What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?
- Thread starter Amasov
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I hate the "red-blue-light-up-police-toy"-aesthetic for Star Trek warp nacelles.
I prefer literally any non-red-blue version - transparent cap only (TOS, JJtrek), no transparency (TOS movie era), LED-stripe look (DIS). All of them look more like "real" engines with small futuristic glowy parts. Whereas big red-blue-lights is the most childish combination, that also makes the whole thing feel like a giant hollow toy with transparent surfaces and a big lamp inside.
I'm okay with it being a signifier of the popular 90s /24th century Trek era (e.g. love it in Lower Decks).
But I hate that it has now transcended & retro-actively infected all Trek eras (First Contact, ENT, SNW, PIC) as "the" Star Trek spaceship look.
It just looks utterly goofy and toy-like.
I prefer something more solid, real-looking.
I prefer literally any non-red-blue version - transparent cap only (TOS, JJtrek), no transparency (TOS movie era), LED-stripe look (DIS). All of them look more like "real" engines with small futuristic glowy parts. Whereas big red-blue-lights is the most childish combination, that also makes the whole thing feel like a giant hollow toy with transparent surfaces and a big lamp inside.
I'm okay with it being a signifier of the popular 90s /24th century Trek era (e.g. love it in Lower Decks).
But I hate that it has now transcended & retro-actively infected all Trek eras (First Contact, ENT, SNW, PIC) as "the" Star Trek spaceship look.
It just looks utterly goofy and toy-like.
I prefer something more solid, real-looking.
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But it makes them look so pretty!
I remember thinking this as a kid when TNG was new. I thought it looked really goofy with the red/blue nacelles, because I was so accustomed to the look from the movies.
But I've gotten so used to it that it now feels weird when it's not there.
For example, I really hate the 32nd century Starfleet aesthetic because it LACKS those colors. It just seems so blah to me with the light blues and grays, and I think those 32nd century designs would look better if they had more color to them.
But it makes them look so pretty!
My personal preference: Red Impulse Exhaust, Blue Warp Field Grilles, Orange Bussard Collectors.
I 100% Agree
I like the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Threshold."
I do not hate the Star Trek: Enterprise finale "These Are the Voyages..."
Don't phaser me!
I do not hate the Star Trek: Enterprise finale "These Are the Voyages..."
Don't phaser me!
I am totally with you on "THRESHOLD".I like the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Threshold."
I do not hate the Star Trek: Enterprise finale "These Are the Voyages..."
Don't phaser me!
I am totally against you on "THESE ARE THE VOYAGES...".
(thinking...)
This balances out, so you don't get phasered.
I'm that Trekkie who likes the bad episodes.I am totally with you on "THRESHOLD".
I am totally against you on "THESE ARE THE VOYAGES...".
(thinking...)
This balances out, so you don't get phasered.
After nearly 6 decades we still don't have a proper speed explanation of Warp.
It's faster than light.
There are different warp scales for the 22nd, 23rd and later centuries so Warp 5 in 2151 is not the same as Warp 5 in 2266 or in, say, 2401 and Season 3 of PIC. Warp 1 is the speed of light but beyond that velocity it's all relative based on the century and series/film.
And that is my exact complaint lol.
Trek's creators had to come up with reasons why ships seem to travel further distances at times than others and the recalibration of the warp scale over 200 years is the best compromise. Otherwise NONE of it makes any sense.
Whenever people bring up the details of the tech in Star Trek, I always think of a show called Party Down that was about aspiring actors and writers in Hollywood working crappy jobs at a catering company. In one of the episodes, Martin Starr's character is writing a "hard" sci-fi script. They act it out, and he's put in all sorts of dialogue with highly-specific details in order to give a quasi-plausible explanation for every little thing, and it just does not work.
Steve Guttenberg, who plays himself, is the guest star in the episode and gets the group to rethink the whole thing from the ground up, get rid of most of the technobabble exposition, and realize that the story is about the characters and the situation the characters are in.
And I remember watching the episode and realized that something similar has probably happened at some point during a writer's room for Star Trek.
To me, you really don't have to explain any of the technology, like warp drive, in detail except in the broad strokes. What will make the audience suspend disbelief is if you give whatever fantastical technology within a story limits and rules, and you're consistent with those limits and rules. Or, if drama demands, you come up with a good exception for why you can break those limits and rules for a specific moment and acknowledge it.
Otherwise, if it's something fantastical that's not clearly defined with no limitations, it's basically magic within the story and you've gone into fantasy. Terry Pratchett, the English author responsible for the Discworld series, made this argument about Doctor Who. Pratchett once wrote an entire column explaining why he believed Doctor Who is not science-fiction. And one example he pointed to was that he likened The Doctor's sonic screwdriver to a magic wand. It has no clearly defined rules or limits and can basically do whatever the script needs it to do for the story.
Beautiful explanation, it's the same for Star Wars lightsabers. But I still think a simple speed explanation is due.
Voyager tried to give an answer but I think that was not upheld afterwards.
I’ve assumed the Narada had perfectly normal mining-ship technology for the 2380s, which purely because of the tech-level difference utterly outclasses standard 2230s and even Kelvinverse 2250s military hardware. Scans of Narada and countermeasure developed in response bumped up the Kelvin Federation’s tech significantly, but still not enough to directly match it. No need for apocrypha about adding Borg technology.
That sounds like Ronald D Moore's story on how he wrote the ending to Battlestar Galactica, the "forget worrying about everything else, it's the characters that are important" part at least.
I know when they were writing '90s Trek they used to write [TECH] in the script in place of technobabble and let someone else deal with it. It was a good plan, except it resulted in the poor actors having to memorise and deliver lines of nonsense with conviction. On the other hand, the shows were surprisingly consistent with the nonsense, and it felt like they were giving us pieces of how the technology worked without just telling us outright.
I dunno, I think Doctor Who can stray into actual fantasy, but it doesn't really belong there. There was a scene in a recent episode where the Doctor used his sonic to draw a forcefield in the air, and that was so far removed from its usual purpose that it felt extremely weird. The device's typical limits were revealed by it going beyond them.
Pretty sure I remember something just like that from the old Whitfield The Making of Star Trek, where Roddenberry replaces a page of the script with Kirk just saying “Reverse course!”
Of course characters are important but Trekkies that consume Trek are an entirely different breed all of us here included. We need our Trek to be canon and explainable damn it!
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