khaosworks @ khaosworks @startrek.website

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The phaser rifles weren’t set on kill or disintegrate, since M’Benga was grazed and was still ambulatory. The suggestion is that they were kept at a lower setting to conserve energy, since Zac probably didn’t have access to charging sources for them.

In addition, the plate might have been made of the same ore that permeated the castle, which could protect from radiation and probably from a phase blast of lower intensity as well.

It’s a replicator. The transporter waveguides at the back are common in Intrepid-class replicators. You can see a smaller one in Janeway’s quarters.

Under the replicator is supposed to be an equipment storage locker (according to the Star Trek Fact Files and the USS Voyager Illustrated Handbook), so it’s likely for creating extra away team equipment. It may also be for food - we see a food dispensing slot in the USS Enterprise transporter room in TOS: “Tomorrow is Yesterday”.

Well, to be fair I didn’t say they were the same as the wormhole aliens - just that they could be related.

There are certainly characteristics that remind me of them: especially their non-corporeality, reluctance to talk with outsiders, a wormhole-like transport tube and an interdimensional liminal space for communication. They may have a concept of linear time, but it’s mostly self-serving. They’re also condescending as hell, but that’s probably a characteristic of all ascended species.

The Last Unicorn Games Star Trek RPG Sourcebook The Way of Kolinahr posited that Vulcan food is more delicately flavoured than human food because of the species' enhanced sense of taste. That's why Tuvok found Neelix's spiced up version of plomeek soup (VOY: "Faces") not to his liking.

I've often thought that foods from tropical climes on Earth tend to be spicy because chili peppers are anti-microbial and so it keeps food edible for longer. Similarly, salt serves a preservation function in more temperate climes. But if neither of these options are available to Vulcans because they would find the flavour too intense, then Vulcan kitchens (and pantries) might be designed to be cooler rooms just to keep food fresher for longer.

Speaking of freshness, it seems to be a necessary part of Vulcan foods. In ENT: "Home" we are told that gespar, a Vulcan fruit, may not taste good if it isn't fresh, and in this episode T'Pril complains the halak is not fresh (and salted). The emphasis on freshness may be borne out of a climate in which food spoils quicker.

If Spock had used that excuse it might have seemed logical. I suspect that it wasn’t used because the writers needed a stronger motivator for T’Pring and Spock to take a break and using that reason explicitly would weaken T’Pring’s decision.

I can understand T’Pring’s hurt feelings. She’s been nothing but supportive of Spock’s humanity and his search for identity. She tolerates the long separations. She desperately wants the relationship to work, gets to know his friends and family and she even gives him tips during the tea ceremony like a partner is supposed to do. To her, they’re a team, but to Spock, she’s still an outsider who needs to be compartmentalized in favor of his shipboard family. Spock claims it’s because he wanted to protect her and to an extent it’s probably true, but the bottom line is that he doesn’t trust her to be helpful, and that’s not the way a partner behaves.

No wonder that himbo Stonn’s in like a shot.

Aha! I just noticed that the lead writer on this episode is Kathryn Lyn, who also wrote the best episode of Lower Decks to date: the incredible “wej Duj”.

No wonder I thought that Ortegas’ line about “Notice how I move my eyebrow but no other muscles in my face,” sounded like something Mariner would say.

The Kherkovians remind me of my worst customer service experiences. I bet Yellow and Blue aren’t even their real names, just aliases to mask the rep of the day.

I’m also convinced they have to be connected to the Bajoran Prophets somehow. A transport tunnel? An interdimensional liminal space? Come on!

The Vulcan comedy of manners was hilarious, especially the Awareness ritual, which is basically every thing your in-laws hate about you but told to your face with no pretense. Pike trying to get them to play charades was a little too on the nose, I think, right up there with “You’re astronauts on some kind of Star Trek.”

I was half convinced the mind meld would turn out to be a TAS: “Yesteryear” reference. Not gonna lie, felt a bit let down. They’re also really teasing us with this Korby stuff.

I also thought the reason Spock didn’t tell T’Pring was because he thought there was a risk T’Pril might pick it up during the meld.

While I enjoy them, I do hope the zany episodes don’t always revolve around Vulcans. As funny as they are (and teaching Spock how to talk like a Vulcan was gasping for breath funny) I don’t always want them to be the butt of the joke.

Annotations up at https://startrek.website/post/353200

Season 1:

The Corbomite Maneuver Balance of Terror What are Little Girls Made Of? Court Martial The Menagerie Shore Leave The Squire of Gothos Arena Tomorrow is Yesterday A Taste of Armageddon Space Seed The Devil in the Dark Errand of Mercy The City on the Edge of Forever

Season 2:

Amok Time The Doomsday Machine The Changeling Mirror, Mirror The Trouble with Tribbles Journey to Babel A Private Little War A Piece of the Action The Ultimate Computer Assignment: Earth

Season 3:

Spectre of the Gun The Empath The Tholian Web Day of the Dove Let That Be Your Last Battlefield The Cloud Minders Requiem for Methuselah All Our Yesterdays

TAS:

Yesteryear The Infinite Vulcan The Magicks of Megas-Tu Once Upon a Planet How Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth

I can elaborate on why these episodes are chosen but I’m afraid my comment would get too long.

However, it is still a “warp bubble”. An unusual one, but not a subspace field, or anything particularly funky that would require specific modification of the ship’s engines, or some other device.

No, it's not. In "Where No One Has Gone Before" it allegedly needed modifications of the warp equations to modify the engines, but in the end it was actually created by the Traveler's own powers. In "Remember Me", Wesley was experimenting with creating a static warp bubble in the warp core using Kominsky's equations, but he couldn't keep it stable. The "static warp bubble" is different from the standard warp field and in fact the terminology was distinct. The first time anybody used the term "warp bubble" to talk about a warp field in-universe was in PRO: "Mindwalk". But it's very clear from the context that the pocket universe created by the static warp bubble in "Remember Me" is not a standard effect but a result of experiment, and not stable at all.

As far as I recall, it was a bit of both. The tractor beam was to keep the moon in the warp field, or the Enterprise in lock around the moon without having to use their engines, with the warp field being used to provide more motive force to move the moon compared to the impulse engines, and then to change the mass of the moon.

From the episode itself:

LAFORGE: The moon will hit its perigee in 10 hours. Now, we match its trajectory, increase emitter coolant rate so we can apply continuous warp-equivalent power nine to the tractor beam. We can push it for nearly 7 hours and I think that just might do it. But, there's a problem.

DATA: The Enterprise will be dangerously close to the atmosphere.

LAFORGE: That's the problem.

So the plan is initially to use the tractor beam alone - to push it. Geordi doesn't come up with the warp field notion until Q suggests changing the gravitational constant of the universe.

LAFORGE: You know, this might work. We can't change the gravitational constant of the universe, but if we wrap a low level warp field around that moon, we could reduce its gravitational constant. Make it lighter so we can push it.

So the operative text is "Make it lighter so we can push it", not "use the low level warp field to push it". And in fact, the two act in tandem.

DATA: Inertial mass of the moon is decreasing to approximately 2.5 million metric tonnes.

LAFORGE: It's working. We can move it. Firing impulse engines.

[Bridge]

DATA: Captain, the moon's trajectory has moved .3 percent. .4 percent.

WORF: Emergency! Shields up.

RIKER: Disengage tractor beam.

This is entirely consistent with and an extension of the original plan to use the tractor beam to push the moon, but with the added warp field effect of lowering inertial mass. This also consistent with what O'Brien does in DS9: "Emissary":

DAX: Couldn't you modify the subspace field output of the deflector generators just enough to create a low-level field around the station?

O'BRIEN: So we could lower the inertial mass?

DAX: If you can make the station lighter, those six thrusters will be all the power we'd need.

If wrapping a warp field around the station alone could provide propulsive effect like you suggest, there's no need for thrusters.

The reason why warp engines can move the ship as stated in the Tech Manual is because the nacelles are capable of shaping the warp field around the ship.

In the case of the moon in "Deja Q", they are extending the Enterprise's warp field so it's not being shaped by nacelles in the same way - any propulsive effect is limited to the ship alone, so the warp field extension is merely to lower inertial mass. In "Emissary" the warp field is being generated by the deflectors, not nacelles whose coils can be adjusted to fire in sequence to shape a warp field, so they still need Newtonian thrusters.

In an Alcubierre situation, if you manage to encompass the moon within the Alcubierre bubble, then there's no need for a tractor beam at all - you can just carry it along with you. Similarly, in relation to "Emissary", you don't need your thrusters. That fact that you still see acceleration effects at warp in countless episodes already puts paid to the idea that it's an Alcubierre drive.

Not if the engine function is separate from the dampener, and it is simply a safety interlock that prevents the engines from engaging under those conditions. The ship wasn’t trying to drag itself through the dampener, instead, the warp engines simply refused to engage in the first place, to prevent the engines shearing off the ship, or exploding from the strain of fighting the dampeners.

But why would engines be shearing off or exploding from the strain? Strain of what? What are the inertial dampers stopping the ship from doing, and how? Inertial dampeners are to reduce momentum and acceleration. If warp drive is Alcubierre, there is none of that, hence no strain or shearing off - there are no forces acting on the ship itself with an Alcubierre drive, that's the entire point. So inertial dampers being on would do absolutely nothing to stop a ship equipped with an Alcubierre drive from warping because the ship never actually moves within its Alcubierre warp bubble.

Anyway, we're kind of going around in circles and I'm repeating myself, so I think I'd stop here.

At the same time, we know that the warp field was creating alternate universe with alternate rules, with both the Traveller experiment, and when Dr Crusher was marooned in an alternate universe. It’s not that much of a stretch to think that a lesser alteration could just give the law of physics enough of a slight nudge that it might be theoretically possible to tow a moon using the warp field.

What occurred in TNG: "Where No One Has Gone Before" directly inspired Wesley's experiment in TNG: "Remember Me", so the two are one and the same. And that wasn't actually a standard warp field, but a "static warp bubble" - a deformation in space that is sometimes unintentionally created, but not a usual effect of a warp field. What we see in "Deja Q" is perfectly in line with what a warp field as described in the TNG Tech Manual is supposed to do - lower inertial mass, and similarly in DS9: "Emissary". Dialogue in "Deja Q" makes it extremely clear that it wasn't the warp field doing the movement of the moon - it was the tractor beam engaging the moon with the warp field helping to lower the mass so it wouldn't burn out while doing it.

The Alcubierre drive just compresses space, but it doesn’t move the ship. The ship would still need a secondary engine within to use that kind of drive, which they would still need inertial dampeners for. An impulse engine, for example, which could exert inertial forces upon the ship.

Correct - the Alcubierre drive doesn't move the ship - it moves space around the ship, and the ship within the Alcubierre "warp bubble" is moved along like on a travelator without actual velocity or acceleration. But in this way, it doesn't need any other secondary engines. Besides, in VOY: "Tattoo" the conversation about needing inertial dampers is specifically about engaging warp - not impulse.

The engines don’t seem to engage or do anything, so it’s equally possible that having the dampener on engages an interlock that prevents the ship from firing its warp engines, to minimise the risk of damage if the engines are accidentally activated due to error, malfunction, or theft attempts.

But why an inertial dampener for this purpose? Why not an actual "gear lock" or parking brake? The fact that they refer to an inertial dampener must mean something - and if the warp engines can't engage when their inertia is arrested externally, then it means that inertia must be present when warp engines are engaged, which mean acceleration at warp.

I agree that was what they were going for with Rutherford, but on reflection even that wasn't necessary. It could have written along these lines: Rutherford was working on Badgey without realizing how psychotic he was (as he did on the Cerritos), and then when he realized this and wanted to pull out of the project, Buenamingo arranged for the accident and subsequent mindwipe. So no necessity in that scenario for a personality change.

In fact, having Rutherford be the same (and possibly serving on the Cerritos at the same time) could have helped to clean up or prevent a little discontinuity between LD: "Second Contact" and LD: "Reflections" as to the precise date Rutherford was assigned to the Cerritos, but that's another discussion.

Startrek.com article.

I wouldn't say it was the best series of PIC, but it was certainly the best received, largely because it was so fan service-y. But then again PIC was creeping that way, anyway. Season 1 revolved around Picard himself dealing with the ghosts of his past, but then they probably noticed people paying more attention when characters like Hugh, Seven and the Troi-Rikers showed up. So Season 2 features Q, and despite it being a bit of a mess and feeling like the writers and actors were using it as proxy therapy, again the best received bits were kisses to the past.

So they went all out in Season 3 as a direct sequel to TNG. Old crew, Borg, the Changelings, etc. Give Picard a son, why not? Bring back the D, you got it! Season 3 was entertaining and nostalgic and gave us all these fanboy feels, but boy, was it emotionally manipulative and a lot doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

But to contrast the way PIC echoed plot lines from the animated shows is, perhaps, not entirely fair, because they were aiming for different things.

In PIC the aim was to bring back Data and add a plot complication, so they chose Lore, just to get everyone excited. On reflection, it might have been more interesting just to have Lore on board and not Data (see how this is being handled in the current Star Trek: Defiant comic), but again then they wouldn't have the TNG bridge crew reunion that fans all wanted to see. So damn the torpedoes, Data had to come back somehow.

If we really want to criticize it, Rutherford's past personality issues suffer from the same problem as the Lore complication: it isn't necessary to the plot. It could easily have been Rutherford discovering that he was the victim of a mindwipe and it would have led to the same revelation about the Texas-class feet. It didn't have to have his past self be a different personality, but that gave them a plot to hang an episode on. So in that sense both could be said to be a vehicle just to allow the actor to stretch himself. Also, given the episodic nature of LD, it was a one and done deal just to get the Texas-class revelation out, while the Lore complication was so to stretch out that part of the story for PIC's one big ten-hour movie.

The Borg virus seeming to come out of left field is typical of shows that want to have an overarching mystery (LOST is a particularly egregious example). To be fair, in PRO we also didn't know how the Construct was supposed to destroy Starfleet until midway through the season. And again, the purposes were different. PRO was dead focused on having the kids develop themselves and learn lessons away from Starfleet and the Construct gave them the plot reason to do so. That was why they had to get it out in the open quickly, or make it obvious.

However, in PIC Season 3, they wanted to maintain the mystery. They did kind of foreshadowed it by dropping hints about transporter incidents and the larger question of why Jack was sought after, but they just didn't drop enough clues for us to put together what the overarching plot was, and decided to approach it by misleading us that it would be a Changeling takeover.

So ultimately, did LD and PRO do the plots better? Maybe they held together better than PIC did, but they weren't telling the same story. PIC was trafficking in nostalgia, trying to keep viewers excited and engaged and not so much plot cohesiveness. LD and PRO were telling their own stories as I mentioned above, so the emphases and approaches differ.

Oh, here's a biggie. That individual ships in TOS had their own unique insignia. That turned out to be a myth, despite being perpetuated on-screen by ENT: "In a Mirror, Darkly".

It also led to a post of mine that was particularly controversial at the time.

We've actually seen a merchant marine vessel early on - in TOS: "Charlie X", the crew of the Antares wear an insignia that we've found out in recent years is supposed to be a Merchant Marine insignia.

I remain skeptical - you can’t have warp drive be the Alcubierre drive without having to retcon a lot of how warp fields are shown to behave, least of all their inertial mass lowering properties.

Everyone saying that it acts like the Alcubierre drive has to ignore the evidence before them. I can’t think of anything that indicates that warp drive behaves like the Alcubierre drive is supposed to be, but I’m open to be corrected on this.

So until shown otherwise by the series, I’m quite content with sticking with my claim and the explanation in the TNG Tech Manual, which was the technical advisors’ intent at the time.

When people say that warp drive is like Alcubierre, they’re specifically talking about the idea that the ship doesn’t move and space moves around the ship. That in essence is an idea that doesn’t involve inertia or acceleration.

Once you start moving away from the idea it’s space that’s moving, not the ship, then it’s not Alcubierre - at least not in its popular conception.

I readily admit I don’t know what kind of additional ideas they’ve come up with and await further edification on that score, but I have my doubts that it will square with the idea of warp fields lowering inertial mass, accelerating to warp or the use of inertial dampers already depicted in the show.

My pet peeve, that warp drive works like the Alcubierre Drive. It doesn't.

One of my favorite formulations of the PD comes from an old text adventure game, Star Trek: The Promethan Prophecy: "You can look all you like, but don't touch."