-Yes, it's the D7 CGI model, proabably the same one last seen on Voyager. It also had the usual torpedo effects and tractor beams - harumph. However, the bridge set we see is a new, relatively simple one-wall set like the ones we typically see for guest ships on viewscreens.
-The guest aliens, the "Zirelians", have some fun tech. Their quad-nacelled ships are equipped with some form of holodeck, which creates vistas and real soil, sand, etc. Their food grows on the walls and floor of the ship, which they pluck off as needed. Oddly, they don't have water as we know it, and synthesize some instant-melt ice chips for Tucker when he goes over. The crew complement is 36.
-And they live at a higher pressure, requiring Tucker to go through a pressure chamber and some medical treatment when he transfers over. It still makes him go through some sort of bad acid trip for part of the show, though. And he just got off the pollen stuff from last week!
-Or was it? There was no timestamp on this show, but T'Pol makes reference that the events of "Broken Bow" happened less than a month ago.
-Warp nacelles leave some sort of plasma wake behind them, in which the Zirelians hide with a cloaking device to repair their warp engines. The Pre-E launches a "charge" from the aft tube to find them.
-Coolest line of the show: "I can see my house from here!" (guess who says it).
-I'd also like to nominate Ensign Travis Mayweather as "Happiest Man in Starfleet". You'll see what I mean. And oddly, it was Trip who was high for most of the show - I'm pretty sure those magic eels weren't really there.
-Okay, so Trip gets pregnant, and starts growing nipples on his arm. If he's supposed to nurse the child, then why did the female Zirelians have such... developed breasts?
Mark
[ October 17, 2001: Message edited by: Mark Nguyen ]
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Are we supposed to assume these are Vulcan months? 'Cause I seem to recall in the last ep that they had been out for six weeks. Hopefully, there was nothing else to indicate which came first, and we can just assume these two episodes were shown out of chronological order?
Posted by OnToMars (Member # 621) on :
Except for the lack of an abdonimal bulge in Trip?
Posted by Ryan McReynolds (Member # 28) on :
quote:Originally posted by TSN: Are we supposed to assume these are Vulcan months? 'Cause I seem to recall in the last ep that they had been out for six weeks. Hopefully, there was nothing else to indicate which came first, and we can just assume these two episodes were shown out of chronological order?
The line said that Archer was on Kronos less than a month ago, returning Klaang. We have no idea how long the side-trips to Rigel and the Suliban Helix took, so it could very well be that it's been six weeks from the ship's launch as of "Strange New World," but only a month since Kronos as of "Unexpected." If Klaang was abducted (inventing numbers here) three days after launch, it took three days to get to Rigel, four days to get to the Helix, and then six days to Kronos, the timeline works fine.
And actually, it would make most sense if they were using Klingon months. T'Pol was doing the talking, and surely she can convert.
[ October 17, 2001: Message edited by: Ryan McReynolds ]
Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
I would say 'a month ago' for anything up to 6 or 7 weeks ago just because i wouldnt say 'two months ago' until it had actually been two months. I wouldnt go checking the date and stand there with the chronology in hand and say 'well, only a.. lemme see here... one month and two weeks and 3 days ago we were on Kronos' I would just say 'a month ago'
Posted by Phelps (Member # 713) on :
I wouldn't rationalize weird date references as Klingon/Vulcan/whatever months because such theories are not only cliche -- they tend to have a short lifespan also. Next time, the writer or the guy fixing airdates will simply make a mistake in the other direction, and we'll be wondering how come the Klingon months are suddenly longer or shorter than before, or explaining them away as Vulcan or whatever months.
[ October 17, 2001: Message edited by: Phelps ]
Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
"-Yes, it's the D7 CGI model, proabably the same one last seen on Voyager. It also had the usual torpedo effects and tractor beams - harumph. However, the bridge set we see is a new, relatively simple one-wall set like the ones we typically see for guest ships on viewscreens."
The tractor beam had the green color indicative of most Klingon technology, but strangely, the torpedoes were of a Federation yellow.
"-Coolest line of the show: "I can see my house from here!" (guess who says it)."
I'm gonna remember that scene for the rest of my life.
It's amazing just how far ahead the Klingons are right now. The Enterprise was barely a toy compared to that Battlecruiser. According to what T'Pol said, it could have blown the Enterprise away with the first shot. It's no small feat for the Federation to par, then overtake the Klingons in only 200 years.
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
David: Of course, we have no idea what a Vulcan ship is capable of, either. Humans may very well be ridiculously behind the Klingons, but other worlds of the soon-to-be Federation may be on more of a par. One can glean from a Blalock interview (that I conveniently can't find now) that a visiting Vulcan Captain will come to dinner soonish at Archer's table, and presumably he'll bring his ship with him.
Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
It makes sense for Klingon ships to be kick-ass: for one thing, they've been space-faring for a longer time then the humans (who've been restricted by the Vulcans). They've had more time to develop weapons, etcetra. They've probably already begun the First Great Tribble Crusade. We can probably assume that the Klingons achieved warp drive at about the same time as Earth -- and given the advantage of not having a race "holding them back", it's no surprise their technology is so much better.
And it's not so much a surprise that Federation tech is able to overtake them so quickly -- with so many member worlds, it's actually surprising the Klingon Empire is able to keep par with them!
Posted by targetemployee (Member # 217) on :
When I watched the scenes of the Klingon battlecruiser, I was reminded of something I had forgotten long ago. In "Day of the Dove", the Klingon captain's wife described the Klingon Empire as an empire of poor worlds. I would say that Klingons don't have the resources, like Earth, to build new classes of ships whenever they feel like it. So, the Klingons build ships that are durable in combat, are maneuverable, are fast, and work for centuries.
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
It could also be that Klingon shipbuilding is not centralized, but is instead mostly handled by the Houses. A basic spaceframe goes as a family heirloom, and the House adds new systems when it can afford to do so. Only the biggest and baddest ships of a period are of Imperial build and operated by Imperial crews consisting of members of favored Houses. This would explain the equipment variation within the static spaceframe design.
Yellow torps are of course compatible with what we saw in ST:TMP and ST2 (and I think "Flashback"), and we can assume the K't'inga in ST6 would also have spat out yellow torps (the "prefire glow" was the same sort of orange as in TMP/ST2) - only the BoP needed to fire fake Fed red torps in that movie. The green BoP weaponry in ST3 and ST5 and "Generations" could be a parallel design.
Frankly, I think we can rationalize this away, although I'm sorely disappointed we didn't get a new/"old" Klingon design here. It does seem, though, that we have to abandon all theories about the Klingons being wussies at this early date. They are clearly far ahead of Earth, and everything points to them having been that way for a long time.
How long, now there is a mystery. Kahless used swords and seemed to live in a largely rural-rustic environment, yet this is no proof he didn't have a warp-driven starship, too. Klingons STILL prefer swords and working with their hands, and have unpaved streets in the High City as seen in "Sins of the Father"...
If it's the Vulcans who are balancing the Klingons, then Vulcan starflight has to be ancient, too. If Kahless had warp, then the Romulans probably had it, too, when leaving Vulcan. But if Kahless didn't, then the Romulans probably didn't either, or the imbalance between Klingons and Vulcans would be greater.
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Just so everyone knows, my comment about the Vulcan months was a sarcastic joke, referring to the similar theories used to explain the "three months" between ST3 and ST4.
Mike: Why would you say that something that happened a month-and-a-half ago was a month ago? That's a good way to confuse people. That would be almost like saying World War II happened a century ago.
Posted by Ryan McReynolds (Member # 28) on :
It could be that the Klingons initially received some form of space travel from the Hur'q circa 1370. If they were largely primitive at the time, it would explain how they could have more advanced technology than some other planets while being culturally behind... and it would probably take centuries before your average pre-industrial society could figure out how to use warp technology, so it's not like the Klingons could just jump out into space in 1400.
Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
TSN, are you being sarcastic again? I just did that the other day, i was remembering a concert i went to on september 2nd and its october now, so i said a month ago. It was actually 46 days ago, or 6 weeks and 4 days ago, or one month, two weeks ago. No one who was at the show argued with my rounding. All i meant was, 'within the month previous to this one', september instead of october..
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Maybe it's just me, but, when someone tells me something was "a month ago", I assume it was within a few days of being exactly a month ago. If something were six weeks ago, I'd expect to hear "six weeks" or "a few weeks" or "a month-and-a-half" or "a little over a month" or something else to that effect.
Or, if you want to say "within the month previous to this one", you could always go w/ the fairly common "last month".
Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
quote:Originally posted by The_Tom: David: Of course, we have no idea what a Vulcan ship is capable of, either. Humans may very well be ridiculously behind the Klingons, but other worlds of the soon-to-be Federation may be on more of a par. One can glean from a Blalock interview (that I conveniently can't find now) that a visiting Vulcan Captain will come to dinner soonish at Archer's table, and presumably he'll bring his ship with him.
*drools* I hope the Vulcan captain says something like "my son's baby stroller is more advanced than your ship".
Judging by the tech difference, I think the Klingons has been space travelling much longer than the humans. As to the Vulcans "holding the humans back", that is unfair. The Vulcans simply weren't sharing much of their technology, which meant that the humans had to do most of the work themselves. Their main bitterness is that the Vulcans could have advanced their technology much more quickly, rather than bit by bit. Keep in mind, the Klingons didn't even have *that*. All they had was Kahless pointing to a star in the sky, telling the Klingon people that he'll return there someday.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Lucky for them it happened to have a habitable planet.
Or did he know?
Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
Of course he did, he's Kahless, the first Emperor of the Klingon Empire. I mean, the man forged a sword from his own hair, molten lava, and his own two hands! Now that's a handiman's man, and he didn't even use duct tape. Pointing at a star with an inhabitable planet in orbit should be as natural to him as scratching himself.
P.S. I wonder what the hair part says about Klingon hygene.
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
A question on "Unexpected":
If the Xyrillians can resequence photons in their holochambers, then why can't they reproduce something as simple as H20? Am I to assume that the Xyrillians do not know water *at all*?
It would have taken the Xyrillians a month at their impulse engines to get to their home/nearest base. If we assume that they were travelling at .25c, then the travel would have been 0.0212 lightyears, or 1342 AU or 2x10^11 kilometers. On a galactic scale, that's not very far away.
[ October 19, 2001: Message edited by: Harry ]
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
That part really bugged me, too - it's not like water is especially uncommon in the universe. I'm curious as to what the liquid in the Xyrillian sea was... They exist at a higher pressure, so a wider varety of non-hydrous compounds would be possible. But no water?
Mark
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
Would the higher-pressure atmosphere perhaps have something to do with the fact that they had only ice chips? I mean, obviously the pressure onboard wasn't so high that water instantly solidified, as we'd have had a Tripsicle, but perhaps whatever tech they had was accustomed to spitting out H20 compressed.
Posted by MIB (Member # 426) on :
Yeah. That whole, "This is the closest thing we can come to water." bit was a bit odd. It's really the only thing that bugged me about the episode.
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
But OTOH, they are aliens, and in reality we can't even begin to imagine what life on a completely different planet has evolved to.
Perhaps the Xyrillian homeworld underwent some crazy metamorphosis, like Earth did when plants started converting C02 (which was nice and breathable) to O2 (aarggh!! poison!), and all us little animals adapted to the O2. Maybe on Xyrillia, H20 was converted into CH4 and CO or something. This would explain the decompression process, the doziness of Trip and their unfamiliarity with replicating liquid water.
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
Judging by the synopsis of "Breaking the Ice" we'll almost definitely see a Vulcan ship there. (It's also probably where the dinner-with-the-Vulcan captain is, too)
It's concievable that a Vulcan ship may turn up the week earlier, in "The Andorian Incident," but who knows.
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
Now, if they show a T'Pau type ship there, I'm going to scream!
Does anyone know if they made a usable T'Plana-Hath CGI model for 'First Contact'? I'd have no problems with seeing that one again.
Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
I'm pretty sure that the t'Plana-Hath model was made in CGI, and only the hatch built as a practical model, so they should be able to use it. If the old 'not-Apollo' Vulcan model is kicking around, im not sure they would use it.. do they still do 'traditional' models?.. I'd actually be alright with seeing it.. its a nice design we didnt get to see enough.
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
I doubt they'd even bother to call up a model shop to do shots for just one episode. Assuming they don't go TOS on us and not show it, it'll be a CGI creation. That isn't to say that the CGI model they'll build mightn't draw design cues from the T'Pau, because it could, or it could be outright copied ( ).
I doubt they'll reuse the Vulcan lander, though. While it was never really made clear if that was just a lander with a larger ship in orbit or an autonomous interstellar craft, it certainly would look silly flying through space. But more importantly, having it dwarfed by Enterprise would just look weird. I'd think that the Vulcan ship would be considerably bigger than Enterprise, if only to get across the "we can kick your ass" mentality.
[ October 21, 2001: Message edited by: The_Tom ]
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
I dunno about that. Typically on Star Trek, whether a ship is more or less powerful than the main starship is almost always dependent on whether the ship is larger or smaller than the main starship. Ever notice that nearly ALL the guest ships voyager encountered were smaller than her, and she could kick the snot out of nearly all of them? Then there are races like the Borg, the Voth, the Krenim, etc. Guess what - their ships are as large or larger than Voyager! Exceptions include the Timeship Aeon and Species 8472, but that's generally for dramatic effect.
Of course, this is normalized by the dramatic effect of similar-sized ships duking it out. In Trek, almost every time one ship is about to blow another to pieces, we see it in a "higher" posititon relative to the doomed vessel. This is usually done to make the winning ship look bigger and dramatically more plausible than the other one.
Where am I going with this? Well, the Vulcans are GOOD guys, and thus by the rule of Trek they *have* to make the Pre-E look better. Ergo, they have to be smaller than her. I guess we'll see in a couple weeks...
).