I like the idea of a subspace internet - but I think that offline copies of as much unclassified information as possible, however insignificant, would be kept in as many places as possible, for four reasons: 1. The storage capacity is there, especially for text based info. 2. Earth lost a lot of information in its late 20th/early 21st century wars, including important cultural items, which would lead me to believe that humans would probably packrat information after they realized what was lost. 3. I believe that we will begin doing a better job of this at some point when we realize that we need the advantage that printed newspapers provided back - when a news item is centrally stored in one or a few digital places, it is easy to change. When it is in a million places, most of which you don't have control over, it is harder to edit the "facts" for your own purposes. 4. How many times has a mission turned on three random people that were put into cryogenic storage 300 years before, or figuring out that someone is immortal and has been masquerading as other people throughout history, or some other weird bit of what would otherwise have seemed like useless trivia? If not from the beginning, surely at some point the people responsible for loading the shipboard databases would have said, screw it, put it ALL in there. All of that said, I agree that only an idiot would not do local loads and updates of STAR CHARTS for a freakin' starship, no matter what else was loaded in there or not!
I figured you'd need a live update to check on current fleet positionings, as we saw in Nemesis. Keeping everything stored in a ships' computer has always seemed goofy to me, but IIRC it was said in TOS that the computers hold the entire total of Federation knowledge. So I guess they do just chuck anything and everything into the database. If it fits, why not?
I think the storage of information involving missions (like the events of the PSI2000 virus) and ships functions (Excelsior maintenance) would be natural to keep stored locally on a Exploratory Starship. Considering how in just a few years the storage in the computer on my desk has gone from being measured in MBs to TBs, we cannot fathom how a few centuries will change things. Personally I think Valtane was just a continuity error- they were trying to recreate the TUC bridge with crew and he was available, they had to kill a crewmember for the virus transfer and picked him. I suspect they hoped he would not noticed be in that group shot on viewscreen. I wish they had not chosen him, but with the story they needed a bridge crew to die, not some extra in the background.
Computer technology in Trek's time is probably the ultimate "cloud". The technology available to Federation citizens is - indeed, must be - absolutely off the charts, so to speak, and certainly beyond anything we could conceive today. I don't see how they could NOT have all information available at all times, in all computers, everywhere. It's almost inevitable, really. I suspect the only reason we saw people using computer tapes in TOS is because that's what 60's viewers expected to see...they certainly didn't know anything about cloud computing back then. A "real" 23rd century would surely not need to transfer any information from anywhere to anywhere.
I guess I rather have a problem understanding what happened to Tuvok's pointed ears and eyebrows in ST VI from an "in-universe" point of rationalization. Wasn't there also some kind of virus involved with the Klingons that made them look different post-TOS? Bob
^^ Oops...thanks for the clarification, I must have been confusing the two. So at least Tuvok had a human "twin" on the Enterprise-B while the real Tuvok served aboard Excelsior? Bob
And apparently a future triplet who's a terrorist and tries stealing trilithium from the Enterprise. Tim Russ has done a lot of Trek before Tuvok. Irony points for him being on the receiving end of the Vulcan nerve pinch.
That's an interesting point. Trek has been very good about not violating POV when dealing with holodeck scenarios, dream sequences, etc. If you pay close attention, you can even spot the episodes where what we're seeing isn't real by noticing that there are no external shots of the ship, the station, etc. Take "Ship in a Bottle," for example. The moment Picard and Data enter Moriarty's simulation, we stop seeing anything outside the ship. With the care that's been taken to pay attention to those details, it surprises me Voyager elected to show the outside of the ship.
It gets even more bizarre since they had to build a new model of the Excelsior, since the original still had the modifications that turned it into the Enterprise B. So they violated POV the one time when it would have been cheaper for them not to.
I haven't seen the VOY episode since it first aired and have no intention of ever watching it again, but... how is it that Tuvok wasn't at least an admiral after a century in Starfleet? Or did he leave Starfleet for a time? Not as big a continuity issue as the others that have already been pointed out, but didn't Kang have the TNG-era Klingon look (long wavy hair, prominent ridges, hooked nose) rather than the TOS movie look (less prominent ridges, normal human nose)?
According to one of the novels (can't remember which at the moment), yes, he did take several decades away from Starfleet. And the reason his ears were temporarily bobbed in ST:VI because he was on or had just come off of a mission for Starfleet Intelligence that required him to not appear Vulcan.
He calls it "his first Starfleet career," and he was only there because his parents wished it. Decades later, he would rejoin and became a security officer rather than the science officer he began as. Kang had already appeared in DS9 sporting the TNG Klingon look. I guess he had the reconstructive surgury mentioned in Enterprise, or had the humanizing effects of the Augment virus reversed.
What I mean is that TNG-era Klingons have a distinct look different from TOS movie Klingons. The makeup for the movie klingons is different from the TNG-era makeup. For one thing, the Klingons of the movies (except for perhaps TMP, I can't remember) have perfectly human noses, whereas TNG-era Klingons have hooked noses. Yes, I'm being pedantic, and it's beside the point.
I just liked how Worf said "We don't talk about it" and left it at that. Enterprise going out of it's way to explain it just makes it even more silly.