Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 2x09 "Subspace Rhapsody"
khaosworks @ khaosworks @startrek.website Posts 97Comments 198Joined 2 yr. ago
khaosworks @ khaosworks @startrek.website
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The year at this point would be late 2384 or very early 2385, so about 6 years since Voyager returned home. It’s been some time since the Season 1 finale. We last left the kids in the 61000s as far as Stardates were concerned, which is 2384, and since the Romulan Evacuation is still a going concern it’s before the Mars Attack on April 5, 2385.
I may have misinterpreted what the Doctor was saying - “Lamarr Special-class… refitted from stem to stern”. He could be referring to a refitted Lamarr. I’ll edit that.
As we’ve seen in PIC with the Titan-A, Starfleet engineers have a very loose definition of what constitutes a refit. Basically as long as you use some of the old structure in the new one, no matter how many doodads you add or on to expand it, they call it a refit.
Annotations for Star Trek: Prodigy Episode 2x01 Sneak Peak:
Dal refers affectionately to his friends as "criminals", since they technically stole Protostar to find the Federation. He also says that he and the others are in different divisions. As we saw in last season's finale, Rok is in Science/Xenobiology, with Jankom in Engineering and Dal I assume is in Command.
Gwyn left the others to go on a mission to her home planet of Solum, to try and stave off the war-torn future they were told about.
Jankom has a new haircut, takes sonic showers and is trying to be more polite - something a bit disturbing for Tellarites, known for their belligerence, as Zero points out. Zero is in their new suit that we saw at the end of last season.
The kids are going with Janeway on a mission, which Jankom points out will stand them in good stead when applying for Starfleet Academy. As pointed out last season, the kids are not in the Academy, but warrant officers-in-training.
The shuttle carries the registry number NCC-74656-A, indicating it belongs to the Voyager-A. The Doctor, while a hologram, can walk about thanks to his mobile emitter, a 29th Century piece of technology (VOY: "Future's End"). We saw a 25th Century version of the emitter used by Raffi in PIC: "Imposters".
The destruction of the Protostar occurred in the Season 1 finale, and opened up a wormhole to the alternate future Chatokay is now in, 52 years from now where he is a captive on Solum (about 2436-7; the last time we saw the kids it was 2384, with the Stardate in the 61000s, 20 years after TNG's first season).
Dal complains about "timey-wimey" stuff hurting his head. The term entered popular usage in the Doctor Who episode "Blink", when the Doctor said: "People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a nonlinear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey... stuff." His mentor, Janeway, also complained that time travel and paradoxes give her a headache ("Future's End").
The new ship is the USS Voyager-A, NCC-74656-A, a Lamarr Special-class starship, refitted and outfitted with technology Voyager gathered from her 7-year journey through the Delta Quadrant. It has 29 decks, 800+ crew and 2 schools, compared to Voyager's 15 decks and 160 crew. The presence of schools may either mean a training vessel or families on board.
The Doctor also mentions that the original Voyager is now a museum ship. This was established in background production art in PIC: “The Star Gazer” and confirmed when we saw her at the Fleet Museum in PIC: “The Bounty”.
The Lamarr Special-class is named after actress Hedy Lemarr, who was also a gifted inventor, patenting a frequency-hopping signal method to prevent American torpedoes from being jammed in WW II, although this was never formally adopted anywhere. There is also a claim that this helped in the development of WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS, but that’s an exaggeration at best.
The Doctor says the rest of Starfleet is busy with the Romulan Evacuation, to help the Romulans escape the impending supernova of their star, which we know has been going on since 2381 (PIC novel The Last Best Hope, LD: "The Stars at Night"). Jellico mentioned in PRO: "Masquerade" that the Federation and the Romulans were working towards peace, which tracks with this. Alas, we also know the effort will collapse very soon on April 5, 2385 with the Mars Attack (PIC: "Remembrance"). The Romulan star itself will explode in 2387 (ST 2009).
One day they’ll do a proper adaptation of “How Much For Just the Planet?” and I can die happy.
Oh no. I need to watch TWOK again. What a chore.
I'm not sure about Sondheim - it doesn't really have his feel and the music and lyrics for the most part aren't as thematically disciplined and crisp as I expect from a Sondheim musical.
The feel was a bit more contemporary pop, like a Pasek & Paul piece.
From the dialogue, David, at the point Kirk has the altercation with hin just outside the Genesis Cave, was unaware that Kirk was his father although he knew that his mother knew him. As he said on Regula I:
DAVID: Remember that overgrown Boy Scout you used to hang around with? That's exactly the kind of man...
CAROL: Listen, kiddo: Jim Kirk was many things, but he was never a Boy Scout.
Carol also doesn’t deny Kirk’s assumption when Kirk asks why she didn’t tell David about him. So it seems clear that David doesn’t know at that moment.
That being said, David may have met Kirk as a child. In the beta canon Kirk does spend time with David as a “friend” of his mother’s, but Carol insists that Kirk not tell David the truth, for the reasons she mentions in ST II about their different worlds.
It’s only after Spock’s funeral that David reveals he knows and is proud to be Kirk’s son. But the way this all makes sense is to assume that David was just told off-screen by Carol about his parentage.
There's a part of me which instinctively follows the FASA RPG classifications - that the original D7 was internally known by the Klingons as the K't'agga-class which was then superceded by the K't'inga-class (FASA called it the D7M).
Yes.
Kirk was aware of David’s existence prior, but David wasn’t aware that Kirk was his father. He is surprised when David identifies himself as Dr Marcus in ST II but asks Carol when she appears, “Is that David?”
Later, he says:
KIRK: I did what you wanted. I stayed away. Why didn't you tell him?
CAROL: How can you ask me that? Were we together? Were we going to be? You had your world, and I had mine. And I wanted him in mine, not chasing through the universe with his father.
Kirk was aware of David’s existence prior, but David wasn’t aware that Kirk was his father. He is surprised when David identifies himself as Dr Marcus in ST II but asks Carol when she appears, “Is that David?”
Later, he says:
KIRK: I did what you wanted. I stayed away. Why didn't you tell him?
CAROL: How can you ask me that? Were we together? Were we going to be? You had your world, and I had mine. And I wanted him in mine, not chasing through the universe with his father.
Incidentally, that makes David about 23-24 years old in ST II (2285) and he dies soon after in ST III.
Two Spock quotes that have become ingrained:
“I object to you. I object to intellect without discipline. I object to power without constructive purpose.”
- TOS: “The Squire of Gothos”
“I do not approve. I understand.”
- TOS: “A Taste of Armageddon”
Annotations up at: https://startrek.website/post/628489
You may be thinking of Ch’Pok, the Klingon advocate from DS9: “Rules of Engagement”, where they were trying to extradite Worf on the grounds that he had destroyed a civilian transport.
CH'POK: I look forward to fighting on your terms.
SISKO: This is not a fight. It's the search for the truth.
CH'POK: The truth must be won. I'll see you on the battlefield.
And later:
CH'POK: What matters to me is the thrill of the fight, not which side I'm on. And I think we both know the extradition fight is over.
I have my own thoughts about Boreth, and the differences between the Followers of Kahless and their subset, the Timekeepers, but that's a subject for another post. I also wonder about Korath himself - while he's characterized as a mad scientist, did he really invent the chrono deflector itself or did he steal some of the tech from Boreth? Maybe he was a Timekeeper himself, even?
Anyway, it's just food for thought and as I said, it's another post altogether.
That might work, but it adds a detail that in my opinion isn’t really necessary and it doesn’t explain why people think you can’t have any more horonium when a scan might reveal its true composition. It’s simpler to say horonium is what it is with its unique properties.
It also complicates things by having Spock’s attempt to create horonium being needlessly hazardous if all they needed to do was infuse some metal with chronitons (and in any case Spock’s experiment was basicaly transmutation, so he must have felt that there was a way to create horonium through nuclear processes).
What does it mean for a Temporal Cold War to be “over” when cause and effect don’t necessarily come in sequence, anyway?
The shade of gray comment was a joke to us, but Boimler was, as always, in deadly earnest. Anyway, I’m just putting this out there - if you don’t buy it, it’s okay, but I think it’s a decent stab at explaining what might be going on.
I had thoughts about that, although I didn’t incorporate it clearly into the post. What Boimler says is this:
BOIMLER: You know, Starfleet used horonium in the original NX class. It's lightweight, it's durable, and it's just the right shade of gray.
What he doesn’t say is when Starfleet used it in the original NX-class. And he says NX-Class, not specifically the NX-01, and not specifically in construction from the keel up. You can see where I’m going with this.
I suggest that honorium was not incorporated into the NX-classes until after the events of ENT’s third or fourth season, and into the newer ships from Columbia as upgrades to shield plating and key components.
Between 2155 (ENT: “Terra Prime”) and 2161 (ENT: “These are the Voyages”) there are a good 5-6 years during which we know very little of what Enterprise and her crew did - short of taking from the beta canon novels.
For all we know, horonium came to the attention of Starfleet only late in 2155 or in 2156 and then used as a shield upgrade. Also, why “just the right shade of gray”? That only makes sense if you’re color-matching to something that’s already there - and that means it’s after construction.
Nothing on-screen has ever said you have to have two nacelles to create a warp bubble. Even from the start of fandom there’ve been one-nacelle designs like the Hermes-class scout.
In the first episode of SNW, “Strange New Worlds”, we first saw the USS Archer which was a one-nacelle design. In LD: “A Mathematically Perfect Redemption”, Peanut Hamper manages to attain warp speed with a salvaged, jury-rigged single nacelle.
Even in the TNG Tech Manual they acknowledge that one-nacelle designs are permissible, although not as optimal:
[A] pair of nacelles is employed to create two balanced, interacting fields for vehicle maneuvers. In 2269, experimental work with single nacelles and more than two nacelles yielded quick confirmation that two was the optimum number for power generation and vehicle control. Spacecraft maneuvers are performed by introducing controlled timing differences in each set of warp coils, thereby modifying the total warp field geometry and resultant ship heading. Yaw motions (XZ plane) are most easily controlled in this manner. Pitch changes are affected by a combination of timing differences and plasma concentrations.
[my emphasis]
So a single nacelle may not be as good as two nacelles in terms of field strength or maneuverability, but there’s no laws of physics, warp or otherwise, saying you can’t generate a warp field with just one. One might also note the existence of three and four-nacelle designs like the Galaxy dreadnaught from TNG: “All Good Things…” and of course the Constellation-class Stargazer, as respective examples.
It’s a puzzle that has confounded readers for years. There are some obvious ones like “Rawhide”, but a lot are still unidentified. Here’s a good attempt at it.