What with the announcement of the show title and first leaked pictures, I thought it suitable to start a speculation and wish-list discussion of the starships and tech we'll be looking forward to in this show, leading up to the premiere date (whenever that is). Potential spoilers ahoy! Time frame: the show apparently takes place in 2399, a good twenty years after the end of "Nemesis". and a dozen years after the destruction of Romulus that kicked off the JJ-verse. This is still after the potential futures seen in VOY "Endgame" (2394) and TNG "All Good Things" (at least 2395, possibly a while after that). Then there's the future seen in DS9 "The Visitor" (2422), which is MOSTLY anarchronistic anyway, but I'll get to that. The time frame is still roughly commensurate with those periods, but is conveniently at a point when everything seen in Endgame and AGT could still have happened, visually-speaking, and allow for ships and tech seen then to have moved on to a new look and design language. I mean, we can HOPE that the LCARS takes cues from the established look from TNG through to the 2390s, but if it doesn't, at least temporally-speaking there should be less conflict. Uniforms: As of this writing, we've only seen shots of the 2399 uniforms, so in practice it's enough time for the Nemesis uniforms to have gotten old by 2390 (when Captain LaForge was seen wearing it with the AGT combadge design in VOY "Timeless"), and for the AGT uniforms to have come and gone. There's lots of precedent for short-lasting uniforms: the TMP, TNG 2.0 and DS9 1.0 uniforms seem to have lasted less as long as a mainline uniform, though YMMV. The AGT uniforms were seen in DS9 "The Visitor" from 2422, but I'm willing to let that one slide - or for the "Picard" uniforms to be an embarrassing fashion blip before Starfleet decided to return to the AGT line. :P As it stands, the "Picard" uniforms have moved their rank pips to the chest, where they were in AGT/Endgame, and the TNG-era tapering shoulder points are maintained in what's otherwise a basic evolution of the DS9/VOY jumpsuit, so hopefully this is a good sign overall that the show designers are doing some homework. Federation starships: as it's "only" twenty years after Nemesis, and arguably a handful of years after Endgame / AGT, then in theory the "new" ships seen in those future episodes have the potential to still be kicking around, while at the same time a new design language based on the new show can kick in too. Also, most / all of the ship seen in these futures are arguably older designs or variants thereof, so you can brush off whatever ships we WILL see as much newer than anything we've seen prior, and get away with it. It would be NICE to see the ol' Sovereign or Intrepid class ships zipping around, being some thirty years old as designs by then, even if they've been succeeded by newer classes of ship (which I expect we'll be seeing at least as background decorations for the most part). As this show would have to start from scratch in terms of digital assets, it's reasonable to not expect older ships to make a real appearance in any real capacity unless the story specifically calls for it... At least this means we'll likely never see any Excelsiors, Mirandas or any of the CG models from the latter TNG era or "Enterprise"; but I'm hoping like crazy that some producer will NEVER say "Aww, we've got a ton of ships we designed for Discovery that were only seen in one episode, just use those". Ugh. OTOH, the Klingons have been seen with the Negh'Var / pre-Negh'Var ship model in both AGT and Endgame; having that ship around would be nice but hardly a requirement... Getting around: Warp 13 was a thing in AGT, and Janeway jetting quickly and quietly about in a futuristic Type-9 shuttle by 2394, I'd expect it to be easier to get around the galaxy as a whole by this time. Transwarp beaming may be in practical use as well, given what the Spock of 2387 knew. In terms of general technology, "The Visitor" suggests that by 2422 everyone will be so used to three-dimensional displays and consoles that anyone on the Defiant may as well be interacting with VGA monitors, keyboards and mice. Assuming that's still a thing (since by the far-future glimpsed in VOY "Relativity" they are interacting with some controls but not touching them) there's still a leeway for it to happen (or not), but OTOH "Discovery" makes liberal use of holographic displays and such. I'd expect most of the "Discovery" level of command interface tech to be there, hopefully with a TNG look. Then there's phasers, tricoders and the like. Endgame introduces a look for their equipment which eventually showed up in "Nemesis" set some fifteen years prior, so it could be argued that it's due for a replacement. It'd still be one of the longer-lasting designs overall. These are my initial thoughts. It's always fun to speculate tech on a new show, but this one will take us for an extended look around a new era after all the others thus far - a whole other level of excitement IMO. Looking forward to everyone's own thoughts as we head towards the premiere! Mark
I'm trying to think if there's anything I'd like to see them use for this time period, and I think I've got a few, not necessarily in focus, just maybe in passing: 1. Another Galaxy_class ship that has been refitted to the AGT three-nacelles and mega-phaser kit. Just because the Ent-D was destroyed doesn't mean that that wouldn't have still been a logical design progression for the other ships in the class. 2. The Rhode Island (with Kim in command - in the main timeline!) and/or the Aventine (with Dax in command). And/or the Titan... I guess. (I'm not a huge Riker fan). Or, short of that, other ships in those classes. 3. Some of the other contemporary ship classes and equipment from STO. And I agree that I don't want to see Discovery starship models. BUT, if we do (and I can see why we might, in a real world context), then I hope there's either a darned good reason in-story for it (like it's crashed or been otherwise abandoned for 100+ years), or one of the artists takes it upon themselves to save us from a poor managerial decision and does something akin to what Doug Drexler did to the Akira-class model to get us the NX-class - changing details to limit anachronism at least a little.
Unlike the S31 show, “Picard” is filming now, which means that there will be various visual decisions that will have already been made. I doubt much of this show will be on a big ol’ starship, but they will be flitting around in the background for sure, as well as on displays and such. I fully expect a reference of some sort will be made about the Enterprise of 2399, even if Picard is nowhere near her. We may not even know if it’s the -E or -F. Other than that though, the slate is pretty clean for new ships and tech IMO. Do we know if the lead designer has been announced yet? Or will we be getting even more Eaves-world ships - not necessarily a bad thing given his previous TNG work, in terms of established designs of the era... Mark
I think I'll be somewhat disappointed to not see Sternbach, Okuda, Drexler and company included in the design team. I know that absence is almost certain to be the case, but even so...
I'd love them to be ballsy and make transwarp beaming the norm, where Picard can hop from world to world. Let Treknology really move on.
I dont think we have to be beholden to anything from AGT, it could have been some Q-induced fantasy and not a true representation of the future.
I originally thought that was a future that was not going to happen. Unless they are going to go in a different direction, I see them as starting with the props and ships.
Thing is, the visual look was repeated again in "Endgame" as a potential future independent of AGT and therefore Q. Other examples as above have incorporated bits and pieces of that future too, so (at least during that era of fandom) it was generally assumed that the AGT "look" was one that was more or less going to happen. While the events depicted in those possible futures could easily be waved off, IMO there's ample evidence that the Federation of the (early?) 2390s would look as we saw it; but that the future of the LATE 2390s would have time to look as different as it doubtless will. Mark
It was one possible future, nothing about it was a fantasy, how else could the Pasteur's tachyon scan combine with those from the present and past to rupture the subspace barrier and end the beginning of life on Earth? Picard and Co's actions stopped it from happening and changed the future into something very different.
Most of the STD fleet already works with a STFC-era aesthetic, so what's the difference if they show up in STP?
There are definite changes in the timeline from the Q version and the Picard present. The Enterprise-D was destroyed a long time ago now. It is possible that the Q version was the Galaxy were Sisko vanished and the Dominion War didn't happen due to the Klingons taking Deep Space Nine. Romulas may or may not have blown up, but it seems that the Klingons still took over Romulas space (or at least that section of the Neutral Zone). It is likely the Klingons have still taken over at least part of the old Romulan Star Empire's territory and the old Romulan Neutral Zone is no more. One wonders if Picard will still be in Starfleet, or an Ambassador like in the comics. Will he still command the USS Enterprise-E after all this time (will he still be a Captain?) Will there be a new USS Enterprise-F by this point in the timeline (even without any random loss of the starship, the USS Enterprise-E would be closing on 30 years old by the Picard series, a more venerable age for a starship which would place it in the likes of the original USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) when it was under either Kirk or Spock's command in the 2270s)
Or then it was all just a weird dream Picard had, induced either by Q or then by something the Captain ate the previous day. Nothing about the adventure remains when Picard wakes up, save for his jumbled memories. There never were any tachyon beams or time ruptures in any decade, as far as sensor scans could tell. No starships ever flew to any of the locations involved in the dream, nobody spoke the things heard in the dream, and apparently nobody would do anything differently as the result of the dream. Indeed, when Crusher brings up how odd it would be for the future to unfold the way the Captain told them, folks just nod - they would never drift apart for real, the romances would never go the way Picard claimed they would, etc. All this would take is normal inaction on the issues brought up in the dream. Except for Picard possibly having himself checked for the Irumodic Syndrome. But even this is never clarified. Perhaps he knew he had it all along, even if the dream involved him briefly forgetting this and thinking it a revelation? Or perhaps the syndrome only existed in the dream and he's fit as a fiddle? All this independently of whether Q had something to do with the dream or not. And I really can't see the events affecting uniform design or even starship design one iota, even if they happened (and then unhappened) "for real". Timo Saloniemi
I’m pretty sure Picard would know whether he just had a dream or he actually experienced what he described.
I don't think the destruction or 1 ship, the Enterprise-D, would prevent certain aspects of the AGT future from taking shape. I think the tech side will be somewhat downplayed in favor of the story telling of the characters, but we'll see. It'd be cool to see a supersized phaser or two, as seen in AGT. If they do something different altogether, that's fine too.
I rather doubt that. After all, he certainly didn't appear to be all that sure. We (or Picard!) never learned if "Tapestry" had anything going for it, either... Timo Saloniemi
Yeah, I’ll take Picard’s side that it really happened to him (not to mention that the writers’ intent was clearly not that Picard just dreamed it all.)
Remember guys, this is likely another "visual reboot" so maybe those Star Trek Online unis are meant to be the same ones as AGT...
Especially if Worf now has a huge bulbous head, no hair, speaks really slow and has an outfit that looks like it came from a Hellraiser movie.