Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 4x13 - "Coming Home"

[Amaris]

That always baffles me too. Casting from the very beginning was about progressive politics as was half the episodes.

It's surprising, too, because Star Trek has been anything but subtle about it.

Commenting on social order and straight up cameos are different for me. I would rather an episode about voting rights.

I understand, and normally I'd agree, but in this case I allow (for myself) because of who and what this cameo is supposed to represent. Plus, Stacey being a huge Trekkie, I can't help but feel good for her. I'd JUMP at the chance for a Star Trek role, even a brief one.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I felt a little cheated how they did a suicide shuttle kamikaze mission where nobody died. Come on.

Starfleet HQ at warp looked spectacular, the evacuation of Earth was cool.

Wait how come Earth gets all this pre-apocalypse asteroid storm stuff when on Book's world they got... a flock of confused seagulls?

Book gets the 32nd century equivalent of community service?

Rest of it was okay, but this season really has been a step down from the last 3. I hope Paul gets a real plotline next season.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

I think the DMA was close enough to Book's world to mine it, while Earth was just being hit by faster-than-light debris from light years away.

 

[Markonian]

On the question of how the Tensi would not recognise humanoids as sentient lifeforms/sophonts, this has come up in Star Trek before.
In the licensed, non-canon Star Trek: Enterprise - Rise of the Federation novel "A Choice of Futures", the mushroom-headed aliens from the ENT episode "Silent Enemy" performs experiments on other species because they don't recognise them as creatures with feelings.

When I saw "It's Coming Home", it got me to re-read the relevant section:
“Thank you, Admiral. I do not claim that the aliens’ intentions toward us are harmless. In their view, we are an inferior and dangerous form of life. They see us as we would see wild animals.”
“But we’re clearly not that,” th’Menchal objected. “We have language, technology, civilizations.”
“We distinguish persons from animals on those bases, among others. They evidently do not.” Sato leaned forward. “Their senses let them literally see inside each other, sense each other’s reactions and emotions. We call them Mutes, but in reality they’re in constant communication, linked on a deep level. To them, that communication is fundamental to their sense of personhood. It’s intimately linked to their feelings, their thoughts. We don’t have that kind of connection, so to them, it’s like we have no real awareness or emotion.”

Source: Bennett, Christopher L.. Rise of the Federation: A Choice of Futures (Star Trek: Enterprise Book 15) (S.264-265). Pocket Books. Kindle-Version.

 

[StarMan]

Perhaps Discovery's writers should've put in a similar amount of effort as the above excerpt. There's only so much gap filling you can do before you have to concede it's just poor / lazy writing.

 

[NCC-73515]

And the Federation probably had far more than 150 member worlds by the time of the Burn. With just 60 left but being in such decay and disarray it would stand to reason that a huge chunk of its 3070 Era membership broke away in the wake of the Burn and what's left by the time of Discovery's arrival in the late 32nd century is a very truncated and far tinier Federation akin to the dissolution of the British Empire.

They mentioned that something in the 300s was the peak of the Federation, IIRC

 

[Vale]

I think the DMA was close enough to Book's world to mine it, while Earth was just being hit by faster-than-light debris from light years away.

Faster... than light... debris...

 

[Markonian]

The USS Yelchin that is mentioned would be registered NCC-4774-F, right?

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

Faster... than light... debris...

I blame subspace. It's usually subspace's fault.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Perhaps Discovery's writers should've put in a similar amount of effort as the above excerpt. There's only so much gap filling you can do before you have to concede it's just poor / lazy writing.

To be fair, they did address it in the episode.

The reason the 10-C were having so much difficulty recognizing the crew as sapient / sentient life and communicating with us on a level they could comprehend was that they were not able to grasp that Burnham, Book, Tarka, Saru, Detmer, Owo, General Ndoye, T'Rina, the President, et. al were all their own individual beings with their own emotions, desires, intentions, roles, ranks in the hierarchy, and actions.

They looked at them more as cells in one giant incomprehensible organism that was acting inconsistently from one moment to the next rather than as fully realized individual beings, some of which were at odds with the others. So when Burnham's team would signal the pheromone for peace and cooperation, Tarka would be taking aggressive action against them.

They couldn't process the conflicting actions until they made the breakthrough that they were dealing with separate tiny beings and not one big dumb space animal that was alternating between friendliness and viciousness from one moment to the next.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Eleven months ago exactly I made this prediction regarding how season 4 would end:

Looks like I was about 80% correct.

I think they scaled the size of Africa to be a bit off.

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But the continent of Africa is recognizeable

 

[thribs]

Maybe they added more land?

 

[Mr Awe]

Well put! Similarly, insects and animals like beavers have been terraforming far longer than humans, and we don’t consider them higher species.

There's degrees of technology though. There must be thousands of magnitudes of difference between beaver dams and warp drives!

 

[XCV330]

I've had my complaints about this season, but the finale was very good. I enjoyed it quite a bit. Best ending for a Disco season.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

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Distance and perspective alter the apparent size and prominence of the continents when viewed from space.





Plus, we're used to seeing Mercator Projection maps of Africa that distort it and make it look a lot smaller than it really is. The Peters Projection map is also distorted, but gives an accurate representation of land area:



I don't doubt that when they made the CGI pullback sequence from Earth they magnified things a bit to put Africa more in focus, but it is possible to get a perspective similar to that from space depending on the altitude and angle of view.

 

[Amaris]

I think they scaled the size of Africa to be a bit off.

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But the continent of Africa is recognizeable

Africa's huge. I mean, it is enormous. It's just so many maps make it seem smaller because we use Mercator instead of properly scaled maps due to how difficult it is to create a flat rendering of a 3D object.

Edit: LOB got it already.

 

[cooleddie74]

You can fit every square kilometer of the United States, China and most of Europe into Africa along with India. It's the second-largest continent after Asia.

 

[Turtletrekker]

Africa's huge. I mean, it is enormous. It's just so many maps make it seem smaller because we use Mercator instead of properly scaled maps due to how difficult it is to create a flat rendering of a 3D object.

Edit: LOB got it already.

Africa is big. You won't believe how hugely, vastly, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to Africa.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

There's degrees of technology though. There must be thousands of magnitudes of difference between beaver dams and warp drives!

There are numerous spaceborne lifeforms that travel at warp velocities in Trek, some intelligent, and some just big dumb animals, so that's no guarantee of anything.

The Crystalline Entity was a warp capable lifeform very similar situation to the 10-C / DMA in fact. It didn't realize it was causing harm to people on the ground even though it "attacked" some pretty sophisticated colony worlds with lots of warp traffic, like Data's birthplace on Omicron Theta. It just thought it was feeding on biomass. But once the Enterprise-D crew learned how to communicate with it, it obviously could be reasoned with and ceased its attack on them. Unfortunately it was destroyed by Dr. Marr (Book, essentially) before it could be told not to feed on inhabited worlds.

 

[Mr Awe]

There are numerous spaceborne lifeforms that travel at warp velocities in Trek, some intelligent, and some just big dumb animals, so that's no guarantee of anything.

The Crystalline Entity was a warp capable lifeform very similar situation to the 10-C / DMA in fact. It didn't realize it was causing harm to people on the ground even though it "attacked" some pretty sophisticated colony worlds with lots of warp traffic, like Data's birthplace on Omicron Theta. It just thought it was feeding on biomass. But once the Enterprise-D crew learned how to communicate with it, it obviously could be reasoned with and ceased it's attack on them. Unfortunately it was destroyed by Dr. Marr (Book, essentially) before it could be told not to feed on inhabited worlds.

Clearly, a warp signature is an indicator of intelligence. Maybe an imperfect indicator, but it is a logical possibility. Most non-intelligent species are not warping around the galaxy!

The 10C were portrayed as a very empathic species. As such, you'd think they'd err on the side of caution. As in, we're not sure if those warp signatures are created by an intelligence species, but we'd better check them out!

Also, after one of their DMAs was destroyed, wouldn't they think it was an intentional act by an intelligence? I doubt some dumb space animal could use an isolytic (or whatever) weapon!

But, as I mentioned, I think overall it's a very Trek theme. I love the idea of it. I just think some of the execution was flubbed. I actually preferred my idea that the 10C was a species from another universe with different physical laws and utterly alien. I'd buy them not understanding.

Even though 10C are more of a collective, they must have very similar biochemistry to us. After all, their emotional dust affected our crewmembers, giving them the same emotions as 10C. So, very similar biology.