Placeholder. I was stuck on campus until midnite, and won't be posting my tech overview until tomorrow.. Sorry 'bout that. However, from the first act I can say there doesn't seem to be much tech stuff to talk about, as expected. More later.
Mark
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Quickie notes:
-Timestamp: a year to the day that T'Pol joined the crew. Ergo, one year since "Broken Bow". And we get another episode named for an obscure American town. What happened in the intervening 5-6 weeks? I thought it was February in "Shockwave".
-Any tech rationalizations could be easily seen as apocryphal, as a) T'Pol is telling the story, and b) we dont' know how much of it was true in the first place. Still, it's an interesting look at Vulcan technology of the era.
-The story takes place sometime in the fall-winter of 1957, starting sometime between October 4 and 25 - presumably twoards the latter date. Sputnik 1 transmitted for 21 days after launch, and was "heard" beeping at the opening of the episode. It stayed in orbit until January 1958.
-Not one, but TWO new Vulcan ships! The one that crashed is distinctly different than the survey ship T'Vahl that eventually pickes 'em up. Both ships are small, about runabout size. They lack the familiar warp ring, though have nacelles of some sort. The latter ship looks a lot like a 50s serial rocketship.
-Vulcans apparently had particle weapons (i.e. phasers) at the time. Were they keeping weapons as well as propulsion technology from the humans?
-A Vulcan may have invented VELCRO! Or at least patented it.
-Name dropping: A Tellarite freighter presumably picked up the ship's distress call, and it took months to route it to Vulcan high command.
Mark
Posted by Starship Freak (Member # 293) on :
Wow, two new vulcan ships, that�s great. It�s only a shame that you can�t cap them for us, Mark
You know, don�t get me wrong, I like to see new vulcan ship designs. And, yes, they are by far one of the most important races for humankind, and it�s only natural that we see lots of vulcan ships. But seriously, why no ships of tellarite or andorian or any other important TOS race origin? (yeh, yeah, klingon, schmlingon..) It�s not as if the opportunity has not existed to write that into the episodes...
Posted by Dukhat (Member # 341) on :
It would make sense for 20th century Vulcan ships not to have warp rings. If the Vahklas or the T'Plana'hath is any indication, warp rings are a relatively new concept for newer Vulcan ships in Enterprise (relatively = 100 years or less before ENT).
Anyway, it's great to know that it's only been the second episode of the new season, and already there's three new Vulcan ships. I'm patiently waiting to see what...(spoilers) $ $ $ $
$ $ $ $$
$$ $ $ $ $ ...the new Romulan ship will look like in "Minefield," whether there will be a new Klingon ship in "Marauders," and if there will be other Starfleet vessel shown this season besides the NX class.
Posted by The359 (Member # 37) on :
There is no real Carbon Creek, Pennsylvania, but there is a Carbon, Pennsylvania within 20 minutes of here. I do notice a trend with Trek writers merely adding "Creek" to real city names, just like Portage Creek, Indiana from Voyager's "11:59", which isn't a real city but Portage, Indiana is (and that was 5 minutes from where I used to live...funky).
Posted by Vogon Poet (Member # 393) on :
I read somewhere they actually filmed on location in PA; if so, would this be the furthest afield a Trek production has ever gone? Apart from wherever they shots those Rura Penthe exterior/2nd-Unit shots, I've always wondered where that was. . .
Posted by Snay (Member # 411) on :
Alaska.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
I don't think that was really shot in Pennsylvania... There are plenty of "small town" locations that can be used around LA, but probably farther than where they normally shoot. I mean, Friends has been able to convince lots of people they've been shooting in New York for eight years, no?
I think Alaska is probably the farthest they've gone to shoot specific second-unit stuff. One wonders what it'd be like if they'd shoot a Trek film in another country for once, like Australia or Scotland or anywhere but Vancouver...
Mark
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
I'm not in the habit of screaming at the television, especially when watching the episode alone... but I was pleased to learn that the Vulcans who were stuck with "bone knives and bear skins" didn't manage to reconstruct the transmitter.
The thing that concerned me the most, though, was the opening shot. We know that Sputnik was transmitting, but wouldn't there have been Earth-based radar, communications, whatever that might have noticed the UFO that was sitting less than a kilometer away? For that matter, what kind of equipment did Sputnik itself have?
Heck, at one point in the episode the kid comments that you can see Sputnik on the horizon when the timing's right. So what did the astronomers and other guys think of the SECOND dot that wasn't too far away? That Vulcan survey ship sure wasn't cloaked...
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
Stick a F-117 one kilometer above a 1950s radar dome and not a whole lot would be seen.
But stick a hundreds-of-years-more-advanced-survey vessel (presumable specifically designed for low observability) a kilometer above a probe already in orbit and it likely would have been seen?
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
Well, when you see a bright (visual, radar) spot where you expect to see a spot, will you really notice that there's a dimmer spot close to it? The Vulcan ship could have been that brighter spot, drawing all the attention from the Sputnik...
...Which, IIRC, didn't have much in the way of instrumentation. A thermometer, and a radio transmitter, the signals of which were used to study the upper atmosphere. Not much else. Korolev had originally wanted to launch the more versatile vehicle that later became Sputnik III, but the plan was considered too ambitious and risky for a first flight.
I'm not sure I like the idea that Vulcan spacecraft would change basic design in just a hundred years, after 3000 years of starflight history. Or perhaps they noticed that humans were using nacelle-based technology, and turned away from it in revulsion?
Were the craft in "CC" described as interstellar vessels, or could they have been mere shuttles/landers?
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by The359 (Member # 37) on :
The one thing I didn't like was the vague reference to "The Twilight Zone" that Tucker made. Television was supposed to have been gone 100 years earlier, long before Tucker was even born, and I'd be willing to bet Twilight Zone wasn't made up until the 2040s.
Of course it was probably some stupid Paramount exec's idea...
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
True. But there are eclectics in every bunch - Tucker could be one of them. For all we know, they did a marathon screeening of Serling's best episodes last week in the mess hall.
Mark
Posted by Toadkiller (Member # 425) on :
Did the Vulcans have shields (don't get Ent quickly here)?
If so then they should be able to adjust to some degree the reflective qualities of their ship and make it dark enough not to show up from the ground. If the shields can absorb energy weapon blasts they should be able to absorb enough visible light on the ground-facing side to hide the ship.
Despite the various times a ships been seen from the ground the are enough times they've been able to hang around in orbit with the low-tech society of the week not noticing the new star for this sort of thing to be "canon". It wouldn't be a cloaking device, as you could still see it if you were close, but if it isn't shiny you aren't seeing it from the ground.
Our little beeping friend was silver to enhance visibility.
Posted by O Captain Mike Captain (Member # 709) on :
why how far up can you see stuff, man? i have a hard time making out the space shuttle myself, and i have the added advantage of a telescope and a guy on the news telling me where to point it...
BTW, if shields were able to do that, they would be a lot less surprised by the cloaking device a hundred years later. i dont think shields can do anything of the sort.
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
Actually, shields *are* an efficient method of stumping observations by 20th century Earth or comparable tech. VOY "Future's End" specifically mentions that the shields are the technology used by the ship to fool Earth's radars. And TOS "Assignment: Earth" might have made a similar statement.
Whether they also reduce visual albedo is unknown. Certainly the E-E glowed a lot in "FC" - but then again, her shields had been damaged, and perhaps were never really repaired. The Voyager was not on low orbit in "Future's End" and probably not optically visible.
We saw no reduction in the E-nil's visual signature in "Assignment: Earth", of course. Or actually we did - there's that glitch in TOS orbital stock footage where one nacelle goes missing! Perhaps it's because of the use of shields on camouflage mode?
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by newark (Member # 888) on :
IIRC, in "Tomorrow is Yesterday", the Enterprise is detected by a radar base in Oklahoma. The officers aboard the starship were aware they could be spotted by the equipment of the time and attempted to increase attitude above the Earth. The implication I got from the episode was that the detection equipment of the planet was limited in range and effectivenss.
A very good question for this episode was-how did T'Mir and her team dispose of the crashed scout? We know the body of the captain was cremated. Was the ship also 'cremated' as well? Or would that have attracted attention?
Another question-does the Vulcan society keep records of all expeditions? If so, couldn't Captain Archer and his friend Tucker ask from the Vulcan commnad for verification of the events relayed in this story? Or does the Vulcan high command discourage humans from researching their records?
Posted by Free ThoughtCrime America (Member # 480) on :
So the Vulcans invented Velcro. Right. That jokes never been done before.
Posted by J (Member # 608) on :
Don't you know that the word for Velcro in Vulcan is Velcro? This has baffled linguists for years... Archer and Trip don't know that they know the secret to the entire event.
Posted by Dat (Member # 302) on :
I thought I'd bring this thread back up seeing as I finally got to watch Carbon Creek tonight. Anyway, the name dropping of "The Twilight Zone" was already brought up. I'm surprised no one noticed the slightly more obscure name dropping of "I Love Lucy" seeing as it was Desilu Studios (eventually bought by Paramount) that helped to get Star Trek produced and on the air.
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What happened in the intervening 5-6 weeks? I thought it was February in "Shockwave". ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
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