Star Trek: Discovery

[Darth Lucifer]

Photon torps are 64 megatons yield-wise, right? Couldn’t tell you where I pulled that number - perhaps my bum-cave - ...

IIRC, it was the TNG Technical Manual by Michael Okuda that first established the oft-quoted 64 megaton yield and that book was never considered canon anyway. While that figure was never quoted in an episode, in "TNG: A Matter of Honor", the writers lifted the 40,000 kilometer range for transporters from the book and it made it's way onto the live screen, so that figure IS canon.

[Vendetta]

Plus if you look at the known size of a Photon Torpedo, plus the stated payload or 1.5kg, a pretty small volume of the whole weapon is going to be active payload.

So there's a lot of room in even a standard photon torpedo casing to stuff a lot of extra boom in if you really want to (especially if you want to use it for eg. orbital bombardment and propulsion and guidance are less of a concern.)

[Thanas]

I am not interested in the technical details that much but - finally the episodes are watchable. Very well directed and I enjoyed the last two episodes. The series seems to be finally hitting its stride.

[amigocabal]

I watched the trailer for Episode 12... and there is one scene in it that is strange.

Apparently Saru has dialogue with L'Rell. (or it was out of context)
Saru: "Tyler is in distress."
L'Rell: "So bei it. That. Is. War."

But that is not Tyler as Saru should know because they arrested him when he was beamed back aboard the Discovery.
Which should be followed by a closer medical examination (at least the once Culber did before) and lead to his discovery as physiolocial klingon.

Ash Tyler... the real one from the main-universe, is most likely dead or at best still in klingon hands.

And now that I think of it that might be how they return Tyler to the show. (like the option they had with Riker in 6x24 Second Chances)

if I remember correctly from SFDebris, the idea from the TNG episode "Second Chances" was to promote Will Riker to captain of his own ship, Data to first officer, and Tom Riker to operations officer.

[Imperial Overlord]

I have to retract a complaint: It is very much in Lorca's background as a captain in his organization that he would leave Mudd to die on a Klingon ship.

We've had good reason to suspect Lorca since the coordinate substitution, but I have to give the writer's props for dropping clues earlier on. Like "Training Day" they hid the truth in plain sight, wrapped in the "Hard man who gets things done" cliche. His ruthlessness, his weapons collection, and those little moments present in the montage all give clues to his origin. I'm happy with it and it was fair play.

I'm guessing now Stamets will be trying to get everyone back home while there's still enough of a network left to try (its die off/maiming being the reason it doesn't get used in the future thus tying up that continuity issue) and going full Orpheus and saving Culber through the power of science since his consciousness survives in the network.

Also, I'm going to note that neither Next Gen nor Deep Space Nine were all that good in their first seasons.

[tezunegari]

Well there must be a third option to travel between universes, or how did Mirror-Lorca travel to the Original-universe?

How can the writers pull off such a storyline twist with Lorca, yet bungle the Tyler arc to the point everyone I know said "He's Voq" the moment he was introduced?

And that's some serious security measures if Empress Georgiou is willing to all but one of her Lords of the Empire to keep the Federation a secret.

Also it seems they have killed of Voq, who was all but a memory engramm inside a human body... I think.
So the memories Tyler had supressed were of klingon attempts to save his life? Or were they the memories of Voq when they harvested his mind?

[Imperial Overlord]

Well there must be a third option to travel between universes, or how did Mirror-Lorca travel to the Original-universe?

How can the writers pull off such a storyline twist with Lorca, yet bungle the Tyler arc to the point everyone I know said "He's Voq" the moment he was introduced?

And that's some serious security measures if Empress Georgiou is willing to all but one of her Lords of the Empire to keep the Federation a secret.

Also it seems they have killed of Voq, who was all but a memory engramm inside a human body... I think.
So the memories Tyler had supressed were of klingon attempts to save his life? Or were they the memories of Voq when they harvested his mind?

1) It's a different kind of fake out with Lorca. There's no need to create a fake actor, which was the weak point in the Voq/Tyler masquerade. They just need to lead us on with a captain we think has gone full Sisko "In the Pale Moonlight" and instead he's worse.

2) The being in question is Voq with surgical modification to his body and organs (the scarring noted by the deep scan) with genetic material grafted from the real Tyler. Tyler's mind was grafted to Voq's, probably using some variant of the mind sifter technology. It appears that L'Rell believes that Tyler's personality is winning/has won but I'm not ready to take that jump yet.

It occurs to me if the Discovery doesn't make it back to our universe, it's a lot easier to justify have Voq and L'Rell as crew because they would be reliable members of Team Fuck the Terran Empire.

It's also nice to see Landry again, even if its Mirror Landry.

[NecronLord]

Well there must be a third option to travel between universes, or how did Mirror-Lorca travel to the Original-universe?

There is, the original route by which Kirk entered the mirror universe.

[tezunegari]

Well there must be a third option to travel between universes, or how did Mirror-Lorca travel to the Original-universe?

There is, the original route by which Kirk entered the mirror universe.

Well, theoretically that hasn't happened yet... and I have not just forgotten about it. No Sir, not me.

1) It's a different kind of fake out with Lorca. There's no need to create a fake actor, which was the weak point in the Voq/Tyler masquerade. They just need to lead us on with a captain we think has gone full Sisko "In the Pale Moonlight" and instead he's worse.

That's the downside of the internet and sites like imdb... access to all sorts of background information about the actors.
Maybe they should have just hired two actors with a similar build for Tyler and Voq.

[Vendetta]

How can the writers pull off such a storyline twist with Lorca, yet bungle the Tyler arc to the point everyone I know said "He's Voq" the moment he was introduced?

They can pull off that storyline twist with Lorca because they distracted you with Tyler/Voq.

Sleight of hand (plot) is about making you look at one thing and make you think you've got it All Figured Out so you miss the other clues they were setting up for something else.

You were fed Voq.


My guess is that Lorca crossing universes is something to do with the destruction of the Buran, which happened to both the Empire and UFP versions, both under the command of Gabriel Lorca. Some other kind of Space Wedgie caught and destroyed both versions, with at least one captain ending up in the "wrong" universe.

As the special ops guy for the Emperor Lorca may well have known of Stamets in his universe whose research appears to have been a little ahead (he was trapped in the network first) so he was able to pull UFP Stamets onto Discovery to pursue his research (he was clearly collecting the data that let this happen).

[Simon_Jester]

IIRC, it was the TNG Technical Manual by Michael Okuda that first established the oft-quoted 64 megaton yield and that book was never considered canon anyway.

Not canon, but on the other hand it's fairly consistent with broad order-of-magnitude estimates of what the torpedoes are capable of. Stopping giant asteroids and so on tends to require many torpedoes, which would be less common if they were gigaton-range weapons.
____________

Footnote: My view is that in general, SF weapon firepower estimates are trickiest when dealing with the upper bound on what they can and cannot do. There are a lot of reasons why a weapon might be fired at reduced power or "dial-a-yield" power, and things like beam weapons and photon torpedoes are well suited to that role. But in situations where the attacker has every reason to hit as hard as they can, you should be able to get an idea of what the upper bound is- for instance, if evil alien ships are trying to destroy all life on a planet, and show no sign of wanting to conquer the planet for themselves, it's a safe bet that if their weapons cause no more than kiloton-range explosions, they CAN'T cause more than kiloton-range explosions.

While that figure was never quoted in an episode, in "TNG: A Matter of Honor", the writers lifted the 40,000 kilometer range for transporters from the book and it made it's way onto the live screen, so that figure IS canon.

This also has the virtue of consistency. Ships routinely beam people up and down from a considerable distance away from the planet and/or the away team. You never hear "the ship is on the other side of the planet, out of transporter range," strongly indicating that "beaming range" is something more than ten thousand kilometers or so, even through a planet-sized mass of material!

On the other hand, ships being forced out of range to beam up personnel is also a common plot point, suggesting that the maximum range of transporters isn't "clear across the solar system" or "significant interstellar distances." And we never see references to people being able to simply beam from planet to planet even within the same solar system, at least not outside the nuTrek movie canon.

[Prometheus Unbound]

That's the charming thing about trying to do firepower calcs about an ongoing franchise; the writers can overturn an arbitrary number of precedents in one scene, as soon as they decide the scene would look cool, because they don't care. Questions like "well, if they could do this ten years before Kirk, why did Picard have trouble blowing up an asteroid in this one episode of The Next Generation?" are simply not in their minds.

Well keep in mind these are Terran Empire torpedoes, fired from the Emperor's flagship (which appears to be a few km in size) in an alternate reality. And they were red/orange, not the normal blue like we get in DSC / TOS.

Whatever those torpedoes / missiles / plasma balls were, they were not standard Starfleet Prime Universe photon torpedoes.

[Prometheus Unbound]

How can the writers pull off such a storyline twist with Lorca, yet bungle the Tyler arc to the point everyone I know said "He's Voq" the moment he was introduced?

Um, go back and read this very thread - many people here refused to believe it or denied it outright. Half the fandom over at r/startrek (the half that aren't bitching incessantly) didn't believe it either.

I mean, it wasn't hidden super secret, but it took a lot of work for people to realise it's the same actor, that his IMDB page was faked etc. Just because you may have figured it out off the bat doesn't mean everyone else did.

[Imperial Overlord]

They can pull off that storyline twist with Lorca because they distracted you with Tyler/Voq.

That's true, but lets also remember that we clued in pretty quickly that there was some nasty stuff going down with Lorca and that he wasn't normal for Starfleet. Alternate theories like "Section 31 hard ass in charge of possibly war winning science project" to "traumatized war survivor who sleeps with phaser under his pillow" were in the running pretty much until we had the coordinate switch which made Mirror Lorca the most reasonable explanation.

[bilateralrope]

It occurs to me if the Discovery doesn't make it back to our universe, it's a lot easier to justify have Voq and L'Rell as crew because they would be reliable members of Team Fuck the Terran Empire.

That could be an interesting way to take the series. One that will have a much easier time with continuity. One that gets to explore new civilizations.

The only problem is that they have the Federation being screwed without the anti-cloak algorithm. They are going to have to resolve that somehow.

[Imperial Overlord]

Well they did just kill the leader of the largest and most powerful Klingon faction so they did buy the Federation some time, especially if the succession struggle is really nasty. Which then makes Voq and L'Rell valuable to the Federation if T'Kuvma's loyalists are in opposition to the majority leadership.

[bilateralrope]

Sure, the war could end due to Klingon infighting. But that still needs to be shown, which requires the Discovery getting home.

[Imperial Overlord]

Sure, the war could end due to Klingon infighting. But that still needs to be shown, which requires the Discovery getting home.

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying it could stalemate for a while because of infighting, allowing whacky adventures, and then they get home and L'Rell and Voq/Tyler remain useful. I don't think this is the way they're going to go, but it's a possibility.

[bilateralrope]

Sure, the war could end due to Klingon infighting. But that still needs to be shown, which requires the Discovery getting home.

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying it could stalemate for a while because of infighting, allowing whacky adventures, and then they get home and L'Rell and Voq/Tyler remain useful. I don't think this is the way they're going to go, but it's a possibility.

Ah, I see what was happening. I was arguing that the Discovery staying in the mirror universe doesn't look likely, despite liking the idea. You were talking about Voq/Tyler remaining aboard the Discovery.

On the subject of Voq/Tyler remaining aboard the Discovery:
- He killed a member of the crew. Even if he is useful to the Federation, keeping him on the Discovery sounds bad for crew morale.
- With the Spore network dead, the Discovery has no advantage over other Federation ships when it comes to transporting him around.
So why keep him on the Discovery ?

[Imperial Overlord]

Sure, the war could end due to Klingon infighting. But that still needs to be shown, which requires the Discovery getting home.

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying it could stalemate for a while because of infighting, allowing whacky adventures, and then they get home and L'Rell and Voq/Tyler remain useful. I don't think this is the way they're going to go, but it's a possibility.

Ah, I see what was happening. I was arguing that the Discovery staying in the mirror universe doesn't look likely, despite liking the idea. You were talking about Voq/Tyler remaining aboard the Discovery.

On the subject of Voq/Tyler remaining aboard the Discovery:
- He killed a member of the crew. Even if he is useful to the Federation, keeping him on the Discovery sounds bad for crew morale.
- With the Spore network dead, the Discovery has no advantage over other Federation ships when it comes to transporting him around.
So why keep him on the Discovery ?

If they did do this, they'll have a reason by then. Saved the ship, working relationship with the crew, diplomatic necessity due to Klingons respecting proven warriors like those who killed Kol, whatever.

[bilateralrope]

How can the writers pull off such a storyline twist with Lorca, yet bungle the Tyler arc to the point everyone I know said "He's Voq" the moment he was introduced?

Um, go back and read this very thread - many people here refused to believe it or denied it outright. Half the fandom over at r/startrek (the half that aren't bitching incessantly) didn't believe it either.

I mean, it wasn't hidden super secret, but it took a lot of work for people to realise it's the same actor, that his IMDB page was faked etc. Just because you may have figured it out off the bat doesn't mean everyone else did.

Lorke's deception was better written. Lets compare the two:

Disguise method
- Voq: Using never before mentioned infiltration technologies.
- Lorke: By being the mirror universe version.

Introducing new technology in a prequel is rarely a good idea because people are going to ask why they haven't seen it before.

Infiltration plan:
- Voq: Klingons ensured that the Discovery picked him up from the prison. I've got no idea how the Klingons planned to keep him on the Discovery, because the main factor in him getting the head of security position is luck that the previous occupant is dead and Lorke thinks "good at killing Klingons" is a good qualification for the position.
- Lorke: Killed his duplicate and most of the people who knew him, then pretended to be that duplicate.

For Lorke's plan I understand the how, but not the why (yet). For Voq's plan, I understand the why, but not the how the Klingons planned him to use. All I see is luck/the plot demands it

Fiction/non-fiction divide
Sure, STD is a work of fiction. But I expect the list of actors to be non-fiction. Putting fiction into something I expect to be non-fiction annoys me. It doesn't matter if that source is something as inconsequential as a credits list or as important as a news website. It gets worse if they rope an unknowing third party into it, for example by lying on the IMDB page.

Worse still, that whole trick of lying about the actors name only works for people who looked at IMDB while the first episodes were airing. Now that the lie has been corrected if anyone starts watching Discovery tomorrow* and gets curious about one of the actors, they would go over to the IMDB page and see that Shazad Latif played multiple characters.

All because they didn't want to use multiple actors. If I wanted to screw with people via a misleading IMDB entry, I'd pick one of the other actors and use him for Voq. Maybe someone a bit taller to justify the line about shortening his bones.

*Say, because they were turned off by the pilot but decide to give it a go after hearing that it has become better. Or because they want to wait until they can watch the whole thing while only paying Netflix for one month.

[tezunegari]

Disguise method
- Voq: Using never before mentioned infiltration technologies.
- Lorke: By being the mirror universe version.

Introducing new technology in a prequel is rarely a good idea because people are going to ask why they haven't seen it before.

The technology is theoretically not new... We had Arne Darvin in TOS and DS9.

But with him it worked because

1. the TOS klingons were essentially humans with spray-tan and weird beards, and the TNG klingons basically were humans with forehead ridges.
2. IIRC it was never portrayed (or perceived by me) as more than simple cosmetic surgery that changed Darvins appearance (he was revealed with a simple medical tricorder scan)
3. his character was a civilian, who could avoid medical scans.

For Tyler/Voq as an infiltrator the people I talked to in RL came up with two explanations:

1. Tyler is real and Voq is an implant created with a mindsifter
   (would fit perfectly with the description "What must I sacrifice?" "Everything." as he would even have to sacrifice being a klingon)
2. Voq was surgically altered to look like Tyler and got a memory upload of the original Tyler
   (Mother of God, the complexity of changing a being to look like another species, including genetic testing... that can fool a post-POW medical examination.)
   
   This also leaves the question of what happened to the original Tyler.
   (he was captured at Binary Star and his DNA harvested... L'Rell never directly said anything about him being dead)
   
   And imagine the emotional impact this might have on the memory-Tyler... to know that everything he remembers is a reconstruction.
   Essentially, is this Tyler even real? Or just a memory-construct inside a klingon body?
   
   Though I would love a scene with Voq/Tyler meeting the original Tyler should he be still alive and sane...

With episode 1x12 though it was revealed that this is physically Voq with a memory-Tyler.

I would have prefered the Tyler with Memory-Voq explanation. (Hey Crichton, how are you and Scorpius?)
I'ts a more elegant and simpler solution to explain how Tyler got past the POW medical exam he had to undergo. (how much of that is automated anyway? Culber mentioned the scar tissue was originally identified as result of torture by the computer...)
TOS has the mindsifter that can extract/record memories and the new "Mandchurian test" could have failed because it was not made to test for the way this memory implant works (or even fails because it's a memory implant, not a brainwashing)

[Prometheus Unbound]

- Lorke: Killed his duplicate and most of the people who knew him, then pretended to be that duplicate.

For Lorke's plan I understand the how, but not the why (yet)

I'm guessing the why is he wanted Michael. Emperor says he seems quite obsessed with her and would cross universes for her. Michael points out that he needed Michael to get to the Emperor.

Why did he come? Essentially it's an elaborate kidnapping so he can kill the Emperor and take over (and/or freedom but he doesn't seem that type). To do that he requires the Discovery (so he can hop back). He has been working with Stamets in the background (MU) to create the spore drive in secret. Stamets in the MU must be part of this rebellion.

He's used this to go get michael, then along with her, he requires the Discovery itself to get back to the MU.

[tezunegari]

the ISS Charon:

Source: Trekyards

This looks... strange.
The front part looks like they tried to build a D'deridex, the nacelles look like beefed-up Discovery-style ones.
It has a sun... another link to the artificial singularity of the D'deridex?
And there is a vibe of Doomsday machine in there, I think.

They reused the Discovery shuttle bay for a part of the design... so I'd wager the scale of this ship is somewhere around 2, maybe 3 times the length of the Discovery. (1500-2250 m)

[Prometheus Unbound]

It has a sun...

It's not a sun lol. It's clearly an energy source of some description. Given how it looks like a tiny star, I'm going with massive fusion reactor.