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How "realistic" should STAR TREK be?

Star Trek is honestly 'Space Fantasy'; there's so littl in it that is realistic to begin with, I don't believe it's a fair question.

We will not have interstellar space travel akin to the way ships sailed the oceans of earth in the past. It will nev er be easy, cheap or fast; and althiough we may one day find an actual Earth like planet we could travel to, it would require decades of testing to see if Humans who evolved on earth could survive there.
 
I don't think Trek's problem isn't "magical space tech" so much as its writers' bad habit of using space magic to deus ex machina themselves out of a plot corner.

There's really only one rule they should follow I'm regards to tech: if you're going to make it the source or solution to the problem, the audience has to understand the tech enough to figure it out.

You know what a phaser is and what it can do. If the bad guy is standing in front of the good guy, and the good guy has the ray gun, you understand (without the hero saying "I'm gonna shoot") how the bad guy can be stopped.

What does a deflector do? Everything, except when it can't. Bad plot device.

A good tech? The Tachyon grid from TNG: Redemption. They set it up, the explain some of its limitations and it can be defeated by...wait for it...flooding the area with tachyons. That makes sense. You swamp the signal by raising the noise floor.
 
I don't think it's fair to call Star Trek space fantasy/science fantasy. During the time period TOS was written, it was pretty much standard "soft-sci-fi" - not that different from written works. Certainly not anywhere near as rigorous as Hal Clement, Arthur C. Clarke, etc, but a step above pulphouse fiction which didn't even bother trying to come up with explanations for things. The problem is literary science fiction moved on from the 1960s conventions (first due to the New Wave movement, and then in the 1980s with a turn towards more rigorous hard sci-fi) but Star Trek's emphasis on continuity and desire to not do a reboot meant that a full retcon of all of the silly stuff just wasn't going to happen.

At this point, I would concur that Star Trek is effecively its own sub-genre with its own rules. If a reboot of Star Trek was ever done from the ground up I'd like to see it be a bit more scientifically plausible from a modern perspective (for example, come up with a better within-universe explanation for humanoids interbreeding, like the Iconians "seeded" modified ancient humans across the galaxy) but as long as continuity in the PU is maintained I think we should leave well enough alone.
 
Star Trek should strive for naturalism, not realism. It should be plausible and relatable to its audience. The best example of Trek utilizing naturalism well is the original series' early first season.

There's the quotidian of starship life. The characters speak of diets, delivering "red Mexican peppers," etc. Kirk gets a routine physical. Uhura is bored by aspects of her job.

Disco is pretty good at this. Running the decks for cardio. Having colds. Ordering breakfast burritos or hamburgers with habanero sauce.
 
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It should always strive to stay within Realistic & Plausible as much as possible while respect previous cannon / lore.

It should aim for internal logical consistency & try to update with the times technologically while being a nice portrayal of the future for tech like TOS was for many future tech.
 
Too much technobabble and damaging the continuity of the earlier series to get your show over is not the way to do it! It's laughable to even think that DSC is set a decade before TOS! What happened to the civilization and technology? If we are to believe that it's the same universe (which I don't, not for one second) then did they go retro tech and decide that the uniforms didn't need to be so much like a tight-necked butler outfit as well? :brickwall:
JB
 
johnnybear said:
Too much technobabble and damaging the continuity of the earlier series to get your show over is not the way to do it! It's laughable to even think that DSC is set a decade before TOS! What happened to the civilization and technology? If we are to believe that it's the same universe (which I don't, not for one second) then did they go retro tech and decide that the uniforms didn't need to be so much like a tight-necked butler outfit as well? :brickwall:
JB
Click to expand...

Really? That's how you feel? Why haven't you spoken up before?

:shrug:

:p

None of that bothers me. One thing I try to keep in mind is that one character's opinion does not make absolute reality. Worf is a good example. So much of what he said about Klingons was total BS. I don't take an individual character's statements as statements of Truth or Fact necessarily. Dates, times, people screw those up all the time. People have different views on the same events. This is not "discontinuity" it's reality. TUC covered this territory to some degree.

As for the look of it, my opinion is that Discovery looks fantastic (it's like watching a movie every week). I don't mind the "upgraded" appearance of things. In fact I think if they had made show with ships looking just like TOS...fans would have complained about that too (not that TOS fans complain a lot or anything...;)).

Like it or not, Discovery is indeed "real" Star Trek, and in the TOS timeline. No amount of wishing it away or posting the opposite is going to change that.

Maybe the problem lies with constantly making prequels. I'd be very happy if they'd return to the post TNG/VOY time frame. It sounds like the Picard show will do that technically, but supposedly he's no longer in Starfleet, so...
 
I think I've said this before, but I think of the Star Trek universe as some sort of fictional history and every show is like a different historian's perspective on that history. Kind of like how one historian, writing about an explorer may focus on his heroic vision of discovering something and another will focus on the brutal way he treated the natives.

Discovery writers write about this fictional history from their perspective and their ideas, which is different from the way previous writers did. They were interpreting the same events differently to tell a story for their audience.
 
johnnybear said:
Too much technobabble and damaging the continuity of the earlier series to get your show over is not the way to do it! It's laughable to even think that DSC is set a decade before TOS! What happened to the civilization and technology? If we are to believe that it's the same universe (which I don't, not for one second) then did they go retro tech and decide that the uniforms didn't need to be so much like a tight-necked butler outfit as well? :brickwall:
JB
Click to expand...

What civilisation?
 
If fans can accept characters like Spock, Belanna, Deanna and Simon Tarses can exist then anything is possible.
However
1.If the premise is 'Earth's humanity has united to roam the stars' then show some national and ethnic diversity in the human crew
2.If the premise is 'humanity is part of a United Federation of Planets' then none of the starships should look like NASA on a spaceship, (yes I know its an American show but how does a starship represent the UFP with one alien crewmember?).
3. Since for some strange reason this intergalactic Starfleet is the de facto military then all your admirals cannot be incompetent buffoons. (and mainly human)
4. Show some career progression, people should be promoted and leave and new officers, crew personnel join. Senior officers serving the same captain for 15 years is pathetic
 
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