Why do postmen exist if we can just drive to whoever we want to give a letter to, probably much faster than the three days it takes the postal service to send mail? One word: convenience.
What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?
- Thread starter Amasov
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Postmen still exist, and we still use normal mail for some things, but we don't use mail the same we used to ever since email, fax machines, online bill pay, etc., became things. There was a natural progression where our world changed in the presence of new tech and the ability to do things a different way.
It's the reason brick-and-mortar retail malls are dying after online shopping became prevalent. The comment earlier in this thread about Stargate doing a really good job in showing new tech changing things about the setting in that franchise is right.
Also, is it really more convenient to send an owl with a message tied to it rather than hocus-pocusing it to the recipient?
I am a postman. I can tell you I'm almost entirely delivering things that people can't or really don't want to send digitally, as well as things that people absolutely could not deliver in less time than it takes us to do it because they don't have the money to drive for hours and hours or even fly across oceans just to deliver a letter.
It's really not at all comparable to the Harry Potter situation because the wizards there can literally go anywhere they want to in a matter of seconds and then come back again just as fast. Delivering mail in person would be like stepping into another room. And to the extent that people still would want someone else to do it for them for convenience' sake (and some would), it still doesn't make any sense for the wizarding mail to use owls instead of their obviously faster teleportation spells. It's an affectation pure and simple.
If this thread is about controversial opinions, one of my most controversial opinions is that most episodes of Star Trek, or any other episodic tv series, happen in their own separate alternate universes by themselves, separate from the alternate universes of all other episodes. Except in a few cases where one episode is clearly a sequel to another episode.
And so if protagonists in a show set on Earth makes a world changing discovery, or protagonists in a space opera make a galaxy changing discovery, but don't remember it in later episodes, it is because those later episodes happen in alternate universes where the episodes with the great discoveries never happened. A protagonist can't remember something which never happened to him in the alternate universe of that episode.
I developed that theory specifically in relation to TOS and other early Star Trek series.
And recently I decided that in an episodic tv series the episodes need not be produced and broadcast in the same order as their fictional dates when those are given.
Here is a link to a thread where I show that the Maverick TV series (1957 to 1962) episodes are certainly not broadcast in the chronological order of their fictional dates.
https://moviechat.org/tt0050037/Maverick/5c943dd3be89fc07f659a340/Some-Maverick-Chronology
And in a thread called "The travelling Salesman Problem" :
https://moviechat.org/tt0050037/Maverick/5ca5301fe31e89655fc51074/The-Traveling-Salesman-Problem
I wonder if there is any possible order of episodes where Bret or Bart could travel to all the places he traveled to during the series, within the relatively few years of fictional time it would take for him to not visibly age.
Remember that during the 1870s there was only one transcontinental railroad, and many places in the west were up to 500 miles from the nearest train station.
If the vast majority of the Maverick episodes happen in their own separate alternate universes Bret or Bart would only travel to one place in each alternate universe and so there would not be any problem with having the travels of the Mavericks happen within just a few years.
And similarly, in Star Trek programs having most of the episodes happen in their own separate alternate universes would greatly reduce the distance the ship would have to travel in each universe and avoid most of the time, distance, and speed problems resulting from having all the episodes happen in one alternate universe.
And here I discuss much less consistent chronology in the series Stories of the Century (1954-55).
https://moviechat.org/tt0046647/Sto...6a618c8b/Chronology-of-Stories-of-the-Century
And a similar discussion for Tales of West Fargo.
https://moviechat.org/tt0050066/Tal...376a618be4/Chronology-of-Tales-of-Wells-Fargo
In the Daniel Boone tv series from 1964 to 1970, partially contemporary with Star Trek TOS, Daniel Boone (1734-1820) was portrayed by Fess Parker (1924-2010) and his wife Rebecca (1739-1813) was portrayed by Patricia Blair (1933-2013), And their two children in the show were Jemina (b. 1762) in seasons 1 & 2 played by Veronica Cartwright (B. 1949) and Israel (1759-1782) played by Darby Hinton (b. 1957).
And as a historian, and as someone who has a relative married to a descendant of Daniel Boone, I have to say that in real life Daniel and Rebecca Boone had a large and often changing household with ten of their own children and eight other children they raised at various times.
And since Darby Hinton aged only about five and half years during the production of the series one might expect that the fictional dates of episodes would not vary by more that about six or seven years. But when I watched the series I noted that some episodes were set before the Revolutionary War, and some were set during it, and some were set after it, and those episodes were mixed up together.
And here is a link to a discussion of the constant changes of date in the series:
https://moviechat.org/tt0057742/Dan.../Anachronisms-and-Things-Out-of-Time-or-Place
And Wikipedia says:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Boone_(1964_TV_series)
Not only was Israel Boone always a child in stories which happened over ten, twenty, and thirty years, but the stories jumped between different fictional dates in no order.
So the best way to think of it is to imagine that in the fictional world of the Daniel Boone tv series the creators of it had access to information about events in countless thousands and millions of alternate universes over several decades and selected various adventures of Daniel Boone from them to depict. And instead of depicting the children which Boone had at those times in different alternate universes they used the same two kids played by the same two actors.
And so the evidence indicates that if creators of episodic television series were asked about consistency and were familiar with science fiction, and if they thought fast, they would probably claim that all their episodes (except the episodes which were sequels to other ones) happened in their own separate alternate universes out of countless millions of alternate universes where the characters existed.
And having almost every episode of every Star Trek tv series happen in its own alternate universe solves a lot of problems and not just the problem of the protagonists forgetting useful problem solvers they discovered in previous episodes.
Of course more recent Star Trek programs have had more and more serialized plot lines, and thus might have ten, or twenty, or thirty, and more episodes in a row explicitly happening one after the other and in the same alternate universe as each other. And without being able to use different alternate universes in those cases, different explanations for various problems and inconsistencies must be found - if possible.
So, from the point of view of reducing inconsistencies, the fact that the newer and more serialized Star Trek programs have fewer episodes per season and in an entire series can be considered a good development.
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I hope this thread spills over into another universe so there'll be room for all that.
Crisis on Infinite Threads
Post will live. Posts will die. And the BBS will never be the same!
Is there a Thread Page Limit or Thread Post limit per topic?
I hope we never have to find out. 
Here's another Controversial Take.
Star Trek needs more Artificial Life-Forms roaming around, helping around StarFleet.
Be it "mass produced" Soong Type Androids derived from Data in a Synth or original Soong type body.
More Artificial Life-Forms like Holographi AI like "The Doctor".
Or helper droids like we see in R2D2 / C3PO / BB8 from Star Wars.
But Trek needs their own equivalents.
We got to see a few more in ST: Discovery.
But I would like to see more in general.
The A500 Synths were a good start, but please don't give them a "Humanoid" face.
That was unnecessary, I'd prefer if you went full generic Helmeted Head and look like something out of Power Rangers / Super Sentai.
Heck, if my Mail-Man can wear a Helmeted Head Gear, there's no reason why the mass produced A500 style Synths can't just all wear Helmets.
There's no need for Anthropomorphisizing our Droids. Just make them Robotic Enough and not look human.
Please don't try to cross the "Uncanny Valley" if you don't have to.
Data is a special One-Off case along with the Coppelius Androids (Soji Asha & Dahj Asha) along with their kin being exceptions that mimic Humans incredibly closely, that they are very hard to distinguish.
I'd prefer if my Artificial Robotic Life-Forms look sufficiently Artificial.
Star Trek needs more Artificial Life-Forms roaming around, helping around StarFleet.
Be it "mass produced" Soong Type Androids derived from Data in a Synth or original Soong type body.
More Artificial Life-Forms like Holographi AI like "The Doctor".
Or helper droids like we see in R2D2 / C3PO / BB8 from Star Wars.
But Trek needs their own equivalents.
We got to see a few more in ST: Discovery.
But I would like to see more in general.
The A500 Synths were a good start, but please don't give them a "Humanoid" face.
That was unnecessary, I'd prefer if you went full generic Helmeted Head and look like something out of Power Rangers / Super Sentai.
Heck, if my Mail-Man can wear a Helmeted Head Gear, there's no reason why the mass produced A500 style Synths can't just all wear Helmets.
There's no need for Anthropomorphisizing our Droids. Just make them Robotic Enough and not look human.
Please don't try to cross the "Uncanny Valley" if you don't have to.
Data is a special One-Off case along with the Coppelius Androids (Soji Asha & Dahj Asha) along with their kin being exceptions that mimic Humans incredibly closely, that they are very hard to distinguish.
I'd prefer if my Artificial Robotic Life-Forms look sufficiently Artificial.
We are not going through this again.
Daniel Boone? Maverick? Stories of the Century? Are you kidding?
You have been told, several times, to stop with the novel-length, tangential posts.
Seriously, start a blog, or write a book, or something.
Just…stop.
I gave myself carpal tunnel scrolling through this damn page.
I'd love to see a Klingon trying to deal with a Gonk!
You mean the walking Trash Bin droid?
Power Droid, yep.
How dare you speak poorly of Sir Gonkington III! Have at thee!
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