The look of SF hardware....

[Warped9]

The funny thing is that when you read SF literature of today you get a sense that a lot of what we see onscreen is behind the more cutting edge thinking in the books. This isn't surprising because SF in the visual mediums is usually at least a decade or so behind the literature. As such often the general audience is behind many of those who read SF lit rather than just relying on SF ideas depicted onscreen.

A lot of the ideas in TOS were already very familiar to the readers of SF lit at the time.

I suppose part of the difference is that an author has the time to indulge and research his material before he commits his final ideas to print while film and television producers (who aren't usually versed in the latest SF concepts) are pressed to get the show on the road.

In the real world I find it somewhat amusing how occasionally the media and the public get hung up on emerging new sciences that make them nervous because they don't understand them while many SF readers are often composed about it because they were already familiar with the given subjects at least a decade or so prior.

I recall someone once saying that science fiction was the antidote to future shock.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I mean the great variety of ships it had from week to week, it greatly expanded the form and look of ships of all kinds on ST. Partly because the technology of film-making allowed it to.

A lot of people called the original 1701 a saucer with two cigars on it. Its really just a lot of ideas from the past married into one. So you could call Voyager a toilet seat, but its actually sleeker and more modern looking than the 1701.

RAMA

The Defiant looks more like a toilet seat. The Voyager is spoon.

Yes, but a very well designed spoon.
The Voyager is really one of the better designs in Trek.

Can't say I care for it or the Defiant. Heck I'm not a fan of 1701-D either. Give me the 1701 or the refit any day. I'll take the NX-01 over the Defiant or the Voyager too.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

Can't say I care much for the NX-01. I love the Akira too much to allow it to continue to exist.

To me, it was like that B-movie Space Mutiny. It was clearly the Battlestar Galactica, and it was laughable that they'd expect you to buy it not being the Battlestar Galactica.

 

[Timo]

The funny thing is that when you read SF literature of today you get a sense that a lot of what we see onscreen is behind the more cutting edge thinking in the books. This isn't surprising because SF in the visual mediums is usually at least a decade or so behind the literature.

Then again, the literature goes to detail on current cutting edge stuff, which becomes outdated and arcane soon enough. The visual media only skim the surface, thus allowing for a looser interpretation and for constant "updating" of that interpretation by new audiences who have new preconceptions about what they are seeing.

Were a literary source to describe a tricorder in the 1960s, for example, it would probably end up describing a device capable of limited functionalities that in the 1960s were novel or in the future, but in the 1970s were found in most homes and in the 1990s were packaged in one's pocket. In the visual media, the little black box on Spock's waist can be attributed with much greater abilities, as it is very rarely indeed that the visual media actually state that what Spock is doing is the full extent of what is achievable, and even more rarely that they would try to describe the mechanism by which this is achieved.

Which makes me a bit sad, because some very good current Trek writers who like to play on the cutting edge (Christopher first and foremost) are likely to get "dated" more quickly than their less detail-minded colleagues.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Nebusj]

The Defiant looks more like a toilet seat. The Voyager is spoon.

Yes, but a very well designed spoon.
The Voyager is really one of the better designs in Trek.

Nah, Voyager's a handheld dustbuster design. Defiant I think is one of those things McCoy used to cure some of Chekov's many head injuries.

 

[NCC1968]

..... When Matt Jefferies was designing the Enterprise the monitors - all with rounded corners, of course - were embedded in the furniture and walls because that's how CRTs were being utilized at the time.

..........

Even the tricorder has a mini-CRT ....B&W at that

 

[NCC1968]

Early SciFi seems "clean" and SW had a beat-up used look.......probably easier to build and seems realistic - esp for the Rebals...being almost broke....