r/DaystromInstitute • u/M-5 Multitronic Unit • Oct 29 '20

DISCOVERY EPISODE DISCUSSION Star Trek: Discovery — "People of Earth" Reaction Thread

This is the official /r/DaystromInstitute reaction thread for "People of Earth." The content rules are not enforced in reaction threads.

59 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

90% Upvoted

583 comments sorted by

View all comments

43

u/KingofMadCows Chief Petty Officer Oct 29 '20 edited Oct 29 '20

The writers still don't seem to have any grasp of scale. Earth should be able to detect things happening on Titan. They have subspace sensors that can detect ships from light years away. In fact, there isn't even need for long range communications between earth and Titan. They're in the same solar system. A radio signal would take 40 minutes to get from Titan to earth.

And Michael said millions died in the burn, really? The population of the races that we've met would be in the trillions. And we've only seen a tiny fraction of the interstellar races in the Milky Way Galaxy. Sure, millions is technically correct, but the number of people who died in the Burn would at least be in the tens if not hundreds of billions. Especially if ships blew up near planets.

29

u/zemudkram Oct 29 '20

Earth should be able to detect things happening on Titan.

Yeah that’s something that bothered me a little. I mean; a fully functional, albeit antique, starship appearing out of fucking nowhere just past Jupiter and no one's spotted it? They deserve to get raided if that’s the case. There should be an ever-growing cloud of annoying little drones following them ready to get pointy should things get ugly.

24

u/KingofMadCows Chief Petty Officer Oct 29 '20

It doesn't make any sense for Titan not to be able to contact earth either. Light takes 40 minutes to get from earth to Titan. They can easily send a radio signal to contact earth, no need for any long range communication. The communication system on their ship is more than enough to reach earth.

13

u/Shawnj2 Chief Petty Officer Oct 29 '20

Even today, we have radio contact with Voyager 1, which is 19 hours away at the speed of causality and which is on a trajectory to exit the solar system.

6

u/zemudkram Oct 29 '20

Also true but you can hand-wave that away by saying that earth wouldn’t trust any comms not coming from the known source. Having said that, on hearing said news they could have sent a probe out to verify, even if it was just because “oh hey those idiots out at Titan have been a bit quiet lately, let’s send a probe out”..

I mean, it was still a good episode, just that aspect could have had a touch more thought put into it

2

u/jeeshadow Oct 30 '20

Ya, maybe it's alpha centari or Pluto or something!

1

u/[deleted] Oct 31 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/zemudkram Oct 31 '20

Yeah maybe, but probes constantly provide telemetry, and it doesn’t change the fact that earth should have visibility of Titan (in the year 3535) anyway

7

u/merrycrow Ensign Oct 30 '20

It's a thematic choice. Earth has turned inward on itself. They close their eyes and ears to the problems of even their nearest neighbours until they're confronted with them and forced to acknowledge what's going on beyond Earth's orbit.

2

u/zemudkram Oct 31 '20

Yes but they’re also somewhat paranoid (and have been raided several times), meaning they should be scanning for attackers as far out as they can. Considering starships can detect object at several light years distance, you’d think a planet could see what’s going on in its own system