And yet, an inescapable
element of that objective reality is the fact that it can
only be
perceived by us through our senses, which are
not always capable of determining its nature accurately. (Even where we have more sensitive instruments with which to better measure those aspects of it that are directly observable, and/or additional mathematical formulae to describe those that aren't, these
themselves must be designed, constructed, and operated by us, and the results obtained
interpreted through the use of those same senses.)
A mere few morsels of food for thought:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress#Scientific_explanations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave
Whatever "reality" it may have is anything
but "objective"; even the author or artist themself can only tell you what their creation means
to them, or to the particular character(s) in question. What it means
to you depends on
you, in the end.
Quite...and some of them they even
did think of, but just weren't able to effectively show at the time! Case in point: holograms on Kirk's
Enterprise, both of the immersive environment and interpersonal communications varieties! Here once again,
The Making Of Star Trek should be required reading for all those laboring under the misapprehension that such aspects of DSC somehow violate "Gene's Vision"!
Pg. 188:
MEN AND WOMEN ON A STARSHIP, SO LONG OUT OF CONTACT WITH EARTH AND SO LONG AWAY FROM OTHER PLANETS, TOO, WILL REQUIRE A FEELING OF FRESH AIR AND SKY AND WIND AND SCENTS. BECAUSE WE ARE, IN MANY RESPECTS, STILL ANIMALS, OUR MENTAL AND EMOTIONAL EQUILIBRIUM WILL REQUIRE THE FAMILIARITY OF THIS. MAN HAS BEEN TOO LONG A PART OF EARTH TO BE TOO LONG SEPARATED. THEREFORE WE INTEND TO BUILD A SIMULATED 'OUTDOOR' RECREATION AREA WHICH GIVES A REALISTIC FEELING OF SKY, BREEZES, PLANTS, FOUNTAINS, AND SO FORTH. ONE OF THE REASONS FOR MAKING A STARSHIP SO LARGE WOULD BE TO HAVE SOMETHING LIKE THIS...
Pg. 190:
The fourth major facility on the eighth deck level is the entertainment center. Certainly man of the future will require entertainment as much as we enjoy motion pictures and television today. Probably entertainment will be three-dimensional in nature and perhaps will go even further, in that you will sit in the room and the story will take place all around you. In other words, a sophisticated extension of holography.
This technique will also have its effect on the traditional "mail call." Instead of receiving a letter, a man can sit in the room and, via tape, actually "see" the person sending the correspondence. As the tape is projected, the images will form in the air in front of him, so he will be able to see how his child looks, what's happening to the house, and how great his grandmother looked that day. It will be just as if he were standing there with them. Having used the "projecting unit," he can then use the "photographing unit," do a similar thing himself, and send it home...
And note how in "The Return of the Archons" (TOS), Kirk and Spock attempt to converse in real time with Landru's projection even
after they realize that's what it is, as if this is a concept they are well familiar with, finding only the lack of identifiable apparatus producing it to be a novelty:
LANDRU: I am Landru.
SPOCK: Projection, Captain. Unreal.
KIRK: But beautiful, Mister Spock, with no apparatus at this end.
LANDRU: You have come as destroyers. You bring an infection.
KIRK: You are holding my ship. I demand that you release it.
LANDRU: You have come to a world without hate, without fear, without conflict. No war, no disease, no crime. None of the ancient evils. Landru seeks tranquillity. Peace for all. The universal good.
KIRK: We mean you no harm. Ours is a mission of peace and good will.
LANDRU: The good must transcend the evil. It shall be done. So it has been since the beginning.
SPOCK: He doesn't hear you, Captain.
And of course, the holographic recreation room, a precursor to TNG's "upgraded" holodeck,
was ultimately shown in "The Practical Joker" (TAS):
Oh, and as to this indignant obsession
@BillJ seems to have with (dis)respect to the notion that they might have had the
unmitigated gall to create and introduce new designs with the specific intent of licensing and marketing them for merchandising purposes, that's
exactly how we got such "iconic" elements as the tricorder, Spock's IDIC medallion, and the Klingon battlecruiser on TOS in the first place! So spare me the moral outrage, please.
As I've gathered from
Memory Alpha's article on the subject (which I see that, in the time since I began composing this post,
@TrickyDickie has also linked to) the plan at the beginning was simply to re-use the actual original model from TOS—I assume with a new paint job, just as they were initially going to do with the Klingon battle cruiser model—but the Smithsonian could not be persuaded to give it back for this purpose. So then another model needed to be built, which was to have incorporated an updated configuration similar to the ultimately filmed version overall, yet retaining a smooth TOS-like finish, as insisted upon by Jefferies. But when the project went from being intended for television screens to movie screens, this was
deemed unworkable by incoming art director Richard Taylor:
When we first came on the project we had to look at everything that existed and Roddenberry said, “Just use the sets that we’re building and the models we are building”. So, I gave the models [an] honest look but had to tell them in the end that “If you use these models and sets, you’re going to be laughed out of the theatre”. The models would have been embarrassing at best. They were really old school in their detail and were not built to armature and light the way we needed for motion control. They looked like the old television show. Again, Don Loos built the Enterprise and Magicam built the dry-dock and a few other things but they were building for a television movie. The resolution of television is forgiving; the big screen is not. I sat down with Roddenberry and Katzenberg and said we are going to have to redesign the Enterprise because it needs to be armatured from six sides and it needs to have lighting systems in it. I told them “You saw Star Wars. You saw the quality of those models and for us to shoot these models of yours with motion control; to put that motion blur in there with multiple passes… it has to have lights that we can control for individual passes”. If the camera is going to get close to the model–say, up close to the windows, the model has got to be big enough for us to give it detail. Trying to film a model that is too small is deadly. The focus, lighting, depth of field, surface textures and much more come into play...
...I told them we were going to have to redesign them and the sets. Well, Joe Jennings the Art Director at the time and the team who had worked on the sets was not happy about that. There was resentment there. It was touch[y] to tell them that the sets had to match the new models and therefore the sets needed to be redesigned as well. The sets needed to have a much more hi-tech look and they needed to have a lighting concept built into them...
I'm confused as to why we've slid back to "unless" here, after only a few days. Once again, we can
already interpret it as a refit, if we have any such inclination, without anything more being required. We've known since TMP that such refits happen, and have moreover had this reaffirmed within DSC
itself. They
could acknowledge it further and/or more specifically with respect to the
Enterprise, but there really isn't any
need at this point. And with that being so, why
should they go any farther out of their way in trying vainly to convince those who will surely
never accept this as a plausible answer
anyway to change their minds?
Unless they intend to make it a full-on
focus of the story, as in TMP—where the dramatic purpose of the refit
isn't merely to "explain" the visual change, but rather more fundamentally
to put Kirk at a disadvantage in having to get to know his estranged old flame all over again, thus further fueling the conflict between him and Decker, and also raising the added obstacle of the ship "not being ready" and having to scramble to meet the threat, which ultimately dovetails with Spock's entrance—then dwelling on such matters any further would only be a derailment, and one likely to little constructive end, because I
guarantee you there will
still be those who insist it's not explanation enough (just as there still are regarding the TMP refit, believe it or not) and continue to argue about it. (Of course, as on other fronts, they no doubt
want us all to keep arguing about it, because it keeps even the haters endlessly talking about the show...but that will surely happen in any case without further prompting.)
-
MMoM
