The age of the antihero

[Refuge]

Lol, I was making a point. Duh If there has to be a regulation in Starfleet to scuttle a ship or salvage before any of these guys do anything, then how come they didn't need one for the telescope?

 

[fireproof78]

Lol, I was making a point. Duh If there has to be a regulation in Starfleet to scuttle a ship or salvage before any of these guys do anything, then how come they didn't need one for the telescope?

Captain's orders. Duh.

 

[Refuge]

You mean the executor of her Will maybe? Do you think he popped up off camera and supervised the recovery? (Just a note this is fun speculation not being literal, that would be stupid).

 

[CorporalCaptain]

The plot hole with the telescope is probably less about who collected it and even when. THOUGH that does make you wonder. It's more that it was something physically considered of importance and taken. Time was required for it to be removed and transported. There was a window of opportunity to do so. Yet other procedures were not. Security and military ones. Come on that is ludicrous that in a time of war that if you don't scuttle your ship you are going to be that stupid you don't render anything within useless? What there has to be a regulation for you to do so? Where was the starfleet regulation to take the blessed telescope, yet it was taken. So we have this touching scene later on involving the telescope. We also have these eye-rolling scenes of Klingons on the Shenzhou looking for parts!

Bingo.

 

[ralfy]

...

And I'm trying to understand them as people in their context.

....

Captain's last wishes.

Your posts no longer make sense.

 

[ralfy]

Yes. That is the "dilithium processor." It's a device used to hold a dilithium crystal in proper alignment within the reaction chamber. It is not a "power core" or anything similar, as this particular device is a component of the Shenzhou's warp core. The warp core as a whole is non-functional and damaged beyond repair, which is precisely the reason Shenzhou was abandoned to begin with.


"It" meaning the warp core. This was mentioned in the previous episodes, where Saru points out explicitly that their ship is incapable of performing an attack; warp drive and impulse engines are both offline, and they don't have enough power to even keep their shields up.


It's not a plot hole at all. The dilithium processor IN PARTICULAR was valuable to Voq only owing to his extraordinary circumstances. It wouldn't NORMALLY be valuable to anyone else, especially to the crew of the Shenzhou, who would have no particular reason to remove that specific piece of technology. As it stands, the processor was the only thing on the entire ship that Voq had any use for.

The telescope, on the other hand, has value to the crew in that it was their dead Captain's priceless heirloom. Considering they failed to recover her body from the Klingon ship, it's probably the only thing they have left to remember her by and may be meant as part of her funeral arrangements.

If ships can be rigged for auto-destruct, then it would not have been difficult to rig them as well to automatically disable devices that could be used by the enemy. And yet they managed to ignore that and instead bothered to retrieve a telescope (or was it a telescope with instructions to have it sent with a will to the mutineer?). There's your plot hole.

 

[fireproof78]

Your posts no longer make sense.

Well, that's good, because your's have not for a while.

You mean the executor of her Will maybe? Do you think he popped up off camera and supervised the recovery? (Just a note this is fun speculation not being literal, that would be stupid).

I already told you-it had its own escape pod.

Boy, this thread is repetitious

 

[AlanC9]

Lol, I was making a point. Duh If there has to be a regulation in Starfleet to scuttle a ship or salvage before any of these guys do anything, then how come they didn't need one for the telescope?

Because the telescope was known to be valuable and blowing up the ship was not.

Remember, people aren't buying your premise here. Assuming what you're trying to prove isn't going to move the chains.

 

[Refuge]

If ships can be rigged for auto-destruct, then it would not have been difficult to rig them as well to automatically disable devices that could be used by the enemy. And yet they managed to ignore that and instead bothered to retrieve a telescope (or was it a telescope with instructions to have it sent with a will to the mutineer?). There's your plot hole.

Apparently the worth of an old relic outweighs strategy. No.

 

[Refuge]

I already told you-it had its own escape pod.

You did

 

[Myko]

I don't think taking the telecope or not scuttling the Shenzhou is a plothole per se, but I sure would've liked to have seen some explanatory dialogue or scene so that the touching moment with the telescope wasn't ruined by me sitting around thinking about how the hell they got it.

 

[Ovation]

I don't think taking the telecope or not scuttling the Shenzhou is a plothole per se, but I sure would've liked to have seen some explanatory dialogue or scene so that the touching moment with the telescope wasn't ruined by me sitting around thinking about how the hell they got it.

But “how the hell they got it” is entirely irrelevant to the moment. (Not all of the post is directed at you—just a convenient place for my own thoughts)

Holding fiction to standards of consistency greater than offered in real life seems beside the point of fiction. It’s all invented and thus artificial. And we absolutely do NOT need diversions into exposition to account for things for which a tiny bit of imagination on the part of the viewer/reader suffices. Such explanations serve only to grind things to a halt, insult me by suggesting I’m incapable of reasoning a plausible explanation of my own AND take up valuable time where more important and interesting story elements would be preferable.

Also, a plot hole is NOT synonymous with “I don’t like how the story is going”. And “amazingly convenient” is standard practice in fiction (remove those moments from all fiction and you’re left with very little story telling indeed).

In any case, the single most refreshing thing to me about DSC is the rather infrequent “info-dumps” compared to most of the rest of Trek. And I’m ESPECIALLY grateful for that lack regarding the telescope.

 

[Myko]

But “how the hell they got it” is entirely irrelevant to the moment.

And it would have been, if they had setup its recovery in an earlier episode by for example showing someone grabbing it in the premiere episodes. Instead they created a huge distraction by showing an item the attentive viewer would think be destroyed or still onboard the Shenzhou.

 

[fireproof78]

Also, a plot hole is NOT synonymous with “I don’t like how the story is going”. And “amazingly convenient” is standard practice in fiction (remove those moments from all fiction and you’re left with very little story telling indeed).

It often amazes me as to how much stories require coincidence and convenience.

 

[Ovation]

And it would have been, if they had setup its recovery in an earlier episode by for example showing someone grabbing it in the premiere episodes. Instead they created a huge distraction by showing an item the attentive viewer would think be destroyed or still onboard the Shenzhou.

I disagree. Showing that would be the same as dropping in a paragraph of exposition. The fact it is present clearly demonstrates someone picked it up, somewhere, along the way (the exact nature of “how it happened” is irrelevant and has zero bearing on the overall story). That (the picking it up or talking about it) is BORING. The moment itself—Burnham giving it to Saru (as well as the earlier moment when she first sees it in the package)—that’s what is interesting.

 

[Myko]

I'm glad the moment worked for you, it didn't for me. Overall I still like Discovery though.

 

[Prax]

The telescope is trivial. Larger mysteries await.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The plot hole with the telescope is probably less about who collected it and even when. THOUGH that does make you wonder. It's more that it was something physically considered of importance and taken. Time was required for it to be removed and transported. There was a window of opportunity to do so. Yet other procedures were not.

And we're back to full circle, with you implying that such a procedure has ever even existed in Starfleet and choosing to ignore the mountain of evidence from precedent that it does not.

Come on that is ludicrous that in a time of war that if you don't scuttle your ship you are going to be that stupid you don't render anything within useless?

The purpose of scuttling a ship in time of war is to prevent an enemy from capturing the actual ship. At no point in history hs "scuttling" ever involved the detonation of a tactical nuclear warhead of sufficient power to vaporize the entire ship right down to its nuts and bolts.

Hell, even the scuttling of the Enterprise in "Search for Spock" didn't destroy the entire vessel, just blew up all of its major computer components and hardware so the Klingons couldn't capture it. If Enterprise hadn't fallen into the atmosphere of Genesis, a fair amount of its hardware would still be salvageable. The ship AS A WHOLE would not be, though, which is the entire point.

What there has to be a regulation for you to do so?

Yes. And judging by previous episodes, the regulation seems to be "Captain's discretion."

In this case, there's no reason to believe the wrecked Shenzhou would have been valuable to anyone at any point in the foreseeable future. Saru's judgement would have been to leave the ship behind to be salvaged later, maybe after the conclusion of hostilities or at a moment of opportunity if and when starfleet was able to reclaim control of the sector. If Saru had known that the dilithium processor would wind up being valuable, he would have just taken thirty seconds out of his day to shoot a hole in it with his hand phaser.

Where was the starfleet regulation to take the blessed telescope, yet it was taken.

They had a reason to take the telescope. They had NO reason to take a random engine component from their totally disabled warp core.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

If ships can be rigged for auto-destruct, then it would not have been difficult to rig them as well to automatically disable devices that could be used by the enemy.

Considering "the enemy" never wants to use Starfleet devices that aren't attached to the actual starship, WHY would they want to do this?

The goal of scuttling is to keep a hostile force from taking control of the SHIP, something that happens often enough that the self-destruct mechanism legitimately makes sense. But stealing random components of those ships for use in salvage operations? That's an act of desperation by someone who has no other options to survive. Indeed, the people most likely to find themselves in that situation are not the enemy themselves, but the surviving crew of the disabled vessel. Automatically demolishing any salvageable components whenever the ship is abandoned is more likely to screw the survivors than the enemy.

And yet they managed to ignore that

You don't "ignore" situations you don't know anything about, dude. Six months from now, the Global Communist Conspiracy might break into my old house and steal my water heater as part of their plan to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids. And yet I neglected to burn my house down when I moved out last month, instead taking a considerable amount of time to pack up all of my personal belongings.

I mean, if I had time to pack up and move my TV and my Xbox, I certainly had enough time to burn the house down, right?

There's your plot hole.

Its not a plot hole. They had a reason to bring the telescope. They did NOT have a reason to bring the dilithium processor. The telescope had value to them, the processor did not.

It only BECOMES a plot hole in the case that Starfleet knew the dilithium processor was valuable to the Klingons in particular and they neglected to destroy it. But Starfleet didn't know that, nor could they have known that, since the only REASON it became valuable -- six months later -- is because the Klingons' situation was highly unusual.

 

[Vger23]

I think they're going to create an entire CBSAA mini-series and associated (canon) novel-verse about the events surrounding the abandonment of the USS Shinzohu...including an epic major motion picture solely based on how the telescope was recovered from Gorgeau's ready room.

I think they're also going to do a JJVerse version of the story. Just to show another alternate universe take on what took place on that fateful, highly influential day.