Star Trek Discovery - Outside of Mythology?!?!?!
- Thread starter Aeronnaex
- Start date
Apple watch communicator like TMP. Every time Kirk used it he looked like he was testing colognes on his wrist. 
3d printer is the precursor to the replicator.
I want to see the component phaser pistol design updated. I always loved how the hand phaser attached to the pistol body.
They could still have a communicator device, but now you get an alert on your PADD as well regarding incoming calls and texts.
VR headsets for recreation (leading to more seedy version of holo-addiction types like Barclay).
3d printer is the precursor to the replicator.
I want to see the component phaser pistol design updated. I always loved how the hand phaser attached to the pistol body.
They could still have a communicator device, but now you get an alert on your PADD as well regarding incoming calls and texts.
VR headsets for recreation (leading to more seedy version of holo-addiction types like Barclay).
Which TAS, TMP, ST IV, TNG and ENT did for Andorians.
Which TMP, ST III, ST IV, TNG and ST VI did for Klingons.
Which TNG did for Bolians, Romulans and Trill.
Which DS9 did for Bajorans.
Which ENT did for Tholians, Tellarites and Gorn.
The undercoat for ENT Andorians was orange.
Shran undercoat of speckled orange by Ian McLean, on Flickr
Last edited:
How far you could take "Trek" is... As I've said in other threads in the past, just imagine a ground up reboot. How far you could take the basis of Trek.
One of the things about trek is that in many ways it is very anti post humanism. Geordi gets his visor because it's the only option. Neural links you get Borg, genetic engineering you get augments and deadly pathogens, eugenics is a non starter in real life, but nonetheless Khan.....there's a very big underlying ethos in trek around these things. We use tools, we do not become those tools, that sort of thing. It's right there with Gary Mitchell in the second pilot, or even with the way the Talosians forget that tool making and using side of themselves after enhancing their biology. Trek constantly shows that blurring that line, is the line you don't cross. Bad things happen almost every single time. It would be like some scarey racial purity thing (and is sometimes) if it weren't balanced by the distinct lack of sexual, racial or inter species discrimination. In some ways that is because Trek pre-exists a lot of transhuman literature and real world concepts, being the child of the golden age scifi and the parent to the more fractured silver age, but later on it becomes a distinct choice and part of its core message. There's no point encouraging human kind to transcend it's limitations and be the best it can, if you can only do it by grafting tech into yourself or otherwise modifying yourself...especially as from our perspective that will always be in the hands of the rich few and not the many. Star Trek is the Human Adventure, not the Transhuman adventure. We have other, (cyberpunk, post cyberpunk, new wave) scifi for that. For something that talks very much about humanity evolving, especially socially but occasionally biologically, it actually takes a very conservative approach, and is almost unique amongst post-apocalyptic speculative fiction. That it does this for a reason is part of its enduring appeal I suspect.
The same is true of its approach to VR, (with one notable exception) it being very external and a communal experience via the holodeck. With a real universe to explore after all, what point is there in hand made fantasy as anything other than an occasional tool or recreational diversion that shouldn't get out of hand? It's a very different humanity we see, whilst also rather obviously still us.
Saying that, the gel packs were interesting in precisely that way, and it's very interesting when you consider her original helmsman, Stadi, was a betazoid. I liked Stadi, she was cool. I want her to come back from the dead more than Trip. XD
The problem is, the basis for Trek isn't unique the Trek. It's the layers on top of those most basic of things, the history of its world, that make Trek into Trek. Otherwise it becomes forbidden planet the series, or voyage of the space beagle. If you want Trek with what people call gritty realism...then I recommend Dark Matter. It's steeped in Trekisms, but full of greedy nasty humans, transhumanist tropes, corporate greed, the lot...that its core characters are almost like Treks ideal people because of being given a blank slate (hands up everyone who took a while to realise why the ship is called the Rasa, put your hand up) is one of the most interesting things in it.
Trek can be many different things, sometimes all at once, but it's precisely it's layers of world building, alternative history and dare I say it, continuity, that make it Trek in the first place.
That's why it shouldn't worry too much about being 'our' future...it's the future of the Cold War, from the sixties and 80s, and that still has something to say. And makes it unique.
I think all tech needs to be drastically altered. I am watching some TOS now and it is flat out ridiculous. When I watched it late night as a kid some 30 odd years ago it was still futuristic enough that it wasn't silly. Now though it is all silly.
Hand held communicators don't really make sense unless they are an all in one device. I almost find it impossible to believe that the tracking and basic communication device is not far advanced from the TNG era badges, only smaller and perhaps integrated into their skin or mouth and ears or even eyes. We have had smart phones, watches and glasses for several years now and this show is supposed to be set very far into the future. Trek is 50 years old, TNG is going to be 30 years old. When TNG launched PCs were not even a household item for many, now we have phones that are so much more powerful than those bulky boxes that cost less than a 10th what those things cost. This natural pace of technological advancement needs to be captured in this show. Part of the fun of Trek was the wow factor of the tech. Why take that away from us to service what they thought the future might look like decades ago?
Any basic tech that they need to do their job needs to be seamless and virtually indestructible. How many times did the crew loose their communicators and be put in danger because of it? That is an unacceptable risk by modern standards and modern tech can make that far less likely to happen. Certainly tech 200 + years into the future will make it all but impossible.
Hand held communicators don't really make sense unless they are an all in one device. I almost find it impossible to believe that the tracking and basic communication device is not far advanced from the TNG era badges, only smaller and perhaps integrated into their skin or mouth and ears or even eyes. We have had smart phones, watches and glasses for several years now and this show is supposed to be set very far into the future. Trek is 50 years old, TNG is going to be 30 years old. When TNG launched PCs were not even a household item for many, now we have phones that are so much more powerful than those bulky boxes that cost less than a 10th what those things cost. This natural pace of technological advancement needs to be captured in this show. Part of the fun of Trek was the wow factor of the tech. Why take that away from us to service what they thought the future might look like decades ago?
Any basic tech that they need to do their job needs to be seamless and virtually indestructible. How many times did the crew loose their communicators and be put in danger because of it? That is an unacceptable risk by modern standards and modern tech can make that far less likely to happen. Certainly tech 200 + years into the future will make it all but impossible.
*soapbox* Sorry for the length.
The last thing I would want to do do to Trek is make it suffer "gritty realism." I've read countless premises from other fans of a Trek show that was basically... WAR DEATH VIOLENCE GRIMDARK EDGIER.... No. God no.
The baggage is precisely what holds Trek back. That "stuff" is what made Berman play it so freaking safe with Voyager and Enterprise. In the former case they had to stick to format so much that nearly all of the major dramatic potential for the show was lost. In the latter case, so much so, that "continuity" didn't even matter anymore. "We gotsa have phasers, transporters, a saucer, cloaks, and all that other stuff otherwise fans won't know they're watching Star Trek!" Star Trek is not about that "stuff."
When watching TOS, continuity has virtually nothing to do with what makes the show so damn good. It's a combination of the imagination of all the creative peoples involved creating engaging stories. The baggage of the continuity only became important later on, well into TNG, and it suffocated Trek.
There's a reason Gene pushed TNG away from TOS, and I don't just mean setting it 80 years later. I mean in his way of thinking about it. TNG was Trek for the 1980s and 1990s audience. He basically reinvented the backstory and everything else.
Merely shoving it into a later century, which is what some people seem to want, wouldn't really work to give Trek the FRESHNESS it needs, because Trek only became more and more hampered into it's own web of continuity, and that still end up being a stumbling block.
How many groups must Trek fandom splinter into where their version of the history of events isn't the one being met? It's just a cacophony of useless noise at this point. Why insist on hanging onto it all for yet another iteration of Trek? All of that stuff will still be there on your shelves, in the books and dvds.
I love The Original Series. Love it. It feels like family. Nothing will ever change that. Those people got together and made an inspiration to millions. But all we do now in Trek is hold onto the nostalgia. Either of TOS or of which ever other flavor of Trek people might choose... And in the process the vitality of the show is smothered half the time.
Start over. Keep the Enterprise, and a few other things that are truly quintessential to Trek... But jettison all the rest and start from scratch! Imagine a Star Trek through the eyes of humanists, futurists. Inspired by the poetical science language of people like Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, Michio Kaku and Stephen Hawking. A Star Trek that shows us the MASSIVE and BEAUTIFUL universe as we are now beginning to understand it. As opposed to half a century ago. We know so much more now...! They were making leaps of faith to try and see the future in the 60s. We've road on their coat tails from then to now. There are so many more wonderful things that could bare the basis of new 21st Century Star Trek stories...
Forget the Cold War stuff. Nobody in today's audience is going to relate to that. Hell, I was born in the late 80s and I don't relate to The Cold War element of Trek like people just a few years older than me do. I respect it, and appreciate some of the messages brought forth because of it, but, Imagine the new generation of potential Trek fans. It comes off as kitsch, silly, dated , weird... We can get to that same future Roddenberry was trying to depict without the need of World War 3 and Khan's "super men rising to power in the 1990s." We could do that in a far more logical, modernized, and interesting fashion. Something ARRESTING and ENGAGING for the audience of today. A generation that desperately needs to both be inspired and entertained by things other than their own immediate problems.
People keep saying that Trek is about moving forward, and keep likening that to... To just pushing it forward another century, and that's just DULL. That's unimaginative. Warp will be more warpy, phasers will be a different color and maybe have another science babble word attached to them... Same dull stuff again and again, fire phasers, political dispute... TAP THE IMAGINATION! Take it somewhere! No, you don't reinvent the wheel... But the rest of the vehicle? Yes! Sherlock Star Trek. Take the original and give it the retooling for the modern world. Accept that times have changed, move forward, bring it to today. Even JJ Trek couldn't totally bring itself to do that. Indeed I fear the biggest failing of JJ Trek is it tried to saddle the divider line between modernizing and nostalgia.
Lord knows I can be wordy on this, and as far as what I feel Star Trek should do from here going forward, I could probably write a book, but needless to say I strongly feel that Trek could, and should, drastically evolve it's structure for the 21st Century, and not hang onto nostalgia for it's past as much as it insists. To truly recover it's high energy, intelligent, wide view outlook on what tomorrow could be... But I, reluctantly, digress...
Actually, one last aside... I think it's pretty clear in the writer's bibles for TOS that Gene did want Star Trek to be reflective of our future. He wanted it to be a believable future that the audience could see actually happening.
The last thing I would want to do do to Trek is make it suffer "gritty realism." I've read countless premises from other fans of a Trek show that was basically... WAR DEATH VIOLENCE GRIMDARK EDGIER.... No. God no.
The baggage is precisely what holds Trek back. That "stuff" is what made Berman play it so freaking safe with Voyager and Enterprise. In the former case they had to stick to format so much that nearly all of the major dramatic potential for the show was lost. In the latter case, so much so, that "continuity" didn't even matter anymore. "We gotsa have phasers, transporters, a saucer, cloaks, and all that other stuff otherwise fans won't know they're watching Star Trek!" Star Trek is not about that "stuff."
When watching TOS, continuity has virtually nothing to do with what makes the show so damn good. It's a combination of the imagination of all the creative peoples involved creating engaging stories. The baggage of the continuity only became important later on, well into TNG, and it suffocated Trek.
There's a reason Gene pushed TNG away from TOS, and I don't just mean setting it 80 years later. I mean in his way of thinking about it. TNG was Trek for the 1980s and 1990s audience. He basically reinvented the backstory and everything else.
Merely shoving it into a later century, which is what some people seem to want, wouldn't really work to give Trek the FRESHNESS it needs, because Trek only became more and more hampered into it's own web of continuity, and that still end up being a stumbling block.
How many groups must Trek fandom splinter into where their version of the history of events isn't the one being met? It's just a cacophony of useless noise at this point. Why insist on hanging onto it all for yet another iteration of Trek? All of that stuff will still be there on your shelves, in the books and dvds.
I love The Original Series. Love it. It feels like family. Nothing will ever change that. Those people got together and made an inspiration to millions. But all we do now in Trek is hold onto the nostalgia. Either of TOS or of which ever other flavor of Trek people might choose... And in the process the vitality of the show is smothered half the time.
Start over. Keep the Enterprise, and a few other things that are truly quintessential to Trek... But jettison all the rest and start from scratch! Imagine a Star Trek through the eyes of humanists, futurists. Inspired by the poetical science language of people like Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, Michio Kaku and Stephen Hawking. A Star Trek that shows us the MASSIVE and BEAUTIFUL universe as we are now beginning to understand it. As opposed to half a century ago. We know so much more now...! They were making leaps of faith to try and see the future in the 60s. We've road on their coat tails from then to now. There are so many more wonderful things that could bare the basis of new 21st Century Star Trek stories...
Forget the Cold War stuff. Nobody in today's audience is going to relate to that. Hell, I was born in the late 80s and I don't relate to The Cold War element of Trek like people just a few years older than me do. I respect it, and appreciate some of the messages brought forth because of it, but, Imagine the new generation of potential Trek fans. It comes off as kitsch, silly, dated , weird... We can get to that same future Roddenberry was trying to depict without the need of World War 3 and Khan's "super men rising to power in the 1990s." We could do that in a far more logical, modernized, and interesting fashion. Something ARRESTING and ENGAGING for the audience of today. A generation that desperately needs to both be inspired and entertained by things other than their own immediate problems.
People keep saying that Trek is about moving forward, and keep likening that to... To just pushing it forward another century, and that's just DULL. That's unimaginative. Warp will be more warpy, phasers will be a different color and maybe have another science babble word attached to them... Same dull stuff again and again, fire phasers, political dispute... TAP THE IMAGINATION! Take it somewhere! No, you don't reinvent the wheel... But the rest of the vehicle? Yes! Sherlock Star Trek. Take the original and give it the retooling for the modern world. Accept that times have changed, move forward, bring it to today. Even JJ Trek couldn't totally bring itself to do that. Indeed I fear the biggest failing of JJ Trek is it tried to saddle the divider line between modernizing and nostalgia.
Lord knows I can be wordy on this, and as far as what I feel Star Trek should do from here going forward, I could probably write a book, but needless to say I strongly feel that Trek could, and should, drastically evolve it's structure for the 21st Century, and not hang onto nostalgia for it's past as much as it insists. To truly recover it's high energy, intelligent, wide view outlook on what tomorrow could be... But I, reluctantly, digress...
Actually, one last aside... I think it's pretty clear in the writer's bibles for TOS that Gene did want Star Trek to be reflective of our future. He wanted it to be a believable future that the audience could see actually happening.
I am against gritty realism too. As I said. You want that, and there's nothing wrong with that, go elsewhere...there's other shows. Trek is hopeful scifi. I love Dark Matter, and it is gritty Trek in so many ways. It's almost what Renegades is trying to be. It just isn't Trek. To paraphrase MJS when he was making B5 , you can see it has the same DNA.
If you throw everything out about Trek apart from the simplest of concepts, it becomes very clear that Trek isn't Trek without its baggage. It is Voyage of the Space Beagle, it is Forbidden Planet, it is those generic space operas which helped make it, with gleaming ships and Big Dumb Objects. Those things too, get dated. (Though they also have had something of a renaissance, look at Interstellar...a fine piece of BDO scifi.)
There are tons of those doing the round on kindle, and some are really very good. Some are obvious Trek expys, and are still very good. Trek is Trek because of how it grew organically from those seeds in that time. Which brings me to my next point.
It was 'our' future in 1966. It was in 1986. Then it became so influential as to actually affect the future. Now, Trek cannot be our future, because unlike those in Trek, we had Trek on TV. That's part of why we have smartphones and tablets. It is known that it inspired scientists and engineers. That's aside from the reality that any long running sci fi is going to trip over itself at some point (cyber men didn't invade in 1986, we didn't have a moonbase in 1999)
And of course that Cold War past is relevant...more than ever. The political and military crises of right now are direct descendants from decisions made then. We are still in its hangover, so why shouldn't Trek, with its Cold War roots, still be relevant? Whether it is science fiction imagining the future of now, 'our' future, or what amounts to alternate history scifi (another popular thing at the moment, look at steampunk, diesel punk, and the new trend for reimagined 90s apocalypses with their roots in the films of the 1980s. The past is big business right now, even when we make it up.) and 'their' future, with 'them' being the people of the 60s and 80s.
I can't remember a single time specific continuity ruined a story, though there are probably a few. I can remember lots of times it made a story though. Sometimes subtle, sometimes gross.
Last edited:
Similar threads
