The Trek verse has gone from land > sea > sky > space > time (prime and multiverses).
What's next?
What's next?
The Next Trek Vista
- Thread starter Laura Cynthia Chambers
- Start date
Bubble baths...
(TNG's "Where No One Has Gone Before")
(TNG's "Where No One Has Gone Before")
After the Milky Way is other galaxies. Beyond all our galaxies is the edge of the universe, then limbo, and maybe other universes.
I think different universes are the next frontier after time. Universes that are completely different from the ground up, as opposed to just off-shoots of our reality.
I think the 21st through 26th Centuries focus on Space. Then the 26th through 31st Centuries focus on Time. After that is a century of The Burn. Then from the 32nd Century to whenever, it's back to Space again. All looking at it from Earth and the Federation's POV. That would eventually extend to other galaxies with ongoing missions out there starting in the 33rd Century at the earliest.
Exploring other galaxies would literally take millennia, if not more. So by the time they're ready to leave our Universe, it'll be way, way, waaaayyyy out.
I think different universes are the next frontier after time. Universes that are completely different from the ground up, as opposed to just off-shoots of our reality.
I think the 21st through 26th Centuries focus on Space. Then the 26th through 31st Centuries focus on Time. After that is a century of The Burn. Then from the 32nd Century to whenever, it's back to Space again. All looking at it from Earth and the Federation's POV. That would eventually extend to other galaxies with ongoing missions out there starting in the 33rd Century at the earliest.
Exploring other galaxies would literally take millennia, if not more. So by the time they're ready to leave our Universe, it'll be way, way, waaaayyyy out.
Exploring the *inner* universe (spirituality), of course.
No, honestly, I don't know.
No, honestly, I don't know.
More of the same, until it becomes unprofitable again.
Essentially, reconnecting and making "renewed contact", as it were, with planets and races they've lost track of in the intervening time. Which keeps them busy enough as it is without having to explore the subatomic realms.
That reminds me of an interview I once read with one of the showrunners for The Simpsons. They were asked how long they thought the show would run.
The answer was: “Until we run out of good stories. And then a couple years after that.”
Universal transhumanism, true postscarcity, and perhaps even technological singularity.
A utopian version of Altered Carbon.
A millennium from now, everyone should be immortal and postbiological (like Picard, minus the ludicrous programmed aging) with superhuman mental and physical abilities and morphological freedom (the ability to change form at will).
Dangerous, resource-intensive, and nonsensical holodecks should be replaced with neurointerfaces which enable completely safe and extremely efficient immersive experiences which almost entirely replace physical reality.
Remotely-controlled, disposable avatar bodies should be beamed down to obviate risk. No more redshirt deaths.
Death should be extremely rare and always reversible through archived patterns.
The continued existence of disease, aging, disability, and frail, unenhanced minds and bodies is nonsensical.
Molecular nanotechnology should enable utility fog which creates an angelnet.
The Federation (and many others) already have all the required technology. They just need to stop underusing it.
Admittedly, a postsingularity setting might be too alien, but at the very least, lifespans should be indefinite—although even that would mean not casting older actors (which was done for the 2011 movie In Time) unless their presence was explained by immortal characters choosing to appear aged—and at least some mental and physical enhancement should be universal. Bashir proved that Augments can be ethical.
The real future will be the exact opposite of space opera: superhuman rather than superluminal.
A utopian version of Altered Carbon.
A millennium from now, everyone should be immortal and postbiological (like Picard, minus the ludicrous programmed aging) with superhuman mental and physical abilities and morphological freedom (the ability to change form at will).
Dangerous, resource-intensive, and nonsensical holodecks should be replaced with neurointerfaces which enable completely safe and extremely efficient immersive experiences which almost entirely replace physical reality.
Remotely-controlled, disposable avatar bodies should be beamed down to obviate risk. No more redshirt deaths.
Death should be extremely rare and always reversible through archived patterns.
The continued existence of disease, aging, disability, and frail, unenhanced minds and bodies is nonsensical.
Molecular nanotechnology should enable utility fog which creates an angelnet.
The Federation (and many others) already have all the required technology. They just need to stop underusing it.
Admittedly, a postsingularity setting might be too alien, but at the very least, lifespans should be indefinite—although even that would mean not casting older actors (which was done for the 2011 movie In Time) unless their presence was explained by immortal characters choosing to appear aged—and at least some mental and physical enhancement should be universal. Bashir proved that Augments can be ethical.
The real future will be the exact opposite of space opera: superhuman rather than superluminal.
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Inhabitants of fake space heaven visiting various degrees of Earth or hell from the safety and comfort of their living rooms or indestructible/throwaway selves? That could be a whole new genre of drama. (So, like TV watching, only you get to speak to the characters and feel you're there.)
Whenever offered such things permanently, Trek heroes reject it in favor of remaining as they are because that's what it means to be themselves (human, or whatever alien they are). Whenever assured that it won't matter to them anymore, they balk at the idea that their opinion could change. Probably because they feel they'll lose control and be helpless at the mercy of who or whatever made them that way.
Essentially, it's hard to experience immersion in the events around you when you know you can pull out of it anytime and it won't change anything.
Perhaps we'll see the "Corporal Prime Directive" next in Trek - prohibiting travel between people and manipulating their bodies directly. https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Wisp
Whenever offered such things permanently, Trek heroes reject it in favor of remaining as they are because that's what it means to be themselves (human, or whatever alien they are). Whenever assured that it won't matter to them anymore, they balk at the idea that their opinion could change. Probably because they feel they'll lose control and be helpless at the mercy of who or whatever made them that way.
Essentially, it's hard to experience immersion in the events around you when you know you can pull out of it anytime and it won't change anything.
Perhaps we'll see the "Corporal Prime Directive" next in Trek - prohibiting travel between people and manipulating their bodies directly. https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Wisp
It would be a real heaven.
It's already been done a few times, such as in Altered Carbon, Dark Matter, and Surrogates, although the technology is artificially limited to maintain dramatic tension.
Also, the protagonists are already effectively indestructible due to plot armor.
Not always. Wesley became a Traveler, Bashir appreciated his augmentation, Vash accepted Q's invitation to travel through time and space with him, Picard accepted postbiological resurrection, and Flint and the Ba'ku enjoyed their immortality, as did Una Chin-Riley as Morgan Primus in the First Splinter timeline.
Also, many species—such as Vulcans, Illyrians, and Betazoids—have naturally superhuman lifespans and abilities.
Even if so, that's what the technology they have would enable if used to its full extent—but I don't need to feel in danger to feel immersed in reality, and videogames and television can be highly immersive, as well, despite putting the player or viewer in no risk. We could at least see some centuries-old and enhanced but still-vulnerable humans, though.
The First Splinter timeline depicts some modest life extension with McCoy alive at 154 in 2381, Sulu at 135 in 2372, Chekov at 132 in 2377, Scotty at 125 in 2422, and Uhura at 121 in 2360. Considering that Jeanne Calment lived to 122 in 1997 (and took no medicine until she was 111), a 154-year-old in 2381 really isn't impressive and is far less than we can expect by then.
The abandonment of suspended animation is also absolutely nonsensical; "The Neutral Zone" shows us that it was perfected in the late twentieth century, yet centuries later, McCoy, a brilliant physician, doesn't consider using it to prevent his father from suffering while awaiting a cure...
That would be a Corporeal Prime Directive; a Corporal Prime Directive would presumably regard corporal punishment or its prohibition.
In Strange New Worlds VI - "Our Million-Year Mission," everyone in the Federation's successor state ascends into noncorporeality around three quarters of a megayear from now.
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My mistake. No taking over other people who have bodies and making them do what you want them to in the past, future, or even the present. Though what "present" means at that point to the non-linear, who knows?
Well, when presented with doing so against their will, before it was too late to say no, they rejected it. I wonder if someone would ever offer Bashir the chance to go back in time and un-augment himself, in favor of doing something less controversial to help young Jules however one could, whether he would take it.
Bashir clearly appreciated his superior intelligence and definitely would not have preferred to have remained developmentally challenged.
Was that treatment the only one possible, or the best/quickest fix?
Some people now, when given the choice between surgery for a problem and medication, prefer meds because they don't like the thought of having surgery in general, for instance.
In that century, if the illegality of obtaining genetic treatment like Bashir's didn't stop some people from choosing it for whatever problem they might have, the treatment itself might cause them to reject it, based on beliefs or fears.
Some people now, when given the choice between surgery for a problem and medication, prefer meds because they don't like the thought of having surgery in general, for instance.
In that century, if the illegality of obtaining genetic treatment like Bashir's didn't stop some people from choosing it for whatever problem they might have, the treatment itself might cause them to reject it, based on beliefs or fears.
Why wouldn't he want to have become a genius with no adverse effects?
Not really. In "DOCTOR BASHIR, I PRESUME", he very clearly tells his father his feelings about being augmented, enough so that he changed his name from Jules to Julian when he found out hus father did to him. He was not happy with feeling his father just gave up on him at so young an age and wanting a 'better son to replace the defective one he was given'.
Not to the extent that he'd have a corrective de-augmentation procedure. That would have been an interesting court episode - Federation law demanding he be "reverted".
Just because you don't reverse what was done to you (and quite probably can't do it) doesn't mean you like it.
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