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Enterprise wasn't on tonight for me. So I don't get to tease you in advance with Pre-E tech tidbits, and I'll probably be a week behind y'all from now on.
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From what I gather online, A-Channel decided to spontaneously show Enteprise an hour early.
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Registered: Mar 1999
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You're kidding? They do that kind of thing? It's a wonder you guys get to see anything. 8)
BTW, I loved seeing, on my MPEG copy of "Broken Bow" as shown on A-Channel, scrolling ads for JAG, premiering that evening at 9. I was really looking forward to it after the 6th repetition. . .
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Registered: May 1999
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An hour earlier? Those weren't the Enterprise End credits we were waiting through just before the Psi factor rerun. Th' Hell?
MPEG, eh? Well, I may just have to find the equivalent for this week's episode - it's not like I can wait till Sunday for the SPACE Channel broadcast..
Technology didn't seem to be as big a presence in this episode. What we did see appeared to be fairly consistent with what Enterprise has shown so far.
It looks like the transporters are really underpowered and limited. They couldn't use it to beam Reed out of the cavern, but it's looks like Tucker could tweak the sensor resolution enough to beam down some stun grenades. My impression, though, was that the caverns weren't too far underground. It's just that the strata was dense (anyone else have a differing impression?).
For handheld tech, I just realized that T'Pol is using a Vulcan hand scanner instead of the Earth scanners that Reed and Archer were carrying. Also, it looks like humans were still using projectile weapons by 2067 (Ryan arrived at this date for the launch of the Costenoga). Reed could easily identify the Novans' rifles as MK-33 or MK-34's, and he had the unfortunate pleasure of having a bullet in his leg. As for our regular phase pistols, it looks like the beam can be narrowed enough to create a cutting beam. Archer used his pistol to saw through a massive tree trunk.
We've also gotten to see the crew actually use the turbolifts. They don't have the twisting handle that TOS turbolifts had to control them, but they aren't operated on voice commands either. Archer just pushed a button near the door and the lift started moving. Also, it doesn't look like the greenish panel on the back wall of the cab lights up to show that the lift is moving.
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I've got an interesting question regarding the tech in "Terra Nova":
How did the cave-dwelling colonists maintain their supply of bullets for their handheld machine guns for seventy-five years?
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
quote:Originally posted by MinutiaeMan: How did the cave-dwelling colonists maintain their supply of bullets for their handheld machine guns for seventy-five years?
How do we know they had to? Maybe the guns have been in boxes for seventy years, they spied the away team and whipped them out, as they've been instructed by the elders to do when the evil humans return.
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I suppose it does depend on how often they were used.
However, those were still machine guns. They were spewing out bullets at a pretty fast rate. Somehow I don't think that (1) the colonists coult maintain that rate of fire, and (2) that the guns could actually HOLD that big of an ammo clip (or whatever you call it).
Remember that the colonists were out there for seventy-five years. That's a long time to maintain an ammo supply under any conditions.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
quote: How do we know they had to? Maybe the guns have been in boxes for seventy years, they spied the away team and whipped them out, as they've been instructed by the elders to do when the evil humans return.
Interesting. So, when you're dying of radiation poisoning and so on, you're going to take time out to teach your 5 year old how to maintain and shoot a machine gun. Makes sense to me.
Seriously, though, the machine guns do raise a problem, in that there didn't seem anything down in the caves that indicated the level of technology needed to maintain the guns in working order. The Novans were similar to the kids in Mad Max 3 in terms of technical sophistication. Given the appearance of the colony, I had the impression that the final collapse of the society happened relatively quickly, and there simply wouldnt have been enough time to teach the kids how to do such a complicated task, to say nothing of manufacturing ammunition to the tolerances necessary for an automatic weapon.
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