Spoilers Star Trek: Prodigy General Discussion Thread

[cooleddie74]

And sleeper warp ships may have existed on Earth in the 22nd century as well since in "11:59(VOY)" Harry mentions that one of his ancestors was a crewmember aboard such a long-duration voyage but the timeline given placed the flight after Zefram Cochrane invented warp drive.

 

[DaveyNY]

Even so, it overcomplicates things to toss in a sublight sleeper ship and a random spacewarp. Occam would start sharpening his razor at such gratuitous overthinking. If something is a bad idea to start with, like getting halfway across the galaxy at sublight, you throw it out and start over. Tossing in arbitrary Ptolemaic epicycles to try to "fix" it just makes it more nonsensical.

We know from ENT that Tellarites had warp capability before they first met humans, so the simpler explanation by far is that it was a sleeper warp ship.

If they weren't actually heading for the Delta Quadrant when they started out, then encountering some kind of space anomaly isn't that far fetched.
We don't know what their original destination was, so we can't assume anything beyond that they ended up in the Delta quadrant.

Warp drive or not makes no difference at this point.

 

[cooleddie74]

The S.S. Valiant got from Earth to the Galactic Barrier not that long after being launched from Earth and contact with the ship being lost. A deep space exploratory vessel launched just a couple of years or so after Zefram Cochrane broke the warp barrier could probably make a little over Warp 1 on a good day so an anomaly of some kind had to have been responsible for the Valiant reaching the very edge of the galaxy when most humans back on Earth were still recovering from World War III.

 

[Christopher]

If they weren't actually heading for the Delta Quadrant when they started out, then encountering some kind of space anomaly isn't that far fetched.

That's not the point. The point is, why would the show's writers have bothered to say it was a sleeper ship in the first place if they intended it to have gotten there by a space warp? It's a contradictory notion. The fact that they defined it as a sleeper ship at all means that they intended its sleeper-ship nature to be the explanation for how it got there, not some peripheral, irrelevant detail. And that means they obviously did not intend a spacewarp to be involved, since then it wouldn't have needed to be a sleeper ship.

 

[DaveyNY]

That's not the point. The point is, why would the show's writers have bothered to say it was a sleeper ship in the first place if they intended it to have gotten there by a space warp? It's a contradictory notion. The fact that they defined it as a sleeper ship at all means that they intended its sleeper-ship nature to be the explanation for how it got there, not some peripheral, irrelevant detail. And that means they obviously did not intend a spacewarp to be involved, since then it wouldn't have needed to be a sleeper ship.

No, that's your point.
As I said, we have no idea where they were going when they started out, so any assumptions either way would be impossible to prove.
They could have only been going a few light years to their destination or they could have been going hundreds.
Thus the former may not need basic warp capability and the latter would.

If one of the episodes actually tells us where the Tellerites were going, then your "point" may become valid. (or not)

 

[Christopher]

As I said, we have no idea where they were going when they started out, so any assumptions either way would be impossible to prove.

"Prove?" It doesn't actually exist. It's just a construct in a story. So the only question that matters is, what purpose was it meant to serve in the story? And I'm a professional writer, so when I talk about the ABCs of how stories are put together and why, that's not "assumption," any more than it's an assumption for a driver to know that you have to push down on the pedal to move the car. It's knowing how the job works.

 

[DaveyNY]

I bow to the superior intellect.

Cause of course you can read minds and you know exactly what the writers of the show have in mind.

 

[137th Gebirg]

As you said...

 

[Christopher]

Cause of course you can read minds and you know exactly what the writers of the show have in mind.

Since when was mind-reading required to understand how your own profession works? Logical deduction based on experience is not magical. The reason our society is such a wreck is that people have forgotten that.

 

[Mudd]

Since when was mind-reading required to understand how your own profession works?

How our profession works is not at issue here. Your assumptions about authorial intent are.

As I said, we have no idea where they were going when they started out, so any assumptions either way would be impossible to prove.
They could have only been going a few light years to their destination or they could have been going hundreds.
Thus the former may not need basic warp capability and the latter would.

In fact, isn't the most frequent used trope attached to space travel in suspended animation having the travelers accidentally wind up at a time and place other than their intended destination?

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[The Old Mixer]

I'm a professional writer

DRINK!

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

DRINK!

You seriously need to develop a catch-phrase count detector and have it become a stat in every users bio-page.

 

[Danja]

You seriously need to develop a catch-phrase count detector and have it become a stat in every users bio-page.

I'm the GIF lady :

 

[Charles Phipps]

I mean space wedgies are why Starfleet is always running across things far from Earth containing probes, astronauts, and so on.

That or aliens.

 

[cooleddie74]

The cryocapsule from 1994 in "The Neutral Zone(TNG)" was never given an onscreen explanation for how it drifted from Earth orbit and ended up near the Romulan Neutral Zone by 2364. All we can assume is: spatial anomaly. Magnetic storm. Subspace tunnel or bubble similar to the graviton ellipse phenomenon that captured the Ares IV in Mars orbit in 2032.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

space wedgies

Getting one of those is the worst!

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Then there's no credible way it could get to the Delta Quadrant. Even at Botany Bay speeds (i.e. fast enough to cover at least the majority of the 250-ly distance to Alpha Ceti within 270 years), it would take nearly 40,000 years to get to the part of Delta where this show seems to be set; at a more realistic sleeper ship speed, it would've taken closer to a million years. Okay, Bajorans are supposed to have been civilized tens of thousands of years ago, but Tellarites? Not to mention that it's hard to buy any kind of sleeper technology lasting a fraction that long without breaking down.

More likely we're talking a long-range warp ship at a speed slower than Voyager's, long enough to take generations to reach Delta.

SS Birdseye - Late-20th century pre-warp sleeper satellite bound for Earth orbit somehow wound up drifting toward the Kazis Binary System near the Romulan Neutral Zone

SS Botany Bay - 1996 pre-warp sleeper ship traveled interstellar distances to the Mutara Sector

Voyager VI - Late 20th century pre-warp deep space probe fell into a black hole and emerged on the other side of the galaxy

Nomad - 2002 pre-warp deep space probe transported by collision and integration with alien probe to the Malurian Star System

Ares IV - 2032 pre-warp Mars orbiter wound up transported to the Delta Quadrant by a graviton ellipse

Charybdis - 2037 pre-warp extra-solar exploration shuttle got transported by aliens to the Theta 116 star system.

Now, I'm no professional writer, but it seems to me abundant precedent has been established for the transport of sleeper ships or other pre-warp spacecraft vast interstellar distances by spatial anomaly, alien interference, or otherwise to the point where it's a bit presumptuous to rule it out in the case of the Tellarite sleeper ship described in Prodigy.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

USS Voyager (NCC-74656) - 24th century - transported to the Delta Quadrant by the Caretaker, as had been many other starships.

 

[Christopher]

The cryocapsule from 1994 in "The Neutral Zone(TNG)" was never given an onscreen explanation for how it drifted from Earth orbit and ended up near the Romulan Neutral Zone by 2364.

Yes, and that was INCREDIBLY STUPID. It makes no sense to hold it up as something worth emulating. I have faith in Prodigy's writers that they're able to come up with something less idiotic than a plot point from an episode that was shot from an unrevised first-draft script due to a writers' strike.

Now, I'm no professional writer, but it seems to me abundant precedent has been established for the transport of sleeper ships or other pre-warp spacecraft vast interstellar distances by spatial anomaly, alien interference, or otherwise to the point where it's a bit presumptuous to rule it out in the case of the Tellarite sleeper ship described in Prodigy.

It's not about the superficial level of in-universe "facts." It's about applying a basic level of reasoning and common sense to the question of why a creator of a work of fiction would choose to establish a data point in a story. The writers of Prodigy chose to establish that Jankom grew up in a sleeper ship. Therefore, they intend its sleeper-ship nature to be relevant. It would not be relevant if the ship got there thorugh a space warp. If they'd intended it to be a space warp, they would just say it was a space warp and would never have introduced the sleeper ship idea in the first place. Why is that not self-evident?

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Yes, and that was INCREDIBLY STUPID. It makes no sense to hold it up as something worth emulating. I have faith in Prodigy's writers that they're able to come up with something less idiotic than a plot point from an episode that was shot from an unrevised first-draft script due to a writers' strike.

It's not about the superficial level of in-universe "facts." It's about applying a basic level of reasoning and common sense to the question of why a creator of a work of fiction would choose to establish a data point in a story. The writers of Prodigy chose to establish that Jankom grew up in a sleeper ship. Therefore, they intend its sleeper-ship nature to be relevant. It would not be relevant if the ship got there thorugh a space warp. If they'd intended it to be a space warp, they would just say it was a space warp and would never have introduced the sleeper ship idea in the first place. Why is that not self-evident?

Who said it was something worth emulating? People were just saying that it's a possibility. To which you did your usual shtick about "I'm a professional writer and this is how things are done" shutting down any contrary opinions, despite the existence of numerous prior examples. Whether it's stupid or not, the writers on the various shows have gone to that well numerous times, so you can't just rule it out like it might not happen this time too. It most likely did happen like you say, but you don't always have to be so damn inflexible about everything.