What part of "cold" in "cold fusion" didn't you get?
Even If you ignore that part and build a hot one… how would that explode so dramatically?
And of course Kirk goes from "no idea how that key thing works in cars and what's the difference between forward and reverse" to "high speed tail slides through heavy traffic" in 10sec
…and Kirk makes out with the female main character! Why wouldn't he?!
Ugh!
Strange New Worlds S1 spoiler
@dat The relationship between Kirk and La'an was the best part of that episode!
It sucks that they went the narratively tidy route of killing the alternate Kirk off at then end, rather than going the Thomas Riker route, or maybe even retconning it so the Kirk that eventually becomes captain is the one from the alternate timeline.
At least that part kinda fits the character… only he probably would have other things to think about (saving his brother or timeline, stopping the thread his version of Earth fights against), but when has that ever stopped Kirk?
No, you're probably right with that one.
In the end it's not so much "they did everything wrong" that kept me from enjoying that episode and more "they did everything exactly the star trek way".
The production has gotten way better since TOS/TNG and writing isn't as bad as VOY, but it's still Star Trek. It's probably my fault for expecting decent science and logical plots. It's a "rule of cool" kind of show. There has to be something exploding, so they select a cool sounding name (but not too futuristic, because it's near-present!) and the main characters all are super humans because of course they are!
So Kirk deems 2D chess far too easy and can drive instantly. And money isn't an issue after a few rounds of chess, because that part is solved once and has never to be solved again.
ugh
@dat Some of the plots and details have been sloppy, but it is better than Discovery and Voyager, and far far better than Enterprise, so I guess we should consider ourselves lucky!
@dat@social.g33ky.de
The "cold" part in "cold fusion" is about the ignition, whereby "cold" means something below iirc about 1000°C. And an explosion would be possible, as a lot of energy is created in very short time. But I doubt there'd be conditions to take out Ontario, as it's really hard to keep the conditions for a fusion (which is why there is no working reactor).
Also, as we know from driving lessons, getting that thing to move is harder than driving - esp. if you're used to other vehicles. Though that level of mastery...
With Kirk, it's almost a miracle he didn't make out with any other gender, incl. energy beings without any.
Yeah, but 1000˚C isn't even enough to melt some steel containment or the building around it. So you're left with gas pressure to do most damage? Helium doesn't expand when fissioned from hydrogen (I could be wrong about that, but for sure it doesn't enough? Like far above 10^6x) So there's not much pressure possible?
It's lot's of energy, but relative to the injected fuel. And we don't ever need tons of fuel, because why would we?
And here I am, doing it again, thinking more about "how could a cold fusion plant explode" than the writers ever did?
As said before… it's Star Trek. It doesn't have to contain the right terms or actual possible things.
"They were teching the tech to make it explode and it destroyed a city or a couple of them"
"What's a term we could sell for that tech?"
"Fusion bomb?"
"nah… it's something that shouldn't explode on it's own"
"Fission plant?"
"It's near-future, we need something that doesn't sound like the 60s"
"cold fusion plant!"
"sold!"
@dat@social.g33ky.de Um, those (up to) 1000°C is the temperature required to get the thing started. It gets a lot hotter one the fusion is going on.
And while the fusioning elements don't expand, the vacuum around them does end at some place. So if something goes wrong and the plant gets some thousand degrees hot in very short time at the wrong locations ...
But I think it's more likely the plant turns into a heap of ashes and molten stuff in a few minutes than to explode as well.
@dat@social.g33ky.de It could've even been a common fear back then. I mean, fusion reactors were explained as "controlled fusion bombs" for way too long.
@dat@social.g33ky.de Oh, missed there's been movies with Kirk recently. Got too confusing for me with all those series I didn't like or only were available on Paramount+, and lost track of what's in cinemas for years...
For 2023, that's really poor.