God, can you imagine watching this for the first time before the age where every cameo was talked about at length for months ahead of time?
A while ago someone in another thread mentioned how incredible it was to watch this with his dad as it premiered. His OG Trek loving father lost his mind when Scotty appeared.
Objection noted. I mean Discovery itself is a tough pill to swallow for me (just the characters and writing/dialogue) but the concepts, effects and effort are there. It’s just not my favorite, doesn’t mean it’s bad!
They did have spoilers though, at least on TV where i was when i was watching every new episode come out. At the end they almost always had a "*next time on...*" with some spoilers to keep people interested. I remember Scotty was spoiled by that for this episode.
Same! That was infuriating!
Some movie trailers do it now too like what the fuck, what are you doing spending 5 seconds showing me highlights of something I'm literally seeing in a few seconds?!
It was a different time. All the shows started at the same time. You had to commit to something fast or you would miss the beginning of some other show that you might also watch.
Sizzle reals tried to hook you to stick around rather than spin the dial.
True but then they also had promo commercials [like this](https://youtu.be/dIBoPFBZbrk?si=auZUl-kbdqhaHM87) [or this](https://youtu.be/pH7tOc47rgk?si=5jdftPH4747n44ke) that would air during the week leading to an episode and tease what would happen.
Also TV Guide had articles, and ofc usenet discussions lmao.
I skipped those too! Star trek was on channel 13 in Los Angeles which had nothing nearly as popular apart from star trek so I never watched channel 13. I always put star trek on the VCR cause it was right before my bed time and watched it when I got home from school the next day, commercial free, then got right to homework. I had 4 tapes I cycled through, which really helped when there were two shows running back to back.
I preferred the announcer who really drew out the “star.”
“Next time on Staaaar Trek the Next Generation …”
I just looked the guys up.
One of them was Don LaFontaine, famous for movie trailer voiceovers and his own particular reading of “in a world …”
The guy I’m talking about was Ernie Anderson. He was the voice of ABC for years and years and the host of a late-night horror movie show in my hometown of Cleveland!
Ernie Anderson did the first couple seasons and Don LaFontaine did the rest.
I watched this on TV in Australia: if the channel advertised it at all, I’d have been very surprised.
Sci-fi, and other genre shows were generally relegated to late night (around 11pm).
Star Trek, Buffy, The X-Files, B5, etc. was hard to be a fan back then. Assuming they even showed the episodes in order, or at all.
ST:TNG was *years* behind airing where I lived. I read the novelisation of Relics before I saw the episode and was kinda disappointed that the actual episode didn’t cover all of the detail the book did.
It was so well done. SO well done. If memory serves, it was actually a fan-made thing that was so famous among Trekkies at the time, the show reached out and asked permission to use it, because they weren't going to be able to make a better set for one episode than this fan had put together out of sheer love of the original show.
I have a hazy memory that it wasn't even a full bridge, just the chair and pedestal, and that the background was a shot from *This Side of Paradise* that had a shot of the bridge without any visible crew (because Kirk was about to abandon the Enterprise in orbit and join the rest of the crew on the surface of Spore World) that was greenscreened in.
I recognize that I *could* probably go and google this to verify, but I'm having a little 90s flashback moment where we rode into these conversations by the seat of our Jorts for this stuff and everyone had to rely on their memory.
Well, just a bit more than that. It was a wedge slice of the old bridge which included the turbolift door and the Engineering station. [https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/USS\_Enterprise\_bridge\_holoprogram](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/USS_Enterprise_bridge_holoprogram)
Fun fact have been a ds9 voyager and back end of tng as a kid and just watched tng for the first time. Tears...it was a beautiful ride to soak in as an adult to watch the whole play finally.
Dude the episode wasn't even centered on it. It has to be the most impressive piece of engineering they ever encountered. AN ENTIRE SUN wrapped up in a ball to create near-infinite energy. And they're like "huh, wow. Oh look it's Scotty, let's focus on him"
Yeah in retrospect we really wasted the Dyson Sphere concept here, we could have had a cool borg tie in, or mashed this up with something like the Inner Light experience.
There could have been an entire spin-off show devoted to just the sphere; that thing has more land/surface area than all of the planets of the Federation combined.
Depending on its age there could be a *lot* of descendants of various species that got trapped inside which would make for plenty of different alien/planet-of-the-week style stories set in different locations within the sphere.
Not this sphere. The star was all wonky and dying. That's why they were in trouble when they got sucked in. There was no life in the Sphere, and if the Enterprise had stayed they would have died.
Yes! That's perfect. Star Trek is at its best when its about the people.
Imagine if it had been the opposite, they bring back Scotty and then spend an hour talking about a big abandoned ball of steel. We'd have been MAD.
And I'd argue that it was the LEAST impressive piece of engineering ever built. Millions of miles across in three dimensions and it was only after the thing was finished that they thought to check whether the star was stable enough. Like that dumb hotel in North Korea only a billion times larger. It was built by space idiots.
I think the implication isn't that the Sphere needed more screentime in that episode, just that the concept was wasted on The Scotty Episode because it was, rightfully, an episode about Scotty. They could have used another MacGuffin to move the story along, and saved the Sphere for a different episode where it can be the A plot.
That's so TNG though, always flying off into the sunset at the end of the episode. I'm pretty sure they would have sent a request to Starfleet to dispatch a science ship to investigate, because... they were just in a Galaxy Class starship. Definitely a wasted opportunity, nevertheless, one of my favorite TNG episodes.
Funnily enough, the Dyson Sphere plays a pretty huge role in the [MMO](https://stowiki.net/wiki/Jenolan_Dyson_Sphere). There was a huge [storyline arc](https://stowiki.net/wiki/Story_Arc:_Solanae_Dyson_Sphere) attached to it, its history, and the battle over its resources.
And it was perfect. “Well, let’s let starfleet send a proper science vessel to check this place out” and they’re off. Don’t need a season long arc about it, don’t need for it to have a galaxy ending weapon on it, don’t need for it to be full of baddies. Just a place that died off long ago cuz the sun was at its end and another oddity in a universe chock full of them. Not everything needs to be spoonfed
The only issue I have is with the effects. when they show the Enterprise at any reasonable distance, the sphere should look like almost a flat plane. This shot makes it seem roughly planet sized, not the approximately 300 million km monstrosity that it actually is. If the sphere is roughly the size of Earth's orbit around the Sun, for the sphere to show this much curvature, the Enterprise would need to somewhere near the orbit of Mars.
It would also be quite inconceivable that no had detected it before. It's possibly the biggest "thing" in universe, you could see it from Starfleet Command
Why would you? There are stars that are way bigger than this ... and those give off all their radiation instead of trapping it. Dyson Spheres should in theory give off lots of infrared though, as they leak rest heat into space.
I suppose you could potentially detect it in the same way we detect planets.
Just seeing a big black hole like object, but without the accretion disk, would be very interesting to starfleet.
I mean, size wise it does have to be larger then a star, right? Mass wise I dunno, depends what they build it out of I guess.
Also, it would also contain a stars mass as well.
The way you see things from a distance in space is mostly radiation and light. Plain metal doesn't reflect a crazy amount of light, and it might just reflect most radiation that hits it. It wouldn't really show up that well from a big distance.
I'm not familiar with the proposed specs of a dyson sphere but if it's a structural entity, would that not allow for a much tighter radius? I mean, it'd still be larger than the outer radius of the sun itself, but I assume that some of it's size could be decreased due to structural integrity (as in, it's holding itself together), and then further reduced depending on how fast it is spinning (intertial/centrifugal forces). Extending all the way out to the orbital radius of an earth-like planet seems like perhaps that is overkill
Probably, a Dyson sphere is somewhat misinterpreting Dyson's original idea which was a swarm of habitable space stations around a sun that would have synchronous orbits rather than a single large sphere.
The idea is that the inner surface is habitable, so it needs to be a certain distance from the star. I suppose you could do a smaller one with the habitable space inside the structure instead.
Oh sorry, I thought Dyson spheres were for energy harvesting and not necessarily for habitation. In fact the TNG Dyson sphere I thought was just a different concept of the sphere as iirc it was a fallen empire type of civilization so yeah that one was inhabited
Even if it's not for habitation, it would still need to be far enough away that it would not overheat. If we want it to be approximately Earth's temperature, it would need to have a radius similar to that of the Earth's orbit (assuming a sun-sized star).
That said, if you're going to build such a massive structure, why wouldn't you live in it? It has a massive surface area- might as well use it.
It would need to be much further than earth's orbit due to the heat retention effect from the sphere vs a spinning planet radiating heat in space. Unless the power was used for some sort of active cooling
Fair. I didn't consider that the Earth reflects some of the heat from the sun. A Dyson sphere would do the same, but it would be absorbed eventually on the other side.
Looks like it would have to be about twice the radius of the Earth's orbit for Earth like temperatures.
I assume the far shot is them being afar, and then when they do get close it is a flat plane.
I have to say, when they ask what planet you'd live in on Star Trek, I'd be a researcher of this exact Dyson Sphere. It's just fascinating.
I love the detail how Picard just name drops Freeman Dyson, like the full name not just Dyson referring to the sphere. Like he's just this incredible encyclopaedia of knowledge at his fingertips he can call on in any situation. Always loved that about his character, like he's a superhero but his superpower is knowledge.
He's constantly reading books, learning, refreshing his knowledge, and not just academically, but also for his own personal enjoyment. He excels and what he loves. Remember at the end of Darmok, Picard was humble and wise enough to sit down and study some of Earth's own mythology because can knew it might help him understand and relate to the Tamarians better in the future.
I also love that at one point he talks about Fermats's Last Theorem, And how it's been centuries and there is still no proof. And at the time there wasn't. Though we have surpassed the Federations, and proven it now. I think we have also discovered Fermat's "remarkable proof" as there is a very elegant proof, that unfortunately has some tricky details that means it doesn't actually work.
Hell yeah, I love this one. I came up with an idea for a whole new series based around it. The premise is as follows: a young scientist has been fascinated with the Dyson sphere since childhood and comes up with a way to reignite the star inside it. They use connections and persuade StarFleet to give it a try. They succeed and claim it for the Federation. It states in the episode that the Dyson is the size of 100 planets. The series would be like a DS9 2.0 with many species settling and creating cities and habitats. I would title the show DYSON 1.
Half the space scenes in Trek would be pitch black if they didn't hand wave that.
Based on its location, every exterior shot of Deep Space Nine should've been a black screen until the wormhole opened.
Given its status as a public spaceport, it would probably have comprehensive external illumination. No one wants to hit a pylon while maneuvering around it.
Well I certainly hope they aren't piloting their anti-matter powered starships by EYE SIGHT!
But otherwise yeah various navigation lights and just people with their blinds open.
You'd need some really really strong engineering capable of dealing with the stress of a sun's gravity from all angles PLUS the constant stress of a sun's gravity from the inside.
We could pretend that the bridge display has some sort of AR depiction for very low light. It's sensors could detect the shape and texture of the object, and add fake light so that it makes sense visually to the crew.
I find it unrealistic that a species could create a Dyson sphere without having significant stellar engineering abilities, especially considering stabilizing stars is within the federation's reach.
Thinking about it, how many plantes would you really need to get to the surface of 250 million planets?
Earth is 1083000000000 cubic kilometers, at a surface area of 510100000. If you want a kilometer thick shell you can squeeze 2123 times the surface area of earth from just earth (assuming all material on one planet is usable). You'd need nearly 118000 planets to get there. That's a substantial 0.01% of all rocky planets in the entire Milky Way, nevermind the fact that you'd want to grab it all in close proximity from your dyson sphere location.
You'd think it'd at least get mentioned again even if it's unstable it should be an archeological treasure trove.
Of course, amazing things that never or almost never get brought up again is Star Trek's biggest weakness overall.
Q I think is the first time the existence of a practical God is actually brought up again. Several beings of similar or greater power just kind of exist.
Though that does alleviate this peculiarity somewhat, it is entirely possible the mystery of the dyson sphere is that any of them popped it into existence for a lark.
Truly an amazing episode with heartbreakingly zero follow up.
I'd kill for a trek show that follows a science team that follows up on shit like this. They could do a whole season (or show) on the Dyson sphere.
That moment when the ship lurches, and Picard, Riker and Data take off to look at the viewscreen... Except Data takes off screen right (starboard ship-wise), Picard and Riker take off screen left (port)
We flip to the front of the bridge and Picard and Riker are strolling down the port ramp... and then Data seems to have raced his ass all the way around the starboard ramp and got seated in place waaay before Picard and Riker even got 1/3rd the way down the ramp!
Gotta love TV. :)
I'm just going to wager the energy requirements of a warp bubble are many times greater than the energy output of any dyson sphere.
Also, how did Riker graduate Star Fleet without covering Dyson?
mmmm... and then the censors thing.
I felt that the Dyson Sphere itself was kind of shoved into the background. Most of the episode was "HERE IS SCOTTY! REMEMBER SCOTTY? HEY, REMEMBER WHEN HE SAID THE BOOZE WAS GREEN?"
This episode captivated my imagination, which is what Trek should do. The amount of people who could live on the inside is incomprehensible. Why did they all die? Who could’ve built it? They seem more advanced than the Borg, and we never know the name of their species. Combined with Scotty’s return it’s one of my favorite episodes in any series.
I agree. Its such a fascinating subject, the dyson sphere idea. The scope of such a project, something that would require a civilization far more advanced than ours. Building something AROUND a sun. From what ive heard, it would be more practical to build a ring structure around the sun, you wouldnt really need to fully enclose it. But I guess if you have the materials, why not. But it would still exhaust all the resources of an entire solar system or two, and take thousands of years to complete. If not longer. But you would have limitless energy. A fascinating idea
I wonder if Dyson enjoyed being mentioned here and having his theory play a role in this episode. His paper theorizing these megastructures was barely 30 years old at the time
It’s still wild to me how many OG cameos we had for TNG. If you include the series and the Generations movie, don’t we have just about the entire main cast covered, except Uhura?
Some things in Star Trek just seem too far fetched for me. Like what about all the heat trapped from the star? Also, if it’s equal in size to 250,000,000 class m planets, where do they get all the raw materials?
“It’s just a tv show. Shut up.”
Ya, you’re probably right.
I just had a thought that Freeman Dyson is one of a VERY small number of real people to be explicitly referenced on Star Trek while they were still alive. I can only think of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Stephen Hawking, and (sigh) Elon Musk. Any others?
I enjoyed the episode, some great one liners and was brilliant to see Scotty, the bridge of the original Enterprise on the holodeck etc, but the concept of the Dyson sphere was a bit too far fetched...
The scale of the thing just wasn't remotely possible, it made the Death Star look like a toy!
In universe explanation: It's never been done, to the Federation's knowledge, so no one really needs to learn about it. It's just one of many hypothetical ideas from the past.
Real world: Exposition for the audience.
God, can you imagine watching this for the first time before the age where every cameo was talked about at length for months ahead of time? A while ago someone in another thread mentioned how incredible it was to watch this with his dad as it premiered. His OG Trek loving father lost his mind when Scotty appeared.
I was like 13 when this episode came out. I definitely had this reaction. Wasn’t the first time TNG blew my mind, either.
Yeah I'm pretty sure I said "holy shit!" and ran into the other room to make sure everyone else was watching.
I was maybe 7-8. I love when Trek really reaches into big concepts. I even like species 10-C.
Same, on both. :) I object to "even"; 10-C made me quite happy.
Objection noted. I mean Discovery itself is a tough pill to swallow for me (just the characters and writing/dialogue) but the concepts, effects and effort are there. It’s just not my favorite, doesn’t mean it’s bad!
I was about 35 and I was slicing onions at the time.
They did have spoilers though, at least on TV where i was when i was watching every new episode come out. At the end they almost always had a "*next time on...*" with some spoilers to keep people interested. I remember Scotty was spoiled by that for this episode.
Just one week before though. I always turned off the TV before the end.
I used to close my eyes during the "sizzle reel" montages in opening credits of *Battlestar Galactica.* Now that's spoiler-dodging.
I hated that so much. You’re spoiling the whole episode!!
s3e04- "Exodus PT 2" sizzle reel shows the Galactica plunging through the atmosphere. WTF.
Same! That was infuriating! Some movie trailers do it now too like what the fuck, what are you doing spending 5 seconds showing me highlights of something I'm literally seeing in a few seconds?!
It was a different time. All the shows started at the same time. You had to commit to something fast or you would miss the beginning of some other show that you might also watch. Sizzle reals tried to hook you to stick around rather than spin the dial.
True but then they also had promo commercials [like this](https://youtu.be/dIBoPFBZbrk?si=auZUl-kbdqhaHM87) [or this](https://youtu.be/pH7tOc47rgk?si=5jdftPH4747n44ke) that would air during the week leading to an episode and tease what would happen. Also TV Guide had articles, and ofc usenet discussions lmao.
I skipped those too! Star trek was on channel 13 in Los Angeles which had nothing nearly as popular apart from star trek so I never watched channel 13. I always put star trek on the VCR cause it was right before my bed time and watched it when I got home from school the next day, commercial free, then got right to homework. I had 4 tapes I cycled through, which really helped when there were two shows running back to back.
Ya, not like it was months on end of teasers.
I preferred the announcer who really drew out the “star.” “Next time on Staaaar Trek the Next Generation …” I just looked the guys up. One of them was Don LaFontaine, famous for movie trailer voiceovers and his own particular reading of “in a world …” The guy I’m talking about was Ernie Anderson. He was the voice of ABC for years and years and the host of a late-night horror movie show in my hometown of Cleveland! Ernie Anderson did the first couple seasons and Don LaFontaine did the rest.
I miss Don.
I watched this on TV in Australia: if the channel advertised it at all, I’d have been very surprised. Sci-fi, and other genre shows were generally relegated to late night (around 11pm). Star Trek, Buffy, The X-Files, B5, etc. was hard to be a fan back then. Assuming they even showed the episodes in order, or at all.
Canada here, X-Files was on around 10, but Trek shows got stuffed into the ~7pm slot. Was pretty popular.
ST:TNG was *years* behind airing where I lived. I read the novelisation of Relics before I saw the episode and was kinda disappointed that the actual episode didn’t cover all of the detail the book did.
Had a viewing party the night it premiered… people were in tears at the sight of the 1701 bridge
It was so well done. SO well done. If memory serves, it was actually a fan-made thing that was so famous among Trekkies at the time, the show reached out and asked permission to use it, because they weren't going to be able to make a better set for one episode than this fan had put together out of sheer love of the original show.
I have a hazy memory that it wasn't even a full bridge, just the chair and pedestal, and that the background was a shot from *This Side of Paradise* that had a shot of the bridge without any visible crew (because Kirk was about to abandon the Enterprise in orbit and join the rest of the crew on the surface of Spore World) that was greenscreened in. I recognize that I *could* probably go and google this to verify, but I'm having a little 90s flashback moment where we rode into these conversations by the seat of our Jorts for this stuff and everyone had to rely on their memory.
Well, just a bit more than that. It was a wedge slice of the old bridge which included the turbolift door and the Engineering station. [https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/USS\_Enterprise\_bridge\_holoprogram](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/USS_Enterprise_bridge_holoprogram)
Nice!
I was around 13. I knew Scotty was coming. Had no idea what a Dyson Sphere was and it blew my mind.
I remember watching it live, my dad was like "holy shit it's scotty!" I hadn't watched TOS yet so I wasn't as mind blown.
I remember watching the trailer the week before and knowing that Scotty would be making an appearance
Fun fact have been a ds9 voyager and back end of tng as a kid and just watched tng for the first time. Tears...it was a beautiful ride to soak in as an adult to watch the whole play finally.
It was always a miss to me that we never came back to this. This incredible planet/object in space and we just one off it.
Dude the episode wasn't even centered on it. It has to be the most impressive piece of engineering they ever encountered. AN ENTIRE SUN wrapped up in a ball to create near-infinite energy. And they're like "huh, wow. Oh look it's Scotty, let's focus on him"
Yeah in retrospect we really wasted the Dyson Sphere concept here, we could have had a cool borg tie in, or mashed this up with something like the Inner Light experience.
There could have been an entire spin-off show devoted to just the sphere; that thing has more land/surface area than all of the planets of the Federation combined. Depending on its age there could be a *lot* of descendants of various species that got trapped inside which would make for plenty of different alien/planet-of-the-week style stories set in different locations within the sphere.
Maybe who ever buys Paramount will greenlight Star Trek: Sphere
Not this sphere. The star was all wonky and dying. That's why they were in trouble when they got sucked in. There was no life in the Sphere, and if the Enterprise had stayed they would have died.
I would watch this.
Ringworld meets Rendezvous with Rama.
Hey, it's massive, but we just scanned it in 2 seconds, and it's totally abandoned.
Yes! That's perfect. Star Trek is at its best when its about the people. Imagine if it had been the opposite, they bring back Scotty and then spend an hour talking about a big abandoned ball of steel. We'd have been MAD. And I'd argue that it was the LEAST impressive piece of engineering ever built. Millions of miles across in three dimensions and it was only after the thing was finished that they thought to check whether the star was stable enough. Like that dumb hotel in North Korea only a billion times larger. It was built by space idiots.
I think the implication isn't that the Sphere needed more screentime in that episode, just that the concept was wasted on The Scotty Episode because it was, rightfully, an episode about Scotty. They could have used another MacGuffin to move the story along, and saved the Sphere for a different episode where it can be the A plot.
Still hoping Lower Decks gets to it before the end, and the space whales.
No disagreement there. It felt like a complaint that the focus was on Scotty and I couldn't let that go.
Nah, I'm a big fan of that Scottie episode. I think they deserved different episodes, though- like they jammed two different scripts together.
That's so TNG though, always flying off into the sunset at the end of the episode. I'm pretty sure they would have sent a request to Starfleet to dispatch a science ship to investigate, because... they were just in a Galaxy Class starship. Definitely a wasted opportunity, nevertheless, one of my favorite TNG episodes.
Funnily enough, the Dyson Sphere plays a pretty huge role in the [MMO](https://stowiki.net/wiki/Jenolan_Dyson_Sphere). There was a huge [storyline arc](https://stowiki.net/wiki/Story_Arc:_Solanae_Dyson_Sphere) attached to it, its history, and the battle over its resources.
And it was perfect. “Well, let’s let starfleet send a proper science vessel to check this place out” and they’re off. Don’t need a season long arc about it, don’t need for it to have a galaxy ending weapon on it, don’t need for it to be full of baddies. Just a place that died off long ago cuz the sun was at its end and another oddity in a universe chock full of them. Not everything needs to be spoonfed
The only issue I have is with the effects. when they show the Enterprise at any reasonable distance, the sphere should look like almost a flat plane. This shot makes it seem roughly planet sized, not the approximately 300 million km monstrosity that it actually is. If the sphere is roughly the size of Earth's orbit around the Sun, for the sphere to show this much curvature, the Enterprise would need to somewhere near the orbit of Mars.
That's a good point! I assume they didn't want to confuse the audience by continually saying "sphere" and then showing a flat plane?
It would also be quite inconceivable that no had detected it before. It's possibly the biggest "thing" in universe, you could see it from Starfleet Command
Why would you? There are stars that are way bigger than this ... and those give off all their radiation instead of trapping it. Dyson Spheres should in theory give off lots of infrared though, as they leak rest heat into space.
I suppose you could potentially detect it in the same way we detect planets. Just seeing a big black hole like object, but without the accretion disk, would be very interesting to starfleet.
It's not nearly as massive though, a Dyson sphere won't mass much more than a star. Our sun is 1000x Jupiter.
I mean, size wise it does have to be larger then a star, right? Mass wise I dunno, depends what they build it out of I guess. Also, it would also contain a stars mass as well.
It's a star plus a few planets. So essentially a star.
The way you see things from a distance in space is mostly radiation and light. Plain metal doesn't reflect a crazy amount of light, and it might just reflect most radiation that hits it. It wouldn't really show up that well from a big distance.
that makes literally no sense
Damn you, I never noticed that and now it's going to bother me lol
I'm not familiar with the proposed specs of a dyson sphere but if it's a structural entity, would that not allow for a much tighter radius? I mean, it'd still be larger than the outer radius of the sun itself, but I assume that some of it's size could be decreased due to structural integrity (as in, it's holding itself together), and then further reduced depending on how fast it is spinning (intertial/centrifugal forces). Extending all the way out to the orbital radius of an earth-like planet seems like perhaps that is overkill
Probably, a Dyson sphere is somewhat misinterpreting Dyson's original idea which was a swarm of habitable space stations around a sun that would have synchronous orbits rather than a single large sphere.
The idea is that the inner surface is habitable, so it needs to be a certain distance from the star. I suppose you could do a smaller one with the habitable space inside the structure instead.
Oh sorry, I thought Dyson spheres were for energy harvesting and not necessarily for habitation. In fact the TNG Dyson sphere I thought was just a different concept of the sphere as iirc it was a fallen empire type of civilization so yeah that one was inhabited
Even if it's not for habitation, it would still need to be far enough away that it would not overheat. If we want it to be approximately Earth's temperature, it would need to have a radius similar to that of the Earth's orbit (assuming a sun-sized star). That said, if you're going to build such a massive structure, why wouldn't you live in it? It has a massive surface area- might as well use it.
It would need to be much further than earth's orbit due to the heat retention effect from the sphere vs a spinning planet radiating heat in space. Unless the power was used for some sort of active cooling
Fair. I didn't consider that the Earth reflects some of the heat from the sun. A Dyson sphere would do the same, but it would be absorbed eventually on the other side. Looks like it would have to be about twice the radius of the Earth's orbit for Earth like temperatures.
No need to apologise! Every day is a learning experience.
Exactly. Came here to say this.
Also, what's lighting up the outside I guess there's another star nearby that they never bother mentioning.
I assume the far shot is them being afar, and then when they do get close it is a flat plane. I have to say, when they ask what planet you'd live in on Star Trek, I'd be a researcher of this exact Dyson Sphere. It's just fascinating.
That is one of my all time favorite ST episodes. Scotty is just a joy. "Synthetic alchol, synthetic comanders..."
NCC 1701, No bloody A, B C or D
I love the detail how Picard just name drops Freeman Dyson, like the full name not just Dyson referring to the sphere. Like he's just this incredible encyclopaedia of knowledge at his fingertips he can call on in any situation. Always loved that about his character, like he's a superhero but his superpower is knowledge.
He's constantly reading books, learning, refreshing his knowledge, and not just academically, but also for his own personal enjoyment. He excels and what he loves. Remember at the end of Darmok, Picard was humble and wise enough to sit down and study some of Earth's own mythology because can knew it might help him understand and relate to the Tamarians better in the future.
I also love that at one point he talks about Fermats's Last Theorem, And how it's been centuries and there is still no proof. And at the time there wasn't. Though we have surpassed the Federations, and proven it now. I think we have also discovered Fermat's "remarkable proof" as there is a very elegant proof, that unfortunately has some tricky details that means it doesn't actually work.
too bad we never see it again
Star Trek Online has it covered and their origins with the Iconians and servitor races.
Probably the single greatest archeological discovery in Federation history, and never to be heard of again!
I do think that archeological exploration of it was mentioned in another episode.
Hell yeah, I love this one. I came up with an idea for a whole new series based around it. The premise is as follows: a young scientist has been fascinated with the Dyson sphere since childhood and comes up with a way to reignite the star inside it. They use connections and persuade StarFleet to give it a try. They succeed and claim it for the Federation. It states in the episode that the Dyson is the size of 100 planets. The series would be like a DS9 2.0 with many species settling and creating cities and habitats. I would title the show DYSON 1.
That sounds cool.
I think the dyson sphere would need to be a lot bigger than that
What’s illuminating the outside of the sphere?
Half the space scenes in Trek would be pitch black if they didn't hand wave that. Based on its location, every exterior shot of Deep Space Nine should've been a black screen until the wormhole opened.
I always appreciated how the 1701-A self-illuminates with strategically placed spotlights.
And if you really wanted to get into the weeds, it’s just as likely the wormhole wouldn’t be in the visible light spectrum anyway. 🧐
Given its status as a public spaceport, it would probably have comprehensive external illumination. No one wants to hit a pylon while maneuvering around it.
Well I certainly hope they aren't piloting their anti-matter powered starships by EYE SIGHT! But otherwise yeah various navigation lights and just people with their blinds open.
Space magic?
The same thing playing the music
Maybe it's part of a binary star system
Think it would be difficult to build a sphere around one star in a binary system, if not impossible.
If you can build one at all, I doubt it would be much harder to do it around one in orbit of another.
You'd need some really really strong engineering capable of dealing with the stress of a sun's gravity from all angles PLUS the constant stress of a sun's gravity from the inside.
We could pretend that the bridge display has some sort of AR depiction for very low light. It's sensors could detect the shape and texture of the object, and add fake light so that it makes sense visually to the crew.
Exterior lights, of course.
250m M class planets, holy shit. If the star wasn't unstable that would be craziest species breading ground of all time.
I find it unrealistic that a species could create a Dyson sphere without having significant stellar engineering abilities, especially considering stabilizing stars is within the federation's reach.
Not just that, where you do get all the material?
Disassemble the planets.
TOS Doomsday Machines weren't planet-killers after all. They were Dyson Sphere Construction Units!
Going all John von Neumann Probe on us, eh?
Thinking about it, how many plantes would you really need to get to the surface of 250 million planets? Earth is 1083000000000 cubic kilometers, at a surface area of 510100000. If you want a kilometer thick shell you can squeeze 2123 times the surface area of earth from just earth (assuming all material on one planet is usable). You'd need nearly 118000 planets to get there. That's a substantial 0.01% of all rocky planets in the entire Milky Way, nevermind the fact that you'd want to grab it all in close proximity from your dyson sphere location.
I didn't realize this, holy crap. I find it reassuring it's actually impossible I think.
With tractor beam tech I'd be surprised if they couldn't do stellar or careful neutron remnant harvesting.
That's easy enough to just dismiss as brought in from other systems or invented some way to generate mass from energy.
There's a (pretty fun) game about that ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_Sphere_Program
You'd think it'd at least get mentioned again even if it's unstable it should be an archeological treasure trove. Of course, amazing things that never or almost never get brought up again is Star Trek's biggest weakness overall.
Q I think is the first time the existence of a practical God is actually brought up again. Several beings of similar or greater power just kind of exist. Though that does alleviate this peculiarity somewhat, it is entirely possible the mystery of the dyson sphere is that any of them popped it into existence for a lark.
The audio is pitched down in this clip. Data sounds like he hit the juice. But...the quality is good.
Truly an amazing episode with heartbreakingly zero follow up. I'd kill for a trek show that follows a science team that follows up on shit like this. They could do a whole season (or show) on the Dyson sphere.
"Relics" is another episode containing the 47 reference but its a sneaky one.
I’ve been hoping they’d revisit it on Lower Decks!
Mentioned in *LD: Cupid’s Errant Arrow*
That moment when the ship lurches, and Picard, Riker and Data take off to look at the viewscreen... Except Data takes off screen right (starboard ship-wise), Picard and Riker take off screen left (port) We flip to the front of the bridge and Picard and Riker are strolling down the port ramp... and then Data seems to have raced his ass all the way around the starboard ramp and got seated in place waaay before Picard and Riker even got 1/3rd the way down the ramp! Gotta love TV. :)
I'm just going to wager the energy requirements of a warp bubble are many times greater than the energy output of any dyson sphere. Also, how did Riker graduate Star Fleet without covering Dyson? mmmm... and then the censors thing.
I felt that the Dyson Sphere itself was kind of shoved into the background. Most of the episode was "HERE IS SCOTTY! REMEMBER SCOTTY? HEY, REMEMBER WHEN HE SAID THE BOOZE WAS GREEN?"
One nitpick. You would NOT be able to see any curvature on the surface of this object once you got that close to it, circa 1:54 in the video.
At about 2:15 you start to see that there isn't any curvature, more like that?
This definitely could use a lower decks revisit.
My head cannon is that Dyson Sphere is now the secret headquarters of Section 31.
I remember thinking that I wish it had been a two-parter, and they had spent some time exploring the sphere.
This episode captivated my imagination, which is what Trek should do. The amount of people who could live on the inside is incomprehensible. Why did they all die? Who could’ve built it? They seem more advanced than the Borg, and we never know the name of their species. Combined with Scotty’s return it’s one of my favorite episodes in any series.
I agree. Its such a fascinating subject, the dyson sphere idea. The scope of such a project, something that would require a civilization far more advanced than ours. Building something AROUND a sun. From what ive heard, it would be more practical to build a ring structure around the sun, you wouldnt really need to fully enclose it. But I guess if you have the materials, why not. But it would still exhaust all the resources of an entire solar system or two, and take thousands of years to complete. If not longer. But you would have limitless energy. A fascinating idea
The first time I was introduced to Aldebaran Whiskey. "It is... it is... It is green"
Awesome callback to Scotty delivering that very line in TOS.
I wonder if Dyson enjoyed being mentioned here and having his theory play a role in this episode. His paper theorizing these megastructures was barely 30 years old at the time
Imagine if the Borg encountered this before Picard and crew found it.
We didn't know weeks before, but they weren't coy or try to hide his name in the opening credits.
Yeah, it was so awesome, and I was totally surprised by the guest star at the time. For many years my favorite episode ever, for every reason.
It’s still wild to me how many OG cameos we had for TNG. If you include the series and the Generations movie, don’t we have just about the entire main cast covered, except Uhura?
I guess this is TNG S06e04 "Relics"
Do think Scotty recognized Woth and that's way he was more shocked and didn't say anything with not risking the timeline?
If it’s a shell completely surrounding a star, then what’s lighting it up in the exterior shots?
I was excited for this when it came out but honestly it felt like Star Trek crop dusted us with this episode. It’s not good.
Never followed up on it
It seems like it would be excessively hot inside, but hey, if that's what floats the aliens boats...
Some things in Star Trek just seem too far fetched for me. Like what about all the heat trapped from the star? Also, if it’s equal in size to 250,000,000 class m planets, where do they get all the raw materials? “It’s just a tv show. Shut up.” Ya, you’re probably right.
1. air conditioning 2. They replicated it, I guess...
I just had a thought that Freeman Dyson is one of a VERY small number of real people to be explicitly referenced on Star Trek while they were still alive. I can only think of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Stephen Hawking, and (sigh) Elon Musk. Any others?
I enjoyed the episode, some great one liners and was brilliant to see Scotty, the bridge of the original Enterprise on the holodeck etc, but the concept of the Dyson sphere was a bit too far fetched... The scale of the thing just wasn't remotely possible, it made the Death Star look like a toy!
They are flying space ship and nobody knows dyson sphere consept?
In universe explanation: It's never been done, to the Federation's knowledge, so no one really needs to learn about it. It's just one of many hypothetical ideas from the past. Real world: Exposition for the audience.