This isn't a tech-heavy show, and the plot itself is rather thin. Anyhoo:
-The episode opens with another PR stunt, this time Trip looking to take pics of the captain to send back to Earth for a portrait. Ironically, the digital camera he's using is perhaps the most NON futuristic prop we've ever seen in the series so far.
-Archer's portrait will join those of other famous Starfleet captains, in a collection which purportedly inspired cadets like Mayweather.
-I can't remember everything from "The Andorian Incident", but was it mentioned there that famous Vulcans get mummified? Well, it gets mentioned here.
-The rogue planet is a class-M, but does not circle a star. It supposedly escaped its parent star, but I don't think current physics supports something that heavy going rogue. Heat supposedly comes from escaping gases, but this is even less likely... And for a sunless planet, there's an awful lot of foliage. Still, it allows for a lot of new optical shots with a darkened Enterprise orbiting a darkened planet.
-Reed and Archer were both in the Eagle Scouts, thogh Reed had two more merit badges - including exobiology.
-The away team this time goes down with spiffy nightvision headsets that cover one eye. Dunno what this does for stereoscopic vision.
-Reed joins a bunch of Hirogen-- uh, *game hunters* they find there - the hunters have even spiffier nightvision sets that cover both eyes. Their rifles look almost a little too obtusely like normal hunting rifles.
-Synthesizing unknown alien blood types is a simple matter for earth medical science, apparently.
The rest isn't terribly interesting, I'm afraid. Not a bad epsiode per se, but it doesn't offer anything really new in the Trek universe. This one's alternate episode is "Captain Archer Falls for a Slug".
Mark
[ March 19, 2002, 22:42: Message edited by: Mark Nguyen ]
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
Hirogen???
Oy... Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Not in the visual sense. But their temperment and constant talk of "prey" pretty much makes 'em Hirogen. I'm betting we never see these particular aliens ever again.
Mark
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
We get to see the preserved corpses of a couple famous Vulcan monk-types in "The Andorian Incident," though there weren't any details about why they (or was it just one?) in particular were preserved. Interesting.
Posted by Identity Crisis (Member # 67) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mark Nguyen: -The away team this time goes down with spiffy nightvision headsets that cover one eye. Dunno what this does for stereoscopic vision.
Screws up steroscopic vision at first but people can adapt with training/practice. Some modern military equipment works in a similar fashion. Hmm, there's stuff about this in that very bad movie with Nicholas Cage in a helicopters. http://us.imdb.com/Title?0099575 Posted by Vogon Poet (Member # 393) on :
I was trained during night ops to keep one eye open, one eye closed whenever a flare went up - it enabled you to look around using the light of the flare, while retaining partial night vision. Of course, I have a lazy eye (otherwise known as a squint) so I don't have true binocular vision (the very idea of what it must be like is unknown to me; it also plays hell with your depth perception!); only using one eye at a time anyway, I therefore found it quite easy - don't know what normal-sighted people thought of it. . .
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
So, no new ships mentioned/seen?
Posted by Flower Man (Member # 780) on :
Actually, star-less planets aren't that unlikely. If I remember correctly, astronomers did discover a few rouge gas giants. I'm not positive about that though.
Posted by Boris (Member # 713) on :
If synthesizing unknown alien blood types is a simple matter, then how come that in "Journey to Babel" Spock had to donate blood to Sarek because they didn't have enough of his blood type aboard?
Boris
[ March 20, 2002, 08:26: Message edited by: Boris ]
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Mim - Nope. The aliens had their own lil' ship, but all we see of their technology is a collection of futuristic camping gear.
Flower - What you may be thinking of are tiny failed stars, which essentially coalesce into gas giant-type planets, go dark, and ultimately freeze. What we're talking about here are rocky Earth-type planets... The science behind it is all fiddle-faddle-foo.
Boris - You'd think they'd remember that...
Mark
Posted by TheF0rce (Member # 533) on :
ack am i the only one getting an ent repeat tonight??
Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :
I also read somewhere that there's new speculation that a terrestrial planet once existed between the Mars and Jupiter orbits and was ejected or plunged into the sun during the early days of the solar system (say, 3-4 billion years ago.) I'm trying to find the link where I read that yesterday.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
I was under the impression that the planet between Mars and Jupiter was the asteroid belt.
Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :
So was I, But this was something based upon a computer generated model of the history of the orbits of the inner planets.
Dammit, I can't find the link!
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
I stand corrected. I'm also wiling to bet that Mr. Science Advisor for Enterprise read just that article in addition to the writer, who took the obvious dramatic liberties.
Mark
Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mark Nguyen: Mim - Nope. The aliens had their own lil' ship, but all we see of their technology is a collection of futuristic camping gear.
Yeah, it seems that technologically advanced races uses pop-up tents. Just toss to deploy.
The hunting rifles reminded me paintball guns, their visual and sound effects are right out of Star Wars.
It's the 23rd Century, and we're still using low-light gear? Held onto our head with metal braces?
Didn't T'Pol and Trip find it strange that when Archer claimed that he was just "taking some scans", he held up his universal translator as proof? Yeah, Johnny's talking to trees again.
Those shapeshifters resembles certain species of Earth marine invertebrates. Basically Archer was conversing with, and falling for a giant sea slug. Man, they just never give him a break.
Posted by Vice-Admiral Michael T. Colorge (Member # 144) on :
Why do I have the feeling that when Enterprise is over, TOS will be non-canon...
Posted by NightWing (Member # 4) on :
I thought it already was...
*runs away and hides*
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
On the idea of rogue planets...
I've read a few articles about the discovery of other planets in distant star systems. And from what I remember, a large number of those planets were found to be in irregular orbits, and also to be very close to their primary, the star. I'd guess that irregular orbits are much more likely to have the planet either swallowed by the star or chucked out of the system altogether.
Of course, so far we've only discovered massive gas giants -- not small Minshara-class planets. So the case could conceivably be different. But in the swirling maelstrom that some systems exist as, it's possible that the close interaction of massive gravitational bodies could eject a planet from a solar system.
...But then, I don't buy that bit about having a full atmosphere on this planet that hasn't condensed due to the extreme cold, or the fact that geological activity is the ONLY thing that keeps the planet warm. Isn't geological activity caused by the flexing and pull of the sun and the moon, similar to the effects of the tides? And just why did these thick jungle plants evolve massive leaves when there's no sunlight to be obtained? (It seems that this "strange new world" is in some ways too strange, and in others not strange enough.)
Posted by Ryan McReynolds (Member # 28) on :
quote:Originally posted by Boris: If synthesizing unknown alien blood types is a simple matter, then how come that in "Journey to Babel" Spock had to donate blood to Sarek because they didn't have enough of his blood type aboard?
Maybe rare tpye-T green copper blood is a lot harder to synthesize than standard human(oid) blood. It was red, at least.
Posted by Flower Man (Member # 780) on :
quote:And just why did these thick jungle plants evolve massive leaves when there's no sunlight to be obtained?
To absorb more air.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"And from what I remember, a large number of those planets were found to be in irregular orbits, and also to be very close to their primary, the star."
Well, I don't know about irregular orbits, but there's a reason for that second part. Most extrsolar planets have been detected by the "wobble" caused by their gravitational effects on their stars. So the stars that wobble the most will be the ones that have really big planets right next to them. Thus, those are the planets that get detected.
Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :
FOUND IT!!
Long-Destroyed Fifth Planet May Have Caused Lunar Cataclysm, Researchers Say
quote:Originally posted by MinutiaeMan: ...But then, I don't buy that bit about having a full atmosphere on this planet that hasn't condensed due to the extreme cold, or the fact that geological activity is the ONLY thing that keeps the planet warm. Isn't geological activity caused by the flexing and pull of the sun and the moon, similar to the effects of the tides? And just why did these thick jungle plants evolve massive leaves when there's no sunlight to be obtained? (It seems that this "strange new world" is in some ways too strange, and in others not strange enough.)
Planet's contain a great deal of heat inside the core, which slowly radiates outward over time. The younger the planet, the hotter the core and more rapidly the heat release. I'd assume that planet's been floating around for a while, though, considering it wasn't near any star systems.
And that still doesn't explain all the foliage we saw. Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
There's a mention of a "Deneva Prime" from T'Pol. At least, it sounded like Deneva.
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
*concurs*
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
quote:Originally posted by David Templar: Planet's contain a great deal of heat inside the core, which slowly radiates outward over time. The younger the planet, the hotter the core and more rapidly the heat release. I'd assume that planet's been floating around for a while, though, considering it wasn't near any star systems.
As I understand it, the heat of a planet's core is caused by the constant pull of a star's gravity. Also, I think you're disregarding the vast, vast amounts of solar energy that a planet like Earth receives every minute of the day, whether it's day or night.
Mars is a very cold planet because it's further away from the sun, and thus receives less solar energy.
Just imagine how cold it would be with no star at all...
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Well, there's two kinds of heat here...
We're warm' that is, you and me and trees and rivers and air, because the sun heats us up.
The planet's core is warm because it is under intense pressure and contains a lot of radioactive substances.
Earth is geologically active due to the second source of heat, not the first. (And there is life, quite a bit of it, that's dependant upon geologic heat sources. Though very little of it comes in the forms of forests and mammal-like things.)
Mars isn't geologically active because it is smaller and thus has cooled more since it was formed than the Earth has, and also because, perhaps, it isn't made of quite the same mixture of stuff. The same goes for the Moon.
Planets and moons can recieve most of their internal heat from tidal forces, but these have to be extreme. Io, for instance. Earth would have to be a lot closer to the sun to recieve that kind of tidal stretching.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Internal pressure... I didn't think of that.
BUT... as far as I know, Mars does NOT have a molten core. And just why is that? (I'm not sure -- it has something to do with a magnetic field, right?)
Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
quote:Originally posted by MinutiaeMan: Internal pressure... I didn't think of that.
BUT... as far as I know, Mars does NOT have a molten core. And just why is that? (I'm not sure -- it has something to do with a magnetic field, right?)
I believe it's the other way around. Mars has a very weak magnetic field because it doesn't have a molten core.
Posted by OnToMars (Member # 621) on :
quote: I believe it's the other way around. Mars has a very weak magnetic field because it doesn't have a molten core.
'Tis.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Okay then, maybe someone knows why Mars doesn't have a molten core?
(Maybe I'm taking this too far, but I think that Mars is a reasonable stepping-stone from Earth to rogue planets, considering that Mars is approximately Earth-sized, but still doesn't have the proper temperature for life as we know it.)
It might have to do with the mass of the planet, and the body must reach a "critical mass" in order to press the insides into a molten core. Or something like that...
In any case, I'm still not convinced that the heat from a planet's molten core would be sufficient to warm the planet for life as we know it.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Well, Mars has a solid core because it cooled, really, is what it comes down to. It has a thicker crust for the same reason.
As for supporting life, well, like I said, there's lots of life on Earth that's solely dependant upon geothermal vents. But not like in the episode, no.
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