You mean that stuff doesn't work?
Spoilers Yeah... I give up - Star Trek has abandoned philosophical naturalism - it's depressing/juvenile
- Thread starter INACTIVEUSS Einstein
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You mean that stuff doesn't work?
No comment on OP itself, but in hindsight it does strike me as odd that mythical beings, spaceborne organisms, and powerful noncorporeal entities all but disappeared from Trek during late Voyager and almost all of Enterprise (closest we got was Kes, Q, and that hallucinatory space whale). And I'm disappointed that we didn't see any of that in the Kelvinverse. Given that that's how TNG, DS9, and VOY started, it's kind of glaring. Heck, the Dominion tried to paint the Founders in the same light.
Say what you will about Discovery, but I'm glad that, at the very least, space animals are back. Points for turning the Mycelial Network into some sort of Eldritch Horror as well. Both should be part of the territory that says, "to explore strange new worlds" and "to seek out new life."
And if any Trek crew runs into a new level of existence or reality, something very high concept, it would make sense that they would run into beings who would understand those dimensions better than the crew, even if it's on a purely instinctual level (like the tardigrade) or some mystic-cosmic-temporal sense (like El-Aurians).
Which stuff? Trek science or Ranger Fu?
I'm sorry, were there any words in that post?
Thanks for so eloquently articulating what the real elephant in the room is. Scientific naturalism and humanism has been the absolute foundation of Star Trek since it began, it's a real shame to see it not being the lifeblood anymore. As has been stated innumerably here on the forum, the emperor never has any clothes in Star Trek. There is always a scientific and rational approach which can explain - or explore ways to explain - even the most seemingly bizarre occurrences. I feel that while DSC pays tokenistic homage to other Star Treks, the central core as explained in the OP has remained either unseen or ignored.
Maybe getting a job on the DSC team just involved Kurtzman judging who can do the best air guitar.
The Organians popped up in Ent don't forget and one could make a case the Sphere Builders/Future Guy/Daniels bordered on that sort of territory, alien so advanced their tech may as well be magic.
Yeah, I'm enjoying seeing our heroes when not fighting a war too
I hate iO9, and that bullshit right there is one of the reasons why.
The Organians popped up in Ent don't forget and one could make a case the Sphere Builders/Future Guy/Daniels bordered on that sort of territory, alien so advanced their tech may as well be magic.
Yeah, I'm enjoying seeing our heroes when not fighting a war too
Eh, I'd argue that Future Guy and Daniels are mortal enough to get DQ'd from the qualification. But the Organians in ENT was one of the very rare examples out of 4 years, when Trek used to have that sort of encounter several times a season.
ENT would never get close to, say, the Farpoint creatures or Trelane or even that water fountain guardian when Picard and Wesley were trapped on that desert planet.
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But, this isn't something unique to DISCO. It just isn't. Naturalism and humanism started sliding away with TPM and TNG, with creatures like V'Ger, the Traveler, Q and the Edo god. Those have no explanation aside from tacit comments and credits.
Godlike aliens were something that Roddenberry loved as a concept, and overused. As soon as he was sidelined, they started dropping the introduction of new ones. They had issues in terms of their narrative use, but I very much appreciated that in the TOS world, there were many alien civilizations which were hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of years more advanced than our own. This was basically dropped during the Berman/Piller era, where all alien races were, for no particularly good reason, either roughly technologically similar to the Federation or significantly less advanced.
Yes I do. Because it's entertaining trite bullshit.
G
Gonzo
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A thread like this would have more weight if they actually stopped watching.
We all know they will be back next week to watch.
A thread like this would have more weight if they actually stopped watching.
We all know they will be back next week to watch.
Wait for all the posts telling us about how people didn't
In terms of viewership, it more like collapsed.
It had exactly the same rate of dropoff over the course of its run as Voyager and Enterprise. Thankfully it started from a higher base however.
another one of those desperately unpopular 7 season shows?
Because it started earlier.
That's right, every post-TNG series dropped off, every year. Eventually they hit bottom. DS9 could not hold onto its viewership. Voyager could not hold onto its viewership. Enterprise could not hold onto its viewership.
TNG grew its viewership. It lent DS9 a pretty high jumping-off place to begin its downward plunge from.
What exactly is your point? That lightening didn't strike twice?
TNG came on the air in a very different period where there was virtually no other sci-fi shows on TV. By the mid 90s, there was plenty of competition, even if some of it was terrible.
Ah, so DS9 fell due to terrible competition?
Fans are always making up silly excuses for Trek's decline on TV. The answer is the same that as for every show that declines: people grew tired of Trek and stopped watching.
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