The whole episode is a take on the notion of sheltering on a ship when dangerous stuff is happening out there, a significant concern for real-life interplanetary flights. Well, real-life ray storms are a hell of a lot less bumpy.
-Listen to the background computer sounds during the briefing room scene at the opening of Act One. Aren't those sounds more TOS than normal?
-The titular catwalk is a pretty neat set. The osmium stuff it's made of makes them the most heavily shielded part of the ship, next to sickbay, oddly enough. Getting there is a pain, requiring a lot of crawling through Jeffries tubes. Supposedly, the catwalk runs within the warp coils.. This is odd, as on the Galaxy class there is nothing in there except the plasma stream. Where does the plasma go on Enterprise? Anyway, the space suit will let someone survive for 22 mintues before a lethal dose is absorbed.
-The Vulcans have run into this sort of storm a century ago. Their ship, the T'plana (sp?) didn't survive. Travis ran into something similar on his family's ship, and spent six weeks in a similar shielded room.
-With everyone packed into the catwalks, it reminds me a lot of certain ships in the Battlestar Galactica fleet... They set up a makeshift conn and command centre in one of the front chmabers, and the latrines in the back - interesting mention of that.
-Solkar was the frst Vulcan ambassador to Earth.
-Reed took zero-G training at "Lunaport"... Why they hell do you take Z-G training on the moon?!
-Denobula has twelve billion people on a single continent. Understandably, space is at a premium.
-CHEF APPEARS FOR THE FIRST TIME!!! Well, sorta. YOu don't see his head, and he doesn't say anything, but he's there in his white overalled glory handing out food. I wonder if it's anyone on the production crew, or if it's a regular extra we'll be seeing again.
-The requisite trouble begins when sensors indicate the matter and antimatter injectors come online - the core under regular operations heats up the nacelles to a toasty 300 degrees (Celsius, presumably). Trip suits up and heads down to engineering, to discover that a bunch of uniforms have docked their really pointy ship looking for a bunch of fugitives the Enterprise crew took in with the understanding that they were stellar cartographers.
-The uniformed militia and the fugitives are natually immune to the radiation, which makes it really easy for the pirates (the corrupted militia) to ransack other ships. During the ransacking, the leader of the militia goes through the Captain's logs, which refer to the Mazarites from last season and rescuing some ship, presumably from that desert planet episode.
-The warp coils take about 20 minutes to power up.
-This week's movie is a western. Can anyone ID the film? Someone was working for Sheriff Boggs...
Mark
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
It's a lot cheaper to put a boatload of cadets into orbit from the Moon.
Posted by Ryan McReynolds (Member # 28) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mark Nguyen: -Solkar was the frst Vulcan ambassador to Earth.
Nice to see Spock's great-grandfather get a mention. Fits with the idea that Vulcans typically follow in their family's career footsteps.
quote:Originally posted by Mark Nguyen: -Reed took zero-G training at "Lunaport"... Why they hell do you take Z-G training on the moon?!
I dunno, but it's a TAS reference! Amanda, Spock's mother, was killed in a shuttle accident at Lunaport in the alternate timeline of "Yesteryear."
Combined with the apparent TOS sounds, this seems like a pretty good one for continuity, eh?
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
Sussman and Strong TOS/TAS coolness. Yahoo!
Interestingly, Decipher decided to make the nameless first vulcan on Earth from ST:FC into Solkar for their CCG a few years back.
In any case, the speculative history of Vulcan relations on Earth in the decade post-FC that's been rattling around my head for a year now has gotten potentially cooler.
Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
if they managed to work in a DeForest Kelley western, i would be thrilled..
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
This "Lunaport" reference, if deliberately TAS, is just plain �bercool. And boy, will I look weird if I say that outside Flare.
OTOH, it could be a randomly picked, deliciously skiffy name for a lunar installation. (I was first reminded of "I'm at Marsport without Hilda"...)
As for the zero-gee thing, Lunaport could be an orbital station serving the lunar surface, a sort of local Spacedock.
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Ryan McReynolds (Member # 28) on :
quote:Originally posted by The_Tom: Interestingly, Decipher decided to make the nameless first vulcan on Earth from ST:FC into Solkar for their CCG a few years back.
If they really wanted to be spiff, Soval would have been named "Skon," so that Solkar, Skon, and Sarek could have been the only three Ambassadors to Earth/Federation up through the 2260s. That would have really set up a tradition for Spock to shun by joining Starfleet. As it is, though, having them three of many isn't bad.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
So, a Vulcan ship called T'Plana was destroyed in a storm a century ago. And just under a century ago, the first Vulcan ship to officially visit Earth was called T'Plana-Hath. Maybe they're the same ship, and it was destroyed not too long after leaving Earth.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Or maybe "-Hath" is the Vulcan way of saying "-A".
But wasn't a Vulcan philosopher named T'Plana-Hath? And if that's the case, wouldn't calling a Vulcan ship "T'Plana" be equivalent to calling the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman the "USS Harry"?
Mark
Posted by The359 (Member # 37) on :
Or just USS Truman. There's no reason Vulcans would have to follow the Given Name-Christian Name routine, they could have it backwords like the Bajorans.
Posted by SoundEffect (Member # 926) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mark Nguyen: Supposedly, the catwalk runs within the warp coils.. This is odd, as on the Galaxy class there is nothing in there except the plasma stream. Where does the plasma go on Enterprise?
The catwalk on the graphic runs below the warp coils, not in the middle of them. The plasma would be flowing above them. That's why they look upwards when the warp drive is turned back on and we see a glow from the cieling. The catwalk is probably a nacelle Jefferies Tube or maintenance corridor
quote:Originally posted by Mark Nguyen: The Vulcans have run into this sort of storm a century ago. Their ship, the T'plana (sp?) didn't survive.
Are you sure Archer didn't actually say T'Plana' Hath? It sounded like it to me, he just ran the word together, whereas Spock enunciated every syllable. So now we know what happened to the ship sometime after First Contact with Earth...[/qb]
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
Two more cool TAS references: -Phlox keeps Edosian slugs. (Lt. Arex of TAS having been from Edos.) -T'Pol went through the kahs-won ritual of going out into the desert to prove oneself, just as Spock did in "Yesteryear." (Tuvok also described the ritual on VGR, but he called it by a different name, the tal-oth.)
And in fact, the whole idea of a catwalk spanning the length of the warp nacelle is a sort of TAS homage, too, as this was first seen in the animated episode "One of Our Planets is Missing."
Who wrote this episode? They certainly did their research!
-MMoM
P.S. It sounded to me like Archer might have said T'Plana-hath as well. I wasn't able to check it with closed-captioning, though. I'll try to catch it again on my other TV on Sunday.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"...Given Name-Christian Name..."
Those are the same thing (unless you're not Christian).
Posted by The Vorlon (Member # 52) on :
Er, why didn't the crew just shuttle down to the planet and leave the Enterprise in orbit? Or maybe just leave the bridge-crew in the catwalk and the rest of the crew on the planet?
One would think that the atmosphere would protect them. Are we to assume that the storm killed all the life on the planet that they were so keen on studying at the start of the ep?
Bummer, eh?
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
Hey, we know that Spock has a first name that cannot be pronounced, and a family name that can (but it was very difficult for Amanda to learn to do so). The names "Spock", "Sarek", "Skon" and "Solkar" thus have to be something other than first names or family names. (It's quite possible that the first name is the family name, of course, and Amanda simply did better than Spock gave credit for human females for. Or then Amanda was flattering herself.)
T'Plana-Hath could have lived at a time when the naming rules were different, considering she was quoted as being something like an originator of a concept that Surak is more famous for. Was she his mentor, or apostle?
Nice catch with the catwalk and "One of Our Planets"! The TAS references simply must have been deliberate here.
Perhaps kahs-won is the girls' version of tal-oth?
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
Oh, and ferrying down the entire crew on just the two pods would probably have taken far more time than flying out of the way of the storm on the ship herself. It's unlikely that transporters or any putative escape pods would have been used for the evacuation...
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by TheWoozle (Member # 929) on :
I wonder how different this storm is, from the standard Ion storm? In the TOS era, they where fairly deadly too. Could it just be different terminology? By the time of TNG, an Ion storm is just an inconvenience.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
quote:Originally posted by Timo: Perhaps kahs-won is the girls' version of tal-oth?
Or tal-oth is what they call it in the ghettos of Vulcan. Word up.
Posted by The Vorlon (Member # 52) on :
How many crew? 84? Let's say 6 people per pod, so figure on 14 trips. 2 pods, so that's 7 trips per pod. 4 hours (240mins) of notice divided by 7 trips equals a 34.286 minute window for a round-trip. Sounds reasonable, eh? I'd bet they could even cram 10 people per pod if they had to.
At any rate, given the shape of the storm as seen out the window, one wonders why Enterprise could not travel straight up from the galactic plane and get away from the storm. It wasn't very tall from the looks of things. Oh well, there go the writers thinking in such 2-dimensional terms again...
Posted by E. Cartman (Member # 256) on :
And underestimating the vastness of space.
Posted by SoundEffect (Member # 926) on :
quote:Originally posted by E. Cartman: And underestimating the vastness of space.
Careful there though...it's just the vastness that we sometimes forget...despite what it looked like on screen, Enterprise could've travelled 'up' at warp 5 for 8 hours and not outrun the brunt of the wave...you can't judge what we saw with any sense of scale.
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
quote:Originally posted by Timo: Perhaps kahs-won is the girls' version of tal-oth?
Oh, so now Spock is a girl, huh?
Re: Spock's name--- Was it really said in "This Side of Paradise" (that's the right episode, right?) that Spock had a first name that was unpronounceable? As I recall, Leila Kalomi (or whatever her name was) asked "Do you have another name?" Unless I'm mistaken about the line, I'd say its pretty clear that the name by which Vulcans are commonly called is their given name, whereas there is also a family name that is not generally used.
-MMoM
P.S. I spelled it wrong, I think. I believe it's actually kahs-wan.
Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :
quote:-CHEF APPEARS FOR THE FIRST TIME!!! Well, sorta. YOu don't see his head, and he doesn't say anything, but he's there in his white overalled glory handing out food. I wonder if it's anyone on the production crew, or if it's a regular extra we'll be seeing again.
I don't think we will ever see his face. He's like Wilson Wilson from "Home Improvement", Peggy's mother from "Married... with Children" or the woman from "Tom & Jerry".
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
Or Cow and Chicken's parents.
Did anyone catch the name of the aliens?
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
The Takrit & the Takrit Militia.
Unless you mean the characters' names, in which case I saw Danny "I've been a Hirogen, a Jem'Hadar, & a Starfleet Marine even though Marines don't exist" Goldring & Zach "Ed Norton Scared The Fuck Out Of Me In 'Fight Club'" Grenier.
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
Actually, that's Takret, I believe.
And closed-captioning says it's just T'Plana. After listening to Archer again, I'm not hearing any trailing "-Hath" either. I guess it's a new ship then. (As mentioned, it could simply be a Vulcan name thing, but that gets a little too far into interpretation of/speculation on the Vulcan language, which is just too sketchy for my taste.)
I was a little surprised that shutting down the main power grid still left every single display screen up on the bridge.
-MMoM Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
Well, I'd think it was even more surprising if the most advanced hunk of metal thus far developed by humanity didn't have a basic auxilliary system to keep essential electronic equipment (plus their uber-energy-efficient magictech displays) functioning when the main power grid was off.
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
quote:Originally posted by TheWoozle: I wonder how different this storm is, from the standard Ion storm? In the TOS era, they where fairly deadly too. Could it just be different terminology? By the time of TNG, an Ion storm is just an inconvenience.
Well, it wasn't an ion storm. It was a NEUTRONIC storm. Though what difference that would make, I'll leave to those of us more well-versed in the behavior of uncharged as opposed to charged particles to explain.
The_Tom: Okay, I'll buy that.
Oh, and I just realized that the reference to osmium as the metal used in the construction of the catwalk is a TOS reference as well. The artificial Kalandan out post planet from "That Which Survives" (TOS) was made up of a diburnium-osmium alloy. More nifty-ness!
-MMoM Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
Osmium is a real metal. Unlikely they got it from TOS.
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
quote:Originally posted by Harry: Osmium is a real metal. Unlikely they got it from TOS.
Considering all the other TOS/TAS references? I don't think it's unlikely at all.
-MMoM Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
And did you catch all the 2001 references? I mean, what with the "stars" through the "window" and the "ship" being in "outer space." It was an homage fest!
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
quote:Originally posted by Sol System: And did you catch all the 2001 references? I mean, what with the "stars" through the "window" and the "ship" being in "outer space." It was an homage fest!
Ha. Ha. Ha.
No, seriously, I think it's obvious that Sussman and Strong are TOS/TAS fans, considering all the points mentioned earlier. Or they have a friend who is, or something in this line. I'd be more surprised if they consulted their handy-dandy periodic table and found Osmium than I would if they remembered it from "That Which Survives" or, even more simply, looked in a copy of either the Star Trek Concordance or Star Trek Encyclopedia. Given the other (quite specific) homages, I'd doubt highly that it was just a coincidence.
-MMoM Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
*bump* For this week's re-run. Any further thoughts?
I'm guessing we'll be seeing the Catwalk in season 3 and subsequently. It's too cool a set to destroy otherwise. One wonders if NX-02 and sisters will be incorporating stuff like a Catwalk command post into their design..?
Mark
Posted by Futurama Guy (Member # 968) on :
Actually, I caught this episode for the first time on the Sunday re-rerun. I certainly didn't think it was a bad episode.
And I'm not sure if anyone missed it or it was just not mentioned, but there was a starlog date of September 18th, 2152 mentioned.
Also, one of the movies mentioned was "The Day the Earth Stood Still".
And, according to dialog, 'the crew and the Enterprise are the best and the sturdiest in the fleet'. Which seems to be related to something mentioned in the "Earth Ship" thread.
Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
the catwalk was nothing like as promised by Right Said Fred.
Posted by Futurama Guy (Member # 968) on :
Isn't he a beekeeper or something now?
Posted by Futurama Guy (Member # 968) on :
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