I'm not sure that would apply for the Royal Navy, which would be a more appropriate choice for an Age of Sail show IMO, but I haven't seen any shows around the RN so I couldn't say for sure.
Actually, I was thinking the American Navy, as I doubt the British Empire is a world superpower anymore.
Under that scenario, this is what the Enterprise-D would have been: Blue Ridge class command ship.
Alternatively, if it had been an Age of Sail show, this is what the Enterprise-D would have been: Indus 80 (1860).
There is no British Empire anymore. But there was during the Age of Sail which is what Ryan's points were about.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though. JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
I'm not sure that would apply for the Royal Navy, which would be a more appropriate choice for an Age of Sail show IMO, but I haven't seen any shows around the RN so I couldn't say for sure.
Actually, I was thinking the American Navy, as I doubt the British Empire is a world superpower anymore.
Under that scenario, this is what the Enterprise-D would have been: Blue Ridge class command ship.
Alternatively, if it had been an Age of Sail show, this is what the Enterprise-D would have been: Indus 80 (1860).
There is no British Empire anymore. But there was during the Age of Sail which is what Ryan's points were about.
^^ This. During the Age of Sail, the US Navy was a relatively small affair and rarely ventured outside American waters. Since the scenario in the OP is about sticking the show during the age of sail, a British ship makes the most sense as they operated across the entire planet from the 1700s.
If the show is to be military and exploration based then the Royal Navy makes the most sense. The Spanish, French, and Portuguese were comparable and had their own Age of Sail, but I doubt a show of those nations would have the same broadchurch appeal to most audiences.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though. JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
Sci-fi isn't what makes Star Trek enduring. That sci-fi attracts not just a vague audience, but also attracts a specific demographic of obsessives* which means that it has an unshakable legion of supporters to make it popular. And that should not be confused with true endurability, because not all sci-fi shows have that endurability, even if they do keep fandoms...
You know, you're right. Sci-Fi, alone, isn't what makes Star Trek enduring. Which is one of the reasons why I even brought up the whole Kirk/Spock/McCoy banter all so many posts ago - whether you personally think it was the best banter ever seen on TV or some of the most worthless drivel...
Because contrary to personal beliefs, "society in general" holds up that banter as a beacon of "well played entertainment". Even to this day, wasn't one of the criteria JJ used in casting his "nu-Trek" crew the ability of the "Spock" and "McCoy" actors to hold a round of banter? Even though he seemingly moved a lot of that banter over to Nu-Kirk?
And I still stand by my stance that Star Trek's overall success is - like endless other "entertainment products" - a "near perfect mix" of the following components:
Acting.
Screenplays and by extension Storytelling.
Setting and appropriateness to same.
And as much as you want to deny it, if you were to strip the "Sci-Fi" out of some "basic" core components of Star Trek like, oh, Spock - or the setting - which also strongly affects the stories written - the remainder of the "Star Trek Inputs" - racially and ethnically diverse crew, pushing the bounds of censorship, focus on the "big three", etc.
Or Worf. Or Data. Or the entire Dax/Sisko situation. Or Ferengi - would any show set on Earth be allowed to have someone with such rampant greed, or would some "ethics board" eventually come after said "Ferengi"? Or the eventual "Earthen Utopia Society", Or a long laundry list of options.
Could you even begin to tell the same stories in much the same manner? Heck no. Well, before you dismiss this as "conjecture" again, I'll have to actually qualify that I see absolutely no method of doing so.
And so, I'm going out on a further limb. That question you're so callously ignoring? It's more a challenge than an actual question.
You contend that a show can be built, without "Sci-Fi", that will rival Star Trek's success. Seemingly both "short term" and "enduring".
I posted a few shows that I remember, fairly Sci-Fi-free, that at least came close to the "short term success" stuff. Bonanza was, back in the 60s at least, considered a much greater success than TOS. However, come the 70s when Trek was beginning it's animated and eventual movie transitions, Bonanza and it's "family of shows" petered out and died.
Happy Days? Even without "Mork and Mindy", a show where there's a tremendous amount of "Sci-fi" built in, it comes close to rivalling the TNG era in duration / ratings / popularity. But again, here's a compilation that lacks the "staying power" to have had a noticeable 40th anniversary binge but two short years ago, and doesn't seem destined to have a 50th anniversary. And I don't exactly see it's "icon", Fonzie, being held up as a role model anymore, while someone tried to put out a new set of Kirk and Spock role models in a movie theater a scant half-dozen or so years ago...
So, balls in your court, as it were. Name me one "entertainment" series that doesn't include Sci-Fi (because Star Wars or Doctor Who are two highly obvious examples here) that even has the remotest of potentials to rival Star Trek in both "short term successes" and "longevity/endurance".
Bonus Points if you can draw references that spell out, almost character for character, one of the "iconic" casts of a Star Trek show.
Detecting big-time "anti-old-school" bias here. NX? Lobi. TOS/TMP Connie? Super-promotion-box. (aka the two hardest ways to get ships) Excelsior & all 3 TNG "big hero" ships? C-Store. Please Equalize...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
Sci-fi isn't what makes Star Trek enduring. That sci-fi attracts not just a vague audience, but also attracts a specific demographic of obsessives* which means that it has an unshakable legion of supporters to make it popular. And that should not be confused with true endurability, because not all sci-fi shows have that endurability, even if they do keep fandoms...
You know, you're right. Sci-Fi, alone, isn't what makes Star Trek enduring. Which is one of the reasons why I even brought up the whole Kirk/Spock/McCoy banter all so many posts ago - whether you personally think it was the best banter ever seen on TV or some of the most worthless drivel...
Because contrary to personal beliefs, "society in general" holds up that banter as a beacon of "well played entertainment". Even to this day, wasn't one of the criteria JJ used in casting his "nu-Trek" crew the ability of the "Spock" and "McCoy" actors to hold a round of banter? Even though he seemingly moved a lot of that banter over to Nu-Kirk?
IMHO, I felt JJ took the banter too far. And I feel he took it too far in Star Wars as well, but that's just my opinion...
And I still stand by my stance that Star Trek's overall success is - like endless other "entertainment products" - a "near perfect mix" of the following components:
Acting.
Screenplays and by extension Storytelling.
Setting and appropriateness to same.
And as much as you want to deny it, if you were to strip the "Sci-Fi" out of some "basic" core components of Star Trek like, oh, Spock - or the setting - which also strongly affects the stories written - the remainder of the "Star Trek Inputs" - racially and ethnically diverse crew, pushing the bounds of censorship, focus on the "big three", etc.
Oh nonononono, you don't get to do that... You can't lump all those criteria and elements into the same discussion about removing the sci-fi elements... Especially not when the very point of the discussion, was related to telling the stories into another context, such as the Age of Sail...
Or Worf. Or Data. Or the entire Dax/Sisko situation. Or Ferengi - would any show set on Earth be allowed to have someone with such rampant greed, or would some "ethics board" eventually come after said "Ferengi"? Or the eventual "Earthen Utopia Society", Or a long laundry list of options.
'If it would be allowed', is a very loaded question. I don't think it would be allowed by the networks or the SJWs, for the potential 'need' to resort to potentially anti-semitic stereotypes. But I do think that the elements/themes/characterizations exist in a terrestrial setting, to allow such a story to be crafted... If it was to ever see air-time: Highly unlikely...
Could you even begin to tell the same stories in much the same manner? Heck no. Well, before you dismiss this as "conjecture" again, I'll have to actually qualify that I see absolutely no method of doing so.
No dismissal of the point at all, I simply disagree on the minutiae of the phrasing... As I said immediately above, I think that the potential options exist to tell said stories in a terrestrial environment, I just don't think that political correctness would allow that to happen. And not being allowed to so something, is very different from not having the capacity to do it at all...
You contend that a show can be built, without "Sci-Fi", that will rival Star Trek's success. Seemingly both "short term" and "enduring".
I posted a few shows that I remember, fairly Sci-Fi-free, that at least came close to the "short term success" stuff. Bonanza was, back in the 60s at least, considered a much greater success than TOS. However, come the 70s when Trek was beginning it's animated and eventual movie transitions, Bonanza and it's "family of shows" petered out and died.
Happy Days? Even without "Mork and Mindy", a show where there's a tremendous amount of "Sci-fi" built in, it comes close to rivalling the TNG era in duration / ratings / popularity. But again, here's a compilation that lacks the "staying power" to have had a noticeable 40th anniversary binge but two short years ago, and doesn't seem destined to have a 50th anniversary. And I don't exactly see it's "icon", Fonzie, being held up as a role model anymore, while someone tried to put out a new set of Kirk and Spock role models in a movie theater a scant half-dozen or so years ago...
No, I'm contending that the majority of the episode plots used in Trek could be transposed into the Age of Sail, with real-world analogues to replace the sci-fi elements, and that they [the stories] would work just as well.
Refresher example: Data becomes an orphaned teenaged savant under the care of his uncle, Captain Hero... He's always been sheltered from the real world, and can't relate to society in general (and even those closest to him find him irritating at times) But he can calculate navigational problems faster than anyone else on the ship. He also knows how to tie any knot faster than most of the other sailors -- he's just as likely to sit counting the strands in the rope as knotting it, but hey, he's a savant...
There's some show about a guy like that which folks have been making a Big Bang about for a while now...
So, balls in your court, as it were. Name me one "entertainment" series that doesn't include Sci-Fi (because Star Wars or Doctor Who are two highly obvious examples here) that even has the remotest of potentials to rival Star Trek in both "short term successes" and "longevity/endurance".
Bonus Points if you can draw references that spell out, almost character for character, one of the "iconic" casts of a Star Trek show.
See my above point... Longevity is speculative, but certainly very popular at the moment...
Refresher example: Data becomes an orphaned teenaged savant under the care of his uncle, Captain Hero... He's always been sheltered from the real world, and can't relate to society in general (and even those closest to him find him irritating at times) But he can calculate navigational problems faster than anyone else on the ship. He also knows how to tie any knot faster than most of the other sailors -- he's just as likely to sit counting the strands in the rope as knotting it, but hey, he's a savant...
There's some show about a guy like that which folks have been making a Big Bang about for a while now...
Two Thoughts:
That... Theoretical show that people are making such a "big bang" about is pulling rampantly from Sci-Fi sources to "fuel" the scriptwriting, as it were.
I mean, the show's not about a group of car engineers or drafters discussing the merits of aerodynamics or Greco-Roman vs. Victorian design, they're "geeks" with all their love of Sci-Fi at heart.
Would you say that if you "morphed" the geeks of the show into / or replaced them with my aforementioned car engineers or drafters - while retaining as much of their "native personalities" as possible that doesn't actually revolve around anything Sci-Fi related - the show would perform at an equal level of success, or would it "crash and burn"?
But this one's a whole 'nother argument. Back to the point at hand:
Sci-fi isn't what makes Star Trek enduring. That sci-fi attracts not just a vague audience, but also attracts a specific demographic of obsessives* which means that it has an unshakable legion of supporters to make it popular. And that should not be confused with true endurability, because not all sci-fi shows have that endurability, even if they do keep fandoms...
You know, you're right. Sci-Fi, alone, isn't what makes Star Trek enduring. Which is one of the reasons why I even brought up the whole Kirk/Spock/McCoy banter all so many posts ago - whether you personally think it was the best banter ever seen on TV or some of the most worthless drivel...
And I still stand by my stance that Star Trek's overall success is - like endless other "entertainment products" - a "near perfect mix" of the following components:
Acting.
Screenplays and by extension Storytelling.
Setting and appropriateness to same.
And as much as you want to deny it, if you were to strip the "Sci-Fi" out of some "basic" core components of Star Trek like, oh, Spock - or the setting - which also strongly affects the stories written - the remainder of the "Star Trek Inputs" - racially and ethnically diverse crew, pushing the bounds of censorship, focus on the "big three", etc.
Oh nonononono, you don't get to do that... You can't lump all those criteria and elements into the same discussion about removing the sci-fi elements... Especially not when the very point of the discussion, was related to telling the stories into another context, such as the Age of Sail...
Yes, I do. Because of the very premise of this thread:
An assertion has been made that if you had removed all the sci-fi future tech from Star Trek and made into a show about wooden sailing ships, it would still be as successful as it is now, on the strength of good scriptwriting/story.
So I thought, let's find out what the STO Players think of that idea.
Would you have still be interested in the franchise if it didn't have any sci-fi at all?
I'm repeatedly asserting that the very scripts that are the fully fleshed out results of the "core" stories being presented cannot be replicated in any other setting without a complete, drastic, reconstruction to the point that it's a whole different script.
Or Worf. Or Data. Or the entire Dax/Sisko situation. Or Ferengi - would any show set on Earth be allowed to have someone with such rampant greed, or would some "ethics board" eventually come after said "Ferengi"? Or the eventual "Earthen Utopia Society", Or a long laundry list of options.
'If it would be allowed', is a very loaded question. I don't think it would be allowed by the networks or the SJWs, for the potential 'need' to resort to potentially anti-semitic stereotypes. But I do think that the elements/themes/characterizations exist in a terrestrial setting, to allow such a story to be crafted... If it was to ever see air-time: Highly unlikely...
Could you even begin to tell the same stories in much the same manner? Heck no. Well, before you dismiss this as "conjecture" again, I'll have to actually qualify that I see absolutely no method of doing so.
No dismissal of the point at all, I simply disagree on the minutiae of the phrasing... As I said immediately above, I think that the potential options exist to tell said stories in a terrestrial environment, I just don't think that political correctness would allow that to happen. And not being allowed to so something, is very different from not having the capacity to do it at all...
Right here. Looks to me like an admission that converting the Ferengi, while possible, is a "non starter" as far as actually getting the script "on the air". And an unaired script cannot be judged a success.
To paraphrase the OP's question: If you were to remove the Sci-Fi (Alien) Features from the Ferengi and shoehorn a character with "ferengiesque levels of greed and ambiguous personal moral code" into an Age of Sail setting- could at least these episodes be deemed "successful"?. Answer: No Because these episodes cannot be presented for judgement, concerns of the required anti-Semitic portrayals that may ensue.
Just lost the entire DS9 conversion - because of Quark. Could salvage the few Quark-less episodes, but IIRC that's not going to be enough for even one season, and the progression will be "haywire" (couple of "peaceful" episodes, then shoot straight to war for "no apparent reason"). It's quite possible to sneak the couple of TNG Ferengi-centric episodes on air though since those Ferengi were clearly villains "known for" their penchants for profit, not "directly being shown" as attempting to derive profit purely from their interactions with the crew and/or guest stars, and their defeats didn't exactly rest on "anti-Semitic" maneuvers.
How's about Spock? Remembering that being "setting appropriate" is going to be critical in determining Spock's replacement, and that Age of Sail "Empires" were quite "ethno-centric" - you can't just go stuffing all of Spock's traits into some "exotic culture from the far side of the world on an undiscovered island", and then having one of these people become your ship's second in command and primary spotter. British boat would have an all Briton "command crew", and most likely all the commanders will be "borderline nobles", not serfs.
Odds of losing TOS to conversion and therefore the "linchpin" of the whole desire to create the Star Trek Franchise? 99.4%, minimum.
Detecting big-time "anti-old-school" bias here. NX? Lobi. TOS/TMP Connie? Super-promotion-box. (aka the two hardest ways to get ships) Excelsior & all 3 TNG "big hero" ships? C-Store. Please Equalize...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
That... Theoretical show that people are making such a "big bang" about is pulling rampantly from Sci-Fi sources to "fuel" the scriptwriting, as it were.
I mean, the show's not about a group of car engineers or drafters discussing the merits of aerodynamics or Greco-Roman vs. Victorian design, they're "geeks" with all their love of Sci-Fi at heart.
Would you say that if you "morphed" the geeks of the show into / or replaced them with my aforementioned car engineers or drafters - while retaining as much of their "native personalities" as possible that doesn't actually revolve around anything Sci-Fi related - the show would perform at an equal level of success, or would it "crash and burn"?
But this one's a whole 'nother argument. Back to the point at hand:
Thought One: That's actually pretty irrelevant... It doesn't matter what material they're using to fuel the fire, the important thing is that the audience is receptive and engaged (which they would seem to be)
Thought Two: There're people who consider Madmen as awesome. I'm not one of them, as I've not seen it, but I know that it's popular, so to answer your thought; yeah, if the scripting and other production values are good, it would have as good a shot as any other fledgeling series...
An assertion has been made that if you had removed all the sci-fi future tech from Star Trek and made into a show about wooden sailing ships, it would still be as successful as it is now, on the strength of good scriptwriting/story.
So I thought, let's find out what the STO Players think of that idea.
Would you have still be interested in the franchise if it didn't have any sci-fi at all?
Corrected that boldening for you 'story' was always part of the OP's premise, so you can't ignore it to try and make it suit your point... OP might have written it in the order of scriptwriting/story, but from a creative aspect, story always comes first. Without a story, there's nothing to even become scripted... A script is nothing more than written instructions for the actor and director. If what's written in the script is poor, it will likely also lead to an actor giving a less-than-strong performance, but if there's no story, then there's no script...
I'm repeatedly asserting that the very scripts that are the fully fleshed out results of the "core" stories being presented cannot be replicated in any other setting without a complete, drastic, reconstruction to the point that it's a whole different script.
And I'm asserting, that if the story is transposed into another setting, then the subsequent script will be its own thing. You are looking at this So Literally in terms of replication, I'm starting to wonder if you're on the AS... I don't mean that as an insult by any means, but the way you are sticking to such a rigid and strictly literal interpretation of the OP's post, makes me wonder if you may be... As I've repeatedly said, you're missing the wood for the trees... Putting the plots used in the stories used in Star Trek (wherever possible) into another setting, would still result in a tellable and engaging story. I freely admit; Not every single episode or concept could be transposed in precisely the same manner, but the transposition of the characters and plot, would still yield results. I'm not prepared to write the Adventures of Captain Hero just to prove you wrong, but I'm confident that the premise would work and be engaging
Right here. Looks to me like an admission that converting the Ferengi, while possible, is a "non starter" as far as actually getting the script "on the air". And an unaired script cannot be judged a success.
'Success' was never part of the equation in the Ferengi/Jewish analogue... I was simply stating that it would be possible, from the perspective of a writer, to tell many of the Ferengi Tales, using stereotypical Jewish characters. And additionally stating, that because* 'Jews run Hollywood', such a premise would not be green-lighted, and noting that even if it was somehow green-lighted, SJW's would scream it down as being anti-semitic... That's not part of the success/failure dichotomy, but a whole different kettle of fish...
To paraphrase the OP's question: If you were to remove the Sci-Fi (Alien) Features from the Ferengi and shoehorn a character with "ferengiesque levels of greed and ambiguous personal moral code" into an Age of Sail setting- could at least these episodes be deemed "successful"?. Answer: No Because these episodes cannot be presented for judgement, concerns of the required anti-Semitic portrayals that may ensue.
Wrong answer to your own question...
If you remove the sci-fi (alien) features from the Ferengi and create a character with 'Ferengi-esque levels of greed and ambitious personal moral code' into the Age of Sail, you are dealing with the mercantile class, and historically, that would be Jews. Quark becomes Shylock... It's perfectly possible to craft a viable story on that framework. That it would be allowed to be aired is unlikely, but still an instance of the Plot of the Story being translatable to the Age of Sail. Again, you are being too literal in your interpretation of the OP's words. Success could relate to 'ability to craft a coherent story', not just popularity with viewers. (and I would again, cite Game of Thrones as an example of stories 'of the era'(ish) being popular and successful (even if it does #trigger SJW's into needing their #safespace due to #problematic content...
Just lost the entire DS9 conversion - because of Quark. Could salvage the few Quark-less episodes, but IIRC that's not going to be enough for even one season, and the progression will be "haywire" (couple of "peaceful" episodes, then shoot straight to war for "no apparent reason"). It's quite possible to sneak the couple of TNG Ferengi-centric episodes on air though since those Ferengi were clearly villains "known for" their penchants for profit, not "directly being shown" as attempting to derive profit purely from their interactions with the crew and/or guest stars, and their defeats didn't exactly rest on "anti-Semitic" maneuvers.
In Terms of Plot, not so, for the above-stated example...
How's about Spock? Remembering that being "setting appropriate" is going to be critical in determining Spock's replacement, and that Age of Sail "Empires" were quite "ethno-centric" - you can't just go stuffing all of Spock's traits into some "exotic culture from the far side of the world on an undiscovered island", and then having one of these people become your ship's second in command and primary spotter. British boat would have an all Briton "command crew", and most likely all the commanders will be "borderline nobles", not serfs.
To quote Zefram Cochrane: "Sweet Jesus!!!" Stop being so literal! You are again, missing the wood for the trees! A character doesn't have to include all Spock's traits... Just a few, or some could even be ascribed to other characters... Fine, Spock in Age of Sail: He is now half British, half French... His father is/was a known captain/military officer who took a French wife... The ship's surgeon constantly rips on him for being a half-blood, a potential turncoat, and that his mother is a loose wench with a taste for British Beef... There's the Spock/McCoy dynamic, and like NuSpock, this is someone with a massive oedipus complex who will lose his temper whenever someone maligns his beloved mother... This is someone who would never be accepted in either society: To the French, he's the son of a conquering woman-taker; to the British, he's the son of an ignorant peasant... But the sea makes all men equal...
Odds of losing TOS to conversion and therefore the "linchpin" of the whole desire to create the Star Trek Franchise? 99.4%, minimum.
Odds of you pulling numbers out of your a55 thin air, 100%
As for 'the desire to create the Star Trek Franchise', I hate to break it to you, but Gene was out to make bank... He wanted lyrics to the theme so he could collect a cheque on it. He created the IDIC pendant so he could sell them to rubes fans... Creating an enduring franchise (as we have seen it become) was probably the last thing he was thinking about... To paraphrase Riker to Cochrane; He was no visioniary, but he did have a vision, and now we're talking about it
"Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" isn't the only example of a social commentary episode that wouldn't work as well; offhand I'd also count "Rejoined" with closeted homosexuality.
The point is to make something up that is then used to bludgeon the viewer's preconceptions and prejudices from an unexpected angle. The whole point of "LTBYLB" is to say, "yes, these differences are insignificant and therefore the conflict between them is stupid, and real-life racism is equally stupid". Ditto "Rejoined": "why should Dax and Kahn have to hide their affection? and why should two g*y guys or girls have to hide their affection?". See also tezha, Andorian sex outside of four-person bondgroups, in the Pocket Books novels. But if you're restricted to real life, by definition it ceases to be allegory, which was the whole reason Roddenberry made a sci-fi show instead of a Western or police procedural to begin with.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
"Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" isn't the only example of a social commentary episode that wouldn't work as well; offhand I'd also count "Rejoined" with closeted homosexuality.
The point is to make something up that is then used to bludgeon the viewer's preconceptions and prejudices from an unexpected angle. The whole point of "LTBYLB" is to say, "yes, these differences are insignificant and therefore the conflict between them is stupid, and real-life racism is equally stupid". Ditto "Rejoined": "why should Dax and Kahn have to hide their affection? and why should two g*y guys or girls have to hide their affection?". See also tezha, Andorian sex outside of four-person bondgroups, in the Pocket Books novels. But if you're restricted to real life, by definition it ceases to be allegory, which was the whole reason Roddenberry made a sci-fi show instead of a Western or police procedural to begin with.
Absolutely so. That's not to say, however, that every episode/show has to 'have a message'... The most recent episode of Star Trek Continues, while I thought it was an excellent episode, and a great example of a character not having Plot Armor, of the criticisms I have seem, they have all accused it of 'being preachy' (which to me, suggests that the message struck a nerve with the critics, and thus it may have been a lesson they still needed to learn
PS With regards tezha, I believe the taboo was not of sex outside the bondgroup, but against two from within a bondgroup to have sex without the other members present... (which I can understand, as it could seriously unbalance the dynamic of the group relationship)
An assertion has been made that if you had removed all the sci-fi future tech from Star Trek and made into a show about wooden sailing ships, it would still be as successful as it is now, on the strength of good scriptwriting/story.
So I thought, let's find out what the STO Players think of that idea.
Would you have still be interested in the franchise if it didn't have any sci-fi at all?
Corrected that boldening for you 'story' was always part of the OP's premise, so you can't ignore it to try and make it suit your point... OP might have written it in the order of scriptwriting/story, but from a creative aspect, story always comes first. Without a story, there's nothing to even become scripted... A script is nothing more than written instructions for the actor and director. If what's written in the script is poor, it will likely also lead to an actor giving a less-than-strong performance, but if there's no story, then there's no script...
As such, "story", in it's "raw" form, can not be used as the "basis" of determining the results of a genre transfer - as when you dig far enough, whether the "story" is told in Sci-Fi, High Fantasy, Pseudo-Reality, or comedy, the "story" is going to be tellable in each and every format once the "proper adaptations to make it fit that sub-genre" are made.
Hence why I stopped at Script. It was the scripts of TOS, or TNG, or DS9, that form the basis for the Star Trek "method of telling the story", much like it is the Script of Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet that tell "those stories" in the Shakesperian Medieval "method".
As such, we seem to have hit a crossroads. I can sit here and type till I'm "blue in the keyboard" about how pulling the Sci-Fi, and only the Sci-Fi, out of an otherwise "Star Trek"ian script is grounds for failure - and you can sit there, typing till you're "blue in the keyboard", about how once you strip a Star Trek script down to one of the 7 "basic plots" and rebuild it in another genre with all the necessary translations to make it fit the new genre, it works.
As far as I can tell, we're both right. I've never "discounted" that - when looked at with only your stance in play, Star Trek, which was ultimately built from one of the seven basic plots, couldn't be "deconstructed down to" said plot then "rebuilt" for a new genre, with new characters, etc.
Strongly hinted at with my "how many 'insider assassin'?" commentary. Boil Journey To Babel down to that "insider assassin" variant of a tragedy, morph the diplomats from having a meeting over a planetary admission to diplomats preparing for a G20 summit, morph the assassin from a rogue alien impersonator to a military double-agent, rebuild the investigation stages, finding of clues, etc. to be done by the NCIS crew in NCIS ways, viola - conversion.
But already the NCIS version is going to "pace" differently than Star Trek's. How likely is the "subplot" of familial prejudice and the necessity for the blood transfusion from Spock to Sarek going to be carried over? Without that subplot, is the NCIS version still going to be enough of a "clone" of the Star Trek one to generate "valid" comparisons (an issue that, I sense, is one that can spawn yet another debate, as evidenced by how deeply or shallowly we're letting various steps go)?
And I haven't yet seen you avowedly disprove that if we were to "copy paste" Spock into a Breton, and all the shipboard diplomats into diplomats from other countries, and had the HMS Enterprise sailing all of these diplomats across the Channel to hold a conference in Wales while an assassin in the diplomatic staffs is offing the German and severely wounding the French ambassadors our "British Spock" is going to be able to still run his sub-plot and save the French ambassador, reuniting his family, if only on the most earliest and superficial of levels... (IE, telling the Star Trek Story as close as possible to the Star Trek way, but done in a completely non-sci-fi setting)
Detecting big-time "anti-old-school" bias here. NX? Lobi. TOS/TMP Connie? Super-promotion-box. (aka the two hardest ways to get ships) Excelsior & all 3 TNG "big hero" ships? C-Store. Please Equalize...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
An assertion has been made that if you had removed all the sci-fi future tech from Star Trek and made into a show about wooden sailing ships, it would still be as successful as it is now, on the strength of good scriptwriting/story.
So I thought, let's find out what the STO Players think of that idea.
Would you have still be interested in the franchise if it didn't have any sci-fi at all?
Corrected that boldening for you 'story' was always part of the OP's premise, so you can't ignore it to try and make it suit your point... OP might have written it in the order of scriptwriting/story, but from a creative aspect, story always comes first. Without a story, there's nothing to even become scripted... A script is nothing more than written instructions for the actor and director. If what's written in the script is poor, it will likely also lead to an actor giving a less-than-strong performance, but if there's no story, then there's no script...
As such, "story", in it's "raw" form, can not be used as the "basis" of determining the results of a genre transfer - as when you dig far enough, whether the "story" is told in Sci-Fi, High Fantasy, Pseudo-Reality, or comedy, the "story" is going to be tellable in each and every format once the "proper adaptations to make it fit that sub-genre" are made.
Hence why I stopped at Script. It was the scripts of TOS, or TNG, or DS9, that form the basis for the Star Trek "method of telling the story", much like it is the Script of Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet that tell "those stories" in the Shakesperian Medieval "method".
As such, we seem to have hit a crossroads. I can sit here and type till I'm "blue in the keyboard" about how pulling the Sci-Fi, and only the Sci-Fi, out of an otherwise "Star Trek"ian script is grounds for failure - and you can sit there, typing till you're "blue in the keyboard", about how once you strip a Star Trek script down to one of the 7 "basic plots" and rebuild it in another genre with all the necessary translations to make it fit the new genre, it works.
As far as I can tell, we're both right. I've never "discounted" that - when looked at with only your stance in play, Star Trek, which was ultimately built from one of the seven basic plots, couldn't be "deconstructed down to" said plot then "rebuilt" for a new genre, with new characters, etc.
Strongly hinted at with my "how many 'insider assassin'?" commentary. Boil Journey To Babel down to that "insider assassin" variant of a tragedy, morph the diplomats from having a meeting over a planetary admission to diplomats preparing for a G20 summit, morph the assassin from a rogue alien impersonator to a military double-agent, rebuild the investigation stages, finding of clues, etc. to be done by the NCIS crew in NCIS ways, viola - conversion.
But already the NCIS version is going to "pace" differently than Star Trek's. How likely is the "subplot" of familial prejudice and the necessity for the blood transfusion from Spock to Sarek going to be carried over? Without that subplot, is the NCIS version still going to be enough of a "clone" of the Star Trek one to generate "valid" comparisons (an issue that, I sense, is one that can spawn yet another debate, as evidenced by how deeply or shallowly we're letting various steps go)?
And I haven't yet seen you avowedly disprove that if we were to "copy paste" Spock into a Breton, and all the shipboard diplomats into diplomats from other countries, and had the HMS Enterprise sailing all of these diplomats across the Channel to hold a conference in Wales while an assassin in the diplomatic staffs is offing the German and severely wounding the French ambassadors our "British Spock" is going to be able to still run his sub-plot and save the French ambassador, reuniting his family, if only on the most earliest and superficial of levels... (IE, telling the Star Trek Story as close as possible to the Star Trek way, but done in a completely non-sci-fi setting)
*sigh* Yet again the argument is that an alternate genre version of Trek would have to be heavily grounded in realism as opposed to the magic-fantasy elements the franchise actually relies on. If you did "Journey to Babel" in a high fantasy setting it would work exactly the same with only the barest minimum of changes to window dressing. Vulcans would just be elves, Tellarites would be dwarves, so on and so forth. Aside from irrelevant terminology changes, everything else about the script would work EXACTLY the same without any notable changes. Spock's family issues are hardly ground breaking and have been done to death a million times in other works, the imposter andorian is likewise nothing uniquely special to sci-fi.
The only reason that Star Trek is allegedly incompatible with other genres is because you are demanding that they choose the narrowest set of genre specifications that would require larger changes. Star Trek is not and has never been grounded in rigid realism or historical accuracy, trying to impose that on a genre shifted Trek is just you trying to put your thumb on the scale to get the outcome you desire.
*sigh* Yet again the argument is that an alternate genre version of Trek would have to be heavily grounded in realism as opposed to the magic-fantasy elements the franchise actually relies on. If you did "Journey to Babel" in a high fantasy setting it would work exactly the same with only the barest minimum of changes to window dressing. Vulcans would just be elves, Tellarites would be dwarves, so on and so forth. Aside from irrelevant terminology changes, everything else about the script would work EXACTLY the same without any notable changes. Spock's family issues are hardly ground breaking and have been done to death a million times in other works, the imposter andorian is likewise nothing uniquely special to sci-fi.
The only reason that Star Trek is allegedly incompatible with other genres is because you are demanding that they choose the narrowest set of genre specifications that would require larger changes. Star Trek is not and has never been grounded in rigid realism or historical accuracy, trying to impose that on a genre shifted Trek is just you trying to put your thumb on the scale to get the outcome you desire.
We are talking about one very specific genre here which does have certain rules imposed on it.
An assertion has been made that if you had removed all the sci-fi future tech from Star Trek and made into a show about wooden sailing ships, it would still be as successful as it is now, on the strength of good scriptwriting/story.
So I thought, let's find out what the STO Players think of that idea.
Would you have still be interested in the franchise if it didn't have any sci-fi at all?
Corrected that boldening for you 'story' was always part of the OP's premise, so you can't ignore it to try and make it suit your point... OP might have written it in the order of scriptwriting/story, but from a creative aspect, story always comes first. Without a story, there's nothing to even become scripted... A script is nothing more than written instructions for the actor and director. If what's written in the script is poor, it will likely also lead to an actor giving a less-than-strong performance, but if there's no story, then there's no script...
As such, "story", in it's "raw" form, can not be used as the "basis" of determining the results of a genre transfer - as when you dig far enough, whether the "story" is told in Sci-Fi, High Fantasy, Pseudo-Reality, or comedy, the "story" is going to be tellable in each and every format once the "proper adaptations to make it fit that sub-genre" are made.
Hence why I stopped at Script. It was the scripts of TOS, or TNG, or DS9, that form the basis for the Star Trek "method of telling the story", much like it is the Script of Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet that tell "those stories" in the Shakesperian Medieval "method".
As such, we seem to have hit a crossroads. I can sit here and type till I'm "blue in the keyboard" about how pulling the Sci-Fi, and only the Sci-Fi, out of an otherwise "Star Trek"ian script is grounds for failure - and you can sit there, typing till you're "blue in the keyboard", about how once you strip a Star Trek script down to one of the 7 "basic plots" and rebuild it in another genre with all the necessary translations to make it fit the new genre, it works.
As far as I can tell, we're both right. I've never "discounted" that - when looked at with only your stance in play, Star Trek, which was ultimately built from one of the seven basic plots, couldn't be "deconstructed down to" said plot then "rebuilt" for a new genre, with new characters, etc.
Strongly hinted at with my "how many 'insider assassin'?" commentary. Boil Journey To Babel down to that "insider assassin" variant of a tragedy, morph the diplomats from having a meeting over a planetary admission to diplomats preparing for a G20 summit, morph the assassin from a rogue alien impersonator to a military double-agent, rebuild the investigation stages, finding of clues, etc. to be done by the NCIS crew in NCIS ways, viola - conversion.
But already the NCIS version is going to "pace" differently than Star Trek's. How likely is the "subplot" of familial prejudice and the necessity for the blood transfusion from Spock to Sarek going to be carried over? Without that subplot, is the NCIS version still going to be enough of a "clone" of the Star Trek one to generate "valid" comparisons (an issue that, I sense, is one that can spawn yet another debate, as evidenced by how deeply or shallowly we're letting various steps go)?
And I haven't yet seen you avowedly disprove that if we were to "copy paste" Spock into a Breton, and all the shipboard diplomats into diplomats from other countries, and had the HMS Enterprise sailing all of these diplomats across the Channel to hold a conference in Wales while an assassin in the diplomatic staffs is offing the German and severely wounding the French ambassadors our "British Spock" is going to be able to still run his sub-plot and save the French ambassador, reuniting his family, if only on the most earliest and superficial of levels... (IE, telling the Star Trek Story as close as possible to the Star Trek way, but done in a completely non-sci-fi setting)
*sigh* Yet again the argument is that an alternate genre version of Trek would have to be heavily grounded in realism as opposed to the magic-fantasy elements the franchise actually relies on. If you did "Journey to Babel" in a high fantasy setting it would work exactly the same with only the barest minimum of changes to window dressing. Vulcans would just be elves, Tellarites would be dwarves, so on and so forth. Aside from irrelevant terminology changes, everything else about the script would work EXACTLY the same without any notable changes. Spock's family issues are hardly ground breaking and have been done to death a million times in other works, the imposter andorian is likewise nothing uniquely special to sci-fi.
The only reason that Star Trek is allegedly incompatible with other genres is because you are demanding that they choose the narrowest set of genre specifications that would require larger changes. Star Trek is not and has never been grounded in rigid realism or historical accuracy, trying to impose that on a genre shifted Trek is just you trying to put your thumb on the scale to get the outcome you desire.
No, we're discussing a very particular assertion in the OP, being that Star Trek would have been just as popular had it been a show about 'wooden sailing ships', not whether the concepts would 'work' in any other setting.
An assertion has been made that if you had removed all the sci-fi future tech from Star Trek and made into a show about wooden sailing ships, it would still be as successful as it is now, on the strength of good scriptwriting/story.
So I thought, let's find out what the STO Players think of that idea.
Would you have still be interested in the franchise if it didn't have any sci-fi at all?
Corrected that boldening for you 'story' was always part of the OP's premise, so you can't ignore it to try and make it suit your point... OP might have written it in the order of scriptwriting/story, but from a creative aspect, story always comes first. Without a story, there's nothing to even become scripted... A script is nothing more than written instructions for the actor and director. If what's written in the script is poor, it will likely also lead to an actor giving a less-than-strong performance, but if there's no story, then there's no script...
As such, "story", in it's "raw" form, can not be used as the "basis" of determining the results of a genre transfer - as when you dig far enough, whether the "story" is told in Sci-Fi, High Fantasy, Pseudo-Reality, or comedy, the "story" is going to be tellable in each and every format once the "proper adaptations to make it fit that sub-genre" are made.
Hence why I stopped at Script. It was the scripts of TOS, or TNG, or DS9, that form the basis for the Star Trek "method of telling the story", much like it is the Script of Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet that tell "those stories" in the Shakesperian Medieval "method".
As such, we seem to have hit a crossroads. I can sit here and type till I'm "blue in the keyboard" about how pulling the Sci-Fi, and only the Sci-Fi, out of an otherwise "Star Trek"ian script is grounds for failure - and you can sit there, typing till you're "blue in the keyboard", about how once you strip a Star Trek script down to one of the 7 "basic plots" and rebuild it in another genre with all the necessary translations to make it fit the new genre, it works.
As far as I can tell, we're both right. I've never "discounted" that - when looked at with only your stance in play, Star Trek, which was ultimately built from one of the seven basic plots, couldn't be "deconstructed down to" said plot then "rebuilt" for a new genre, with new characters, etc.
Strongly hinted at with my "how many 'insider assassin'?" commentary. Boil Journey To Babel down to that "insider assassin" variant of a tragedy, morph the diplomats from having a meeting over a planetary admission to diplomats preparing for a G20 summit, morph the assassin from a rogue alien impersonator to a military double-agent, rebuild the investigation stages, finding of clues, etc. to be done by the NCIS crew in NCIS ways, viola - conversion.
But already the NCIS version is going to "pace" differently than Star Trek's. How likely is the "subplot" of familial prejudice and the necessity for the blood transfusion from Spock to Sarek going to be carried over? Without that subplot, is the NCIS version still going to be enough of a "clone" of the Star Trek one to generate "valid" comparisons (an issue that, I sense, is one that can spawn yet another debate, as evidenced by how deeply or shallowly we're letting various steps go)?
And I haven't yet seen you avowedly disprove that if we were to "copy paste" Spock into a Breton, and all the shipboard diplomats into diplomats from other countries, and had the HMS Enterprise sailing all of these diplomats across the Channel to hold a conference in Wales while an assassin in the diplomatic staffs is offing the German and severely wounding the French ambassadors our "British Spock" is going to be able to still run his sub-plot and save the French ambassador, reuniting his family, if only on the most earliest and superficial of levels... (IE, telling the Star Trek Story as close as possible to the Star Trek way, but done in a completely non-sci-fi setting)
*sigh* Yet again the argument is that an alternate genre version of Trek would have to be heavily grounded in realism as opposed to the magic-fantasy elements the franchise actually relies on. If you did "Journey to Babel" in a high fantasy setting it would work exactly the same with only the barest minimum of changes to window dressing. Vulcans would just be elves, Tellarites would be dwarves, so on and so forth. Aside from irrelevant terminology changes, everything else about the script would work EXACTLY the same without any notable changes. Spock's family issues are hardly ground breaking and have been done to death a million times in other works, the imposter andorian is likewise nothing uniquely special to sci-fi.
The only reason that Star Trek is allegedly incompatible with other genres is because you are demanding that they choose the narrowest set of genre specifications that would require larger changes. Star Trek is not and has never been grounded in rigid realism or historical accuracy, trying to impose that on a genre shifted Trek is just you trying to put your thumb on the scale to get the outcome you desire.
Clarke's third law
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Sci-Fi and High Fantasy are, in essense, identical.
Perchance, if we were to do just the transplantation you propose (Elves, Magical essense transfers, etc.) and "tell" the story to an early medieval period (just out of the dark ages medieval), would he view it as "fantasy" or perhaps "science fiction"?
Because to him, the "sciences" of magic, et.al. are being portrayed in a significantly advanced and form.
Hence why, just as I discount boiling a script "all the way down" to an extremely common plot, do I discount such a copy-paste transplantation in what is, outside of a matter of semantics, essentially the same genre.
Oh, last I knew, Elves were extremely aloof yet emotional beings that took extremely long views to things and were typically hyper-emo over the destruction of "nature". Not a lot of "logic" for Elven-Spock to build from...
Detecting big-time "anti-old-school" bias here. NX? Lobi. TOS/TMP Connie? Super-promotion-box. (aka the two hardest ways to get ships) Excelsior & all 3 TNG "big hero" ships? C-Store. Please Equalize...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
No, we're discussing a very particular assertion in the OP, being that Star Trek would have been just as popular had it been a show about 'wooden sailing ships', not whether the concepts would 'work' in any other setting.
This is where I'm having the disconnect, the thread's original post might have been asking about the hypothetical success of Trek with wooden ships, but the conversation has shifted over the last few pages. Much of the debate has been framed in how such a change in setting would work. Much of the criticism has stemmed from the assertion that a change in the shows genre would be unworkable and leave an unrecognizably different product in its place.
What I've been trying to point out is that much of these alleged differences are superficial or unnecessary. Yes, sci-fi and fantasy are often lumped together due to the spectacle of it all, but that is also the point I was trying to make. Wooden ships are a common sight in fantasy settings, and fantasy lends itself to Star Trek's overall mood and style. Aside from the visual differences and terminology, most of Star Trek's stories could be done in a fantasy setting with no noteworthy changes.
Since the stories would be relatively unchanged that implies that they would still hold up or fail based on the quality of the original work. If you think Star Trek's success is rooted in the quality of its stories then a Sail Trek would be just as good as Star Trek.
As for demographics and fads, those are impossible to predict, entertainment tends to come in waves as studios copy whatever the last big super hit was. Even then shows tend to live or die by the whims of the network executives, with many shows getting axed simply because an executive wanted to throw his weight around. Trying to judge the hypothetical success with those factors is a fools errand.
PS With regards tezha, I believe the taboo was not of sex outside the bondgroup, but against two from within a bondgroup to have sex without the other members present... (which I can understand, as it could seriously unbalance the dynamic of the group relationship)
Well, either way, the real issue was that the Andorians were in a population crisis and basically put a moratorium on non-procreative sex (which was originally to justify why there weren't any Andos in the 24th century shows).
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
PS With regards tezha, I believe the taboo was not of sex outside the bondgroup, but against two from within a bondgroup to have sex without the other members present... (which I can understand, as it could seriously unbalance the dynamic of the group relationship)
Well, either way, the real issue was that the Andorians were in a population crisis and basically put a moratorium on non-procreative sex (which was originally to justify why there weren't any Andos in the 24th century shows).
Really? Did they think 'it never came up' wasn't a good enough reason? Besides, Andorians were around during the 24th century. One of Bashir's classmates at the academy mistook him for his Andorian fellow-graduate at a graduation party (although how a human mistakes a clearly Anglo-Indian name like 'Julian Bashir' for an Andorian is beyond me). That just sounds like writers trying to address a problem which wasn't really a problem.
PS With regards tezha, I believe the taboo was not of sex outside the bondgroup, but against two from within a bondgroup to have sex without the other members present... (which I can understand, as it could seriously unbalance the dynamic of the group relationship)
Well, either way, the real issue was that the Andorians were in a population crisis and basically put a moratorium on non-procreative sex (which was originally to justify why there weren't any Andos in the 24th century shows).
Really? Did they think 'it never came up' wasn't a good enough reason? Besides, Andorians were around during the 24th century. One of Bashir's classmates at the academy mistook him for his Andorian fellow-graduate at a graduation party (although how a human mistakes a clearly Anglo-Indian name like 'Julian Bashir' for an Andorian is beyond me). That just sounds like writers trying to address a problem which wasn't really a problem.
Don't look at me for answers, these are the same writers who were determined to explain Klingon ridges and why the NX-01 looked "more advanced" than NCC-1701 when the real explanation was special effect budgets.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
It might not be a view shared by everyone, but for me personally, I do not equate fantasy to sci-fi.
They share a common element of fictional events happening through a factor that doesn't exist in the real world, that's it.
They each come with their own set of guidelines for writing a story and I doubt they are compatible.
Ironically, I do know of one exception, the Elves in the Inheritance quadrilogy.
They have magic, but believe firmly in science because they used their magical abilities to advance their understanding of those principles. There's even a reference to one of their number generating a nuclear explosion by using his magic to start the reaction. And afterwards, they observed that the area irradiated by the blast produced mutations.
But to go back to the topic at hand, I set the limit because I wanted to exclude the possibility of writers being free to make up whatever they wanted, regardless of the genre.
How far can you push a story that is meant to be realistic and yet, keep it entertaining?
Can good acting and decent scriptwriting get a fanbase invested to the point where Sea Trek would have forged a legacy equal to what Star Trek has now?
Why make the Ferengi substitutes any culture at all?
They could just be pirates and that would be easy enough.
Plus, I couldn't find references to any nation who behaved in this manner, that prioritized money above all else, even honesty and morality.
Which is sortof what I was getting at, in the real world, many of the concepts that Star Trek explored simply do not or could have existed in the age of sail version.
Yes, you could perhaps get close, but not all the way.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
PS With regards tezha, I believe the taboo was not of sex outside the bondgroup, but against two from within a bondgroup to have sex without the other members present... (which I can understand, as it could seriously unbalance the dynamic of the group relationship)
Well, either way, the real issue was that the Andorians were in a population crisis and basically put a moratorium on non-procreative sex (which was originally to justify why there weren't any Andos in the 24th century shows).
Really? Did they think 'it never came up' wasn't a good enough reason? Besides, Andorians were around during the 24th century. One of Bashir's classmates at the academy mistook him for his Andorian fellow-graduate at a graduation party (although how a human mistakes a clearly Anglo-Indian name like 'Julian Bashir' for an Andorian is beyond me). That just sounds like writers trying to address a problem which wasn't really a problem.
Don't look at me for answers, these are the same writers who were determined to explain Klingon ridges and why the NX-01 looked "more advanced" than NCC-1701 when the real explanation was special effect budgets.
PS With regards tezha, I believe the taboo was not of sex outside the bondgroup, but against two from within a bondgroup to have sex without the other members present... (which I can understand, as it could seriously unbalance the dynamic of the group relationship)
Well, either way, the real issue was that the Andorians were in a population crisis and basically put a moratorium on non-procreative sex (which was originally to justify why there weren't any Andos in the 24th century shows).
Really? Did they think 'it never came up' wasn't a good enough reason? Besides, Andorians were around during the 24th century. One of Bashir's classmates at the academy mistook him for his Andorian fellow-graduate at a graduation party (although how a human mistakes a clearly Anglo-Indian name like 'Julian Bashir' for an Andorian is beyond me). That just sounds like writers trying to address a problem which wasn't really a problem.
Don't look at me for answers, these are the same writers who were determined to explain Klingon ridges and why the NX-01 looked "more advanced" than NCC-1701 when the real explanation was special effect budgets.
Good point.
Don't blame the writers exclusively, though. It' also the audience that, in this day and age, DEMANDS "explanations", no matter how phony and terrible they are.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
An assertion has been made that if you had removed all the sci-fi future tech from Star Trek and made into a show about wooden sailing ships, it would still be as successful as it is now, on the strength of good scriptwriting/story.
So I thought, let's find out what the STO Players think of that idea.
Would you have still be interested in the franchise if it didn't have any sci-fi at all?
Corrected that boldening for you 'story' was always part of the OP's premise, so you can't ignore it to try and make it suit your point... OP might have written it in the order of scriptwriting/story, but from a creative aspect, story always comes first. Without a story, there's nothing to even become scripted... A script is nothing more than written instructions for the actor and director. If what's written in the script is poor, it will likely also lead to an actor giving a less-than-strong performance, but if there's no story, then there's no script...
As such, "story", in it's "raw" form, can not be used as the "basis" of determining the results of a genre transfer - as when you dig far enough, whether the "story" is told in Sci-Fi, High Fantasy, Pseudo-Reality, or comedy, the "story" is going to be tellable in each and every format once the "proper adaptations to make it fit that sub-genre" are made.
Hence why I stopped at Script. It was the scripts of TOS, or TNG, or DS9, that form the basis for the Star Trek "method of telling the story", much like it is the Script of Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet that tell "those stories" in the Shakesperian Medieval "method".
As such, we seem to have hit a crossroads. I can sit here and type till I'm "blue in the keyboard" about how pulling the Sci-Fi, and only the Sci-Fi, out of an otherwise "Star Trek"ian script is grounds for failure - and you can sit there, typing till you're "blue in the keyboard", about how once you strip a Star Trek script down to one of the 7 "basic plots" and rebuild it in another genre with all the necessary translations to make it fit the new genre, it works.
As far as I can tell, we're both right. I've never "discounted" that - when looked at with only your stance in play, Star Trek, which was ultimately built from one of the seven basic plots, couldn't be "deconstructed down to" said plot then "rebuilt" for a new genre, with new characters, etc.
Strongly hinted at with my "how many 'insider assassin'?" commentary. Boil Journey To Babel down to that "insider assassin" variant of a tragedy, morph the diplomats from having a meeting over a planetary admission to diplomats preparing for a G20 summit, morph the assassin from a rogue alien impersonator to a military double-agent, rebuild the investigation stages, finding of clues, etc. to be done by the NCIS crew in NCIS ways, viola - conversion.
But already the NCIS version is going to "pace" differently than Star Trek's. How likely is the "subplot" of familial prejudice and the necessity for the blood transfusion from Spock to Sarek going to be carried over? Without that subplot, is the NCIS version still going to be enough of a "clone" of the Star Trek one to generate "valid" comparisons (an issue that, I sense, is one that can spawn yet another debate, as evidenced by how deeply or shallowly we're letting various steps go)?
And I haven't yet seen you avowedly disprove that if we were to "copy paste" Spock into a Breton, and all the shipboard diplomats into diplomats from other countries, and had the HMS Enterprise sailing all of these diplomats across the Channel to hold a conference in Wales while an assassin in the diplomatic staffs is offing the German and severely wounding the French ambassadors our "British Spock" is going to be able to still run his sub-plot and save the French ambassador, reuniting his family, if only on the most earliest and superficial of levels... (IE, telling the Star Trek Story as close as possible to the Star Trek way, but done in a completely non-sci-fi setting)
The only reason that Star Trek is allegedly incompatible with other genres is because you are demanding that they choose the narrowest set of genre specifications that would require larger changes. Star Trek is not and has never been grounded in rigid realism or historical accuracy, trying to impose that on a genre shifted Trek is just you trying to put your thumb on the scale to get the outcome you desire.
It might not be a view shared by everyone, but for me personally, I do not equate fantasy to sci-fi.
They share a common element of fictional events happening through a factor that doesn't exist in the real world, that's it.
They each come with their own set of guidelines for writing a story and I doubt they are compatible.
Ironically, I do know of one exception, the Elves in the Inheritance quadrilogy.
They have magic, but believe firmly in science because they used their magical abilities to advance their understanding of those principles. There's even a reference to one of their number generating a nuclear explosion by using his magic to start the reaction. And afterwards, they observed that the area irradiated by the blast produced mutations.
But to go back to the topic at hand, I set the limit because I wanted to exclude the possibility of writers being free to make up whatever they wanted, regardless of the genre.
How far can you push a story that is meant to be realistic and yet, keep it entertaining?
Can good acting and decent scriptwriting get a fanbase invested to the point where Sea Trek would have forged a legacy equal to what Star Trek has now?
Why make the Ferengi substitutes any culture at all?
They could just be pirates and that would be easy enough.
Plus, I couldn't find references to any nation who behaved in this manner, that prioritized money above all else, even honesty and morality.
Which is sortof what I was getting at, in the real world, many of the concepts that Star Trek explored simply do not or could have existed in the age of sail version.
Yes, you could perhaps get close, but not all the way.
Because the Ferengi were not pirates... With the exception of one episode where a group of Ferengi tried to hijack the Enterprise, their focus is always on business, and profit, hence why in the Age of Sail, they would be Jewish mercantiles. An utterly valid historical analogue, but one which would likely draw accusations of anti-Semitism from SJWs...
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
so replace 'jewish merchants' with 'east india trading company'...problem solved
Not really, because that's just a company... For a viable comparison to the Ferengi, it would need to be represented across a whole culture/demographic for the scale to be accurate...
so replace 'jewish merchants' with 'east india trading company'...problem solved
Not really, because that's just a company... For a viable comparison to the Ferengi, it would need to be represented across a whole culture/demographic for the scale to be accurate...
Ferengi culture is essentially structured like one colossal mega-corporation.
It might not be a view shared by everyone, but for me personally, I do not equate fantasy to sci-fi.
They share a common element of fictional events happening through a factor that doesn't exist in the real world, that's it.
They each come with their own set of guidelines for writing a story and I doubt they are compatible.
Just going to throw this out for you to "chew on"...
Let's replace:
Water for Space
Wood for Metal
Magical Wind Generator for Warp Drive
Enchanted Wood for Deflector Shields, exploding cannonballs for photon torpedoes
"Elven looking people" for Vulcans. "Dwarven looking people with pig like features" for Tellarites. "Horns" for Antenna
Magical Contraption for Transfusion Apparatus
"Island" Coridan III for "Planet" Coridan III
Maybe a few others that I'm missing in my haste...
Then take the TOS episode "Journey to Babel". Pull up it's script. Replace every reference of a technological piece with it's "magical" equivalent. Edit every "Set" and "Scene" to "look" Fantasy instead of Sciencey. Tell the Costume Department to make the appropriate visual swaps on the makeup.
And watch as you can tell, "word" for "word", step for step, the episode "Journey to Babel", exactly as it was told back in the 60s.
Replace "Giant Space Amoeba" with "Jellyfish". Rowboat for shuttlecraft. Immunity Syndrome's already 99% converted, just need to double-check the "magic for tech" replacements.
"High Fantasy" and "Science Fiction", because they both use "factors that don't exist in the real world", are ultimately 100% compatible with each other, since you either make up a pseudo-science reason for the impossible to be possible, or just use the word Magic, and apply appropriate visuals...
Detecting big-time "anti-old-school" bias here. NX? Lobi. TOS/TMP Connie? Super-promotion-box. (aka the two hardest ways to get ships) Excelsior & all 3 TNG "big hero" ships? C-Store. Please Equalize...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
so replace 'jewish merchants' with 'east india trading company'...problem solved
Not really, because that's just a company... For a viable comparison to the Ferengi, it would need to be represented across a whole culture/demographic for the scale to be accurate...
Ferengi culture is essentially structured like one colossal mega-corporation.
Absolutely, but as mentioned, it is a culture, with a population conceivably in the billions, all sharing the same (or certainly very similar) value system, and they would need to be encounter-able in large numbers not just at sea, but on land/in port, which something like the EITC wouldn't really be able to 'number up' to... Another option might be Chinese merchants, but I don't think they would be such a close analogue as Jewish mercantiles...
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
exploding cannonballs were a real thing...there is nothing 'magical' or 'high fantasy' about them
If I recall, aren't they cannonballs which have been heated up before being fired? I also seem to remember something about two cannonballs joined together by a length of chain, which could be used to take out an opposing ship's masts...
Comments
There is no British Empire anymore. But there was during the Age of Sail which is what Ryan's points were about.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
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^^ This. During the Age of Sail, the US Navy was a relatively small affair and rarely ventured outside American waters. Since the scenario in the OP is about sticking the show during the age of sail, a British ship makes the most sense as they operated across the entire planet from the 1700s.
Trials of Blood and Fire
Moving On Parts 1-3 - Part 4
In Cold Blood
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
You know, you're right. Sci-Fi, alone, isn't what makes Star Trek enduring. Which is one of the reasons why I even brought up the whole Kirk/Spock/McCoy banter all so many posts ago - whether you personally think it was the best banter ever seen on TV or some of the most worthless drivel...
Because contrary to personal beliefs, "society in general" holds up that banter as a beacon of "well played entertainment". Even to this day, wasn't one of the criteria JJ used in casting his "nu-Trek" crew the ability of the "Spock" and "McCoy" actors to hold a round of banter? Even though he seemingly moved a lot of that banter over to Nu-Kirk?
And I still stand by my stance that Star Trek's overall success is - like endless other "entertainment products" - a "near perfect mix" of the following components:
Acting.
Screenplays and by extension Storytelling.
Setting and appropriateness to same.
And as much as you want to deny it, if you were to strip the "Sci-Fi" out of some "basic" core components of Star Trek like, oh, Spock - or the setting - which also strongly affects the stories written - the remainder of the "Star Trek Inputs" - racially and ethnically diverse crew, pushing the bounds of censorship, focus on the "big three", etc.
Or Worf. Or Data. Or the entire Dax/Sisko situation. Or Ferengi - would any show set on Earth be allowed to have someone with such rampant greed, or would some "ethics board" eventually come after said "Ferengi"? Or the eventual "Earthen Utopia Society", Or a long laundry list of options.
Could you even begin to tell the same stories in much the same manner? Heck no. Well, before you dismiss this as "conjecture" again, I'll have to actually qualify that I see absolutely no method of doing so.
And so, I'm going out on a further limb. That question you're so callously ignoring? It's more a challenge than an actual question.
You contend that a show can be built, without "Sci-Fi", that will rival Star Trek's success. Seemingly both "short term" and "enduring".
I posted a few shows that I remember, fairly Sci-Fi-free, that at least came close to the "short term success" stuff. Bonanza was, back in the 60s at least, considered a much greater success than TOS. However, come the 70s when Trek was beginning it's animated and eventual movie transitions, Bonanza and it's "family of shows" petered out and died.
Happy Days? Even without "Mork and Mindy", a show where there's a tremendous amount of "Sci-fi" built in, it comes close to rivalling the TNG era in duration / ratings / popularity. But again, here's a compilation that lacks the "staying power" to have had a noticeable 40th anniversary binge but two short years ago, and doesn't seem destined to have a 50th anniversary. And I don't exactly see it's "icon", Fonzie, being held up as a role model anymore, while someone tried to put out a new set of Kirk and Spock role models in a movie theater a scant half-dozen or so years ago...
So, balls in your court, as it were. Name me one "entertainment" series that doesn't include Sci-Fi (because Star Wars or Doctor Who are two highly obvious examples here) that even has the remotest of potentials to rival Star Trek in both "short term successes" and "longevity/endurance".
Bonus Points if you can draw references that spell out, almost character for character, one of the "iconic" casts of a Star Trek show.
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
IMHO, I felt JJ took the banter too far. And I feel he took it too far in Star Wars as well, but that's just my opinion...
Oh nonononono, you don't get to do that... You can't lump all those criteria and elements into the same discussion about removing the sci-fi elements... Especially not when the very point of the discussion, was related to telling the stories into another context, such as the Age of Sail...
'If it would be allowed', is a very loaded question. I don't think it would be allowed by the networks or the SJWs, for the potential 'need' to resort to potentially anti-semitic stereotypes. But I do think that the elements/themes/characterizations exist in a terrestrial setting, to allow such a story to be crafted... If it was to ever see air-time: Highly unlikely...
No dismissal of the point at all, I simply disagree on the minutiae of the phrasing... As I said immediately above, I think that the potential options exist to tell said stories in a terrestrial environment, I just don't think that political correctness would allow that to happen. And not being allowed to so something, is very different from not having the capacity to do it at all...
No, I'm contending that the majority of the episode plots used in Trek could be transposed into the Age of Sail, with real-world analogues to replace the sci-fi elements, and that they [the stories] would work just as well.
Refresher example: Data becomes an orphaned teenaged savant under the care of his uncle, Captain Hero... He's always been sheltered from the real world, and can't relate to society in general (and even those closest to him find him irritating at times) But he can calculate navigational problems faster than anyone else on the ship. He also knows how to tie any knot faster than most of the other sailors -- he's just as likely to sit counting the strands in the rope as knotting it, but hey, he's a savant...
There's some show about a guy like that which folks have been making a Big Bang about for a while now...
See my above point... Longevity is speculative, but certainly very popular at the moment...
Two Thoughts:
That... Theoretical show that people are making such a "big bang" about is pulling rampantly from Sci-Fi sources to "fuel" the scriptwriting, as it were.
I mean, the show's not about a group of car engineers or drafters discussing the merits of aerodynamics or Greco-Roman vs. Victorian design, they're "geeks" with all their love of Sci-Fi at heart.
Would you say that if you "morphed" the geeks of the show into / or replaced them with my aforementioned car engineers or drafters - while retaining as much of their "native personalities" as possible that doesn't actually revolve around anything Sci-Fi related - the show would perform at an equal level of success, or would it "crash and burn"?
But this one's a whole 'nother argument. Back to the point at hand:
Yes, I do. Because of the very premise of this thread:
I'm repeatedly asserting that the very scripts that are the fully fleshed out results of the "core" stories being presented cannot be replicated in any other setting without a complete, drastic, reconstruction to the point that it's a whole different script.
Right here. Looks to me like an admission that converting the Ferengi, while possible, is a "non starter" as far as actually getting the script "on the air". And an unaired script cannot be judged a success.
To paraphrase the OP's question:
If you were to remove the Sci-Fi (Alien) Features from the Ferengi and shoehorn a character with "ferengiesque levels of greed and ambiguous personal moral code" into an Age of Sail setting- could at least these episodes be deemed "successful"?. Answer: No Because these episodes cannot be presented for judgement, concerns of the required anti-Semitic portrayals that may ensue.
Just lost the entire DS9 conversion - because of Quark. Could salvage the few Quark-less episodes, but IIRC that's not going to be enough for even one season, and the progression will be "haywire" (couple of "peaceful" episodes, then shoot straight to war for "no apparent reason"). It's quite possible to sneak the couple of TNG Ferengi-centric episodes on air though since those Ferengi were clearly villains "known for" their penchants for profit, not "directly being shown" as attempting to derive profit purely from their interactions with the crew and/or guest stars, and their defeats didn't exactly rest on "anti-Semitic" maneuvers.
How's about Spock? Remembering that being "setting appropriate" is going to be critical in determining Spock's replacement, and that Age of Sail "Empires" were quite "ethno-centric" - you can't just go stuffing all of Spock's traits into some "exotic culture from the far side of the world on an undiscovered island", and then having one of these people become your ship's second in command and primary spotter. British boat would have an all Briton "command crew", and most likely all the commanders will be "borderline nobles", not serfs.
Odds of losing TOS to conversion and therefore the "linchpin" of the whole desire to create the Star Trek Franchise? 99.4%, minimum.
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
Thought Two: There're people who consider Madmen as awesome. I'm not one of them, as I've not seen it, but I know that it's popular, so to answer your thought; yeah, if the scripting and other production values are good, it would have as good a shot as any other fledgeling series...
Corrected that boldening for you
And I'm asserting, that if the story is transposed into another setting, then the subsequent script will be its own thing. You are looking at this So Literally in terms of replication, I'm starting to wonder if you're on the AS... I don't mean that as an insult by any means, but the way you are sticking to such a rigid and strictly literal interpretation of the OP's post, makes me wonder if you may be... As I've repeatedly said, you're missing the wood for the trees... Putting the plots used in the stories used in Star Trek (wherever possible) into another setting, would still result in a tellable and engaging story. I freely admit; Not every single episode or concept could be transposed in precisely the same manner, but the transposition of the characters and plot, would still yield results. I'm not prepared to write the Adventures of Captain Hero just to prove you wrong, but I'm confident that the premise would work and be engaging
'Success' was never part of the equation in the Ferengi/Jewish analogue... I was simply stating that it would be possible, from the perspective of a writer, to tell many of the Ferengi Tales, using stereotypical Jewish characters. And additionally stating, that because* 'Jews run Hollywood', such a premise would not be green-lighted, and noting that even if it was somehow green-lighted, SJW's would scream it down as being anti-semitic... That's not part of the success/failure dichotomy, but a whole different kettle of fish...
Wrong answer to your own question...
If you remove the sci-fi (alien) features from the Ferengi and create a character with 'Ferengi-esque levels of greed and ambitious personal moral code' into the Age of Sail, you are dealing with the mercantile class, and historically, that would be Jews. Quark becomes Shylock... It's perfectly possible to craft a viable story on that framework. That it would be allowed to be aired is unlikely, but still an instance of the Plot of the Story being translatable to the Age of Sail. Again, you are being too literal in your interpretation of the OP's words. Success could relate to 'ability to craft a coherent story', not just popularity with viewers. (and I would again, cite Game of Thrones as an example of stories 'of the era'(ish) being popular and successful (even if it does #trigger SJW's into needing their #safespace due to #problematic content...
In Terms of Plot, not so, for the above-stated example...
To quote Zefram Cochrane: "Sweet Jesus!!!" Stop being so literal! You are again, missing the wood for the trees! A character doesn't have to include all Spock's traits... Just a few, or some could even be ascribed to other characters... Fine, Spock in Age of Sail: He is now half British, half French... His father is/was a known captain/military officer who took a French wife... The ship's surgeon constantly rips on him for being a half-blood, a potential turncoat, and that his mother is a loose wench with a taste for British Beef... There's the Spock/McCoy dynamic, and like NuSpock, this is someone with a massive oedipus complex who will lose his temper whenever someone maligns his beloved mother... This is someone who would never be accepted in either society: To the French, he's the son of a conquering woman-taker; to the British, he's the son of an ignorant peasant... But the sea makes all men equal...
Odds of you pulling numbers out of your a55 thin air, 100%
As for 'the desire to create the Star Trek Franchise', I hate to break it to you, but Gene was out to make bank... He wanted lyrics to the theme so he could collect a cheque on it. He created the IDIC pendant so he could sell them to rubes fans... Creating an enduring franchise (as we have seen it become) was probably the last thing he was thinking about... To paraphrase Riker to Cochrane; He was no visioniary, but he did have a vision, and now we're talking about it
*according to Mel Gibson
The point is to make something up that is then used to bludgeon the viewer's preconceptions and prejudices from an unexpected angle. The whole point of "LTBYLB" is to say, "yes, these differences are insignificant and therefore the conflict between them is stupid, and real-life racism is equally stupid". Ditto "Rejoined": "why should Dax and Kahn have to hide their affection? and why should two g*y guys or girls have to hide their affection?". See also tezha, Andorian sex outside of four-person bondgroups, in the Pocket Books novels. But if you're restricted to real life, by definition it ceases to be allegory, which was the whole reason Roddenberry made a sci-fi show instead of a Western or police procedural to begin with.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
PS With regards tezha, I believe the taboo was not of sex outside the bondgroup, but against two from within a bondgroup to have sex without the other members present... (which I can understand, as it could seriously unbalance the dynamic of the group relationship)
This is a result of only "extremely cursory research":
A four year old piece by an advertising system in which the opening paragraphs state that from the days of Homer, if not even earlier, to now, every "story" can be distilled down to one of 7 "basic types".
As such, "story", in it's "raw" form, can not be used as the "basis" of determining the results of a genre transfer - as when you dig far enough, whether the "story" is told in Sci-Fi, High Fantasy, Pseudo-Reality, or comedy, the "story" is going to be tellable in each and every format once the "proper adaptations to make it fit that sub-genre" are made.
Hence why I stopped at Script. It was the scripts of TOS, or TNG, or DS9, that form the basis for the Star Trek "method of telling the story", much like it is the Script of Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet that tell "those stories" in the Shakesperian Medieval "method".
As such, we seem to have hit a crossroads. I can sit here and type till I'm "blue in the keyboard" about how pulling the Sci-Fi, and only the Sci-Fi, out of an otherwise "Star Trek"ian script is grounds for failure - and you can sit there, typing till you're "blue in the keyboard", about how once you strip a Star Trek script down to one of the 7 "basic plots" and rebuild it in another genre with all the necessary translations to make it fit the new genre, it works.
As far as I can tell, we're both right. I've never "discounted" that - when looked at with only your stance in play, Star Trek, which was ultimately built from one of the seven basic plots, couldn't be "deconstructed down to" said plot then "rebuilt" for a new genre, with new characters, etc.
Strongly hinted at with my "how many 'insider assassin'?" commentary. Boil Journey To Babel down to that "insider assassin" variant of a tragedy, morph the diplomats from having a meeting over a planetary admission to diplomats preparing for a G20 summit, morph the assassin from a rogue alien impersonator to a military double-agent, rebuild the investigation stages, finding of clues, etc. to be done by the NCIS crew in NCIS ways, viola - conversion.
But already the NCIS version is going to "pace" differently than Star Trek's. How likely is the "subplot" of familial prejudice and the necessity for the blood transfusion from Spock to Sarek going to be carried over? Without that subplot, is the NCIS version still going to be enough of a "clone" of the Star Trek one to generate "valid" comparisons (an issue that, I sense, is one that can spawn yet another debate, as evidenced by how deeply or shallowly we're letting various steps go)?
And I haven't yet seen you avowedly disprove that if we were to "copy paste" Spock into a Breton, and all the shipboard diplomats into diplomats from other countries, and had the HMS Enterprise sailing all of these diplomats across the Channel to hold a conference in Wales while an assassin in the diplomatic staffs is offing the German and severely wounding the French ambassadors our "British Spock" is going to be able to still run his sub-plot and save the French ambassador, reuniting his family, if only on the most earliest and superficial of levels... (IE, telling the Star Trek Story as close as possible to the Star Trek way, but done in a completely non-sci-fi setting)
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
*sigh* Yet again the argument is that an alternate genre version of Trek would have to be heavily grounded in realism as opposed to the magic-fantasy elements the franchise actually relies on. If you did "Journey to Babel" in a high fantasy setting it would work exactly the same with only the barest minimum of changes to window dressing. Vulcans would just be elves, Tellarites would be dwarves, so on and so forth. Aside from irrelevant terminology changes, everything else about the script would work EXACTLY the same without any notable changes. Spock's family issues are hardly ground breaking and have been done to death a million times in other works, the imposter andorian is likewise nothing uniquely special to sci-fi.
The only reason that Star Trek is allegedly incompatible with other genres is because you are demanding that they choose the narrowest set of genre specifications that would require larger changes. Star Trek is not and has never been grounded in rigid realism or historical accuracy, trying to impose that on a genre shifted Trek is just you trying to put your thumb on the scale to get the outcome you desire.
We are talking about one very specific genre here which does have certain rules imposed on it.
No, we're discussing a very particular assertion in the OP, being that Star Trek would have been just as popular had it been a show about 'wooden sailing ships', not whether the concepts would 'work' in any other setting.
Trials of Blood and Fire
Moving On Parts 1-3 - Part 4
In Cold Blood
Sci-Fi and High Fantasy are, in essense, identical.
Perchance, if we were to do just the transplantation you propose (Elves, Magical essense transfers, etc.) and "tell" the story to an early medieval period (just out of the dark ages medieval), would he view it as "fantasy" or perhaps "science fiction"?
Because to him, the "sciences" of magic, et.al. are being portrayed in a significantly advanced and form.
Hence why, just as I discount boiling a script "all the way down" to an extremely common plot, do I discount such a copy-paste transplantation in what is, outside of a matter of semantics, essentially the same genre.
Oh, last I knew, Elves were extremely aloof yet emotional beings that took extremely long views to things and were typically hyper-emo over the destruction of "nature". Not a lot of "logic" for Elven-Spock to build from...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
This is where I'm having the disconnect, the thread's original post might have been asking about the hypothetical success of Trek with wooden ships, but the conversation has shifted over the last few pages. Much of the debate has been framed in how such a change in setting would work. Much of the criticism has stemmed from the assertion that a change in the shows genre would be unworkable and leave an unrecognizably different product in its place.
What I've been trying to point out is that much of these alleged differences are superficial or unnecessary. Yes, sci-fi and fantasy are often lumped together due to the spectacle of it all, but that is also the point I was trying to make. Wooden ships are a common sight in fantasy settings, and fantasy lends itself to Star Trek's overall mood and style. Aside from the visual differences and terminology, most of Star Trek's stories could be done in a fantasy setting with no noteworthy changes.
Since the stories would be relatively unchanged that implies that they would still hold up or fail based on the quality of the original work. If you think Star Trek's success is rooted in the quality of its stories then a Sail Trek would be just as good as Star Trek.
As for demographics and fads, those are impossible to predict, entertainment tends to come in waves as studios copy whatever the last big super hit was. Even then shows tend to live or die by the whims of the network executives, with many shows getting axed simply because an executive wanted to throw his weight around. Trying to judge the hypothetical success with those factors is a fools errand.
Well, either way, the real issue was that the Andorians were in a population crisis and basically put a moratorium on non-procreative sex (which was originally to justify why there weren't any Andos in the 24th century shows).
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Really? Did they think 'it never came up' wasn't a good enough reason? Besides, Andorians were around during the 24th century. One of Bashir's classmates at the academy mistook him for his Andorian fellow-graduate at a graduation party (although how a human mistakes a clearly Anglo-Indian name like 'Julian Bashir' for an Andorian is beyond me). That just sounds like writers trying to address a problem which wasn't really a problem.
Trials of Blood and Fire
Moving On Parts 1-3 - Part 4
In Cold Blood
Don't look at me for answers, these are the same writers who were determined to explain Klingon ridges and why the NX-01 looked "more advanced" than NCC-1701 when the real explanation was special effect budgets.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
They share a common element of fictional events happening through a factor that doesn't exist in the real world, that's it.
They each come with their own set of guidelines for writing a story and I doubt they are compatible.
Ironically, I do know of one exception, the Elves in the Inheritance quadrilogy.
They have magic, but believe firmly in science because they used their magical abilities to advance their understanding of those principles. There's even a reference to one of their number generating a nuclear explosion by using his magic to start the reaction. And afterwards, they observed that the area irradiated by the blast produced mutations.
But to go back to the topic at hand, I set the limit because I wanted to exclude the possibility of writers being free to make up whatever they wanted, regardless of the genre.
How far can you push a story that is meant to be realistic and yet, keep it entertaining?
Can good acting and decent scriptwriting get a fanbase invested to the point where Sea Trek would have forged a legacy equal to what Star Trek has now?
Why make the Ferengi substitutes any culture at all?
They could just be pirates and that would be easy enough.
Plus, I couldn't find references to any nation who behaved in this manner, that prioritized money above all else, even honesty and morality.
Which is sortof what I was getting at, in the real world, many of the concepts that Star Trek explored simply do not or could have existed in the age of sail version.
Yes, you could perhaps get close, but not all the way.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
Good point.
Trials of Blood and Fire
Moving On Parts 1-3 - Part 4
In Cold Blood
Don't blame the writers exclusively, though. It' also the audience that, in this day and age, DEMANDS "explanations", no matter how phony and terrible they are.
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So this discussion is concluded.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Ferengi culture is essentially structured like one colossal mega-corporation.
Trials of Blood and Fire
Moving On Parts 1-3 - Part 4
In Cold Blood
Just going to throw this out for you to "chew on"...
Let's replace:
Water for Space
Wood for Metal
Magical Wind Generator for Warp Drive
Enchanted Wood for Deflector Shields, exploding cannonballs for photon torpedoes
"Elven looking people" for Vulcans. "Dwarven looking people with pig like features" for Tellarites. "Horns" for Antenna
Magical Contraption for Transfusion Apparatus
"Island" Coridan III for "Planet" Coridan III
Maybe a few others that I'm missing in my haste...
Then take the TOS episode "Journey to Babel". Pull up it's script. Replace every reference of a technological piece with it's "magical" equivalent. Edit every "Set" and "Scene" to "look" Fantasy instead of Sciencey. Tell the Costume Department to make the appropriate visual swaps on the makeup.
And watch as you can tell, "word" for "word", step for step, the episode "Journey to Babel", exactly as it was told back in the 60s.
Replace "Giant Space Amoeba" with "Jellyfish". Rowboat for shuttlecraft. Immunity Syndrome's already 99% converted, just need to double-check the "magic for tech" replacements.
"High Fantasy" and "Science Fiction", because they both use "factors that don't exist in the real world", are ultimately 100% compatible with each other, since you either make up a pseudo-science reason for the impossible to be possible, or just use the word Magic, and apply appropriate visuals...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"