- Vashti had its secondhand defence net already in place at the time of the Mars incident. We don't know exactly how long the Romulan settlement had been there by that point, but it stands to reason that for a planetary exodus, not every designated resettlement target could be covered by either Starfleet or the Romulan navy. Odd though that in the flashback the only visible craft were Federation, and no Romulan smaller ships were seen, though we know those assets exist. Presumably the Fenris Rangers were active back then too, as they helped the locals install it.
The dialogue paints the system as an active defense based on killer nodes of some sort. Not what I'd call a "planetary shield", for the purposes of that separate argument. That is, you can fly through if you don't mind getting shot into pieces in the process.
Not much help against phaser bombardment of the surface, then. Unless there's a separate shield component we didn't get to see.
- Picard is super-busy with the evacuation plan, but gets to take three days off to visit Elnor and his Sister Act crew. I'm guessing someone forced him to take a bit of leave.
Makes sense. Although no doubt being busy also involves traveling a lot in and around Romulan space. And we might speculate that doing so is slow going, due to the collapse of infrastructure: you need permits from warlords, or escort, and roundabout routes and whatnot. Perhaps staying put would be mandatory every now and then, and Picard just happens to get stuck with Elnor, hence the two becoming an item, as opposed to the two being an item and Picard thus choosing to stay.
- When Raffi calls Picard with the Bad News, he takes the call privately by pressing a finger to his ear. It's reasonable to assume a man in his 80s would have a hearing aid (implant?), but we don't see it - and his combadge is still attached to his jacket which lies nearby. Incidentally, today's hearing aids can come with bluetooth control from one's phone and can take calls exactly like this.
Picard's old badge would appear to be a super-secret way of contacting Raffi. But quite possibly standard Federation commnets can be trusted with secret messages once the contacting is said and done, and implants might be the standard way to access those nets.
- Picard walks down the stairs as he dematerializes, which is one thing. Another is where is he going? A waiting shuttle? The USS Verity* in orbit? Or some other planet - there is ample evidence these days to suggest interstellar beaming is commonplace by now.
Such as the total lack of mention? In this timeline, Scotty has come up with the theory (or so Spock claims, perhaps solely to bolster the ego of the depressed engineer), but there is no mention of practice. And the Dominion capacity is but a rumor, not really confirmed by "Covenant" where a much shorter beaming to a waiting ship would better fit Dukat's means and lying about it his psych profile. Had the capacity really existed, we probably would have seen it play a role in the war. (So what the heck was Worf rambling about, really?)
*I'm being part sarcastic, I have little confidence his prequel comic starship will ever be mentioned, let alone seen
And in theory, the reporter does imply Picard went directly from the/an
Enterprise to the Evacuation Pundit job. Although that may just be the press taking shortcuts for the benefit of the readers.
- La Sirena is first shown in this episode jumping into warp, suggesting they haven't taken a straight line from Earth to Vashti. Most starships are often shown at impulse when an episode kicks off. Did they just finish a stopover adventure? Side quest? Excuse to move the background crates around since the previous episode? Or are they following the "faster than light, no left or right" doctrine from Voyager and changing course only after dropping from warp?
...Getting those letters of transit from the warlords?
Basically every era of Trek is compatible with the idea that warp involves cooldown periods - that is, it's not incompatible with this. We might simply traditionally meet our heroes during the cooldowns, which sort of punctuate the dull passage and thus perhaps serve as conversation pieces, resulting in plot-relevant dialogue.
- We've yet to see what's on the lower deck of the ship since last week, but twice now we've seen people come up from there. I'm sure we will, all these crew quarters and holodeck (holosuite?) have to be somewhere. Maybe the sickbay is on this main deck, the EMH walked onto the scene last week from an off-set room (that may not fit into the CG model of the ship, but I digress). No lifts though, which is a thing.
The horizontally elongated, runabout-style portholes are chiefly found on the lower deck in the exterior view. Only two decks are really accounted for, though.
- Agnes was "going to watch a holo" when she discovered that the ship's memory only had Klingon Opera available. A holo... movie? Holonovel a la Voyager? Or have movies made a resurgence in the past couple decades?
DSC gave us a spectrum of messaging means. Perhaps something similar to the message from Culber that Stamets was watching and we were eavesdropping on, from an odd and distorted angle? That'd be "watching" all right, as opposed to the more interactive holotainment we usually got in TNG, DS9 and VOY.
- Is at least one of the Romulan ship designs swarming the Cube a variable wing design? Or are we looking at the same one in different wing configurations?
I'm sorta seeing the former. There's an economy of designs so far: instead of numerous kitbashes, we could well be getting variable geometry and lots of re-skinning.
- It's great that a Romulan defence net allows transport windows in nice round increments of terran time units.
Well, it
is round. No real need to assume 30 minutes sharp, over 27.2 or 31.47 - the heroes aren't involved in split-second countdowns in this respect.
- Did anyone else see the triangular bread the sisters were making and think that it was actually Elven lembas bread?
They just need to properly wrap it in leaves. (Against their thighs like Carmen?)
- The bottle of Romulan Ale seen here is a different shape than the one seen originally in TWOK, but has the same label as in another appearance of the drink in some other episode, according to evidence from
TrekCore.
Makes sense that there would be a theme to the bottle (just like there's to wine bottles), but not a single design.
- Narek and Soji go skating in a "ventilation return" corridor. What are they sliding on? They took off their shoes but are still wearing socks. Sliding on ice in one's socks doesn't work, the moisture in the socks increases friction. And if they're slipping around on ventilation grease / goo / whatever, is it their magic space boots that keep them from sliding around?
Good point. I guess future socks are different...
- The former Romulan senator was brought to Vashti aboard the Wallenberg class USS (?) Nightingale. The implication is that this ship is of the class that was being built over Mars, but my read is that everyone brought here was aboard some fleet that Picard managed to scrounge together, and starting the move before the synths attacked. From last week's episode, it did seem that Picard was keelhauled pretty quickly after the attack. Or, as I suggested previously, the exodus was well underway with new ships as they were being completed. Either way, I wonder if the ships of the exodus fleet had names already assigned to other Starfleet ships, as "Nightingale" would be a pretty early target name to assign to a ship, IMO. "Captain" Kim's command aside.
Given that the tugs had no names painted on, but did have the "Tug ????/??" pennants, I'd not immediately consider the
Nightingale one of those. And indeed the tugs might have been unrelated to the evacuation fleet except as the regular means by which Utopia Planitia got raw materials from external sources, for building whatever it would be building at given times.
But if Starfleet did have evacuation assets before Romulus blew, it's pretty natural for them to have possessed a (not necessarily particularly numerous)
Wallenberg class, featuring a
USS Nightingale...
- The Romulan BoP is seen firing both beam and pulse weapons, the latter of which is likely a torpedo. No sign of the classic plasma weapon, though.
Remarkably, this is the first time in Trek that the Romulan design (or any Romulan design) is actually called a Bird of Prey...
- Said BoP is disabled when La Sirena fires on the shields on the ship's starboard pylon, and then Seven's fire neatly cuts through the hole made and then the pylon itself. Smart and nonlethal.
...Despite obviously cutting through whatever is feeding warp power to the nacelle. Unless, say, it's a self-contained unit...
Also, Seven cuts through a structure that has a brightly glowing trailing edge. I wonder what that was, since the traditional impulse engines appear to be at their traditional spot at the stern of the main hull.
- What does this say for the state of non-Starfleet weaponry? The BoP is an antique, but between La Sirena and Seven's little ship, they were able to take care of things much more swiftly than Kirk and his crew did some 130+ years prior.
Then again, Kirk never got a chance to aim, much less hit.
Then again again, no shields were ever mentioned in connection with Kirk's old fight.
Timo Saloniemi
