Spoilers ST Lower Decks - Starships & Technology Season 4 Discussion

That’s something that kind of annoys me. Did the producers think we wouldn’t know that they were Orions unless they were depicted in the same type of ships we’ve seen before, even if those ships would be 250 years old by this point? It’s an animated show for Pete’s sake. They could come up with any design they wanted.

 

They clearly broke the bank with the Chalnoth ship. :P Or really the good ship Friend Ship.

But this could be another in-universe example of “if it ain’t broke “. As it stands the Orions we’re saying their ship was already pirate-adjacent in their mission, so this could easily be an ancient second-line ship akin to the Miranda class, which is on-brand for the crews we’ve been seeing get zapped so far.

Mark

 

The Klingons being one of them.

 

But the IRL reason for all that was budget. They didn’t have the money to build new filming models most of the time. LDS doesn’t have that problem. They shouldn’t have to recycle designs; they can come up with new ships if they really wanted to.

 

we've also seen non-governmental forces using upgraded versions of otherwise obsolete ships before, like the 23rd century Romulan BoP used by the warlord Kan Kantar in PIC S1 "Absolute Candor" (which was effectively being used in piracy, going by dialog). and the appearances of a 22nd century Vulcan Suurok class showing up to help during the living construct incident in PRO "Supernova part 1".
it may well be that that any non-governmental groups just can't afford to reject the use of ships if they are still useable, instead just using older ships for roles where combat is less likely.

 

That’s true, and it annoys me for the exact same reason.

 

As well as there still is a budget for creating and rendering models.

But, more to LDS' trend of playing with TNG era tropes of reusing models and finding fun in it.

 

As pointed out by Jörg Hillebrand, the grapples, color, and glowing edges are all taken from the Orion pirate ship seen in TAS.

 

And the Orion bridge has the same-ish command chair too - plus assorted other callbacks, including the ENT Orion snot-ship appearing as well!

Mark

 

Not really a tech thing, but today's episode revealed that the Sh'vhal's prefix is 'VCF'

 

But that’s a SHIP thing, and that makes it a THIS thing! And also:

- Love the BIA phasers. They look like the Microsoft arc mouse that was released a few years back, with a clever folding gimmick.

- Stun sticks in use by the.. “Treks In the Cerri” trio are also with few parallels in Trek. Klingon pain sticks come to mind, but this begs the question if there are limits to Federation weapons designed to cause pain.

- T’lyn being an ensign-equivalent rank at 63 raises suspicion, if someone like Tuvok could do the same thing on the Excelsior at half that age. OTOH, with a long-lived species there’s nothing wrong with a Vulcan having several career changes if they think it logical.

- Are we going to treat her Bendii syndrome, or are the crew going to have hilarious and emotional episodes whenever she feels out of sorts? In terms of medical technology, COULD whatever they use to treat Zanthi Fever be helpful here?

- As is stood, everyone getting naked and uninhibited really had me thinking it was the Psi 2000 virus. I wonder if they want to draw a common thread here.

- You’d think that upon a command to repel hostile from the bridge, whoever was at Tactical would hit a button to alert all the bears downstairs to get the phasers slung. Or that the computer would understand what’s going on and do the same thing.

- Where IS the slam poetry room on the ship? The corridors look different, sorta like how the deck 15 looks different on Voyager in the later seasons. Are we supposing that this is literally the lowest deck on the Cerritos?

- Said room has folding chairs, which we’ve seen before in the Cerritos and absolutely nowhere else in Starfleet.

Mark

 

It’s the hidden deck 13. Only certain members of the crew know how to get to it.

 

Is the difference in rank progression more to do with T'Lyn serving in the Vulcan fleet while Tuvok served in Starfleet? T'Lyn's rank at age 63 might be average for a member of the Vulcan fleet as they would be more exacting in requirements to advance while Starfleet is a bit easier. In apparently a very short time in Starfleet T'Lyn already earned a promotion to Lt JG so Tuvok likely advanced at the Starfleet rate. IMHO.

 

The slam poetry group probably books either a briefing room or a lounge space as it suits both them and the other scheduled ship's activities.

 

It also has the exact same panels missing as they one they flew off in. I think it's just an animation mistake.