It's a fictional technology operating according to fictional rules.
I really should have said "no dumber than warp drive in the first place".
Spoilers Things that grind my gears about S3
- Thread starter ED-209
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It's a fictional technology operating according to fictional rules.
I really should have said "no dumber than warp drive in the first place".
honestly, after one thousand years of matter/antimatter generators and tractor beams I really hope never to see a situation like that.
Quite right.
If people are going to repeatedly go with 'it's fictional so none of it makes sense' then I don't understand why they bother engaging with this sort of conversation anyway TBH.
Just like how you can answer 'because it's just a TV show' to virtually every question raised here if you so wished.
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Well done you for noticing it's all fictional. You've really raised the level of debate there by pointing out something we're all fully aware of.
I mean, given how they can explode that might not be a bad thing.
True, the TOS nacelles looked like they were clamped in to make them easy to detach which makes sense.
The thing about starships that really bugs me is why do they put plasma conduits right behind the consoles on the bridge. It would be like your fuel line going right behind your dashboard!! Surely, a car like that would not be approved. I mean is there some kind of corruption we're not told about... Like Starfleet safety inspectors are being paid to look the other way?
What safety inspectors?
they were. At least in the original concepts, I’m not sure it was ever said on screen.
i can think of two possibilities.
1) in the Star Trek timeline they never discovered circuit breakers or, even worse, they don’t work because their reality works differently than ours.
2) nobody dies anymore, so they have to find ways to kill off people with “accidents”.
I always believed that phasers and photon torpedoes we designed specifically to cause this particular kind of damage to starships to make them more effective in disrupting the ship and crew. I never looked at it as plasma conduits exploding in (for example) TWOK. I just looked at is as Photorps are bad news and, when they hit unshielded starships, they are designed to surge energy through critical systems to cause more damage and injury.
I know it's a stretch....but it works for me.
I have an even easier time suspending disbelief with the technology in DSC Season 3+ than other Star Trek, because it's so far in the future. It's passed the year 3000, so they might as well just go nuts. I can only speak from my perspective, but I always think, "It's so far into the future, why wouldn't they have developed this?"
Reprogrammable Matter? Works for me.
Refitting Discovery in three weeks? Same.
That's also why I have no problem with limits being put in place. Lack of dilithium limited warp travel or communication dependent on warp. Time travel and jumping to alternate universes being banned. The Federation only being a tenth of the size it was at its peak. That keeps Starfleet from becoming invincible and allows stakes to enter into the story.
Reprogrammable Matter? Works for me.
Refitting Discovery in three weeks? Same.
That's also why I have no problem with limits being put in place. Lack of dilithium limited warp travel or communication dependent on warp. Time travel and jumping to alternate universes being banned. The Federation only being a tenth of the size it was at its peak. That keeps Starfleet from becoming invincible and allows stakes to enter into the story.
Agreed. I think there is this idea that Trek technology can just keep growing exponentially without any sort of upward limit, or concern for the impact on the story.
Limits are more interesting than technology solving the problem daily.
I agree that it's important to have limits within stories. However, I think it's quite possible to tell stories within a far-future setting where the characters are limited even if the tech itself seems limitless. Some of the possibilities don't really mesh well with Trek admittedly, since we can't expect (at least in the traditional Trek format) to follow a group of people with limited power and agency dropped into a much bigger and scarier world. Though that would have been an interesting alternate take on Season 3, with the crew feeling like ants scampering around a house, dealing with eldritch machines they scarcely could even fathom.
I also think that Trek's traditional use of tech as a "problem solver" has been the absolute worst way to use tech in science fiction. Technology can equally cause new problems (the whole philosophy of Black Mirror). This is one of the two fundamental story beats of SF, and something Trek itself has dipped into (Measure of Man for instance considering the ethical outcomes of creating artificial intelligence). Alternatively, it can just be used as background worldbuilding to help give a setting more of an "alien vibe." YMMV, but the little things we saw this season like "programmable matter" didn't really scream Clarktech to me.
Still, the biggest issue overall is if you don't want to have to deal with the problem of exponential future technological development...just don't go into the future! There was no reason they had to jump 930 years exactly. That was a choice they made during Season 2 however.
Still a choice I don't agree with. Caused unnecessary difficulties to the writers. I think the efforts with the Temporal Wars and the Burn to indicate why technology had hiccups in development. I also prefer technology to be limited so being in the far future isn't the most ideal setting for me. It is what it is.
No, the technology in this season didn't feel too magical and I prefer it that way. I grow tired of expecting technology to solve all the problems or for our heroes to be totally out of their element and have to rely on it. It's tiresome, not interesting as far as SF stories go.
If Starfleet aren't at the "indistinguishable from magic" phase by 3189 they might as well pack it all in.
The thing that really sticks in my craw in the whole franchise is the notion of "sentient" "living" or whatever machines. I think it's just stupid, even if some stories built around this misconception are actually interesting (kinda like vampire stories, they're absurd but can be entertaining). The whole point of making a machine is that it can do the work that is too dangerous, too tedious, too demanding, too expensive (when done by a human being) for a human being to do. If you build sophisticated tools after years and years of research and people tell you: "You can't use those tools because they are alive" whatever the hell that means, then what's the point?
Plus intelligence and sentience and/or sapience are two very different things. Intelligence can be simulated at the highest level by a program that will be no more sentient than your current toaster.
Plus intelligence and sentience and/or sapience are two very different things. Intelligence can be simulated at the highest level by a program that will be no more sentient than your current toaster.
Fully aware maybe but none of you seem to understand.
Yeah that must be it. No one understands other than you. That's not at all egotistical TBF...
I’m not the one insisting that everything on a TV show has to have a logical explanation.Yeah. You're the only one that understands and no one else does. That's definitely the situation here!
and do you really have to be a complete dick
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