Spoilers ST Prodigy - StarShips & Technology Season 1 Discussion

[Deks]

Well, with Quantum Slipstream, all they had was sensor scans from the few days they had the vessel, and they re created the drive from scrap, even bettered it with the benemite crystals.

Arturis ship (the original) didn't use antimatter though.
So, why didn't anyone bother to look into that power core and recreate it too?

As for benemite crystals... some people want to argue that Arturis Dauntless DID in fact use them, but they were never mentioned (so I'm of the opinion Arturis Dauntless never had Benemite crystals), and there are clear differences between QS Arturis used and the version 2 that VOY crew created and needed Benemite crystals for - for one thing, speeds weren't the same (version 1 topped out at 300 Ly's per hour... version 2 with benamite crystals topped out at about 10 000 Ly's per minute... roughly).
Also, v1 of QS presented problems with Quantum Stresses pummeling VOY hull, whereas V2 didn't have that issue (but instead had a phase variance issue for which VOY computers weren't fast enough to compensate for as the slipstream was forming).

I don’t think the idea that 32nd century technology is still reliant on dilithium indicates any kind of technical stagnation. It’d be like hearing about the high value of copper today and assuming nothing had changed from the Bronze Age.

Incorrect analogy.
While copper is a baseline material which can be used as a building block for other things... Warp drive is like an 'entry level FTL drive' (and usually the main thing species discover after advancing far enough).

Other FTL drives do not rely on Warp drive as a baseline to operate... (but a species may need understanding of Warp drive principles and experience to further advance BEYOND the need for Warp itself and develop better technology which would completely discard Warp theories and fundamentals due to them not being the same thing and not being compatible).

Also, conductive aluminium exists and could be used as a replacement for copper... carbon nanotubes could do the same (along with graphene).

See the main difference here is: humanity's development (or science and technology) were nowhere near the level they are today compared to 4000 years ago (the Bronze Age).

Also, the more advanced a society becomes, technical and scientific breakthroughs will occur faster and faster.

It wasn't until we had an industrial revolution that things started to really develop faster and faster (prior to this, developments were occurring yes, but it was more akin to a flatline that was moving upwards in very small increments over huge periods of time... this is because knowledge and science were primitive and barely existed in a significat way they do now (computers and even automated R&D reduce the needed times to discover new drugs, materials, or methodologies between 1000 to millions of times)... so, researching new science and technology or implementing new methods in the bronze age would have been extremely time consuming to say the least - obviously each new piece would add to the bigger picture and this would accelerate things somewhat, but again, by very little (over huge portions of time) until we had the industrial revolution and actual machinery for scaled up production and automation and better tools to reduce the time needed to make new discoveries - after that, things picked up much faster and have been progressing exponentially).

UFP in contrast is a spacefaring organisation with extremely advanced technology in comparison (aka it has fully developed interstellar infrastructure that spans solar systems, etc. - that's nowhere near the same compared to say Earth in the Bronze Age where technology/science barely existed as such - or heck, even compared to Earth from just 1000 years ago).

The UFP moving away from Warp drive, Dilithium and M/AM should have probably occurred by late 23rd or early 24th century (and it would have done it all on its own without encountering more advanced tech... by adding those discoveries into the mix, and taking into account the type of society UFP actually is, the technological curve jumps up considerably - aka, think of it like an 'unexpected discovery' that can push thing farther AMIDST exponential developments and returns).

But Disco writers didn't really pay that much attention to this, and needed a 'drama' that sounded semi-convicing (even if it was anything but). So, to make things easy for themselves, they ended up 'waving stuff away' for their own benefit and be done with it... that way, they didn't have to change the setting too much from what was known (even though they should have) and have written stories bypass making a FAR more fleshed out and advanced UFP compared to what was shown (in the 32nd century) and writing stories within that setting.

 

[Deks]

Not me, just a hypothesis that no one else in the galaxy according to trek writers has an alternative, why would previous civilizations.

Disco writers forgot or ignored the times UFP/SF DID encounter working alternatives to power generation that originated in the Milky Way, went beyond dilithium and M/AM and even engaged in active research of their own.

Also leaves out transwarp beaming, Iconian gateways, transwarp hubs, artificial wormholes. Etc.

Those are methods of transportation though, not power generation... but yes.

Transwarp beaming was only mentioned as being solved by Scotty before the time Romulan star went supernova (as Spock acquired the formula), but there is 0 evidence (as of ST: Picard) that the technology was incorporated into wider use (but then again, we mostly experienced 'civilian' side of things via PIC series, not SF, so there's no conclusive way to tell - but evidently, Disco personal transporters are not based on Transwarp beaming).

Iconian Gateways... it was rare to find any... the only two known locations were in the Neutral Zone (A/B Quadrants), and Gamma Quadrant (thus far) - also, the power source was never mentioned it was running off Dilihtium and M/AM.
For the one in the NZ, it was said it was running of a 'vast undergound power source' (could imply Geothermal because there's a massive amount of energy there easily enough).

Transwarp hubs - Borg invention. Not sure if SF would know how to reproduce it (although they DO have Seven and Picard and have acquired a LOT of information on Borg technology in the late 24th century)... but in effect they were able to incorporate other Borg tech into their systems, and now even have Jurati Queen on their side to help them with it.

Artificial wormholes - yeah, they developed those in DS9. And despite the initial setback, it WAS a successful test of experimental technology... so why wasn't this pursued or developed further?

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

I like the cock pit but the nacelles look like the batons used to direct traffic.

Could the "Lights on the nacelles" be used to indicate Police Shuttles?

 

[Dukhat]

Could the "Lights on the nacelles" be used to indicate Police Shuttles?

Not unless the Voyager-A is a police cruiser.

 

[Deks]

Could the "Lights on the nacelles" be used to indicate Police Shuttles?

I don't think so.
Shuttles do have nav lights, but that's about it.
And I don't think police shuttles would be using starship production numbering scheme.
In fact, does Earth even have the police? I don't think so. SF seems to have taken over security in all aspects.

The red curvy lines on the nacelles were likely associated with Bussard Collectors, and the blue ones with Warp drive (assuming the shuttles are Warp capable - and since all of VOY shuttles were initially Warp capable, it stands to reason these are as well).

One of the possible reasons why VOY-A shuttles would be used here is because the kids are of special interest to VA Janeway herself, so she probably had standing orders of the VOY-A crew to intercept and find them.

 

[137th Gebirg]

They have robot police, at least in the 23rd century Abramsverse.

 

[Deks]

They have robot police, at least in the 23rd century Abramsverse.

Perhaps in the 23rd century and in that timeline.
In the 24th century though and Prime timeline, it seems that SF took over that role.
Its possible the 23rd century of Prime Timeline does have an equivalent of robot police too... who knows.

 

[fireproof78]

Could the "Lights on the nacelles" be used to indicate Police Shuttles?

I don't think so but it might be an indication that they are engaged in certain operations.

 

[David cgc]

Last year, I got a message from an old friend of mine. He was working on animating an unspecified Star Trek project, and remembered I was big Trek fan, and wanted to check with me about visual details on some ships. I actually guessed it was the new "Resurgence" video game, because his first question was where the beams come from on the Centaur (he had been a TNG fan, so he recognized the phaser strips on the other ships, but didn't know about the little yellow rectangle movie-era phaser banks). While he was picking my brain on some other ships, the Akira came up, and I mentioned the trivia fact that, while it never used them all on-screen, the ship was designed with fifteen torpedo tubes, and suggested it'd be fun if he was the first to use the sideways-pointing ones on the saucer. He said he'd give it a go, and, later, that he managed to do it twice.



It turns out, as you probably guessed, it was the Prodigy season finale. I'd been keeping my eye out whenever we saw an Akira in anything for the past year or so for torpedos coming out of surprising places and I totally missed it. I heard from my friend recently and found out there was a decent reason. The more prominent of the shots was adjusted after he was done with it, the Akira was rotated to be more head-on and fired phasers instead of torpedos (the shot immediately after Janeway gets let out of the brig by the ensign who was one of the kids in "Counterpoint"), and the second one was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment near the end of the episode which, apparently, I blinked at and missed.

Without further ado, here you are, conclusive, canon proof that the Akira-class has port- and starboard-pointing torpedo tubes in the saucer. All debates are now settled.

 

[137th Gebirg]

I didn’t realize there was a debate. I always counted between around 16 to 20 torpedo launchers in various positions and arcs all over the ship. Alex Jaeger armed that thing to the teeth.

 

[NCC-73515]

Without further ado, here you are, conclusive, canon proof that the Akira-class has port- and starboard-pointing torpedo tubes in the saucer. All debates are now settled.

I thought I knew all about these ships, and I did read the EM magazine back then, but never knew (or forgot) that it has these lateral saucer tubes as well! Tell your friend he did a great job, and ask if he knew that the Sovs have the E registry on the nacelles and fans would go wild

 

[C.E. Evans]

Naturally it's not canon, but the 2001 Star Trek Starship Spotter book has the 15 torpedo launchers thing too and describes the Akira-class as something of a "gunship" initially conceived during the Federation-Cardassian Border Wars, but brought to reality after Wolf 359. The idea was while it was equipped with a number of phaser arrays, it's primary weapons are the torpedo launchers and the design was meant to be a heavy hitter in combat situations. There was a belief that Starfleet didn't build actual warships, but both the Defiant- and Akira-classes were technically designed as such from the get-go, even if they may be officially called other things...

 

[Markonian]

Last year, I got a message from an old friend of mine. He was working on animating an unspecified Star Trek project, and remembered I was big Trek fan, and wanted to check with me about visual details on some ships.

You have made it into the pantheon of people whose ideas influenced Star Trek!

Speaking of that scene, I wonder if the USS Centaur model is kept around by the Prodigy team and if they might canonize the name Centaur class at some point?

 

[Dukhat]

You have made it into the pantheon of people whose ideas influenced Star Trek!

Speaking of that scene, I wonder if the USS Centaur model is kept around by the Prodigy team and if they might canonize the name Centaur class at some point?

I hope not. I hate when they take the only known example of an unknown class of ship and just use that ship’s name as the class. How probable was it that the exact class ship was the same one that came after Sisko’s stolen Jem’Hadar fighter, especially taking into consideration how old the design was? We’re talking Excelsior parts here, not Galaxy parts.

 

[Markonian]

Probably just as probable as meeting any other named ship.
Three hero ships were prototypes, too, so everyone who encountered them on a weekly basis encountered that class's lead ship: NCC-1701 (Enterprise class in the 2270s), NX-01, USS Defiant.

 

[Janewaysson]

Going to state my opinion hopefully without a lot of backlashes - But I hated seeing the Centaur on Prodigy, out of ALL ships you had to put that random ship?

 

[137th Gebirg]

Cuz it WROCKS!!!!

 

[fireproof78]

Going to state my opinion hopefully without a lot of backlashes - But I hated seeing the Centaur on Prodigy, out of ALL ships you had to put that random ship?

They like picking out ugly ships nowadays

 

[Dukhat]

You have to admit it was the odd man out. You have Sovereigns, Akiras and Defiants, all new classes contemporaneous to the time. And then…Centaurs? And like, a ton of them, to boot? And despite all of them having the same name and registry, the ship itself is so different from the physical filming model that it might as well be a different class?

 

[Janewaysson]

I almost feel like a writer or someone on the show loved the Centaur (like how its obvious Picard people love Bill Kruse)