Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 3x03 - "People of Earth"

They also wanted to bring back Tige Andrews as Kras for "The Trouble with Tribbles," which would've been interesting, given Kras's onscreen death in "Friday's Child".

 

If you take Book's words that the Temporal Wars were really devastating and assume even Earth was affected somehow, and then the Burn happened immediately after that, it's not really unrealistic that Earth would become isolationist. The majority of the population was probably so worn out by all the wars brought by being part of the Federation that they didn't even try to stop the Federation from leaving.

 

We are getting very far afield here, but, while I very much dislike the movie, the physics in that particular scene actually make way more sense than they do at first glance. Being able to maneuver independent of orbital velocity and having artificial gravity inside the ships makes what we see way more plausible than it looks.

 

I would say TOS is - despite its goofiness at times - a genuine attempt to engage with literary science fiction ideas which was relatively rare for the time period it was made.

But Trek over time became more self-referential. It stopped being about exploring science-fiction concepts and the human condition, and became about exploring Star Trek lore.

 

That was more due to the change on how Roddenberry in the TNG era established that humans were supposed to be more enlightened, move past current day prejudices, etc. in the future. To the point that DS9 had the Ferengi be the stand-ins for modern day humans, as the humans portrayed in Trek were no longer quite representative anymore, having mostly become moral superheroes.

 

I think TOS could do that but didn't always succeed, largely because it was focused on the characters and didn't worry as much about technical explanations.

I think TOS tried very hard at first, and then became more willingly to be in its own world. Which I liked but it relied less on the harder science and more on what it was building in regards to the characters. I do think that Trek, despite becoming more self-referential, was still largely about the human condition, even if the science was not as concrete.

 

Hard to say in retrospective for all Trek series, but at least Disco doesn‘t do a good job at this.

For example in the seasion opener, its totally unplausible why and how they crashed. And how did they survive this extreme trajectory ?

Also this standard orbits, it’s not really a thing to hover over the same point of a planets surface in low altitudes.

I guess Kerbal ruined 30 years of Trek for me

 

But if they use anti-gravity (or some other means) to keep their ships stationary in a point in space above a planet rather than needing to actually orbit the planet, then if something is dropped from those ships, it will fall straight down to the planet below.

EDIT TO ADD: That's also why a heat shield might not be necessary for star wars. Our real-life spacecraft require heat shields because they are moving at 17,000 mph while they orbit (or 25,000 mph when they returned from the moon). So, when they hit that atmosphere at those speeds, there is plenty of friction.

However, for a ship NOT orbiting that fast, or one that could slow down to a much reduced speed before contacting the atmosphere, then no heat shield would be required.

 

TOS was rarely, if ever about “science fiction concepts”. It was about exploring humanity in a science fiction setting.

 

Nothing in the episode saying they're Xenophobic, in fact there are aliens it the boarding party.

 

So you must think most of the Star Trek is stupid then.

if you're talking about the bombing at the start of TLJ, that does not disobey the laws of physics.
They're close enough to the planet that gravity would still effect them (at most 90% of the force), plus the ship itself has artificial gravity acting on the bombs, that force wouldn't suddenly go away when they hit vacuum. They falling straight down. People with scientific backgrounds have done videos on this.

 

From TNG on, I've seen most of the series as they were airing. ENT was the only exception. So, for me, it's not hard to say in retrospect. Discovery shouldn't be singled out. It's only singled out because it's the current series. No other reason. It's happened before. It'll happen again.

 

And even if it wasn't fully scientific it exists inside the realm of the world, i.e. the bombers in Empire Strikes Back. So, even if not scientifically accurate it is consistent with the world's rules.

 

Yeah, Star Wars ignors the laws of physics all the time.

Starfighters fly through space like it's a vacuum, at least in the OT. That's mostly because Lucas modelled them after WW2 aerial battles.

 

Quite literally:

 

Even then not all literary science fiction was also 'hard' science fiction. IE - A lot of literary sci fi still posited things that were technically impossible by the science we know today.

Star Trek has never been 'hard' science fiction...ever.

 

Earth was definitely not what I expected in this one.
We got some nice moments as Burnham reunited with everyone else.
The introduction of Adira was pretty good, them having a Trill symbiont was a huge surprise.
The reveal that the attackers were actually human, and the resolution to that whole conflict was great Star Trek.

 

I'm still not convinced Wen was human. He was obviously Todd the Wraith in disguise.

 

He's obviously more human than Book, who could still be a 32nd century Borg with more subtle technological parts. Or an Augment.

 

Chekov and Terrell seem aware of the Ceti Alpha system and the number of planets in the system. They beamed down to what they think is Ceti Alpha VI and Chekov makes jokes about it's nature. You'd think sensors would have told them a planet was missing when they arrived. Especially if the planet is the sixth of six planets but there are only five.
I think the Reliant had a list of potential planets for use in the Genesis Project and Ceti Alpha VI was on the list. Probably based on previous explorations. Spock knew that Ceti Alpha V was habitable , if a bit savage in Space Seed, so it goes to reckon that there was information on the other planets as well.