[+] Star Trek Discovery (Fan) Thread

[Umbran]

Voyager would have needed to harvest raw materials (possibly asteroids) or dedicated some of its own internal structure to be re-processed into shuttle components. The mines might have had a cloaked reserve of spare matter, or had limited quantities of raw materials on board.

Starships have the capability of using a Bussard ramscoop - they deploy a magnetic field to collect interstellar hydrogen.

My understanding (and rationalization) of a starship's fuel lifecycle is as follows:

1) Ship collects interstellar hydrogen.
2) Some of this hydrogen is stored. Some of it is fused to create impulse power. Some of it is fused and the energy used to make antimatter, which is stored.
3) When needed, the stored hydrogen and antimatter are used to fuel the warp core.

If you aren't trying to be stealthy, you can run the ramscoop all the time, and basically never run out of fuel.

This kind of path is absolutely necessary for the operation of any vessel for any significant period of time away from starbases, as otherwise you run out of antimatter, and are stuck.

 

[Umbran]

I wonder what role they're going to have Saru play, if any, going forward.

I think the new uniforms are particularly ugly. Yuck.

 

[Mallus]

I wonder what role they're going to have Saru play, if any, going forward.

I think the new uniforms are particularly ugly. Yuck.

I read Dough Jones will definitely be back for season four, so maybe he'll be an admiral or ambassador assigned to Discovery?

Agree about the uniforms. They look fine against the Apple Store aesthetics of Starfleet HQ... not so much against the DISCO sets.

 

[Argyle King]

I agree with what some of the others have said about Burnham, but my dislike for the character started back in season 1.

I think the difference between TOS and Discovery is that TOS was based around characters which were compelling and likeable (even when they were flawed); in contrast, Burnham is someone who I find to be generally unlikeable. It rubs me the wrong way when one of the other characters (such as Tilly) gets on the verge of having a breakthrough moment, but then the writing somehow twists it into still being about Burnham.

 

[Hussar]

I'm not sure having an arc counts as being "inconsistent". Burnham starts the season after a year away from Star Fleet and is questioning whether or not she wants to come back. She then spends a couple of episodes tying up personal business and being drawn back into her role in Star Fleet. By the end, she's all in and wants to be a part of the family again. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

 

[MarkB]

I'm not sure having an arc counts as being "inconsistent". Burnham starts the season after a year away from Star Fleet and is questioning whether or not she wants to come back. She then spends a couple of episodes tying up personal business and being drawn back into her role in Star Fleet. By the end, she's all in and wants to be a part of the family again. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

For me the stumbling block is the bit in the middle where, after having been made First Officer and with the crew in a precarious relationship with the new Starfleet, she disobeys orders and abandons her post to pursue a personal mission.

She's rightly relieved of her duties afterwards, but there's no way she should have been able to come back from that to being entrusted with any command role in the short time between then and the end of the season.

 

[Mallus]

Yeah, I didn't find the writing of Burnham inconsistent this season, especially given one of her defining traits is 'impulsiveness'. She's almost as much half-Kzinti as half-Vulcan (this would make her Weeper-to-Animals).

I'm surprisingly okay with Michael ending up in the captain's chair by season's end. I liked the original choice of Saru, but by the time the writers maneuvered him onto a really gentrified-looking Kaminar with Su'Kal, I feel it made the emotional kind of sense that's the kind of sense they use on the show. And the writers also did a fairly good job showing why Michael would be the better captain in a post-Burn galaxy (also why Saru & maybe Tilly should head up the diplomatic core).


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[Umbran]

I read Dough Jones will definitely be back for season four, so maybe he'll be an admiral or ambassador assigned to Discovery?

I think there's meat in "Burnham takes the chair, finds it to be a bit too big still, and cedes it when Saru comes back". Tilly becomes #1, and Burnham leads Discovery's "Special Solutions" team.

Agree about the uniforms. They look fine against the Apple Store aesthetics of Starfleet HQ... not so much against the DISCO sets.

Yeah. Plus, they look good for someone trying to look formal, but seem ill suited to getting up to your elbows in plasma conduits or alien slime...

 

[Dire Bare]

I think there's meat in "Burnham takes the chair, finds it to be a bit too big still, and cedes it when Saru comes back". Tilly becomes #1, and Burnham leads Discovery's "Special Solutions" team.



Yeah. Plus, they look good for someone trying to look formal, but seem ill suited to getting up to your elbows in plasma conduits or alien slime...

I really hope they don't play yo-yo with Burnham anymore. She's been given the chair, she needs to keep the chair. There can be drama, challenge, and all sorts of sturm-and-drang, but no more musical captains please.

However, your idea of Burnham heading up some sort of special forces team . . . . I had the same thought before the season finale rolled around. It would have allowed her to be the maverick and not be constantly in trouble or at odds with Saru and Starfleet. But then again, that's basically Section 31's role, in dark way, and I think it's time to move on from Secton 31 for a while (and the Mirror Universe while we're at it).

Of course, Star Trek has a history of its captains defying the authority of the admirals, so . . . maybe the captain's chair is the safest place for Burnham!

 

[Hussar]

To be fair, Kirk disobeyed orders a LOT and still managed to keep the seat. So did Archer. And, well, frankly, every bloody captain. It's a wonder Star Fleet admirals don't all die of cerebral hemorrhages from all the stress.

I would add though, that the Trek tradition seems to be holding strong - weak(ish) first season, second season is better and hit their stride by third season. If it holds up, I have very high hopes for the next two or three seasons before the show kerlunks to it's inevitable ending.