Star Trek Discovery - Outside of Mythology?!?!?!

Oblivion pulled off the White Scifi look while still having it be gritty and believable.

 

Why does everyone want grit in the future?

I appreciate the sleek, clean, minimalist aesthetic of TOS and Forbidden Planet, as it reflects the types of designs that were common in real life at the time. Mad Men has made this kind of interior design popular again. Make Discovery's interiors look like Mad Men in space.

Keep the gritty, grungy, worn-out look in Star Wars, where it belongs.

Kor

 

I don't have an issue with a "visual reboot" of aliens. In fact, outside of Klingons, Star Trek has done that countless times. Andorians, Tellarites, Bolians, Cardassians, Gorn, Tiburonians, you name it. Every series has updated itself as new technologies and new techniques became available. We can write about subspecies or whatever, but we're really just supposed to shrug and accept them. And I think most of us usually do that.

 

Oh, I definitely expect them to update things, I just want them to still be recognizable as what they're supposed to be. It would just be weird to me for them to say it's in the Prime Universe and then totally change everything. I don't necessarily think that is what they're doing, it's just what I hope they aren't doing.
I think setting it 10 years before TOS is pretty smart, it's far enough they can make things look different, but still close enough they can work elements of TOS into it.

 

Me too and when I refer to grit I mean in the storytelling and characters. The show will be clean Trek, they won't change that. The Klingons will probably get a drastic makeover. Their ship and costuming is iconic but open to more interpretation.

If you look at Fuller design in other shows you can get an idea. Beautiful costumes. Stunning set design but also a more extreme aesthetic so if you don't like Fuller's stuff, you'll probably have issue with his design. I love it but I was surprised when I heard it was 23rd era. I thought they have to update the design of the most iconic Trek era and they hired a showrunner with a "love him or hate him" kind of aesthetic. I'm expecting nice uniforms that will seem closest to actual clothing yet (even more than JJverse but no saggy pants). Colors won't be solid but complex patterns like JJ but nicer. Probably short pants, iconic but slightly more contemporary boots. Choice of skirt or pants for women. Captain will have a variation(s) especially if older. Definitely new landing party jackets that call back to the Cage, but way more complex in design. Component Phaser. Updated but recognizable. Communicator is a tough call.

Darker lit sets (bright lighting interior and exterior was a production necessity before HD. They tried more complex lighting in TNG season 1 and 2 but it looked muddy when transferred to tape for broadcast). Lighting that will be saturated but mostly contained to living quarters. They will not abandon that, because Fuller always uses a lot of color. He mixes it with patterns to temper it. But as far as quarters and mood lighting for people hooking up, I'd expect some classic weird colors in those scenes. But not on the bridge or the transporter room or sickbay. They can't make the ship itself colorful or it will look dated. Warmer grays I think. Nicer pattern carpeting. The captain's chair I'm guessing will have nice wood in it ( I might be pushing it now). I have no idea how they'll go on buttons and panels. Much larger screen possibly floor to ceiling like TNG. These are the kinds of things they can't bring forward from 1966. Scifi productions usually need to keep up with the state of the art. Retro for sake of style can look dated and lame to a younger viewer.

The main thing about Fuller is his attention to detail. His work goes far beyond what is necessary in today's production climate. He makes shows that will hold up in appearance and content 20 years from now and longer. This is what qualifies him to do TV Trek. I can't think of a better showrunner for Trek right now, and I'm a Whedonite.

This is all speculation of course.

 

Fans will of course be able to -if they so desire- point to Enterprise's time war, First Contact's temporal incursion and even wibbly-wobbly rippling effects of the Kelvin timeline split to explain any changes. Of course, that will lead to years-long debates over what constitutes "prime" universe Trek.

*inserts Brace Yourselves meme*

 

Stealth reboot.

Fuller's made it clear that the choice of the so-called "Prime Universe" wasn't made out of any sense of loyalty to oldTrek - quite the opposite. However ironic, the fact is that the Trek "canon" that the new series now has to avoid stumbling over is the continuity being established in the nuTrek movies, and as Fuller has said it's easier to do that in the Prime universe since right now it's closed for business; a fossil.

Most of the change in TNG's look beginning with its third year was Marvin Rush becoming Director of Photography. Among other things he pushed for a change to a film stock that would work well with lower light levels.

 

I totally agree with this!!! In fact, one of my misgivings about setting it before TOS is that our vision of future tech is far different from TOS. How do you update TOS' setting without it feeling too retro? And yet, as I've thought about it over the last few months it could be done if folks are creative. For example, make the communicators like cell phones - put a screen under the cover and give it apps. You don't really break continuity with TOS......much.

But fundamentally I think the future should look like the future - and technology doesn't get bulkier and rougher looking as time goes on, it gets sleeker. I think the gritty aesthetic is popular because it's easy. But in context it only works in something post apocalyptic like Mad Max or Fallout.

Someplace Star Trek can go back to a sleek future is the communicator. Go to a wrist communicator design that basically looks like a razor thin wristband, but with a touchscreen all the way around. Have it interface with the user via VR, hud, vibration, audio, and text. Have it pull data from sensors in the uniform, and it replaces the tricorder as well. That can then build toward a holodeck recreation of an away team's situation organically without adding strange headwear or glasses. It would still look like Trek, but the functionality is a lot closer to our vision of the future.

 

I know that we as viewers expect sci fi tech to look more like the touchscreen devices that are so common now at the consumer level. And it certainly looks cool.

But one thing to consider is that real-life military equipment is a lot less flashy, and each device is durable and robust and serves a single purpose, rather than being a delicate and finicky multi-tasking computer like our consumer-level tablets and cell phones. I can definitely picture the TOS tricorders and communicators being part of that kind of no-nonsense military tech design lineage.

I would certainly hate it if I needed to contact my starship for an emergency beam-out, but I couldn't even make the call and ended up getting eaten by a monster because Angry Birds or Snapchat were freezing up again on my communicator/tricorder/tablet thing.

Kor

 

The borg... And I can't remember anyone complaining...

 

Here you go.

 

Military Tech is getting touch screens, the F35's Cockpit is basically one giant Touch Screen.

 

And isn't the whole point of the future that things go beyond what we have today? Touch screens will seem as antiquated buggy whips one day.......I always thought some form of holographic interface would be nice, but is a little hard to visualize on a day-to-day operational level.

 

Hard to visualize as in costly to do every episode, you mean? Because it's easy enough to see how that would/could happen..

It's been discussed before in the past, but the idea of a future where technology just *is* or as Gene called it "technology unchained" where it is more like magic, because it's inviisbly integrated all around us. You sit on a couch, run your hand over something and a holographic display comes up that you can wave your hands at.

The problem with a lot of this is... Kirk whipping out his communicator and flipping it open - That's the iconography of Star Trek. Yeah, in our future, everything will be very very different. We already have a good idea of what an FTL ship would possibly look like, and it's nothing like the Enterprise we love. In our future everything would likely be integrated, and a true synthesis of artificial and human organics. We'll have more in common with the borg than we will with TOS's 23rd Century. A 23rd Century mind, that was conceived of by Veterans of World War 2, and of people who grew up in the cold war.

 

I love the concept of "technology unchained"!! Technology should be easy and should "just work". I think that's why Star Trek's future has led to so many practical technologies today.

What I meant by holographic interfaces being hard to imagine operationally is trying to envision how it's better than a button on a panel, or a touchscreen. Much like a touchscreen can be easily reconfigured for various tasks or inputs, thereby making it better than buttons and gages, how do you similarly justify a holographic interface from a daily function standpoint? If I want to type something, how would a holographic interface work, aside from emulating a standard keyboard? I suspect the ideal scenario is something that looks very different than a keyboard, but I can't imagine what that is. It could be visually interesting (very interesting) and still relatable like Kirk's communicator because there's an interface we can identify with. This is where I think the design of controls on TNG fell apart - a lot of wasted display space with lots of small buttons.

I'd love to see Trek eventually create something as groundbreaking as the TOS communicator, but it will probably be a while given the production costs and issues.

 

One problem with newer tech is its often smaller and less visually impressive on screen. Holographic tech will need to exist in some form since VR is an emerging tech even now.
My old roommate would get furious when Data typed. He would say they could just plug him in, it's so inefficient. But it looked good on screen.

 

That could also be explained by his desire to be more human.

I seriously doubt Discovery will introduce anything revolutionary in terms of tech. I'd love to once again see a Star Trek series that did, though.

 

I'm not so sure. I think we are in for more of a change than we realize. In fact I think many of us fans are about to be dragged kicking and screaming into the "real" 23rd century. But even if it looks like the old, I'll be happy as long as story and character are solid.

 

Whoa, I just got promoted again. What is this, a Klingon ship?