Hard Star Trek

[Warped9]

When people like something it can be hard for them to imagine it being done any other way than the way it currently exists.

That Star Trek can be rebooted has already been established several times over with each successive series and specific films. Of all that two versions have proven the most enduring: TOS and TNG. That leaves me to believe that those two contain the most basic elements from which to build a new interpretation. I also think it needs to go back to television where it can tell the stories best suited to it. Additionally it should be considered to take advantage of the forms that are resonating successfully with audiences. To that end I would lean toward being produced for a specialty channel where you could focus on 13 episode seasons rather than the conventional 22 episode seasons on network television.

If there were a contemporary show that I could point to as an example of how to similarly approach a new Star Trek it could be AMC's Mad Men. MM wasn't laced with gratuitous nudity, graphic violence and/or reams of foul language, but it was written with a certain style and in an adult manner. It certainly didn't talk down to its audience. The seasons, as well as the series as a whole, had over arcing storylines even as the episodes could often feel quite episodic.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

What Trek trappings could be removed, but still allow the show to be Trek?

Quite a few things, actually, assuming it is feasible to do so.

Artificial gravity, for one. This is something Scifi shows depend on because simulating weightlessness is complicated and expensive, but if it was feasible to do away with it (at least some of the time) then you could play with centrifugal gravity in the saucer section and finally have a logical reason for the ship to be designed the way it is.

Impulse engines too. There are some possible interpretations of "warp drive" where the ship can move at an arbitrary velocity using a single gravity-based engine. No need to have two engines where one will do.

Transporters: Enterprise managed to do without them for much of the series, so it's at least dooable. You could even reimagine transporters as something similar to ODST drop pods that just happen to have an orbit-return engine: your away team rides to the surface in their pods, then load up and fly back to the ship when they're done (like Kirk's escape pod in STXI).

Ferengi: One can hope.

As for the scenario, I like it but it doesn't feel like Star Trek, if that makes sense. It honestly feels more like Stargate, and more focused on the physical damage down to the ship and making Starfleet at more of a disadvantage than other species. While it makes sense with Starfleet still developing, it is a well worn trope that, I think, needs to be tread upon carefully.

And Stargate, IMO, did not tread upon that concept carefully at all.
For oen thing, I would favor a deliberate inversion of Stargate: make Stafleet a straight military organization that is trying its hand at exploration and having to re-learn its approach to everything in order to avoid starting conflicts where there shouldn't be any. There'd be a certain moral element there where the Enterprise crew once or twice uses its superior firepower to impose some kind of sweeping change in a small town or colony only to come back a couple months later and discover their changes made things a hell of a lot worse than their lack of intervention ever could.

In the technical aspect, you could apply real-world physics to the foreground setting and get JPL/NASA to chime in. Say, we have Trip and Archer on a space walk inspecting the damage to the hull and Archer says "Those nausican shells punched the hull plating like tissue paper" and Trip tells him "Well, that's what's supposed to happen. These old NX starships use a whipple shield. Th outer plating doesn't stop the shells, just breaks them up into smaller pieces so they won't puncture the pressure hull. Hm... deformation isn't so bad. Just got to patch the inner baffle and replace the kevlar sheet and we'll be good as new!"

The reason I mention fission reactors instead of fusion reactors is because a fission reactor actually has known quantities that a normal person could google if the technobabble goes over their head.

Another thing to consider is that "all aliens speak English" is an increasingly tired trope that I wish Enterprise continued to subvert after the first few episodes. Realistically, the ability to understand what an alien species is even SAYING is going to be the first and most difficult challenge in opening communications. Star Trek has always treated it like it's just a trifle detail, when in fact a skilled linguist and a cultural anthropologist will typically be the two most important people in the room in ANY first contact scenario.

 

[wulfio]

I think expecting a network show to have half their dialogue in jibberish is a bit unrealistic. Unless you're ok with nameless aliens of the week who are featured only as plot devices and one dimensional antagonists.

I'm afraid you'll just have to accept all aliens speak english if you want to continue seeing trek style sci-fi produced of a quality beyond youtube web series.

 

[Warped9]

I think expecting a network show to have half their dialogue in jibberish is a bit unrealistic. Unless you're ok with nameless aliens of the week who are featured only as plot devices and one dimensional antagonists.

I'm afraid you'll just have to accept all aliens speak english if you want to continue seeing trek style sci-fi produced of a quality beyond youtube web series.

Hard SF or even semi-hard SF isn't dependent on reams of accurate technical terminology but rather on simply obeying consistent rules.

Technically speaking a modern day cop show or war film is hard SF by the standards of an early 20th century perspective. It would seem incredibly futuristic to someone of the world of the early 1900s, but a truly forward thinking scientist of the time could say nothing he saw violated the known rules of physics and such. And nowhere in those contemporary films is someone explaining how the technology being used actually works. Things are simply shown to work in a conistent manner.

For a hard SF film or television series you don't have to explain anything. You just have to establish the rules and stay consistent to them when depicting the tech in operation.

 

[wulfio]

what does that have to do with what I said?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I think expecting a network show to have half their dialogue in jibberish is a bit unrealistic.

And yet Voyager went on for seven seasons....

Unless you're ok with nameless aliens of the week who are featured only as plot devices and one dimensional antagonists.

Actually, forcing them to work harder to find ways to communicate would make the storylines much easier to sell. With an English speaking alien, you might find a survivor on an escape pod and be told "I am a defector! My commanding officer is planning to attack your home planet with a giant superweapon!" and then have to take the story from there.

If he doesn't speak English at all, translating his frantic warnings and gesticulating is the FIRST problem you have to solve. It may actually be an ongoing problem if you're a) trying to decide whether or not you trust him and b) finding that the alien coordinate system is really weird and it's incredibly difficult to figure out where his commander's ship really is or what it's doing.

Even more interesting is the fact that the nature of translation and "linguicode" might allow for the removal of alien dialog altogether and have their messages come in text form (and Hoshi or T'Pol read back or paraphrase the actual response e.g. "Message from the Romulan ship. They're ordering us to surrender and prepare to be boarded.") That would actually save the studio some money if they don't have to hire as many extras with speaking roles.

 

[wulfio]

I think expecting a network show to have half their dialogue in jibberish is a bit unrealistic.

And yet Voyager went on for seven seasons....

Actually, forcing them to work harder to find ways to communicate would make the storylines much easier to sell. With an English speaking alien, you might find a survivor on an escape pod and be told "I am a defector! My commanding officer is planning to attack your home planet with a giant superweapon!" and then have to take the story from there.

If he doesn't speak English at all, translating his frantic warnings and gesticulating is the FIRST problem you have to solve. It may actually be an ongoing problem if you're a) trying to decide whether or not you trust him and b) finding that the alien coordinate system is really weird and it's incredibly difficult to figure out where his commander's ship really is or what it's doing.

Even more interesting is the fact that the nature of translation and "linguicode" might allow for the removal of alien dialog altogether and have their messages come in text form (and Hoshi or T'Pol read back or paraphrase the actual response e.g. "Message from the Romulan ship. They're ordering us to surrender and prepare to be boarded.") That would actually save the studio some money if they don't have to hire as many extras with speaking roles.

I'm not saying it couldn't be great sci-fi. As a sci-fi fan I'd be able to appreciate that. I can't see it working on the grind of a 12-24 episode season. It'd be fine for an episode here and there. It's just my opinion, but I don't think they'd get the numbers. There's been nothing in the history of tv to indicate to me that the general audience would respond to a tv show like that. We're in the era of "dark and gritty" right now. Hard sci-fi seems like a tough sell. And more importantly, I think it's an even harder sell to the network. We're talking about CBS here.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I think expecting a network show to have half their dialogue in jibberish is a bit unrealistic.

And yet Voyager went on for seven seasons....

Actually, forcing them to work harder to find ways to communicate would make the storylines much easier to sell. With an English speaking alien, you might find a survivor on an escape pod and be told "I am a defector! My commanding officer is planning to attack your home planet with a giant superweapon!" and then have to take the story from there.

If he doesn't speak English at all, translating his frantic warnings and gesticulating is the FIRST problem you have to solve. It may actually be an ongoing problem if you're a) trying to decide whether or not you trust him and b) finding that the alien coordinate system is really weird and it's incredibly difficult to figure out where his commander's ship really is or what it's doing.

Even more interesting is the fact that the nature of translation and "linguicode" might allow for the removal of alien dialog altogether and have their messages come in text form (and Hoshi or T'Pol read back or paraphrase the actual response e.g. "Message from the Romulan ship. They're ordering us to surrender and prepare to be boarded.") That would actually save the studio some money if they don't have to hire as many extras with speaking roles.

I'm not saying it couldn't be great sci-fi. As a sci-fi fan I'd be able to appreciate that. I can't see it working on the grind of a 12-24 episode season. It'd be fine for an episode here and there. It's just my opinion, but I don't think they'd get the numbers. There's been nothing in the history of tv to indicate to me that the general audience would respond to a tv show like that. We're in the era of "dark and gritty" right now. Hard sci-fi seems like a tough sell.

So make it dark and gritty. And while you're at it, might as well pander to demographic shifts; there's a rapidly growing number of bilingual Star Trek fans who might appreciate the concept of language difficulties being an important theme in the show.

Imagine this: Enterprise puts in at a Vulcan shipyard for some much needed repairs. The chief engineer in charge of the overhauls doesn't speak English, so the only person who can talk to him is T'Pol. It soon becomes apparent that the guy is kind of an asshole and doesn't really like humans, and some of the crew get the impression that he is using the "No English" excuse just so he doesn't have to talk to them and is even dishing on them in Vulcan right in front of them. T'Pol, then, has to make a choice to either call him on it and risk alienation from her fellow Vulcans, or stay silent and risk alienation from her own crew.

Then throw in a plot twist: turns out the engineer doesn't really like T'pol either, so when she calls him out he tells her to go fuck herself. In the end, it turns out the only person he DOES like is Trip. When T'Pol asks him why, he hands her a sheet of subspace field equations that Trip wrote for him (which he studied carefully and relied on in order to make his repairs) and tells her "Because we speak the same language."

 

[wulfio]

I am not debating the merit. It's just my opinion. I don't think enough of the audience would support it. And I don't think CBS would buy it. You're talking about hard sci-fi on network television. And this is an IP owned by a company who's probably only interested in syndication. I just don't think it is at all possible.

And when i say dark and gritty, I mean more like melodramatic. And every episode ends with an acoustic cover of a popular song while the cast is shown in a montage being introspective.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I am not debating the merit. It's just my opinion. I don't think enough of the audience would support it. And I don't think CBS would buy it. You're talking about hard sci-fi on network television. And this is an IP owned by a company who's probably only interested in syndication. I just don't think it is at all possible.

Network television is overrated. Probably for precisely that reason.

If I was going to pitch a new Star Trek TV series, I'd go to HBO first.

And when i say dark and gritty, I mean more like melodramatic.

Which is the one thing Star Trek has SPECIFICALLY AVOIDED for its entire history.

 

[Warped9]

TPTB want something that will entertain their viewers. They won't care if it's hard SF or schlock. You don't even have to tell them it's hard SF.

And to keep it hard you just resist writing in things where tech is arbitrarily pulling things out of its ass.

Take two films that could be classified as hard SF: 2001: A Space Odyssey and Interstellar. Particularly Interstellar which has more character and emotion than 2001. Neither makes a point of making overlong explanations of the tech and science. There's just enough for flavouring and that's it.

 

[wulfio]

Network television is overrated. Probably for precisely that reason.

If I was going to pitch a new Star Trek TV series, I'd go to HBO first.

Is that possible? Doesn't CBS own the tv rights?

 

[Warped9]

Network television is overrated. Probably for precisely that reason.

If I was going to pitch a new Star Trek TV series, I'd go to HBO first.

Is that possible? Doesn't CBS own the tv rights?

Yes, CBS does own the TV rights, but I imagine there could be some deal done to get the series onto a specialty channel. CBS might even have a direct pipeline to one.

 

[wulfio]

But then we get back to my original point that it's CBS that is the gatekeeper. And would they want to develop a fresh show that redefines the franchise/genre, or just put something out that's more of the same, that they know they can sell to syndication?

I just don't have faith in those big networks being all that progressive.

 

[fireproof78]

Network television is overrated. Probably for precisely that reason.

If I was going to pitch a new Star Trek TV series, I'd go to HBO first.

Is that possible? Doesn't CBS own the tv rights?

Yes, CBS does own the TV rights, but I imagine there could be some deal done to get the series onto a specialty channel. CBS might even have a direct pipeline to one.

If they could score a sweet licensing deal with HBO and not have to invest any more in to the show and still reap the benefits.

In case anyone has not been paying attention, CBS seems unwilling to put forth any money on a new series...period. They have other irons in the fire that they want to invest money in, and Star Trek makes them money through merchandising.

Someone needs to come up with a sweet deal to get them to bite.

 

[Tim Walker]

Book-"Final Frontier" by Brian Clegg. Has a chapter which discusses FTL concepts. Comments that even if warp drive is possible, that doesn't necessarily mean that you can send a signal FTL. So to hold together a large, interstellar confederation/federation/or empire you need to use couriers.

 

[Warped9]

In something like Star Trek you can have a couple of science fiction gimmes. Warp drive is one. You establish how it works and stay within those guidelines. The transporter might be another as well as FTL communications. Pretty much everything else you respect the textbook.

Remember, though, hard SF isn't defined solely by what is factually known, but also by what is theoretically possible. So speculative science and tech is permissible as long as you hew closely to what is theorized or reasonably speculated.

 

[Tim Walker]

Discussion involving several different parameters. http://kheper.net/topics/scifi/grading.html

 

[horatio83]

So make it dark and gritty.

This is Trek, not cyberpunk.

And while you're at it, might as well pander to demographic shifts; there's a rapidly growing number of bilingual Star Trek fans who might appreciate the concept of language difficulties being an important theme in the show.

First of all, if you wanna make a good piece of art you should never ever pander to anyone.
Second, there are ample of episodes in which communication problems exist. The aliens from "Vox Sola" and "A Night in Sickbay" come to mind. Sure, not peeing on some holy ground or the notion that eating in front of other people is disgusting were mainly played for fun but so what, we still saw a species with some different customs.

There is no need to abolish the universal translator for that. It is just more comfortable to have aliens that speak English as the benchmark (you can still abandon that for specific episodes like "Vox Sola"), after all this is a piece of drama so also want to get a speech performance by actors and not only some alien gibberish.

 

[Tim Walker]

Speaking of gritty, there was a thread on gritty space opera. www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=163783

Note the comments regarding demographics. It seems that a new series should strongly appeal to women-who, it is commented, tend to prefer fantasy to sci fi.