ENT to TOS tech downgrade in novels?

[flandry84]

Kinda off topic,
How come no landing party/away team use a realtime link to the orbiting ship a la the marines in "Aliens"?
The only time we see an away team visually record their mission is that episode where La Forge is mutated by the alien spores,the episode name escapes me.

 

[Trent Roman]

Recordings in the Star Trek universe have always puzzled me; we never see it happen except where it's necessary for the plot to have a recording, in which case it's usually treated as perfectly mundane that there's a recording on hand. Is the 24th century a surveillance society where nobody cares that they are always being recorded, presumably because there is no longer a concern of such recordings being abused by governments or corporations?

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[Sci]

A modern mobile telecommunications device requires a complex network of relays and satellites to function and is incapable of propagating its signal at FTL speeds through subspace, let alone broadcasting its signal to an orbiting space ship with no relay.

And Captain Kirk's communicators didn't stop working when he got into an elevator.

All true, but the point is, if a communicator can do all that, you'd think it could handle video and data too.

The goal might be reliability and durability rather than trying to cram as many functions into it as possible. I'm sure a tricorder can be used for other data functions.

and complexity and even rivals a tricorder in some respects.

.... I have yet to encounter a cell phone capable of emitting a sensor beam capable of telling you detailed sub-surface information. The most any cell phone I've ever seen can do is take a picture.

Hence "in some respects." I was speaking more of the computing and memory functions,

We saw a 24th Century tricorder capable of downloading the entire hard drive of a 1996-era desktop computer in "Future's End." I would presume, given that, that even a 23rd Century-era tricorder has computing and memory functions that vastly outmatch that of the best of the CrackBerries.

Recordings in the Star Trek universe have always puzzled me; we never see it happen except where it's necessary for the plot to have a recording, in which case it's usually treated as perfectly mundane that there's a recording on hand. Is the 24th century a surveillance society where nobody cares that they are always being recorded, presumably because there is no longer a concern of such recordings being abused by governments or corporations?

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

I'm not aware of any such recordings being made on-planet at a civilian installation. Presumably life aboard a Starfleet ship is different and people accept that there will be surveillance at or on a Starfleet installation as a matter of course.

 

[captcalhoun]

count me in as one of the 'why bother?' crowd.

 

[Dayton Ward]

When my cell phone can cause an avalanche, we may have something.

 

[JoeZhang]

The more I hear about it, the more it sounds like the sound of continuity porn that gets me rolling my eyes and dropping a book down the side of the sofa.

 

[Ronald Held]

Perhaps the NX-01 was a testbed of advanced technologies that were not available to the rest of the Earth Stafleet. Perhaps consolidating/selecting from all of the individual planetary fleet's technlogies to be used into the Federation Starfleet took a lot of time?

 

[William Leisner]

Recordings in the Star Trek universe have always puzzled me; we never see it happen except where it's necessary for the plot to have a recording, in which case it's usually treated as perfectly mundane that there's a recording on hand. Is the 24th century a surveillance society where nobody cares that they are always being recorded, presumably because there is no longer a concern of such recordings being abused by governments or corporations?

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

I'm not aware of any such recordings being made on-planet at a civilian installation. Presumably life aboard a Starfleet ship is different and people accept that there will be surveillance at or on a Starfleet installation as a matter of course.

I believe the settlement in TOS: "And the Children Shall Lead" was a civilian outpost, and we saw their home movies of daily life.

Though curiously, in TNG: "Future Imperfect", the home movies Riker watched of his son and wife were definitely staged and shot as if another person were in the room with a handheld camera, and not just playbacks of static security-style footage.

 

[Saul]

I appreciate the fact that they are trying to link Ent with TOS which is what I had always wanted with ENT but never got.

Huh? All the fourth season was was a giant ol' link to TOS.........

(Okay, I exaggerate. But not by much....)

Ok yes the 4th season did begin that and the books ran with it and even made TATV make sense

 

[Therin of Andor]

it’d better not clash with Final Frontier! (or Star Trek Log 7!)

They already clash... with each other.

 

[Nerys Myk]

When my cell phone can cause an avalanche, we may have something.

Have you tried adjusting the volume or perhaps a different ring tone?

 

[The Grim Ghost]

This need to explain every little difference between the shows gets kind of tiresome at times. The Klingon thing, the difference in the Trill..really who cares? I suppose somebody does, or there wouldn't be a demand for this type of thing.

I don't see any need to link Enterprise to TOS. It seems to me that Enterprise is by far the least popular Trek show and outright hated by many people. I don't even think the average Trek fan knows that the show existed! Why not just leave it alone? Let the Enterprise books stand on their own, so fans of the show can enjoy them without worrying about all of the baggage.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

(why did it take so long to cast James Avery as a Klingon?????)

I had the exact same thought. When I wrote a TNG spec script with Klingons back in 1992 (my gods, it's been that long?), I imagined Avery as the main Klingon male guest star, and would've recommended that given the chance.

It seems that actors with 'Avery' in their names, make great Klingons. James Avery, Avery Brooks...

And Rat Boy, I like your idea.

Spoiler: Romulans

Why else do you think they use 'prefix codes' in ST II? To prevent an enemy from doing exactly what the Romulans *were* doing over a century before that. It does make sense that technology would have to suffer some setbacks as well because of the Romulan 'telepresence' ability to hijack other vessels.

As for tricorders, though: I don't remember the ones in ENT being as bulky as the ones in TOS. ENT tricorders were about the size of modern day cellphones, whereas the ones in TOS were huge, like hardback novels. Although the ENT models might have been Vulcan in origin and thus likely to be more advanced anyway.

 

[Emissary of the Prophets]

Has anyone considered this?
The technology on Archer's Enterprise was designed to be used by Humans. At that time Starfleet was primarily a Human only organisation (forget Vulcan observers & Denobulan doctors for a moment). By the time of Kirk's Enterprise it was a multi-species organisation (even though due to real-life budget restraints we didn't get to see that). The 'jelly bean' keys used on the 1701 were designed to be used by species with different appendages, not just a 5 digit hand like Humans. The 23rd century tech may look more antiquated (we all know the real-life explanation) but it by far more superior to that of Archer's time.

 

[Therin of Andor]

The 'jelly bean' keys used on the 1701 ...

Problem was, the Tellarites kept eating them.

 

[Csalem]

Has anyone considered this?
The technology on Archer's Enterprise was designed to be used by Humans. At that time Starfleet was primarily a Human only organisation (forget Vulcan observers & Denobulan doctors for a moment). By the time of Kirk's Enterprise it was a multi-species organisation (even though due to real-life budget restraints we didn't get to see that). The 'jelly bean' keys used on the 1701 were designed to be used by species with different appendages, not just a 5 digit hand like Humans. The 23rd century tech may look more antiquated (we all know the real-life explanation) but it by far more superior to that of Archer's time.

That's how I've explained it in my mind since Ent started. It may not be a perfect reason, but then they are two tv shows made forty years apart.

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

There's already been one explanation, I think it was in a Diane Duane book... or maybe Diane Carey...

There's a scene where Uhura is working on her console's innards, and an observer comments on why the components are so big and chunky compared with the micro-subspace technology used in the civilian sector.

Uhura says that civilian equipment isn't meant to keep working when undergoing combat manoevres at warp, at relativistic velocities, going through a wormhole, or any of the other odd temporal and subspace effects that FTL travel throws up. I always accepted that as a reasonable explanation.

I can imagine an early ship trying something like the Picard maneuvre, then suffering a catastrophic systems failure when the electrons supposed to whizzing around the main computer plotting the course, get left behind a couple of lightseconds away when the ship makes its warp jump.

 

[JoeZhang]

There's already been one explanation, I think it was in a Diane Duane book... or maybe Diane Carey...

Memory Prime.

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

I knew it was one of the good ones...

 

[captcalhoun]

wasn't Memory Prime a Reeve-Stevens?