Discovery prequel novel: Desperate Hours

[WebLurker]

But Doctor Who has never really claimed to be particularly plausible or realistic. It initially dabbled in being educational, but it left that behind ages ago. It's basically a series of tall tales and ripping yarns. Star Trek was created with the specific goal of being a naturalistic and plausible portrayal of the future. So I hold it to a higher standard of credibility.

Okay, on one hand I kind of understand what the difference is to you. On the other hand, I don't really think that Star Trek was mean to be plausible (what with the multiple aliens, FTL engines, transporters, time travel stories, etc.). On the scale of sci-fi hardness, it always seemed closer to Doctor Who than something meant to be completely plausible. Does that make any sense?

Besides, would it really have been that hard for American viewers to handle a prefix other than "U.S.S."? There are tons of American SF works before and since that have come up with different prefixes for their spaceships, so it's not something that takes an enormous mental leap.

Not to mention that "United Space/Star Ship" is just a silly way of rationalizing the use of "U.S.S." It isn't even really a coherent phrase. Usually, ship prefixes denote the nation and the type of ship. "United" isn't a nation. Okay, you can handwave it as "United [Federation of Planets] Star Ship," but that's labored.

Maybe? For me, the "U.S.S." prefix is so engrained that anything else just sounds wrong. I guess that the "U.S.S. = United Star Ship" thing never bothered me either.

 

[BillJ]

Okay, on one hand I kind of understand what the difference is to you. On the other hand, I don't really think that Star Trek was mean to be plausible (what with the multiple aliens, FTL engines, transporters, time travel stories, etc.). On the scale of sci-fi hardness, it always seemed closer to Doctor Who than something meant to be completely plausible. Does that make any sense?

I agree here.

Though it seems creative folks and fans have been trying to turn Star Trek into something it never was (hard, serious sci-fi) since the mid-70's.

 

[Christopher]

On the other hand, I don't really think that Star Trek was mean to be plausible (what with the multiple aliens, FTL engines, transporters, time travel stories, etc.). On the scale of sci-fi hardness, it always seemed closer to Doctor Who than something meant to be completely plausible. Does that make any sense?

It absolutely was meant to be plausible. Look at the 1967 draft of the writers' bible -- the first three pages are a lecture about plausibility and how important it is to write the characters in a way that would be believable in a contemporary show. Character plausibility, emotional plausibility, was paramount to Roddenberry even when he took liberties with the science. His entire goal was to defy the assumption that sci-fi was always fanciful kid stuff and to make an SF show that was as grounded and believable as the best adult Westerns and medical dramas and courtroom dramas of the day. And where the science was concerned, he was one of the first SFTV producers to make any attempt to consult with scientists, engineers, and think tanks in an effort to create a believable view of the future rather than just making up random nonsense. That's why ST has warp drive for FTL travel when most of its contemporary shows and films didn't even acknowledge that the speed of light was a thing that existed, and just assumed you could travel anywhere in the universe using ordinary rockets. (And many of its successors, too. The original Battlestar Galactica had the fleet travel through multiple galaxies in less than a year even though "lightspeed" was the absolute maximum that its fastest ships could attain. It also portrayed different "galaxies" as adjacent with no space between them at all.)

Yes, compared to something like Larry Niven's prose SF or Poul Anderson's or mine, Trek is very "soft" SF, but compared to 99% of the fanciful nonsense that passes for SF on film and TV, Trek is actually one of the more scientifically grounded shows, and never more so than when Roddenberry was personally in charge. His aspiration was always to make ST as plausible as he could, even if he often fell short of that goal for reasons of dramatic license or budgetary necessity, and even if his successors have mostly been less concerned with credibility than he was. But it's ST's foundations in plausible worldbuilding and characterization, that original commitment to make something more believable and less stupid than the likes of Lost in Space, that made Star Trek so compelling to audiences in the first place. It's sad to me that modern fans have forgotten something so basic and important to the first generation or two of fans, the fact that the ST universe was unique in SFTV for feeling like a future that we could actually believe in and imagine ourselves living in. I guess that's because it's not as unique anymore, that other modern shows have aspired to at least somewhat credible worldbuilding in the Trek vein, e.g. Babylon 5 or the Stargate franchise. But the only reason those shows have even as much credibility as they do is because Star Trek set the precedent -- as it set the precedents for most of the things modern audiences take for granted about SFTV, like intelligence, maturity, conceptual depth, diverse casting, sophisticated visual effects, etc.

 

[Krandor]

I'm going to need a specific example for Conspiracy, I just reviewed a transcript and Commodore was definitely not said in dialogue. As for The Enemy, all that proves is that Geordi had heard of the rank, not that Starfleet was still using it. Indeed, given he seemed so insistent to call his Romulan friend "Commodore" we could infer an implication that it was meant to be a Romulan rank in the episode.

It isn't in the dialogue and can only be seen with freeze frame. When Data is gooing over the records of orders some of the orders that come up show as being from commodores.

 

[Noname Given]

It absolutely was meant to be plausible. Look at the 1967 draft of the writers' bible -- the first three pages are a lecture about plausibility and how important it is to write the characters in a way that would be believable in a contemporary show. Character plausibility, emotional plausibility, was paramount to Roddenberry even when he took liberties with the science.

Plausible from a character standpoint, yes. But sorry, Star Trek's depiction of how FTL (and even near-lightspeed) travel operates was always absolutely implausible. That doesn't mean it wasn't generally consistent within the show (it was for the most part if you disregard general travel times/distances between some destinations.

Star Trek has always been science fantasy. Yes, it does generally depict some real aspects of actual science - but too much of it's internal technology just doesn't/wouldn't work that way in our real Universe. <--- Therefore it's not 'hard' science fiction.

 

[Krandor]

This is the commodore reference from conspiracy. Not a great pic, but best I could find quickly.

 

[Christopher]

Plausible from a character standpoint, yes. But sorry, Star Trek's depiction of how FTL (and even near-lightspeed) travel operates was always absolutely implausible.

As I already explained, compared to every other contemporary SFTV show, it was plausible. Most SFTV at the time didn't even know about relativity and the lightspeed limit. They showed interstellar travel as being as easy as interplanetary travel, and had no grasp of the distances involved. Their level of astronomical knowledge was basically nonexistent. Roddenberry, by contrast, did his homework. He consulted with scientists and researchers, and he was well-read in science fiction. So he understood that interstellar travel would require some kind of hypothetical space-warping drive. And there's nothing fanciful about a warp drive. The reason it's called that is because it's a solution of Einstein's equations of General Relativity, a way of altering the geometry of spacetime (i.e. warping it) to achieve effective superluminal velocity. Yes, it's vanishingly unlikely to be practical in real life, but it's predicated in actual scientific theory and has been a staple of both hard and soft science fiction since John W. Campbell first used it in 1930.

So, yes, using the concept of warp drive made ST enormously more science-literate and SF-literate than its ludicrous contemporaries and successors like Lost in Space, Space: 1999, and Battlestar Galactica. I mean, my gods, Space: 1999 had the Moon blown out of Earth's orbit by a nuclear explosion and sent wandering from star system to star system on a weekly basis. That's the baseline of SF literacy in '60s and '70s TV. Compared to that gutter-level standard of plausibility, even Trek's flexible grasp of science was a quantum leap upward in scientific literacy. Even acknowledging the existence of the speed of light and the vast distances between stars put it far ahead of its peers. It was the only SFTV show of its era that even tried to pay attention to science, and that was downright revolutionary for its time.

 

[BillJ]

So he understood that interstellar travel would require some kind of hypothetical space-warping drive.

From a series standpoint, warp drive was just really fast. It really was no different than other shows depictions. Just because they lip service to the science doesn't mean they were giving us anything more than other shows from the time period.

 

[The Wormhole]

That's a fair point, although I think it's a little bit like complaining how in the Doctor Who universe, when Earth is visited or invaded by the Doctor or other aliens, a disproportionate of them happen in London, Cardiff, Bannerman Road, or other places in England. At the end of the day, Doctor Who is a British franchise and will be written first and foremost for British viewers, just like how Star Trek is the same for America. Pretty much every franchise is ethnocentric to the culture that it's it's produced for.

That isn't quite the same thing. Doctor Who has never really claimed to be about anything other than Britain. The show is about an alien who identifies as a British citizen, and it is very common for people to write alien invasion stories about aliens attacking their homeland, and Doctor Who is more or less an extension of that trope. Star Trek on the other hand is claiming to represent humanity as a united race, yet we just end up with the entire world abandoning their culture and heritage and embracing Americanism.

 

[mattyhugh]

So back to Desperate Hours...if any existing classes of ship show up in the novel, will it get described? Or will it be vague enough that the reader assumes it looks like the 60s version until it's seen again on screen?

 

[Christopher]

Just in general, comparing Star Trek and Doctor Who is quite a mismatch on a number of levels. Indeed, I'm not sure there's anything it really makes sense to compare Doctor Who with as a one-to-one analogy. Maybe Quatermass for the Third Doctor era, since that was a direct influence. Maybe something like Voyagers! for the time-travel elements, but DW has always been about a lot more than just time travel/Earth history stories. And there are current shows like The Librarians and Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency that are pretty overtly writing their lead characters as homages to the Doctor, but they're rather different in other respects. There are bits of DW that can be compared to various other shows, but as a whole it's pretty much in a class by itself.

 

[WebLurker]

Just in general, comparing Star Trek and Doctor Who is quite a mismatch on a number of levels.

Hmm. Trills and regenerations? Borg and Cybermen (heck there was an official crossover on that one)? Gary Seven's Servo and sonic screwdrivers (heck, Gary Seven and Doctor Who himself)? Aliens being behind certain important human developments? The ENT time pod and the Tardis?

Indeed, I'm not sure there's anything it really makes sense to compare Doctor Who with as a one-to-one analogy. Maybe Quatermass for the Third Doctor era, since that was a direct influence. Maybe something like Voyagers! for the time-travel elements, but DW has always been about a lot more than just time travel/Earth history stories. And there are current shows like The Librarians and Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency that are pretty overtly writing their lead characters as homages to the Doctor, but they're rather different in other respects. There are bits of DW that can be compared to various other shows, but as a whole it's pretty much in a class by itself.

I think we're kind of missing the forrest for the trees; the point was that fiction is usually tailored to the main audience first, hence why Star Trek is American-centric; that's the audience it was written for (whether that's a good or bad thing is something else). You could examine the same thing through anything besides Doctor Who, like say Super Sentai vs. Power Rangers.

So back to Desperate Hours...if any existing classes of ship show up in the novel, will it get described? Or will it be vague enough that the reader assumes it looks like the 60s version until it's seen again on screen?

I've often found that Star Trek novels are not that descriptive of Federation ships. My guess is that it'll probably be had to "see" it from the text alone, much less where it's a TOS-style or "Abramsverse"/"NuTrek"/"Kelvin Timeline"/whatever ship.

 

[Christopher]

Hmm. Trills and regenerations? Borg and Cybermen (heck there was an official crossover on that one)? Gary Seven's Servo and sonic screwdrivers (heck, Gary Seven and Doctor Who himself)? Aliens being behind certain important human developments? The ENT time pod and the Tardis?

I said "in general." Cherrypicking isolated details is the exact opposite of "in general."

I think we're kind of missing the forrest for the trees; the point was that fiction is usually tailored to the main audience first, hence why Star Trek is American-centric; that's the audience it was written for (whether that's a good or bad thing is something else).

I'm not "missing" anything. I know perfectly well why Roddenberry did it; I just think it hurts the credibility of the resulting work. And I would certainly think that Doctor Who's British-centric approach to the universe would badly hurt its credibility as well, if I considered it a show for which credibility mattered in the first place, which I don't. DW long ago embraced being pure, unapologetic fantasy. ST has usually at least attempted to keep one foot in reality and naturalism, however imperfectly. There's just no comparison.

 

[WebLurker]

I said "in general." Cherrypicking isolated details is the exact opposite of "in general."

Okay.

I'm not "missing" anything. I know perfectly well why Roddenberry did it; I just think it hurts the credibility of the resulting work.

The show doesn't seem to have suffered that much for it, given that it's still around decades later and still going.

And I would certainly think that Doctor Who's British-centric approach to the universe would badly hurt its credibility as well, if I considered it a show for which credibility mattered in the first place, which I don't. DW long ago embraced being pure, unapologetic fantasy. ST has usually at least attempted to keep one foot in reality and naturalism, however imperfectly. There's just no comparison.

Okay.

 

[Christopher]

The show doesn't seem to have suffered that much for it, given that it's still around decades later and still going.

Oh, come on. Criticizing one detail is not denouncing the whole show. Good grief.

 

[Ithekro]

Well, you are the writer. If they don't already have something, see if you can come up with a logical in universe reason why Archer's Federation Starfleet uses "USS" on everything (Or did you do that already?)

 

[WebLurker]

Oh, come on. Criticizing one detail is not denouncing the whole show. Good grief.

I didn't say that.

 

[INACTIVEUSS Einstein]

Not this again.

There have often been people TrekBBS arguing negatively "Star Trek was never XYZ" - never scientific, never cerebral, never on the harder side of TV sci-fi, never actually any good (yep, believe it or not, there are alleged fans here who have argued this, basically having fallen out of love with some aspect of Trek, to the point they can't see why anyone else might value it anymore, and project their changing tastes onto the show's objective merit - until DS9 apparently, which is the show a Trek cynic can un-guiltily accept since guns and war are more 'real' than a society of scientific endevour or exploration). I often see people selectively picking isolated examples to discount the general direction attested by 99% of the show's material - while someone uses informed commentary on the show's actual creative intention, and is ignored by people with a philosophical axe to grind against TOS/TNG/Roddenbury/often anything that isn't DS9/BSG.

Star Trek was made with the intention of making a space opera that was as believable as a serious police procedural - in an era when science fiction on TV was basically poor fantasy fiction. This is a simple fact that anyone who grew up watching TOS would know - you can feel the intention of it as you watch - the show is clearly trying to be a serious drama with a believable naturalistic take on the world, and mostly succeeding, even by today's standard. Of course it had levity too - and we'll known problems in season three when politics interfered - but the intent is plain to see.

I cannot for the life of me understand how anyone could compare it to Doctor Who, which started with a couple of harder stories like The Daleks, but for the majority of its run has been pure fantasy, and recently has become so genre-less that it's basically like some kind of avant-garde canterbury's tale anthology of history/fantasy/sci-fi genre mashup. Star Trek depicted a galaxy in which people had to actually work, understand nature, and be organised, in order to travel, not step in a magic box - there was a crew of 400 people running the ship, checking circuits, maintaining computers - miners producing raw material for the Federation's industry and science to function. This is what drew in legions of fans - a well thought out speculation on what a technological society might look like in 300 years time.

But maybe I shouldn't be suprised that this is now seen as incidental or boring in a west increasingly anti-intellectual in its entertainment and obsessed with melodrama, miracles, mysticism and soap opera while the rest of the world in reality steams ahead with research in physics and engineering, knowing full well that understanding the natural world is the only way for humans to liberate their societies from poverty.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Whatever the original intent might have been, 50 years of goofy plots later I find it hard to view Trek as any more plausible than Doctor Who.

That's not a knock against it.

 

[Galaxy]

...see if you can come up with a logical in universe reason why Archer's Federation Starfleet uses "USS" on everything

The NX-01 did not have USS on it, and neither did Columbia.