khaosworks @ khaosworks @startrek.website

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Annotations for 1x08 are up here: https://startrek.website/post/31579269

I do apologise if people are waiting for my annotations. I also apologise for any arrogance in assuming people are waiting for them.

I haven’t found a window where I can sit down and actively listen to do them. I’m working on “Original Sin” right now and it’s taking a bit of time because (as an English nerd in high school), I have a bit to say about the use of poetry and Shakespeare in this episode.

I mean, it’s being very heavily hinted that Lear is Kali.

Annotations for 1x07 are up at: https://startrek.website/post/30720634

It was in the TOS Writer's Guide as far back as April 17, 1967, where it was stated (page 8):

Hyper-light speeds or space warp speeds (the latter is the terminology we prefer) are measured in WARP FACTORS. Warp factor one is the speed of light — 186,000 miles per second (or somewhat over six hundred million miles per hour.) Note: warp factors two, three and four are so on are based on a geometrical formula of light velocity. Warp factor two is actually eight times the speed of light; warp factor three is twenty-four times the speed of light; warp factor four is sixty-four times the speed of light, and so on.

It was subsequently mentioned in the behind-the-scenes book The Making of Star Trek in 1968 and Franz Joseph's Star Fleet Technical Manual. The TOS scale was finally made canonical when it appeared on a viewscreen in ENT: "First Flight".

The TNG scale was established in the series' Writer's Guide in 1987 establishing Warp 10 as the absolute limit (and infinite speed), so the scale had to be adjusted accordingly.

That's correct as far as the TNG-era scale is concerned. In the TOS/SNW era it was a simple speed = warp factor³ equation, meaning Warp 6.25 is about 244c.

While not stated explicitly on screen, it was clear in behind-the-scenes documentation, and it was also clear that Enterprise in TOS exceeded Warp 10 in a handful of episodes, which I cited in my original comment. How fast a particular Warp Factor is may have been inconsistent, but the scale itself definitely changed between the two eras.

The thing I freeze framed on was the close-up of the helm console. Here we see the warp speed control and the impulse and weapons controls.

What’s interesting at the warp speed control is that it indicates the speed at Warp Factor 6.25, but that seems to be less than half speed. If the dots at the bottom of the throttle circle are correct, 6.25 is about two-fifths the top speed of the ship, which means theoretically they have a top speed of about Warp 15.6, which is just a bit higher than the Warp 14.1 we saw Kirk's Enterprise achieve in TOS: “That Which Survives”, although Scotty said there that the ship wasn’t structured to even take Warp 11 for any length of time. The Kelvans did modify Enterprise to take that speed in TOS: “By Any other Name”, though. That being said, the specifications of the TOS-era Enterprise usually indicate a cruising speed of Warp 6 and a maximum speed of Warp 8.

On the other side, the impulse throttle circle and the dots at the bottom seem to indicate that they are also at two-fifths impulse power (which may be different from speed), and there appears to be a speed limiter next to the circle, although the speed indicator on the inside goes about a third higher than that. That’s actually consistent with the idea that full impulse isn’t the top impulse setting but there’s a limit placed on it (traditionally 0.25c) so as to avoid time dilation issues.

But I could be wrong and for all you know those dots are just to swipe left or right to get other controls visible.

Another interesting bit is the weapons controls. SNW: “What is Starfleet?” stated that Enterprise had six phaser banks and two torpedo tubes. The buttons here indicate two forward phaser controls - one ready to fire and one ready to charge. There are also two photon torpedo buttons, one ready to fire and one ready to load. Does that mean a single button fires three phaser banks?

There’s also a bunch of indicators above the impulse control (where Ortegas dismisses the warning pop-up alert) which seem to be communications or sensor indicators because they talk about band limits and Rx levels (received signal strengths).

Annotations for 1x06 are up at: https://startrek.website/post/30326603

Annotations for 1x05 are up at: https://startrek.website/post/30064816

Annotations for 1x04 are up at: https://startrek.website/post/29717239

You are correct that the eels were not named in ST II. However, they were named in the script.

Outside of the script, they are also named in Vonda M. McIntyre's 1982 novelisation of the movie, Shane Johnson's (as she then was) book Star Trek: The Worlds of the Federation (1989) and in Greg Cox's novel To Reign in Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh (2005).

Annotations for 1x03 are up here: https://startrek.website/c/startrek

Yep, that was established in 1x01, Joachim being the son of Joaquin and his unaugmented wife Talia (who does not appear to have survived to join them).

Annotations for 1x02 are up at: https://startrek.website/post/29088123

The Beholder stuff is left as a dangling mystery in SNW: "Through the Lens of Time" but any idea that it's going to involve Batel is not.

I keep finding questions coming up in my head. Why would her chimerical DNA make Batel and the Vezda recognize and attack each other? Is it some kind of genetic memory, in which case any race that had encountered the Vezda would have the same reaction, and does that mean a Gorn or an Illyrian would have the same reaction? Or is it only a combo thing?

I was expecting, given what happened in “Through the Lens of Time”, that it was actually the Gorn part of her that reacted. And that could have led into a revelation that the Gorn were created or designated as Vezda killers, a predator species to rid the galaxy of them. Which would then explain why they turned their predator instincts on the rest of the galaxy once the Vezda were apparently gotten rid of for good.

Or, the ancient race that imprisoned the Vezda created this telepathic alphabet that would send a message to the descendants of the people who helped them the first time around - so M’Benga and Uhura would read the messages as Swahili, La’An in Mandarin (which means La’An, despite being related to a Sikh, is ethnically also Chinese), maybe Scotty would read it as Gaelic, who knows? That would certainly make more sense than the random inscriptions somehow being related to M’Benga for whatever reason.

Or Batel would actually travel back in time to be the Beholder and we see her setting up the messages in a sort of bootstrap paradox - the messages were there because they were always meant to be there. A bootstrap paradox is hinted at in Batel’s dialogue but never quite explicated.

I don’t know. The more I think about the flaws in the plot the more I think it could all have been fixed with a little bit of thought and effort.

I thought that the way they came to understanding what was going on was a little rushed and a bit too speculative, not being based on actual evidence and it was just convenient that they happened to be right that Batel was the Beholder. That entire bit of exposition sounded like it was out of Doctor Who rather than Star Trek: rapid fire vaguely plausible assertions that you just gloss over to get along with the plot and treating concepts like evil not as abstract but actual entities. There was none of the tension of putting things together from actual clues.

Are we meant to believe then that there is a degree of time travel or simultaneity going on? Because aside from the glib “effect before cause” thing which is the equivalent of “shut up, just run with it”, how precisely does Batel become the Beholder? How does three sets of DNA in her - Gorn, Human and Illyrian - translate to having all the abilities of all races that have faced evil?

It would have made more sense to have her go back in time after defeating Gamble (which is what I was expecting) or to say that the prison existed in non-linear time or something. As it is, it’s left pretty much up in the air and we are asked to accept it.

Are we also meant to believe that she was the one who left the messages for M’Benga and La’An, and why leave them in Swahili and Chinese respectively? Why not just put them in English? And how did Batel learn those langauges?

There were good bits, and heartfelt bits, but mostly it was kind of meh for me as finales go.

Annotations for 3x10 are up at: https://startrek.website/post/28867268

Thanks! No, this is mine - I do it regularly for most new Star Trek episodes and decided to do it while I was listening to this one.

Annotations for 1x01 up at: https://startrek.website/post/28791347