own swirly tower.
I'll see your magical devil and raise you a giant Greek god, a giant black cat in a haunted castle, and Space Lincoln. And a giant blow-up starship is a hell of a lot more credible than a starship getting shrunken down to a tabletop model in Flint's mansion.
Inflatable space stations are actually a real subject of research. They make sense in space, since without gravity you don't need heavy tension members to hold a structure's shape; you can do it with internal pressure and use a lot less material. There's also ongoing research into inflatable sail-based spacecraft. So there's nothing the least bit implausible about the idea of an inflatable starship mockup. Such things might be used for tactical simulations, target practice, and the like. Or, indeed, as decoys to confuse an enemy.
If it's feline behavior, they'd probably prioritize scent first, then hearing, then vision. Though of course, just because Caitians superficially resemble Terran felids doesn't mean we should assume they replicate every aspect of their biology and behavior. I mean, Cardassians look reptilian but are obviously viviparous mammals.
There's precedent in Wesley Crusher, a human who sort-of-ascended to become a Traveler. And Will Decker ascended with help from V'Ger.
We know from "Court Martial" that ships keep audiovisual logs of events on the bridge. We can infer that they do the same for other locations such as engineering, and that declassified logs of past starship missions may be studied at the Academy. By LD's time, that's probably done in a holodeck.
Maybe they build replicators with a "dispenser mode" if you want to be able to quick-refill your favorite coffee mug or something rather than have an entire new container replicated.
Trek has always ignored this. We've seen gravity go off in individual quarters in DS9: "Melora" and ENT: "Strange New World." See also ENT: "Minefield" where Archer and Reed are in free fall on top of Enterprise's hull even though there are gravity plates just one deck below them. Additionally, "Encounter at Farpoint" alluded to the E-D having a low-gravity gymnasium, and the shuttlebays on the E-D had "Caution: Variable Gravity Area" signs. At least three Voyager episodes mentioned the ship losing gravity on a single deck.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Artificial_gravity#Artificial_gravity_failures
So we have no choice to conclude that the effect of a gravity plate only extends as far up as the ceiling above it, so you can have full gravity on one level and microgravity on the next one up. Similarly, there's no evidence of edge effects from adjacent quarters' gravity plating.
In one of my Trek novels, I accounted for this by saying that AG plating created virtual gravitons that decayed very quickly so that they didn't travel more than a few meters. I think I justified this as being so the grav plates inside the ship wouldn't interfere with the warp field outside.
This came up on the Tor.com review of this episode, and some military veterans chimed in that "fired" is used as a vernacular term for getting transferred out of a posting due to poor performance.
https://www.tor.com/2020/09/10/badgieeeeeeeeee-star-trek-lower-decks-terminal-provocations/#comments
See also "The Apple," where Kirk told Scotty he was fired, though he wasn't really serious.
Why not would be my questions. If the computer can replicate anything then why not be able to program to do so, i.e. wanting to hand drizzle chocolate or something of that sort.
No, but probably not have the same job in the organization and still be "fired" from that specific job. I mean, even in my own organization we joke about being "fired" by clients even though we still have our job.
The Flint one I'll grant you. The rest I find more plausible than the giant inflatable starship being stored onboard, as well as the literal devil calling Kirk "friend."
Maybe for gravity plating, you need two opposing plates (floor and ceiling plating) to accelerate the gravitons between them producing localized artificial gravity. Sort of like electrons passing between to opposing charged plates (electrodes). Another idea, gravitons are emitted from one plate and re-captured by the opposing plate, then recycled back to the first plate to put it in a loop. Something about gravitons are not easy to create, but they can be recovered/recycled/reused. To change the gravity level, gravitons are inserted or bled out of the closed loop system into graviton reservoirs. The power level to maintain the transference loop could be very small, thus, they are maintained by separate power cells and are not affected by ship power failures. Power cells may maintain artificial gravity for years. Battle damage might short out the power cells or rupture the graviton "conduits" causing them to spill out of their closed loop systems. Also, certain space events (like Galactic Barriers, and such) might neutralize or drain gravitons over the whole ship, and require the laborious process of making more gravitons (gravity generators ?) to bring the ship back to normal.
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Well 'fired" for an current officer could mean court marshaled, or there's a "Page 11" entry, Court Marshal is akin to a felony where a Page 11 is a misdemeanor.
You can't be discharged for a page 11, its akin to a reduction in rank, restricted to quarters, etc. Akin to Tom Paris after the water world affair, I don't remember a "Court Marshal" to demote him.
for Discharge you have Honorable, General, Less then Honorable, and Bad Conduct. Less than honorable I believe is akin to a misdemeanor on your record, where a Big Chicken Dinner is a felony. There is also Medical Discharge. and Officers can resign there commission, and leave at any time, enlisted can't there in for a specified duration.
So for Trek, being "Fired" could be demoted, transferred ( in ship or off ship) or after a hearing kicked out if bad enough. For that guy it was probably he screwed up and got demoted and transferred off a plush ship to Star base 80!
For Gravity. Well, for Trek its a bit weird. If the decks were in the direction of acceleration, you could simply have a gravity plate above on the ceiling "Pulling" you up at 1 g less than the acceleration. if not accelerating, the floor would produce 1 gee.
But Trek, and others, the Decks run lengthwise, so the Inertia dampeners would have to behave like a bubble that encompass the whole ship that totally negates any acceleration, and the decks supply 1 gee, and zero g is made by turning off the plate under you.
now the fun is if you hit the Inertia dampeners during battle and your accelerating at 200g's.. if that happens your Raspberry jam in a nano second. .. eww..
You can't be discharged for a page 11, its akin to a reduction in rank, restricted to quarters, etc. Akin to Tom Paris after the water world affair, I don't remember a "Court Marshal" to demote him.
for Discharge you have Honorable, General, Less then Honorable, and Bad Conduct. Less than honorable I believe is akin to a misdemeanor on your record, where a Big Chicken Dinner is a felony. There is also Medical Discharge. and Officers can resign there commission, and leave at any time, enlisted can't there in for a specified duration.
So for Trek, being "Fired" could be demoted, transferred ( in ship or off ship) or after a hearing kicked out if bad enough. For that guy it was probably he screwed up and got demoted and transferred off a plush ship to Star base 80!
For Gravity. Well, for Trek its a bit weird. If the decks were in the direction of acceleration, you could simply have a gravity plate above on the ceiling "Pulling" you up at 1 g less than the acceleration. if not accelerating, the floor would produce 1 gee.
But Trek, and others, the Decks run lengthwise, so the Inertia dampeners would have to behave like a bubble that encompass the whole ship that totally negates any acceleration, and the decks supply 1 gee, and zero g is made by turning off the plate under you.
now the fun is if you hit the Inertia dampeners during battle and your accelerating at 200g's.. if that happens your Raspberry jam in a nano second. .. eww..
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First off, balloons are much smaller before they're inflated, being hollow and all. And a sufficiently advanced material could be extremely thin, so in compressed form it wouldn't be that big.
Second, who said it was stored? The ship has fabricators.
Lucien wasn't "the literal devil," he was an extradimensional alien that humans mistook for a devil due to prejudice. Again, no different from Apollo.
Gravitons don't work that way. They're force exchange quanta like photons. You can't "capture" them, just emit or absorb them. In fact, I'm not sure you could absorb them, since gravity passes through material objects (obviously, as we still feel it through the Earth's surface and through the floor of whatever building or vehicle we're in). Nothing is opaque to gravity (unless someone manages to invent Cavorite), which is why I'm so annoyed by shows and movies that assume people standing on top of a spaceship with artificial gravity will be weightless, as if the hull somehow blocks the gravity. (Honestly, some of these productions even seem to assume gravity is caused by atmosphere or something.)
Although, well, ST IV said you could capture photons, not that that made any sense.
But the ship wouldn't be under constant acceleration, so that wouldn't work when it was coasting at full speed or orbiting a planet. And of course in warp there'd be no acceleration at all; the ship would be stationary relative to the pocket of spacetime inside the warp bubble.
I would think grav plates produce a uniform field up to the ceiling, as I do not recall any gravitation gradient effects in any starship room.
The point is not that TAS was never odd. The point is that TOS was often equally odd, just in different ways. A lot of people say "I can't take TAS seriously because it had this implausibility and that absurdity" while blithely ignoring all the ridiculous stuff that went on in TOS.
Of course.
I concur, other than the Bussard Collector and Warp Nacelle, it really looks like "Super Evil Villain's" StarShip.
The most unusual Starfleet ship ever?
And what kind of tunnel does it fly through?
The tunnel it came out of seemed to resemble stereo typical Evil & Terror vibes.
And what's up with the Red "Tron" like glow stripes on the main hull?
What's up with the protrusions on the Warp Nacelle Pylons.
They look like giant Razer Blades mounted on them.
It bears some stylistic resemblance to Discovery's Section 31 ships. I hope not, though. They're already overused.
Looks like a slipstream or transwarp corridor.
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