Baggage you wish Star Trek could be free of?

[Captain Clark Terrell]

I hated that reference to baseball no longer existing by the 23rd century because supposedly people don't like to play competitive sports anymore. The HELL? Get rid of that crap on the double. Indeed, go whole hog in the other direction. Show a state-of-the-art future ballpark, with room for hundreds of thousands of fans. And who knows how many teams exist in Trek's time? There could be hundreds of them. And an 'Interplanetary World Series' to boot. (The Cubs probably still haven't won...)

I agree with this, which is why I decided that one of the OCs I created was a basketball player while in high school. Even three- or four-hundred years from now, people will still act like people. I'd love to see a Quadrant (?) Series featuring the Pike City Pioneers (Cestus III) and the Ki Baratan Cloaks (Romulus)--the latter of which advanced to the series after sweeping the Cubs, who were forced to play their home games at Pavel Chekov Field (currently US Cellular Field) because Wrigley Field finally crumbled to the ground.

--Sran

 

[Christopher]

ESP and "psychic powers" have been the basis of more than a few good scenes and episodes, these would be lost. The Vulcan mind meld would be gone.

But they're fantasy abilities, not science fiction. Back in the '60s, there was still enough credulity about "ESP" and psychic phenomena that they could be taken seriously as science fiction, but now the experiments that purported to demonstrate such abilities have been debunked, the tricks of alleged psychics exposed as frauds. It's fine if you want to include them in a fantasy series, along with magic and ghosts and vampires and whatnot, but I'm talking about what I'd like to see in a science fiction series.

Besides, you don't need woo-woo supernatural powers to read minds. Modern science is making impressive strides at deciphering the activity of the brain, and it may eventually be possible to "read" a person's thoughts or memories to some extent through technological means -- which is something that already exists in the Trek universe in the form of things like the Klingon mind-sifter and Romulan mind probe. Also, with transhumanism in the mix, you could have alien or transhuman populations that have communication implants built into their brains, so that they can have a technological form of "telepathy" among themselves (which, again, has a precedent in the Borg). So a lot of what Trek and other past sci-fi has done with psi powers can be achieved just as well through more plausible technological means.

 

[Kilana2]

I remember Worf playing soccer in one of the kids novels, unintentionally

Spoiler: Worf soccer

killing a player by hurting him fatally

So, it´s not only baseball. Happy to see that nobody wants to see more velocity or parrises squares.


As to the mind-sifter: isn´t it likely that it creates serious mental damage on the subject? That makes it questionable.

As to the implants: Janeway from the future uses a kind of neural interface in Endgame, if I´m not mistaken.

 

[BillJ]

I kinda like Star Trek the way it is. Flaws and all.

 

[Christopher]

I remember Worf playing soccer in one of the kids novels, unintentionally

Spoiler: Worf soccer

killing a player by hurting him fatally

That's not originally from a novel, it's from "Let He Who Is Without Sin" on DS9.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I admit I would like to hear an explanation of what, exactly, Parrises Squares is, and how it is played...

 

[Captain Clark Terrell]

I admit I would like to hear an explanation of what, exactly, Parrises Squares is, and how it is played...

I would, too. I just remember Riker freaking out because his (fictional) son was playing it at such a young age.

--Sran

 

[Orphalesion]

But they're fantasy abilities, not science fiction.

Because psychic powers are the only thing in Star Trek that's more fantasy than science . A bit of fantasy and planetary romance/space opera is not bad, if you ask me, it adds colour.

As to the holodec/planet of hats episodes being due to bugdet constrictions.
Uhm....just make fewer episodes...you know, quality over quantity. Instead of having to spread out the budget over 24 episodes, 10-12 per season would be enough and would allow for higher production values per episode.

 

[Kilana2]

I remember Worf playing soccer in one of the kids novels, unintentionally

Spoiler: Worf soccer

killing a player by hurting him fatally

That's not originally from a novel, it's from "Let He Who Is Without Sin" on DS9.

Alright, then. But at least it was mentioned in one of the Starfleet Academy novels.

 

[Kilana2]

I admit I would like to hear an explanation of what, exactly, Parrises Squares is, and how it is played...

I would, too. I just remember Riker freaking out because his (fictional) son was playing it at such a young age.

--Sran

The Doctor´s holographic daughter played it, was seriously injured and died. It must be a quite rough game.

 

[Christopher]

But they're fantasy abilities, not science fiction.

Because psychic powers are the only thing in Star Trek that's more fantasy than science .

I don't think you're getting into the spirit of this thread. It's not about evaluating the version of Star Trek that we have, it's about asking what each of us would set aside if we were given the opportunity to reinvent it from scratch. It would be a pretty boring thread if we didn't each have different ideas about how to do that. So those differences of opinion are not something to roll our eyes at, they're something to welcome.

 

[Cyke101]

I know it's classic Trek, but I'm wary/weary of cosmic entities with otherworldly powers. Spaceborne lifeforms like Junior are cool, but others like Q really should be operating on a level that's incomprehensible by any means to the audience, or are just vague enough that magic applies (and even those entities are rather cryptic about their abilities, again despite the sci-fi aspects of the show).

 

[The Wormhole]

Instead of constantly running into aliens of the week who are identical to humans or nearly identical to humans just with bumps on the forehead, I'd have it re-written so that they are in fact human colonies, possibly separated from the Federation or whatever.

 

[Orphalesion]

I don't think you're getting into the spirit of this thread. It's not about evaluating the version of Star Trek that we have, it's about asking what each of us would set aside if we were given the opportunity to reinvent it from scratch. It would be a pretty boring thread if we didn't each have different ideas about how to do that. So those differences of opinion are not something to roll our eyes at, they're something to welcome.

I just find the reasoning flawed. Star Trek is not hard science fiction.

Of course everybody can have their opinions, and I don't say you must love telepathy but if you throw out telepathy with the reasoning that it's a "fantasy ability" the universal translator, (non fatal) matter transporters and god knows what else can go along.
If technological telepathy is okay, i don't see why an alien race shouldn't evolve it without technological means, of course such a characteristic would calls for a far more alien culture than the psionics we have seen in Star Trek, I concede that.

I will also say that telepathic abilities in Star Trek, such as Troi's often seem to be written without much thought being put into them. That should change, imho.

 

[Tim Walker]

Instead of constantly running into aliens of the week who are identical to humans or nearly identical to humans just with bumps on the forehead, I'd have it re-written so that they are in fact human colonies, possibly separated from the Federation or whatever.

Even transplanted humans would be more plausible than the bumpy-headed alien of the week.

Which was so over done that it is now tedious.

 

[Tim Walker]

As for mulit-culturalism, would it be too much to ask for to have more diversity? Not even other species-even humans from Earthly ethnic groups would be an improvement.

As for sports, I can imagine a character watching a soccer game on television. Someone who isn't too "evolved" to enjoy sports.

 

[Melakon]

One of my biggest disappointments was Section 31 suddenly popping up in Archer's era. I thought it was fine in DS9, though that may be due to William Sadler's work. It had me convinced that Section 31 was only one man.

 

[Kilana2]

As for mulit-culturalism, would it be too much to ask for to have more diversity? Not even other species-even humans from Earthly ethnic groups would be an improvement.

As for sports, I can imagine a character watching a soccer game on television. Someone who isn't too "evolved" to enjoy sports.

Christopher´s novels include the most diverse characters I have read of. Some are difficult to picture, but he gives his best to describe them. That´s the advantage of the novels: you don´t see an alien onscreen, you have to imagine how he/she/it looks like.

 

[Tim Walker]

I know it's classic Trek, but I'm wary/weary of cosmic entities with otherworldly powers. Spaceborne lifeforms like Junior are cool, but others like Q really should be operating on a level that's incomprehensible by any means to the audience, or are just vague enough that magic applies (and even those entities are rather cryptic about their abilities, again despite the sci-fi aspects of the show).

Why would God like beings bother to interact with puny Earthlings?

Only a few plots are plausible with these beings, and I think these were exhausted with the first TNG episode.

As for other powerful entities, a think that a force as powerful as the Borg would work only in very limited doses. Otherwise, they would have simply overwhelmed the Federation.

 

[Christopher]

I just find the reasoning flawed. Star Trek is not hard science fiction.

Again, though, this thread is not about what Star Trek already is. It's about what we'd change if we could start over from a more modern perspective. So yes, of course my suggestion is different from what ST currently is, but that's what I was asked for. The question was about "modern standards" versus the '60s-era assumptions that went into the original (or '80s-era for TNG), and my point is that the fascination with psi powers was more a part of '60s science fiction than it is of modern science fiction.

As for mulit-culturalism, would it be too much to ask for to have more diversity? Not even other species-even humans from Earthly ethnic groups would be an improvement.

Yes. White people make up less than a fifth of the human race and that percentage is shrinking, so an integrated humanity in the future should not be mostly white people with a few black people and the occasional solitary Asian or something. The ratios are badly skewed.

I've sometimes thought that if I could reinvent Trek totally from scratch and make it my own, I'd make Captain Kirk an Asian woman. ...Who would still be a womanizer.