Yes, though it's a term that has a much longer history. Asimov seems to have used the term fairly often in the '50s and after, though other writers used it going back at least to 1925.
If lasers are antiquates by the TNG era how are Photon Torpedoes still relevant?
- Thread starter Kemp
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Yes, though it's a term that has a much longer history. Asimov seems to have used the term fairly often in the '50s and after, though other writers used it going back at least to 1925.
Of course none of the lasers in Star Wars behave like lasers in the real world anyway, so we can likely caulk them up as a generic sci-fi term rather than the actual lasers. Sort of like 'The Cage' lasers likely being phasers before the term was settled on, or at least something similar.
Star Wars being more science fantasy helps it in regards to technology and generic naming.
While there are camps on both sides that favor abject technological superiority for either Star Trek or Star Wars, whenever I attempt crossovers, I tend to balance out the weaponry to make them seem more equal, or only as overpowered as the plot calls for, rather than based strictly on observed, stated, or projected weapons output, as those tend to be ignored on screen most of the time anyway.
Star Wars being more science fantasy helps it in regards to technology and generic naming.
While there are camps on both sides that favor abject technological superiority for either Star Trek or Star Wars, whenever I attempt crossovers, I tend to balance out the weaponry to make them seem more equal, or only as overpowered as the plot calls for, rather than based strictly on observed, stated, or projected weapons output, as those tend to be ignored on screen most of the time anyway.
Pretty much, but I'm so tired of how warsies go on and on about it, so I put it that way.
I'd like to see that kind of fan-fic. The stuff that has Data explaining how 30,000 Star Destroyers are useless and get wiped out in 15 seconds or Lord Vader reporting to Palpatine how The Executor just wiped out the entire Federation, Klingon, and Romulan fleets in 20 minutes, then demolished the Borg, Dominion, and Voth a couple hours later just bores me.
I generally set my crossover materials to be around the time of the Enterprise-B and used mostly TMP-TUC era stuff. I keep the phasers and turboslasers as basically equal. Federation style shields are slightly better, but only so their small size doesn't get them destroyed by a hail of fire from an Imperial starship.. I do have photon torpedoes as being quite powerful, but most Federation style ships can't pump them out like there is no tomorrow (especially when they are generally outnumbered.
I do not set the crossovers in the Milky Way. I always set them in the Star Wars galaxy. Arriving two years before Yavin. Warp drives are quite slow compared to hyperdrives, but I can also imagine the Rebel Alliance acquiring some smaller or older hyperdrives for the Starfleet engineers to install into the Impulse decks to at least somewhat correct that problem. Using the warp drive in hyperspace to reduce the time to roughly the speeds the Empire uses.
If Starfleet style ships ever seem overpowered, it usually doesn't get them much but the ability to escape, or complete an objective, because they are still outnumbered and require aid and/or time to establish bases, supply lines, and ways to repair and resupply their ships, since this would be early replicator or proto-replicator days at best, if at all. Plus they would have to work through the Rebels to keep their starbases hidden from the Empire until better defenses can be setup.
My setup was also never the Federation exactly. I tended to have them be the faction of Starfleet that was opposed to the treaty with the Klingons (but for more noble reasons, since I was using FASA materials at that time.) They rebelled to protect the Triangle from the Klingons and Romulans because the Federation wouldn't due to treaties. After several years, they lost, but found a means to evacuate the region and resettle far, far away....only to come into another civil war. I had the Federation later come to a agreement with them to cover up this dark period, which ends around the time Picard is born and the aftermath and evacuation is covered up with the Tomed Incident. (I did this while on the boring walk to and from school from seventh grade to my senior year of high school, which was now over 20 years ago).
I do not set the crossovers in the Milky Way. I always set them in the Star Wars galaxy. Arriving two years before Yavin. Warp drives are quite slow compared to hyperdrives, but I can also imagine the Rebel Alliance acquiring some smaller or older hyperdrives for the Starfleet engineers to install into the Impulse decks to at least somewhat correct that problem. Using the warp drive in hyperspace to reduce the time to roughly the speeds the Empire uses.
If Starfleet style ships ever seem overpowered, it usually doesn't get them much but the ability to escape, or complete an objective, because they are still outnumbered and require aid and/or time to establish bases, supply lines, and ways to repair and resupply their ships, since this would be early replicator or proto-replicator days at best, if at all. Plus they would have to work through the Rebels to keep their starbases hidden from the Empire until better defenses can be setup.
My setup was also never the Federation exactly. I tended to have them be the faction of Starfleet that was opposed to the treaty with the Klingons (but for more noble reasons, since I was using FASA materials at that time.) They rebelled to protect the Triangle from the Klingons and Romulans because the Federation wouldn't due to treaties. After several years, they lost, but found a means to evacuate the region and resettle far, far away....only to come into another civil war. I had the Federation later come to a agreement with them to cover up this dark period, which ends around the time Picard is born and the aftermath and evacuation is covered up with the Tomed Incident. (I did this while on the boring walk to and from school from seventh grade to my senior year of high school, which was now over 20 years ago).
Obviously, if Trek and Wars were ever to crossover and fight in a movie (it sounds impossible, but never say never), they'd be presented as equals - whatever the nerdy technical stuff says.
Yep, and they handwave it away as the laws of physics being slightly different so their shields don't work. In less time than it took me to write that.
...Most of the sophomoric acting actually works fairly well on the Tampere dialect they are abusing. But it's easy to see their real love was B5 rather than Trek. Probably easier to emulate, too, with the show's tradition on B acting, C plots and D sets... Not to mention the ZZZ speeches.
Have y'all seen Iron Sky by essentially the same lot?
Timo Saloniemi
Have y'all seen Iron Sky by essentially the same lot?
Timo Saloniemi
Yup.. that is. It's a funny comedy film ,but i am more impressed with the technology comparisson betwen the two series. What happened on the film is really meet my expectation years be4 i watch it. And yes, i think the same too.. their real love is on B5, since the Trek is the antagonist here, though we can clearly see that B5 get very hard time dealing with Trek ship technology despite their serious handicap, without shield. But thanks to that ,the technology clash between them become more objective.
Roddenberry invented the term phaser as realised that he wanted the weapons to be able to do things that lasers probably never would be capable of. Star Wars was intended to be action-adventure, so all the weaponry is designed to be plot-specific with little thought given to how things actually work. Yeah, they call the ship-to-ship weapons turbolasers, but even on-screen they bear no resemblance to what lasers actually do.
This is how almost every sci-fi universe works, with the possible notable exception being Babylon 5. Of course, some races have artificial gravity, and we have the whole hyperspace thing, but apart from the plasma-based weaponry and jump engines, you could theoretically build an Earth Alliance Hyperion or Omega Class ship today.
But if we assume that the lasers in Trek act as they do with our current technology, the ships armed with them probably use them to cut through physical armour rather than attempt to defeat energy shielding.
This is how almost every sci-fi universe works, with the possible notable exception being Babylon 5. Of course, some races have artificial gravity, and we have the whole hyperspace thing, but apart from the plasma-based weaponry and jump engines, you could theoretically build an Earth Alliance Hyperion or Omega Class ship today.
But if we assume that the lasers in Trek act as they do with our current technology, the ships armed with them probably use them to cut through physical armour rather than attempt to defeat energy shielding.
That is a gross overgeneralization. There are plenty of science fiction universes that are very well-researched and grounded in scientific literacy. It's just that most of them are in prose. You might be correct to say it's how most SF universes in film, television, and comic books work, but those barely scratch the surface of what science fiction is. Most SF universes are found in books and prose stories, and they are far more rich and diverse in their approaches than the narrow cross-section of stuff that trickles out into the mass media. Prose SF tends to be more along the lines of movies like 2001 or Contact or Interstellar or Arrival (and three of those are actually based on prose works) than stuff like Star Wars or Doctor Who.
Indeed - I was referring to mainstream sci-fi, which takes numerous liberties for the visual medium. For example in Trek, where weapons have effective ranges of thousands of kilometres, it's doubtful we'd ever see the close-range "knife fights" of the Dominion Wars, they just look better to the audience. To my recollection only Babylon 5 and NuBSG has manoeuvring anything approaching what would actually happen in space.
As a prose author myself, I disagree with the assumption that "mainstream" equals film and television exclusively. I prefer to think of prose as the mainstream of science fiction, because what ends up on film and TV is usually just the narrowest sliver of what the literature is capable of, and it usually lags a decade or two behind the literature in its concepts and trends. Most mass-media SF is entry-level stuff, though we have been getting a larger number of smart SF feature films in recent years, and some smarter shows as well. The lion's share of which are adapted from books.
It's a pity I can only click "like" once for a post. This post is worthy of so much more.
--Alex
"The Expanse" for example.
Thank god other people like Curtis Saxton developed Star Wars technical lore then.
There not lasers, plasma weapons as stated using a concentrated gas.
About the only place sci-fi tech related that has pissed me off more than it should was the old stardestroyer site. That is specifically why I tend to keep by crossovers essentially equal when I think it will work, or unbalance them when something doesn't work for reasons. The largest one I've had to adjust tends to be weapon's ranges between different series as so many give what some people call long ranges, yet show ridiculously close in fighting (visual range combat) that would be considered too close for even naval gunners in World War One. Others give giant range bands that would be possible, but need to be evened out with other series so one won't have so range an advantage as others. Also equalize or remove he various electronic countermeasures aside from actual cloaking devices, as some use it and some don't, which makes cross over rules very annoying, when one side does and has short range weapons, while the other does not and has long range weapons, that can't hit the other side at all due to the Electronic warfare rules.
