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Hyperdrive
- How did the entire culture of the Defiant Caverns somehow forget the basic principles of the cytonic hyperdrive? They're all descended from people who worked on the original Defiant, and the hyperdrive is a vital part of any interstellar ship, yet nobody aside from Gran-Gran ever mentions the idea of hyperdrive. Nobody recognizes that the "defect" is a well-known thing that allows engineers to activate hyperdrives. Nobody ever mentions the concept of building a hyperdrive-capable ship so we can escape the planet and hopefully leave the Krell behind. When Gran-Gran tells Spin how hyperdrives work, Spin actually thinks to herself "Why did no one tell me this before?". The question is never answered.
- This may be answered in later books, but it may have been a secret from the rest of the ship, given that psychic hate eyes seem to live in cytonic space.
- Part of the DDF's problem in the first book, as shown in Ironside's portions, was that they were too timid, unwilling to take risks that might get them a major advantage. Ironsides repeatedly loses important battles because she doesn't dedicate enough fighters, and the organization as a whole lets the First Citizens undermine them by stealing their best pilots. Once Cobb was in charge he managed to turn everything around in a matter of months. The point being that an incompetent fascist society trapped on the losing side of a Hopeless War is not the sort of society that is going to be able to reinvent hyperdrives from first principles. Nevermind the way they treated the "defect."
Prison Guards
- At the end we're told that "The Krell aren't murderous. They're prison guards." They've been instructed to keep the Defiant people confined to this planet without killing them off entirely. That's why they always field less than 100 ships. Uh...if the Krell aren't murderous, why do they keep murdering people? If you can logistically call up more than 100 ships, just call up all the ships, send them to the planet, and force the humans to surrender. Then you can just round up the humans and put them in actual jail cells, instead of carrying on with this endless war. Currently the Krell have to be on their toes all the time because the humans might develop a hyperdrive-capable ship and escape the planet.(Though see the previous entry: The humans apparently haven't even thought of this option.) But if you put them in an actual jail without access to technology, you wouldn't have to worry anymore.
- We don't know enough about the Krells culture, but from what little we have, they seem to be a rather peaceful people opposed to genocide. They likely take moral issue with straight up imprisoning humans outright and keep them on their reserve. Imagine the fuss if someone decided to kill all the sharks on earth outright, people all over the would create a storm of backlash even though sharks are scary and can kill us.
- The Krell seem to treat humanity as dangerous animals, and so treat their planet like a wildlife reserve. They only want to make sure humanity stays on planet, but it seems like they still value freedom to the extent that they don’t want to lock them all up. As for why they don't call for more ships to wipe out the Defiants, well, so far the Krell are winning the war, it's just taking a while. So they may not want to expend the resources to amass a large fleet when they are currently doing fine in containing humanity.
- There's also the fact that Detritus was a human world, and it still has automated defenses that engage the Krell. So if they tried to send actual jailers down, they'd risk losing them in transit and they'd be sitting ducks for anything on the lowest levels that might target their landing parties. Not to mention that a hundred years ago when this policy was set up, the automated defenses would have been a lot stronger.
Inhibitor slug (REDAWN SPOILERS)
- At the end of ReDawn, on the Superiority ship, Alanik discovers a slug-powered mindblade weapon about to destroy the ship, rigged against tampering. Fine, great. But moments earlier, Alanik found a cytonic inhibitor with a living slug. Couldn't she just drag the inhibitor, or at least the slug, over to the weapon in order to neutralize it?
- You can bypass an inhibitor field if you know the correct cytonic "key". Presumably the boomslugs for the hypercannon had been given the key to bypass the inhibitor slug.
