If the title peaks your interest, you'll be disappointed to learn that there is no "Daedalus Class" ship.
"Enterprise" too advanced for 22nd Century
- Thread starter CaptainSpirk
- Start date
More referring to the Greek myth, but that's good to know too. I never liked the Daedalus class anyway.
Thank you. I would have like to have to seen the Enterprise more along the line of the Original Series. After all, it was only one-hundred years in the past.
Who cares if our current technology is meant to represent our future? Isn't the 22nd Century only 100 years? I doubt it would have changed that much.
I think the idea of what does or does not look advanced is quite subjective. That said, my surmise is that rooms with screens all over the place are going to look pretty ridiculous in the future as audio interfaces become more normalized. Sure, there will be displays, but I think don't they'll be put to use very often except in cases like viewers that are more like cams or simple displays. I think the Graphical User Interface will be pretty much dead once you can just talk to the computer in completely normal language.
We're already on the road to that today. Most of us can tell our phones to, "Skype call James Kirk and put him on speaker," and most of the time the phones get it right. But sometimes they don't. It's a work in progress.
But once it does work right, who the Hell is going to want to swipe through icons, tap on Skype, wait for all the graphics to load, tap on contacts, scroll through the list, tap on James Kirk, tap on call, tap on speaker. Amping up displays and creating more complicated-looking visual interfaces isn't the future. It's Data and Troi in Darmok constructing complicated queries of multiple databases in order to report on and filter results -- all using natural language.
As for jelly buttons, switches, and toggles... Well, I think they'd probably be labeled in any kind of reality, but somewhat generically. I can imagine Scotty whipping up one of his programs -- like blowing up the Constellation's impulse engines -- and saying finishing it with something like "go into stand by mode when Switch 1 is activated, start a 30 second timer when Switch 2 is activated. When the timer completes, execute."
I'll grant you, their appearance kinda sucks, but I think that's a matter of style. And styles do change over time. But I really don't see switches and toggles disappearing, especially on spacecraft.
You have seen the difference in a warship from 1917 and a warship from 2017, right?
Or 1817 for that matter.
That was originally meant to be a fatal accident, which is why it was played so gravely when it happened. But the producers decided they didn't want the first crew fatality to be dealt with so casually; they wanted it to carry real weight when it happened. So they put in a line about the crewman surviving, and we didn't get the first actual crew fatality until season 3. Maybe they waited too long, but that's one thing I think ENT did better than any previous Trek series -- approaching death in a mature way, not just using it as a throwaway plot beat but dealing with its impact and consequences when it happened.
But it makes no sense to ask a show made in the 2000s for 2000s audiences to pretend it's a product of the 1960s. Again, Star Trek was not meant to be retro. It was meant to be cutting-edge futurism. Its '60s elements are the areas where it fell short of its goal to portray the future, due to limitations of budget (as in the appearance of the sets and controls) or imagination (as in the unthinking sexism). Roddenberry himself would never have wanted a later incarnation to cling to those dated '60s elements, which is why he changed the look of everything so completely in TMP (or approved of Robert Wise doing so, at least).
The first mention of a 23rd-century setting for the show was in James Blish's prose adaptation of "Space Seed" in the collection Star Trek 2 in 1968 (although Blish's adaptation of "Miri" in the previous volume put it in the 27th century, and the much later "Squire of Gothos" adaptation in volume 11 was consistent with the episode's 28th-century assumption). The second was in the book The Making of Star Trek later that year. That book was the authoritative text about ST for some time, the original source of a lot of long-accepted conventional wisdom about Trek, e.g. the term "mind meld" (which was never used in TOS until season 3 and then only twice), the existence of a Klingon-Romulan alliance ("The Enterprise Incident" only said Romulans were using Klingon ships), the idea that Kirk was the youngest starship captain, the idea that the E's forward dish was a navigational deflector, etc. So its mention of the 23rd century was probably the reason that was subsequently accepted as the correct time frame.
The first explicit onscreen mention was in the TV commercials for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, while the film itself implied a 23rd-century setting when Decker said that Voyager 6 had been lost "over 300 years ago" (although that doesn't rule out an early 24th-century setting). The first explicit in-story mention was the opening caption of The Wrath of Khan.
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Yeah, they beam him aboard as a last resort emergency when they hear him screaming and suffering on the com, and have no other way of getting to him. He looks awful, but after he's treated, the Doctor says "He'll be okay." A little later the Doctor says "I was totally wrong. This dude's gonna die most likely." Then at the end, T'Pol says he'll live. Poor guy...
Wow. I didn't know that. Yes, when people do start dying in the Expanse, it's treated very seriously. Kudos to ENT.
I like that, the show realizing that this was a lone ship that was on its own so no throwing "Red shoulder striped Bill to the wolves" just to establish a dangerous thing since with such a limited crew with little support back home already made it clear of the dangers they'll face anyway since they can't take a loss so casually.
^Yeah, but I wish they'd found a way to deal with it earlier than the third season. Sure, it was great that they were determined to give death weight rather than treat it as a casual "Oh, so sad the redshirts died, now let's finish the episode laughing at a dumb joke" sort of thing. But it was also unrealistic that these novice, out-of-their-depth explorers managed to go two whole years without a fatality, and it made the first two seasons feel like they were going too easy on the crew.
Honestly if Enterprise tried to look retro it would never have left the depths of Braga's mind without being shot down.
Star Trek isn't about pandering to retro.
Star Trek isn't about pandering to retro.
If Ent had gone for the TOS look, it probably would have fell faster then it did.
The show was made in the 21st Century, not the 60s.
I want a retro-inspired look, but not exactly like TOS. Imagine if post-WWII modernism was given a much bigger budget. Something can look "retro" but still have futuristic functionality.
I absolutely love sleek, smooth, minimalist, forward-thinking and clean retro-futurism based on the great modernist designers such as Saarinen, Wright, the Eameses, Kloss, et al. To me, nothing looks better in a science fiction setting, especially contrasted with the tendency of a lot of sci-fi to make things look grungy and cluttered with all kinds of nonsensical pieces of mechanical junk just for the sake of meaningless visual detail. That's supposed to be the future? Really??
Kor
I absolutely love sleek, smooth, minimalist, forward-thinking and clean retro-futurism based on the great modernist designers such as Saarinen, Wright, the Eameses, Kloss, et al. To me, nothing looks better in a science fiction setting, especially contrasted with the tendency of a lot of sci-fi to make things look grungy and cluttered with all kinds of nonsensical pieces of mechanical junk just for the sake of meaningless visual detail. That's supposed to be the future? Really??
Kor
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It wouldn't make sense to be exactly like TOS any way. A century is a long time for technological advancement-just look at computers or phones in the last 50 years. Technology isn't static, so the idea that things are a bit cluttered at first, leading up to TOS makes more sense to me, especially given that Earth had just gone through world war or something, and some technology might have been lost.I want a retro-inspired look, but not exactly like TOS. Imagine if post-WWII modernism was given a much bigger budget. Something can look "retro" but still have futuristic functionality.
I absolutely love sleek, smooth, minimalist, forward-thinking and clean retro-futurism based on the great modernist designers such as Saarinen, Wright, the Eameses, Kloss, et al. To me, nothing looks better in a science fiction setting, especially contrasted with the tendency of a lot of sci-fi to make things look grungy and cluttered with all kinds of nonsensical pieces of mechanical junk just for the sake of meaningless visual detail. That's supposed to be the future? Really??
Kor
I enjoy retro-futurism as well, and the clean lines, but I don't have an issue with a between stage that was a little bit rougher. I certainly don't feel like ENT was too advanced looking to be a prequel to TOS.
Why "Braga's mind"? It was created by Rick Berman and Brannon Braga. Some people have this notion of Braga as a singular auteur like J.J. Abrams or Joss Whedon, advancing his own vision, but the theme that's emerged over his career is that he's really more of a workmanlike producer who helps make other people's ideas happen. As a screenwriter, he's almost always worked with partners, and he's only had a co-creator credit on three of the many shows he's run, and they've all had very different styles and creative voices (Trek, Threshold, FlashForward, 24, Terra Nova, Cosmos, Salem), because the visions aren't really his. If anything, I think the reason the Braga-produced seasons of VGR and ENT were mediocre compared to those seasons of Trek from other showrunners is because the other showrunners had more inclination to stand up to Berman and defend their own ideas, while Braga mostly just did what Berman wanted.
Braga makes a convenient scapegoat. So that's why everybody keeps blaming him.
(This also applies, to a lesser extent, to Berman.)
(This also applies, to a lesser extent, to Berman.)
Honestly, I don't want ENT to have modeled itself too much after TOS' aesthetic. TOS had a shoe-string budget and was cancelled after only three seasons. NBC definitely wanted it cancelled before that, but gave it a chance to find its footing - something that would never happen in today's TV environment. As soon as Star Trek's production team had a chance to get a real budget, they completely changed just about everything about the aesthetic of the universe.
For my tastes, ENT paid enough homage to TOS to fit in-universe as a prequel set a century earlier, and did enough of its own thing to make it feel like a unique Star Trek story. And in doing so, it ended up putting 19 more episodes than TOS on the air.
For my tastes, ENT paid enough homage to TOS to fit in-universe as a prequel set a century earlier, and did enough of its own thing to make it feel like a unique Star Trek story. And in doing so, it ended up putting 19 more episodes than TOS on the air.
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NBC didn't want to cancel it -- they appreciated having such a classy and well-made show on their network (it actually had just about the best visual effects in the history of television up to that point, far from being the cheap production people today tend to assume), and they appreciated the prestige of its Emmy nominations (which both Leonard Nimoy and the FX team received in all three seasons). They just had trouble affording to keep it on the air because its ratings weren't as strong as they'd like. This is what people tend not to understand about network renewal/cancellation decisions -- they're not about wanting or liking, they're about money. If a show is making money, they renew the show even if it's stupid and embarrassing, like all the reality crap around these days. If it's losing money, then they have to cancel it no matter how much they want to keep it.
