Sure, like Wrath of Khan falls apart because its whole plot hinges on a survey ship not noticing an entire planet is missing from a system.
Writers forgetting common technologies?
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Sure, like Wrath of Khan falls apart because its whole plot hinges on a survey ship not noticing an entire planet is missing from a system.
Shhhh, we don't mention that.
The temporal wars spanned most of the 30th century. It's possible some everyday Trek tech the ENT/DSC/SNW/TOS/TAS/TNG/DS9/VOY/LDS/PIC (wow that's a lot of Trek) crews knew of was erased from this final version of future history we're in now.
True! But it's also possible that some technologies were just lost as a result of the political chaos local space finds itself in. It's really important to remember that technological infrastructure doesn't exist in a vacuum (no pun intended!).
Or Memory Alpha + Beta got disconnected from the varying parts of UFP Subspace Relay Networks, ergo UFP's Wikipedia is gone and all the technical references are isolated and whomever is nearby gets access to all the tech while local clusters may only have partial bits of technology and knowledge.
People are very quick to claim how old Trek has been always perfectly consistent with itself, but it's really just nostalgia blurring all those pesky details. When you don't look deep into it, of course it seems internally consistent, because it had the same look and feel for 20 years... due to using the same production assets originally developed for the first three TOS movies and largely keeping the same production crew for the whole period. But looking at the episodes themselves, the writers never shied away from graciously ignoring technologies and concepts, sometimes ones they had developed themselves, if they would've been inconvenient for the story they were currently writing. Remember when transporters were shown to be able to cure just about every medical condition imaginable? When TNG kept using sublight shuttlepods for interstellar travel? Or when the Trill all got replaced by Kriosians and nobody in-universe noticed anything about that?
I never had an issue with DISCO's tech in the 23rd century.
It wasn't too advanced... it actually seemed consistent with having dozens of species in the Federation contributing to technical and scientific advancement (to that end, I was dissapointed that the Federation was not more technologically evolved than the Klingons by the 23rd century).
I always posited that based on what we saw in TOS, it was TNG/DS9/VOY that didn't seem 100 years ahead... but rather exactly several decades ahead (or more to the point, the exact passage of time that passed between TOS to TNG/onward).
It seems incredulous to think than an interstellar organisation comprised of hundreds of alien species working together that spans thousands of Ly's didn't have the resources to deploy faster than Warp tech on a large scale.
For example, the Quantum Slipstream version 1 (300 Ly's per hour) didn't require use of benamite crystals (only minor modifications to the Warp core - and while Voyager was encountering Quantum stresses preventing it from using the tech for more than 1 hour, its still usable in emergencies for say 30 mins, and SF would have been able to develop deflector technology or structural integrity fields that would be able to cope with the quantum stresses.
Version 2 of QS required use of Benamite crystals (and this version was also much faster than V1 QS - about 10 000 Ly's per minute) and Harry Kim mentioned it would take years to synthesize more benamite crystals.
Keep in mind that Voyager was able to create V2 of QS technology (which was much faster than V1) only 4 months since encountering the V1 of QS... if a single ship and a crew was able to do that, imagine what Starfleet would have been able to do with just version 1 and no use of Benamite crystals. Sure, slower speeds, but still faster 122 times faster than Warp 9.9 (21 473 times Lightspeed which translates to 2.45 Ly's per hour).
Mind you yes, just because it would have been possible to implement it (I'm pretty sure that if Voyager was able to upgrade QS technology in 4 months since first encountering it, Starfleet would have been able to easily use Version 1 with improved structural integrity field technology, while simultaneously working on a way to synthesize Benamite crystals and work on recrystalizing them in a year or a decade at most to make V2 QS viable for the entire fleet on the go in a few months or years once the ship got back to the Alpha Quadrant), if ships were still using dilithium and M/AM, they'd be vulnerable to the Burn - which leads us to another inconsistency:
Starfleet developed dilithium recrystalization technology in late 23rd century.
So, Dilithium supplies running out 700 years post 23rd century never made much sense if you can just recrystalize those currently in use... and it also stands to reason that as you advance, you'd use technical efficiency (producing more with less).
We've seen that 32nd century ships can run on proverbial chips of dilithium (like Booker's ship) for long periods of time.. so that's fine, but apparently, they still ran out dilithium EVERYWHERE (which seems like a stretch).
And there are other ways of generating enough energy you need for powering ships systems (and FTL) that weren't reliant on dilithium for regulating those reactions.
Arturis ship (the fake Dauntless with QS drive v1) didn't use dilithium or antimatter (and Voyager crew got detailed scans of that ship and familiarized itself with it from stem to stern).
Thermionic generators are another option (which species 8472 used and there was exchange of technologies in that episode where the species recreated SF HQ on Earth).
Tetryon reactors (which Voyager had info of from initial scans of Caretaker array and second time from Tash's subspace catapult which used same technology and got detailed sensor readings of - tetryon reactors were quite powerful and can easily power an 'FTL jump' method to push a ship thousands of lightyears).
Omega molecule (which Voyager was able to stabilize using the harmonic resonance chamber... even without the molecules stabilizing on their own, the harmonic resonsance chamber was already stabilizing the Omega molecules pretty fast and didn't show signs of instability) - though Starfleet had severe reservations about this substance due to its subspace destroying properties (which actually seem to vanish when the molecule is stabilized)...and they also had similar prohibitions/treaties in place against using subspace based weapons (which can cause rifts in the fabric of space) - so even if they KNEW how to use Omega Molecule reliably (which they technically do since Voyager), they might not WANT to use it (but we also don't know if SF decided to change their approach on this in the proceeding 810 years and try again in a remote part of space using an approach Voyager developed).
Incidentally... species 8472 bioships also used antimatter... Chakotay noted heavy concentrations of antimatter particles when scanning the bioship innards with his tricorder... but no mention of whether they used dilithium for regulating the reactions.
And of course, Romulans use forced Quantum singularity for power generation... no dilithium usage... despite the fact they still mine it... which could be for trading or other applications (not necessarily for power generation).
There are a few examples of non dilithium/M/AM for power sources, but they are there.
I don't think it would kill the writers to quickly look up some transcripts of older TV shows where certain technologies were used repeatedly to make a good extrapolation.... takes mostly 5 minutes to do that and its only a few lines they need to read through to get a decent understanding.
Quantum Slipstream was featured in two episodes after all, and isn't it the writers job to do basic research?
Same with calculating warp speeds... not much of a problem with a calculator (you know, for consistency sake).
I just found it incredibly stupid that Earth's sensor capabilities were even less advanced than those on the NX-01.
I mean come on... you can build ships with highly advanced quantum torpedoes and floating nacelles (and even say that a viewscreen on Discovery is 'quaint' - can even ascertain WHEN the ship was built) but don't have access to sensor technology capable of scanning real time lightyears away (like it was already doable by late 24th century?).
You'd think Earth would want an early warning system for potential Dilithium raiders which might enter SOL - which would be very useful.
A CME hitting the Thikov and killing the family on board was equally incredible. Mainly because, for things like that, you'd think the ship's short range sensors would have detected a CME and raised shields and set a course away at maximum impulse or engaged Warp engines.
Even a late 24th century Federation ship had metaphasic shields which allowed them to survive in a star's corona for hours.
I would appreciate a little bit of consistency here... or at least a viable explanation as to why Starfleet (and non Federation worlds like Earth) seemingly lost basic (and well established) technologies which are actually required even for basic warp or day to day functioning.
I mean come on, you NEED subspace sensors capable of scanning far ahead of the ship in real time to avoid possible collisions when travelling at Warp, and having those sensors to warn you about dilithium raiders would be prudent to say the least.
To be fair, if something happened as a final act of the Temporal War which reversed Federation technical abilities, that would make sense (and nice to hear)... otherwise, the writers are just so incredibly lazy and technically speaking NOT doing their job.
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I mean, I'm living through a plague right now where a large percentage of the population is claiming that there is no such thing as the novel coronavirus in spite of pile of almost a quarter-million bodies and millions of sick people, and where that same group is attempting to deny the reality of mathematics. So, no, the idea that the Federation might find itself unable to figure out how to deploy FTW tech on a large scale doesn't feel implausible to me -- I think it's perfectly plausible that the Burn could directly lead to the rise of reactionary factions that might inhibit the necessary research, production, and distribution of such technologies.
I think you're jumping more conclusions than can be supported on the basis of one failed test that would have led to Voyager's destruction but for temporal shenanigans.
I mean, it's a basic law of thermodynamics that no process is 100% efficient and some energy is always lost. I would assume the amount of usable crystal retrieved each time the dilithium is recyrstalized gets smaller and smaller each time. It probably revolutionized warp tech in the 23rd Century but by the 30th it was probably no longer sufficient to keep usable indefinitely the same dwindling supply.
*shrugs* I'm willing to squint and ignore one-off VOY episodes for the sake of a good story. I mean, by that same logic, Federation science should be way more advanced in the TNG era than it is after the UFP encountered the Andromedan androids on the planet Mudd, or the Eymorg tech on Sigma Draconis VI.
Do we know that with certainty?
I think you are holding them to a standard writers on other shows aren't required to live up to.
ST writers have never, ever been consistent about how fast different warp factors actually are.
Again, technological development is not a linear, ordinal progression from inferior to superior, and it is highly dependent upon the economic and political systems in which they occur. It's entirely plausible that they could be way more advanced in some ways, more advanced than the Discovery but less advanced than you would think in other ways, and even less advanced than Discovery in other ways.
Here's an example: In the real world, we developed the technology necessary to traverse the Atlantic Ocean at supersonic speeds in less than four hours in the 1970s... and we have de facto lost that that technology today with the retirement of the Aérospatiale/BAC Concorde almost twenty years ago. And yet when the Concorde was developed, the idea of instantaneous intercontinental communication utilizing a combination of textual, graphical, and televisual technologies in a mobile device was the stuff of science fiction. So which society is more "advanced," 2020s Earth or 1970s Earth?
Another example of technological regression in our lifetimes due to the economic and political systems in which they exist: The Airbus A380 is the world's largest passenger airliner. It has seating for 525 people, and is certified for up to 853 people. That's almost a thousand people per plane! And yet the A380 is ceasing production and will probably disappear because the infrastructure necessary to support it is proving not to be economical for airline companies in the context of 2020s global capitalism.
It would! And yet being isolationists, they apparently have fetishized this idea of "self-sufficiency" (which reminds me a lot of the toxic concept of autarky) to the point of not even being interested in establishing territorial control of Luna. Given that their planetary defense system only extends to low-Earth orbit, I would hypothesize that there is a political component to their technological limitations. Ignoring events out on Titan wouldn't be the first time a government has ignored the necessity of gathering and responding to intelligence about foreign powers.
*shrugs* Doesn't bother me. Some tech can get lost and some preserved. There's no objective reason why I can facetime my friends in New Zealand but can't take get there in 3.07 hours in a supersonic jet, and yet that is the world I live in.
1) I think it's pretty obvious almost no one from Earth is going to warp these days.
2) The capabilities of sensors at warp have been depicted inconsistently for many years.
They are doing their job. Their job is to tell a compelling story with interesting characters going on emotionally affecting journeys with depth of theme -- and to do so in a timely fashion and on budget according to the economic pressures under which television is produced.
Their job is not to come up with technobabble to cover every last minor detail from a franchise consisting of almost 800 episodes across 50 years. And, yes, one-off episodes where a ship on an old TV show that aired its last new episode four months into the George W. Bush Administration gets X light-years closer to home thanks to Y technology that subsequently never appears, is a minor detail.
Time travel itself is a perfect example. The TOS crew developed a method of time travel that didn’t require any advanced technology beyond warp drive and was safe and reliable enough that they were able to do it with a stolen Klingon ship.
So why get stuck in the 32nd century? Why not ditch Discovery somewhere, get another ship and use the slingshot technique to return? Because it would be a very short and boring third season.
The Airbus A380 is a 4 engine rival to dethrone the 747 and launched in an era when all companies were looking to downsize to 2 engine aircraft due to new regulations allowing 2 engines to fly long routes with giant stretches of water where there is no emergency landing field due to modern engine reliability. So both the 747 and A380 came at a bad time and the A380 isn't as economically efficient or fuel efficient as 2 engine Airliners.
Boom AeroSpace is bringing back Supersonic Travel at the cost of modern day business class tickets. If you can afford Business Class seating, you can cross the globe in 1/2 the time or better. Imagine San Francisco to Sydney Australia in 1/2 the time or better.
You’ve raised a good point here and I think this ties in with a bigger problem you see quite often in amateur geek film and TV critique, the idea that a character can operate on incomplete information, but if the audience is aware of that information then it counts as a plot hole, or lazy writing, or whatever the armchair critics want to complain about today.
Indeed, yes. There is a very common thread of "Well, I know it, so the character must know it!" I'll freely admit to struggling with that in some franchises, but that is part of the drama and storytelling.
I have a special dislike of cherrypicked, half-truths used to criticise something. I’m also really lazy, so I’m not going to bother picking up all the inaccuracies used by the OP in this thread, but I honestly don’t think it would matter. The objective doesn’t seem to be accuracy, it seems to be criticism. I guess some people enjoy it. Fair enough, it’s your life, but it’s just not for me; I think this is where I’m going to have to be more disciplined and use the ignore function.
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That does seem to be the goal, yes.
Yes, that is a more detailed version of what I already said: "the infrastructure necessary to support it is proving not to be economical for airline companies in the context of 2020s global capitalism."
Very cool! I hadn't heard about that. Thank you for the link.
Edited to add: Wikipedia indicates that the Boom Overture likely won't be in service until 2029 though. So we're looking at 26 years during which supersonic travel was de facto a lost technology. Technological development is definitely not always linear.
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Exactly, its like making fun of horror movie characters for making bad decisions when, from the characters' point of view, none of them have ever experienced a zombie outbreak or been locked in a mansion with a psychotic killer, so expecting them to know what to do is expecting far too much.
For example, the Romulan singularity engines. The Romulans are secretive and insular, unlikely to share the technology. So if the Federation never got a good look at one up close, never got the chance to reverse-engineer one, they may never have figured out how to build one or get one to work reliably. Knowing something is possible doesn't necessarily mean you know how to do it. The supernova may have been the end of the Romulans' ability to construct them, particularly if they kept a tight grip on the technology in the first place.
The crew of Discovery are from a time when the Romulans hadn't been seen or heard from since the war with United Earth, so you can't expect them to know anything either.
So the singularity engine might have been one of many technologies the Federation tried after the Burn, and may not have had the resources to get it working reliably, couldn't get access to a working one to study it, and wrote it off as yet another dead end. The writers don't need to spell any of this out. Booker's line about how they tried alternatives but none of them really worked was enough.
Or that, at the exact moment Khan is springing his trap, Kirk just happens to be getting out from behind his desk to go on a joy ride with his old crew and a group of cadets aboard the Enterprise.
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