Spoilers ST Lower Decks - Starships and Technology Season One Discusssion

I believe the Vulcan implant was for other species. There may be a Starfleet approved version, hence the LCARS.

 

JOBS FOR ENSIGNS ON USS CERRITOS

‘They’re all like “buffer the phase coils” and we’re all like “what are you talking about?”’

•Adjusting a subspace comm array
•Aligning “like 100” EPS conduits takes Sam a week, recalibrating takes another 3 or 4 days.
•Inventory of Cargo Bay 4
•Baryon sweep of warp nacelles (which can seemingly be conducted en route)
•Diagnostic on the guidance system is a 30 minute calibration
•Purge the calibration matrix (from a wall of buttons). Boims loves purgin’!
•Supervised Surgery
•Compiling (surgical data onto a PADD)
•PADD distribution
•Impulse manifold needs to be degaussed- again
•Conference room clean-up duty (An antigrav cart with mop, bucket, jugs of cleaning solution, a hard-bristled brush, lint roller, and a squeegee are seen. If any of them have sonic function or other improvements over 21st century equipment it is not seen. Despite how labour intensive this seems, it is a coveted job- Boimler and Tendi are eager for it, and Mariner resents never being asked.)
•Monitor power fluctuations in the tractor beam or impulse relays. Look at those amplitudes!
•Turbolift lubing
•Holodeck waste removal
•Carbon Filter Maintenance (Using a phaser to Scrape Carbon off the Carbon Filter)
•Archival cataloging during spacewalks
•Bridge Duty begins at 1530 (for Boims) This, according to Beckett, is during the Captain’s watch
•Re-chip the isolinear cores
•Wipe down diagnostic panels
•Replace a toranium ops module with ionizing subcircuits
•Buffer the phase coil
•Realign the matrix
•Fetch coffee
•Solve science mysteries
•Unclog waste pipes
•Protect the peace and freedom of the Federation
•Rotate the EPS capacitors- which overheat if left in one position for too long
•Update the Dog
•Bed pans are still a thing
•So, fortunately, are sprayable Air Freshener cans

 

Evidently there have been some advances since 2369. Maybe after criminals used a baryon sweep to rob the Enterprise, they devised a way to do it in space as a security measure.

Or maybe it's always been possible to do it to the nacelles at any time, and it's just when you need to sweep the populated parts of the ship that you have to evacuate the crew.

That struck me in retrospect. Ensign Tendi created an apparently sentient biosynthetic artificial life form, by herself, in her spare time. How brilliant is she???

Also in AI sentience you've got Peanut Hamper the exocomp, and possibly Badgey, though he might have just been a convincing emulation. They're popping up all over these days. Although presumably this AI renaissance will get nipped in the bud in about 4 1/2 years when the synth ban is enacted.

 

SOME CERRITOS DEETS

•The (Main) Bridge is on Deck 2. Captain Freeman’s Spacious Ready Room is beside the Conn, maybe the door by the Bridge Ops station is an emergency turbolift. Or the head.
•Turbolift 9 is inside a beautifully sensible (or boring) grey tubular lift shaft and not pinwheeling around in a roller coaster cavern in another dimension like some starship ‘lifts were back in 2255.)
•Captain’s Quarters (seemingly in the starboard upper saucer) are multiple decks above Environmental Control (and we either saw E.C. in “Moist Vessel” or a room with environmental control functions that also includes a transporter). Windows in Conference Room 5, and Lt Mariner’s room “so far away from everyone” is likely on the same starboard upper saucer deck, possibly the unseen Casa de Ransom is nearby, too.
•Command Prep is a windowless room with a large display screen and a table for auditing the audits. Efficiency might suggest it’s near the bridge.
•”Report to Ops for review of scheduled Ops” suggests a room called ‘Main Operations’ or something, but maybe Mare is being asked to report to any of the many “Ops” areas on Brad’s map and she can work from anywhere.
•Corridor 89 is a standard service corridor. It was full of unauthorized terraformation, but just like filling engineering to the brim with water and exploding coral, it was easily repairable with readily available parazine gas, deflector radiation, and some leaf blowers.
•Sickbay is sprinting distance from the Sequoia Workshop, and both might be on Deck 4. The Workshop was on the outer saucer hull fairly near the rim and does not have a bathroom, otherwise Tendi wouldn’t need to leave it to pee in “Veritas”.
•There seems to be no wait time for the holodeck, (which there was even on the Enterprise-D) implying more than one. A Holodeck is seemingly on a lower deck than Sickbay as Sam came up to Sickbay through a hatch in the floor in “No Small Parts”. In “Crisis Point” Tendi apparently changed into a Henching Costume made of non-holodeck matter and left with it through the arch. Her uniform is still somewhere, implying a Dressing Room or Green Room behind some hatch in the holodeck.
•The Bear Pack Security room and Brig are likely located in the saucer. Shuttle Bays 1 & 2 are at 8 and 4 on a clock face, and there’s an airlock at 3, probably, on the starboard edge of the saucer where they linked up with the Osler.
•Big, beautiful Transporter Room 8 may be on Deck 8, proximate to the vaunted Maintenance Hatch 70. Possibly there is a kindergarten on Deck 8 & a pre-K at the rear of the saucer but these rugrats (if any) have been neither seen nor heard.
•Ensign Barnes is quartered (possibly in a bunkbed hallway) on Deck 9 near the squash courts.
•The Bar is at the front of the saucer, on Deck 9 or 10. Otherwise Barnes and Rutherford took a VERY long walk from their date to the rally point. The Bar is very like the Officer’s Lounge, which is similar to the Mess Hall, and all are on the saucer outer hull, probably.
•Bunk hallways for Beta and probably Delta shifts are on Aft Deck 11. The A12 & A13 numbers on the bunks might mean the zigzag halls are positioned like 12 and 1 on a clockface. Or not. Tendi carries a jug (likely cleaning fluid for her mop bucket and squeegee) to her cleaning cart from the same perpendicular hull edge hallway said to include the showers, implying a Custodial Storage Room or maybe equipment replicator close by. Plumbing including mop water (and, incidentally, one of the other items with handles on her cart is the right size to be a 21st century toilet plunger) could account for the musty smell Boimler spoke of in episode one. Near the A12 bunk hall is an airlock more accessible than a transporter room.
•I’m still very unclear on how the nacelle struts and engineering pod are defined in terms of decks, so please, please correct me if I’m wrong. Tentatively I’d put Shuttlebay 3 on Deck 15-16, Main Engineering on Deck 19.
•Shax reports Pakleds damaged Deck 20, the lowest deck mentioned so far. •Frazzled Tendi doubts there ARE 26 Decks when Exhausted Sam guesses Sickbay’s on “Deck 26”.
•We didn’t see: Armory, Captain’s Yacht, Cargo Bay 4, Cetacean Ops, Observation Deck, Photon Launchers, Pottery Class...

•My “final” count for distinct Cerritos characters seen or heard of in season 1 is 168. A total crew approaching or over 670 would be no big surprise. Red Dwarf’s season 1 crew of 169 and later revision to 1,169 makes me wonder if I’m getting close. Close to going crazy! Crazy for Star Trek.

 

"Holodeck matter" is a rubbish idea that TNG used a couple of times in contradiction to its own tech manual, and which VGR wisely ignored. Holograms are just that, constructs of light given substance by force fields, as VGR consistently established (though they did occasionally technobabble it up by referring to "photonic lattices" or whatnot). Simple items like clothing, food, and props are merely replicated out of normal matter. Recall that in "Elementary, Dear Data," a piece of paper created in the holodeck could be removed intact.

 

So... character Photonics like Badgey and the EMH can’t leave the deck because they require holoemitters. Pulaski could be “crammed full” of real replicated crumpets, and Tendi’s costume could likewise be replicated inside the holodeck. Photonic Shax’s splattered gore vanishes off Tendi because he wasn’t a replicated meat-puppet, just forcefields and lattices. Sounds right to me- Thanks, Chris!
Well, that’s Replicated Egg on my face!
Now I’ll have to check which TNG episodes have repeatedly put the holomatter notion in my head. And decide what writer I retroactively shake my tiny fist at and which trusted character(s) snoozed in the Academy course on holo-engineering! And that means it’s not a given that Holodecks would have an adjacent dressing room for uniform storage- Tendi, Sam, and Mariner could have recycled their clothes in the holodeck replicator.

 

I think it's just the two Moriarty episodes.

There's a weird alternate explanation in the TNG Technical Manual, though. It says that inanimate objects are either replicated or holographic/force-field based, but it also says in one paragraph that holodeck characters are "composed of solid matter arranged by transporter-based replicators and manipulated by highly articulated computer-driven tractor beams" (p. 156). So basically they're replicated animatronic puppets, and it's just the scenery that's "photons and force fields." Maybe that's what the "holodeck matter" lines in the Moriarty episodes were referring to -- not that there was some alternative type of matter that existed only in holodecks, but that holodeck characters were made of nonliving matter and thus couldn't exist outside the holodeck. Although then they'd just drop dead outside the holodeck rather than "losing cohesion" and disintegrating.

In any case, it's overcomplicated, and it's no wonder Voyager simplified it.

Of course, the real question is, how did the Cerritos holodeck make everything letterboxed? Also, since I doubt the guys were watching the movie credits in silence, that means the Lower Decks main title theme exists as diegetic music in-universe. Did Mariner write it herself? Or is it a piece of stock music the holodeck selected from a library?

 

It comes from the same place as the TMP/TNG theme that Boimler was humming in another episode.

 

The Federation seems to have an anthem, played at the Niners baseball game. Is it possible that ships and installations can have their own anthems in-universe? Brad is humming the Galaxy-class anthem, ‘Crisis Point’ is playing the Cali-class anthem?

 

I was really disappointed that the anthem wasn't the Goldsmith theme.

 

Or as it is known diegetically “Anthem for Constitution-class refit 2270”.

 

I hope they play the old Federation anthem at some point in Disco S3, maybe at the end...?