Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 4x02 - "Anomaly"

[Deks]

Yeah the Flux does seem like entropy on steroids, while this anomaly seems to have a definite shape and size (5 light years across). But still, both shows are dealing with anomalies that will end the world as they know it, even if Discovery's anomaly is limited to the Milky Way Galaxy.

Yeah, but 5 LY's is literally NOTHING compared to the size of the Milky Way (150 000 Ly's across, and about 2500 Ly's in most thick regions).

On a galactic scale, this anomaly is tiny... 30 000 times smaller (width wise)... again, impressive if an artificial construct (plus it would be interesting if it was UFP creation in fact... by intent that is - that would be some feat and probably a bit more interesting in terms of its capabilities - wouldn't be the first time).

Plus, if the UFP once spanned some or a lot of he galaxy... at least double (but could be a LOT more) of what it had in late 24th century... that would imply an area of at least 16 000 Ly's with 350 members (at its height before the Burn)... so UFP could have spread to most of Alpha, Beta and possibly even into the Delta Quadrant (or even into Gamma Quadrant).

If a larger power joined UFP, they could be considered as 1 member planet which incidentally had a LOT of space... say when the Romulans joined UFP, they'd be counted as 1 member... but the Romulan Empire is decent in size... smaller than UFP yes, but would add thousands of LY's to UFP - anywhere between 30% or 50% in size).
If the Klingons joined... thats another 30-50% addition of space with just 1 species counted (but lets say both Romulans and Klingons subjugated several smaller alien races... if they were added to UFP, both would amount to say 20 new alien species perhaps).

Cardassia joined UFP eventually too.. Cardassian space would probably be counted as part of UFP.

Point being... that depending on how large UFP is in 32nd century (58 planets)... this could in fact point to 16 000 Ly's of space alone.... so, 5 Ly's of anomay is a bit... meh (scale wise).
Dangerous? Evidently... but still tiny even compared to 16 000 Ly's... or even 8 000 Ly's.

It will be interesting to see how fast this thing travels or changes positions.

 

[Deks]

I think having Saru back on Discovery really improves the show. Saru is a great character. The actor that plays him is great. And Saru is a great mentor to Michael. His wisdom really helps the other characters.

I was envisioning Saru would have taken command of Voyager (or another SF ship)... so the show would have alternated between the two ships (or at least keep the greater focus on Disco and one on VOY and her crew when Saru is needed/involved... I was actually half expecting SF to send Disco and VOY on a joint mission).

 

[Nerys Myk]

because some excessive drama and emotions bore the heck out of me on this show

Yeah, you definitely need to change the channel. Star Trek is driven by drama and emotion. Especially when it's excessive. Spock is the king of both.

 

[cooleddie74]

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[Nerys Myk]

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Too....much....drama...and emotion!!!!

 

[Photoman15]

Was there a reason given why both Stamets and Book couldn’t both use the holographic link?

They didn't know if the link would last. If it failed, the ship would be lost.

Maybe the anomaly is the mycelial network turned sentient and is after Discovery and/or the "tardigrade" steering it.

 

[cooleddie74]

Trek has been emotional ever since "Where No Man Has Gone Before(TOS)." You can't watch that second pilot and say that the producers weren't going for melodrama and hamming it up.

 

[fireproof78]

Too....much....drama...and emotion!!!!

Yup. Can't have that.

 

[TimeIsAPredator]

So what is the point of the flame thrower at the back of the bridge?

The internal security seems to have been designed by the kid from Home Alone

 

[BigJake]

8/10.

Spoiler: Not bad

Okay, I've got a couple of gripes. I'm willing to make allowances for DSC's rather rubbery approach to science, but space dust being too "dense" to let probes pass and the "fluid dynamics" treknobabble solution to this episode's conundrum were... a bit much. And it seems like those bridge flame effects are meant to represent some kind of a failsafe system, which if so, I'm not sure for what or why it seemed like a good idea to anyone to have periodic flame spurts on the bridge. Those are pretty distracting. Oh, and the Anomaly being five light-years across is pushing Big Dumb Object scifi to the limits: that thing is the scale of a star cluster.

However, some big positives, too. This episode was set up to be about dealing with grief, especially for Book, but it follows through on mental health stuff for a bunch of characters and I think it's very cool that it shows them all coping with various forms of tragedy and trauma in healthy, adult ways. Not something we get a lot of in adventure fiction, TBH, and it's refreshing. For Burnham and Book, that process tied directly into the action in a really cool way, and the action overall delivers just as well as ever. The Anomaly is getting interesting as a major threat. Despite some irritants along the way, it was a fun episode.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Lt. Beavis was in charge of damage control.

 

[Deks]

nope. They “established” that it was risky for the enterprise in that particular instance in that very movie and proceeded to ignore it in plenty of consequent mo vies and episodes.

it’s barely a few seconds, minutes at most, at warp 9. Do the math.

It was ignored depending on circumstances (in 24th century, this was usually done in emergencies or if there was no other option)... otherwise, they tended to stuck to the rule of not using Warp drive inside a solar system more times than not.

Here's the link:

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TOS Enterprise is failry slow (to watch) in that video... and it would take 2 minutes to reach interstellar space at maximum warp (not counting TNG ships since they're not in question here).
Light on the other hand takes 17 hours to travel from Earth to interstellar space (123 AU's).

If 1/4 of light speed is 'average impulse speed'... at that speed (75 000 km/s), a ship would take 68 hrs to get from Earth to interstellar space (that's nearly 3 days).

Obviously SF ships didn't wait that long.
The 'cut off point' seems to be just beyond the furthest planet (Neptune)... about 29.8 AU's away.

So, that changes the narrative by quite a bit... and reduces the travel at impulse by 4.14 times (approximately).

At that point, it takes light roughly 4 hours to reach 29.8 AU... whereas a ship travelling at 1/4 impulse would need about 16.5 hrs to traverse that distance (that seems a LOT more manageable).

Plus, we saw Disco at the end of Season 1 clearing Neptune and were then clear to engage Warp (if I remember correctly).

I wouldn’t say 4 minutes is a long time.

Its not. But if the TOS Enterprise was NOT using Warp drive inside the solar system at the time, then it would still take a better part of the day to reach the 'safe limit'.

Remember that even in TNG when the Borg assimilated Picard and went towards Earth... they dropped out of warp at the edge of the solar system... probably Neptune... or closer (its possible the Borg have less of a worry than SF does and probably better technology to ensure nothing bad happens if they drop out of warp closer).

totally with you here and on the missed opportunities in season 3.

Thank you. That IS definitely a sore spot for me... but won't delve into it again.

That could be, but it’s not the impression I got so far.

We have no data to say one way or the other (yet). It could be alive for all we know and 'feeds' off various interstellar bodies, or it could be a natural (but unknown) phenomena which just REACTS randomly to changes in subspace or gravity.
Or, it could be artificial (someone in UFP might have made it using technology not widely available), or its artificial construct made by someone else... or it could be an accidental byproduct of a technology UFP made.

Tough there are other options too I suppose.

here, solved why they couldn’t send probes.

I still think they could have used 100 probes instead (not individual probes working separately - that wouldn't work).
Interconnected/networked 50 probes together with programmable matter to form a larger 'super probe' (5 rows, stacked on top of each other with every row containing 10 probes) and gotten 2 of them... similar to this:
********** **********
********** **********
********** **********
********** **********
********** **********

That's an increase in total size/mass (probably would be large enough to penetrate the anomaly). One super probe would be just outside the anomaly, and the other one inside (again both could be tethered and controlled by Zora)... both would be taking data.

Or, just use 100 probes to form 1 super probe to send instead of Booker and his ship.

But, we can just ignore this I guess since we got what we did.

 

[Fateor]

here, solved why they couldn’t send probes.

But it doesn't solve why they couldn't have probes follow at a station keeping 500k kilometers behind the anomaly so they always know where it is and what direction it's heading.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

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Quick show that speech to President Rillak.

 

[NCC-73515]

Yes, it was nice to see the loss of artificial gravity. We've heard reports of various decks losing gravity without showing it a million times during the TNG area.

It was really odd though, they were thrown upwards and then just stopped and hovered around? They should either slowly start to rise up cause it's just gravity failing, or be slammed into the ceiling cause the ship is moving down at the same time. But being thrown up just half-way to the ceiling made no sense (unless... the inertial dampeners kicked in a little late XD)
It was very well done in TUC by comparison.

And I agree with whoever said the Adira/Gray lovefest is too much. I'm here to watch Star Trek, not Love Boat.

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So what is the point of the flame thrower at the back of the bridge?

Now they even have one on the Nautilus XD

Basically the only time our heroes, any heroes, recognized a phenomenon they themselves had seen before was when the Crystalline Entity made a reappearance. And the only time they recognized something experienced by some other hero was "The Naked Now", thanks to Riker's vague recollection of something from Kirk's bestselling memoirs. Every hole in space is new and unprecedented, every natural phenomenon moving at warp speed previously unheard of.

Apparently, the heroes simply are very exacting. "This gravity phenomenon is 11% blue-greener than the one NCC-74656 encountered - it sure doesn't match anything in our records!"

Timo Saloniemi

Did the ellipse have anything to do with merging black holes?

 

[eschaton]

Trek has been emotional ever since "Where No Man Has Gone Before(TOS)." You can't watch that second pilot and say that the producers weren't going for melodrama and hamming it up.

This is true. But I actually admit, after watching this episode, I miss Georgiou stinking up the joint. I don't need everything to be Marvel-style quippy, but I feel like the tone of Discovery from Season 3 onward has felt a little too much like a group therapy session to me at times.

 

[Agony_Boothb]

This is true. But I actually admit, after watching this episode, I miss Georgiou stinking up the joint. I don't need everything to be Marvel-style quippy, but I feel like the tone of Discovery from Season 3 onward has felt a little too much like a group therapy session to me at times.

Personally I like it. I feel it's how the crew of Voyager should have been at least during the first season. The Voyager crew were in all likelihood never going to see their families again and they all just kinda got over it very quickly. We had a 10 second shot of a random crew member gazing sadly out a window in one episode, Janeway getting depressed for 45 minutes in season 5 and that was about it.

 

[BigJake]

Personally I like it. I feel it's how the crew of Voyager should have been at least during the first season. The Voyager crew were in all likelihood never going to see their families again and they all just kinda got over it very quickly. We had a 10 second shot of a random crew member gazing sadly out a window in one episode, Janeway getting depressed for 45 minutes in season 5 and that was about it.

I like that DSC is really specific about addressing mental health and willing to show the crew as being positive examples of how to do that. That was actually one of my favorite things about this ep.

 

[Tuskin38]

I’m glad the bridge crew have been getting more and more screen time.

I like Burnham’s quarters.

The first time gravity went offline, when Burnham falls, she knocks a piece off the captain’s chair. It’s fixed next cut, so it was probably a mistake.

 

[Fateor]

I like that DSC is really specific about addressing mental health and willing to show the crew as being positive examples of how to do that. That was actually one of my favorite things about this ep.

Which is stupid since they have had ways to almost insta cure most mental health issues since TOS.