Star Trek and Cannon... darned confusing!

That's an ingenious rationalization, but it doesn't get around the fact that talking to people over computer screens doesn't look futuristic anymore. Today's kids grew talking to Grandma via mom's laptop, so it doesn't remotely read as sci-fi to modern audiences.

And I don't remember people worrying that holodecks were too "power-intensive" in the later shows. Heck, if the U.S.S. Discovery can manage warp drives, transporter beams, phasers, universal translators, and artificial gravity, I think we can allow them a few holograms without worrying about their batteries.

 

Power is only a problem when the script calls for.

 

Bingo. If the Kirk's Enterprise can spring for a bowling alley and food slots that magically dispense chicken sandwiches, I think Discovery can spring for some holograms. Things aren't exactly spartan on Federation starships.

 

What makes you think that shows set in the future are supposed to look cool and futuristic? Any more than shows set in the past are supposed to look uncool and old fashioned.

Shows set in the future are supposed to look like their events happen in the future. Shows set in the past are supposed to look like their events happen in the past. That is all.

In a story or show there should be some aspects that have a "wow factor". But the "wow factor" doesn't have to be the stuff that people use all the time everyday in their day to day lives. For example in a story set in the past the main characters could live a plain existence in drab surroundings using primitive technology centuries behind that of the writer's era. But something could happen to the main characters that takes them out of their dreary mundane existence with its "ho hum factor" and gets them involved in historical events that have a "wow factor".

Suppose a historical movie started with the day to day life of a slave, a field hand in the south. His home with be a shabby, primitive shack, his cloths would be drab rags, his life would be constant physical labor. There would be constant tension between his desire to slack off and work slow and his need to work fast enough and well enough to avoid being whipped. Then he runs off to join the Union army and enlists in the United States Colored Troops.

Then he gets to wear a uniform that is much brighter and fancier than anything he has worn before. In the 19th century fancy Ruritanian uniforms were a major inducement for voluntary enlistment. And the movie, depending on its budget, could show him participating in battles with thousands of soldiers in close order, with dozens of regimental colors, the most artistic of military objects, flying in the breeze, for the "wow factor".

And in a science fiction story set in a future FTL spaceship the people can use in their daily lives stuff that doesn't look much - if any - more advanced than the audience uses in their everyday lives. The characters can use controls to control their vehicle which aren't any more advanced than audience members use to control their vehicles. Their two way video screens don't have to look any more advanced than the communication methods the audience uses in their daily lives.

The "wow factor" can come from the vehicle they control being capable of traveling many times faster than light and taking them to many distant stars during their mission. The "wow factor" can come from their conversations with two way video screens being with people in distant solar systems using subspace radio that travels millions of times as fast as light.

It seems to me that the control interfaces used by characters in futuristic movies and television shows don't determine how advanced the societies in those movies and shows are. Machine control will have advanced to the stage that people just sit around and the machines read their thoughts and carry out their orders, with no manual control actions, long before a space opera society becomes reality. All of the man-machine interfaces used in all versions of Star Trek seem equally retro in a space opera setting.

What makes various Star Trek productions seem more advanced than others are the speeds of the starships, the power output of the phasers, the maximum achievable transporter range, and so on. So everything is fine so long as the starships get faster in each later fictional date and the phasers get more powerful, etc. etc.

So the only real technology bone which people should have to pick with prequels like Enterprise and Discovery should be with any examples of more advanced technology - in a true sense - that they may depict.

Yes, taking to people over computer screens does look futuristic to even kids in elementary school. Kids old enough to go to elementary school should realize that talking to people over computer screens is only done in three periods: the present, for a short period of a decade or two in the past, and the future, which may extend for decades, centuries, or millennia into the future.

So anyone who sees characters talking over computer screens knows that the story must happen in either the present, the recent past, or a future of unknown length that may last for ages to come, and thus is statistically more likely to be in the indefinite future than in the present or the recent past. So if there are any aspects of the story, such as the fashions or mention of interstellar travel, which show that it can't be in the present or in the recent past, people talking on computer screens will be seen as a contemporary action engaged in by future people, like, for example, eating in the future..

 

Because that's always been part of the appeal of STAR TREK, ever since it was first broadcast in Living Color. There's a reason that the transporter beams sparkle, that phaser beams glow, that going to warp comes with snazzy SFX, that Spock has pointed ears, that Orion dancing girls are green, and that Seven of Nine has some flattering circuitry on her face. Certainly, there's more to TREK than striking visuals, but I think people tune into STAR TREK, at least in part, because they want to see the World of Tomorrow, featuring amazing devices and aliens and creatures that aren't part of their ordinary lives. They want strange new worlds and civilizations, not a world that looks like today.

So, yes, they play 3D chess and take sonic showers and eat brightly colored snacks made out of Play-Doh, and play bizarre-looking "future" sports, so that the 23rd century looks new and exciting, because Tomorrow should not look like Today, or what's the point of watching a show set in the future?

In short, go back and look at TOS. It looks anything but drab and everyday. Great effort went into making it visually appealing, not to mention cool and futuristic.

 

and what's cool and futuristic then, is not today. and won't be in another 50 years.

The only way for canon continuity is for the franchise to have been produced in a finite amount of time.

 

Well how can ten years before TOS look like that? And how can anyone play Spock outside of Leonard Nimoy in TOS?
JB

 

Is not the whole point of an interconnected universe that everything links up and syncs up? Now they're making shows that sync up to nonexistant hypothetical modern remakes of 1960's shows and expecting us to act as if nothing is wrong.

 

That's not the only way. The other way is to consciously embrace what has come before rather than brush it aside. I'm not saying they have to do it that way, but it is another viable approach.

 

It's like Greg Cox stated, Star Trek continuity was never supposed to last fifty years!!! In fact three to four would have sufficed back in 1969/70!
JB

 

No. The point of an interconnected universe is to leverage audience affection for an older show into a new production. It’s not aesthetic; it’s dollars and cents.

“Happy Days” didn’t spin off “Mork and Mindy” so it would look the same; it introduced Mork on one of the most popular shows of the day so viewers would get interested in the character, and hopefully tune in.

 

I'll maybe... probably regret this, buth what does this mean

 

This difference of opinion and how we deal with perceived inconsistencies and perceptions changing over time (even within the shows themselves) is strangely reminiscent of the difference in how "progressive liberal" believers and conservative ones approach their own source material - in my eyes at least. We take it all a bit less seriously because it is just a TV show though- or at least I hope we do ...

 

Because it's a TV show.

 

It’s Johnnybear I take anything they say seriously.

 

Because it's a TV show, not a documentary. Fiction, not fact. And fiction is malleable.

And because "Spock" and Leonard Nimoy are not the same person. "Spock" is a role that can and will be played by different actors.

 

Yes, yes, yes, yes, I know all that! But when we watch the shows and get into them, we're supposed to take it all seriously! I personally don't count ENT or DSC in my canon but others tell me I must because it's legitimate Trek!!! Well I draw that line and say I know it's just television and the like but that's my bone on that beef!
JB

 

There's serious and then there's OTT serious. Serious is watching the show and being in the moment, OTT serious is getting so hung up on the details that you can't separate fiction from reality,
You don't get a "canon". (And neither do I)
No one can tell you what to like or dislike.

 

As I joked in another forum the other day: If we have to treat STAR TREK as though it's a religion, can we at least not be so fundamentalist about it?

Don't laugh. When I see folks using words like "abomination" and "blasphemy" without irony, and arguing endlessly about who the "true fans" are and what they're supposed to believe, or insisting that The Orville is the true spiritual successor to Trek as opposed to DISCO, as though this a matter of apostolic succession or something, it does sometimes feel like too many folks are treating this stuff as though it's a holy war . . . ..