posted
Placeholder, as I just got home and missed the opening two minutes of the episode. But suffice it to say for now - BOOOOM! That's one big chunk of saucer they blew off!
posted
Yup, this is one tech-heavy episode. This'll take a while.
-There are only two crew working full-time down in the armory. Reed asserts that adding a third will allow one of them to work on the upgrades to the torpedo launchers. Upgrades?
-England has made it to the finals in the 2152 World Cup for soccer. Huzzah.
-The fun begins when they orgbit a new M-class planet. They're going to start exploring in 'pods when BOOOOM (and I repeat for emphasis: BOOOOOM!!!)! A large hunk of the fore port section of the saucer gets blown to pieces.
-Damage is to C and D decks; this may not jive with the damage seen. It looks a lot lower. 17 casualties reported in the initial blast, including Hoshi.
-Okay, the mines ARE cloaked. So are the Romulan ships that show up later. This sucks. Anyway, a second mine soon latches itself close to the starboard impulse saucer impulse engine. It's armed with tricobalt explosives - apparently not much, as yield is later determined to be a quarter kiloton. I think they really meant MEGAton. Anyway, letting it blow so close to the impulse manifold is considered a Bad Thing, so Reed heads out to fix it.
-Figuring a minefield can't have only two mines, Archer breaks out the quantum beacons still attached to the grappler arm (back in "Shockwave Part I"). Soon enough, they break through the cloak (already?! Yeesh!) and detect 'em.
-New set gimmick: The side airlock, opening upwards, No idea where it comes out.. Probably under a slideaway plate. I'd have liked it if they'd used those ventral/dorsal doors where the robot arms are supposed to be kept.
-New set gimmick #2: the steering wheel at the conn has been replaced by a joystick. Looks better than the wimpy control sticks used on the E-E or Delta Flyer. Travis may need a little more practice with it, though, as we see soon enough.
-The mines may have been there for some time - they're scorched with micrometeorite impacts. A pretty nifty prop, actually, though it doesn't really "look" Romulan. And this is a Good Thing. Along the way, Reed gets speared through the leg with one of its magnetic mooring legs - luckily, the suit seems to be equipped with a self-dispensing sealant, which is also a Good Thing, but something apparently forgotten by the time Worf goes Borg-hacking in "First Contact".
-Oh, and the detonator is similar to one seen on a Triton-class spatial torpedo, whatever that means. It's got lots and lots of tech yaddas to disarm, though no one seems to suggest the transporter (I may have missed it - but it's pretty obvious).
-Ooh, the Romulan ship is spiffy. They apparently have a more advanced version of the mine's cloaking field, as the quantum beacon couldn't penetrate it. There is at least one weapons mount, in the nose, and fires a typically Romulan green pulse blast.
-They broadcast in Romulan, which Hoshi has to translate as the UT can't handle it. Huh? Given that the Romulans are off-shootish from the Vulcans, shouldn't their languages share at least a little commonalities? But I guess it's not THAT bad, since English/Latin is pretty different from almost any African language, and we're all on the same planet - there could be something like that working with the Romulans (not to mention thousands of years apart). Can anyone remember any Romulan language references in any TNG series?
-Let's talk about the Romulans themselves for a minute. Archer does remember the book he saw when he was stuck in the future two episodes back, and true enough can't offer anything because of it. T'Pol knows of them, and reports that the Vulcans know them to be an "aggressive, territorial species" that they've never made direct contact with. Sure. In any case, that's about all we learn about them this time around. By the end of the episode, Hoshi has figured out their language and the UT translates accordingly.
-Relevant character bits: Reed was trained not to "chat", which is part of the reason he sits in his shell most of the time. He's not perfectly comfortable with the relatively lax attitude Archer has on the bridge, or with his relative lack of caution in security matters. Adding to all that we know of his family (he's the most developed of the characters in that area, no?) he's got a great uncle who served in the Royal Navy, but who was aquaphobic like him (one reason he chose Starfleet instead), but served on, and gave his life for the crew of, the RN sub HMS Clement. Reed was raised on the water, and loved the Navy, but was always afraid of drowning.
-Archer mentions at one point that "they could be out here for years", referring to their mission. Interesting - do they have an open-ended mission? No "five-year" stuff? Are they scheduled to return to Earth at SOME point, or just whenever they feel they need to?
-We see a little more of the spacesuits later on, when Archer attaches a spare air hose to Reed's suit after Malcolm tries to make like his uncle. Apparently, Starfleet has been using the same magnetic boot technology for a while: the SFX used for the suit boots are the same as for the FC suits (but not those in the comparitively silent boots of Star Trek VI).
-Crew counting... When the Romulans show up again (this time with two ships), they say that there are 82 people in Enterprise, plus Archer and Reed outside. At last count we were at 87; counting Daniels, we seem to have lost two people. No mention is made of this, or if they were lost in the blast.
-I'll leave the resolution of the episode for you guys to see yoursleves, 'cuz it's pretty neat. I WILL say however that it involves the use of two shuttlepod doors.
-At the end of the show, Enterprise leaps into warp with all the damage on the port side still there (and a large plate of hull missing from the starboard side-- oops, did I say too much?). Possible glitch: Voyager apparently has trouble going to warp with a Kazon shuttle sticking out of its hull. Enterprise has NO trouble with large sections of ship missing. Hm.
quote:Originally posted by Mark Nguyen: [QB]Yup, this is one tech-heavy episode. This'll take a while.
-England has made it to the finals in the 2152 World Cup for soccer. Huzzah.
Which, peculiarly enough, should be a World Cup year, right?
quote: -The fun begins when they orgbit a new M-class planet. They're going to start exploring in 'pods when BOOOOM (and I repeat for emphasis: BOOOOOM!!!)! A large hunk of the fore port section of the saucer gets blown to pieces.
-Damage is to C and D decks; this may not jive with the damage seen. It looks a lot lower. 17 casualties reported in the initial blast, including Hoshi.
Yeah, I noticed this as well. Looked more like D and E got nailed. No fatalities.
quote: -New set gimmick #2: the steering wheel at the conn has been replaced by a joystick. Looks better than the wimpy control sticks used on the E-E or Delta Flyer. Travis may need a little more practice with it, though, as we see soon enough.
I'm pretty sure it was always there in the middle of the steering wheel apparatus. Might need to check some pictures to be sure.
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quote:Originally posted by Mark Nguyen: -Figuring a minefield can't have only two mines, Archer breaks out the quantum beacons still attached to the grappler arm (back in "Shockwave Part I"). Soon enough, they break through the cloak (already?! Yeesh!) and detect 'em.
This is a little disconcerting... on the one hand, it forms the basis for a weak explanation of why the cloak was new in "Balance of Terror." Humans cracked the old cloak (eventually including the one on the ships), making it useless. On the other hand, we're looking at temporal contamination. Why hasn't Daniels retrieved all of the anachronistic paraphernalia yet? The only two asnwers I can think of are predestination and the possibility that quantum beacons would naturally be developed around this time, but Enterprise got a leg up. They might be useless on other forms of cloak.
quote:Originally posted by Mark Nguyen: -They broadcast in Romulan, which Hoshi has to translate as the UT can't handle it. Huh? Given that the Romulans are off-shootish from the Vulcans, shouldn't their languages share at least a little commonalities? But I guess it's not THAT bad, since English/Latin is pretty different from almost any African language, and we're all on the same planet - there could be something like that working with the Romulans (not to mention thousands of years apart). Can anyone remember any Romulan language references in any TNG series?
In "Unification," a Romulan boy has the syllabic nucleus of the Vulcan language on some toys, keeping it alive on Romulus. In any case, I'm taking linguistics this semester, and there are languages on Earth that linguists haven't yet figured out, or have only a rudimentary understanding of, after years of study. It's not unreasonable at all to have dramatically different languages after 2000 years of seperation. Two other possibilities:
1.) At the Time of Awakening, Vulcan didn't have one world-wide language. The Romulans were of one ethnic group or nation with a very unique language, and when they left, their modern language evolved from that, and not "Standard Vulcan." Also explains their high occurrence of forehead ridges.
2.) As in Diane Duane's novels, they designed their own language (as well as society) aboard their departing ships as a social protest of what they were leaving behind.
posted
Actually that is interesting reguarding the Romulans... is there any possibility that Romulans and Vulcans were two dominant species on the one planet - like in that VERY GOOD Phlox episode - where the more 'advanced' race was dying - or the B5 season 5 episode with Franklin revealing that one of the Races from the League of Non-aligned Worlds had committed genocide on another species that co-evolved on their planet.
So are the Romulans original "Vulcans" - i.e. from Vulcan but of a slightly different species? Doesn't gel? Oh well.
And as for a (canon) example of Romulan language... "Jolan Tru".
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"-England has made it to the finals in the 2152 World Cup for soccer. Huzzah."
"Which, peculiarly enough, should be a World Cup year, right?"
The World Cup is every four years, isn't it? And there was just one this year? Then there should be World Cup tournaments in 2150 and 2154, not 2152.
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posted
Maybe World War III fucked up the schedule for soccer World cups.
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posted
In the "Paradise Syndrome", Spock speaks of the languages of the Vulcan colonies. Their language is founded on musical notes.
Though largely forgotten in the development of Star Trek history, the original story of the Romulans is found in "Balance of Terror". In the era prior to Surak, Vulcans were colonizing other worlds. The Romulans were part of one such colonizing mission and over the thousands of years the Romulans and the Vulcans became two distinct species with their own languages and customs.
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posted
The World Cup is every 4 years, so it should be 2150 and 2154, BUT, the Woman's World Cup is also every 4 years and offset by 2 years, so the Women's World Cup was in 2000, and therefore would also be in 2152...
So maybe England's women's team made it to the finals.
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quote:Originally posted by newark: In the "Paradise Syndrome", Spock speaks of the languages of the Vulcan colonies. Their language is founded on musical notes.
Well, he actually said that "some Vulcan offshoots" use musical notes, not that it was common to all Vulcan colonies, or to Vulcan itself.
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AFAICT, there was absolutely no mention of using the transporter to save Reed. While I applude B&B for this small attempt at technological self-restriction, it's pretty bloody stupid in this case. They could have beamed Reed off, patched him back up, and have him back out to disarm the damned thing in half the time. Or simply beamed him off the detached hull plating. No, let's go with Archer's stupid plan. At 20m, even with something solid between you and the blast, a 1/4 kiloton yield should have sent out enough energy to scramble your brains and internal organs with sheer kinetic force, especially when it's got a flating to vaporize into gas for use as an energy transfering medium. I'm guessing Reed lacks guts to scramble, and Archer brains.
Something that bothered me, by giving an actual explosive yield like that, we're gonna have Warsies swarming all over the fact that something that small opened up the ship. Are they going to care that it was done to an old and unprepared ship, with hull plating less than half a foot thick? No, they'll just make up some crazy crap to diss Trek tech as us.... *is shot*
Ahem, now that fanatical ranting Dave is dead, the final point of this point is how no one dead. B&B seem to be going out of their way to make sure that no nameless crewmen buys it on what is a very dangerous voyage, probably because they don't want to give Enterprise an excuse to return to Earth. Hell, I don't think this mine impact is going to sent Enterprise home.
"Don't worry Admiral Forrester, it's just a scratch on the paint job. It'll come right off with some elbow grease..."
"Sir, C deck is losing atmospheric pressure again! And someone stole one of our impulse reactors!"
"I'll have to call you back, sir."
^That's more likely to happen then anything else. I'm thinking that by the time the series end, Enterprise's hull-patching ability will rival if not surpass Voyager.
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quote:Hell, I don't think this mine impact is going to sent Enterprise home.
$$$ Spoilers $$$ (mark space below)
You're right. Next episode the Enterprise will find an alien repair station. I'm glad that they don't do it like on Voyager. At the end of the episode the ship is badly damaged but next episode it looks all new.
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posted
We've already ranted about the actual use of the cloaking device vis a vis "Balance of Terror" long enough... so I'll leave that part alone.
I'm no scientist, but wouldn't the very nature of a cloaking device mean that there shouldn't be any "quantum emissions" lying around for Archer's fancy doodad to pick up in the first place?
I'm most curious about Reed's mention of a Royal Navy in which his great-uncle served. If we're generous and assume 35 years between generations, that would still mean that Reed's relative was living in a yellow submarine (or a grey one) around 2080 -- thirty years after World War III. I suppose it's possible that some of the national militaries could be resurrected... but does that really make much sense in a post-First Contact society?
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EdipisReks
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posted
quote:Originally posted by MinutiaeMan: I'm no scientist, but wouldn't the very nature of a cloaking device mean that there shouldn't be any "quantum emissions" lying around for Archer's fancy doodad to pick up in the first place?
many forms of combustion should be "clean" theoretically, but they still produce pollutants. i imagine that the cloaking devide is inefficient and is not good enough to mask all of the emissions produced by the doodad thingamiwop that produces the thingamajiggers.
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quote:They could have beamed Reed off, patched him back up, and have him back out to disarm the damned thing in half the time. Or simply beamed him off the detached hull plating.
You forget that Reed had one of the mine's leg going through one of his own legs. And if you tried to transport Reed out, you'd have to sever the mine's leg that went through Reed. And severing any of the legs would cause the mine to detonate. At that point in time, they had not made any decision to detach the hull plating and Trip had said to do so would take one hour or prep. Also they didn't know the mine would have a delayed detonation. So they didn't take any risks of that nature...assuming Archer even thought of that in the first place.
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