Spoilers Starship Design in Star Trek: Picard

Not sure why, in a franchise with time travel, any timeline would be considered "the real one?"

To paraphrase Teal'c, "As I said, Daniel Jackson, the one we're watching is the only one of consequence."
 
In Caretaker, they're called "tricobalt devices" rather than torpedoes.

I always assumed they were some kind of sciency tool rather than a weapon, but they had a secondary use for demolition. Maybe they were for smoking out the Maquis from the plasma storms?

The Voyager Conspiracy is a bit of a retcon, but Seven was not in a rational state and was making up a lot of crazy stuff, so I don't think her statement should be taken as definite fact.
 
One of the things that annoyed me about "The Voyager Conspiracy" is that, while Seven's conclusions were ridiculous, there wasn't any indication given that she was inventing the fundamental "facts" she was discovering. So they did raise questions that ended up never being answered. If the Caretaker grabbed (and, presumably, returned) a Cardassian ship, did the Central Command know it was possible Voyager had been abducted similarly and just sat on that? What was that tractor-beam looking flash? Was there really anything weird about Voyager having tricobolt explosives?
 
One of the things that annoyed me about "The Voyager Conspiracy" is that, while Seven's conclusions were ridiculous, there wasn't any indication given that she was inventing the fundamental "facts" she was discovering. So they did raise questions that ended up never being answered. If the Caretaker grabbed (and, presumably, returned) a Cardassian ship, did the Central Command know it was possible Voyager had been abducted similarly and just sat on that? What was that tractor-beam looking flash? Was there really anything weird about Voyager having tricobolt explosives?

The Cardassians would not have an inclination to share such information with Starfleet though (considering their tenuous relationship at the time, then destabilization of the military government where the civilian government took charge, then the war with the Klingons and finally the Dominion's involvement, etc., so, it wouldn't surprise me if the Obsidian Order found out the warship's been to the DQ and back and ended up hiding all evidence of those events and sworn the crew of the warship to secrecy (or threatened them to not disclose anything to anyone - especially SF), and by the time the Obsidian Order was largely destroyed by the Dominion (along with the Romulan Tal'Shiar when both sent their ships to attack the Changeling's homeworld in the Omarion Nebula), the information would have probably died with them - and the warship in question along with its crew may have been destroyed when the Klingons invaded, or during the Dominion War (or they just forgot about it all together because it wasn't something worth mentioning next to everything else that was happening even if they survived all the events in DS9).

As for what the tractor-beam looking flash was... that's something of a contested point I suppose.
VOY's sensors were damaged in 'Caretaker Pt2' from not just their initial pull to the DQ, but also subsequent attack by the Kazon (the ship was barely patched to functional status by automation in the 3 days the crew was at the Array for example, but probably wasn't up to 100% status - so the systems got damaged 'again' in the attack).

At any rate, its possible the tractor beam was a glitch in the visual sensors... or its possible that it was indeed a tractor beam that pulled the Tetryon reactor into subspace... but there would be 0 evidence to support the idea its the same reactor... or even if it was that mr. Tash had any bad intentions (which we know he didn't).

And as for VOY having tricobalts... I provided a potential explanation behind that in my previous reply... but of course, its nothing more than my personal opinion of what may have happened to prompt SF to give VOY tricobalts.
 
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Yeah, they were not standard issue, and it was never explained why they had them for a simple 'capture the maquis' mission.

No, but its possible that because they caused tears in subspace, someone in SF may have hoped it would destabilize Warp travel in that part of space - although that would carry some SERIOUS moral implications... and it possible VOY had standing orders to use the Tricobalts if all else failed (its also possible that SF was expecting to find a well fortified compound or outpost that needed Tricobalts to destroy it)... point its, we just don't know and don't think we ever will.
 
I really wished Discovery's far future had been one where all of Trek's one-off-with-no-explanation magic tricks were used to the fullest.

Sure, but at the same time I generally just assume that those things aren't used because they either didn't work very well or were otherwise just irrelevant by that time. We know the Picard golem technology was abandoned because it really didn't work for the most part.

Voyager's armor seemed to be very specifically an anti-Borg measure... which was largely unnecessary post-Endgame and the technology may not even have ever been developed.

SO... Holy shit! In reading that, it would seem that the Federation may have engaged in some ethically questionable weapons development and deployment.

Starfleet doing shady shit isn't really anything new. Hell even the hero characters get up to it on occasion. Sisko committed a war crime or two, like that time he just straight up had a dude murdered. And that time that he rendered a planet uninhabitable just to spite Eddington.

They developed the Phase Cloak in a big "F U" to the Romulans. Carol and David Marcus were on guard that Starfleet would come and take Genesis away from them. The whole of Insurrection.
 
Sure, but at the same time I generally just assume that those things aren't used because they either didn't work very well or were otherwise just irrelevant by that time. We know the Picard golem technology was abandoned because it really didn't work for the most part.

Voyager's armor seemed to be very specifically an anti-Borg measure... which was largely unnecessary post-Endgame and the technology may not even have ever been developed.

Actually, we know the armour tech from the future was effective against regular species weapons.
If you recall, just when Admiral Janeway stole the chrono-deflector, the two Klingon Negh'Var ships opened fire on her armoured shuttle... and it didn't even flinch - and after noticing this, the Klingons even tried hailing Janeway to threaten her (a last ditch effort which of course failed).

Starfleet doing shady shit isn't really anything new. Hell even the hero characters get up to it on occasion. Sisko committed a war crime or two, like that time he just straight up had a dude murdered. And that time that he rendered a planet uninhabitable just to spite Eddington.

Though to be fair those aren't your everyday occurrences - they were kind of last ditch attempts when everything else failed (though I really wish people didn't vilify Janeway for her decision to dematerialize Tuvix into Tuvok and Neelix while glossing over a war crime that Sisko committed (which carried with it bigger implications even leading to hundreds of Romulan ships being destroyed and tens of thousands of Romulan lives being lost).

They developed the Phase Cloak in a big "F U" to the Romulans.
Yes, but this was done by an effectively a small group of people who were too paranoid about the Romulans and didn't want to play nicely by the rules.
Though it did demonstrate the fact the UFP had the capability of creating superior cloaking technology decades ahead of the Romulans.

Carol and David Marcus were on guard that Starfleet would come and take Genesis away from them. The whole of Insurrection.

On guard and unsure yes, but we don't know for certain how Starfleet would have reacted... its possible Carol and David were just paranoid and overblown the situation due to their own insecurities (although, Starfleet was more concerned about the larger political impact advanced technologies could have had - aka, it could have potentially destabilized the balance of power, or they may have indeed tried weaponizing the device to deter the Klingons - which ultimately didn't happen anyway because SF seemed to have been handling the Klingons well as is and was more concerned about UFP's perception by other powers - plus, the device didn't work as intended at the time - though for the life of me why would SF and UFP abandon the further development of this tech is a bit weird... it still could have had vast implications and applications).
 
Fuller wanted to put his own stamp on Trek, and wanted DSC to look different from any other Trek series. So yeah, no round warp nacelles simply because he said so. He also wanted Discovery herself to stand out, so he insisted her hull be bronze rather than the "traditional gray" used for other Starfleet ships.
 
It’s fine to talk about the guy who came up with the mandate for ships being flat and having angular nacelles. It doesn’t change the fact that every other component of the ships look nothing like the TOS Enterprise, but rather a hodgepodge of designs that could have been from any time period in the Trek chronology, rather than a more unified, TOS-centric aesthetic, which seems to be what Krause is doing with his models.
 
It’s fine to talk about the guy who came up with the mandate for ships being flat and having angular nacelles. It doesn’t change the fact that every other component of the ships look nothing like the TOS Enterprise, but rather a hodgepodge of designs that could have been from any time period in the Trek chronology, rather than a more unified, TOS-centric aesthetic, which seems to be what Krause is doing with his models.
One can't forget that we're living on a Post-NX-01 world. Those ships didn't need to simply pre-date the TOS Enterprise, they also had to follow-up on the design language established by Enterprise.

Honestly, with the exception of the angular nacelles, I've got no issue with any of the Dicso ships. I actually like quite a few of them.
 
One can't forget that we're living on a Post-NX-01 world. Those ships didn't need to simply pre-date the TOS Enterprise, they also had to follow-up on the design language established by Enterprise.

Oh god, we're heading for another "The NX-01 'Akiraprise' looks far too advanced for the 22nd century" argument aren't we...
 
One can't forget that we're living on a Post-NX-01 world. Those ships didn't need to simply pre-date the TOS Enterprise, they also had to follow-up on the design language established by Enterprise.

Honestly, with the exception of the angular nacelles, I've got no issue with any of the Dicso ships. I actually like quite a few of them.
I’m not telling anyone what they should or should not like. I personally really like the Shenzhou, though its nacelles look out of place for a pre-TOS period.

As for the design language of ENT, there is one clear descendant in the DSC fleet: the Engle (which still has flat nacelles, unlike Archer’s Enterprise.) All the other ships look nothing like they were descended from the NX-01, other than maybe the Walker with its deflector in front of the saucer. Barring that, its other design attributes look little to nothing like the ENT era.
 
As for the design language of ENT, there is one clear descendant in the DSC fleet: the Engle (which still has flat nacelles, unlike Archer’s Enterprise.) All the other ships look nothing like they were descended from the NX-01, other than maybe the Walker with its deflector in front of the saucer. Barring that, its other design attributes look little to nothing like the ENT era.
The Shepard-class looks like it just about might fit the lineage, at least from certain angles.
 
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