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 Compel wrote:
Sure, to a point...

However, it's worth keeping in mind that I can't play a British DVD on an American DVD player.

Or the various legends about 'Imperial Measurement designed device meets Metric designed device.'

That's not to say you COULDN'T have an episode where a bunch of people are stranded and cobble a ship together out of spare parts from two other ships. But it's not exactly 'plug and play' or easy to do as standard.

It's also worth mentioning that the whole point of the Defiant was them literally plugging a Romulan cloaking device into the ship and it working.

Ish.

Kinda.

Eventually.

Oh wait, we just lost power again.

Yeah, I think they use a lot of shortcuts just for the sake of moving the plot along, but there are enough mentions of incompatible tech to show that the writers are aware of the problem. DS9 had a lot of Cardassian tech that was incompatible with Federation power units for the first season or so, the aforementioned Scotty flying a BoP ("Repairing a ship is easy. Reading Klingon, that's harder."). There's the episode where the universal translator isn't working on a Gamma Quadrant species, in Enterprise Trip does some pretty lengthy exposition on how he's fixing an alien ship and how it's different from (pre-)Federation tech.

Keeps the plot moving along, shows how far humans have progressed that they can apply general scientific principles to understand alien technology, but enough examples of that translation being tricky or frustrating to help suspend disbelief.

Isn't there an episode of TNG where they find a crate of phasers that have been modified by Romulans, but it takes a whole episode's worth of tests to find out how and why?

If your ships work on similar principles, then you can work it out. The navigation controls? Just a matter of figuring out which buttons does what.

So where dilithium powered warp core etc? If you’re is AC, and the other ship AC, it’s gonna be easier than if the other ship is DC for merging technology.

But here on Earth, you can’t so readily swap a diesel for a petrol engine. It can be done, but other gubbins will need know-wots. That’s how I see the challenge O’Brien had on DS9.

Now, let’s breakdown say, Cars from the point of invention to now. At their most basic, they remaining the same. Engine, fuel, accelerator, brake, gears, steering. I could probably pile in a vintage car from the 20’s or 30’s and have a decent crack at driving it. Main difference I’m aware of would be remembering the choke, which the car I learned to drive in had.

Given the future Federation ships are all dilithium powered, the learning curve for Disco’s crew likely isn’t all that steep, especially as they have people to show them what’s what.

Soo, if the Romulans where a part of the federation before the burn.......why didnt they share their warp drive schematices that didnt use dilithium?

I have the feeling that is exactly a question that's going to be raised and answered at one point.

Or they might just stay away from the Romulans completely and leave them for Picard.

However, in general, the Federation didn't think too highly of flying in a ship that's built around a miniature black hole.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Soo, if the Romulans where a part of the federation before the burn.......why didnt they share their warp drive schematices that didnt use dilithium?

Same reason that the Klingons didn't hand over cloaking technology. Same reason the US didn't give the Soviet Union their atomic weapons research during WW2.

Just because you are allies now, doesn't mean you will remain so and if that happens you want to have some aces up your sleeve.

That’s also assuming they didn’t break away from the Federation before.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Soo, if the Romulans where a part of the federation before the burn.......why didnt they share their warp drive schematices that didnt use dilithium?

Same reason that the Klingons didn't hand over cloaking technology. Same reason the US didn't give the Soviet Union their atomic weapons research during WW2.

Just because you are allies now, doesn't mean you will remain so and if that happens you want to have some aces up your sleeve.

Actually the Romulans traded Cloaking tech to the Kingons or they would not have it

Same as China got tech from Russia during the early part of the Cold War.

we sold the harrier design to the US.

 Compel wrote:

However, it's worth keeping in mind that I can't play a British DVD on an American DVD player.

I can get British or American dvds playing fine in a Japanese player, though. Many players can. There's often a 4 digit code (using the controller) to "unlock" kiddy-mode.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
That’s also assuming they didn’t break away from the Federation before.

They explicitly state they broke away post burn.

Must’ve missed that!

It’s not like the Federation couldn’t figure out another method of warp travel. For goodness sake, Cochrane never had any dilithium crystals, either.

Dilithium is only used to make m/am conversion efficient. It is not the only power source on the Enterprise, let alone in the Federation. Warp travel is no complicated thing in universe; the Bajorans used primitive warp sails thousands of years ago. Canonically, some members of the Federation as of TNG have been traveling through space for more than 10,000 years, and if one includes the novelization of TMP as canon, there are some really crazy, long term spacefaring civilizations in the Federation.

The Bajoran lightship wasn’t inherently warp capable. I don’t think it was even faster than light given it was being pushed by solar currents on sails. The speed/distance it achieved was an unintended fluke of its design interacting with a tachyon eddy.

True. But it was still space worthy. And as we know, the Star Trek galaxy is riddled with wormholes, subspace eddies, and other phenomena that a post-dilithium Federation would understand how to exploit.

It’s weird because in the show it works, but the people who designed it said it wouldn’t. A ship of its size would take sails a mile wide to function. Also how did that thing break atmo or even land? It’s a cute hobby, but not anything one could take seriously.

Different topic. After watching an episode with the Breen the other day I got curious and googled it they’d ever shown what they looked like under the mask. Apparently it never has been disclosed exactly what they look like, beyond something shouted, possibly wolf like. However the people behind Discovery have said they’re interested in showing that and having unmasked Breen in their series.

Tangent. The same article that mentioned Discovery and Breen also showed Saru’s original design and man that face woulda been freaky to always have there.

In the novels, the Breen are a society of 5 or so species* who all wear the same encounter suits to prevent any kind of bias between members.



*This diversity likely started as a way to explain inconsistencies in the show, but later developed into a device to show the Breen as a mirror to the Federation’s ideals of inclusivity.

Yeah i feel like the "No dilithium" is kinda a big plot hole when they forgot that dilithium isnt actuallly required.

Well Reunification Part III (I see what you did there) was sure a perfect storm of stuff I hate.

I do wonder what kind of time keeping system federation ships use that they all keep the exact same time synchronized down to the millionth of a micro second.

 AduroT wrote:
I do wonder what kind of time keeping system federation ships use that they all keep the exact same time synchronized down to the millionth of a micro second.

Time beacons were mentioned in TNG - they used one (instantaneously) in "Cause and Effect" after breaking out of the time loop ("The beacon confirms that the Enterprise's chronometers are off by 17.4 days and Data resets them accordingly")

Time is REALLY important in maritime navigation and log keeping, so I have no issue with starship automatically keeping time to the microsecond .

I do have an issue with no one ever thinking of this before...

Likely old news for the folks watching the show in the thread but apparently they refitted the Discovery in the future and this video breaks down some of the changes. I'm just starting to watch this but just from the thumbnail it looks like an improvement (not hard to do admittedly IMO given the starting point).




I still don't actually like the design but at least I no longer actively dislike it either. I'd also have no problem with the fidget spinner/spore drive 900 years into the future if they had debuted it then as an alternative to the subspace destroying warp technology. No idea if the turboshaft roller coaster and clown car self replicating shuttle bay are still functioning though...

Well, I thoroughly enjoyed that episode and kinda weirdly didn't have any complaints with the episode.

I also didn't really feel too much of the Burnham mary sueness in it, if anything I felt it was more an episode of an entire planet calling Burnham out on her ****, before her coming to a self realisation, prompted by other people.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Well Reunification Part III (I see what you did there) was sure a perfect storm of stuff I hate.

Spoiler:

Bottle episode
Burnham Mary Sue stuff
No one thought of triangulation before? No one?
Tilly is first officer
Burnham's mom
Those Romulan ninja nuns, worst thing from Picard
Vulcan Romulan politics, almost as interesting as Klingon politics. Almost.
Prequel timeline issues - Everyone's totally cool with learning Vulcans and Romulans are the same race, 10 years before it becomes common knowledge

Just ug. Get on with it!

Any word on Picard Season 2?

Urghh god so its still the "Burnham and Tilly show" and Fk the rest.

I am really worried one or both of them will be excreted into Picard and ruin it - are they even doing a season 2 of Picard?

Yeah i find it funny this show is touted for including several LGBTQ+ groups, yet none of them get a focused episode, like ever.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Yeah i find it funny this show is touted for including several LGBTQ+ groups, yet none of them get a focused episode, like ever.

Because like alot of shows that claim to be inclusive they fail in number of ways:

1. They make a point of including them - their sexual orientation should be irrelvant in both the show and the setting and treated in that way.
2. They usually kill them off - so much that its pretty much now a meme
3. They are singled out as unique or unusual or something to be revealed.

Sci-fi and fantasy has often been slow at this and Trek has a awful track record with the most interesting character in this vein being Dax - strong and capable and whose gender was just another life experience - really well done.

If you want to see a gay couple done right in fantasy - watch The Old Guard.

Its the same with Tilly - oh look here is a fat character - wow isn't that great are we not awesome. No because she is unique in this and her physique makes no sense in the military role she has (IMO) and they make it so even wins races to show that hey being fat is really great - its a good thing. Have a wide range of body shapes by all means but not stupid tokenism.

Same with Burnham - ow wow we have a non white female character - isn't that awesome - look at us. And waste the opportunity.

If you want to see a non white, powerful female character with strengths AND flaws - look to Chrisjen Avasarala in the Expanse

Sorry bit of a rant.

Well, I think I'm done.

Made it halfway through the episode and all that I managed to get from it was:


I was able to watch the latest season with some sense of appreciation for where things seemed to be going; but nope, it's season 2 Space Jesus again, only this time we'll point fingers at her and accuse her of thinking that she's Space Jesus as if it's some sort of joke.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Yeah i find it funny this show is touted for including several LGBTQ+ groups, yet none of them get a focused episode, like ever.

The problem with Disco is nobody gets a focused episode. In every Trek show since TOS they've been true ensembles. Yes, TNG focused a lot on Picard but many, many episodes gave the rest of the crew a chance to shine and that holds true for every Trek after that. We have entire episodes dedicated to other characters in every other Trek, to the point that there are multiple episodes that barely even feature the "main" character at all. Discovery has none of that, to the point that most people didn't even know the names of the bridge crew until this season. One of last season's main character moments fell completely flat because android lady was a complete non-character right up until they had to kill her off.

We now have the ridiculous scenario where the crew is so poorly developed they have to make an ensign the XO, which is stupid beyond belief. Literally every other bridge officer outranks her, along with likely over half the rest of the ship and we're supposed to believe she commands enough respect to operate as the first officer?

Sometimes in DS9 you started to forget who the heck Sisco was at times and he was the captain. If anything characters like Quark and Garrack easily rose to appear far more interesting in their own ways.

And yet the series never suffered for that, if anything it grew fantastic strength from having such a widely developed supporting cast. Especially when you then brought them all together in major events.



The Original Series mostly focused on the core three - Kirk, Spock and McCoy. You get snippets of the others, but they were always supporting and never a focus. However its formula was to basically be the same rough formula for every single episode.

We forget that TNG was quite a revolution in many ways; trying out long interconnected story arcs; having a focus on characters outside of the core; heck they even killed off a key bridge character in the first season.*


*And whilst that meant we got to see Worf move up into a command position, it was a shame we lost Tasha. We had to wait until DS9 before we got women taking on more typically considered "male" roles/attitudes in Kira and Dash. Which isn't saying that TNG women were weak, but many held quite traditional female roles (counsellor, doctor, mystical mystic/barkeep)

DS9 has maybe too much Quark I think, but not excessively so.

 AduroT wrote:
DS9 has maybe too much Quark I think, but not excessively so.

He fits in so well because he's at the most neutral focal point for so many of the characters, a bar in the middle of the station that everyone visits for food, drink, relaxation and chat and such. So its very easy to fit him in all the time even if its just for a few lines.

Interestingly when they did Ten Forward in TNG I get the feeling they might have liked to have done similar with that, but it never really matured that way. It got used a few times, but it was never as seamlessly used as in DS9 by the second season and beyond (once DS9 had found its own legs). It might have also been because Whoopy almost seemed like she was more of a guest* actress in the series or had reason not to be there for long periods or such. There's certainly a good few Ten Forward moments where she never appears, not even in passing serving at the bar. Of course that also played into the mystery around her character, because we really got very little development with her. A few key focus episodes, a dropped story path with her confrontation with Q; but after that we never really hear or see much of her until the Generations film. Even then it doesn't really answer many questions about her, its just another small part of her. I'm always surprised how the latter films focus so much on Data and Picard when Guinen is perhaps the last great mystery of TNG.



* a quick google suggests that over 7 seasons she only appeared in 29 episodes. For reference each season (barring 2) had 26 episodes.