Importance of tech in today’s trek

[Paul Weaver]

I was reading my TNG tech manual this morning. One footnote grabbed my attention - how Gates McFadden was a stickler for getting medical procedure as accurate as possible, and tricorder operations were built around this. I recall Wil Wheaton saying similar things in the past regarding conn.

Do Discovery actors have similar views? I’ve had the feeling there less emphasis on the details of technology than there was 30 years ago, but I’m 30 years older so maybe it’s me that’s changed.

Does the modern franchise have people like Rick Sternbach and Michael Okuda working on it? I also get the feeling that something has changed between season 1 and 2 when it comes to technology.

 

[David cgc]

I'm not sure if it's my imagination or not, but it certainly feels like there's less internal consistency to the way Discovery strings Star-Trek-words together than there has been in the past, never mind its use of real science, which is elided to the point of being metaphorical (seriously, it would've taken, what, five seconds to say "Stuff can be alive in our dimension as well as another one"? But instead they just got self-serious about implicitly-subspace mushrooms to the point where it's treated as a joke in the second season).

 

[GeorgeKirk]

Gene Roddenberry was always rather heavily invested in the technical aspects of the universe he created as a way of making it seem grounded and believable, and since Rick Berman tried to hew closely to the rules Gene established, the tech being believable and consistent was important in his productions, too.

Despite his claim to be a Star Trek fan, I don't get the impression that Bryan Fuller is that attached to the minutiae of the universe; a lot of the things that made longtime fans howl in frustration like the starship designs that don't fit at all in the design lineage established in the Original Series and Enterprise or the weird-looking Klingons are things that Fuller insisted upon when he was running the show. And Alex Kurtzman is very much a known quantity from his work on the JJ movies, you know he's not insisting on any kind of scientific or technical accuracy. And I say this as someone who's really enjoying the new season of Discovery. So, if a VFX artist wants to do a cool-looking 10-second shot of the inside of the turbolift system that makes it look like Space Mountain with the lights on, and the money is there he's not going to say no just because it's stupidly unrealistic.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Gene Roddenberry was always rather heavily invested in the technical aspects of the universe he created as a way of making it seem grounded and believable, and since Rick Berman tried to hew closely to the rules Gene established, the tech being believable and consistent was important in his productions, too.

Despite his claim to be a Star Trek fan, I don't get the impression that Bryan Fuller is that attached to the minutiae of the universe; a lot of the things that made longtime fans howl in frustration like the starship designs that don't fit at all in the design lineage established in the Original Series and Enterprise or the weird-looking Klingons are things that Fuller insisted upon when he was running the show. And Alex Kurtzman is very much a known quantity from his work on the JJ movies, you know he's not insisting on any kind of scientific or technical accuracy. And I say this as someone who's really enjoying the new season of Discovery. So, if a VFX artist wants to do a cool-looking 10-second shot of the inside of the turbolift system that makes it look like Space Mountain with the lights on, and the money is there he's not going to say no just because it's stupidly unrealistic.

Alex Kurtzman & Bryan Fuller would've been fine if it was a Sci-Fi series that was Star Trek-esque and not actual Star Trek.

We need somebody at the helm that cares about the technical aspects and cannon.

As "Cool" as the Turbo-Lift scene & Pod launching scenes were in S2 ep 1, they made ZERO logical sense in terms of layout relative to the structure of the ship.

 

[Paul Weaver]

As "Cool" as the Turbo-Lift scene & Pod launching scenes were in S2 ep 1, they made ZERO logical sense in terms of layout relative to the structure of the ship.

One example doesn't make things terrible -- after all there's always

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

And even TNG's turbolifts weren't consistent in times and routes

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

And even TNG's turbolifts weren't consistent in times and routes

That's something that needs to be fixed!

In my StarTrek HeadCannon, for any TurboLift scenes, I'll have the show switch from 16:9 to 4:3 (12:9) aspect ratio and use the remaining 4:9 side bar and split that into 3x views.
Top-Down View, Side View, 3/4 Isometric view

This way we can get a realistic view of travel aboard the StarShip to help immersion.

And keep the Scene Director honest with how much dialog can go on in the TurboLift.

 

[F. King Daniel]

One example doesn't make things terrible -- after all there's always

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

And even TNG's turbolifts weren't consistent in times and routes

That's my turbolift video, cut out and reposted. Hmmm.

 

[David cgc]

That's something that needs to be fixed!

In my StarTrek HeadCannon, for any TurboLift scenes, I'll have the show switch from 16:9 to 4:3 (12:9) aspect ratio and use the remaining 4:9 side bar and split that into 3x views.
Top-Down View, Side View, 3/4 Isometric view

This way we can get a realistic view of travel aboard the StarShip to help immersion.

And keep the Scene Director honest with how much dialog can go on in the TurboLift.

You joke, but for Insurrection, at the beginning of the movie, they wanted to have a live view of the turbolift traveling from Picard's quarters to the reception room on the screen, but the graphics team quickly realized that they were right next to each other on the MSD. The solution they came up with was animating little sidebar-screens with a zoomed-in view of the MSD that turned into an endless straightaway turbolift journey the moment the edge of the ship went out of frame.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

You joke, but for Insurrection, at the beginning of the movie, they wanted to have a live view of the turbolift traveling from Picard's quarters to the reception room on the screen, but the graphics team quickly realized that they were right next to each other on the MSD. The solution they came up with was animating little sidebar-screens with a zoomed-in view of the MSD that turned into an endless straightaway turbolift journey the moment the edge of the ship went out of frame.

They couldn't have moved Picard's quarters to some far away section of the ship?

 

[GeorgeKirk]

We need somebody at the helm that cares about the technical aspects and cannon.

Do we, though? I mean, Nick Meyer didn't give two craps about either of those things, and most fans believe that The Wrath of Khan is the most perfect Star Trek thing in the history of ever. Not to mention that its success led directly to the expansive universe of movies and spinoff TV shows we have today. (Seriously. If TWOK flopped in 1982, there would've been no more sequels and no TNG in 1987.)

I know there's a school of thought that says Star Trek's pretend technology and imaginary continuity are the main reasons for its appeal, and that's definitely true for a small segment of the fandom, but not the Star Trek fanbase as a whole.

And just be clear, I would love to see more "realism" in Star Trek. I think a show where there's no real-time communication over interstellar distances and where warp speed doesn't effectively shrink the galaxy to the relative size of Queens would be more dramatic and entertaining than what we have now or what we've had before. But I don't feel entitled to that, and I'm not angry that Star Trek's producers aren't making the theoretical perfect show that exists only in my imagination.

And keep the Scene Director honest with how much dialog can go on in the TurboLift.

In every TV show, movie, or video game cutscene ever that has a scene with characters having a conversation that's important to the plot while riding a conveyance (be it an elevator, a car, a train, or a rickshaw) the ride is always--always--as long or short as it needs to be to serve the plot and production realities. That's just how filmed entertainment works. Movies and TV are replete with these kinds of things--cop shows where DNA tests take a few seconds to run, or characters traveling from Manhattan to Staten Island in like 10 minutes. And audiences accept them, because we realize that what we're watching isn't real and that certain shortcuts have been taken to make the show more entertaining or fit within the established runtime.

Again, I'm sure there's a very tiny segment of people who can't suspend their disbelief enough to enjoy anything. And that's fine, but they're not a market segment that's big enough for anybody to cater to.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Do we, though? I mean, Nick Meyer didn't give two craps about either of those things, and most fans believe that The Wrath of Khan is the most perfect Star Trek thing in the history of ever. Not to mention that its success led directly to the expansive universe of movies and spinoff TV shows we have today. (Seriously. If TWOK flopped in 1982, there would've been no more sequels and no TNG in 1987.)

I know there's a school of thought that says Star Trek's pretend technology and imaginary continuity are the main reasons for its appeal, and that's definitely true for a small segment of the fandom, but not the Star Trek fanbase as a whole.

And just be clear, I would love to see more "realism" in Star Trek. I think a show where there's no real-time communication over interstellar distances and where warp speed doesn't effectively shrink the galaxy to the relative size of Queens would be more dramatic and entertaining than what we have now or what we've had before. But I don't feel entitled to that, and I'm not angry that Star Trek's producers aren't making the theoretical perfect show that exists only in my imagination.

I have no problem with In-Universe "Realism" as long as it's based on existing cannon and tech that we've seen work or something that is. The Real Time Communications across the Galaxy has already been established in Voyager via Hyper-SubSpace and I've already calculated the speed of the signal that needs to travel to make that work for real time communication. So I have no issue with that. As far as Warp Speed, the Universe is a big place and it's constantly expanding IRL, ergo it's going to take some time to get there, maybe not as much as you would want it, but long enough for my Head Cannon to make it interesting.

I'm not "Angry" or feel entitled, but I would like some change towards a more "Theoretically Perfect Show".

In every TV show, movie, or video game cutscene ever that has a scene with characters having a conversation that's important to the plot while riding a conveyance (be it an elevator, a car, a train, or a rickshaw) the ride is always--always--as long or short as it needs to be to serve the plot and production realities. That's just how filmed entertainment works. Movies and TV are replete with these kinds of things--cop shows where DNA tests take a few seconds to run, or characters traveling from Manhattan to Staten Island in like 10 minutes. And audiences accept them, because we realize that what we're watching isn't real and that certain shortcuts have been taken to make the show more entertaining or fit within the established runtime.

Again, I'm sure there's a very tiny segment of people who can't suspend their disbelief enough to enjoy anything. And that's fine, but they're not a market segment that's big enough for anybody to cater to.

That's the thing I really liked about "24". Everything was in Real Time and things happened in the show around it during most of it's run. That's what I liked about it and wish every show can operate on a "Real Time" perspective to the point where it's normalized across many more shows.