Special alien and tech abilities to exploit

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Deanna Troi and Spock have the ability to read people, emotionally and mentally. Spock has his other Vulcan powers (strength, pinch) Data has android strength and brains. Odo and The Doctor can change forms, when needed.

How hard is it to keep coming up with story excuses for main characters to exercise their special powers?

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Deanna Troi and Spock have the ability to read people, emotionally and mentally. Spock has his other Vulcan powers (strength, pinch) Data has android strength and brains. Odo and The Doctor can change forms, when needed.

How hard is it to keep coming up with story excuses for main characters to exercise their special powers?

Just have those characters be on a seperate mission far away & unrelated to the current crisis at hand so the current protagonists can't have access to the characters with special powers.

Characters do get time off and vacation time in StarFleet, we've seen episodes where officers go away on conferences or holiday/vacation leave. Just have them be on one of those and boom, you can't have access to that character to solve your problem.

Or you can create a seperate mission for them to go on off-screen and now you've created a genuine problem that needs their special powers to be used for that off-screen non-story focused problem.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Their abilities better be applicable to a variety of situations, if they're a main character. So they're often open-ended. Things like telepathy and shape-changing are handy because they can be useful in a variety of circumstances.

A character whose superpower is something super specific, such as the ability to shoot soap bubbles from their fingertips, wouldn't have call to use it very often.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Their abilities better be applicable to a variety of situations, if they're a main character. So they're often open-ended. Things like telepathy and shape-changing are handy because they can be useful in a variety of circumstances.

A character whose superpower is something super specific, such as the ability to shoot soap bubbles from their fingertips, wouldn't have call to use it very often.

When was the last time you can remember that shooting soap bubbles was a useful ability to innately have that we couldn't have a soap bubble squirt gun solve?

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Being able to, in effect, bring an ability into a place where devices are confiscated due to high security.

I just mean that some powers are useful and applicable to multiple types of situations - eavesdropping on people's minds and changing your look to disguise yourself or get into tight spaces is very handy.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Being able to, in effect, bring an ability into a place where devices are confiscated due to high security.

True, that's why Julien Brashir was chosen by Section 31, he has advanced abilities thanks to being genetically engineered.

I just mean that some powers are useful and applicable to multiple types of situations - eavesdropping on people's minds and changing your look to disguise yourself or get into tight spaces is very handy.

Yup, many people would kill to have super-powers beyond regular people of their species and what they normally have.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

And of course, aliens with said abilities come as no surprise. A human with the same would be scrutinized, well-known, and seen as an oddity among their own.

 

[Mojochi]

Their abilities better be applicable to a variety of situations, if they're a main character. So they're often open-ended. Things like telepathy and shape-changing are handy because they can be useful in a variety of circumstances.

Honestly, that's also why in both Troi & Spock's case they tailored & limited those abilities, to keep them as loose as possible, because as much as they can be an asset in sci-fi writing, they can easily also become a stumbling block to have around in some narrative situations, where you'd too easily be able to solve any plot point.

This is why Batman has always worked better for writing than Superman. Supes really does a hell of a job boxing you into corners.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

This is why Batman has always worked better for writing than Superman. Supes really does a hell of a job boxing you into corners.

That's what happens when your fundamental hero is given a smorgasbord of powers:
SuperHuman:
- Strength
- Speed
- Stamina
- Agility
- Reflexes
- Longevity
- Senses
- Durability
- Heat vision
- Wind and freeze breath
- Solar energy absorption
- X-ray vision
- Flight

Superman literally gets 13x powers as the base version that we mostly know and in some other versions, he gets more on top of what he has.

It's ridiculous.

In a series like To Aru Kagaku no Railgun (A Certain Scientific Railgun) which is part of the greater To Aru (A Certain ...) franchise, the author was Smarter and generally limited his ESPers to have only 1x power at a time and have different levels of proficiency with their powers for those who have them to train and level up in.

It's incredibly rare for somebody to have multiple powers or they come from the "Magic Side" which is part of the greater theme of Science vs Magic in the franchise.

 

[at Quark's]

This is why Batman has always worked better for writing than Superman. Supes really does a hell of a job boxing you into corners.

I suppose we can be glad Q wasn't written as the hero of the show.

 

[Mojochi]

I suppose we can be glad Q wasn't written as the hero of the show.

Right. You can have a being of limitless super abilities, but it works best in doses... & like I've said elsewhere, even Q are shown limited in other ways, e.g. we never really seem them engaging in telepathy. I mean they're omnipotent, so they must be able to do it to/with anyone, but the only time I recollect seeing it is when Amanda Rogers mind controls Riker to love her. point being, it's best to lay off wherever possible, to give yourself some elbow room

 

[at Quark's]

^I remember someone proposing on this forum we should do a Federation series set in the far future, in a time when humanity has acquired Q-like powers. I then gave that person basically the same reply, that the writers probably would run out of interesting stories very quickly, as (most) stories usually revolve around difficulties that must be overcome .

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

because as much as they can be an asset in sci-fi writing, they can easily also become a stumbling block to have around in some narrative situations, where you'd too easily be able to solve any plot point.

That's why Q, with his capricious comings and goings, at his own whim, self-limits - he's not available whenever the crew needs him, like spinach for Popeye.

 

[at Quark's]

That's why Q, with his capricious comings and goings, at his own whim, self-limits - he's not available whenever the crew needs him, like spinach for Popeye.

On the other hand, he seems to be available pretty much whenever the crew does not need him

 

[Mojochi]

^I remember someone proposing on this forum we should do a Federation series set in the far future, in a time when humanity has acquired Q-like powers. I then gave that person basically the same reply, that the writers probably would run out of interesting stories very quickly, as (most) stories usually revolve around difficulties that must be overcome .

I've often flirted with how the heck TNG could've made a cinematic film that incorporated its most prominent or most creatively fertile nemesis (like TOS had Khan)

That character is Q, but really? That's a tough mission to write. It really can only revolve around the Continuum granting Picard Q powers in order to deal with him on equal footing. There's just no satisfying way to make an engaging story about 2 omnipotents in conflict IMHO, & that's probably why Q never made it to the big screen

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

There's just no satisfying way to make an engaging story about 2 omnipotents in conflict IMHO, & that's probably why Q never made it to the big screen

"Where No Man Has Gone Before" already covered that (sort of), although the effects were only temporary.

 

[publiusr]

Zakdorn as strategists…Binars for computer science…etc.

One approach to superbeings is to have Q and a companion travel to other universes…or universe sets…Dr. Who writ large…W quoting Rudy Rucker about how some infinities are larger than others.

Now here is where AI could really shine

In one alternate reality, Q looks a bit frightened… down below, you see a computer animation of this painting brought to unlife:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Triumph_of_Death

Right as Q and companion vanish, the head Embodiment/archetype looks skyward, and turns the hourglass anew.

The secret weapon against gods—is that heaven is never so high as hell is deep

 

[Henoch]

A Q show could be a Star Trek version of Marvel's "What If?" series.
Example for the first episode: "What If ... Kirk failed to kill Gray Mitchell?"

 

[Roundabout]

It wasn't alien tech. But it was presented as something special. What I'm referring to is Geordi's visor, in TNG.

The visor obviously gave Geordi sight, of a sort. And just as importantly, it gave Geordi capabilities that other humans didn't naturally possess.

There were a number of episodes, early in the series, where the plot highlighted the visor's capabilities, like in "Heart of Glory", where we saw the visor function in all its glory.

In "Too Short a Season", Geordi's use of the visor helped the landing party navigate Karnak's tunnels. And in "Up the Long Ladder", the visor allowed Geordi to function as a human lie detector. That's not a bad ability to have.

To the writers' credit, it wasn't overused. I don't recall too many episodes where Geordi used his visor to save the day.

In fact, there were other stories where the visor was shown to have vulnerabilities that were exploited by the bad guys.

But here's my issue with the visor. Starfleet engineers are smart. So why didn't they manufacture a visor that had the capabilities of Geordi's visor, but that could be used by someone with normal sight, something akin to present day night vision goggles.

I'm not saying that someone should wear such such a visor all the time. If a mission requires a certain capability to be employed, then the crewman would simply put on the visor for the mission.

But, of course, Geordi would have lost his specialness if that had happened.

Geordi was a relatively boring character imho. The visor, at least, gave the character his claim to fame.

 

[WarpTenLizard]

What gets me is, why couldn't Starfleet find a full Betazoid to be Picard's Bridge psychic? Was Deanna just one of the only Betazoids in Starfleet at the time?