Am I the only one wanting a reboot that is a harder sci fi?

Ok, well, I don't agree with any of that. But fair enough.

 

A) NuBSG was a very specific time in history, at the time it was a radical novelty to even acknowledge depression.

B) Sci fi is inherently pretentious, I mean that's basically what it literally is "pretense" fiction.

C) I like both sets of costumes, but it gets absurd when you have characters going on dates in their starfleet uniform.

D) Regardless of whether or not you like BSG, the point was that it was a fantastic effort in reimaging something. It did what exactly what it set out to do, which was to create a more realistic interpretation of the premise. You don't have to like it, but you have to acknowledge that it was good at what it set out to be(in the first two seasons).

E) comparing BSG to Star trek is bizarre. I wouldn't in any shape or form consider them the same sub genre of space opera.

One of nuBSG's main strengths was that it wasn't trying to lean on either Star Wars nor Star Trek, someone the original did to the extreme.

F) Nutrek isn't stating itself to be a reimaging of trek. I'd probably have more tolerance for it if it did. Its problems are pretty much in line with what I stated before STD was even released. Bryan Fuhler knew what he was doing, the studio had multiple agendas he forced on him, he got fed up left, and in turn Kurtzman and his lazy disorganized writers butchered a great premise, great cast and great production.

I'd also argue they looked at Voyager and saw it as the trek to emulate. When in reality it was the real franchise killer, meanwhile Enterprise was bringing things back in line with TOS.

 

If you want an ultra-realistic space show, bring a video camera onboard the International Space Station and have at it.

As far as fashion in the future: It's happening right now. People wear pajamas and athletic-wear everywhere. Like it or not, that's what it's going to look like. People in the future wearing jeans and a button-up shirt: that's what's going to be unrealistic, not the other way around.

Granted, I give Picard a pass because though I know the direction fashion looks like it's moving in, I -- as a viewer -- take the way they handle clothing on that series more seriously while watching, rather than the way I think it's going to go in real life.

 

I don't have a problem with the clothing in BSG either.

But even in general: Given how close each of the 12 colonies were to each other, I buy a more late-20th / early-21st Century style society having more developed space travel than we do.

If Mars could support life and had natural resources, I think we would've landed a man on Mars by 1980. Today, we'd have people colonizing Mars the way Europeans colonized the Americas. Whereas in reality, we have no incentive to do any of that.

 

I don't want any reboots of Trek thanks, I like the 56 years of Trek we've got just fine.

That said I'm a lot happier with it when I'm not being thrown out of a story by science so bad that even I know it's wrong. I can live with godlike aliens, transporters and warp drives, but when a crew member's disembodied consciousness starts possessing people, or a luck machine starts messing with probability, or a forensic scanner reconstructs the events that took place in a room from the residual particles etc. it doesn't feel like Star Trek anymore to me. The magic trick has failed.

 

But that pretty much summarizes the majority of Star Trek.

 

The problem with that argument is the idea that a new series shouldn't try to be better than the trek of the past.

Equally absurd is the idea that great episodes required those devices.

Yes Q sent picard back in time, but if it were simply a neural probe that create a simulation of those events it would in no shape or form alter the artistic merits of that episodes.

I'd also add "majority" means the grander volume of complete filler. I can't think of many episodes in the top 10 lists that rely on these ideas.

And the few that do, are not necessarily episodes that should be reproduced. A lot of things in TOS were cliche in the 90s, just the same lots of things in the 90s are now cliche, that's the absolute cost of being a trend setter

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/star-trek-episodes-best-100-924455/scorpion/

If you go through this list, only a handful of episodes are dependent on things like time travel. And I'd argue that in a 10-13 episode season there simply isn't time to go with an episode that is outside the thematic frame of reference.

Again I suggest reading that list. It's less than the majority that are reliant on anything other than ancient aliens/ftl.


The odds a new show will be as good as the original without change is unlikely.

The odds a new show will be good without trying to be better is a gaurentee for failure.

The biggest direct problem with nu trek, is they assume different is better without actually trying to be better.

All of a sudden swearing is a good idea, when a leading point in tng etc was the idea that a progressive society would expect a certain level of consensual professionalism.

Discovery wiped their ass with that very idea, that starfleet represents some idealized professional environment driven by consent.

I consider a harder sci fi, is an attempt in being more real, as in more connected to canon.

I think it'd absurd to take an episode like "in the pale moonlight" and try to argue it was dependent on magic.

I equate scientific realism with computer graphics. It isn't trying to replace or invalidate the things that were done in the past. It's to say you can't even attempt to be in the same room with the classics if you can't bring something new/worthy of the key concepts of trek.

Star Trek in the past had an abundance of women in skin tin closing.

I have no problem with it, but I also have no interest in putting it into current era fiction.

I detest boob shots, not for moral reasons but for the simple reality its a boring cliche.

To make trek without cat suits, isn't a mission to go against old episodes, it's simply doing something that is more reflective of the best abilities of our time.

 

Sure, if you know enough about science to be completely thrown out of a story every time they use a resonating tachyon burst to close a temporal rift and end a time loop. Like I said they've got warp drives and forcefields, and Heisenberg compensators, and if those cross someone's threshold for scientific plausibilty then they won't be enjoying much Star Trek.

Personally I can suspend my disbelief through some absolute nonsense as long as there's enough doubt for me to wonder 'maybe that WOULD be possible...', or it builds on other impossible things I've already accepted. Like if Q turns someone into a dog I might wonder if it's an illusion, or substitution, or genuine transformation, but I won't be taken right out of a story. If Quark accidentally turns someone into a dog by calibrating his replicator wrong and sending out dog waves, then the story's lost me.

 

Well, that's still Star Trek to me.

 

"I'm not talking about making trek a pure hard sci fi, but how about uping the plausibility?" I said this phrase almost six months ago at the start of this thread, that statement hasn't changed in that time.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/l...-best-100-924455/homefront-and-paradise-lost/

If you go through this list, few episodes are reliant on magic time travel.

Even Episodes like Year of Hell were not necessarily benefactors of time travel.

The overall premise of a year of real challenge I believe was diluted by the idea that it was simply an alternate timeline.

There's no reason a new show would need any of this to be good. There's plenty of great thoughtful episodes that would be perfectly in line with a more plausible science.

FTL ancient aliens are requirements of trek. The rest is very much optional.

I'll repeat the notion that trek should reflect the times. The idea a pre internet civilization should have episodes that line up with the information age is a bit puzzling.

 

More connected to canon =/= harder. In point of fact a lot of Star Trek relies upon magic tech, from interspecies compatibility, including very disparate species from different sides of the galaxy, to consciousness transfer and disembodied spirits, to transporters functionality without killing people. Making any of that "harder" will result in some stories not being told, and eliminated from canon. If you are trying to connect more to canon then the magic remains, and it doesn't get harder.

To me as well. Star Trek has tried a variety of different story ideas, including parallel development to explain various Earth like worlds, and assuming similarity in alien cultures.

Agreed.

 

My own concept for Star Trek would be to explore more of the culture. I agree that Star Trek has too many Doctor Who-ish features to ever accurately become hard sci-fi, but there is deeper lore that could be created to enrich the universe.

Speaking of which, chime in on this related thread: https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/a-deep-space-nine-graphic-novel.310277/

 

Sadly true.

 

I'm not sure what you mean by something being 'radically' more likely, but the propulsion method portrayed in The Expanse is based on the theoretical science of the fusion rocket:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_rocket

I like both shows so I don't want to get into a game of tit for tat, but the method of propulsion portrayed in The Expanse is closer to harnessing the power of magic red FTL crystals. I have no doubt there's a boffin or two at NASA (or suchlike) thinking about fusion. I have serious doubts that anyone at any similar organisation is thinking about Warp Drive. Such a thing is an example of 'rubber' science.

A fusion drive is something we could plausibly see before the turn of the century.

 

This interspecies thing is an easy retcon, do the ancient aliens thinger but bump it up a little.

"some stories" yes I never suggested some wouldn't be lost. But some have been lost by having a 10 episode season format.

The flip side that some stories that were never told will come to life in new ways. Transporters for example could be explained by some sort of temporary warp bubble, that dissipates in seconds, at short distances.

If you're gonna have to reboot things on some level. Random expisode x will be invalidated, obviously that is a thing. But that doesn't negate the borg invasion etc.

Current canon exists as a large number of contradictory things. It's a garbled mess, and I think a whole lot of canon, the big emotional stuff have been watered does by the episodes reliant on magic.


If you take the premise to heart, it's quite easy to figure out what stays and what must go/be altered.

It'll obviously not be canon in the literal sense, but I believe it'd be radically better at serving the function of canon, which is something like a better interwoven tapestry of stories.

And again it's 2022, Trek needs to be advanced to by 3 decades if it actually want to explore new things, and not just rehash cliches from game of thrones.

 

All FTL drives are nonsense, buttressed by lifted terminology from those occasional findings in theoretical physics that remind us the universe is stranger than we can imagine.

 

It's not a technology that is fundamentally unscientific nor impractical.

It could happen, and it isn't an out there idea.

The biggest obstacle is the drake equation. If FTL is possible the galaxies of the universe should be flooded with peoples. Which means we need an abundance of ancient aliens enforcing a kind of intergalactic order, i.e. like the Q continuum, otherwise we'd be flooded with alien signals from across the universe.

And we're not being absolutist. There's a difference between wanting something that is plausible/authentic to make an artform work, and wanting to use magic to exert less effort when writing a story.

Magic is a low hanging fruit, it's become lazy and cliched, part of the point of being harder is that writers are given a frame work that forces them to work harder while at the same time making more sense.

A lot of the magic of the past trek was usually just a cheap ploy to fill episode counts.

Yes occasionally they were absolute masterpieces, but it isn't something we need to keep going, anymore than we need to keep catsuits going.