khaosworks @ khaosworks @startrek.website

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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.

To add to this, we have to remember that Multitronics isn't the magic formula on its own. In TOS: "The Ultimate Computer" Daystrom couldn't get it to work - Units M-1 to M-4 were in his words "not entirely successful". The breakthrough of multitronics as embodied in M-5 was the ability for the system to be overlaid with the engrams, personality and, fortunately, morality of persons.

Daystrom used his own engrams to bring M-5 to its full potential, and his anxiety and fears about wanting to prove himself and survive academically translated into an obsessive drive in M-5 to also prove itself and ensure its own survival. Luckily, Daystrom's morals also translated over, and so M-5 was forced to confront the moral implications of what it had done, eventually electing to terminate itself in atonement.

When Zimmerman created the EMH, he incorporated part of his personality into the program, so it made sense to use multitronics because the technology had the ability to do just that. DS9's "multitronic engrammatic interpreter" is an offshot of that tech, and one imagines from the name it would copy a person's engrams in order to process and manipulate it.

So while it may have been obvious to us that sapience would arise from using multitronic tech in the EMH process, multitronics by itself won't do that. It's when you use it to incorporate real people and memories into its matrix and let it percolate that the potential arises.

The Tech Manual notwithstanding, on screen we’ve definitely seen longer than seven minutes, notably VOY: “Counterpoint” and DIS: “Stormy Weather”. I take it like I do the original Tech Manual’s statement that you can’t fire phasers at warp.

Thanks!

Annotations are up at https://startrek.website/post/508416

There is a kind of middle ground I can see them considering - remake specific episodes while forging on with new ones, much like the IDW Kelvinverse comic did when they retooled “Where No Man Has Gone Before”. It’d only make sense if they used the opportunity to retcon certain details, though, or else it’d seem completely gratuitous (like the Gus Van Sant version of Psycho), even more so than your standard fan service episode. “Space Seed” with La’An might be interesting.

Or they could set some episodes between the episodes we already know - like: “Captain’s Log: having left Sherman’s Planet and removed the last of our tribble infestation, we find ourselves with a new assignment…”

Wait a second.

https://heroprop.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Thom_Christopher_Hawk-Costume-Buck-Rogers-in-the-25th-Century-Movie-Prop.jpg

Did a bit of research.

The back injury is real, and did result in the “Riker lean” where he is often seen leaning on consoles or chairs.

Even Wil Wheaton believed (and stated on a Reddit thread) that the chair thing was because of the back injury. However, apparently Frakes said in an interview with IGN that that isn’t why he did the Riker Maneuver with chairs. The chairs in 10 Forward were very low so he decided he could (and did) swing his leg over them to sit as was an extremely cocky way to do it, and nobody stopped him so he kept doing it.

You’re welcome. I have fun doing them - especially this episode!

Annotations up at: https://startrek.website/post/462450

I mean it’s not grammatically wrong to have the 要 - it just depends on what message or emphasis you want to get across. In this case the 要 implies the lack of respect was deliberate.

(As a side note, I read “moi” or “don’t want” as two words mushed together - “mm-oi” as in 不要. Same as “mm dtuck” is 不可.)

If it was just a behavioral correction it could also be phrased as 刚才你应该给我面子 or 下次在人员面前你必要给我面子… but I digress.

(I can speak colloquial Cantonese but I don’t know the Cantonese-specific 汉子. I was taught Mandarin as a second language in school.)

From the TNG Technical Manual (for the Galaxy class, but one can safely assume operations haven’t changed that much):

In the event a deuterium tanker cannot reach a Galaxy class starship, the capability exists to pull low-grade matter from the interstellar medium through a series of specialized high-energy magnetic coils known collectively as a Bussard ramscoop. Named for the twentieth-century physicist and mathematician Robert W. Bussard, the ramscoop emanates directional ionizing radiation and a shaped magnetic field to attract and compress the tenuous gas found within the Milky Way galaxy. From this gas, which possesses an average density of one atom per cubic centimeter, may be distilled small amounts of deuterium for contingency replenishment of the matter supply. At high relativistic speeds, this gas accumulation can be appreciable, though the technique is not recommended for long periods for time-dilation reasons (See: 6.2). At warp velocities, however, extended emergency supplies can be gathered.

[my emphasis]

In those three places there are the qualifiers “in the event…”, “contingency” and “emergency”, which indicate that the Bussard collectors are only activated when needed and are not always on.

The reason is simple: the amount of deuterium that can be gathered is usually in negligible amounts unless you’re in proximity to a dense source of the element, like in a nebula. So it’s just not energy efficient to keep the collectors on all the time.

That’s ridiculous amounts of exposure and ingestion though. There certainly wasn’t that much time for Uhura to be exposed to it when she was going the communications array maintenance in the nacelle - which was the assumed source of the poisoning until she pointed out she was experiencing symptoms prior to going to the nacelle.

Deuterium toxicity does exist, but you’d have to ingest a hell of a lot of it, not trace amounts via breathing. The symptoms mimic radiation poisoning, although since deuterium isn’t radioactive, it isn’t actually that.

Yes, I mean 给面子 (gěi miàn zi) - that’d be the Mandarin version of it, which is 俾面 (bei meen) in Cantonese. There is an element of reluctance in the definition, but it doesn’t have to be.

The emphasis is more on the respect - it’s like if you as an XO undermine your Captain by contradicting him in front of the crew, and he takes you said and scolds you, saying, “lei deem gai moi bei wo meen” - 你为什么不要給我面子？(not sure how to write it in Cantonese, but that’s the Mandarin equivalent phrasing) “Why didn’t you want to give me face?” Where giving face can be an obligation but not necessarily reluctant in nature.

So giving face is just about giving respect or helping maintain someone else’s face. It’s only reluctant in certain contexts.

As an addendum, T’Khut, Vulcan’s sister planet, is now canon.

https://twitter.com/timothypeel1/status/1680632707116675074?s=20

“[Vulcan's sister] planet, shortchanged on the denser elements, was able to settle into an orbit with its partner that would seem, to those unfamiliar with the physics and densities involved, to bring it dangerously close to Vulcan. It rarely fails to look dangerous, especially when a Terran used to a small, cool, distant, silvery Moon, looks up at dusk to see a ruddy, bloated, burning bulk a third of the Vulcan horizon wide come lounging up over the edge of the world, practically leaning over it, the active volcanoes on its surface clearly visible, especially in dark phase. "Vulcan has no moon," various Vulcans have been heard to remark: accurate as always, when speaking scientifically. "Damn right it doesn't," at least one Terran has responded: "It has a nightmare."”

• Diane Duane, Spock’s World