posted
Well, I was going to defer this honour to Mark, but seeing as we've gone a whole 22 hours with nothing from him yet, I get to be dorky this week.
Proportionally speaking, there isn't a huge amount of tech tidbits here, actually.
First of all, our valiant heroes pay a visit to a Paraagan mining colony with 3600 inhabitants. The Paragaans are a matriarchal society who've apparently not been getting too much company lately and have been looking forward to meeting the crew of the Enterprise. As a result of the mining process, a chemical byproduct called tetrazine has collected in a atmospheric layer at an altitude of 45 to 50 kilometres. If subjected to the heat of something as hot as engine plasma, tetrazine goes bang and leaves behind a borocarbon residue, so the Paragaans have an elaborate set of landing protcols for shutting down engines before anyone gets too low and blows the whole atmosphere up.
Of course, despite Reed's additional caution, that's exactly what happens when the shuttlepod enters the atmosphere, with the explosion reducing everything on the surface in a radius of more than 100 km to scorched earth and killing all 3600 colonists.
Anyway, shades of Star Trek VI here, as the Enterprise crew can't seem to explain how the tetrazine was set off, seeing as both port and starboard plasma ducts were indeed sealed.
[Here there's some neat drama stuff. But because this is a tech post, the following twenty minutes could be on the level "Profit and Lace" and it'd be irrelevant. Ha. Screw you, quality.]
Anyway, this whole incident ends up being part of the temporal cold war. Here we see the writers pull yet another weird incarnation of time travel out of the bag, with Archer waking up in his San Francisco apartment the night before we saw him inspect Enterprise in "Broken Bow." However, the Marty McFly mechanic has been dropped (ie, future-Archer == past-Archer, and there aren't two people) which Archer finds wacked-out. We do too, but are kindly told time travel's just like that. (I wonder how this works with the whole "reintegration" concept of multiple Braxtons from "Relativity")
Anyway, Archer learns that the Suliban now have fancy cloaking technology (presumably a gift from the future,) which is apparently compact enough to cloak something the size of a large washer. He is given the requisite knowlege to build detecting thingamajigs. We get Enterprise's first real head-on serving of technobabble, (which is actually played nicely as vaguely humourous and thankfully isn't rapidly done to save the day), and the detecting thingamajigs are affixed to the bottom of the Enterprise grappler.
Superlock(tm) is pried off the door of Daniels' quarters and Archer and Reed grab a holo-database thingy contained within which they use to get the schematics of a "Suliban stealth cruiser." While digging through the files, Reed spots schematics of several Klingon ships (I actually was only able to spot the "raptor" class from "Sleeping Dogs") and after spending a few seconds on them, we rapidly zip through a whole pile of stuff, in which a few more ships make cameo appearances. (None are onscreen for any more than one or two frames, so don't worry about Reed going off to build a Defiant anytime soon.)
Anyway, using new detector and the schematics, our heroes mount a rather cool sting operation (that makes the pretty pathetic adventures of the Voyager crew on Borg cubes look just that way) on the Suliban stealth cruiser to obtain data discs that prove that the Suliban set off the atmospheric explosion. Tech-wise, we see that the extending docking collar on the shuttlepod is actually corrogated and slightly flexible and finally see some stun grenades. Yowzers. The production design inside the Suliban ship is noteworthy as well, with some nifty ladders.
I'll say no more about the last fifteen minutes. I'm sure someone else can pick up here.
[ May 22, 2002, 18:15: Message edited by: The_Tom ]
-------------------- "I was surprised by the matter-of-factness of Kafka's narration, and the subtle humor present as a result." (Sizer 2005)
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Tom you missed Voyager... After the first set of ships [Defiant, NX, Excelsior, Norway] there'll be a very small ship to the right of Archer [Archer's left]. Below it seems to be another NX--- it looks a little odd though. Then the Vulcan ship. Nova. Couple more frames and it looks like a Peregrine fore view above Malcom's head. Back to Defiant, NX and Excelsior... then Voyager is again seen below this. Vulcan ship... I think it's repeating... yeap, that's the end of it.
Wow, not bad. Interesting way to add in some stuff for us freeze framers.
-------------------- Later, J _ _ _ _ _ ___ _ _ _ _ _ The Last Person to post in the late Voyager Forum. Bashing both Voyager, Enterprise, and "The Bun" in one glorious post.
posted
I spotted Voyager but for some reason neglected to grab it.
I missed the Peregrine, though. After re-checking I've snapped what I think you're referring to, though I can't say I'm particularly certain that's what it is.
Two more pics up at the above link nonetheless.
-------------------- "I was surprised by the matter-of-factness of Kafka's narration, and the subtle humor present as a result." (Sizer 2005)
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I've read that a Vulcan ship appears in that episode. What's its name and is it a combat cruiser or Surak-class?
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A Vulcan ship is mentioned but never seen or named.
-------------------- "Lotta people go through life doing things badly. Racing's important to men who do it well. When you're racing, it's life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting."
-Steve McQueen as Michael Delaney, LeMans
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You can also see the Death Star. It's in the upper right corner of the screen, IIRC, at the start of the viewing.
And as far as Reed's line about Klingon "ships", perhaps he was saying that although the only ship design we see is the Raptor, the fine print might have had the names of several ships of that class.
Re: The Vulcan Ship: Are you sure? That doesn't look like any Vulcan ship I've ever seen...
[ May 23, 2002, 08:45: Message edited by: Dukhat ]
-------------------- "A film made in 2008 isn't going to look like a TV series from 1966 if it wants to make any money. As long as the characters act the same way, and the spirit of the story remains the same then it's "real" Star Trek. Everything else is window dressing." -StCoop
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I'm too lazy to start a new thread, so here's a tech question: did the NX plan to engage those Suliban ships at warp? O_o This does mean that phase cannons and spatial torpedoes are warp-capable?
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Archer asked Reed wether or not they could fight them, but they made no mention of dropping out of warp to do it. I think it was implied that they would have to.
And the Vulcan ship appears to be upside-down/
[ May 23, 2002, 12:43: Message edited by: The359 ]
-------------------- "Lotta people go through life doing things badly. Racing's important to men who do it well. When you're racing, it's life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting."
-Steve McQueen as Michael Delaney, LeMans
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quote:And the Vulcan sheep appears to be upside-down
OMG; logical farm animals!!!
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-------------------- "Lotta people go through life doing things badly. Racing's important to men who do it well. When you're racing, it's life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting."
-Steve McQueen as Michael Delaney, LeMans
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The last time the issue came up, Reed said they couldn't fire the phase cannons at warp without screwing up their warp field.
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Or maybe Daniels's datafile contains the ultimate secret -- the true and definitive size of the Defiant!
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Alpha Centauri
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posted
The Death Star in Enterprise? Whooaaahhh! The Empire invades!!!
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Filling in: Mark's been in Toronto for the last ten days. This has prevented him from seeing the ENT finale, plus these forums for a while. It'll take me a while to catch up on everything. I hear lots of good things about this episode, though...
On the flipside, whilst in Toronto I discovered the secret of David Templar. This secret is one I shall keep, but one that was amazing nonetheless.
Mark
[ May 28, 2002, 20:47: Message edited by: Mark Nguyen ]
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