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Spoilers Starship Design in Star Trek: Picard

I don't get it. TOS, too, had mankind survive imaginary wars only: if there was an episode on, say, racial tolerance or proxy wars, it just sat there, not having affected mankind's ascent to the stars in any way. Indeed, man went to the stars while still happily waging the Vietnam War, only now with the Klingons. There was no learning curve involved.

In no incarnation of Trek did mankind overcome anything. It just persisted with everything, so that we could have allegory episodes or message stories or moral sledgehammering. TOS had its opportunity to claim that the stars opened up for us because we stopped killing each other, or stopped hating each other's skin color, or something - but it never took that opportunity. We just went to the stars, dragging all our ballast with us. Oh, perhaps Kirk in one adventure said that violence was a thing of the past, but he triumphed in the next one by punching his opponent in the jaw and threatening to blow up his planet. And if Picard went further with the pious 19XXs-folks-were-cavemen attitude, his planet-blowing antics remained pretty much the same.

Trek isn't about history. It's not about pseudohistory, either, but that's what forms the backdrop of all the shows anyway. A fictional launching of orbital nukes may be an event of some relevance, but it still coexists with an equally fictional nuclear war in the TOS context already; mankind in Trek doesn't learn, or solve. It just lives in a new reality that lacks certain types of challenge - but when faced with those, via a scifi twist (we now get to rasistically hate aliens rather than fellow humans, say) it's the very same one that faced them "originally" in the 1960s, having learned nothing, and exhibiting no role for the purported "potential".

Timo Saloniemi

This is painfully un-true. You do know about the (in)famous Kirk-speeches? Yes - Kirk is the guy to give an unruly alien a hook to the chin - but afterwards he offers a hand to help him back up. Also, racism against humans had entirely disappeared, and against aliens is specifically not tolerated. Which is kind of a biggy. Also, women that weren't just housewives or mistresses, but had actual typical "man" jobs. In the America of the 60s.
 
Telephone operator, nurse, secretary...
I think that undersells the abilities of those characters professions. I'm immediately thinking to when Uhura had to relieve someone at helm, which showed her expertise wasn't limited to communications. Heck, one of the very first characters aired on television was her at the helm (albeit via stock footage from another episode). I'd like to think that counts for something.

Of course the depiction of women in general isn't perfect, even problematic at times. I'll concede that TOS could have- SHOULD have shown a lot more of the females taking more active roles if only more creatives encouraged it.
 
Here’s a vote vehemently AGAINST another reboot. What is this, the Spider-Man universe? Is Spock’s mom going to show up in a halter top and be a total MILF? ENT, DSC, the Kelvin Movies, the upcoming Strange New Worlds series, and, to a point, PIC and the upcoming Lower Decks are all looks backward, to varying degrees of success. Enough already. Trek is about the future — a quasi-fantastical sci-fi version of it, but the future all the same. Frankly, I’m sick of Spock & Co.

I don’t care if they do a 25th century series, a 24th century series elsewhere on the Federation frontier, or to an alternate universe, but quit going back to the same well, and COME UP WITH SOMETHING NEW in the FUTURE. Every successful Trek series already did that time and time again. No excuses.
 
When we have two shows covering uncharted territory in the 25th and 30th centuries, I'm not really sure what's the point over being upset that one show will be set in the 23rd. Frankly, I think it's cool that we'll actually get multiple shows set in different eras. Contrast that with the 90s where we had three different shows but they were all set concurrently in the 24th century. Heck, VOYAGER arguably didn't even need to be set in the 24th century anyway, but that's what Berman did. At least back then, going backward to the 22nd century after having three shows set in the 24th during a 14 year timespan seemed refreshing, even if the show never really lived up to its potential.
 
Maybe "reboot" is the wrong term. Reboot implies not only wiping the slate clean but leaving behind what came before in favor of something totally different.

With the Kelvin universe they didn't really take as much liberties as they could have. The only reason it was a different timeline was purely so the filmmakers can slightly deviate from canon and not contradict what came before. That was all there was to it. It was nothing as drastic as something like BATTLESTAR GALACTICA where Ron Moore merely took the core concept and drastically altered the characters and dynamics.
 
I think that undersells the abilities of those characters professions. I'm immediately thinking to when Uhura had to relieve someone at helm, which showed her expertise wasn't limited to communications. Heck, one of the very first characters aired on television was her at the helm (albeit via stock footage from another episode). I'd like to think that counts for something.

Of course the depiction of women in general isn't perfect, even problematic at times. I'll concede that TOS could have- SHOULD have shown a lot more of the females taking more active roles if only more creatives encouraged it.


The "creatives" (e.g. writers), or those who greenlight shows after hearing from the "creatives" pitching their ideas? Roddenberry had a lot of ideas from "The Cage" shot down, for varying reasons. He didn't do that on his own.
 
I don't get it. TOS, too, had mankind survive imaginary wars only: if there was an episode on, say, racial tolerance or proxy wars, it just sat there, not having affected mankind's ascent to the stars in any way. Indeed, man went to the stars while still happily waging the Vietnam War, only now with the Klingons. There was no learning curve involved.

In no incarnation of Trek did mankind overcome anything. It just persisted with everything, so that we could have allegory episodes or message stories or moral sledgehammering. TOS had its opportunity to claim that the stars opened up for us because we stopped killing each other, or stopped hating each other's skin color, or something - but it never took that opportunity. We just went to the stars, dragging all our ballast with us. Oh, perhaps Kirk in one adventure said that violence was a thing of the past, but he triumphed in the next one by punching his opponent in the jaw and threatening to blow up his planet. And if Picard went further with the pious 19XXs-folks-were-cavemen attitude, his planet-blowing antics remained pretty much the same.

Trek isn't about history. It's not about pseudohistory, either, but that's what forms the backdrop of all the shows anyway. A fictional launching of orbital nukes may be an event of some relevance, but it still coexists with an equally fictional nuclear war in the TOS context already; mankind in Trek doesn't learn, or solve. It just lives in a new reality that lacks certain types of challenge - but when faced with those, via a scifi twist (we now get to rasistically hate aliens rather than fellow humans, say) it's the very same one that faced them "originally" in the 1960s, having learned nothing, and exhibiting no role for the purported "potential".

Timo Saloniemi

True, but the point of the series was that humankind/mankind/whoeffingcareswhatthewordisasitmeansallofuskind* had overcome its past issues and now only deals with issues beyond its realm (the Klingons, et al)... all as metaphor or allusion. Trek was about humanity surviving its allegedly immature past and evolving in the way its creator, Unkie Gene, wanted. TOS was encapsulating a possible future and leaving its past in the past because humans grew up (per some of season 1 TNG's mannerisms, as heralded by (if nothing else) a more cynical Gene).

(Okay, maybe some viewers right now want to see what they're seeing but in 1969 they wanted more.)

Even the use of language was more formal and, well, evolved. If I want to watch a show with 21st century peeps in space I'll bugger off and watch "The Orville", a sci-fi parody where current vernacular and slang tends to fit better.


* that's by far exponentially less pottymouth than any given episode of PIC
 
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A total reimagining of Star Trek, without worrying about maintaining continuity, would be a really interesting concept.

I think if I were doing one, I'd start by solving the problem of why the Federation is so human-centric if everyone is supposed to be equal, by jettisoning the Federation. Whereas TOS's depiction of a Federation starship where everyone is from Earth except one guy is the equivalent of, say, a show about a U.S. Navy ship where everyone is from Texas except for one guy from Massachusetts? I'd have the adventures of the United Earth Starship Enterprise, with a crew of Humans from Earth, where Spock is the only non-Human because he's an immigrant. Vulcan, Andor, Tellar, etc., would all be neighboring powers, rather than co-equal subdivisions of the same political entity the main characters serve. And an ongoing story arc in the background could be them all eventually recognizing their need to unite, thereby founding the Federation... Basically, ENT, but done right this time.
 
But a reboot would allow them more creativity

There's nothing stopping anyone if being creative now. There's nothing you can do with another re-imagination of the Klingons that you can't do by just inventing an entirely new species. In fact - from my experience, reboots stop creativity. I know if exactly one(!) case where a reboot was more creative than the original - and that is Battlestar Galactica. Two, if you count Nolan's Batman.
 
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