Could There Be Something in the 25th Century and Beyond?

[VulcanMindBlown]

I am interested in it, but I am not certain how Star Trek could pull off anything major after the 24th century.

It would be interesting to see what they could do with new technology, like a cloaking device on a Federation ship and maybe gelatinous state of a space ship that could conform to different shapes with a decentralized structure like the Borg..

 

[David.Blue]

They didn't make any real technological advances between the 23rd & 24th century, why would they make any for setting a story in the 25th? They'll say the ship is faster and bigger and the weapons more powerful, but that won't make any real impact on episodes. If anything producers are most likely to add some fairly trivial invention (like the Holodeck) or rename things (slipstream drive instead of warp for example) with a different special effect to go with.

 

[Paul Weaver]

One problem that Stargate had was the advance in tech through the series. It lost its core aspect of a hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned crew going up against the universe and winning.

That's not a bad thing, after all the winning was the point, and the constant movement of technology and growth of characters, while maintaining an episodic format, was good.

However it meant in the end the show was stretching credibility with it's plot (a secret military organisation with tens of thousands of people in the know, multiple space ships flying around the place, alien attacks, multiple governments, and it's still secret?), and continuing from that point, at least on Earth, would be a very different show. By the end of season 8, they'd conquered the galaxy. There wasn't need for ingenious solutions like blowing up a sun any more.

Trek however hasn't really had that, the technology used by the end of DS9 or "Renaissance Man" was pretty much the same used at the start of TNG. New technologies introduced (transwarp beaming, phase cloaks, slipstream, Warp 10) didn't stick for a variety of reasons, and it was made clear on many occasions that the doctor's emitter could not be reproduced. There was still a whole galaxy unexplored to use as a canvas for telling the stories.

However as time goes on you have a lot of canon to follow - and a lot of people who won't like inconsistencies, this can be detrimental on story telling. Continuing 80 years after the end of DS9, with Captin Bango and the voyages of the Enterprise H could work, they could ignore older trek most of the time just as TNG did, and allow the novels to fill in the "Lost Era" time. No reason why you wouldn't still have warp drive fast enough to get to the plot on time, but slow enough to make it nail biting, quantum torpedoes, phasers, etc. It would still be difficult though, TNG had 4 films and 79 episodes before it. A new series would have 10 films and 700 episodes behind it.

I suspect the new series will be like TNG, but set in a different universe, with no canon other than events they choose to take. They'll have the fact that Zefram Cochrane broke the warp barrier, but it wouldn't be in 2063, it wouldn't be with Riker + Geordi on board, Khan wouldn't have been taking over the world in the late 90s and then getting frozen, but there may have been genetic badness happening in the 2100s. When they go back to 2024 in a season 7 episode the Bell Riots won't be erupting, but in 2084 there may be some form of civil unrest.

 

[CorporalClegg]

^
Nailed it.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I definitely think something could be done in the 25th-Century. If anything, there will always be some kind of parity to keep things interesting for the Federation, no matter what changes in technology may occur. Moving things forward also provides perspective on how far (or little) things have progressed since Picard's time and that in itself could be a source for new stories and situations.

That being said, I've also think writers and producers shouldn't lose sight of the forest for the trees. Trek's technology and continuity are best used in small amounts (or as generally as possible) or else they wind up becoming hindrances rather than aides.

 

[JoeZhang]

There has been no significant technology development in trek since the first series - it's a red herring - Trek is in a side-road and its own thing largely unconnected to modern science fiction at this point.

Which in itself is fine but talking about the difference between Warp, transwarp or slipstream drive is really just a discussion about made-up terminology not about technology nor how technology (based on current understanding) can influence a story.

 

[JohnD]

Star Trek The Motion Picture "bumped" the series 100 years into the future. In The Original Series on television, Star Trek took place in the 2100s. Two hundred years into the future from the 1960s. As the 1990s drew near it became clearer that future speculation in most science fiction series and novels and movies had greater expectations than what was actually taking place in the real world. We did not have robot butlers and maids in our houses, manned flights to Mars did no happen in the 1980s, no Jupiter 2 type mission occurred in 1999 nor was there a Moonbase Alpha that year (although there was an ALF by then).

ST TOS was well ahead of its time, far more technologically accurate about what will actually happen than nearly all other depictions of the future. But it also had some bone head ideas that experience would later correct. Like a pre-warpdrive fleet of earth ships that could reach other star systems, fight a Romulan war, and function on nuclear reactors.

ST ENT came closest to solving all these errors without taking the credit for it. What was in TOS pre-warpdrive was corrected in ENT as pre-warp five. And the immense leaps in technology in such a short amount of time was not due to long laborious research and invention processes but in a small shoestring experiment using a recrafted nuclear warhead (the Phoenix) in ST 1st CON. And the mentoring of the Vulcans also helped explain the Terran leaps in technology in so short a time along with the established galactic community of species humans encountered.

But in reality, It would probably be the 25th or even the 28th Century before the future would be like the TOS era.