Bit of a placeholder this, as I'm still DL'ing the ep - but each week I see these unimaginative Official Tech Thread titles and it's been driving me nuts, all those lost opportunites. . .
Anyway, person who spots the most blatant steals from Voyager's "One" wins a prize. 8)
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Man, you've been waiting on that pun for how many weeks?
Mark
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Honest truth, it only just occurred to me last night!
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
OK, not a lot of tech in the episode, apart from some transdimensional equivalent of last week's Giant Bubbly Space Pizza, and some bits and pieces about starting warp cores that went in one ear and out the other. But. . .
- Impulse vents get clogged if you don't check them every two hours. Clogged with what?
- Tucker mentions 4 years of Starfleet training - the same amount of time that cadets spend at the Federation Starfleet Academy. . .
- Phlox Club! I figured out pretty early on that it wasn't the real T'Pol; while it was conceivable that Phlox might not have mentioned her prior to her first appearance, the way she acted for the rest of the ep was totally off.
- Porthos!
- Menage � Phlox! He likes to go to nightclubs and pick up a "companion or two."
- Austin Phlox: Interstellar Denobulan of Mystery! Bit of a giveaway, really - would he be likely to wander the ship naked if T'Pol was awake? Brilliantly done, though. . .
- Film Night is improving - they're showing The Exorcist, and Danny Kaye in The Court Jester.
- Anyone else think the fact that they hadn't reached the edge of the disturbance might turn out to be a hallucination?
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
- Everyone apparently likes to sleep in full uniform.
- Phlox mentions Spican (?) spacemoth. It can travel half a lightyear. Nice.
- Dr. Lucas, Phlox's penpal, is back. So are Phlox' freaky toenails.
- Phlox eats leeches. Yuck.
- Last weeks anomaly (like this one) was a transdimensional anomaly. "Nothing from this universe survives contact". Well, only human 'neocortices' are affected, and can be shut down with some neural device.
- The computer runs most systems, but Phlox has had some tutorials.
- Phlox is still a great character, it's a shame they've barely used him in this season.
- Denobulans have funky ridges on their back.
- So are those movies in the Viacom/Paramount portfolio, or do they have to pay outrageous fees to show those clips?
- Chef is mentioned again. He's not very good in alien dishes.
- Crew-count: 80 humans (+ 2 aliens and a dog, obviously). Although T'Pol later says "over 80 lifeforms, not counting your [Phlox's] pets".
- The Dr. Phlox Horror Show. There are some pretty disturbing shots. That Hoshi thing was just wrong!
- Phlox mentions his "medical staff". This is consistent with last week, were we saw a Starfleet medic for the first time, IIRC.
- "I'm a physician, not an engineer". No comments.
- "Output must be confined to within 300 and 312 millicochranes to prevent fusion of the dilithium matrix, unless the spatial compression index is greater than 5.62% or the ship is within 2 parsecs of a Class-C gravimetric field distortion." - From the procedures on restarting the reactor in the ship's database. The anomaly is apparently a Class-C or greater distortion.
- Control of the hull plating is also located on the warp-engine console. And so are, rather unsurprisingly, the magnetic constrictor coil controls.
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
Hey.. just a thought. Might this "spatial compression index" be the often-speculated "Cochrance factor" that makes up for the sometimes ulikely travel-times (Rigel system, 4-day Qonos trips)?
Posted by Manticore (Member # 1227) on :
What I liked was the fact that you felt that the warp drive was a really complicated piece of equipment for the first time in a while. I know that when I heard Phlox's description of the stuff in the manual that it sounded like a lot of manuals that I've read... Posted by J (Member # 608) on :
Did anyone notice that T'Pol said Phlox needed to sleep? I thought he only needed a few hours each month?
I noticed something else, but I can't remember it now, the scene where they're trying to use the Warp Drive kinda made me lose it--- it was near there.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"Anyone else think the fact that they hadn't reached the edge of the disturbance might turn out to be a hallucination?"
Well, there's a problem either way. If they were outside the anomaly when Phlox started messing with the engines, I don't think Tucker would have said he'd done "a hell of a job". More like "dammit, the whole engine's screwed up, and there wasn't even a reason for it".
However, if the sensor readings that Phlox and "T'Pol" were looking at were correct, then they were going to be able to cover almost a quarter light-year in ten weeks. That means full impulse is superluminal.
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
Well, she said it was "nearly" a quarter of a light-year, and given that she was a hallucination of Phlox there's a bit of fudge factor one can employ. .25 light-years would be something like 1.3c, and even .2 light-years would be just over 1c. But, if it were somewhere closer to an eighth of a light-year (i.e. .125ly), then the speed would be 0.65c, well within the bounds of impulse reason.
Also noteworthy is that the anomaly was supposed to take four days to cross at impulse, whereas at warp four it would take an hour. Assuming a speed of .999999999999999c for impulse (just as a rough upper limit), that makes warp four 96c . . . which is consistent with "Broken Bow", at least, but in reality constitutes another monkey wrench in the warp speed issue.
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
Also of note is that Phlox loads a phase pistol with one of those weird red glowing dual-battery-looking things. We've seen it before in another Enterprise ep, and we saw something similar inside the Nemesis phasers and phaser rifles.
I personally find it unlikely that this little red doohickey is the power cell. For starters, the power cell on the Type III is suggested in "Siege of AR-558"[DS9] to be a much larger object on the rear of the rifle. Further, the stock of the ST:FC-style rifles would seem to be superfluous if the power cell and phaser beam/pulse generation are all going on well forward of the trigger and other controls. Last but not least, a similar red cell is seen in the Type II phasers, once again forward of the controls, and also on the phase pistols of the 2150's in a similar location. As with the rifles, this would render the handles of those devices superfluous. I would surmise that this red object is in some way connected with generating the nadions associated with phasers (as referenced in "Endgame"[VOY7]).
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
As long as we are playing in the 1 c ballpark, we should remember Unca Albert. Were those "ten weeks" shorter than one quarter of a year, or longer?
And agreed about the phaser/phase pistol doohickey. A phase-weapon-thing probably has more than one component that requires frequent cleaning or replacing. Cf. Bashir twiddling with his rifle's front end in "AR-558".
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Manticore (Member # 1227) on :
Something that I just remembered, doesn't it take !20 minutes to charge up the warp coils from a dead stop? I think that was the time mentioned in "Catwalk." And if it's the same reason as in The Naked Time, wouldn't it send them like four days back in time if they charged the things up any faster?
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
You saw the red glowy thing being instered in close-up in "Fight or Flight," I think (or was it "Sleeping Dogs?" One or the other, anyway, can't be bothered to look it up right now). And in "The Xindi" you saw Reed take a pistol from storage and then insert the thingy.
I don't know if it's a power cell, or perhaps some sort of prefire chamber that is best stored outside the weapon when not in use for extended periods. Because we still don't know if a Phase Pistol is the same as a Phaser. We've seen nothing to confirm or deny they're the same thing. I suppose the original name could have ben changed, perhaps when the first Type-1s were introduced: you couldn't call them Phase Pistols, what would you call them? Phase TV Remotes? Phase Cellphones?
Just checked, it's "Sleeping Dogs" - but they don't refer to the component by name.
But I don't have a problem with it being the power cell - the size of Type-1s we've seen establishes that the overall barrel length doesn't have to be that large; and comparing the power cell on a TNG rifle with that on a Phase Pistol, with 200 years of tech in between, doesn't work for me. I think I'll reserve judgement for now.
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
I also noticed they forgot about the 20-minutes-for-cold-start rule. While the VFX certainly implied the engines were completely offline, they may have actually been in some form of hibernation mode. I also seem to remember that in TOS, you actually needed an intermix formula to reboot the engines!?
Posted by TheWoozle (Member # 929) on :
quote:Originally posted by Manticore: Something that I just remembered, doesn't it take !20 minutes to charge up the warp coils from a dead stop? I think that was the time mentioned in "Catwalk." And if it's the same reason as in The Naked Time, wouldn't it send them like four days back in time if they charged the things up any faster?
Maybe the quick-start is why he had to massage the controls and why they where bent out of alignment. I expect that they where at warp for only an hour or so.
Posted by J (Member # 608) on :
Impulse still has time dilation affects, especially after you get past full impulse .25c, it's noticable at maximum impulse .75c. I don't know if this is sci or sci-fi, but it's what the TNG TM talks about.
I don't remember if .75 was maximum in that was what they would safely use or what it could reach period. However, would T'Pol's ETA be affected by time dilation in some way?
However, in any case... the crew, unless they got IV's hooked up to them, wouldn't survive that period of time.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
And of course, all we get out of the wakeup process was Trip being hungry. Being in a coma STILL leaves you with a number of autonomic functions that have to be taken care of. Even if Phlox was able to surpress their renal functions, for example, I was hoping that everyone as they were waking up would make the can their first destination.
Mark
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
Er, is this full impulse not being the same as maximum impulse something everyone has always known about, and I've just missed it?
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
As I recall, it's in the TNGTM.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Concerning the cold start: Considering how long Phlox was poring over those manuals, doesn't it make sense that the engine could've been warming up in the mean time? That would've been the first part I would've read, anyway... "How to start the warp core."
One thing I noticed, is that we've got a timestamp for this episode -- it's said that it's two days after the end of "Harbinger," which was on December 27. So that means that the crew spent New Years' in a coma. Hell, the could've hung out on the edge of the anomaly for two days, then had a big bash on New Years' Eve, and then have Phlox pilot them through at warp the next morning while they're all unconscious and hung over! Posted by Fleet-Admiral Michael T. Colorge (Member # 144) on :
I doubt that New Year's Eve was something they had on their minds as a priority.
Posted by TheWoozle (Member # 929) on :
Christmas too, it would seem.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
I thought they said they encountered "Harbinger"'s anomaly "several weeks ago" or something like that. Or was that a reference to something else?
Posted by J (Member # 608) on :
quote:Originally posted by PsyLiam: Er, is this full impulse not being the same as maximum impulse something everyone has always known about, and I've just missed it?
Been that way solidly since the TNG TM... but I do recall that there is an episode where they were at full impulse and then there was an order for maximum impulse.
.0625 c is quarter impulse .125 c is half .25 c is full .75 c is maximum
And as I think I said, I'm fairly certain that the engines can exceed .75 c, but it's not recommended.
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
Regarding time dilation, we see a running clock during the scene of the doctor in Engineering. I can't tell on the copy I have how fast the thing is running . . . if it were running at normal speed, then the four days is at the ship's frame of reference. If it were running faster, then the clock would be showing the outside frame of reference.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
quote:Originally posted by TheWoozle:
quote:Originally posted by Manticore: Something that I just remembered, doesn't it take !20 minutes to charge up the warp coils from a dead stop? I think that was the time mentioned in "Catwalk." And if it's the same reason as in The Naked Time, wouldn't it send them like four days back in time if they charged the things up any faster?
Maybe the quick-start is why he had to massage the controls and why they where bent out of alignment. I expect that they where at warp for only an hour or so.
Maybe it also depends on how long the warp engines have been off for?
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Trip might have left them on "standby" just in case.
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
BTW, did anyone with CC got the actual name of that spacemoth? It sounds like "Pican spacemoth"..
Posted by Dat (Member # 302) on :
It might have been Spican... as in from the Spica star system.
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
The log from this episode hasn't been posted yet, but this site keeps up with all closed-caption logs from ENT episodes.
-MMoM Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
G2K's pointed me in the direction of what I think is the clock in question, but it's barely onscreen for a second before the camera pans away; and I can't see any evidence of it counting very quickly. . .
Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
Thank you sir!
On my version, there was enough fuzz and general digital ick in that region to cause all sorts of hard-to-see-through wackiness. It looked for all the world like the clock was running really fast, which would've been an extraordinary nod to Einstein. As it stands, the four days pretty much has to be ship time.
[And no, I don't know what I was thinking that made me even consider that the thoughtful nod to Einstein might possibly exist on an episode of Enterprise. :-) ]
My thinking on the clock was that if it were running fast, it would be showing external time. Since it is suggesting that the trip was four days of internal time, then we must assume that the time dilation value was less than a factor of five (which would've made the four-day impulse trip 20 days of external time, and thus valueless since warping around the thing would take three weeks, or 21 days).
Thus, we have a plot-based upper limit on the speed they were actually travelling. It could not have been more than about .98c, which is about where a time dilation factor of five comes into play.
Of course, given the whole mass-lightening thing in regards to impulse maneuverings, I could be all wrong . . . time dilation might not be an issue, even at sublight.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
Sorry - this maybe a little off topic but, does anyone think Phlox and Denobulans have vaguely Cardassian features?
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
Pycan space moth. Right. Thanks.
Denobulans do look vaguely Cardassian. On the same hand, a *lot* of aliens look like Bajorans and/or Humans.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
When the first blurry photos of Phlox appeared on the web, everyone was complaining about how Cardassian he looked.
Posted by J (Member # 608) on :
I would think that all times given in the episode would be external times, not internal. Remember they are racing to this planet so they can stop the Xindi weapon, 21 days going around the anomaly at warp is too long... but they can go through it at Impulse in 4 days < neither are ship time, they are normal frame time, or external time.
This means: That no time dilation effect was apparent [maybe an honest mistake on production side]. In otherwords... 4 days inside was 4 days outside. The anomaly was not very wide, but was definately long and tall.
Actually right at this moment, I'm feeling bad for even mentioning time dilation and impulse speeds... etc etc--- it's getting nowhere and it was too much to expect of the production staff.
And yes, Phlox's make-up uses components from Cardassian molds.
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
I don't know, but it feels to me there's something inherently wrong about *knowing* about 'external time'. If you can just adjust for time dilation by letting your clock run faster, doesn't that kind of invalidate the entire complexity of the "frames of reference" theory? It isn't just the clock that moves slower, it's time itself.
Not that I'm a physicist or anything.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Y'know, for the anomaly to be 21 days around at warp, but only four days thick at impulse, it would have to be multiple light-years wide, multiple light-years tall, and about one light-day deep.
Shouldn't they have seen it coming from a long way off, and been able to adjust course around it without adding an extra three weeks? I realize it was still forming, but it couldn't have appeared that quickly, or it would have been expanding much more rapidly than they made it out to be.
Also, isn't it odd how the anomaly appeared right in their path, almost like a wall? I wonder if we'll find out it was created there intentionally?
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
quote:Originally posted by Harry: I don't know, but it feels to me there's something inherently wrong about *knowing* about 'external time'. If you can just adjust for time dilation by letting your clock run faster, doesn't that kind of invalidate the entire complexity of the "frames of reference" theory? It isn't just the clock that moves slower, it's time itself.
Not that I'm a physicist or anything.
I think what the difference is, Harry, is that what we consider as "absolute" "external time" is not really absolute -- it's just the large majority of space that has similar time. It's still all relative. The "external" frame of reference is only considered external because it's what most people seem to experience.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
quote:Originally posted by J: And yes, Phlox's make-up uses components from Cardassian molds.
That is interesting... I wonder if that was intentional or just money saving?
Or maybe it might explain why we don't see Denobulans in TOS and beyond... they become affiliated with the Cardassians or something - occupied like the Bajorans? "reclaiming cardassian brethren" or something?
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
No no no.
I believe Phlox is actually one of the very few off-world Denobulans. Remember that they seem more interested in their own lives than in, for example, movies. I think it's very probablu that the Denobulans weren't particularly interested in joining the Federation.
Besides, with such a complicated love live, who has time to go galavanting about the galaxy?
Posted by TheWoozle (Member # 929) on :
Like the Tellerites, they're there, but more interested in doing their own thing and not expansion. In Trek, they make it look like Humans are the only race that really gets into colonization. Well, and the Borg.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Well...the whole "colonization" thing seems to wear off after a few generations in space. Just look at all the "Vulcanoid" worlds.
It seems that each race colonizes several worlds with proximity of their homeworld, and in the Federation's case, many additional worlds are colonized by a mix of species living together (like the Maquis colonies) then those worlds, once established, branch out to the other worlds in those systems....
Small wonder the Romulans deem the Federation as "aggressivly expansionist". Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
Regarding that wall-like anomaly... Perhaps its very thinness caused the crew to disregard it originally? (VOY "One" used the excuse that the nebula originally looked benign and passable; perhaps Archer has learned that thin anomalies in the Expanse are generally benign as well?)
And yes, that "racing against the external clock" argument is very good. If nothing is truly won by making 21 days "look" like four days, then why not take the long route?
...Except if taking a four-day trip instead of a 21-day one saves a lot of fuel. I'd really, REALLY like to see the refueling issue addressed in the show. Kirk was always signing fuel consumption reports. In comparison, Archer should be worrying about meeting the next collier as much as a WWI cruiser captain, or more...
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Mabye Kirk was always worried about fuel consumption because his ship was always being hijacked and sent to the ass end of the galaxy or back in time or some damn thing.... Bad for mileage.
Also, Kirk's ship obviously uses much higher warp factors, so that's likely to consume more fuel as well.
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
And what's more, they can't 'grow' dilithium in this era. And Kirk regularly managed to destroy his dilithium crystals, whereas the NX-01 has been running on the same crystals for three years now?
This might also indicate that Kirk didn't pay a lot of attention to his engines. I mean, how often did we hear Scotty screaming in agony that she 'cannae take it'?
Posted by TheWoozle (Member # 929) on :
DOES the NX-01 have dilithium crystals?
The thinness, but wideness of the anomaly is easily explained as part of a 'shell' of anomalies around the center of the region.
RE: Time Dilation, it's entirely possible that the effect is negligible until you reach 90% of c. and they may not be able to, considering the compression of interstellar dust and stuff (hence, the deflector).
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
The NX-01 has a "dilithium matrix", at least. I assume that means they use dilithium crystals.
Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
quote: In comparison, Archer should be worrying about meeting the next collier as much as a WWI cruiser captain, or more...
Almost certainly more; at least WWI cruiser captains knew they'd be able to make a landfall in a relatively friendly place if necessary. If a collier fails to meet Enterprise, she's probably screwed.
Actually, where would Enterprise refuel? From Vulcan ships? or alien commercial concerns? or are there other Earth ships out there?
Posted by J (Member # 608) on :
a gas giant you idiots... yeesh, if ever you have looked for the most difficult solution to a problem it's this one. They don't need to contact another ship, they just need to find a rich hydrogen source.... of course this doesn't explain where they hid the antimatter generator onboard Enterprise, but it's more than likely got to be there.
Posted by J (Member # 608) on :
Ok... this weeks episode kind throws the antimatter generator question up in the air.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Despite the presence of (apparent) bussard collectors, I can't imagine that sucking up some atmosphere and processing it is cheaper or easier for the NX-01 than getting actual fuel from some moderately friendly hydrogen concern.
Just for kicks (and to justify the $100+ this textbook cost me, which I am unlikely to ever recoup considering my current academic field of interest), here's how you calculate the difference between the speed of a moving clock and a "stationary" one: Δt = Δtp / sqrt(1 - (v2 / c2)), where Δt is the elapsed time as witnessed by a stationary observer, Δtp the elapsed time as witnessed by a moving observer, v the velocity of the moving observer, and c, of course, the speed of light. And "sqrt" is my hamfisted way of displaying a square root sign.
One other thing I don't think anyone has mentioned yet: The, uh, warp speedometer in Engineering displayed warp factors as "Warp Factor X.X.X" (1.7.2, for example), which I don't think is a nomenclature that's been used before.
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