Star Trek and Cannon... darned confusing!

Discussion in 'General Trek Discussion' started by A'Tun-Te, Dec 29, 2018.

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  1. The Mighty Monkey of Mim

    The Mighty Monkey of Mim Commodore Commodore

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    I entirely agree, there.

    Yet, I hardly think positing that 23rd century starships, including Pike and Kirk's Enterprises, had force fields capable of holding against vacuum for some consequential if reasonably limited duration of time (i.e. for as long as sufficient power can be allocated, and as long as the machinery itself holds out against wear and overuse, subject to failure as much as shields or transporters or life support or any other system, at need of plot) is all that far out there in "anything goes" territory, really. I don't see what makes it an implausible idea, specifically.

    I mean, they have shields by this point, and shields seem to be an advanced implementation of force field tech, so other force field trickery seems like something they might naturally be capable of, too. (Just as by the same token, considering Starfleet had not yet mastered even the basic force field at the outset of ENT, it makes sense that ships of Archer's era accordingly lacked shields.) By TOS, they clearly can seal compartments with them. If in the brig, or in Charlie's quarters, why not elsewhere? Why not the hangar deck, or a compromised section, if there were to have been a plot that called for it? It just so happens there wasn't.

    If someone had pitched them a compelling story revolving around two crewmates trapped in a compartment where the hull had been breached, staring out into the abyss as they anxiously awaited their comrades' efforts to un-jam a malfunctioning door, with the ever present risk that the attempt might interrupt power to the section and collapse the force field ominously hanging over the pair as they bond, quarrel, recall loved ones and past experiences, discuss alternate escape plans, etc., with drama and poignancy and humanity in it...then I highly doubt they'd have said "sorry, we can't do it, the Enterprise doesn't have emergency force fields for that!"

    We quite obviously didn't visit Kirk or Picard or Janeway and their crews every day (or even every week, or month) of their many missions and journeys. Plenty of gaps where any number of different situations we'll never be privy to might have called for a response different to what we observe in any given set of episodes, and plenty of room for plenty of things to be overlain or inserted where previously unobserved. Star Trek has always done that. Just because they physically didn't have a shuttlecraft prop yet in season one of TOS, and so using one never comes up even where we might logically expect at least the possibility to be raised, as in "The Enemy Within" (TOS), it in no way follows that the Enterprise didn't have them yet at that point. (Perhaps none were available for reasons x, y, and/or z? Or perhaps the confounding factor was the storm, and there was a moment between scenes where it was established that a shuttle could not perform a rescue? That makes the most sense to me, but the episode certainly doesn't specify.)

    In discussing DSC, I've often heard people raise the questions such as: "If they have this spore drive thingy in the 23rd century, why does no one on Voyager ever bring that up as a possible way to get home?" Well, even leaving aside that the show will most likely clarify the matter further as it goes on, how do we know they didn't, exactly? It could well have been brought up and ruled out for one reason or another, offscreen, when we weren't looking, just as innumerable other seemingly-promising shortcuts were onscreen. Heck, how do we know the "sporocystian" banjo man who transported Voyager across the galaxy in the first place wasn't connected to the mycelial network, for that matter?

    Same thing with hologram displays and such. We know they had those by TNG, because we saw them used in its first season...but then they stopped showing them for the rest of the series, illustrating that such tech merely going unseen by the audience, even for many years, is no counter-indication of its existence. As Pike quotes of the Bard in the latest DSC episode: "There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

    I of course mean this all in good nature and fun, Mr. Cox, not to take anything too seriously that oughtn't! I know I'm not telling you anything you don't already know well yourself here.:beer:

    As DSC shows ships older than Discovery with emergency force fields, and shows Pike's Enterprise herself looking as if she will need system-wide refitting in the present (and perhaps multiple times over through the years to come, if she is to ultimately appear in Kirk's day as we've seen her depicted on other shows), it would be better to just say that capability was there all along, and we simply never saw it in use because it wasn't particularly called for by any story. Again, them decompressing the hangar bay to launch and land shuttles on some occasions clearly can't be taken as evidence of absence here, because Voyager did that too.

    (Nevertheless, Disco "going commando" much of the time may indeed be a sign of her particular opulence, sure.)

    Yeah I remember he said it was "sheathed in special materials that rendered it invisible," and while it had served him "long and durably...the strain of arduous pursuit...exceeded even its advanced qualities" and that was why he barely made it aboard the Enterprise before it disintegrated.

    However, in a similar vein to your bubble ship idea, if on a smaller and shorter-term scale, The Making Of Star Trek did envision photon torpedoes as being "energy pods of matter and anti-matter contained and held temporarily separated in a magno-photon force field." (The idea of them being missiles with an actual physical casing didn't arise until TWOK.) And as someone else already pointed out, TAS had spacesuits made of force fields, too.

    -MMoM:D
     
    Last edited: Jan 29, 2019
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  2. Greg Cox

    Greg Cox Admiral Premium Member

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    Honestly, the force fields don't bother me. I was objecting more to the absolutist idea that everything has to be 100% consistent than to the alternative. I merely mentioned the "anything goes" option to forestall any objections along the lines of "So, you think they can just change everything willy-nilly?"

    Trust me, I'm not a purist about this stuff.
     
  3. JonnyQuest037

    JonnyQuest037 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    That moment of O'Brien and Maxwell singing "The Minstrel Boy" together is connected to one of my favorite memories of my father. I was watching "The Wounded" on the basement TV at our house in Nashville. My dad was fetching something or another behind me (the basement was also his home office), and after the first line or two of "The Minstrel Boy," he sang along. He explained to me that it was a song used in the movie "The Man Who Would Be King."

    I was very impressed with my father in that moment. :)
     
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  4. Freman

    Freman Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    I don't buy this excuse for a second. And I've heard it bandied about a LOT.

    The two Mirror Universe episodes of of ENT heavily featured sets from the original series, and I never once had a problem believing the Defiant sets were more advanced than the ENT era ships. Why? Different filming techniques and different lighting used today as opposed to the 60s totally sold it. Add to that some minor tweaks to the sets themselves, like computer graphics for the screens and you can totally make the sets from the 60s more believable.

    And since Discovery is a completely different ship from the Enterprise, they had all the freedom in the world to change it and make it look more futuristic while still keeping the basic design aesthetics of the original series.

    I highly doubt throwback sets from the 60s would stop modern audiences from watching. The camera angles, lighting, story telling techniques, acting and special effects would all still be 21st century stuff. Whatever. They did what they did, and now DISCO doesn't remotely look like it belongs. Should have made it a sequel series.
     
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  5. JoeZhang

    JoeZhang Vice Admiral Admiral

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    It looked pretty hokey nearly 10 years ago using sets where they keep the lights down to try and mitigate this situation - today on big bright TVs with HDR? It would look absolutely terrible if you were doing this every week for 50 minutes.
     
  6. Freman

    Freman Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Except Discovery is already the darkest lit Trek ever, so who needs to worry about the lights being up? And like I said, they could have a different looking USS Discovery, just keep with the basic design aesthetics of the TOS.
     
  7. CommanderRaytas

    CommanderRaytas DISCO QUEEEEEEN Rear Admiral

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    Being of a rather agreeable disposition, I simply pretend it's an alternate universe...or you could say that in ten years, fashion fads change considerably. It's a very human thing, at least.
     
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  8. johnnybear

    johnnybear Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I would say that the combined Federation/Klingon forces at Wolf 359 probably opened fire on the Borg cube first and they retaliated! As we know from the later VOYAGER episodes, the Borg took many of the survivors aboard and converted them into drones! Were there any Romulan ships there because one of the survivors in Unity was a Romulan who had escaped from the Collective!
    JB
     
  9. JoeZhang

    JoeZhang Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Not sure how you are watching it but on Netflix with HDR it's not a particularly dark show.
     
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  10. MAGolding

    MAGolding Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Possibly it was built like a modern garage door?

    Or possibly an early form of replicator was replicating an inch of height at the top of the door for each inch that the bottom of the door descended?

    And once again I repeat that saying that some Star Trek prequels show more advanced technology than TOS and/or later shows of the TNG era is not correct or relevant.

    It is not relevant if only one ship in each series or movie shows the more advanced technology, because one ship might be testing technologies which are later decided not to use on all ships. And there are many examples in history of technical achievements which have not yet been equaled or surpassed.

    For example, SS Great Eastern (1858-1889) was not equaled or surpassed for decades.

    The Seawise Giant (1979-2010) was the largest ship ever by most standards.

    And the technological advancement of a spaceship should not be judged by its control interfaces and displays, since all space opera spaceships show very primitive and retro controls and displays compared to those which will be used by the time that FTL starships are invented.

    Decades or centuries in the future, vehicles are likely to be controlled by people who sit and receive information fed directly into their brains by the vehicles' computers, and who think what they want the vehicles to do, with the vehicles obeying their thoughts.

    See this question:

    https://scifi.stackexchange.com/que...re-helmets-which-reads-your-mind-to-control-a

    So all displays and controls in typical space operas are very primitive and retro compared to what would be available in a society long before it became advanced enough to count as a space opera civilization. And many other aspects of technology in Star Trek seem very primitive and retro compared to what would be available in such a society.

    And so the use of such comparatively backward technology in Star Trek must be - in universe at least - a deliberate choice by the society the characters live in for various unspecified reasons.

    The correct way to judge the advancement of fictional starships is by the abilities of their warp drives and other features such as shields, phasers, photon torpedoes, tractor and presser beams, transporters, etc. As long as starships increase the abilities of those functions over time they are becoming more advanced over time, not standing still or going backwards.

    It should also be noted that as some technologies advance other and rival technologies may decline and may be totally abandoned.

    In TNG "Relics" LaForge and Montgomery Scott are repairing the 75-year-old transport ship USS Jenolan.

    This implies that as warp engines have become better impulse engines have been used less and less and are built to lower and lower specifications. And there are some indications in early TOS that impulse engines were sometimes used for faster than light space travel.

    And sometimes technologies are abandoned because of their side effects. Shoe stores used to have X-ray viewers that people could stick their feet in and see how their feet fit inside their shoes, and watch themselves wiggle their toes inside the shoes, but use of those machines ended a long time ago due to the dangers of over exposure to X-rays. CFCs are being phased out due to their bad effect on the ozone layer. Etc., etc.

    So a few examples of advanced technologies being used and then abandoned would not make the Star Trek universe too inconsistent.
     
  11. fireproof78

    fireproof78 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    From personal experience I can tell you I know people who have rejected many Star Trek films for their looks alone. It is an attitude I am encountering more and more.
     
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  12. johnnybear

    johnnybear Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I wonder why they can't just set their new Trek in the future and create new characters? That way we can't complain or moan unless they directly change the continuity! I know we'll always find something to moan about in a new show but at least we won't be complaining for silly reasons!
    JB
     
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  13. 1001001

    1001001 Serial Canon Violator Moderator

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    Yeah, because Trekkies never do that...

    :shifty:
     
  14. CommanderRaytas

    CommanderRaytas DISCO QUEEEEEEN Rear Admiral

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    I thought we were a nitpicky and whiny bunch, but we've got nothing on hardcore Star Wars fans, I'm told. Apparently, if you don't complain about anything and like everything, you're not a real fan. Seeing as I'm not hardcore anything but the fan equivalent of a happy stoner, I wouldn't know if that's accurate. The keepers of the canon shall be the ultimate judges of fandom, maybe - certainly not someone who couldn't care less whether a hologram or a mention of Section 31 are canon or not.
     
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  15. Nerys Myk

    Nerys Myk A Spock and a smile Premium Member

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    What's the difference?
    I think we all have control over what we complain about. If it's a silly reason, don't complain. Seems simple enough.
     
  16. johnnybear

    johnnybear Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Well a bit of nit picking is okay but gets you nowhere, while a big topic of continuity being ignored creates a dislike of the new show especially if you were an avid fan of the original! It goes on all the time in many other series and films!
    JB
     
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  17. CommanderRaytas

    CommanderRaytas DISCO QUEEEEEEN Rear Admiral

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    That is true. The excessive nitpicking is probably why I stay out of the SW fandom. I was being cute up there, but I really have been told that their discussions can get pretty vicious. But I see everyone's point.
     
  18. Nerys Myk

    Nerys Myk A Spock and a smile Premium Member

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    I'm an avid fan of the original. And I like it when new things are added to continuity or when continuity is tweeked. Fiction should be allowed to evolve, not stagnate.
     
  19. Greg Cox

    Greg Cox Admiral Premium Member

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    Bingo. All avid fans do not automatically object to such things. It's a false assumption that one necessarily leads to the other. It may for some, but it's hardly a universal principle . . . no matter how many times its asserted as such.

    "But they're going to alienate all the old-school fans!"

    Eh, not necessarily.
     
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  20. Spot261

    Spot261 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Sorry, but I think this is quite presumptuous really. I'm a long time fan but frankly I'd rather see creativity than crystallisation. I don't care about the Klngons' foreheads or whether Spock has one sibling or twenty. Nor could I give a toss whether the spore drive makes sense from a continuity perspective. Trek has never made any real sense and I'm not expecting it to start now.

    What I care about is seeing what interesting and creative concepts people can generate.
     
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