Military/engineering type fandom: Should DSC embrace technicality?

[INACTIVERedDwarf]

Looking back on growing up, the Star Trek video games of the 90s probably played an important part in embedding my imagination further into the setting. Games like Birth of the Federation simulated colonisation of new solar systems, and the industrial production of starships. It and others showed the relative differences between classes of ships. Going back and watching an episode afterwards probably gave you new appreciation for the Federation as a living society. The non-canon cloud of realistic material surrounding Star Trek and Star Wars was important.

A big part of the fandom surrounding many science fiction franchises is an engineering enthusiast type of appreciation for the technical specs of vehicles, and their tactical applications. Star Trek fandom embraced this from the Fleet Charts of the 80s onwards, although on-screen writing didn't always reflect the systematic ideas in the non-canon books (Stargate SG-1 or Japanese franchises tended to more). Quite a few fans are attracted by this side of the franchise, as irrelevant of whatever stance you have on glorifying military operations in Star Trek, appreciating their engineering ideas can be very satisfying, and is a natural healthy pursuit.

Should DSC perhaps make a conscious effort for units and vehicles to adhere to some kind of realistic military principles? Or if it already does, to publish more material about this? Do you feel the Crossfield-class with it's rotating saucer adheres to realistic principles, or was it done to capture attention in a more superficial way?

 

[F. King Daniel]

Im pretty sure any Treknical aficionados left hate Discovery for rendering all their existing diagrams, manuals and size-comparison charts obsolete with its reboot-but-its-not-a-reboot-honest. Same reason there's no real demand for Kelvin Universe technical stuff (as much as I would love it)

 

[INACTIVERedDwarf]

Im pretty sure any Treknical aficionados left hate Discovery for rendering all their existing diagrams, manuals and size-comparison charts obsolete with its reboot-but-its-not-a-reboot-honest. Same reason there's no real demand for Kelvin Universe technical stuff (as much as I would love it)

I think it was a bad idea to not pay attention to building a coherent design history within the setting, so my own view is that, for example, Klingon ship designs should have presented a more coherent and practical military evolution between ENT and later Trek.

Ultimately I wonder whether all this obsession with incoherent re-imagining within entertainment settings (separating the visual from the historical) contributes to viewer anxiety. Psychological theories such as "sense of coherence", seem to suggest that humans do in fact prefer a comprehensible reality; just not one that is simplified down into fanwank (oh look, the same people and ships turned up); to be logical without being simplistic (i.e. real life has fascinating complex things in it, but they are ultimately comprehensible). This is perhaps what people find disturbing about Discovery and Into Darkness; the incomprehensibility of some of the material.

 

[XCV330]

Im pretty sure any Treknical aficionados left hate Discovery for rendering all their existing diagrams, manuals and size-comparison charts obsolete with its reboot-but-its-not-a-reboot-honest. Same reason there's no real demand for Kelvin Universe technical stuff (as much as I would love it)

I had the SF Technical manual as a kid in the 80s. It's the 80s and I'm not a.. ok we'll leave the kid thing alone but I change is good. More stuff to look at.

If I see a design cycle continuity from ENT to TOS to TOS/MOVIE era it would be, knowing what we know now only from visual cannon.

Earth gets the standard Cochrain drive. The two-nacelle layout is there from the start.
At some point Earth experiments with Vulcan style ring drives. They abandon this for the most part.
SS Emmett is shown still using the twin nacell layout with a delta shaped main hull. This is later used in the Warp Deltas.
USS Franklin and the USS Intrepid are some of the first saucer hulled ships. From NX-01 on, this appears to be the norm for Starfleet ships.
There is at least one ship class in the period after the NX class with a secondary hull, albeit with a spherical main hull. The Sisko keeps a model of it. We don't know why he does, but he's a ship designer so it must be important to him. Whether it is the Daedalous remains unclear.

Starfleet will continue on and off with single nacelle ships but and other configurations but single saucer hull/twin nacelles becomes the norm. Rectangular nacelles begin to become the norm at this point on many Starfleet ship classes.

The Constitution class is developed.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

No disrespect intended, but technical aficionados have a tendency to over-inflate their importance as a viewing bloc compared to fans who enjoy the characters and stories but couldn't give a hoot about the tech stuff, and more casual viewers, who represent a much larger demographic.

I don't say this to imply that there's anything wrong with being a Treknology geek, as my shelves are full of Treknical publications too, it's just that we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the vast majority of the audience you have to appeal to in order to build a successful show don't give a damn about the details of how a phaser works or why there are differences in the external layout of two ships of the same class. They just want to be entertained, and a bunch of technical jargon and slavish devotion to technical continuity isn't the way to do it.

 

[The Wormhole]

realistic military principles

(Tapping the back of my head)
I'm getting a Red Alert right here.

 

[INACTIVERedDwarf]

No disrespect intended, but technical aficionados have a tendency to over-inflate their importance as a viewing bloc compared to fans who enjoy the characters and stories but couldn't give a hoot about the tech stuff, and more casual viewers, who represent a much larger demographic.

I don't say this to imply that there's anything wrong with being a Treknology geek, as my shelves are full of Treknical publications too, it's just that we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the vast majority of the audience you have to appeal to in order to build a successful show don't give a damn about the details of how a phaser works or why there are differences in the external layout of two ships of the same class. They just want to be entertained, and a bunch of technical jargon and slavish devotion to technical continuity isn't the way to do it.

Oh, I defiantly agree with you that technical affectionados don't make up a large part of the audience. No disrespect taken.

However, consider it like this; most people probably didn't really understand the depth of JRR Tolkien's linguistic learning (professor of Anglo-Saxon and English at Oxford, devoted student of epics like the Old English Beowulf and the Finnish Kalevala) which went into his "mythopoeia" when first reading The Lord of the Rings, but I wonder how much having the technical jargon in the background informing Frodo/Gandalf/Aragorn's conversations built a believable world.

Every word had an etymology stretching through a fictional history layered with centuries of development; every theme was deeply informed by his lifelong obsession with ancient epic poetry. Readers got a sense of the incredible layers of antiquity through casual references that were internally consistent.

See I think perhaps that has been a mistake in modern schools of TV writing, to assume those details don't matter, and are just window dressing surrounding a generic story. For Star Trek maybe the equivalent of a word like argonath, rohirrim, ithilien, haradrim, imladris, references to Durin's Bane and the Fall of Gondolin are Trek's technical and procedural details.

But ignoring that side of it for a moment, in Japan, and outside among the fan community, people still buy different minor variations of certain Gundam mobile suits or Front Mission robot panzer models and form a core of reliable hobbyist consumers who apprentice newer fans looking for depth; it might make good business sense to cultivate that kind of military enthusiast side of things for revenue and constant Internet media exposure, even if it's in the background. "25% different" reimaginings in "officially not a reboot" shows and other controversies like that don't seem to be well thought out from a purely branding POV; it might even send sales down if fans believe entire designs can be rendered unofficial at any time. Recently technically accurate games like Battlefleet Gothic and Battletech have been showing there is a market for good adaptations of technical settings; once upon a time Star Wars and Star Trek inspired audiences with their screen outings (dealing with grand themes of ethics and goodness) while games and manuals acted in this way as a second layer.

 

[Kor]

I think that such details should be kept to tie-in materials such as technical manuals, games, etc. It's little too much of a 'niche' interest area to have the show itself focus on it.

Kor

 

[INACTIVERedDwarf]

I think that such details should be kept to tie-in materials such as technical manuals, games, etc. It's little too much of a 'niche' interest area to have the show itself focus on it.

Kor

Although I hear what you mean, I'm wondering if we are not misinterpreting each other's definitions, getting our meanings crossed.... I say this because when I talk about references informing writing, I don't mean fanwanky quotes from Memory Alpha, or unnatural exposition, I mean, for example, procedural details informing what Starfleet does in a given situation, or casual lines that you might expect a character to say. SG-1 for example had a military advisor who would say "here in this scene it would make more sense if Carter radioed base first, because military units must maintain communication in this situation". A two second click on the radio with Carter reporting her position to SGC would be inserted and the scene looked far more professional as a result.

 

[Greg Cox]

People come to Trek and watch Trek for their own reasons. Some people really get into the hardware and technical specifications and that's cool if you're into that kind of thing and keep it in perspective. Other people are more into the characters, or the social allegories, or the optimistic vision of the future, or the space opera excitement, or the far-out sci-fi concepts and exotic aliens or whatever. A certain degree of consistency regarding the tech is probably not a bad thing, but I suspect that most viewers aren't going to care or notice if the starboard auxiliary deflector array switches location from one series to another.

Says the guy who, honestly, cannot tell a Ford from a Chevy and tends to scratch my head when folks see vast differences between the various different versions of the Enterprise. As long as it's got a saucer and a couple of nacelles, it looks like the Enterprise to me . . . .

 

[Mudd]

God, no.

 

[Pauln6]

I'm not an engineer or scientist but I've always admired Star Trek's attempt during TOS at least, to build their stories around sound engineering principles. Magical technology is something of a turn off for me. That said, TOS used terrible security protocols and shoddy scientific method as plot devices instead and that's equally irritating.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I'm not an engineer or scientist but I've always admired Star Trek's attempt during TOS at least, to build their stories around sound engineering principles. Magical technology is something of a turn off for me. That said, TOS used terrible security protocols and shoddy scientific method as plot devices instead and that's equally irritating.

Are we talking about the same TOS?

 

[Pauln6]

Are we talking about the same TOS?

Yes lol. There was a lot of real world engineering in there! Or are you suggesting that their security wasn't incompetent?

 

[Nerys Myk]

Yes lol. There was a lot of real world engineering in there! Or are you suggesting that their security wasn't incompetent?

I'm suggesting the engineering, like a lot of the science and tech, was more plot driven than real world driven.
Then again so was the security.

 

[XCV330]

I'm not an engineer or scientist but I've always admired Star Trek's attempt during TOS at least, to build their stories around sound engineering principles. Magical technology is something of a turn off for me. That said, TOS used terrible security protocols and shoddy scientific method as plot devices instead and that's equally irritating.

What real technology did you see in TOS?

 

[Pauln6]

I'm suggesting the engineering, like a lot of the science and tech, was more plot driven than real world driven.
Then again so was the security.

Ah yes, but I meant the core engineering ideas were sound.

TOS did waver quite a bit into very vague scenarios regarding power failure, engine failure, shield failure, and to this day, nobody really gets Impulse engines.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Ah yes, but I meant the core engineering ideas were sound.

Such as?

 

[Locutus of Bored]

What real technology did you see in TOS?

The Apple Store sells the newest version of Kirk's captain's log, and every time I go to CVS Pharmacy, they give me a yard-long receipt from something that looks just like Spock's science station printer.

I think they're singlehandedly responsible for deforestation.

 

[Pauln6]

Such as?

Using a matter / anti-matter reaction to generate vast amounts of energy?