SlackerinDeNile wrote:
T'Pol's anti-human racism throughout the show really irritated me, I don't mind it when she points out the flaws of human characters or takes interstellar travel and science for granted but did she have to come across as so xenophobic and intolerant towards them?
I actually like it, finally seeing another race that isn't human or a deliberately "racist as their hat" race that exists only to show how better the Federation is like the Anticans and Selay kicking around exhibiting a reaction that is so widespread in people.
It's also comes from a deep, almost primal part of people and seeing that come from a Vulcan is interesting, shows nuance to them and that their condition is an eternal work that can unconsciously slip up when something unexpected is confronted by them, which is something that even the most principled and collected of people continually face.
Linkara wrote:Honestly I think it works out better this way.
I do too even though I'd given up on this show by early Season 1 and only came back to see what Season 4.
What I find interesting now knowing about it is how it nicely sets up that later two parter as it establishes that the Tholians are looking for and messing with time travel and other weird stuff, so it's not something out of the blue when they suddenly get their hands on Defiant.
What just occurred to me that's interesting given that and how similar both the Tholians and Mirror Tholians are would be if they are a Mirror universe race that hopped over and is working on trying to expand into two realities both for the benefits and as a refuge if they begin to lose to a more powerful Mirror nation.
CharlesPhipps wrote:2. As for the Vulcan-Human thing, we got a general sense Archer was supposed to be taken at his word regarding the Vulcan and the fact they were portrayed as constantly sneering about everything humanity did.
The eternal trap of self-betterment is the complacency of thinking yourself better than others that blinds oneself to introspection.
It is why humility is viewed as such an important virtue and one that's all the more important the less ones shit doesn't stink, not when it stinks more.
CrypticMirror wrote:Sure if you take a modern aircraft carrier and give it to the crew of that Junk then they've got no chance. Give that Junk to the Romans, 900 years back again, and the Navy of Caesar will be able to figure it out and catch up pretty quickly (essentially that is what they did to the Carthaginians, nicked one of their advanced ships and reverse engineered it). Hell, take the SS Great Eastern and give it to the Romans an they've still got a shot at getting something useful from it even if they cannot build a new one.
I think, already having some of the space tech then the Starfleet of even the ENT era still have a shot at getting something from it even if they can't build a new one. The tech gulf between Ancient China (hey, Star Trek tells me 12thC China is just full of ancient Chinese secrets) and 21stC is just too huge. Nuclear power is a tech singularity in itself. However the tech gulf between 2ndC Rome and 19thC British Empire is not that huge, there is no real singularity in the way there.
The problem isn't so much one of time but of different paradigms.
A late Age of Sail ship is not only easy to understand but because the same principles remain constant it's more advanced construction could be easy to grasp by people centuries or millennia in the past for at least a good 3000 years. Hell, there have even been times when more complex methods of construction gave way to more simpler ones, especially when the simpler methods strengths and weaknesses better suited a culture than others. Western ships proved that when older methods of Roman introduced ship construction gave way to clinker built ships in Northern Europe despite the weaker hull that came with it (it was easier to produce and North Europeans didn't need to build larger ships that the other method was more suited towards), but itself disappeared as more advanced forms of the old method continued that produced the "modern" carvel hull construction of the Age of Discovery until the 19th Century.
None of this also goes into the finer issues of what exactly "advanced" is within technology like ship (or spaceship) technology. To be blunt, nuclear powered ships are in many ways dinosaurs since they are the only modern ships that continue to rely on steam. Despite that they are perfectly suited for the requirements and conditions of certain warships like large aircraft carriers and submarines that keeps the technology in use despite how outdated it is. Outside of this gas turbines rule and the USN even retired many relatively new warships in the 1990s to reduce the number of steam specialized crew the Navy required so costs could be saved by limiting steam expertise specifically to sub and carrier engineering crews.
When that applies to certain circumstances it results in things like Romans or *insert your own recipient of future tech* being better off building muskets or other pre-repeating rifle designs due to the easier logistical and metallurgical demands than modern automatic weapons have being completely dependent upon modern industrial manufacturing to supply ammunition and replaceable parts.
(essentially that is what they did to the Carthaginians, nicked one of their advanced ships and reverse engineered it).
That is more analogous to the Royal Navy capturing the French 74 gun Invincible and incorporating many of its design advancements into future 3rd rate warhips while ignoring it's massive weaknesses. The Romans also didn't blindly imitate the Carthaginians but built ships suited to their own outlook and mentality even when such advancements quickly died out or were ad hoc improvements, like the famous Corvus appears to have been as the Romans quickly stopped using it once their navy got its footing, if they ever used it at all.
As for reverse engineering the Defiant, I think the Roman vs. Junk vs. Aircraft carrier argument fails as in Star Trek it's very probable there's a manual for all of this explaining EXACTLY how all of this work because Starfleet keeps those kinds of records.
Such stuff does not help build a new ship without the industrial base that created it. Even if you understand all the tech that goes into making up a modern warship, you know nothing about the tech that was created to build the thing let alone the tech that went into the industrial base that builds such warships. Such things are the reason alt-history around "How could Nazi Germany have better fought WWII" are DOA given even the simple technological and infrastructure leaps that happened between 1939 and 1945, let alone what came after '45.
None of this even touches upon the institutional knowledge that is required to be built up to use and maintain such technology, which along with the support infrastructure is the largest stumbling block keeping many nations from building and operating their own nuclear powered warships - the cost taken together for all of that costs many times that of a single ship when such nations would be lucky to put a single ship into service as it is.
The sheer cost of building that up is exorbitant even before you've gotten around laying down the first ship. About the closest thing that comes to bridging that in real life is the system the French have built where you send your ships back to France for reactor repair and refueling, but no one buys it since it would leave the nuclear powered arm of their navy at the mercy of French politics should disagreements arise and the support infrastructure in France suddenly becomes unavailable (Something not without precedence as France is notorious in arms dealing circles for doing this sort of things with nations who have bought their military equipment, like their antics twisting arms by manipulating the cost and delivery of replacement parts for foreign operated aircraft and the like for decades).
Even in a world with replicators I doubt you could start working on building a Constitution class from the replicators the ship came with.
