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this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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Star Trek
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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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water#Effect_on_biological_systems
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.
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.
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