Poll Do you consider Discovery to truly be in the Prime Timeline at this point?

[BillJ]

Bandwidth usage.

You don't think they would've figured that out in three hundred years time? A way to compress and decompress the signal? If they haven't why wouldn't they go ahead and use screen-to-screen where they have figured it out? Especially on critical communications?

It was done to look cool. But be consistent about it and don't go trying to sell it as Prime.

 

[Ceridwen]

A holographic projector should work basically the same way, regardless of whether it is projecting a mirrored person or a person on the other end of a long-distance call.

There's a silliness to there being a difference.

A FaceTime call should work basically the same way as taking a selfie, AND YET...

There's a silliness to all of Star Trek, this is where we draw the line?

 

[BillJ]

There's a silliness to all of Star Trek, this is where we draw the line?

At what point do they begin to work the silliness out if they want their work treated seriously as an adult drama? Seriously. The first season was about as well thought out as "The Alternative Factor".

 

[Ceridwen]

At what point do they begin to work the silliness out if they want their work treated seriously as an adult drama?

If they wanted to make an adult drama they shouldn't have made a Star Trek, since that has never described any version of this show.

 

[lawman]

Discovery presents itself as serious drama in a believable future, but it’s not above the occasional gag. But would Star Trek get away with farting aliens, the big brother house, rat eating skulls, sentient blobs of fat, a titanic replica in space, the orient express in space, stolen planets, clockwork robots, disappearing Olympic crowds. Dr who has far more creative freedom than Trek could ever have.

I don't necessarily agree that DSC presents itself as a "serious drama in a believable future." It's more of a melodrama, if anything. It does have different constraints than Doctor Who; DW is almost an anthology show, and always has been, with just enough continuing characters to stitch it together. TOS was something more like that, with lots of episodes that used SF tropes to explore other genres and settings, but each subsequent Trek series has been less so, and DSC seems the most inward-looking of all, very concerned with its own little world.

That said, DSC did have an episode this season with a villain who arrived on board in the belly of a space whale, wearing a literal bug-eyed alien suit, and proceeded to kill everyone on board in various creative ways in a series of time loops. That's not really any less wild than any of the DW examples you mention. And that was one of the favorite episodes of the season for a lot of people.

Very much this for me. Trek's claim to be our future is more valuable to me than its internal consistency.

I can't agree with this at all, mainly because in my eyes Trek has never claimed to be "our future." That ship sailed from the very beginning. All that's left is the question of how internally consistent its fictional world is.

(And I'm fine with that, BTW. It doesn't stop it from telling powerful stories with allegorical messages about our world. NuBSG made no pretense of having any connection to present-day Earth, for instance, but it told stories like that very effectively nonetheless.)

I want to see Trek as who we could be...

On this point, I agree. It's an aspirational vision.

...and it should always update itself to better represent our future. It shouldn’t be treated as some realistic alternate universe...

...but I don't see how the above point leads you to this conclusion. SF is full of aspirational visions of who and how we could be in possible futures — consider Asimov's robot stories, or Heinlein's future history — and the fact that their jumping-off points from real history are in the past doesn't make them any less compelling, entertaining, or insightful. I shiver at the thought that anyone would think of "updating" such things just for the sake of a better extrapolation from the present day... which would inevitably be dated itself within a few years anyway.

Other way around. It's past not being our past makes it pointless from a storytelling perspective. One of the conceits of Star Trek is it our future and shares our past and present.

Pointless? How do you figure? What do you say then about alternate-history SF, which is a huge subgenre in its own right and is explicitly, inherently different from our reality, yet is a great vehicle for evocative storytelling?

Anyway, the notion that Trek is "our future" has never been one of the conceits of the conceits of the show. I don't know what show you've been watching over the years, but the counter-examples are myriad.

I tend to prefer fictional universes be consistent with themselves primarily and find that breaking that consistency for the sake of real world developments to be annoying.

Quite so. Hear hear.

(All this seems to be the crux of the issue; some people don't mind or like the changes of DSC while others do. Everything else is just variations on that theme and none of it really has anything to do with the question of if the show is good or not on its own merits.)

I wouldn't say it has nothing to do with that. If DSC were really blowing everyone away with innovative, high-quality storytelling, I think a lot of people would be more tolerant of it on other grounds, including continuity. But it's not doing that, so its other weaknesses are all the more open to criticism as well.

He was 31 in First Contact? Post WWIII Earth must age people worse than Tatooine.

Umm, yep. You're just now asking the question that every other Trek fan was asking when the movie came out 22 years ago?

(James Cromwell was great in the role, no question — IMHO one of the best things about that movie. But I've often wondered if Braga and the other filmmakers had ever even seen TOS "Metamorphosis"...)

 

[Ceridwen]

(James Cromwell was great in the role, no question — IMHO one of the best things about that movie. But I've often wondered if Braga and the other filmmakers had ever even seen TOS "Metamorphosis"...)

Their original casting choice was Tom Hanks, but they had scheduling conflicts with That Thing You Do. Cromwell was a last minute decision that was justified by the strength of his performance over his resemblance to the original actor.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Pointless? How do you figure? What do you say then about alternate-history SF, which is a huge subgenre in its own right and is explicitly, inherently different from our reality, yet is a great vehicle for evocative storytelling?

I love alternate history SF, but that's not what Trek is, set out to be or ought to be.

 

[Ceridwen]

Yeah, Star Trek is all about that alt-history, that's why "Future's End" featured the Voyager crew running for their lives during a superman attack and "Carpenter Street" was a serious exploration of the lead up to World War III.

 

[Awesome Possum]

...but I don't see how the above point leads you to this conclusion. SF is full of aspirational visions of who and how we could be in possible futures — consider Asimov's robot stories, or Heinlein's future history — and the fact that their jumping-off points from real history are in the past doesn't make them any less compelling, entertaining, or insightful. I shiver at the thought that anyone would think of "updating" such things just for the sake of a better extrapolation from the present day... which would inevitably be dated itself within a few years anyway.

It's because our future is always changing and becoming more advanced as we grow more advanced. They're still making new Star Trek, they aren't making new Asimov and Heinlein because they died. If they were still alive and writing, I'd be surprised if modern advances didn't factor into their writing. It's not like updating the look or technology is changing the story. Star Trek is still about a future society of humans and aliens dealing with other aliens and sometimes thinly veiled social issues that affect the audience in a hamfisted way some of the time and reasonably other times. I'm not sure how holograms are used. There is a major difference between the story and the visuals. What difference does it make that viewscreen went from a giant TV screen (seen as advanced in the 1960s) to a window with an advanced HUD (seen as advanced in the 2010s)? You're still getting the same information, it still allows them to communicate visually with other ships. The only difference that instead of it getting damaged and going blank, it can get damaged and show whatever they can see out the window, which is probably the front of the ship and maybe a ship in the distance. If anything it increases dramatic possibilities and tension because the crew could see a threat slowly coming towards them instead of a blank screen or static.

Star Trek used to inspire younger generations to want to create the things they saw on screen. That's why we got flip phones, desktop computers and tablets. People have made an actual tricorder and we're developing holograms. How do you think seeing old clunky computers that seem to run off reel to reel tapes that sound like a 50s robot when we have smart phones in our pockets that look and sound better? Don't you want some young engineer to see a hologram communication over distances and figure out a way to actually create it?

 

[BillJ]

Don't you want some young engineer to see a hologram communication over distances and figure out a way to actually create it?

And the only way they will ever be inspired is if Discovery is in the Prime universe?

 

[lawman]

Yeah, Star Trek is all about that alt-history, that's why "Future's End" featured the Voyager crew running for their lives during a superman attack and "Carpenter Street" was a serious exploration of the lead up to World War III.

To be perhaps a bit pedantic about it, every work of fiction, SF or otherwise, is in a sense depicting an alternate reality. If it's about the future, any given story might envision a plausible extrapolation of the world that existed at the point a writer sat down to imagine it, but it can't envision the future of the world in which that story was actually published (or broadcast). At least, not unless prophecy is an element of the story (with all of the unsettling implications that has for free will). Even an ordinary piece of memetic litfic can't take place in the same world in which it's published. (Of course you can play around with this conceit — the movie Stranger Than Fiction did so, for instance, and it's a delightful little film — but that's a very distinctive kind of story.) This is perhaps a minor consideration for some random story in a low-circulation literary magazine, but Star Trek was and is one of the major popular culture phenomena of the late 20th century, and it's been hugely influential. There is no way the future depicted in Star Trek could exist in world in which Star Trek (the show and the franchise) existed.

To be less pedantic... even setting aside the above (which pertains to almost all fiction), there's plenty of evidence that Trek's writers never intended it to be a vision of our own future. To run down just a few examples, some of which have already been mentioned:

• As early as TOS season 1, "Space Seed" described events in the early 1990s (just 25 years in the show's future) that no one expected to happen, not least because the "selected breeding" program mentioned would've had to exist at that time and its subjects would already be alive.
• Even more to the point, TOS S2's "Assignment: Earth" was set in 1968, contemporary with its broadcast, and involved the launch of orbital nuclear weapons platforms, something that (thankfully) never took place in our reality, in 1968 or otherwise.
• ST: TMP, in 1979, described V'ger as the return of the Voyager 6 probe. Only two Voyager missions were ever launched in our reality, and by '79 no one seriously expected additional ones to be forthcoming.
• Fast forward to 1995, and DS9 did "Past Tense," depicting a near-future of 2024 in which poor Americans were herded into draconian urban "sanctuary districts." I sincerely hope the writers didn't expect this to be a real development.
• In 1996 VOY did "Future's End" — again set contemporary with its broadcast — depicting its history as one where technology had been changed as far back as 1967 by reverse-engineering future tech. (And no, BTW, nothing about it contradicts the Eugenics Wars backstory, seeing as how the action was confined to LA.)

Many of these stories, and more like them, are effective precisely because Trek doesn't have to pretend that its past is our present or future. Instead it can tell allegorical tales, warning parables of how we might go astray. That's one of the things SF is good at. If you just keep retconning it to be an extrapolation of our actual present, though, you lose that.

...It's not like updating the look or technology is changing the story. ... There is a major difference between the story and the visuals.

I never heard Trek fans saying this sort of thing before the launch of DSC, and quiet frankly I just don't buy it. The two are intimately, inextricably intertwined. It's just as true of Trek as it is of 2001 or Star Wars or Blade Runner or Alien or any other piece of iconic film or TV SF you care to mention.

If people want to create a new setting for a new story, extrapolating from the present day in newly imagined ways, that's great. Sounds like it could be a cool show (depending on the talent involved). There's just no reason to call it Star Trek.

 

[fireproof78]

Many of these stories, and more like them, are effective precisely because Trek doesn't have to pretend that its past is our present or future. Instead it can tell allegorical tales, warning parables of how we might go astray. That's one of the things SF is good at. If you just keep retconning it to be an extrapolation of our actual present, though, you lose that.

You really don't lose it if you update the tech to reflect current technological abilities.

Not sure what is "lost" on that point.

 

[BillJ]

You really don't lose it if you update the tech to reflect current technological abilities.

At what point do things lose cohesion when you have to keep pretending this or that didn't happen? What happens when there are no Sanctuary Districts in 2024? There comes a point when all you end up with is a jumbled mess that makes no sense.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Sarek looks like a ghost but the Klingons on the "not"Holodeck were completely solid. MirrorMode is solid.

Solid looking, sure. Creating a hologram that is physically solid is a lot more complicated to do and probably requires a degree of computing power that would be impractical aboard a 23rd century starship... but that's the same as saying that an Imax theater would be an impractical thing to install on an submarine, yes?

We know they interact with their environments at least little, but the extent of which is pure supposition.

It's not supposition at all. We know the projections are positioned relative to objects around them of the right shape and height. In that sense, Discovery's holocommunicators "interact" with their environment about as much as a snapchat filter "interacts" with your face. They're just projected in the right location to use the environment around them.

It doesn't work because I refuse to imagine in my head a bunch of technological limitations the show has failed to establish itself.

I can't think of any particular need to establish limitations. Just having these things have consistent capabilities and not expand too far beyond those capabilities will more than suffice.

Given the holograms' lack of ability to physically move real objects, and given the lack of artificial intelligence to animate them, I would say that the technology itself is pretty mundane and limited.

I explained this to you in detail 100 pages ago, but I'll say it again: The real innovative thing about holograms in the 24th century wasn't the projections per se, but the fact that they just such precise control over the projections as to give them realistic textures, shapes, and the realistic perception of mass and density; these also crucially depend on the computer's ability to simulate sophisticated artificial personalities with (relatively) realistic emotional and physical responses to stimuli, both real and simulated.

None of Discovery's holograms are anywhere close to being that sophisticated. To repeat an earlier analogy, you're essentially looking at 1918 typewriter and comparing it to a laptop computer because they can both be used to write letters. These are absolutely not the same things. Hell, Sisko's holocom on the Defiant was basically an electronic label maker by comparison.

The reason these holograms exist and are widespread in Discovery is because we now have the technology to depict them cheaply

That's it, there you go. It's something producers of Star Trek HAVE ALWAYS wanted to do but have never been able to pull it off. Now they can, so they're going for it.

 

[Nerys Myk]

You really don't lose it if you update the tech to reflect current technological abilities.

Not sure what is "lost" on that point.

Yes, that argument doesn't make sense. Trek's use of allegory and parable has nothing to do with keeping history and technology current.

 

[Nerys Myk]

At what point do things lose cohesion when you have to keep pretending this or that didn't happen? What happens when there are no Sanctuary Districts in 2024? There comes a point when all you end up with is a jumbled mess that makes no sense.

You simply don't mention them or if you do change the date. The number of veiwers who recall the Sanctuary Districts is small. It's just not that important.

 

[fireproof78]

At what point do things lose cohesion when you have to keep pretending this or that didn't happen? What happens when there are no Sanctuary Districts in 2024? There comes a point when all you end up with is a jumbled mess that makes no sense.

I was talking about technology, but that's a fair point.

It comes down to suspension of disbelief and individual members. For me, Heinlein hasn't lost value because we are not on Mars, or whatnot. There are still cultural touch stones that ground Heinlein firmly in Earth's past, and then extrapolate in to Earth's future.

I guess that's the key point for me-extrapolate. That's what Star Trek has always done is look at contemporary tech and forward look from there, to the point that individuals imagine and aspire to do so, to make it a part of our world. Now, that may have little impact on your viewing, or even my viewing, but the claim that Star Trek needs to keep being its own world in order to be relevant relegates its role to Grimms' fairy tales, entertaining, but, ultimately, not worth updating.

Which is fine. If Star Trek cannot be updated to reflect current understanding of technology, then perhaps it is time for it to die.

 

[BillJ]

It's just not that important.

If it isn't that important, they why the need to cram it into the Prime universe to begin with? Seriously? Every point that gets brought up "it's just not that important". Why is it important to be Prime, if nothing about Prime is important?

 

[Nerys Myk]

While you shouldn't throw out the baby with the bath water, you also shouldn't hang on to the bathwater forever.

 

[BillJ]

Which is fine. If Star Trek cannot be updated to reflect current understanding of technology, then perhaps it is time for it to die.

It absolutely can be, but it should've been done as a reboot.