"A stack of books with legs" mouthing off to a potentially dangerous alien on a subject about which he (supposedly) knows nothing? To what end?
If Star Trek was a realistic guess of the future in the 1960s it certainly isn't now. 1) Transporters - I've previously read actual scientists discuss this one. The concept is not realistic at all given the energy involved. More on this can be found with some web searching if interested. 2) Communicators- I could preface all of these with, IF we have similar biological humans 300 years from now, most certainly we'll have some sort of direct thought communication supplemented with brain enhancing technology. I highly doubt many people like today will still be around, too much room for improvement to keep our flawed bodies. 3) Touchscreens - At the least there will likely be data displayed directly in your vision with direct interaction and manipulation. Even this idea seems old fashioned for 300 years from now. Perhaps intelligences in virtual constructs with magnitudes more intelligence and memory. Again, hairless apes flying around in tin cans isn't a great way to go about exploring interstellar space. 4) Warp Drive - Faster than light travel is impossible, we know this. There is the math for a warp drive like ship, the math makes sense, but actually building it gets complicated. Look up: Alcubierre drive. It's quite possible we'll forever be stuck at sub-light speeds. No problem though if you ditch the biological bodies and can take eons to get to other systems. 5) Scanners - Not sure on this one as Star Trek has pretty impressive scanners. I'd see AI doing all the heavy lifting, not much need for humans (as is) to steer ships and go down to planets and hold out scanners. I look at Star Trek more as a fantasy at this point. Even 100 years from now looks to be far more exotic than we expected. At least in respect to the relationship between man and his tools. Star Trek imagines a galaxy full of sentient humanoids who all developed star ships within a few hundred years of each other, have similar cultures and levels of technology, and are all around human levels of intelligence. A more realistic show would be terrible though. It would likely be an AI traveling to planets at sublight speeds and not encountering intelligent alien life.
Yep. There's many things Star Trek is - but "Hard Science Fiction" is not, and never has been one of them.
Star Trek never aspired to be realistic. At best it gave a version of the future that audience could identify with. One not weighted down by explaining the technology involved.
That's like disparaging Newton for presenting his Principia, when he ought to have known it was all wrong and read his Einstein first. "The Chase" posits that life on Earth did evolve - it just happened to evolve guided by Intelligent Design, a vanity project by ancient humanoids. Us apes weren't dropped here fully formed or anything; if there are mistakes in reading the fossil record, they only pertain to the failure to spot the Voth civilization, way back. Kirk couldn't have known. Or, he would have known the falsehood of humans being natural products, with absolute certainty. Timo Saloniemi
Which Star Trek are you talking about here out of curiosity? Because I agree with you on the identification point - that’s one reason why Starfleet has a naval rank structure as I understand it. But to say that Star Trek was not weighted down by explaining the technology denies the dialogue of several Trek characters over the years - particularly Geordi and Data... I think the more recent Trek productions (post-09) that are tying to appeal to a much wider audience than before certainly fit your criteria. I don’t think the same can be said of classic (66-05) Trek.
TOS didn't explain anything. It was the Berman-era productions that came up with putting "[tech]" in the scripts for Mike Okuda and friends to fill in with babble.
Dilithium crystals and time warps and such... That’s a fair point I guess I think that’s one reason (among many!) why Star Trek V stands out so much - the “sci” in that sci-fi film is sorely lacking. Trek III dealt with philosophical stuff the best out of all of them I think... Lols yeh that’s true! Maybe a wider audience demands less [tech] insertion? “The Big Bang theory” is perhaps a counter example to that logic mind you - although I haven’t watched it for a number of years now so I may be way off the mark with that
They didn't do much technobable for the original TOS - or the TOS feature films either - nor the later JJ Verse outings as you mentioned... Thus that leads to just one conclusion that many TOS fans have maintained since 1987 - the TNG era ISN'T 'real' Star Trek
Ah, so when you say “Star Trek” you mean “Star Trek” Yeah fair point - TNG onwards tended towards more technobabble than TOS. I wouldn’t go so far as to say Star Trek wasn’t “realistic”, mind you. I think one of the things that makes it relatable is the pseudo science they used in TOS (antimatter and the like), rather than have a ship just “jump into hyperspace” and flip across the universe (or dimensions) in the blink of an eye. But I agree with your overall point. Well... if the whole TNG era is related to the ENT continuity then TOS isn’t even in the same timeline as TNG. And DSC is its own thing while we’re at it... CANONS AT THE READY! FIRE!!!