Why the hate for Disco?

[dupersuper]

I said before Season 3 came out my preferred solution would basically be Star Trek: Left Behind.

Captain Kirk Cameron searches for Sha Ka Ree...

Thanks to people like this, I'll never know what New Coke tasted like.

You're welcome.

 

[fireproof78]

Captain Kirk Cameron searches for Sha Ka Ree...

I'd watch it. But, stuff like Left Behind has always fascinated me.

 

[EnderAKH]

Thanks to people like this, I'll never know what New Coke tasted like.

Pepsi.

 

[Deks]

I said before Season 3 came out my preferred solution would basically be Star Trek: Left Behind.

I will freely admit that in a "normal" situation, Discovery should have no agency 930 years in the future. Just too much time has passed, and their technology is too far out of date. So you have to take the Federation down in order to actually give the ship and its crew any meaning in the setting whatsoever.

There's also a big mystery within the Trek setting - how few advanced civilizations actually exist. The universe is 13.8 billion years old (IRL, and presumably in the Trekverse as well). Yet probably 9/10ths of the alien races we bump into are either of basically equivalent technology or more primitive, with the other tenth being various isolated "energy beings." Where are the true elder races? Why haven't we run into races which have been traveling the stars for thousands, or even millions of years? Some had to have made it, and one would expect their headstart would mean they'd have control of a goodly portion of the galaxy. Yet for the most part we don't meet major players who have been out and about for more than a few centuries.

Well, the Voyager encountered Voth, who technically speaking are about 65 million years old space faring civilization - oddly enough they didn't seem THAT much more advanced than the Federation.
More advanced yes, but not by much... and implemented pretty similar technology the Federation had access to, just on a larger scale (and its not like the UFP couldn't do something similar).
I would posit the major difference was Voth Transwarp capability... but to be fair, when Voyager encountered Arturis, the crew reverse-engineered and IMPROVED upon Slipstream drive technology (10 000 Ly's per minute), making it even faster than Transwarp from the Voth or the Borg... in just 4 months since first encountering it.
In mere months, UFP managed to technically SURPASS the Voth in FTL... but that's also a bit of 'cheating' because 7 of 9 contributed a lot of her Borg Transwarp knowledge to Slipstream v2.

Still the Collective would have implemented a similar approach like the Federation... only incredibly brutalized by forcibly assimilating species.
Each species would have contributed certain information, or point of reference which increased Borg understanding of how to better integrate these technologies... but otherwise, they likely assimilated TW (like all other technology) from another advanced species (or possibly the Voth themselves?).

I can accept the Voth would be more advanced due to having the advantage of sheer amount of TIME at their disposal... and to be fair, I think the Voth should have been a lot more advanced than shown, and perhaps indicated that Voyager only saw a 'fraction' of that potential.

However, the Federation is unique in its approach because it combines multiple alien species and all their resources and knowledge to merge into one.
That, coupled with exponential developments and returns, would easily accelerate UFP technological development by at least 150x over the Voth (at least in the 24th century)... and 'unexpected discoveries' would also be far more frequent and faster occurring in the UFP vs the Voth (example being freeing 7 of 9 from the Borg, encountering Quantum Slipstream and applying combined knowledge to improve upon the technology - or even individuals inside UFP would stumble upon new discoveries by accident far more frequently from so many different species mixing together and exploring).

Its possible that the Voth aren't too interested in exploration like Humanity and UFP are... which could somewhat limit their development.

Sadly though, the Voth weren't really explored that much beyond 1 episode.
Would be interesting to see them again.

So, have Discovery jump 930 years into the future and find the former Federation...basically empty. Earth is returned to a largely pristine state, complete with extinct megafauna like mammoths. They chance upon incomprehensible megastructures. They have issues dealing with empty self-aware ships. Eventually they meet others - holograms stuck in matrixes, people left in suspended animation, isolated colonies of luddites, etc - and piece together the truth of what happened.

Pretty much this... coupled with say UFP built Dyson Spheres (or swarms) in Milky Way (unless that's what you may have thought by megastructures).

Lots of options the writers could have gone with.

 

[fireproof78]

Yup. Earth could have been destroyed and all other humans could have been just brains in jars manning these megastructures. Lots of options.

 

[The Wormhole]

I remember reading an interview with brannon braga around the time Enterprise was on the air, where the question was raised as to why he and berman had not set the series post-voyager. Braga's answer was along the lines of treknology is basically already magic and makes it difficult to write high-stakes situations for the characters. Going further into the future would make that worse.

I remember the quote one of them had in response to why they weren't doing a show set in the 25th century. "What is the 25th century besides tighter spandex and smaller tricorders?"

 

[fireproof78]

I remember the quote one of them had in response to why they weren't doing a show set in the 25th century. "What is the 25th century besides tighter spandex and smaller tricorders?"

Yup. Star Trek is no longer future looking, aside maybe from how humans treat each other. The days of expecting technological extrapolation are long gone, and we will see variations of the toys in the Star Trek sand box, i.e. tricorders, communicators, transporters and warp drive.

 

[Agony_Boothb]

I remember the quote one of them had in response to why they weren't doing a show set in the 25th century. "What is the 25th century besides tighter spandex and smaller tricorders?"

Yep. Fans seem to forget that Star Trek is about the personal, philosophical and moral evolution of humanity. It's not about the ships or slipstream drives or whatever else. The technoguff is just a means to an end and I'm glad that discovery focused more on people and the state of the Federation rather than confirming whether ships were now travelling at warp 47.

 

[The Wormhole]

Yep. Fans seem to forget that Star Trek is about the personal, philosophical and moral evolution of humanity. It's not about the ships or slipstream drives or whatever else. The technoguff is just a means to an end and I'm glad that discovery focused more on people and the state of the Federation rather than confirming whether ships were now travelling at warp 47.

Indeed. Whenever I imagine the 32nd century that some fans seem to think we should have gotten with a massive Federation of several thousand members spanning five galaxies where life is an ever loving utopia and everyone's flying in mobile bases the size of a moon that's capable of a form of propulsion known as "sidewarp" I just get bored and glaze over. A reaction I did not have to Disco's 32nd century.

 

[fireproof78]

Indeed. Whenever I imagine the 32nd century that some fans seem to think we should have gotten with a massive Federation of several thousand members spanning five galaxies where life is an ever loving utopia and everyone's flying in mobile bases the size of a moon that's capable of a form of propulsion known as "sidewarp" I just get bored and glaze over. A reaction I did not have to Disco's 32nd century.

Indeed, yes. It's amazingly boring to imagine this supposed techno-utopia that apparently the 32nd century implies.

 

[Amaris]

Yep. Fans seem to forget that Star Trek is about the personal, philosophical and moral evolution of humanity. It's not about the ships or slipstream drives or whatever else. The technoguff is just a means to an end and I'm glad that discovery focused more on people and the state of the Federation rather than confirming whether ships were now travelling at warp 47.

That's the formula that worked for TOS. It wasn't about technology except in the abstract.

 

[dupersuper]

Indeed. Whenever I imagine the 32nd century that some fans seem to think we should have gotten with a massive Federation of several thousand members spanning five galaxies where life is an ever loving utopia and everyone's flying in mobile bases the size of a moon that's capable of a form of propulsion known as "sidewarp"

My lords Val and Apollo would I watch the hell out of that show...

 

[eschaton]

Well, the Voyager encountered Voth, who technically speaking are about 65 million years old space faring civilization - oddly enough they didn't seem THAT much more advanced than the Federation.

The actual origin of the Voth was not clear in the episode other than they evolved from dinosaurs. I always took it as more likely that their ancestors were either taken off earth during the Cretaceous, or they "devolved" into presapients after leaving for space and only relatively recently became sentient again.

Indeed. Whenever I imagine the 32nd century that some fans seem to think we should have gotten with a massive Federation of several thousand members spanning five galaxies where life is an ever loving utopia and everyone's flying in mobile bases the size of a moon that's capable of a form of propulsion known as "sidewarp" I just get bored and glaze over. A reaction I did not have to Disco's 32nd century.

I dunno. I think it suffered from Berman Trek disease to some extent:

Voyager went to the Delta Quadrant...and everything was pretty much the same

Enterprise was a prequel...and everything was pretty much the same.

Now Discovery is in the far future...and everything is pretty much the same.

Indeed, yes. It's amazingly boring to imagine this supposed techno-utopia that apparently the 32nd century implies.

It doesn't have to be boring because we don't follow "the Federation" - we follow the U.S.S. Discovery. As long as there are stakes involving the main cast and the ship, an entertaining story can be told. There's no pressing reason to make Discovery itself the fulcrum which saves everything.

 

[fireproof78]

doesn't have to be boring because we don't follow "the Federation" - we follow the U.S.S. Discovery. As long as there are stakes involving the main cast and the ship, an entertaining story can be told. There's no pressing reason to make Discovery itself the fulcrum which saves everything.

Sorry, I don't buy that. 32nd century technology is magic. Or supposed to be by what I read.

Could an entertaining story be told? Sure. But, that is no longer desired. It has to be good Star Trek first.

 

[TRON JA307020]

Sorry but I didn't understand any of this. If you're going to criticise discovery for bad writing, at least have the ability to structure a coherent argument and check your spelling.

Im typing on a phone. Not everyone has the ability to decipher spelling errors. Pretty obvious what i meant. I corrected the errors for you.

 

[TRON JA307020]

Someone criticizing a show for bad writing, who also uses bad writing?

IRONY!!!

Im not telling a story they are. The show sucks. The writing is horrid.

 

[Dukhat]

Im typing on a phone. Not everyone has the ability to decipher spelling errors. Pretty obvious what i meant. I corrected the errors for you.

That’s funny; I type on my phone all the time and my grammar and spelling is just fine.

Im not telling a story they are. The show sucks. The writing is horrid.

Feel free to write a better show and post it here for all of us to critique the writing thereof.

Also, feel free to post exact examples of how the writing is so horrid.

 

[Deks]

The actual origin of the Voth was not clear in the episode other than they evolved from dinosaurs. I always took it as more likely that their ancestors were either taken off earth during the Cretaceous, or they "devolved" into presapients after leaving for space and only relatively recently became sentient again.

Both the Voth and Voyager crew had to extrapolate and speculate based on available data.
As far as I know, Chakotay and Gegan constructed a decent hypothesis on how the Voth came to be (Earth was being ravaged by asteroids and was undergoing quite a lot of changes back then, so the Voth's ancestors developed spacefaring technology and left the planet).
They probably would have left as soon as they could (meaning, they likely didn't have anywhere as fast Warp speed as Voyager - or possibly no Warp to begin with) so they probably spent a good chunk of time in space traveling to the D.Q.

Since nothing was implied they developed FTL technology, it stands to reason they would have had massive ships moving at sublight (possibly impulse level speeds if they developed subspace technology by then, or slower).

That would make for one incredibly long journey.
At Warp 1 it would take anywhere between 35 000 to 70 000 years to reach the point where they finally settled... at impulse speeds of 75 000 km/s (assuming they developed subspace technology to allow for those speeds), it would have taken them 4x longer, and without sublight/impulse... even longer.

When you say 'taken off Earth', it implies that another alien species removed them.
There weren't that many (if any) spacefaring species around in the Milky Way back then from what we know.
The Voth could have been the second species for all we know (the first one being the progenitors). And if the progenitors were around that time, wouldn't that imply that they would have noticed the Voth and perhaps establish contact?
Maybe not if the progenitors had Warp and the Voth hadn't.

 

[eschaton]

Both the Voth and Voyager crew had to extrapolate and speculate based on available data.
As far as I know, Chakotay and Gegan constructed a decent hypothesis on how the Voth came to be (Earth was being ravaged by asteroids and was undergoing quite a lot of changes back then, so the Voth's ancestors developed spacefaring technology and left the planet).
They probably would have left as soon as they could (meaning, they likely didn't have anywhere as fast Warp speed as Voyager - or possibly no Warp to begin with) so they probably spent a good chunk of time in space traveling to the D.Q.

There was also that very dumb holodeck scene (full of bad science, like calling Eryops the common ancestor of mammals and dinosaurs, and having a CGI creature more like Dimetrodon with no sail) where they extrapolated the evolution of a Hadrosaur after another 65 million years of evolution. This seemed to imply that the ancestors of the Voth were still Hadrosaurs at the time of K/T, and had considerably changed since this time.

There weren't that many (if any) spacefaring species around in the Milky Way back then from what we know.

While I know there's no reason to make this conclusion within the Trekverse, logically speaking there should have been just as many alien spacefaring races 65 million years ago (or at whatever random time is considered) as in the present. After all, the universe is 13.8 billion years old, and plenty of stars are older than the Sun and would have had billions of years of a head start and developing intelligent life.

 

[The Wormhole]

Im typing on a phone. Not everyone has the ability to decipher spelling errors.

Your phone doesn't highlight misspelled words with a red line beneath them?