That's your right. It's not like the Federation didn't have things to do in that time.
The age of the antihero
- Thread starter Refuge
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Compared to some of the bizarre decisions we've seen Starfleet make in this era, it's nothing. En route to deliver vital plague supplies? You must divert to check out this quasar for reasons!
It's not like that sort of conflict-inducing device wasn't hackneyed 50 years ago in "The Galileo Seven."
But what's gained by having the good guys be conveniently incompetent in the Shenzhou situation? Nothing. There wasn't anything that happened as a result that couldn't have happened some other way that made more sense. L'Rell had allies. One of them could have been scripted to have received an emergency signal of hers and to have picked her and Voq up from a completely derelict Shenzhou. Nothing appears to have been gained plot-wise by not scuttling her. There was no point to it at all.
At least in "The Galileo Seven" we got... something out of the pretense: fog, angry, giant stone age aliens with big spears who can pound the shuttle with big boulders, The Cold Equations-type dilemmas, Spock reasoning that it was time for an emotional outburst, etc.
I think this was seen in light of the recovery of the telescope.
It was a specific plot point to the contrary that L'Rell and Voq boarded Shenzhou to get something of value. They even had intelligence that it was there. Saying that Starfleet didn't consider it as important as a vintage telescope is not the same thing as saying that it had no value....
And ignore the Klingon cloaking technology?
The sarcophagus ship had something of value. Why was that left there?
I doubt someone went there to recover the telescope. The telescope was probably recovered during the evacuation itself. Except for the Kelvin Timeline ones, Starfleet Escape Pods generally do have some space to spare.
Crewmen Personal Effects are more important to Starfleet than giving a few worthless scraps for the Klingon Empire, it's simple as that. They put the well being of people above pettiness, it's not hard to imagine that's a thing in Star Trek.
It was not something of value. It was like Rick and Daryl in The Walking Dead presuming there was a can of beans inside an abandoned Supermarket. Is it a vital piece for survival ? Yeah, sure. Not valuable, though. Voq and L'Rell at that moment were more worried about surviving than winning a war for the Empire.
Besides, all of that doesn't matter anyway. The whole point is that Voq and L'Rell did it for nothing. Kol arrived with supplies shortly after. He had tons of food. It isn't hard to imagine he had some Dilithium to spare. That was his objective all along, conquer T'Kuvma's Cult by saving them.
I mean, you don't need a lot of intel to presume where the Dilithium is stored inside a Starfleet ship. I think it's as straightforward as guessing that the big hole on the side of a car is where you store the fuel. No biggie.
That's a really fucked-up sense of what's valuable.
In TWD, the kind of thing that people fought for, fought over, and sometimes died over is the very definition of what's valuable. It's part of the premise that the value that something had pre-zombie apocalypse is not the same that it has post-zombie apocalypse. What you're talking about, a can of beans, was strictly inventoried and controlled in Alexandria. So, valuable.
But, anyway, the analogy you've set up comparing this to a can of beans is false. This isn't just something that's going to keep them going for another day. This is power for interstellar travel and escape from the entire situation. In TWD, that really has no analogy, but it would be priceless.
Would you trade your fully loaded handgun for a single can of beans ? Would you risk the entire manpower of Alexandria so a few Sanctuary guys couldn't find the can of beans you forgot lying around somewhere ? No.
So even in the Post Apocalyptic Genre some things look worthless if compared to other bigger things. That is even more accentuated in the Post-Scarcity Space Opera Genre. Just because we had a few minutes of Klingons in a survival sequence doesn't change that the fact that rest of the ST Universe was not in survival mode. They were literally seeking to regain something everyone had, warp capability. Even the war itself is not being fought because one needs the resources of the other to survive, it's fought because one wants to impose its idealism over the other.
By regaining interstellar travel capability they would've escaped the situation and gone for another day.
That was the whole point. Reaching a populated area of their territory so they could prevent starving to death. How preventing a few starving Klingons to survive helps the Federation in any way ? What's the big picture here ?
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Was that even the exact same telescope Georgiou had on the Shenzou?
I could be wrong, but I figured the family heirloom telescope willed to Burnham was just that -- an heirloom -- and not the same as the one Georgiuo had on the ship.
That's an interesting idea, but if you look carefully at the Klingon scenes aboard the Shenzhou, you'll see that Georgiuo's telescope is missing from its mount. The mount is still in the window, but it's no longer holding anything. It could still be a different telescope, but the one on the Shenzhou is gone.
So we're not distinguishing between being valuable and being the most valuable thing in the world? OK.
The rust patterns are the same.
However, the evacuation of the Shenzhou isn't immediate, and we don't actually know how long it took, we just see a shot of escape pods jettisoning. There was potentially ample time to grab some personal items on the way to the door.
So we're not distinguishing between being valuable and being the most valuable thing in the world? OK.
I mean, we Humans generally attribute value to things using some other thing as comparative. When we are generous, at least. See why people get so pissed when you try to attribute value to stuff so common as drinking water. Water costs something, sure, when compared to everything else that cost looks negligible. That's why drinking water is a Human Right but a nice cup of cold soda isn't.
I think it's hilariously petty the concept that Federation should've gone through the trouble of obliterating the Shenzhou just because something the Klingons already have lots of. Imagine risking the lives of your crewmen delaying their evacuation and risking a too early self-destruct because of something so silly like that. Our ridged-forehead friends are not even attacking the Dilithium Mines because they need it, they are doing that in order to cripple the Federation like they did with several other species they dominated throughout their history.
Having regulations ordering you to finish off your already ruined Starship so nobody gets to touch it is something I expect to be a Ferengi Rule of Acquisition, to be honest.
Yeah, that's hilarious.Having regulations ordering you to finish off your already ruined Starship so nobody gets to touch it is something I expect to be a Ferengi Rule of Acquisition, to be honest.
That's kind of nonsense though. You're equating 'plenty of' in terms of technology and not simple resources that the enemy could use and further their cause. Give the enemy nothing. No chance to loot a dilithium processor, no access to Starfleet anything. It's not like scuttling a ship or setting it on self-destruct is not straight forward. Or standard procedure if the Glenn is anything to go by.
The Glenn isn't anything to go by, because there's nothing standard about it. It was a highly unique prototype. The Shenzhou was not only standard, but old. By all accounts self-destruct to "give the enemy nothing" is not standard, unless you're Romulan. The only example I can think of was when Kira fried Ops when the Cardassians retook DS9, but it wasn't destroyed either.
