Distance as gimmick: The pros & cons of DSC/ST/sci-fi expansionism

[NewHeavensNewEarth]

What happens when a sector, quadrant or galaxy gets too familiar for the audience? Expand the frontiers. This is particularly true for sci-fi franchises that run for several years. I was a fan of Stargate the movie, for example. Then the snowball effect started.
1. Stargate the movie: a self-contained story between 2 planets
2. Stargate SG-1: explored our galaxy
3. Stargate Atlantis: explored another galaxy
4. Stargate Universe: hopping from galaxy to galaxy
5. cancelled. The end.

[SPOILER below if you haven't seen "New Eden"]
Each time that the environment got too familiar (or ratings started to wane), they expanded the scope to make it look fresh and new. For ST, the snowball effect has been TNG for the Alpha Quadrant, then DS9 for Gamma, Voyager for Delta, and now we just had a casual visit to the Beta Quadrant with Discovery.

At what point do you run out of room, where you have to take it to another galaxy if there's going to be a new frontier - or if you need a new gimmick to keep the audience hooked? Even though I can't stand Enterprise, I applaud it as an effort to reign it in and focus more on the story, going in the opposite direction of the expansionist formula that some writers have come to depend on.

I'm still enjoying DSC a lot. To me, the possibilities of the mycelial network are limitless and marvelous. But I have to ask whether it cheapens the experience, casually popping up in the Beta Quadrant and back again without a scratch before anyone even knew you were gone. Does it cheapen the experience for the viewer when the journey isn't actually a journey?

The answer here lies in making the mission the journey, whether they spent 12 hours at warp or not to get to whatever place. But it's risky, because the whole galaxy suddenly seems a lot smaller, and if we get into galaxy hopping, the phrase "all good things" suddenly comes to mind.

Character development and their relationships must always be paramount, and sci-fi simultaneously has the advantage and disadvantage of doing that in places like space. It can be an asset or a liability, especially in getting the balance right. So far I think DSC has gotten the balance pretty good. But these weekend getaways to the Beta Quadrant and elsewhere have to be made more monumental than they currently are, because if the characters start treating it as something mundane or routine, the audience will, too. And then the snowball effect will be out of everyone's control.

Still a big fan.

 

[eschaton]

Starships in Trek have always moved at the speed of plot. The spore drive doesn't fundamentally change this.

In my mind, the bigger issue with the spore drive is it has limitless potential which isn't being explored by the show. It doesn't just allow instantaneous travel through space. It also allows travel through time, and travel to any one of a (presumably limitless) number of alternate universes. This could have been the angle of Discovery as a show. It could have gotten lost in time, and ended up meeting the ancient humanoids. Or kept on skipping around alternate universes ala Sliders - so we get to see many different possible incarnations of Alpha Quadrant politics (aside from the MU).

 

[Locutus of Bored]

In November 2013, astronomers reported, based on Kepler space mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars and red dwarfs in the Milky Way, 11 billion of which may be orbiting Sun-like stars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_potentially_habitable_exoplanets

- Even with propulsion that can jump you anywhere in the galaxy instantaneously.
- Even with sensors that can scan dozens or hundreds of light years around you.
- Even with the collective knowledge of hundreds or thousands of species.
- Even with fleets of hundreds or thousands of ships.
It's still going to take longer than one series or seven series or a lifetime or a thousand lifetimes to explore all of those stars and planets in detail.

There should be largely unexplored regions within the Federation's own claimed territory. An interesting story would be a new up and coming species from within Federation space that wants to have its own expansionist exploration and trade and treaty period that is hampered by the fact that the Federation surrounds them.

The bottom line is, no one should ever become "bored" by staying within the quadrant or galaxy. Not that it's wrong to want to expand beyond that if that where you want to go with your storytelling, but it's shortsighted to feel limited by such a vast amount of space.

 

[eschaton]

In November 2013, astronomers reported, based on Kepler space mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars and red dwarfs in the Milky Way, 11 billion of which may be orbiting Sun-like stars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_potentially_habitable_exoplanets

- Even with propulsion that can jump you anywhere in the galaxy instantaneously.
- Even with sensors that can scan dozens or hundreds of light years around you.
- Even with the collective knowledge of hundreds or thousands of species.
- Even with fleets of hundreds or thousands of ships.
It's still going to take longer than one series or seven series or a lifetime or a thousand lifetimes to explore all of those stars and planets in detail.

There should be largely unexplored regions within the Federation's own claimed territory. An interesting story would be a new up and coming species from within Federation space that wants to have its own expansionist exploration and trade and treaty period that is hampered by the fact that the Federation surrounds them.

The bottom line is, no one should ever become "bored" by staying within the quadrant or galaxy. Not that it's wrong to want to expand beyond that if that where you want to go with your storytelling, but it's shortsighted to feel limited by such a vast amount of space.

Yeah, Trek has never accurately shown the scope of the real galaxy. Realistically speaking, all of the powers that we're aware of - which supposedly span a good deal of the galaxy - should be packed into Orion's Arm with us. Particularly when the series give the impression that the antagonists - like the Klingons, Romulans, and Cardsssians - basically have very little in the way of settlement off of their homeworlds.

 

[NewHeavensNewEarth]

The bottom line is, no one should ever become "bored" by staying within the quadrant or galaxy. Not that it's wrong to want to expand beyond that if that where you want to go with your storytelling, but it's shortsighted to feel limited by such a vast amount of space.

Right. And that's my point. It depends on the writers keeping it fresh without *needing* to go to gimmicks to keep the audience involved, or to repackage it in some way that's not really innovative. That's why I got fed up with Stargate, because every sector of this galaxy, every part of the Pegasus galaxy, and every galaxy explored by SG-Universe had extremely rehashed elements that felt like they were part of an effort to reuse/recycle old scripts. So it really depends on creativity.

There are other Alpha Quadrant storylines I could envision, like what if the Federation absorbed another federation of planets and suddenly humanity was a minority? Rather than a club for homosapiens, how would humanity feel about absorbing 50 billion folks into the fold who could help shape the future of the Federation?

There are storylines galore that could be explored, and that's kind of my point here.

 

[Jadeb]

I’ve always thought that all the talk about quadrants just made Trek seem smaller, not bigger. I kinda flinched when Discovery started with it.

 

[Tuskin38]

I’ve always thought that all the talk about quadrants just made Trek seem smaller, not bigger.

How?

 

[eschaton]

I've thought for awhile an interesting Trek show would be one where Starfleet discovers another Dyson sphere, and basically spends the entire show exploring it. After all, a Dyson sphere with a 1 AU radius would have an interior surface area equal to 550 million times the Earth's surface area. With that much area, you can discover practically anything. The show would require some sort of transit device to get from one part of the shell to another (maybe super-fast underground trains) but it would be a nice change of pace to have an entire show based on one massive "planet."

 

[Jadeb]

How?

I like how TOS handles it. It’s space. It’s big. There’s a whole lot of it, and we know very little about it. There’s Federation territory, Klingon territory, Romulan territory and then there’s everything else. The show has a real frontier feel — very much Wagon Train to the stars.

The more you map out that frontier and divvy it up, the less it seems.

 

[Tuskin38]

I like how TOS handles it. It’s space. It’s big. There’s a whole lot of it, and we know very little about it. There’s Federation territory, Klingon territory, Romulan territory and then there’s everything else. The show has a real frontier feel — very much Wagon Train to the stars.

The more you map out that frontier and divvy it up, the less it seems.

If you look at any maps the explored territory is still only like 5 percent.

 

[Jadeb]

If you look at any maps the explored territory is still only like 5 percent.

Honestly, I don’t get that deep into it. I just look at it from a storytelling perspective. The Arizona territory sounds a lot more exotic and unknown to me than the northwest quadrant of Arizona.

In general, the more they jargon up the language, the less I like it.

 

[eschaton]

If you look at any maps the explored territory is still only like 5 percent.

That would still mean that they've explored 2 billion earth-like planets - which seems way, way too high given the apparent size of Starfleet.

 

[Lord Garth]

I think with DSC being the sixth Star Trek series, it's impossible for the galaxy to be less known or as little known as in TOS. While there is a ton of space out there in the "immediate area", some parts of it will simply be more populous and prominent than others. We know what's further out because we've seen TNG, DS9, and VOY. We know what's already around us because it was mapped out in ENT and TOS. That just comes with being sixth in line.

With the search for the Red Angels, and someone like Pike in command, I think Discovery is spreading out its wings with the use of the Spore Drive.

Someone like Lorca only cared about figuring out how to get back to the Mirror Universe and getting in as many kills as the Klingons could afford him as long as he was stuck in the Prime Universe. His only care about what the Spore Drive could do was tactical or and hiding his ulterior motives behind the bait of "look at everything we can explore!" in order to get whoever needed it to be on board with whatever he was doing.

 

[NewHeavensNewEarth]

That would still mean that they've explored 2 billion earth-like planets - which seems way, way too high given the apparent size of Starfleet.

Exactly. Objective astronomy would point to that, but I'm saying that the writers corner themselves when there's an episode on the border between the Alpha Quadrant and Delta Quadrant, and who's there? Of course the Federation and the Romulans (in VOY). They make the ST universe smaller than the actual one, and Quadrants start to feel more like neighborhoods. Discovery has all the potential to reign it in again while exploring every new frontier in all its glory, and that's my hope.

 

[Lord Garth]

How?

Honestly, i don’t get that deep into it. I just look at it from a storytelling perspective. The Arizona territory sounds a lot more exotic and unknown to me than the northwest quadrant of Arizona.

In general, the more they jargon up the language, the less I like it.

This is true. If you want to think of the galaxy as big, you want to think in BIG NUMBERS. Billions of light-years, millions of sectors, and googles of unexplored planets. Just dividing the galaxy into a number like 4 makes it sound small because it's not 4,000,000; it's just four. It's a psychological thing.

To someone in the 23rd or 24th Century, they can't be constantly blown away by how BIG everything is because, to them, it's their normal way of life. Their view of the galaxy should be like our view of the world. But to a viewer today, any space outside of Earth would seem big. Larger than life.

In some episodes of TOS they were "closer by" than the intro of the series would suggest, but the mentality in the episodes when they seemed to be more Out There was really that "Space Is Big!" In DSC, the sense I get is "Space Is Big" but only when you go Out There. Being in Federation Space or near Klingon Space isn't considered to be Out There. And it shouldn't be given that this is a century after ENT. So the Spore Drive in DSC effectively works the same way as the Wormhole in DS9 did or Voyager getting lost in the Delta Quadrant.

 

[Jackson_Roykirk]

I've thought for awhile an interesting Trek show would be one where Starfleet discovers another Dyson dphere, and basically spends the entire show exploring it. After all, a Dyson sphere with a 1 AU radius would have an interior surface area equal to 550 million times the Earth's surface area. With that much area, you can discover practically anything. The show would require some sort of transit device to get from one part of the shell to another (maybe super-fast underground trains) but it would be a nice change of pace to have an entire show based on one massive "planet."

See Harlan Ellison's (or I should say Cordwainer Bird's) The Starlost for a similar idea.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

It's a good thing the original concept of TOS was discarded, though remnants of it in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" remained, like mentions of "leaving the galaxy".

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[guyute03]

I hear what you're saying with this stuff.

In its defence, my interest lies in how quadrants of Trek space are different. The Gamma where the Dominion has a stranglehold on the various races, oppressing that quadrant. The Delta where there is this lingering Borg threat spreading throughout it. The Alpha & Beta where the Federation, Klingons & Romulans hold power. These places have always been distinct to me, and yes they've gone there to keep the shows fresh, but I've personally never been disappointed in that.

What I kinda think of now though is how with the shroom network, and the trip to the Mirror u, they've opened up another side in that they could travel to other universes besides the Mirror U. That would be interesting to me. That is one way they could encounter an entire Borgified universe, and be forced to shut up about it once they returned home. And I'm sure there are far better ideas for new universes to discover than just a Borg controlled one. Discovery "discovering" new universes. I would not put this idea past them. They could do anything they wanted to with it, and honestly, it sounds kind of exciting to me and reminds me of TNG's 'Parallels'.

 

[XCV330]

That would still mean that they've explored 2 billion earth-like planets - which seems way, way too high given the apparent size of Starfleet.

that could explain the need for specialist science vessles like Oberth class. The initial surveys would probably just like today be done astronomically, then possibly probes, then maybe passing "captain took noticed this island of the bow of his ship" type flyby, followed eventually by an actual detailed study

 

[NewHeavensNewEarth]

What I kinda think of now though is how with the shroom network, and the trip to the Mirror u, they've opened up another side in that they could travel to other universes besides the Mirror U. That would be interesting to me. That is one way they could encounter an entire Borgified universe, and be forced to shut up about it once they returned home. And I'm sure there are far better ideas for new universes to discover than just a Borg controlled one. Discovery "discovering" new universes. I would not put this idea past them. They could do anything they wanted to with it, and honestly, it sounds kind of exciting to me and reminds me of TNG's 'Parallels'.

I've been thinking about that a lot, too, especially in the context of the show "Sliders" which was mentioned earlier. In that show, there was kind of a moral obligation to help out where possible as they journeyed between a indefinite number of alternate realities. And then they encountered a different evolutionary branch of apes that wanted to wage war on all the realities that were dominated by homosapiens.

It raises questions of ethical responsibilities to alternate Federations, alternate humans, waging war across realities, or being on the receiving end of those wars. Was that why Discovery was abandoned in that storm in Calypso at a future point, in a place and time where no other powers could find & exploit its abilities? In the same way that certain temporal accords came to be a thing, maybe multiverse accords became a thing, too. We shall see.