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Spoilers marsh8472's Consolidated Continuity Thread

Why does warp drive in Star Trek Discovery look so different?

  • Starfleet is employing advanced propulsion technology on their ships in addition to the Spore Drive

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Star Trek Discovery is showing correctly, every other series looks abnormal actually

    Votes: 1 4.8%
  • Nothing is wrong at all, everything is consistent everywhere

    Votes: 10 47.6%
  • Discovery is in a seperate timeline from TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT

    Votes: 3 14.3%
  • Star Trek Discovery's visual effect of the warp drive is incorrect

    Votes: 1 4.8%
  • Other

    Votes: 6 28.6%

  • Total voters
    21
The Klingons in TOS and the movies already weren't like that. The stuff you're talking about was the "retcon of Klingon culture" in the first place.
In "Day of the Dove" they were taken prisoner but while being influenced by an alien that wanted them to stay alive and fight. Not much of a solid case to make there. What other cases are there?
 
The reason given in TNG and beyond for why they didn't like to be taken prisoner is that it was considered dishonorable. The TOS and movie Klingons that we met couldn't give two shits about that. (Which is not to say that there weren't others we didn't meet who did.)

Here, in part, is how the Klingons are defined in The Making Of Star Trek (1968) by Stephen E. Whitfield and Gene Roddenberry:

"The number-one adversary of the Federation is the Klingon Empire. More powerful than the Romulans, the Klingons are less admirable characters. Their only rule of life is that rules are made to be broken by shrewdness, deceit, or power. Cruelty is something admirable; honor is a despicable trait. [...] Their society is totally devoted to personal gain by the cleverest, strongest, or most treacherous."

(Not that I would advocate for them to all follow that stereotype, either.)
 
My interest is not in measuring damage per second or having some optimized min-max build.

I was just responding to the assertion implying that you can't make a serviceable canon build in STO.
That wasn't the implication at all. With enough effort you can make just about ANYTHING work.

The point is, canon builds don't make a lot of sense from a practicality standpoint, and this is mainly because torpedoes in that game are DESIGNED to be somewhat impractical because otherwise it would be incredibly silly to use anything OTHER than torpedoes. It's not just STO, almost all space opera games are guilty of this same illogic when it comes to torpedo weapons: missiles and torpedoes are all heavily nerfed in some way because otherwise unskilled players would use missiles exclusively, as those give them the ability to one-shot-kill more advanced players and completely eliminate the incentive to BE more skilled in the first place. That basically kills the PVP crowd that alot of those games depend on for their revenue and player base. So they have to keep missiles weak and/or useless so that people who put in a shit ton of time and/or money grinding to get a more impressive build can still reign supreme. Another example of this is Elite Dangerous, where torpedo weapons as originally envisioned would allow small ships to wreck larger ones by firing torpedoes three or four at a time. The first revision of the game, they limited the amount of ammo you can carry in a single torpedo launcher (they used to be stored in the cargo bay, now you can only ever carry one per tube and then you have to reload at a starbase). Then they doubled the price of the things, then they limited their effectiveness against subsystems. Torpedoes went from highly practical and effective weapons in the alpha and beta versions to being really expensive gimmicks in the full game, becoming useful only once you complete a long and convoluted side quest in "The Engineers" to have them upgraded.

STO shares the same videogame PVP mechanic that deliberately makes torpedoes less useful than they should be
so grind players can have a good time with it. Getting killed every two seconds isn't particularly fun for most people, but the game is designed so that the solution to "get killed a lot" is to level up over time. If torpedoes worked the way they SHOULD, leveling up over time wouldn't make alot of difference and players would have to invest in point defense systems or more advanced shields, which would kind of mess up the game's internal ecosystem since it puts high end projectile weapons at a premium along with equally high-end defense systems. You have a literal arms race in a market that tops off pretty quickly; can't have that.

The Trek universe, as I said, has different problems: the writers just didn't think of it. Realistically, a single torpedo ought to detonate with enough explosive force to flatten a small city (think of the core detonation from ST09 when they escaped the black hole). If somebody takes your shields down and locks a torpedo on you, you either run away or surrender, because if you get hit, you're DEAD.

My point was that IMHO the torpedoes in STO perform fairly similar to what is shown on the shows.
Yes, though for entirely different reasons, which makes the effect almost an accident. Even at their current level of performance, they still had to be modified (with the long reload times and limited range) in order to be comparable.
 
There are Roddenberry Klingons, Ronald D Moore Klingons, and now Fuller Klingons. I wish we could accept they are three distinct species that just happen to have the same names.
 
We're not talking about a single remark in this case. There are entire episodes devoted to this idea. Being taken prisoner resulting in family dishonour for 3 generations sounds more like a rule than a guideline to me. We don't need to trash Worf's knowledge of Klingons to defend L'Rell's actions either.
Using existing Trek examples to find context with Discovery is not uncommon. In some ways though it would be easier to just go with it, you know what I mean? If Discovery Klingons are hideously ugly, one-dimensional, monsters then that is what they are. Just like the crew of Discovery are not particularly honourable compared to future Trek crews. This little band of Federation characters and Klingon ones seem independent of a future we've seen, and given the prospect of parallel universes and mirror ones, nothing needs to make sense.
 
Using existing Trek examples to find context with Discovery is not uncommon. In some ways though it would be easier to just go with it, you know what I mean? If Discovery Klingons are hideously ugly, one-dimensional, monsters then that is what they are. Just like the crew of Discovery are not particularly honourable compared to future Trek crews. This little band of Federation characters and Klingon ones seem independent of a future we've seen, and given the prospect of parallel universes and mirror ones, nothing needs to make sense.
Yeah I can suspend disbelief with the best of them. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't find it amusing to watch Discovery fans try to dance around these canon issues.

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^Star Trek Discovery Canon Dance
 
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^Not canon...but relevant.;)
 
In this series we see the Discovery crew wearing metallic detachable badges instead of the Assignment Patches.

GTYP7g4.jpg


Up until at least Star Trek the Motion Picture they would use the Assignment Patch which were cloth based and sewn directly onto the uniform. In Star Trek 2 they were metallic though I'm not sure if they were sewn onto the uniform or not, if anyone knows the answer to that. Even enterprise used the assignment patches as it was appropriate for the time. Do you think Discovery went a little too far ahead of its time there?
 
I don't see a problem with the badges themselves. Patch was cheaper to probably do in the 1960's. As long as they have a consistent look, I'm fine with it.

The actual uniforms on the other hand...
 
would be interesting if they find a way make it part of the uniform detailing in later seasons... as they allegedly evolve toward something more era-appropriate.

they're clearly not averse to adding details to the uniforms themselves. like really not averse.
 
In this series we see the Discovery crew wearing metallic detachable badges instead of the Assignment Patches.

GTYP7g4.jpg


Up until at least Star Trek the Motion Picture they would use the Assignment Patch which were cloth based and sewn directly onto the uniform. In Star Trek 2 they were metallic though I'm not sure if they were sewn onto the uniform or not, if anyone knows the answer to that. Even enterprise used the assignment patches as it was appropriate for the time. Do you think Discovery went a little too far ahead of its time there?

If they are changing the whole uniform, then they may as well change the emblem too. :shrug:

Kor
 
If they are changing the whole uniform, then they may as well change the emblem too. :shrug:

Kor

The one thing I've noticed, is that the badges look a lot better without the rank pips. I got all four from QMX and I could definitely see them in place of the fabric badges on the TOS uniforms.
 
The one thing I've noticed, is that the badges look a lot better without the rank pips. I got all four from QMX and I could definitely see them in place of the fabric badges on the TOS uniforms.
I recall hearing that QMX doesn't even sell them with rank pips -- I wonder why that is?
 
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