Should popular SciFi universes be limited to narrow time periods?

[RJDiogenes]

The first few episodes had some great stuff, like the crew rushing to the windows to see a new planet or taking a group photo on the new planet and so on. And the recorded message back to the school kids on Earth. I wish they had done more of that.

 

[Mistral]

The first few episodes had some great stuff, like the crew rushing to the windows to see a new planet or taking a group photo on the new planet and so on. And the recorded message back to the school kids on Earth. I wish they had done more of that.

Good point.

Let's look at the 2 WHYs scifi on tv covering many years acts the way Gotham Central explained.

1 is that you have to tell a story the audience can get into. Sorry, its a business, and whatever brings in the viewers is what gets done. Hence, UPN insisting on a transporter for that element of familiarity w/the audience.

2 More importantly, even the most far-seeing creator has a tough time with the future and how it would look because the "world" we know gets turned upside down all of the time-but we turn with it, so it seems familiar. Spider Robinson made a pretty good point of this in his short story, The Time Traveler.

Point is, as a hypothetical number, if the world turned upside down (changed what everyone considered familiar) say , every 30 years, and you're trying to portray how it would look 500 years in the future, by the time you successfully pulled it off(if you could) NO ONE would be able to relate to the results. There wouldn't be any common reference points. So to portray humanity millions of years in the future(on Dr Who) or 29th Century tech (on Voyager) you'd have to make something so outre the audience wouldn't even know what they were watching. How would a viewer born in the 1500's know what an "electric broom" was, that is, a Dust Devil?There wouldn't be any common reference point. And as we slide into the nano-tech, bio-engineered future and leave the Industrial Age behind I'm thinking the changes are going to be so vast that in a few hundred years the shape of Humanity would be unrelatable to a 21st Century man, little less the devices we will one day create.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Very likely true. And there are many ways to portray the future, from a post-Apocalyptic crash to a surreal post-Singularity phantasmagoria. Or something unlikely-but-relatable, like Steampunk or Jack McDevitt or... Star Trek. The future of Star Trek was never a realistic one, and looks less realistic now, but it's a good and appealing one. And if you're going to make a sequel or prequel, you've got to start from the square one of TOS.

Now, if it were me in charge of making a prequel, I would have filmed it in black-and-white and made it look like the original Outer Limits. And, of course, that would have been hugely popular.

 

[Dick Whitman]

One of the many things I have enjoyed about your Star Trek books Christopher is your respect for Enterprise. Using it well as part of the tapestry of Federation history.

On the whole subject of this thread. Enterprise was equally criticized for being too much of the same but also too different. Having the Vulcans and Humans struggling to overcome their different views of how things should be done was often complained about. But I think it was one of the best aspects of the show and truly embraced the prequel concept.


I also would not of had transporters on the show. Its been a while since I have seen the whole series. But I believe even as it progressed it was never used as often or casually as other series did. Where it was viewed as simple and common place as we view automobiles. Archer seemed to use shuttle pods more often than Kirk and Picard used shuttlecrafts. Partially due to advancements in computer effects of course.

 

[Christopher]

Yes, ENT did great things with the Vulcans, taking them beyond the usual one-note portrayal and giving them the kind of depth and layers and multiple voices that are all too lacking in most SFTV alien species. It was very smart of the ENT producers to recognize that cultures can change over time, and it was good that they surprised us in their portrayal of the Vulcans rather than being predictable.

 

[DWF]

Yes, ENT did great things with the Vulcans, taking them beyond the usual one-note portrayal and giving them the kind of depth and layers and multiple voices that are all too lacking in most SFTV alien species. It was very smart of the ENT producers to recognize that cultures can change over time, and it was good that they surprised us in their portrayal of the Vulcans rather than being predictable.

You mean by turning Vulcans into racist terrorists?

 

[Klaus]

^^No, by showing us that they once could produce such individuals. They didn't spring full-blown from Surak's head.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I agree with Christopher that imposing an arbitrary rule is counterproductive but I agree with Morpheus that "Enterprise" failed because it was too much like "ToS" and "TNG" for a show supposedly set way in the past. Yes, I understand the 'suits' may have been responsible for that but assigning blame for a failure doesn't mean it wasn't a failure.

Then the same could be said for TNG being similar to TOS, even though its set far in the future. The reality is ENT, TOS, TNG, VOY and even DS9 are variations on the same theme and concept.

 

[Christopher]

I don't think ENT was particularly similar to the other Trek shows. Season 1-2 were very different (especially season 1) in that they focused on the novelty of what the crew was doing and their inexperience at it, and it painted a very different world where humans were a backward, vulnerable power surrounded by more advanced nations. Season 3 was also very different from any prior ST series except parts of DS9, in that it embraced a season-long conflict arc. Season 4 was unique structurally in that it consisted mainly of 2- to 3-part arcs, and embraced a "historical fiction" sensibility focused on showing how the very different world of the first few seasons started to change into the more familiar one.

I think some people fixate too much on the superficial things like the fact that it had transporters and Klingons in it and assume it's "too similar" on those grounds alone. But I think it had very much its own distinct character, even if that character changed radically from season to season.

 

[Deckerd]

Other times its due to the need to keep everything familiar to the audience. However, I also think that some of it is due to limited thinking on the part of creators or an unwillingness to stretch beyond the familiar. Then of course there is the limits of what we as 21st century humans could ever really conceive about the future. I tend to think that there is something of a barrier beyond which it becomes futile to even speculate what the future might look like. Our ability to imagine a viable future probably only extends a few centuries ahead. Beyond that and the possibilities start to stretch beyond our ability to fully appreciate how different the future could look. I feel like writers ought to limit themselves to a fairly small window near the 21st century for speculating about the future. I highly doubt that the 29th century will look and feel much like the 21st...let alone the 853rd century. Projecting distant futures that look and feel like our own time just makes the world feel stagnant...which is not usually intentional.

The beauty of science fiction is that you can imagine what you want. I think you're right about the parameters the film and TV makers have to operate in but putting an artificial time limit on them doesn't make sense. The Time Machine ignored your limits and seems quite a credible story for all that.

The human race is a young species compared to the age of this planet so there isn't all that much difference between us and the people who were here 50,000 years ago. Medicine and science may well tinker round the edges but substantially people won't change very much for the next few centuries, aside from global health and increased longevity for those who can afford it.

Therefore it stands to reason that the things that people like now are going to be the things they like in the future, including environment.