What with the announcement of the show title and first leaked pictures, I thought it suitable to start a speculation and wish-list discussion of the starships and tech we'll be looking forward to in this show, leading up to the premiere date (whenever that is). Potential spoilers ahoy!
Time frame: the show apparently takes place in 2399, a good twenty years after the end of "Nemesis". and a dozen years after the destruction of Romulus that kicked off the JJ-verse. This is still after the potential futures seen in VOY "Endgame" (2394) and TNG "All Good Things" (at least 2395, possibly a while after that). Then there's the future seen in DS9 "The Visitor" (2422), which is MOSTLY anarchronistic anyway, but I'll get to that.
The time frame is still roughly commensurate with those periods, but is conveniently at a point when everything seen in Endgame and AGT could still have happened, visually-speaking, and allow for ships and tech seen then to have moved on to a new look and design language. I mean, we can HOPE that the LCARS takes cues from the established look from TNG through to the 2390s, but if it doesn't, at least temporally-speaking there should be less conflict.
Uniforms: As of this writing, we've only seen shots of the 2399 uniforms, so in practice it's enough time for the Nemesis uniforms to have gotten old by 2390 (when Captain LaForge was seen wearing it with the AGT combadge design in VOY "Timeless"), and for the AGT uniforms to have come and gone. There's lots of precedent for short-lasting uniforms: the TMP, TNG 2.0 and DS9 1.0 uniforms seem to have lasted less as long as a mainline uniform, though YMMV.
The AGT uniforms were seen in DS9 "The Visitor" from 2422, but I'm willing to let that one slide - or for the "Picard" uniforms to be an embarrassing fashion blip before Starfleet decided to return to the AGT line. :P As it stands, the "Picard" uniforms have moved their rank pips to the chest, where they were in AGT/Endgame, and the TNG-era tapering shoulder points are maintained in what's otherwise a basic evolution of the DS9/VOY jumpsuit, so hopefully this is a good sign overall that the show designers are doing some homework.
Federation starships: as it's "only" twenty years after Nemesis, and arguably a handful of years after Endgame / AGT, then in theory the "new" ships seen in those future episodes have the potential to still be kicking around, while at the same time a new design language based on the new show can kick in too. Also, most / all of the ship seen in these futures are arguably older designs or variants thereof, so you can brush off whatever ships we WILL see as much newer than anything we've seen prior, and get away with it.
It would be NICE to see the ol' Sovereign or Intrepid class ships zipping around, being some thirty years old as designs by then, even if they've been succeeded by newer classes of ship (which I expect we'll be seeing at least as background decorations for the most part). As this show would have to start from scratch in terms of digital assets, it's reasonable to not expect older ships to make a real appearance in any real capacity unless the story specifically calls for it...
At least this means we'll likely never see any Excelsiors, Mirandas or any of the CG models from the latter TNG era or "Enterprise"; but I'm hoping like crazy that some producer will NEVER say "Aww, we've got a ton of ships we designed for Discovery that were only seen in one episode, just use those". Ugh.
OTOH, the Klingons have been seen with the Negh'Var / pre-Negh'Var ship model in both AGT and Endgame; having that ship around would be nice but hardly a requirement...
Getting around: Warp 13 was a thing in AGT, and Janeway jetting quickly and quietly about in a futuristic Type-9 shuttle by 2394, I'd expect it to be easier to get around the galaxy as a whole by this time. Transwarp beaming may be in practical use as well, given what the Spock of 2387 knew.
In terms of general technology, "The Visitor" suggests that by 2422 everyone will be so used to three-dimensional displays and consoles that anyone on the Defiant may as well be interacting with VGA monitors, keyboards and mice. Assuming that's still a thing (since by the far-future glimpsed in VOY "Relativity" they are interacting with some controls but not touching them) there's still a leeway for it to happen (or not), but OTOH "Discovery" makes liberal use of holographic displays and such. I'd expect most of the "Discovery" level of command interface tech to be there, hopefully with a TNG look.
Then there's phasers, tricoders and the like. Endgame introduces a look for their equipment which eventually showed up in "Nemesis" set some fifteen years prior, so it could be argued that it's due for a replacement. It'd still be one of the longer-lasting designs overall.
These are my initial thoughts. It's always fun to speculate tech on a new show, but this one will take us for an extended look around a new era after all the others thus far - a whole other level of excitement IMO.
Looking forward to everyone's own thoughts as we head towards the premiere!
Mark
Time frame: the show apparently takes place in 2399, a good twenty years after the end of "Nemesis". and a dozen years after the destruction of Romulus that kicked off the JJ-verse. This is still after the potential futures seen in VOY "Endgame" (2394) and TNG "All Good Things" (at least 2395, possibly a while after that). Then there's the future seen in DS9 "The Visitor" (2422), which is MOSTLY anarchronistic anyway, but I'll get to that.
The time frame is still roughly commensurate with those periods, but is conveniently at a point when everything seen in Endgame and AGT could still have happened, visually-speaking, and allow for ships and tech seen then to have moved on to a new look and design language. I mean, we can HOPE that the LCARS takes cues from the established look from TNG through to the 2390s, but if it doesn't, at least temporally-speaking there should be less conflict.
Uniforms: As of this writing, we've only seen shots of the 2399 uniforms, so in practice it's enough time for the Nemesis uniforms to have gotten old by 2390 (when Captain LaForge was seen wearing it with the AGT combadge design in VOY "Timeless"), and for the AGT uniforms to have come and gone. There's lots of precedent for short-lasting uniforms: the TMP, TNG 2.0 and DS9 1.0 uniforms seem to have lasted less as long as a mainline uniform, though YMMV.
The AGT uniforms were seen in DS9 "The Visitor" from 2422, but I'm willing to let that one slide - or for the "Picard" uniforms to be an embarrassing fashion blip before Starfleet decided to return to the AGT line. :P As it stands, the "Picard" uniforms have moved their rank pips to the chest, where they were in AGT/Endgame, and the TNG-era tapering shoulder points are maintained in what's otherwise a basic evolution of the DS9/VOY jumpsuit, so hopefully this is a good sign overall that the show designers are doing some homework.
Federation starships: as it's "only" twenty years after Nemesis, and arguably a handful of years after Endgame / AGT, then in theory the "new" ships seen in those future episodes have the potential to still be kicking around, while at the same time a new design language based on the new show can kick in too. Also, most / all of the ship seen in these futures are arguably older designs or variants thereof, so you can brush off whatever ships we WILL see as much newer than anything we've seen prior, and get away with it.
It would be NICE to see the ol' Sovereign or Intrepid class ships zipping around, being some thirty years old as designs by then, even if they've been succeeded by newer classes of ship (which I expect we'll be seeing at least as background decorations for the most part). As this show would have to start from scratch in terms of digital assets, it's reasonable to not expect older ships to make a real appearance in any real capacity unless the story specifically calls for it...
At least this means we'll likely never see any Excelsiors, Mirandas or any of the CG models from the latter TNG era or "Enterprise"; but I'm hoping like crazy that some producer will NEVER say "Aww, we've got a ton of ships we designed for Discovery that were only seen in one episode, just use those". Ugh.
OTOH, the Klingons have been seen with the Negh'Var / pre-Negh'Var ship model in both AGT and Endgame; having that ship around would be nice but hardly a requirement...
Getting around: Warp 13 was a thing in AGT, and Janeway jetting quickly and quietly about in a futuristic Type-9 shuttle by 2394, I'd expect it to be easier to get around the galaxy as a whole by this time. Transwarp beaming may be in practical use as well, given what the Spock of 2387 knew.
In terms of general technology, "The Visitor" suggests that by 2422 everyone will be so used to three-dimensional displays and consoles that anyone on the Defiant may as well be interacting with VGA monitors, keyboards and mice. Assuming that's still a thing (since by the far-future glimpsed in VOY "Relativity" they are interacting with some controls but not touching them) there's still a leeway for it to happen (or not), but OTOH "Discovery" makes liberal use of holographic displays and such. I'd expect most of the "Discovery" level of command interface tech to be there, hopefully with a TNG look.
Then there's phasers, tricoders and the like. Endgame introduces a look for their equipment which eventually showed up in "Nemesis" set some fifteen years prior, so it could be argued that it's due for a replacement. It'd still be one of the longer-lasting designs overall.
These are my initial thoughts. It's always fun to speculate tech on a new show, but this one will take us for an extended look around a new era after all the others thus far - a whole other level of excitement IMO.
Looking forward to everyone's own thoughts as we head towards the premiere!Mark
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