Spoilers Starship Design in Star Trek: Picard

[XCV330]

Ultimately I think we mean different things with 'continuity.' To me continuity cannot have contradictions, canon can.

My thinking might be affected by running a lot of RPGs, I tend to think setting as a coherent, consistent whole. So If I'm running a Star Trek RPG set in 2262, then the question "does Starfleet have knowledge of cloaking devices" can have only one answer in that setting. As setting where there is a different answer to that question is a slightly different setting with a slightly different history.

I ran a Star Trek RP set in 2080. I know how hard continuity can be.

But when it comes to film and television, you have to accept some inconsistencies, and that gets harder to control as the franchise ages. Reboots are one answer. Hollywood loves them. It frees up writers to do what they want. They can use what worked in the past or try new elements.

Star Trek fans are.. uh.. not always the most pleasant souls. 2009 was a reboot of sorts and there's just no pleasing some fans. Should they do it again? Honestly I don't care, as long as the writing is good and they have good actors and the spaceships look like star trek, which I'm not really that picky about either. But if they do, it will won't please everyone. They should just keep doing what they're doing. It's working.

 

[El Maestro]

It's a very postmodern approach to argue that fans are entitled to create their own reality that resolves tension and doesn't make them uncomfortable.

ETA: I mean, if it doesn't hurt anyone, then fine, but man, I wouldn't want to create content for a franchise whose fans can't or won't agree on what is and isn't in-universe.

 

[SolarisOne]

My way to explain time travel suits, interstellar beaming and knowledge of mycelial Jump Drive as early as the 2250s is that everything from First Contact and ENT "Regeneration" exists in a changed timeline. Someone in the 2150s went back for those Borg bodies that ENT blew out into space and for the wreckage of that Borgified freighter. After decades of study, reverse engineering and painstaking recovery of data from the Borg...breakthroughs are made in time travel and transporter tech and other areas. Maybe fragments of Borg data on research into an instantaneous Jump Drive system leads to discovery of the mycelial network, etc.

That's actually not a bad hypothesis.

 

[BillJ]

ETA: I mean, if it doesn't hurt anyone, then fine, but man, I wouldn't want to create content for a franchise whose fans can't or won't agree on what is and isn't in-universe.

This has been going on for nearly the entirety of Star Trek’s existence. You are just now noticing?

For the record, I consider it all in-universe. Just that multiple timelines exist within that universe.

 

[Longinus]

It's a very postmodern approach to argue that fans are entitled to create their own reality that resolves tension and doesn't make them uncomfortable.

It is pretty postmodern that creators of fiction explain their intent online. In olden days people just read books and absorbed whatever meaning could be found on their pages, without the author holding their hand and explaining what they actually meant.

 

[fireproof78]

It's a very postmodern approach to argue that fans are entitled to create their own reality that resolves tension and doesn't make them uncomfortable.

Not really. That is the very nature of humanity to seek pleasure and avoid pain.

 

[Longinus]

I have still hard time understanding the definition of timeline that can contain blatantly contradictory events...

 

[Racefuel]

I have still hard time understanding the definition of timeline that can contain blatantly contradictory events...

Like the federation both having and not having money at the same time?

 

[fireproof78]

I have still hard time understanding the definition of timeline that can contain blatantly contradictory events...

It's all a matter of interpretation.

 

[Longinus]

Like the federation both having and not having money at the same time?

Yes, kinda like that. I have my headcanon for how that works which is sufficiently consistent for me. (I.e. if I were running a Trek RPG I could explain roughly how the Federation economy works.) I literally could not explain the history of cloaking devices so that TOS, ENT and DIS depictions of them could all exist as part of one continuous history.

 

[Longinus]

It's all a matter of interpretation.

But humour me, I am not trying to argue as much as honestly trying to understand. What is your interpretation of the history of cloaking devices that is consistent with all the depictions?

 

[cooleddie74]

It's possible that cloaks weren't actually used on Romulan warships in the conflict with Earth and the Coalition, just for smaller and easier-to-hide objects like mines. Thus a lot of humans and their allies wouldn't have had any experience with or even knowledge of primitive cloaking technology. It's as reasonable a theory as any.

DSC is harder to explain away but if T'Kuvma's Sarcophagus Ship was one of only a few that had a cloaking device then not many Starfleet officers in the 2250s would have known of the technology and it could have easily been dismissed and swept under the rug as a rumor.

 

[Longinus]

It's possible that cloaks weren't actually used on Romulan warships in the conflict with Earth and the Coalition, just for smaller and easier-to-hide objects like mines. Thus a lot of humans and their allies wouldn't have had any experience with or even knowledge of primitive cloaking technology. It's as reasonable a theory as any.

But they used cloak next to the Enterprise, NX-01 had direct contact with several cloaked ships and objects. and then on DIS, the cloaks were prominently used in the Klingon War. Yet a decade later Kirk's crew is unfamiliar with them.

 

[cooleddie74]

I don't know. ENT is a lot easier to explain away, though, by classifying what the NX-01 encountered in a few small incidents during peacetime.

 

[XCV330]

I wish they had not retconned cloaks, but they did. the possiblities are that there were various types of cloaks. The Romulan one from TOS was very different from the Klingon version, or from the Romulan active camo used in ENT.
as far as Klingons go: I don't think they invent much of anything. It's clear that their doctors and scientists are a lower caste that only the most dedicated willingly work for, and even then they're still left having to steal or take most of their technology.

 

[cooleddie74]

A hydrogen bomb is very different from an atomic bomb. And let's face it, not many people before the first hydrogen bomb had seen an atomic bomb detonation so they're going to treat the first fusion-created mushroom cloud they witness with awe and a sense of wonder at from where it originated.

To DSC's credit - and this is being generous with some of the lazy writing aimed at just being "cool" - the Klingon cloaks are referred to as "invisibility screens" on at least one or two occasions and the term "cloak" isn't universally used so there's an out to preserve TOS canon.

 

[Gonzo]

This has been going on for nearly the entirety of Star Trek’s existence. You are just now noticing?

For the record, I consider it all in-universe. Just that multiple timelines exist within that universe.

As you know I dont worry too much about this universe or that however I am wary of Discovery S3.

Burnham still has that suit so she could reset it all at any time, all she has to do is identify the events (probably more than one) she needs to stop to undo it all:

1. Avoid the war with the Klingons by destroying the beacon, sarcophagus ship and possibly T'Kuvma himself.
2. Stop her parents from dying in the retaliatory attack so she never lives with Spock by stoppng the theft of the crystal from the Klingons in the first place.

Plus Georgiou has to come back at some point and there is no guarantee she will be returned to the correct point in time.

In fact one viable storyline for the S31 show could see Georgiou coming back prior to all those events with the intention of stopping them from ever happening.

All she would need to do is go back and convince Leland that he should drop the time suit project.

 

[WarpFactorZ]

To DSC's credit - and this is being generous with some of the lazy writing aimed at just being "cool" - the Klingon cloaks are referred to as "invisibility screens" on at least one or two occasions and the term "cloak" isn't universally used so there's an out to preserve TOS canon.

Actually, what happened in-universe is that someone on the Shenzhou entered it in the log as a croaking device, because it was masking the ship of the dead. So, Spock was (as always) technically correct that no cloaking device had ever been observed by a Federation ship.

And now you know!

 

[Longinus]

A hydrogen bomb is very different from an atomic bomb. And let's face it, not many people before the first hydrogen bomb had seen an atomic bomb detonation so they're going to treat the first fusion-created mushroom cloud they witness with awe and a sense of wonder at from where it originated.

Most people do not even understand the difference, and the mushroom cloud if forever associated with the bombs used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

To DSC's credit - and this is being generous with some of the lazy writing aimed at just being "cool" - the Klingon cloaks are referred to as "invisibility screens" on at least one or two occasions and the term "cloak" isn't universally used so there's an out to preserve TOS canon.

'Invisibility screen' is literally what it is called in Balance of Terror. It is just a blatant continuity violation and I for one am done with trying to patch up the continuity. If the creators do not care about it then it is ultimately an exercise in futility. In DIS there were cloaks in the Klingon War, and in TOS they encountered the cloaks the first time. I take both of these at face value, and treat them as they're presented, and if that means that these two things cannot exist in the same continuity then so be it. I am not trying to come up with some bizarre explanation for how Sean Connery's and Timothy Dalton's Bond adventures take place in same continuity either, I just enjoy both set of films as their own thing.

 

[cooleddie74]

I'm on record saying a lot of DSC's writing is lacking and just plain lazy retconning just to make the show more "hip" and exciting, I just think the ENT examples are easy to explain what with the minefield incident happening 114 years before the TOS episode and Starfleet's penchant for being very nervous about previously unseen and potentially dangerous alien technology. That's why we don't hear about the Borg between "Regeneration(ENT)" and "Q Who?(TNG)" and even the El-Aurian refugees in GEN don't openly mention the Borg during their scenes aboard the Enterprise-B.