Well, we know they'll have this and at least 2 more seasons to do it. But they made it a real point to 1) completely destroy the ship 2) have absolutely no survivors - I'll be surprised if this is brought up again.
Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - Season 3 Viewing (Spoilers)
- Thread starter Omand
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pukunui
Legend
I’d be surprised if the Federstion doesn’t send a ship to investigate the wreckage. I mean, the scavengers did almost destroy Starfleet’s flagship, and they had fancy tech that could absorb phaser blasts. People are going to want to find out more about it.
Absolutely, they should investigate and they should want to find out all/more about it. But Star Trek has a pretty long history of introducing insanely game changing technology and then just acting as if it was never a thing. But yes, we'll see if this goes anywhere.
James Gasik
We don't talk about Pun-Pun
I think that's really the problem with Star Trek as a series. Most episodes are written with the idea of "wouldn't it be cool if they encountered this?" but all too often, actually delving into how these new discoveries would completely change the franchise runs into immediate problems from a storytelling perspective.
Like, think of how many episodes have been devoted to people wanting to extend life. Then remember, way back in TOS, how Miri's people figured out how to make children live for centuries. You could have an entire society where everyone stops aging permanently just before puberty, but then we'd have to have a show full of child actors! Can't have that!
Why bother with an emergency medical program, when you can ask the holodeck to create a fully staffed sickbay with advanced AI doctors?
Heck, why not have entire crews of holograms, in holoships? We've seen how advanced Vic Fontana is, and he's just a lounge singer, let alone Moriarty! And they can live forever! (Wait, I think Red Dwarf did that first).
Instead, almost everything has to be a one-off and status quo is god, because massive changes would be too hard to produce/write for. Yet Star Trek suffers from a form of "power creep" where each new iteration has to somehow top the last in terms of scale. So just like a trading card game, you introduce powerful new concepts then have to ban or rotate them out of the game so they don't warp the entire thing around them.
I mean, think about it. How many episodes of Trek have you seen that could have spawned entire new series by themselves, with the concepts they introduced? I'm going to guess almost all of them, lol.
But I can't fault anyone for not making a series that constantly mutates in response, as much as I'd love to see it, because I think for a lot of people, it'd be hard to watch if you miss two episodes and suddenly everything's changed!
Or try to get back into the franchise after a hiatus and wonder why nothing is familiar anymore.
That having been said, you can have a series that has primarily the same writing team and a tightly plotted narrative (Babylon 5, for example), but even that show would often introduce something world-shattering (wait, souls and reincarnation are real?) and just kind of gloss over it and keep on rolling, lol.
Like, think of how many episodes have been devoted to people wanting to extend life. Then remember, way back in TOS, how Miri's people figured out how to make children live for centuries. You could have an entire society where everyone stops aging permanently just before puberty, but then we'd have to have a show full of child actors! Can't have that!
Why bother with an emergency medical program, when you can ask the holodeck to create a fully staffed sickbay with advanced AI doctors?
Heck, why not have entire crews of holograms, in holoships? We've seen how advanced Vic Fontana is, and he's just a lounge singer, let alone Moriarty! And they can live forever! (Wait, I think Red Dwarf did that first).
Instead, almost everything has to be a one-off and status quo is god, because massive changes would be too hard to produce/write for. Yet Star Trek suffers from a form of "power creep" where each new iteration has to somehow top the last in terms of scale. So just like a trading card game, you introduce powerful new concepts then have to ban or rotate them out of the game so they don't warp the entire thing around them.
I mean, think about it. How many episodes of Trek have you seen that could have spawned entire new series by themselves, with the concepts they introduced? I'm going to guess almost all of them, lol.
But I can't fault anyone for not making a series that constantly mutates in response, as much as I'd love to see it, because I think for a lot of people, it'd be hard to watch if you miss two episodes and suddenly everything's changed!
Or try to get back into the franchise after a hiatus and wonder why nothing is familiar anymore.
That having been said, you can have a series that has primarily the same writing team and a tightly plotted narrative (Babylon 5, for example), but even that show would often introduce something world-shattering (wait, souls and reincarnation are real?) and just kind of gloss over it and keep on rolling, lol.
MarkB
Legend
I thought this week's episode was really good, but was anyone else annoyed by the term "low geostationary orbit"?
First off, only Earth has a geostationary orbit - the "geo" refers to Earth specifically, not any old planet. For instance, if you wished to establish an orbit of equivalent characteristics around the Moon, it would be a selenostationary orbit.
Second, even if we allow that the term has become colloquially applicable to orbits around any planet, there's no such thing as a low geostationary orbit. There is only a maximum of one distance around any given body at which your orbital period will perfectly match its rotational period, such that you appear stationary relative to any given spot on its surface - go any closer or further away and either you're not matching its rotation or you're no longer in orbit but are instead in powered flight.
This sort of thing is the whole reason why Trek invented the "standard orbit", so that writers didn't have to risk tripping themselves up by attempting to use actual orbital dynamics. Seemingly it's a lesson they've forgotten.
First off, only Earth has a geostationary orbit - the "geo" refers to Earth specifically, not any old planet. For instance, if you wished to establish an orbit of equivalent characteristics around the Moon, it would be a selenostationary orbit.
Second, even if we allow that the term has become colloquially applicable to orbits around any planet, there's no such thing as a low geostationary orbit. There is only a maximum of one distance around any given body at which your orbital period will perfectly match its rotational period, such that you appear stationary relative to any given spot on its surface - go any closer or further away and either you're not matching its rotation or you're no longer in orbit but are instead in powered flight.
This sort of thing is the whole reason why Trek invented the "standard orbit", so that writers didn't have to risk tripping themselves up by attempting to use actual orbital dynamics. Seemingly it's a lesson they've forgotten.
James Gasik
We don't talk about Pun-Pun
It's Treknobabble, and it's kind of a franchise staple at this point. Go back and watch some TNG if you really want to be reminded of how much worse this sort of thing can get! I think it was the Q Squared novel when someone pointed out that the Enterprise runs into bizarre new anomalies so often that they have to coin wholly new terms just to try and describe what it was they encountered!
Or to quote Captain Jack Harkness, "a little technobabble is good for the soul."
I actually think the biggest weakness of this season is that there is so little technobabble....in fact most of the plans barely get a few seconds of explanation.
Its "I have a plan!" followed by "the plan worked!". From La'an magically getting them off the Gorn ship with a little consel work on a completely alien ship, to Spock last week putting his two best girls in mortal dangers on what basically amounted to a hunch, to this week where apparently shooting the nacelles at this super advanced armored ship disabled it....somehow. Its definately the weakest part of the season to me.
But I still quite enjoyed this episode to see some Kirk early character development and how he learned some of his "early lessons". I also thought the B plot with the telephones was hilarious and awesome.
James Gasik
We don't talk about Pun-Pun
I hope that one day the Federation will see fit to fund the Pelia Museum of Human History, given that she's been collecting relics of it for centuries and probably knows more about humanity's last dark age than anyone.
Hm. What do you suppose would happen if I asked Pelia about the Eugenics Wars and the Bell Riots?
Hm. What do you suppose would happen if I asked Pelia about the Eugenics Wars and the Bell Riots?
tomBitonti
Hero
There are stationary orbits around every planet. I guess “geo” might be off, but the rest is fine.
A low “orbit” could be stationary, except it would require constant acceleration and might not qualify as an “orbit” in normal usage. It would be a circular path that maintained the same position relative to the planet’s surface.
TomB
Ruin Explorer
Legend
You are 100% technically correct, the best kind of correct, to be annoyed by this, but I think it's acceptable shorthand, otherwise they'd have to either say "stationary orbit", which is a bit of a contradiction-in-terms and would confuse some people, or invent the event more babble-y "planetostationary", so that bit didn't annoy me at all.
Re: low, that did cause by brows to burrow very slightly, but I figure what they mean is "using the thrusters to stay stationary relative to a position on the ground". And sure, definitionally, that's not an orbit, but do you reeeeeaally want them to have to explain what they mean with more babble-y words?
It's like, on the one hand, it's not exactly right in two ways (the "low" being much worse, geo does just mean earth not Earth), but did anyone not understand what they meant? If think if they audience mostly gets what you mean, and it's not like, grossly wrong in some way (like confusing cells and molecules or something), it's probably okay.
Never ask a woman* her age or Pelia about what she was doing during the Eugenics wars!
I mostly** josh of course, I love Pelia, Carol Kane is god-tier and I never felt more connected to her when she went through a box of junk she'd inexplicably kept and pulled out some dreadful electronics from the 1980s/1990s. Also the line about finally being happy she lived through the 1980s lol.
* = Especially Pelia.
** = I feel like Pelia has the moral flexibility and survivor's instinct that she's probably been on the "wrong" side of quite a large number of conflicts historically. Just not ultimately the losing side or at least the part of that side that suffered consequences. I mean that's how you live on Earth for literally thousands of years without being like, that much harder to kill than a human (I assume she's not particularly hard to kill, I could be wrong, maybe she's basically a Highlander-style being, we know next-to-nothing about Lanthanites).
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