Honestly I'd say that it's more like that Vulcans are similar to christians in most christian majority nations here on Earth, most Vulcans are technically followers of the surakian teachings but they aren't really all that devout or fanatical.
Also where was it mentioned that Number One was an augment (or anything about her that wasn't obvious by looking at her) if wasn't in the Cage it matters just as much as my foundry projects did, that is to say not at all.
It is, if you will pardon the term, fascinating to me how many people in this discussion have made up their own fanwank about various matters, or created their own definitions, and now insist that those are the "canon" to which one must adhere - particularly as regards merely visual matters, like the exact details of appearance of a Constitution-class starship.
Point: TOS begins with the episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before", with a later flashback to the events of "The Cage" (outlined during Spock's court martial in "The Menagerie"). It ends, sadly, with the rather disappointing "Turnabout Intruder", although a rational case can be made for including the TOS movies in the same heading (even though that weakens the supposed point about what the Enterprise looked like during TOS and DSC; there's a ten-year gap there, and in TMP they did a pretty doggone thorough revamping of every visual element of the ship in only two.)
Point: Any claims about the numeracy of Vulcans and Romulans is pure fanwank. We have no real idea how big the Romulan Star Empire is, although Scotty's statements about the lack of warp drive in the Romulan ship in "Balance of Terror" imply that it can't be more than maybe a few dozen lightyears across. We also have no information about how many, if any, offworld colonies Vulcan has - ST09 rather implies that there are none, but then again ST09 also has a supernova whose destructive effects threaten "an entire quadrant" (that's one-fourth) of the Milky Way, a stellar structure over 100,000 ly across and out at our distance from the core some 3000 ly thick, so we can assume that it falls under the heading of Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale. We do, however, know that as of TOS, all the beings calling themselves "Vulcans" follow the philosophies of Surak. We also know it's been a few thousand years since Surak walked the sand and stones of Vulcan, so his points have almost certainly been re-interpreted a few times, which is why beings who claim to be "emotionless" and driven by pure logic are also aloof bigots who regard pretty much everyone else as stunted children who need a keeper.
Point: Spock has lied on multiple occasions. His actions in "The Menagerie" have already been mentioned; he also lied to McCoy, Kirk, and Sulu in "Amok Time" simply because he was embarrassed about Vulcan physioneurology (hardly the "purely logical" reaction, hey?), and to the Romulan commander in "The Enterprise Incident" (his orders did not, I'm pretty sure, involve gaining the affections of the captain of the ship Kirk was infiltrating). He wasn't exactly forthcoming with his ex-girlfriend at the Academy, either, as mentioned in "This Side of Paradise". Not to mention his repeated claims to have "no emotions" across the run of the series, claims repeatedly belied by his own actions (recall his reaction on finding Kirk alive at the end of "Amok Time", for instance, and you can't even blame that one on pon farr).
Discovery gave Cryptic something new to wrap an expansion around with content that yet again leads right into the existing 25th century storyline. A storyline that has more or less stalled due to development attention being focused on Discovery content.
Not really. As Cryptic themselves have admitted no less than three times now, they were pretty much out of ideas for major stoylines for STO. Besides the "Mirror Leeta returns" plot they originally had planned for after ViL(which I suspect would have been STO's big Mirror Universe focused storyline, which would also have a major focus on the Prophets/Pah-Wraiths), the 25th century story of STO was pretty much done before Discovery came around.
We have been to all four quadrants, interacted with pretty much every major galactic power in Trek canon, talked to the Guardian of Forever, received visions from the Prophets, fought the Doomsday machine, explored the Dyson Sphere, been to the Mirror Universe, shattered the Crystalline Entity, etc. etc. They have mentioned smaller ideas for patrol sized narratives, and "Beyond the Nexus" style one offs, but that isn't "storyline" content. That is just more side stuff to do.
Yeah, as with the earlier reply to this, the "out of ideas" response doesn't fly, really. Admittedly I don't read every blog or post but I would like to see where that was posted and the context, because if I had read that, I would have been enquiring as the competence of the person writing it - for as the other response made to the above post, there are sooooo many things that could be explored within the 2409-10 universe, if you merely focus for a few seconds on it, but the Devs haven't been because of going back to the shows and getting the actors in to reprise their roles.
That's a choice and 'stalling' the game timeline has been the price - but still arguably the right choice. As the passing of Aron Eisenberg has made us all painfully aware (and anyone at DSTB this weekend and heard/saw JG Hertzler talk about him would have realised) that the actors that play these beloved characters aren't getting any younger, so let's get them in-game whilst we still can.
That said, much of that is already done. It might be nice to get Suzie Plakson come in as Game Q's 'Mom', and/or as a more mature Dr Selar, or see what happened with the Enterprise Crew, (Reed, Mayweather, Hoshi in particular - Federation-Romulan war, anyone?), and wouldn't we love to see the TNG crew members that we haven't seen so far - such as Will (and Tom) Riker, Deanna Troi, Dr Crusher and - dare I say - Wesley!
Let alone all those Captains...
But hoping/dreaming aside, the main things I hope for from the game right now are that a) there is more 25th century content and more exploration of those lesser known worlds, as already expressed in this thread, but also that b) the game timeline doesn't get broken by CBS with Picard.
I hear from the likes of Ambassador Kael that STO has a good relationship with CBS/paramount and that they have been liaising over the Picard show - which is great - and hopefully means that they won't 'break the game', by introducing storylines that destroy the timeline created within the game, but we have already seen a more human Seven of Nine in the trailers than we have in the later-set game, which isn't a good sign of the rest of the above being true.
OK, that can be fixed, by adjusting the character in-game, to tie-in better, but ideally, it shouldn't be necessary.
I hear rationalisations that if 'game-breaking' storylines come to pass in the likes of ST: Picard, that we have had games before that have stood on their own, etc, but as a long-time player who has paid into the game more than he ever paid towards watching any of the shows or movies, in terms of both time and money (but probably not as much as a fair few of you reading this), I feel very invested in the game, which is, after all, coming up to an anniversary that none of the TV shows achieved.
I would be far from happy if CBS broke the game for the sake of the new show - or any other show - because STO isn't strictly canon, and they are more concerned about the shows.
I feel sure that if they did that to the game, they would lose me not just from the game, but sour me on Star Trek in general.
We may have started playing this game at a time when there were no shows, and got our 'fix' this way, but now that there are an abundance of shows, I really hope that the Execs don't consider STO as superfluous and respect the players, as well as the Devs.
STO already had that, its called the Iconian arc. It began at the game's launch in February 2010, and ran until "Midnight" released in September 2015. Even then, the next arc, the Temporal Cold War arc, was all about the repercussions of our actions in the Iconian War(the deletion of the Tuterians and Noye's wife), so one could argue that story ran until "Ragnarok" released in July 2016.
The first 6.5 years of the game's narrative was one giant meta story filled with smaller stories inside it that connected to, and built upon it, without necessarily all being directly related to each other
Absolutely. IMO the best thing about this game is the storyline, which is why I am so concerned about it being broken.
> @ajm1067 said:
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> Absolutely. IMO the best thing about this game is the storyline, which is why I am so concerned about it being broken.
IIRC they said they would establish the game as being in a separate universe if that did happen.
So we would have Prime Universe, Mirror Universe, Kelvin Universe, STO Universe, possibly Mirror STO Universe and all those universes in Parallels.
Which wouldn't make a big difference to me since this is exactly how I look at this game universe now. Honestly I never understood why CBS is so hell bent on giving the TOS universe the brush in favor of the Discovery angle. The uniforms, ships , technology etc in no way even resembles the TOS version of Star Trek.
For me as an example William Shatner is always going to be the face of Captain Kirk, not Chris Pine , that Captain Kirk is from another universe or parallel one and for me that clicks right.
CBS I think would have done better by hiring that guy that made a great work of a piece of fan fiction that was just a "Prelude" because honestly it was more interesting than anything that is currently out now. But that's just my opinion.
"There is iron in your words of death for all Comanche to see, and so there is iron in your words of life. No signed paper can hold the iron. It must come from men. The words of Ten Bears carries the same iron of life and death. It is good that warriors such as we meet in the struggle of life... or death. It shall be life." - Ten Bears (Will Sampson)
The "out of ideas" thing is because the devs fell into the same storytelling style trap that TMP and everything that followed did (and that trap is very easy to fall into btw, so it is not a bad reflection on STO).
In TOS the Enterprise was just an ordinary ship (well, technically it was a "hard luck" ship that tended to run into trouble in the most innocuous of places) with a crew that was a bit better than average and thought out of the box and were lead by a somewhat loose-cannon, flamboyant, but very clever captain (Kirk). While it was the hero ship it was just one of many Starfleet vessels doing important things all over the Federation and the frontiers (and yes, they saved the universe or timeline a few times but it was not the standard thing for the show).
Then, about a decade after the series ended Star Wars exploded on the scene triggering off a tidal wave of interest in science fiction in Hollywood and Paramount started looking to Trek as their surfboard. The Phase II series was cancelled late in their run-up to filming and everything was transferred to the movie division, who then turned it into the typical quasi-epic movie style where the heroes are not just people particularly good at their jobs, they are essentially the chosen ones, the ONLY ones who can save the day on a wide scale while everyone else is totally ineffective set dressing.
Unfortunately TNG more or less kept the movie division's ideas of plot style and Trek settled into the weird idea that every series has to block out its own timeframe where every important event involving the Federation or Fed ships falls to the one hero ship and (with a small exception here and there) all the rest are irrelevant and just serve to show how desperate things are (sort of like TOS redshirts) with no room anywhere in the block for any other stories about other ships and crews.
As others have pointed out already, while it is nice to have grand arcs it is not necessary to have everything be part of those arcs, TV (and later games) have run just fine with threads instead of solid arcs for a long time before the networks started skimping on the number of episodes and simplifying everything into a long narrow-focus miniseries format that can be told in the limited time available per season now.
As for the Number One stuff, the fact that she was enhanced was in her bio in the original pre-second-pilot series bible, and the script was written with that in mind. Barrett played her that way too, though it was not incredibly obvious since they did not stop for technobabble sessions all the time like they did in TNG, and The Cage was mostly Pike's story not Number One's so no plausible situation to show it came up. The transhuman part is not a fan creation, that fan thing was the idea that her name was actually "Number One" and that it signified she was the "best" person from her planet instead of it being a nickname for her position (like "Bones" was for McCoy). Back then fans would dig into all sorts of obscure things from the production of the show to base fan stuff on, it is not like today were very few even care.
The fact that it was never explicitly talked about in dialog could be taken as a sign that the transhumant idea was dropped even before filming, but from what Roddenberry said at conventions and in interviews when asked about her that was not the case, it was NBC's demand that they get rid of the character that shut down the ideas he wanted to explore with her character (though a later script with a similar theme thread was heavily rewritten to be closer to Roddenberry's idea and addressed a few of the questions, the very popular "Space Seed").
One piece of trivia that bears on the subject was that in the next-to-last script version for "The Cage" the usual landing part people were still a bit banged up from their previous encounter-- all but Number One who already healed from it (and according to a comment from Pike she mostly avoided getting whomped on like the rest of them though she was in the same fight) but they had to cut for time and to simplify things a bit (though the helmsman or astrogator, I forget which offhand, was still shown with the bone knitting brace on his forearm).
I haven't had the time to go and pull the exact quote from the third link, but he says it in there also.
Thanks. Context helps.
I think I can identify a lack of imagination there ("we hit every major thing"), in terms of perhaps looking at minor worlds and making them important, due to a discovery, or conflict, or something, and a lack of willingness to explore/create new worlds.
I suspect however that if they had not had new Trek to tap into, perhaps necessity would have got the minds working on it and perhaps then they would have gone down the sort of routes (I) suggested are available.
> @ajm1067 said:
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> Absolutely. IMO the best thing about this game is the storyline, which is why I am so concerned about it being broken.
IIRC they said they would establish the game as being in a separate universe if that did happen.
So we would have Prime Universe, Mirror Universe, Kelvin Universe, STO Universe, possibly Mirror STO Universe and all those universes in Parallels.
Which wouldn't make a big difference to me since this is exactly how I look at this game universe now.
That is illogical, Captain.
For me, that would negate much of the immersion, if the STO Universe became parallel and out of line with "canon".
I cannot regard the STO timeline as parallel. Because it simply isn't. The canon timeline is integral to the game's timeline. If you break that, you break the game, AFAIAC.
And seeing as so much effort has been spent over the decade to maintain (or correct) the STO timeline as being in keeping with canon, to do something now that would alter that would, as I see it, be utterly disrespectful of all those involved with STO over the years, on both sides of the paywall.
The Devs, etc, have the dilemma of being paid staff, are therefore subordinate in the corporate Trek world and therefore cannot openly rebel against 'the powers that be'. But as a paying player, I sure as hell can.
But for now, I'm asking: Unforeseen circumstances aside (as in the death of someone who appears in ST Picard and STO), please do not TRIBBLE with the established timeline of this game from within the new shows. I think you would ruin STO for me, and possibly ruin it for enough people to make a significant difference to the game's viability.
> @ajm1067 said:
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> Absolutely. IMO the best thing about this game is the storyline, which is why I am so concerned about it being broken.
IIRC they said they would establish the game as being in a separate universe if that did happen.
So we would have Prime Universe, Mirror Universe, Kelvin Universe, STO Universe, possibly Mirror STO Universe and all those universes in Parallels.
Which wouldn't make a big difference to me since this is exactly how I look at this game universe now.
That is illogical, Captain.
(just saving space here but I did read what you wrote)
I understand your opinion on the subject and do agree with you on the basis that how you play this game or in this case view the Star Trek universe is your view, your opinion and play style. Nothing illogical about that at all. it's how you make the game and the entertainment venues (tv and movies) more enjoyable for you.
I know you didn't say this but I would like to expand on my original post that I am not suggesting that folks should play and perceive the game as I do. I play this game and view the world of Star Trek with my set of standards on what I find entertaining or what would make sense to me.
Right now I do not see how the Discovery Universe is in the same timeline as the TOS universe (and here I could be wrong about this if they in fact do not share the same universe at least according to the CBS writers). The technology , the overall look of Discovery is vastly different to the TOS. But that is just how I look at it. It is how I am able to deal with the whole Discovery story and not be overly critical of it. If I am of the mindset that this just a variant or parallel universe then it makes it alot easier for me to enjoy the story.
Two things on a more positive note. There is alot of potential with the Discovery line. The ships, uniforms and the technology are very attractive to me and some of the series has some interesting moments so I'm not saying the series is garbage, just a different take much like the JJ Abrams movies.
Last is I know there is no way I could expect the execs at CBS (or Paramount for that matter) to take a look at my post and stop every project they have for the Star Trek franchise and say "stop what you're doing and read what Shrimphead has said and head his words!!!" Yeah right...so I think whoever is way into the Discovery camp has nothing to worry about as far as how canon will be dictated and I am totally fine with that. I just will look at it in my own way so I won't just walk away from it completely.
This is just my opinion is all.
"There is iron in your words of death for all Comanche to see, and so there is iron in your words of life. No signed paper can hold the iron. It must come from men. The words of Ten Bears carries the same iron of life and death. It is good that warriors such as we meet in the struggle of life... or death. It shall be life." - Ten Bears (Will Sampson)
The overall look is unimportant, really. And yes, DSC is part of the same timeline, the same universe if you will, as ENT, TOS, TNG, DS9, and even VOY. In the words of Khan Singh, we are all one big happy fleet!
As for future directions for STO, if they run out of things to reference from various series, they could always have Starfleet engineers stabilize the quantum slipstream drive, then we go out to explore one or more of the Milky Way's satellite galaxies. Or heck, we could even use some Iconian portals to the Andromeda galaxy, and see what's up with the Kelvans.
Discovery gave Cryptic something new to wrap an expansion around with content that yet again leads right into the existing 25th century storyline. A storyline that has more or less stalled due to development attention being focused on Discovery content.
Not really. As Cryptic themselves have admitted no less than three times now, they were pretty much out of ideas for major stoylines for STO. Besides the "Mirror Leeta returns" plot they originally had planned for after ViL(which I suspect would have been STO's big Mirror Universe focused storyline, which would also have a major focus on the Prophets/Pah-Wraiths), the 25th century story of STO was pretty much done before Discovery came around.
We have been to all four quadrants, interacted with pretty much every major galactic power in Trek canon, talked to the Guardian of Forever, received visions from the Prophets, fought the Doomsday machine, explored the Dyson Sphere, been to the Mirror Universe, shattered the Crystalline Entity, etc. etc. They have mentioned smaller ideas for patrol sized narratives, and "Beyond the Nexus" style one offs, but that isn't "storyline" content. That is just more side stuff to do.
Yeah you can see that in the way ViL ended. Loriss is now talking to the Prophets??? That has nothing to do with the Gamma story OR Disco. It DOES tie-in to the mirror universe stuff though.
> @spiritborn said:
> Honestly I'd say that it's more like that Vulcans are similar to christians in most christian majority nations here on Earth, most Vulcans are technically followers of the surakian teachings but they aren't really all that devout or fanatical.
>
> Also where was it mentioned that Number One was an augment (or anything about her that wasn't obvious by looking at her) if wasn't in the Cage it matters just as much as my foundry projects did, that is to say not at all.
No most members of the Vulcan species have utterly rejected Surak's teachings. It is only really the minority that lives on Vulcan that follows Surak. The vast majority of Vulcans, who call themselves Romulans, have nothing to do with Surak.
As for the "number one is an augment" thats a fan creation not relevant to anything as it has no connection to even discarded plans for the character.
I'm pretty sure modern romulans don't really see themselves as "vulcans" as their identity as "romulans" have taken over their identity as "Vulcans". As for the population of the planet Vulcan or its colonies those are predominantly surakian (unless you can point otherwise, even the high command was officially surakian even if corrupt). Calling modern romulans "vulcan" would like calling citizen of USA, british as US was a former british colony.
Hell based on TNG there's a biological difference between those from the Planet Vulcan and citizens of the RSE. Also I'm pretty Enterprise never said that "those marching under the raptor banner" were a majority in fact what we know of Surak's teachings suggests they were in fact a minority (a large minority sure but a minority none the less).
Way way way back we were given the KDF afterlife missions with a very teaser ending that tied the Fek'ihri to the Hur'q. It was very vague and very unexplored for a very long time. Instead in an anticlimactic way we find out it was actually a secret Dominion project that created the Fek'ihri and they are only related to the Hur'q in that they were both Dominion projects. It also doesn't really explain why the Fek'ihri have a whole fleet standing by to play with. You'd think the Dominion would have destroyed them once realizing the Fek'ihri were uncontrollable.
They explain this in "Doomed to Repeat". The Dominion let the Fek'Ihri continue to run amok in local space in the hope they, and the Klingons, would destroy each other. All of the Fek'Ihi were in Klingon space, the Dominion had no reason to care if they were loose or not.
The Hur'q themselves are not even canon in the game, with no reasonable liklihood of them ever having established a museum of their conquests and holographic tech, especially one that included the Sword of Kahless, as any point of their society as we saw in the one DS9 episode. Instead they are a crazy species that devours worlds in their Dominion induced insanity. This is a lost chance to actually explore the Hur'q and the Fek'ihri.
What appears as mindless aggression may only be the survival instinct of 'fight or flight' with Ketracel White being more of a key that unlocks deeper brain functions like emotion and creativity. Even when aggressive and starving, the Hur'q are still capable of piloting their starships, maneuvering tactically, and working together; indicating they are more than just mindless consuming creatures.
If they were simply insane/crazy they wouldn't be able to build and pilot starships, make tactical decisions, find things to steal etc. etc.
The gamma missions also reveal the most nonsensical thing of all, that the Tzenkethi admiral was supposedly the Female changeling all along. Well we don't actually know how long, but it is implied. Yet that completely destroys the Tzenkethi storyline as it wasn't the admiral behind their crusade, but the Autarch, and it doesn't begin to explain why they would destroy worlds without any Hur'q eggs. The admiral simply being a madman would have opened up further exploration of Tzenkethi issues. While Bajor is explained as a desperate ruse to draw the Alliance into the Hur'q threat, the Tzenkethi crusade doesn't fit with the idea that the hibernation cycle of the Hur'q, because they've been devastating Dominion space for a while, yet lay dormant in the alpha.
The Admiral manipulated the Autarch into it.
The only world without eggs that the Tzenkethi attacked was Bajor, and that was because, as you mentioned, Odo had put a Hur'q beacon there to make the Tzenkethi think the Hur'q were there, so he could swoop in and save the day as a means to convince the Alliance to help deal with the Hur'q problem in the Gamma Quadrant.
That isn't how hibernation works. Just look at Earth animals, not all bears go to sleep on the same day, or wake up on the same day. The Hur'q in the GQ could only have woken up after the Iconian War was over, as Sela spent some time in the GQ trying to get the Dominion to send a fleet to help the Alliance and makes no mention of the Hur'q invasion when she returns. The GQ Hur'q could have only been awake for maybe a month or so.
it cuts off the Tzenkethi line with a very messy chop that gives us no reason to explore them further because it was all a Dominion plot.
Even if the Tzenkethi weren't being manipulated by the Dominion, there would have still been no reason to continue exploring them. The Tzenkethi's actions were an attempt to stop the Hur'q, something they failed at doing, and we succeeded at. With the Hur'q threat over they would have had no reason to continue bombing planets, and would have gone back to their space. At that point anything they do falls under the Prime Directive's internal politics clause, and is none of our business.
Its much the same thing as the Voth. The Voth were trying to get Omega to fight the Borg, and destroy warp travel through a large portion of space in doing so. That isn't good for anyone really, so we stopped them by pushing them out of the Sphere. Then we went to the Delta Quadrant, formed the Delta Alliance, defeated the Vaadwaur and the Borg(again), and left the Delta Alliance there to deal with any remaining problems. With the Voth pushed out of the Sphere, and their primary reason for trying to get the Omega defeated again, the Voth had no reason to continue, so we had no reason to keep messing with them either. That the Voth have problems intenrally due to the number of people who resist the Voth's "Doctrine" is not our business.
Unanswered hooks is what lets you write sequels and continue a storyline. Your very claim that the Devs are out of storyline ideas is exactly the point as to why its a bad idea to close everything off, as well as tying it together too much.
And obviously no the Fek'ihri weren't all in Klingon space. The large fleet that emerges at the end of that mission is proof to the contrary, not to mention the vast numbers of stasis pods.
Hur'q insanity is fairly obvious. A peaceful species driven to absurd levels of violence is pretty easily described as insanity. We call all kinds of mass murderers insane and they are more than capable of killing their victims in their chosen way, eating meals to survive, getting from A to B, and even disposing of bodies in many cases. What we don't see from the Hur'q though, is any kind of trophy hunting mentality. They aren't the Hirogen, but that DS9 episode made it clear they would and could collect trophies to display to other Hur'q, especially the Sword of Kahless. That is utterly absent in STO.
Renegade's Regret (or whatever Parr's mission is) shows us the Tzenkethi destroying a planet after they moved all the eggs to an uninhabited moon. They also mercilessly wiped out defenseless civilian ships.
We are supposed to believe that the Hur'q hibernation ended long enough ago in the gamma quadrant to devastate the Dominion's fleets and ability to fight them to the point that they hatched a plan to replace an admiral in the Tzenkethi fleet and start destroying worlds left and right to ultimately gather at Bajor and on command wake the remaining alpha quadrant Hur'q to attack Bajor. This is not something that happened in a week.
It's also ridiculously complicated to the point that it should have failed miserably as a plan. The Hur'q already awake in the gamma quadrant, could therefore have woken up in the alpha at any time, before the lion's share of egg purging was done which would have made for a very different and less successful battle of Bajor. The alliance also could have caught up to the Tzenkethi quicker and cut off the head of the snake before the plan was ready to conclude at Bajor.
Maybe discussions of this kind should have some kind of referencing system enforced in order to reduce 'grandstanding' (where you say something is 'true' with no form of proof).
At the end of the day what the I.P holder says is cannon, is cannon.
How people 'feel' about the look of one series compared to another, is completely irrelevant, even if the most recent iterations do not look like TOS, the I.P holder has stated they part of the same time line:
(Link: https://time.com/4952491/star-trek-discovery-timeline).
Comments
Also where was it mentioned that Number One was an augment (or anything about her that wasn't obvious by looking at her) if wasn't in the Cage it matters just as much as my foundry projects did, that is to say not at all.
Point: TOS begins with the episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before", with a later flashback to the events of "The Cage" (outlined during Spock's court martial in "The Menagerie"). It ends, sadly, with the rather disappointing "Turnabout Intruder", although a rational case can be made for including the TOS movies in the same heading (even though that weakens the supposed point about what the Enterprise looked like during TOS and DSC; there's a ten-year gap there, and in TMP they did a pretty doggone thorough revamping of every visual element of the ship in only two.)
Point: Any claims about the numeracy of Vulcans and Romulans is pure fanwank. We have no real idea how big the Romulan Star Empire is, although Scotty's statements about the lack of warp drive in the Romulan ship in "Balance of Terror" imply that it can't be more than maybe a few dozen lightyears across. We also have no information about how many, if any, offworld colonies Vulcan has - ST09 rather implies that there are none, but then again ST09 also has a supernova whose destructive effects threaten "an entire quadrant" (that's one-fourth) of the Milky Way, a stellar structure over 100,000 ly across and out at our distance from the core some 3000 ly thick, so we can assume that it falls under the heading of Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale. We do, however, know that as of TOS, all the beings calling themselves "Vulcans" follow the philosophies of Surak. We also know it's been a few thousand years since Surak walked the sand and stones of Vulcan, so his points have almost certainly been re-interpreted a few times, which is why beings who claim to be "emotionless" and driven by pure logic are also aloof bigots who regard pretty much everyone else as stunted children who need a keeper.
Point: Spock has lied on multiple occasions. His actions in "The Menagerie" have already been mentioned; he also lied to McCoy, Kirk, and Sulu in "Amok Time" simply because he was embarrassed about Vulcan physioneurology (hardly the "purely logical" reaction, hey?), and to the Romulan commander in "The Enterprise Incident" (his orders did not, I'm pretty sure, involve gaining the affections of the captain of the ship Kirk was infiltrating). He wasn't exactly forthcoming with his ex-girlfriend at the Academy, either, as mentioned in "This Side of Paradise". Not to mention his repeated claims to have "no emotions" across the run of the series, claims repeatedly belied by his own actions (recall his reaction on finding Kirk alive at the end of "Amok Time", for instance, and you can't even blame that one on pon farr).
Yeah, as with the earlier reply to this, the "out of ideas" response doesn't fly, really. Admittedly I don't read every blog or post but I would like to see where that was posted and the context, because if I had read that, I would have been enquiring as the competence of the person writing it - for as the other response made to the above post, there are sooooo many things that could be explored within the 2409-10 universe, if you merely focus for a few seconds on it, but the Devs haven't been because of going back to the shows and getting the actors in to reprise their roles.
That's a choice and 'stalling' the game timeline has been the price - but still arguably the right choice. As the passing of Aron Eisenberg has made us all painfully aware (and anyone at DSTB this weekend and heard/saw JG Hertzler talk about him would have realised) that the actors that play these beloved characters aren't getting any younger, so let's get them in-game whilst we still can.
That said, much of that is already done. It might be nice to get Suzie Plakson come in as Game Q's 'Mom', and/or as a more mature Dr Selar, or see what happened with the Enterprise Crew, (Reed, Mayweather, Hoshi in particular - Federation-Romulan war, anyone?), and wouldn't we love to see the TNG crew members that we haven't seen so far - such as Will (and Tom) Riker, Deanna Troi, Dr Crusher and - dare I say - Wesley!
Let alone all those Captains...
But hoping/dreaming aside, the main things I hope for from the game right now are that a) there is more 25th century content and more exploration of those lesser known worlds, as already expressed in this thread, but also that b) the game timeline doesn't get broken by CBS with Picard.
I hear from the likes of Ambassador Kael that STO has a good relationship with CBS/paramount and that they have been liaising over the Picard show - which is great - and hopefully means that they won't 'break the game', by introducing storylines that destroy the timeline created within the game, but we have already seen a more human Seven of Nine in the trailers than we have in the later-set game, which isn't a good sign of the rest of the above being true.
OK, that can be fixed, by adjusting the character in-game, to tie-in better, but ideally, it shouldn't be necessary.
I hear rationalisations that if 'game-breaking' storylines come to pass in the likes of ST: Picard, that we have had games before that have stood on their own, etc, but as a long-time player who has paid into the game more than he ever paid towards watching any of the shows or movies, in terms of both time and money (but probably not as much as a fair few of you reading this), I feel very invested in the game, which is, after all, coming up to an anniversary that none of the TV shows achieved.
I would be far from happy if CBS broke the game for the sake of the new show - or any other show - because STO isn't strictly canon, and they are more concerned about the shows.
I feel sure that if they did that to the game, they would lose me not just from the game, but sour me on Star Trek in general.
We may have started playing this game at a time when there were no shows, and got our 'fix' this way, but now that there are an abundance of shows, I really hope that the Execs don't consider STO as superfluous and respect the players, as well as the Devs.
Absolutely. IMO the best thing about this game is the storyline, which is why I am so concerned about it being broken.
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> Absolutely. IMO the best thing about this game is the storyline, which is why I am so concerned about it being broken.
IIRC they said they would establish the game as being in a separate universe if that did happen.
So we would have Prime Universe, Mirror Universe, Kelvin Universe, STO Universe, possibly Mirror STO Universe and all those universes in Parallels.
Which wouldn't make a big difference to me since this is exactly how I look at this game universe now. Honestly I never understood why CBS is so hell bent on giving the TOS universe the brush in favor of the Discovery angle. The uniforms, ships , technology etc in no way even resembles the TOS version of Star Trek.
For me as an example William Shatner is always going to be the face of Captain Kirk, not Chris Pine , that Captain Kirk is from another universe or parallel one and for me that clicks right.
CBS I think would have done better by hiring that guy that made a great work of a piece of fan fiction that was just a "Prelude" because honestly it was more interesting than anything that is currently out now. But that's just my opinion.
In TOS the Enterprise was just an ordinary ship (well, technically it was a "hard luck" ship that tended to run into trouble in the most innocuous of places) with a crew that was a bit better than average and thought out of the box and were lead by a somewhat loose-cannon, flamboyant, but very clever captain (Kirk). While it was the hero ship it was just one of many Starfleet vessels doing important things all over the Federation and the frontiers (and yes, they saved the universe or timeline a few times but it was not the standard thing for the show).
Then, about a decade after the series ended Star Wars exploded on the scene triggering off a tidal wave of interest in science fiction in Hollywood and Paramount started looking to Trek as their surfboard. The Phase II series was cancelled late in their run-up to filming and everything was transferred to the movie division, who then turned it into the typical quasi-epic movie style where the heroes are not just people particularly good at their jobs, they are essentially the chosen ones, the ONLY ones who can save the day on a wide scale while everyone else is totally ineffective set dressing.
Unfortunately TNG more or less kept the movie division's ideas of plot style and Trek settled into the weird idea that every series has to block out its own timeframe where every important event involving the Federation or Fed ships falls to the one hero ship and (with a small exception here and there) all the rest are irrelevant and just serve to show how desperate things are (sort of like TOS redshirts) with no room anywhere in the block for any other stories about other ships and crews.
As others have pointed out already, while it is nice to have grand arcs it is not necessary to have everything be part of those arcs, TV (and later games) have run just fine with threads instead of solid arcs for a long time before the networks started skimping on the number of episodes and simplifying everything into a long narrow-focus miniseries format that can be told in the limited time available per season now.
As for the Number One stuff, the fact that she was enhanced was in her bio in the original pre-second-pilot series bible, and the script was written with that in mind. Barrett played her that way too, though it was not incredibly obvious since they did not stop for technobabble sessions all the time like they did in TNG, and The Cage was mostly Pike's story not Number One's so no plausible situation to show it came up. The transhuman part is not a fan creation, that fan thing was the idea that her name was actually "Number One" and that it signified she was the "best" person from her planet instead of it being a nickname for her position (like "Bones" was for McCoy). Back then fans would dig into all sorts of obscure things from the production of the show to base fan stuff on, it is not like today were very few even care.
The fact that it was never explicitly talked about in dialog could be taken as a sign that the transhumant idea was dropped even before filming, but from what Roddenberry said at conventions and in interviews when asked about her that was not the case, it was NBC's demand that they get rid of the character that shut down the ideas he wanted to explore with her character (though a later script with a similar theme thread was heavily rewritten to be closer to Roddenberry's idea and addressed a few of the questions, the very popular "Space Seed").
One piece of trivia that bears on the subject was that in the next-to-last script version for "The Cage" the usual landing part people were still a bit banged up from their previous encounter-- all but Number One who already healed from it (and according to a comment from Pike she mostly avoided getting whomped on like the rest of them though she was in the same fight) but they had to cut for time and to simplify things a bit (though the helmsman or astrogator, I forget which offhand, was still shown with the bone knitting brace on his forearm).
Thanks. Context helps.
I think I can identify a lack of imagination there ("we hit every major thing"), in terms of perhaps looking at minor worlds and making them important, due to a discovery, or conflict, or something, and a lack of willingness to explore/create new worlds.
I suspect however that if they had not had new Trek to tap into, perhaps necessity would have got the minds working on it and perhaps then they would have gone down the sort of routes (I) suggested are available.
That is illogical, Captain.
For me, that would negate much of the immersion, if the STO Universe became parallel and out of line with "canon".
I cannot regard the STO timeline as parallel. Because it simply isn't. The canon timeline is integral to the game's timeline. If you break that, you break the game, AFAIAC.
And seeing as so much effort has been spent over the decade to maintain (or correct) the STO timeline as being in keeping with canon, to do something now that would alter that would, as I see it, be utterly disrespectful of all those involved with STO over the years, on both sides of the paywall.
The Devs, etc, have the dilemma of being paid staff, are therefore subordinate in the corporate Trek world and therefore cannot openly rebel against 'the powers that be'. But as a paying player, I sure as hell can.
But for now, I'm asking: Unforeseen circumstances aside (as in the death of someone who appears in ST Picard and STO), please do not TRIBBLE with the established timeline of this game from within the new shows. I think you would ruin STO for me, and possibly ruin it for enough people to make a significant difference to the game's viability.
I understand your opinion on the subject and do agree with you on the basis that how you play this game or in this case view the Star Trek universe is your view, your opinion and play style. Nothing illogical about that at all. it's how you make the game and the entertainment venues (tv and movies) more enjoyable for you.
I know you didn't say this but I would like to expand on my original post that I am not suggesting that folks should play and perceive the game as I do. I play this game and view the world of Star Trek with my set of standards on what I find entertaining or what would make sense to me.
Right now I do not see how the Discovery Universe is in the same timeline as the TOS universe (and here I could be wrong about this if they in fact do not share the same universe at least according to the CBS writers). The technology , the overall look of Discovery is vastly different to the TOS. But that is just how I look at it. It is how I am able to deal with the whole Discovery story and not be overly critical of it. If I am of the mindset that this just a variant or parallel universe then it makes it alot easier for me to enjoy the story.
Two things on a more positive note. There is alot of potential with the Discovery line. The ships, uniforms and the technology are very attractive to me and some of the series has some interesting moments so I'm not saying the series is garbage, just a different take much like the JJ Abrams movies.
Last is I know there is no way I could expect the execs at CBS (or Paramount for that matter) to take a look at my post and stop every project they have for the Star Trek franchise and say "stop what you're doing and read what Shrimphead has said and head his words!!!" Yeah right...so I think whoever is way into the Discovery camp has nothing to worry about as far as how canon will be dictated and I am totally fine with that. I just will look at it in my own way so I won't just walk away from it completely.
This is just my opinion is all.
As for future directions for STO, if they run out of things to reference from various series, they could always have Starfleet engineers stabilize the quantum slipstream drive, then we go out to explore one or more of the Milky Way's satellite galaxies. Or heck, we could even use some Iconian portals to the Andromeda galaxy, and see what's up with the Kelvans.
which reminds me... what's Mirror-Loriss like?
My character Tsin'xing
I'm pretty sure modern romulans don't really see themselves as "vulcans" as their identity as "romulans" have taken over their identity as "Vulcans". As for the population of the planet Vulcan or its colonies those are predominantly surakian (unless you can point otherwise, even the high command was officially surakian even if corrupt). Calling modern romulans "vulcan" would like calling citizen of USA, british as US was a former british colony.
Hell based on TNG there's a biological difference between those from the Planet Vulcan and citizens of the RSE. Also I'm pretty Enterprise never said that "those marching under the raptor banner" were a majority in fact what we know of Surak's teachings suggests they were in fact a minority (a large minority sure but a minority none the less).
Unanswered hooks is what lets you write sequels and continue a storyline. Your very claim that the Devs are out of storyline ideas is exactly the point as to why its a bad idea to close everything off, as well as tying it together too much.
And obviously no the Fek'ihri weren't all in Klingon space. The large fleet that emerges at the end of that mission is proof to the contrary, not to mention the vast numbers of stasis pods.
Hur'q insanity is fairly obvious. A peaceful species driven to absurd levels of violence is pretty easily described as insanity. We call all kinds of mass murderers insane and they are more than capable of killing their victims in their chosen way, eating meals to survive, getting from A to B, and even disposing of bodies in many cases. What we don't see from the Hur'q though, is any kind of trophy hunting mentality. They aren't the Hirogen, but that DS9 episode made it clear they would and could collect trophies to display to other Hur'q, especially the Sword of Kahless. That is utterly absent in STO.
Renegade's Regret (or whatever Parr's mission is) shows us the Tzenkethi destroying a planet after they moved all the eggs to an uninhabited moon. They also mercilessly wiped out defenseless civilian ships.
We are supposed to believe that the Hur'q hibernation ended long enough ago in the gamma quadrant to devastate the Dominion's fleets and ability to fight them to the point that they hatched a plan to replace an admiral in the Tzenkethi fleet and start destroying worlds left and right to ultimately gather at Bajor and on command wake the remaining alpha quadrant Hur'q to attack Bajor. This is not something that happened in a week.
It's also ridiculously complicated to the point that it should have failed miserably as a plan. The Hur'q already awake in the gamma quadrant, could therefore have woken up in the alpha at any time, before the lion's share of egg purging was done which would have made for a very different and less successful battle of Bajor. The alliance also could have caught up to the Tzenkethi quicker and cut off the head of the snake before the plan was ready to conclude at Bajor.
At the end of the day what the I.P holder says is cannon, is cannon.
How people 'feel' about the look of one series compared to another, is completely irrelevant, even if the most recent iterations do not look like TOS, the I.P holder has stated they part of the same time line:
(Link: https://time.com/4952491/star-trek-discovery-timeline).
Um... no it's not. Some of the best stories have ambiguous/unanswered or even no ending.
Inception/The Crying Lot of 49/No Country for Old Men/'Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and Spring'.
Unanswered questions can make a story all the more poignant, and is not necessarily a sign of bad writing.