Final part of my observations for these opening episodes. I'll be doing them in the Tech forum from now on, though. But it's been SO much fun doing this again, lemme tell ya.
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- Oh, Admiral Anderson apparently walks right through the Shenzhou's floor-mounted astrogator doodad as he walks between the Helm/Ops stations. HOWEVER, after the Europa is attacked, you see a long shot of the forward stations and the doodad simply isn't there - the prop has been removed! I suppose it was removed so the Admiral's actor could walk through it for production purposes (i.e. the takes he would be physically on set), but it does create continuity problems. Or perhaps they could simply say that the doodad had been blown into space with the comms and blue scaly guys, since that area of the bridge is not seen after this...
- The Europa starts evacuating pretty quickly after the Klingon blade ship (sic) appears. Presumably the Admiral gave the order to abandon ship pretty quickly after saying "What the f[static]k was that?". The escape pods look to be the same kind the Shenzhou pops off later on, but there don't seem to be any specific hatches opening up or places they're coming from - if anything they come from the underside of the damaged area.
- The worker bees have no autopilot? Okay, but they were apparently going to try remotely firing Burnham's jetpack before. Why can they do one but not the other?
- The Shenzhou combo of ready room and conference room is noteworthy for several reasons. First, it's just as gorgeous as the rest of the ship's sets. Second, I feel that we're going to see it as part of the Discovery sets in the guise of something else. I find it pretty weird that they built an entire conference room portion of the space, and then not use it over the two episodes that the Shenzhou is the "hero" ship. Sometimes sets are built larger and purposefully left with empty space as it's the usual place for the cameras (like the front third of the Enterprise-D and -E bridges, or the DS9 wardroom set). Here though, they built and detailed a conference room (complete with monitors and dedicated graphics, plus likely stealing the chairs from the bridge set to use here when they're shooting it), and have it prominently visible in the background of all the scenes, but they don't use it for any conference scenes! DSC may have more money to throw around per episode than the average network show, but even they would have trouble justifying the construction of a large and unused set, UNLESS it would be used elsewhere while they're at it. Methinks these sets will be seen disguised as part of Discovery later on.
- Moving to the transporter room to beam the photon(ic?) warhead to the Klingon corpse, the transporter graphic suggests that they have up to NINE platforms that need a slider. Cool if true - it just really suggests that the Shenzhou does everything bigger.
Incidentally, it's been suggested that some of these cool touchscreens are actually practical - so here the actor playing the transporter chief is actually manipulating the sliders by touch (and it really does look like it IMO, given the slightly choppy animation of the slider buttons moving and how they match the variable speed of his hands). Again, cool if true!
- I know it's a trope of televised drama and especially Star Trek, but is there any reason Georgiou and Burnham didn't beam over there with a bunch of security officers or burly assistance in the capture of their prisoner? They apparently have up to nine platforms to play with, to say nothing of the actual budget of the show!
- Burnham definitely and deliberately flips a switch on her phaser before she fires on T'Kuvma, changing the top light from blue-white (stun, I guess) to red. This sorta explains why her target has a neat little hole slowly burned into him, instead of unceremoniously keeling over like everyone else.
- Saru states that he can't beam Georgiou's body back without a life sign, presumably to lock on to. Have they not transported corpses before, though? I can't think of a specific instance appropriate to the era. At the very least though, you'd think that she'd have a transponder built into her tight-fitting tactical vest to help with this sort of thing. Too early for a skeletal lock, obviously. :P
- I count space for 52 escape pods from the dorsal side of the Shenzhou alone. The scale of the pods suggests they're pretty big, and not the "ST Beyond" one-person standup types, despite their general shape.
- Is there a specific rank badge for Admiral? The tribunal of three at the end (two Asians and one African-American/Canadian, just sayin') all have the same uniform type as Anderson, badge included. I'm guessing this is her court martial, and if Timo's last post has anything going for it, it's SUPER dark in there because everyone else is attending by holocomm.
And now, assorted tech musings on the season preview that followed the second episode:
- The seat Burnham is sitting on in the (prison?) shuttle is marked "Emergency Life Support". I wonder what that is - depressurization in this case isn't exactly solvable with an oxygen mask.
- Either the shuttle in the very first shot of Discovery that we see is parking backwards, or the shot is being played in reverse. I'm guessing the latter, since the shuttle landing tail down like that doesn't look right at all. Also, the Discovery shuttle bay has parking space for three shuttles, alphabetically-labelled atop some prominently-displayed Starfleet symbology. Guess it's their equivalent of the "H" on helipads, though no other starship has ever been THAT presumptuous.
- Discovery's corridors look different, but feature the same bulkhead partitions as Shenzhou. It's almost as if they changed the paneling and lighting but left the doors.
Will have more on the set changes once we have our first solid look at the new hero ship. I can't wait.
Mark
