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Can anyone explain why a space station that seems to break down when you sneeze at it wrong, or smash one of its power conduits, requires photon torpedoes to shut it down?
this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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First Uhura said destroy it, then she said release the deuterium, then she gave the order to fire photon torpedoes like that's even a thing she has the authority do. Make up your minds, writers.
I thought she said to release the deuterium from the nacelles (of the Enterprise), but to destroy the mining station (as @cybervseas@lemmy.world points out, Pike confirmed the latter order).
Hydrogen burning would be bad too right, (the frieball seems large, how much oxygen was on the station?).but burning the D in the explosion is bad too right
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They sneezed at it wrong... and the shutdown measures malfunctioned.
And they couldn't very well just let the deuterium-creatures continue being butchered while they sorted it out.
I liked this episode! Although one thing that irked me was “deuterium poisoning.” Deuterium is just a hydrogen isotope; is breathing it actually poisonous? It felt like the writers didn’t realize it wasn’t a fake substance like duranium.
Also I suspected the hallucinations were coming from aliens in the nebulae because the deuterium collection was harming them pretty early on. Definitely feels like a classic Trek story though!
Also, seeing Hemmer again resurfaced my disappointment that they killed him off! He was one of my favorite characters in the first season. When they showed the flashback of his death in the episode intro, I was hoping they were going to revive him somehow in this episode, haha. I’m still holding out hope that he didn’t actually die but survived the fall and has been surviving on the ice planet (since he is Aenar after all). Unfortunately, I guess they already used the “left behind a crew member assumed KIA” with Zac Nguyen so I doubt this will happen.
Deuterium toxicity does exist, but you’d have to ingest a hell of a lot of it, not trace amounts via breathing. The symptoms mimic radiation poisoning, although since deuterium isn’t radioactive, it isn’t actually that.
deuterium poisoning
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water#Effect_on_biological_systems
As may occur in chemotherapy, deuterium-poisoned mammals die of a failure of bone marrow (producing bleeding and infections) and of intestinal-barrier functions (producing diarrhea and loss of fluids).
Deuterium is toxic (in high concentrations) to multicell animals as it changes the angle of.the hydrogen bonds which is key to cellular replication and enzyme prodcution. However you would have to drink all d2o instead of h2o for about a week to begin to notice (need 25-50% of body water). Blocking cellular replication is similar to what chemotherapy does so would.be like bad chemo...eventually the dose is so large it is not useful Cancer drug.
There is also mentions of dizziness and impact on vestibular system (senses) but not the wiki article does not expand on this and the linked article just mentions nystagmus (involuntary eye movements)
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1974Natur.247..404M/abstract
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water
Interestingly there is also a theory it may affect circadian cycles in some insects https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC433660/ (which could impact sleep pattern in humans)
All in all it looks like the writers may have looked into it afterall.
Yeah when you have "refinarey", mysterious signal, it was well hinted, then acts of sabotage it did seem that way and when the other victim was focussed on jestisoning the gas from the nacel seemed even more certain
I mean, I think it's just reality-adjacent technobabble and you've got to accept it as plausible in universe. Tritium is a real thing used in nuclear fission but it's not so rare that you should don robotic arms and go on a crime spree to get some. On a more Star Trek adjacent topic, protostars are a real thing but (at least as far as we know) you can't shove them in a box to travel ludicrous speed.
@ValueSubtracted @Buziel_411 D is an isotope of H, yes, but H is so light and D has twice its mass. It’s a kinetic isotope effect issue IIRC - throws off our enzymes.
A little sleepy w/ exposition over showing BUT had some nice moments.
An okay episode.
Finally Una got to do something instead of being completely on the sidelines. The whole ensemble got something to do, except Ortegas who slowly turns into SNW's Travis Mayweather: that one cast member that is just there physically but doesn't get anything to do.
My personal highlight was the scene were Spock and Chapel play chess, and he passive-aggressively pushes her to play faster. Very Vulcan.
What irked me: everyone and their mother immediately started calling the First Officer of another Starfleet ship by his first name. That was weird.
The Canon defenders will complain that Kirk and Pike met face to face, although there was that throwaways line in The Menagerie that they've never met. But it was kinda inevitable that it would happen sooner or later. At least we got that out of the way.
Alright, one of the weaker episodes.
Not a fan of this Kirk, he reminds me more of Carrey than Shatner. Neither he, nor the Farragut needed to be in this episode.
It was a good episode, but there are a few things I didn't like:
- Blowing up a space refinery on a whim.
- Too much romance/interpersonal stuff, still.
- Pike needs to grow a spine and be more assertive.
I give it a 6/10; not bad, not great. I'm looking forward to the new episode.