Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 2x08 "Under the Cloak of War"
RootBeerGuy@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
I liked it, but two things went a bit too far.
The bio-bed acting up was just too silly of an issue to bring up. I mean this is starfleets flagship with the best of the best on board and M’Benga keeps working on this bio-bed, never fully fixing it? Sounds weird.
Second, they are making this whole keeping a person buffered in a transporter thing way too useful. Like the only downside seems to be that if you get a malfunction you may need to “delete” the person. I remember some episode of another series, was it Rikers clone in TNG? Where they were worried about integrity of the pattern, since it was stored so long. Did not seem to be a problem for his daughter though. Don’t like how this is so trivialized, it would solve so many problems if this could be done “professionally”.
Re: the transporters.
Patterns in the buffer usually degrade over time - The TNG Technical Manual says patterns can last about seven minutes before degradation begins. Obviously, Scotty was able to extend this dramatically, though with only a 50% success rate.
They did touch on this in SNW season one, when M’Benga said he had to rematerialize his daughter periodically. However, the timeframe, while not specified, seemed a helluva lot longer than seven minutes.
The Tech Manual notwithstanding, on screen we’ve definitely seen longer than seven minutes, notably VOY: “Counterpoint” and DIS: “Stormy Weather”. I take it like I do the original Tech Manual’s statement that you can’t fire phasers at warp.
You’re certainly right that there’s some wiggle room, though “Counterpoint” has the advantage of having shown the pattern degradation occurring.
I love the TNG Technical Manual but anything onscreen has to trump it.
I’m much more fussed about rapid organ fabricators and dermal regenerators being a thing this early.
I think we’re going to have to buy into 23rd century technology being ahead of were we expect from TOS - but not necessarily ahead of some of the wild claims (and therapies) Bones had access to in the movies.
For all we know, 24th century transporters have an advantage over the 23rd century design but at the expense of superior pattern storage.
Or they don’t, but 23rd century medicine isn’t sophisticated enough to detect/understand the damage.
About the bed: There seems to be an ongoing sub-plot about random systems on the ship glitching out. I’ve seen speculation they’re quietly setting up some kind of AI takeover issue later on. Note the odd shot the episode ends on, with the bed’s info screen flickering again.
My take is the same as the other poster the biobed was metaphor for the doctors state of mind.....but happy to be wrong if it is system glitches and have seen suggestions it links to romulan time sabatours
Sounds feasible but reminds me of the DISCO control plot. I hope that is not returning.
There was the episode with Scotty in TNG (Relics) where there was indeed the problem of the pattern of the person who was in the buffer with him degrading, but that was over decades (2294-2369), while M’Bengas daughter was in the pattern buffer significantly less time. She was also rematerialised from time to time and it was noted that not doing so risked the integrity of the pattern, which contributed to the issue seen in the TNG episode.
@RootBeerGuy @startrek The transporter is essentially magic. If you think too long about it, you’ll wonder why, for example, *everyone* doesn’t “store their pattern”, and thus become effectively immortal. Or why a pattern can’t be materialized multiple times, to generate an army of clones.
I love Trek, but it’s much more space opera than hard sci-fi, and often the “sciencey” bits are purely for narrative convenience (see also “holodeck”).
I thought it was played like pattern bugger storage is an m'benga special skill he is better at than his peers
They should take the idea of “storing people in buffers” all the way to extreme and explore it like Black Mirror does. What does this mean if everyone had the opportunity to store people in buffers? Can everyone sign up for this service and instantly beam you into a buffer whenever you have an incurable diseases at the time? Is there a service to auto-beam you into the buffer if the ship is about to crash-land? Can richer people pay to have poorer people’s buffer be deleted when you run out of buffer space? What happens if there is a glitch and people who are in the buffer experience 20 years in real-time?
I think there’s so much potential for more exploration here. It would be cool to have Charlie Booker on a Star Trek episode, as he kinda did a fun/excellent/dark Star Trek Black Mirror episode too.
ari@startrek.website 1 year ago
ValueSubtracted@startrek.website 1 year ago
Personal attacks are out of line.
ari@startrek.website 1 year ago
Being 100% honest with you I never intended to attack anyone personally and would greatly appreciate help in highlighting where I’ve done that. I’d normally reread my comment to try to figure out where any misunderstanding could have occurred in situations like this, but the comment’s been removed. I put considerable effort into that comment and don’t want this to happen again in the future.
eva_sieve@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Our literal introduction to Brad Boimler is him trying to repair a broken replicator! Things break and they don’t magically get replaced despite (because of?) Starfleet.
Kinda agree on the media literacy thing. Subtext and symbolism exist! I don’t even think this episode’s was particularly subtle. Sometimes I wonder what percentage of the fandom believe that Janeway genuinely would get her crew killed just to get some coffee.
Hogger85b@kbin.social 1 year ago
Excellent post, absolutely right about symobolism
RootBeerGuy@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
You raise some good points but your condescending intro was seriously unnecessary and uncalled for. I get it, you are smart, wow, congratulations.
Sure it could be symbolic. It could also be just a bio-bed. If its used as a metaphor it is a terrible one in my opinion, seeing as this is an advanced future with massive technological advancement. Why out of all people on this ship is it M’Benga doing this, never succeeding, but at no time an actual engineer, you know, like someone with 1000+ years experience, is asked to fix it? I get it that its part of his character that he is handy, but still this is medical equipment, its essential, it needs to work 100%. How would this not be escalated to relevant personel? This is not the war times depicted in the flashbacks, they have resource to do this. Also quite some time has passed since the Gorn attack.
I rather agree with one of the other posters who said its a setup for something to come.
So, thanks for your comment but seriously work on your attitude if you consider posting more than just this one comment.