Things that date Trek

[WraithDukat]

I'm noticing more and more things that are dating Star Trek lately, I'll list a few but not an exhaustive list.

Paper Photos - this just makes it look bad, especially when they're faded otherwise you could explain it away as a paper width display (which we technically already have the technology to do).

Mini 'skirts' - I need say no more.

Terminology, Kors use of the term 'vegetable' makes me cringe every time.

TOS Music, sometimes that gets so bad I mute it - I don't mean the main theme but the 'suite' music.

Enterprises thick monitors.

Anyone got anything to add?

 

[Butters]

CRT monitors. I can’t remember who, but it was explained in a documentary that all screens in TNG were black glass with printed inlays to simulate a touch screen because CRT screens would look obvious and date the show, in the same way that real switches and toggles would have dated TOS. And then they used them anyway. Doh.

 

[Sophie74656]

Hair. The first season or two of TNG is full of awful 80s hair.

 

[Butters]

Hair. The first season or two of TNG is full of awful 80s hair.

Thought this was going to be Klingon hair.

Klingons with hair so date the older series.

 

[WraithDukat]

Hair. The first season or two of TNG is full of awful 80s hair.

TNG S1 and 2 have dated worse than TOS in a lot of ways.

 

[Brennyren]

Data PADDS. Especially stacks of them! I remember a scene or two from TNG where we were expected to understand that Picard was super busy because he had not one, but a pile of them, on his desk. And on Voyager, when the crew got letters from home, Neelix was passing them out manually, giving every recipient a PADD of their own.

 

[TribbleFeeder]

The way they hold their phasers in TOS always reminded me of old western movies. Anyone who fires a weapon with one hand isn’t going to hit the target very accurately. Military has been holding their weapons with two hands for decades now.

The activewear in TNG is so over the top 80s...what were they thinking?!

Kind of makes you wonder what Discovery is doing now that will look outdated in 20 years.

 

[The Wormhole]

The omnipresence of 4:3 monitors always gets me. I mean sure, in the 80s and 90s most people would give WTF reactions if they were told future TVs would be rectangular, but it makes the shows and movies look very dated all the same.

CRT monitors. I can’t remember who, but it was explained in a documentary that all screens in TNG were black glass with printed inlays to simulate a touch screen because CRT screens would look obvious and date the show, in the same way that real switches and toggles would have dated TOS. And then they used them anyway. Doh.

I noticed CRT really became a thing on DS9. The station had CRT screens all over the place, as did the runabouts and even the Defiant. I remember back in the 90s I actually approved of this, as it helped give the series more of a realistic look over TNG, but now, yeesh, it does date the show.

Data PADDS. Especially stacks of them! I remember a scene or two from TNG where we were expected to understand that Picard was super busy because he had not one, but a pile of them, on his desk. And on Voyager, when the crew got letters from home, Neelix was passing them out manually, giving every recipient a PADD of their own.

The PADD stacks or crates are terrible, as is the habit of walking around the ship handing PADDs to people. In the case of Neelix personally delivering the letters from home, I just overlook that as a morale-boosting thing, making a big deal of the first letters the crew is getting from their families in four years. I imagine that if the letters had become a regular thing, they would eventually just be sent to the crew's email accounts (for lack of a better term) with no fuss.

The way they hold their phasers in TOS always reminded me of old western movies. Anyone who fires a weapon with one hand isn’t going to hit the target very accurately. Military has been holding their weapons with two hands for decades now.

Ah, but that's part of the charm, make the show look like it's about a group of adventurers.

 

[1001001]

She went out with Lost in Space a few times, but Star Trek decided she just wanted to be friends.

 

[The Wormhole]

Groan.

 

[WraithDukat]

She went out with Lost in Space a few times, but Star Trek decided she just wanted to be friends.

I was waiting for someone to make a joke like that.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Everything dates Trek. The attitudes towards women in TOS, the ridiculously-PC Next Generation and it's psychiatrist in a prominent bridge position, the constant 9/11 references in ENT and the Kelvin movies, the grimdarkness of DSC. They're all a product of their time.

Personally, I love the 80'sness of the original cast movies. Seeing big boxy monitors showing ultra-crude animations which are meant to pass as amazing stuff from 300 years hence amuses me no end. Chekov's outfit in STIII is so ridiculous it's amazing (and Koenig must have pitched a fit over it, since Chekov gets a badass leather jacket in STIV)

 

[WraithDukat]

the grimdarkness of DSC.

Yeah that’s really going to come back and bite them some day, they need to tone it back with the ‘style of the decade’ stuff. But I suppose it’s pretty inevitable.

 

[Lord Garth]

Star Trek in general, before First Contact, looks dated to me. Everything from First Contact on (including the corresponding seasons of DS9 and VOY), but before 2009, is starting to show its age; though I wouldn't call it dated yet.

Put a space battle from late-DS9 next to a space battle from DSC, and DS9's will still hold up pretty well in comparison, even for something that came out 20 years ago.

I don't expect every time period to look like it came from Now. "Now" looks different every 10 years.

 

[Sophie74656]

The giant "laptop" on Janeway's desk

 

[WraithDukat]

The giant "laptop" on Janeway's desk

Urgh, yeah I forgot about that. Picards is even worse.

 

[1001001]

Groan.

How much did you pay to get in?

 

[fireproof78]

Hair. The first season or two of TNG is full of awful 80s hair.

This.

 

[Sophie74656]

https://goo.gl/images/mfoYP2

 

[CRM-114]

What's dated about Star Trek? All sorts of stuff.

All it means is that Star Trek has always reflected in some extent the era in which it is made. That, and the inherent risk that comes with trying to guess what the future will be like.