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Will We Ever See The 1990s Star Trek Aesthetic Again? Or Hear that “humm” Sound When No One Speaks?

I've read many TOS fans opinions who still think TNG design is poor compared to what they were used to.
Count this TOS era fan is one of them. The Galaxy class, Defiant class and Intrepid designs are still garbage. The only 24th century air design are remotely like is both versions of the Ambassador class; and I really like Andy Probert's original design which we never saw on screen.

I disliked the Galaxy class since I first saw it in 1987 In an entertainment show 'sneak peek' a few days before the 2-hour premiere of "Encounter At Farpoint".

As always YMMV.
 
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I love TNG/DS9 and even Voyager. I miss those shows. But they are dated - at the very least because they were made 2 to three decades ago. The sets can look very plastic and junky, the graphics can be laughably bad, the costumes ill-fitting at times and ridiculous at others, etc. etc. etc.
The sound design and lighting was fine for it's time but doesn't fit a modern aesthetic. The action scenes are dorky and very staged.
Voyager, in particular seems to be fond of sprayed on sweat.
It's ok to love something and admit it was rather silly at times.

But the modern Trek shows haven't exactly wowed, with their reliance on colorization to set moods, surprisingly bad alien costumes, and lazy ship battles. It's not like half a dozen other skiffy franchises rely on those crutches, but I've not been too impressed.
To me the last time I was in awe at a Trek special effect was in Star Trek Beyond during the Starbase Yorktown scenes. THAT WAS AMAZING! I also though the Romulan mining vessel BadGuy or whatever was impressive, as was the Jellyfish.
The Trek movies have been a good place to see some really high quality effects and costumes, Trek TV not so much.
 
ENT was the first HD Star Trek series and it showed. The effects took a pretty significant jump over those in VOY and until DSC came along you couldn't top ENT's visual effects in small screen Trek and had to go to the big screen to surpass what the effects team on that series accomplished. Even TOS Remastered didn't try to match ENT's recent accomplishments though Remastered sequences like the Enterprise's strafing run on the Planet Killer in "The Doomsday Machine" may have taken cues from what the prequel series achieved on its own budget.
 
I couldn't give a :censored: about effects. Give me characters I care about. VFX gets so much emphasis that it takes away a lot of enjoyment. "Oh, look at how pretty the VFX is!" is not complimentary in my view.

ETA: To clarify, pretty VFX is not the compliment that people seem to think it is. I get that it is almost a requirement now to have "pretty FX" but that doesn't make a good show.
 
DSC doesn't have pretty f/x most of the time, sadly. Too murky, too dimly-lit and not enough shots of the camera lingering on the action at hand. It has the most advanced for sure of any of the series but I'd never call them "pretty" in most cases.
 
DSC doesn't have pretty f/x most of the time, sadly. Too murky, too dimly-lit and not enough shots of the camera lingering on the action at hand. It has the most advanced for sure of any of the series but I'd never call them "pretty" in most cases.
Use whatever term you want. VFX is not my focus and I am slowly getting to the point that I despise the use of VFX as any meaningful measure of a show's quality.
 
With all the resources they threw at it, they could at least have made their show look like something made in 2021. You know, instead of amateur CG designs shot like a videogame?

Honestly, this "it's all these years later" comeback which seems to be the go-to for defenders of STD works out as "It's okay that it looks like crap, don't you realize things are supposed to look like crap now?" And that's not actually true.
What's really telling is the bridge sets only look marginally better (and cut from the same plywood) than the various tech centers of DC shows despite having the budget of over four times per episode or almost three times per season.

What do they spend all the money on?
 
What's really telling is the bridge sets only look marginally better (and cut from the same plywood) than the various tech centers of DC shows despite having the budget of over four times per episode or almost three times per season.

What do they spend all the money on?
Group hugs
 
Christ alive - doing a Voyager rewatch and got to Good Sheperd in S6. They have a moment where Paris gets handed a PADD and it shows the display clearly and it really hit home how low tech 90s Trek pitched the future at.

The PADD looks just about as advanced as the graphical calculator I had back in 2003.

As others have mentioned - the complete lack of networks on the ship are shocking. Home and business networks were common enough, as was email, that email (fleetmail?) should have been standard.
 
Christ alive - doing a Voyager rewatch and got to Good Sheperd in S6. They have a moment where Paris gets handed a PADD and it shows the display clearly and it really hit home how low tech 90s Trek pitched the future at.

The PADD looks just about as advanced as the graphical calculator I had back in 2003.

As others have mentioned - the complete lack of networks on the ship are shocking. Home and business networks were common enough, as was email, that email (fleetmail?) should have been standard.
This one?
https://voy.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/6x20/Good_Shepherd_180.JPG
In the PADD's defence, the character who handed it to Paris was claiming to do "multivariate analysis" so perhaps "graphical calculator mode" serves that purpose best? ;)
 
This one?
https://voy.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/6x20/Good_Shepherd_180.JPG
In the PADD's defence, the character who handed it to Paris was claiming to do "multivariate analysis" so perhaps "graphical calculator mode" serves that purpose best? ;)

Exactly that.

Fair point that God did invent the graphalator for such an occasion...when we wasn't luring starships to him using less heard of pointy earred siblings.

That looks like someone ran over a game boy colour through- it just amazes me how short reaching their ideas of future tech were.

It's been mentioned before about one PADD per document, lack of redundant systems it is sheer madness.

Think it was Time's Arrow in TNG where Samuel Clemens rocks up - when they try to send him back Worf says they can't know whether he made it or not. Pick up a damn book and just see if he is referenced as writing any books after that date! Get your 2370 era Nokia out and use Spacewiki or something guys!
 
If Star Trek is supposed to be self-updating in order to reflect a vision of the future, does that mean that every fictional event which should’ve happened by now has been erased from the continuity, even though they’re all still reflected in the official timeline?
 
Christ alive - doing a Voyager rewatch and got to Good Sheperd in S6. They have a moment where Paris gets handed a PADD and it shows the display clearly and it really hit home how low tech 90s Trek pitched the future at.

The PADD looks just about as advanced as the graphical calculator I had back in 2003.

As others have mentioned - the complete lack of networks on the ship are shocking. Home and business networks were common enough, as was email, that email (fleetmail?) should have been standard.
One of the worse times for me was in Voyager's fourth season when the crew is getting letters from home for the first time. Neelix is going around the ship acting as the postman to deliver PADDs to everyone with their letter on it. Because everyone just doesn't have their own e-mail account the letter could be sent to?

Runner up would be Dark Frontier where Seven of Nine's parents' logs are kept on something like two dozen PADDS stored in a crate. Those logs should be stored in the ship's database that can be accessed from a single PADD.
 
I can kind of forgive TOS for some of their tech low points (Kirk with a mic guys? Sorry not a mic, whatever special audio equipment it was meant to be) due to the vast difference in tech and budget between then and the 90s.

But certainly by Voyager, most tech that we know now was in use or in development - Internet, email, networked systems were all there. Touch screens were not far off commercial use.

When Enterprise updated the tech a fair bit I was alright with it due to it being more realistic compared to our current stage of technology. Same with Disco being flashier.

Clothing was another shocking low for Trek in the 80s and 90s. The leisurewear was atrocious. Seems everyone loved a one piece jumpsuit type thing in the off hours.

I also found the language of Trek in that era to be strange at best - almost Victorian or Edwardian in how children spoke to adults for example.
 
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