I am completely fine with the holographic technology as it is presented on DIS (most of the time). This is simply an issue where the real world catched aup prety fast. We are going to see functioning holograms probably already in our lifetime, two hundred years in the future they should have this technology. For me it's more important to still register as "our" future than some canon nitpicks. The head-canon explanation is also really simple: The TNG era holograms are solid. With force-fields. That's some batshit insane technology. On DIS, we saw Tyler open a door in his holographic battle simulation - but even that was just minimal interaction, and could very well just be his hand position being registered, and not actually "touching" a hologram. Craft in Calypso seemed to must have learned to move to dance with hologram Zora, he probably didn't really hold her, but just copied the position from the movie, and Zora was projected to match that. Overall, non-solid holograms on DIS are completely fine, and TNG's force-field ones still work as 100 years more advanced. My only complaints about the holograms are two-fold: That holographic communication was such a big deal for Sisko - but to be perfectly honest, that was stupid on DS9 part. In the world of Trek, holographic communication (at least in civilian environment) should have been well known. This was DS9 dropping the ball. Not DIS. Holographic communication is less usefull than the face-time commication they did before. Also it looks very generic. Everyone has to always stand awkwardly around, you don't see the environment the other person is in, you can't just sit and have a talk, and there is a distracting 3D image in the middle of the room. A classic monitor would be a far superiour metod of communication - hell, they could even make the image truly 3D if they wanted to show off. So yeah, I think the hologram communication is not really an issue with canon. I'm just not a big fan of it because it's highly impractical. But it's not bothering me enough to really care about it.
Oh, yeah, forget the episode, but there was one, Huh. I think that went out the door when the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s were reaffirmed to be part of the world's history after the real life timeframe came and went; the Star Trek franchise chose to keep its own continuity over representing our future a long time time ago. Besides, as the Jurassic Park franchise has shown, being an alternate timeline doesn't make you any less relevant. Okay. That's a fair way to look at it, although I kinda think the latter shows should conform to the earlier ones in general. Okay.
The only thing we know about the holographic communicators in "For The Uniform" were that they were new for the Defiant and the Malinche and that Eddington had stolen one. The characters made a big deal about it, but we really don't know how old that technology is, especially since, given the technology witnessed throughout TNG and DS9, there's no way Starfleet hadn't already perfected this method of communication well before DS9. The fact that we never saw it doesn't mean much when considering the canonicity of DIS holographic comms. I just got a new DVR. It wasn't just invented, though.
You tagged me as saying those last 3 quotes, not Rahul. I wouldn't be surprised if holo-comms just suddenly vanish in Season 2. Unless they've already been shown in the trailers, I don't recall. The ones in DS9 could be a seen as a refinement of DSC's versions of them comms. Maybe some issue comes up that takes about 100+ years to resolve. Obviously that is speculation and wishful thinking.
I can think of a few ways to rationalize this in my head. Perhaps on newer starships, increased weapons yields or shield reserves might have taken some of the energy budget that had been previously allocated for holocomms on older ships. Or differences in the design of internal energy waveguides, inertial dampers, etc., no longer provided an efficient way of energizing and managing the required ship or deck wide hologrid required for the types of holocommunication we've seen in DIS. Over the years, the tech was streamlined, and eventually, holoemitters got small enough it became practical to have standalone holocomm pads as seen in DS9 on Defiant, Malinche, and Sisko's office. Then comes the Intrepid class where this technology is put to use in the medical bay. Sorry for the derail. To legitimize my post, I will, however, say that I approve of the hair being added back to the klingons -- although the season 1 Klingons did eventually grow on me a little and I could have gone either way going forward. I do have a problem with the face makeup we've seen on L'Rell, it clearly can be improved. I thought her face was prettier in S1. I'm not going to hold to that opinion over one photo though before the season starts. I'm okay with the in-universe explanation, but I think it's going a bit too far to call it a clever or great explanation. It's an explanation that works, but that's about as far as I'll go with it, IMO.
You mean when Voyager travelled back in time to the year 1996 - and it was our time, and not some Eugenic Wars happening? Yeah, Star Trek is supposed to be our future - at least a "possible" one. And everytime real-life developments overtake the fictional future history, reality overwrites canon. In this case, the date given for the Eugenic Wars was simply wrong - maybe Khan just created a new calendar in his delusions of grandeur. In the same way, when the year 2063 comes arond, you can be sure that Zephrane Chochranse maiden voyage will be retconned back a reasonable amount of time. Reality trumps canon. Always.
Sorry. It wasn't our 1996; Rain Robinson had a photo of a launch of a DY-100 space ship, something that only happened in the Star Trek version of the 1990s. (Also, as I recall, the official chronologies put the episode after the war ended.) Then why have all post-1990s Star Trek canon projects continued to reaffirm the original date, from ENT to Star Trek Into Darkness? Heck, the only source that even possibly re-dated the Eugenics Wars was admitted to being a scrip error by the writer and explained to be something to ignore. I'm very not sure. This isn't a comic book sliding timescale. It never has, as we've consistently seen.
First of all: The "official" chronology is non-canon as fuck. Second: Humanity in VOY's "Time's end" definitely had NOT the technology for space travel OR genetic engineering for that matter. The DY-100 was a great inside gag, but in the continuity of the show nothing more than a concept. The 1996 of Star Trek is as much "our" world as the world of "How I met your mother" and "Sherlock Holmes" is our world. Of course it's fictionalized. It's a fictional story for Christ's sake! But it's still supposed to be our world in which those fictions take place. That's how storytelling works at it's basic fundamental level. Star Trek is our world. At least it's supposed to be. Kirk in "Voyage Home" visited our 1989. VOY visited our 1996. Kelvin-Trek uses music from our 00's. And the year 2018 in the Trek history is exactly our 2018. In a story. Because it's a story. About our world. Easy stuff.
The 1996 seen in VOY "Future's End" wasn't our world. There's a superficially recognisable California onscreen sure. A lot more everyday than a previously mentioned 90's dominated by genetically engineered warlords fighting among each other, while billions got bombed out of existence. But we're still seeing a different timeline to ours, because it's obviously polluted by Henry Starling reverse engineering future tech, making himself the creator of the microchip revolution.
Things is we have never been living in Star Trek's timeline. Our present has never been James Kirk's past. In our reality Star Trek is just some television shows and moves, not the reality of the 22nd-24th centuries. No Edith Keeler in the 30's, no orbital nukes in the 60's, no "Omaha Air Force Base", no Eugenics Wars in the 1990's, no Voyager 6 space probe. They need to just stop trying to adjust the fiction to match our present and concentrate on the future.
This is true for EVERY fiction. There never has been a "Ted Mosby", nor the skyscraper he designed. There never has been a "Sherlock Holmes". Nor the crimes commited by Moriarty. No "Romeo & Juliet". No Camelot. Yet ALL of these stories pretend to take place in "our" world. And so does Star Trek. Is that really so hard to understand?
^^^^ I get that. Really I do. I'm just saying I wish folks would stop trying to rationalize Star Trek to try and fit it into the real world. Or visa versa. Let Trek be Trek, and let Reality be Reality. We don't need lengthy explanations about how the Eugenics Warts happened when we weren't looking (for example) - all due respect to Greg Cox, we just need to accept it happened in Trek's past, not ours.
VOY may be "our reality" but TOS was not, we did not have a massive war in the 1990's. THe Soviet union is also gone in our reality . so what you are saying is TOS is an alt reality but TNG is our reality?
Star Trek is part of our world as much as any other story set in our world. The Eugenic Wars never happened in 1996 in Star Trek canon. That was, well, ret-conned. 1996 was "our" 1996. The history of the Star Trek universe is the same history as "our" history up to the present, depending on which year "present" currently is. And that will never change. Because one of the central conceits of Star Trek is that it's our future, not an alternate history, or a story from a galaxy far away.
Technically true. On the other hand, it has been used as a source for guiding canon info. The reason that the Federation was founded 2161 was because the writers suggested that date in the book, same with Kirk being born 2233. Even the timeframe of TOS was taken from the chronology (albeit a year off, but that would give TAS room to fit in). There is speculation and some guesswork, but it seems to have more weight then something like those licensed technical manuals or other reference books that invented stuff from whole cloth. But whatever. Where is that written? Just because we don't see it doesn't mean it's not there, anymore then you'd argue that Earth Spacedock didn't exist during TOS just because we didn't see it until the movies. And yet the franchise has done nothing but reaffirm that fictional events like this still happened even when real-life history has stated otherwise. Also, the reason that the wars are not mentioned in the VOY episode was only to keep the story less confusing for viewers why the modern day had stuff going on that only hardcore fans weren't aware of. Nowhere has it ever been indicated that the intent was to retcon the wars or that we were supposed to read the show as taking place in a world where they never happened. Wrong. Look at the history at how this's been handled. In that "Future's End" (VOY) prologue, there's a broadcast about the Brush Wars inspiring a riot, referring to a fictional 20th century conflict mentioned in "A Private Little War" (TOS) that had long been proven to not have happened. The Eugenics Wars and the Augments themselves are handled as they were original presented back in the '60s. In "Doctor Bashir I Presume" (DS9), Admiral Bennett says: "Two hundred years ago we tried to improve the species through DNA resequencing, and what did we get for our trouble? The Eugenics Wars. For every Julian Bashir that can be created, there's a Khan Singh waiting in the wings." Writer Ronald D. Moore, when asked why the character's pegging of the dates seemed to move the events out of the '90s, explained:"This is my personal screw-up. When I was writing that speech, I was thinking about Khan and somehow his dialog from "Wrath" started floating through my brain: "On Earth… 200 years ago… I was a Prince…" The number 200 just stuck in my head and I put it in the script without making the necessary adjustment for the fact that "Wrath" took place almost a hundred years prior to "Dr. Bashir." I wrote it, I get the blame." (from Memory Alpha) So, Moore's intent was to use the '90s date despite knowing that it was not accurate to real-life history. In "Borderlands" (ENT), Phlox comments on the Augment DNA: "This is extremely sophisticated work for twentieth century Earth." In Star Trek Into Darkness, when they discover the Augment in the torpedo, we get this conversation: McCoy: "This [cryogenics] technology's beyond me." Spock: How advanced, Doctor Carol Marcus: It's not advanced. That cryo tube is ancient." [that's problematic with "Space Seed" [TOS], but bear with me] MCCOY: We haven't needed to freeze anyone since we developed warp capability, which explains the most interesting thing about our friend here. He's three hundred years old." Canonical sources building off the Eugenics Wars backstory, written after the 1990s, always reaffirm the original date (and if you want to get into non-canon, the Khan miniseries that tied into Into Darkness also used a version of a '90s Eugenics Wars that was an open conflict and did not conform to real history). Don't know how much clearer we can get.