How else could we have all the aliens breeding together!?
Spoilers Should Star Trek be "our future" or an alternate timeline?
- Thread starter eschaton
- Start date
Hell, that's true for the franchise's concept of science in general.
It’s funny, ‘cause I grew up in a Doctor Who household. The kid across the street would always tell me Star Trek was better because the science was right.
Really they usually just say science words quickly on Star Trek and hope no one is listening.
The real 23rd century won’t look like the Star Trek version so it’s already not in our universe. Star Trek isn’t real. Shocking I know. 
That's when we become the canon violationThe real 23rd century won’t look like the Star Trek version so it’s already not in our universe. Star Trek isn’t real. Shocking I know.
Maybe it's an alternate future where the Challenger didn't explode, and people truly realized that space was meant for everyone. In our timeline, where NASA was too chicken to send up another civilian, space became something exclusively for astronauts, scientists, and rich folks.
TOS was a lot like The Expanse in that it got more right then the other sci-fi shows that were on at the time, but it's hardly the scientist's bible everyone makes it out to be. The other Treks never even tried to get the science right, but acted like they were an authority on the matter anyway. Doctor Who never worried about getting the science right, and is all the better for it.
Obviously not, since the Challenger disaster has been acknowledged within canon before.
whaaaa? You mean 'quantum subspace singularity inversion matrix' doesn't necessarily mean anything?
To be fair, Star Trek got a TON of people into STEM, me included. And it (even the later series) is one of the main fictional sources that introduced mainstream audiences to many concepts like wormholes, black holes, supernova, lightspeed, dark matter, nebula, planetary orbits, asteroids, comets, lasers, robots, particles and so forth.
Of course all the specific stories around that were usually scientific junk - they were stories first and foremost. But it cannot be overstated how much these concepts are wildly known because of something like Star Trek.
In fact, I absolutely love the comparison to "The Expanse". Because that show is also scientific garbage. Only less than other current shows. It's still first and foremost entertainment. But at the time, Star Trek was what now is the Expanse in this regard to scientific accuracy.
Maybe it does, we just don't know what yet.
Star Trek has aliens that all look like humans with bumpy heads. That alone makes its fantasy in sci-fi colours, IMHO.
Every depiction of an alien is fantasy until we meet one and know what they look like.
They really, really aren't going to be English-speaking humans with goofy foreheads or ears.
I mean, there's sound in space. Ships move like boats, entirely unlike zero-g. Expecting reality from Trek is like expecting it from Lord of the Rings
How else could we have all the aliens breeding together!?
It helped that there was a franchise of Studio 54 outlets on Risa, Wrigley's Pleasure Planet o'Wiggles, Pacifica, Orgasmatron 6, etc, etc...
And yet not everybody likes both franchises despite that truism regarding both. That's the fun part!
I expect reality from every story, just in different ways and to different degrees. Star Trek gets a lot of mileage out of 'this is just really advanced science stuff, you wouldn't understand' but I don't appreciate it when they push their luck.
Aliens in Star Trek don't all speak English. UT for the win!
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Actually they're all speaking Rigellian.
I think this would be less of an issue if Star Trek didn't go back to the Present Day almost every decade. The idea behind it is the Star Trek characters are interacting with what's largely Today's Society. It's not relatable if it's a completely different version of today.
In "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" and "Assignment: Earth", they go back to the 1960s. And it's our 1960s.
In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, they go back to the 1980s. And it's our 1980s.
In "Future's End" (VOY), they go back to the 1990s. And, for the most part, it's our 1990s. Just swap out Henry Starling with Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. In "11:59" (VOY), we see the Turn of the Millennium, and it more or less looks like Y2K.
In "Carpenter Street" (ENT), they go back to the 2000s. And it seemed like our 2000s.
And now, in Picard's second season, they've gone back to the 2020s. And it looks pretty much like our 2020s. And hopefully we're on track to our 2024 being as mask-free as we see in PIC.
When I'm watching these episodes, I'm not thinking about what else might be going on in the background Star Trek wise. I'm thinking "This looks like today!" and "Star Trek characters are interacting with us!" That's what it feels like and that's the way it comes across. At least to me.
And if we'd had more Star Trek in the 1970s and 2010s, we would've seen them go back to those decades too.
In "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" and "Assignment: Earth", they go back to the 1960s. And it's our 1960s.
In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, they go back to the 1980s. And it's our 1980s.
In "Future's End" (VOY), they go back to the 1990s. And, for the most part, it's our 1990s. Just swap out Henry Starling with Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. In "11:59" (VOY), we see the Turn of the Millennium, and it more or less looks like Y2K.
In "Carpenter Street" (ENT), they go back to the 2000s. And it seemed like our 2000s.
And now, in Picard's second season, they've gone back to the 2020s. And it looks pretty much like our 2020s. And hopefully we're on track to our 2024 being as mask-free as we see in PIC.
When I'm watching these episodes, I'm not thinking about what else might be going on in the background Star Trek wise. I'm thinking "This looks like today!" and "Star Trek characters are interacting with us!" That's what it feels like and that's the way it comes across. At least to me.
And if we'd had more Star Trek in the 1970s and 2010s, we would've seen them go back to those decades too.
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