Seasons 1 and 2 were good but couldn't stand the MacGuffin Red Angel
- Thread starter urrutiap
- Start date
Most of those other things at least make some kind of sense, given the rest of the technology.
The Red Angel suit can travel literally anywhere in time AND space, can move large objects, structures, people along with it. It can basically do... almost literally anything. It completely and utterly broke any kind of suspension of disbelief. It needed to have some explanation for existing other than "Burnham's parents built it". It's like, the most advanced piece of technology we have seen in Star Trek.
Nanotech is a massively disruptive technology. It'll change the face of the planet eventually.
In TNG it was an accidental tinkering by Wesley that led them to gain sentience, also fairly massive in implications.
They use them for minor surgical procedures. Minor surgical procedures! They are not prototypes though, there aren't just one of them, and they are in standard use.
Later on the Borg use them. Again, they are underutilized but what they DO is use capabilities undrempt of in the Federation, and is never utilized anywhere in Starfleet!
TOS: How many times did they travel over warp 10? Never reverse-engineered any of it even though their computers would've registered the changes made.
So, again this is not uncommon, but the time suit is at least explained by what it is, and what happens to it.
The actual time travel aspect of it I can excuse as the time crystal macguffin. But... it's the rest that's the issue. The Red Angel is basically a self-contained starship suit, capable to essentially instantaneous travel to seemingly any point in the galaxy.
All spacesuits are essentially self-contained spacecraft. Space-time is also essentially the same thing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime
The time crystal is like any object that has weird properties for whatever reason they want it, but it isn't unprecedented, we had an "Orb of Time" in DS9 for example. So it is something missing in everyday Federation science that would probably keep the project from being easily repeatable, because of diplomatic and cultural reasons. That goes back to my prototype rationale.
My inference of the design is that the suit itself is not a time ship in the sense of an Aeon ship (small in itself though) but it uses the "wings" to extend area as some sort of fictional focusing element (like the time mirror in Ellison's Outer Limits).
The art direction also shows they had at one time planned on using other components for a larger unit, but the rendering of the wings sort of demonstrates this focusing area.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/KeJ8AR
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Season 2 was literally about the Red Angel.
See, to me that makes it incredibly cool. They developed God tier technology and after it freaked out the known galaxy, buried it.
Well there is that.
A common scifi trope. Every Marvel movie is about something advanced developed ahead of its time, often by secret orgs like Sec31.
TOS uses a different warp scale. Warp 8 in TOS is 512 times the sped of light, in TNG it is 1024 times the speed of light.
Originally this is from the writers guides, and the TNG Technical Manual, but Enterprise First Flight canonized the chart used in the books.
Of course we then have the speed of plot as well...
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They violated that warp scale, which is why David Gerrold put the warp 10 scale in the TNG Bible.
Yes, sometimes I feel guilty because the printed scale is really not what we always see. So there is always that footnote.
Here's a little tip - watch the two seasons, both closely enough, understand the plot, and then if you're not sure or it's too complex for you, have a look on Memory Alpha or similar, BEFORE you come on here and tell us what took place in whatever season (incorrectly) and then argue with people who have watched the show properly.
You won’t have to deal with Klingons on that show any longer.
