> @flash525 said: > Their focus may have been on technology, but to imply they didn't add biologicals when on their technological quest is a little absurd. Even with technology, they still need drones, and the Borg don't reproduce in the normal manner.
They did. There were Borg children. Yes Voyager showed children and we can sloppily retcon everything. But fact is when the Borg showed up there were not different species and they reproduced, because it was a cautionary tale of a society bevoming too dependant on technology. They were not Zombies yet.
^ 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
Yet they do use antimatter on planets. It is one of the main signs of a warp capable civilization as it is the first realistic means of powering warp drive, and of ending energy scarcity in a civilization. I'm sure several episodes in the various series have shown us this concept, though I can't tell you any off the top of my head.
I am actually fairly confident that the mentioning of antimatter reactions on planet would be a rare exception.
They tend to detect warp capable species by seing them fly around at warp - unless they have advance observation posts on a habitable planet and see that they're close to developing the tech.
It is also not clear that you always need antimatter to run a warp core. Or rather, we know that isn't the case, because the Romulans use a singularity drive. The exact energy source of the Phoenix is never stated on screen, it could be antimatter, or it could be something less advanced - he just needed to get to Warp 1 for a few minutes at best, not Warp 8 for days.
I don't think we know of any other potential energy technology that ST uses with the kind of efficiency and output necessary for the incredible amount of energy they utilize in ST. Matter-antimatter reactions are really the only thing that makes sense. Someone might say fusion, but I'm fairly sure that is conspicuously absent in ST. It is also arguably much more dangerous and less practical due to the massive amount of shielding needed to protect from the normal reactions so we wouldn't see it on a ship.
The Golden Gate in PIC isn't a "solar road", it's a solar array where a road used to be. Where they're going, after all, they don't need... roads.
They don't need solar power either though. It is absurdly primitive compared to matter-antimatter reactors and far less reliable.
It also begs the question, if they already have flying cars (shuttles) why are they retrofitting the roads with solar panels? Shuttles require a level of energy tech that has already surpassed solar panels.
That is assuming that they are still using the solar power. The golden gate bridge is obsolete with the flying technology but they kept it (assuming largely due to its historic nature/symbol of the city) - who is to say that the solar panels were not built in an earlier period, utilized for some point, and then as technology advanced just left there as part of the bridge?
That was my point though. They make the road impassable with solar panels, but the only reason to do that is if the civilization no longer needs roads, but if they no longer need roads, they also no longer need solar panels.
With transparent aluminum or a stronger transparent material, it should be possible to create a solar roadway that would not be damaged by vehicles travelling over it. However, the usefulness of the solar panels would be useless most of the time due to the vehicles blocking the sunlight. So solar roadways would only be useful in residential areas not roads with high-density traffic like the Golden Gate Bridge. A road covered with Thermoelectric Generators could be useful for roads with high-density traffic. Especially, for areas like Canada in the winter.
As far as using solar panels on Earth in the 24th Century, it is extremely wasteful. It is far better to have the solar panels orbiting Earth or better around the Sun and transmit the energy where it needs to go. A solar panel 1,000 km away from the Sun would generate far more power than it being on Earth.
I find solar roads to be the most comically stupid idea. Driving over them causes wear from dirt, gravel, rubber, etc. grinding them down. The materials matter greatly, not just for durability of the road itself, but for the cars, the traction, the tire life, and so on, however no matter what material is used there WILL be wear and tear, it is unavoidable. Then you add to that the gross inefficiencies of the road not being aimed at the sun, the shadows of the cars blocking the sun, and of course the rubber/gravel deposits left on the road by the cars reducing efficiency further. Weather is also a huge issue in wear and tear as winter is notoriously rough on roads. They are a stupidly bad idea.
Instead of something as dumb as paving a road with solar panels, they could just mount them above the road instead where not only is there no wear and tear or even shadows on them from cars, they can track the sun or at least be better inclined.
And somehow, Discovery had more advanced holographic technology than TNG and far better replicators than TOS. While the aesthetics can change, the technology has to match the era.
Actually, the holotechnology in DSC is very poor, like the staticky unstable analog holograms in Star Wars instead of the stable realistic holograms that Star Trek has always had (with the possible exception of ENT).
In the first season of Discovery, the holograms were like Star Wars, but in the second season, Burnham was using a hologram as a mirror in her quarters with the same resolution as the holodeck. Only holographic communications seems to have the problem with Star Wars quality holograms likely due to transmission issues and not with the holoprojectors. TNG only had their solid holograms on the holodeck while regular holograms were rarely used and limited to floating above Picard's desk not as a life-size hologram of a person wherever they want in a room.
So much this. this is supposed to be the future, making it look... obsolete is dumb.
that and physicly some things don't change much. The computer on my desk doesn't look much differant from the one I had on my desk as a kid 30 years ago. The only way you'd be able to tell one is more advanced then the other is the flatscreen monitor.
Likewise let's take a F-16 vs a F-15. the F-16 has a notable technological advance over the f-15 (Fly by wire controls) you'd not know that just by LOOKING at it.
sometimes you can tell sure, but thats mostly because of changing aestetic sensabilities, or a change to how we understand apperance impacting performance. (modern cars are more aerodynamic because we understand it improves fuel effiancy etc)
that doesn't mean that attention to detail should be ignored but it does mean you can shrug off some odd chocies of design
And somehow, Discovery had more advanced holographic technology than TNG and far better replicators than TOS. While the aesthetics can change, the technology has to match the era.
Actually, the holotechnology in DSC is very poor, like the staticky unstable analog holograms in Star Wars instead of the stable realistic holograms that Star Trek has always had (with the possible exception of ENT).
In the first season of Discovery, the holograms were like Star Wars, but in the second season, Burnham was using a hologram as a mirror in her quarters with the same resolution as the holodeck. Only holographic communications seems to have the problem with Star Wars quality holograms likely due to transmission issues and not with the holoprojectors. TNG only had their solid holograms on the holodeck while regular holograms were rarely used and limited to floating above Picard's desk not as a life-size hologram of a person wherever they want in a room.
The reason given for not using non-solid holograms outside of the holodeck in TNG was that it simply did not add anything to the story and would instead tend to confuse viewers as to who was actually there and who was a hologram, they had already established that holograms were indistinguishable from the real objects and people so it would all just be actors, and they did not want some silly marker to tell which was which (like for instance the "H" on the foreheads of holograms in Red Dwarf).
Ironically, the second season holographic controls that read gestures (like Spock's private terminal that Burnham used) were what TOS was going for in addition to the "tophat" action jewel buttons but they did not have the budget to try to do that with mulit-layer film compositors, and the back lit transparencies they tried projecting on the panels from underneath burned too fast to even do LCARS style controls.
What they did show though was the equivalent of electronic paper (most people don't notice it but the labels on the buttons on the command chair arm change on their own (they would change the slips of paper with the typed labels between takes) though they never showed it while it actually changed since it would have been a small but unnecessary waste of SFX budget to do it.
That is why the control stations had so few buttons in The Cage compared to TOS, they added more jewel "buttons" over where the backlit stuff was supposed to be (and just dropped the free-air idea completely even before filming Cage) in the remodel for the series itself.
If DSC had paid attention to the aesthetics (which is overall look and style, not just "technology") instead of ignoring it out of contempt they could have added the context sensitive controls and holographic controls back in to TOS era Trek in a way that meshed and kept the sense that time and technology were advancing the same way they were in the various series before DSC. The three eras shown before CBS took over each had their own distinctive looks that were immediately recognizable by aesthetics, not just by what tech they had or didn't have.
A real-world example would be the roaring '20s, the 1950s/early 1960s, and today. All three have cars, telephones, medicine, clothing, makeup, and culture, but it is all different and immediately recognizable for each era. DSC broke that progression with their weird aversion to TOS, and compounded it by deliberately drawing on "The Undiscovered Country" and other out-of-era sources that were common to both the movie and TNG era (along with the almost ENT-like ugly uniforms and whatever they got the NuKlingon aesthetic from).
Actually, the biggest zeitgeist error in DSC is that the subspace relay network is way, way to dense (and therefore too fast) for the time period, and that "headquarters is just a videocall away" thing totally changes the dynamic and makes it feel more like the TNG era. They could get by with it in the pilot since Shenzhou was sitting right on top of one of the relays, but a major plot point in TOS was the fact that ships were on their own almost as much as sailing ships were since while the backhaul between relays was almost instant the ship-to-relay link always had at least a few seconds and often minutes, hours, or even a day or two of transmission lag if they were way out from the nearest relay or they did not have a lot of energy to spare to throw into speeding the information packets up.
TOS era communications were more a matter of subspace radio dispatches for the most part, sort of like texting or email, rather than like the cell phone network the way DSC makes it out to be. "Balance of Terror" is probably the best example of the drama that semi-isolation adds.
As for solar roads, the main idea is not to be an efficient way of generating power for the power grid, it is that the roadway would be at least partially self-sufficient, like clearing its own snow and ice away and for streetlighting and dynamic lane marking, along with carrying at least some power and possibly communication signals to reduce dependence on wooden utility poles and their all-too-vulnerable wires.
While the solar tiles are more expensive than the same area of current concrete-and-asphalt roadway topping they are tougher and would theoretically last longer, and the combination of passive and active lane markings built into the tiles would eliminate the constant lane marking and remarking that counties have to do with conventional roadways as they wear. In theory (they have not been deployed long enough to know for sure) it has the same sort of higher up front cost but lower maintenance profile that brick paved streets do (the ones with real bricks, not the textured brick-colored concrete ones).
As for Borg children, originally the idea was that they would use artificially produced cyborg babies in cloning drawers (they actually filmed a scene were one of the Enterprise crew pulls open one of those drawers and finds some) but they cut that idea (and scene) before the filming ended for that first episode showing a cube interior. Instead, they went with reproduction by assimilation only, the assimilated children shown on Voyager were just like Annika Hansen was, children who were injected with the nanites the same way the adults were and they eventually grow into adult drones like Seven of Nine.
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.
Here’s my unpopular opinion: Discovery is a visual reboot of TOS. I don’t think there’s gonna be a refit that makes the Donnie look like the Connie. We see the Donnie in Starfleet Command. Why show that ship and not Kirk’s enterprise? Because that is Kirk’s enterprise. Kirk, Spock and McCoy boldly go in that ship and in those uniforms. This is why Discovery doesn’t match up with TOS. It wasn’t meant to.
Your pain runs deep.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
Here’s my unpopular opinion: Discovery is a visual reboot of TOS. I don’t think there’s gonna be a refit that makes the Donnie look like the Connie. We see the Donnie in Starfleet Command. Why show that ship and not Kirk’s enterprise? Because that is Kirk’s enterprise. Kirk, Spock and McCoy boldly go in that ship and in those uniforms. This is why Discovery doesn’t match up with TOS. It wasn’t meant to.
Yeah, I've said it several times already, but if TOS was made today it wouldn't look like TOS.
> @markhawkman said: > (Quote) > Yeah, I've said it several times already, but if TOS was made today it wouldn't look like TOS.
I agree with this 1000%
Your pain runs deep.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
Here’s my unpopular opinion: Discovery is a visual reboot of TOS. I don’t think there’s gonna be a refit that makes the Donnie look like the Connie. We see the Donnie in Starfleet Command. Why show that ship and not Kirk’s enterprise? Because that is Kirk’s enterprise. Kirk, Spock and McCoy boldly go in that ship and in those uniforms. This is why Discovery doesn’t match up with TOS. It wasn’t meant to.
Possibly, but it would be a different Kirk, Spock, and McCoy from the TOS ones just like the Kelvin timeline ones are not quite the same ones because of the changes in their timeline.
I am fairly sure that the "reboot" is rooted in all the temporal distortions that happened between the temporal cold war, the red angel manipulations, the "First Contact" temporal incursion, and the Defiant grab distorting the causal sync relationship between the prime and mirror universes all cumulating into the DSC alterations. CBS calls DSC prime universe, but that in turn begs the question of whether the original Desilu/Paramount productions are part of that same "prime" or if alternate versions of them are part of this "prime" instead.
If that is the case, Picard show may not even be directly connected to TNG, it may be descended from a "Discoized" TNG instead. It may even be a good thing for CBS to do it that way anyway since it would free them from having to research plot points so thoroughly, and that way the fans would not get so worked up about the details of the mistakes.
While the differences between DSC and The Cage/TOS were because Moonves reportedly hated TOS more than all other science fiction, it undoubtedly made making DSC a lot easier since the production team never had to leave their comfort zone and try to understand the '60s zeitgeist and the other foundations of the TOS era Trek and adapt it to today's production technology and viewer expectations.
The thing is, the easy way is not always the best way and while making something simply look different from TOS is very easy (just use generic stuff from current sci-fi shows and file off the serial numbers and throw in a few token references from past shows like they did for DSC), making something different from the current TV sci-fi standard that actually works well is far, far harder. Putting in that greater effort could have made DSC something truly phenomenal instead of merely adequate, but that ship has already sailed.
> @phoenixc#0738 said: > (Quote) > > Possibly, but it would be a different Kirk, Spock, and McCoy from the TOS ones just like the Kelvin timeline ones are not quite the same ones because of the changes in their timeline. > > I am fairly sure that the "reboot" is rooted in all the temporal distortions that happened between the temporal cold war, the red angel manipulations, the "First Contact" temporal incursion, and the Defiant grab distorting the causal sync relationship between the prime and mirror universes all cumulating into the DSC alterations. CBS calls DSC prime universe, but that in turn begs the question of whether the original Desilu/Paramount productions are part of that same "prime" or if alternate versions of them are part of this "prime" instead. > > If that is the case, Picard show may not even be directly connected to TNG, it may be descended from a "Discoized" TNG instead. It may even be a good thing for CBS to do it that way anyway since it would free them from having to research plot points so thoroughly, and that way the fans would not get so worked up about the details of the mistakes. > > While the differences between DSC and The Cage/TOS were because Moonves reportedly hated TOS more than all other science fiction, it undoubtedly made making DSC a lot easier since the production team never had to leave their comfort zone and try to understand the '60s zeitgeist and the other foundations of the TOS era Trek and adapt it to today's production technology and viewer expectations. > > The thing is, the easy way is not always the best way and while making something simply look different from TOS is very easy (just use generic stuff from current sci-fi shows and file off the serial numbers and throw in a few token references from past shows like they did for DSC), making something different from the current TV sci-fi standard that actually works well is far, far harder. Putting in that greater effort could have made DSC something truly phenomenal instead of merely adequate, but that ship has already sailed.
I don’t think it’s a Disco-ized TNG since they’ve used pictures of Worf that looks like the Worf we know and the Ent-D looks to be the same ship.
Your pain runs deep.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
While the differences between DSC and The Cage/TOS were because Moonves reportedly hated TOS more than all other science fiction, it undoubtedly made making DSC a lot easier since the production team never had to leave their comfort zone and try to understand the '60s zeitgeist and the other foundations of the TOS era Trek and adapt it to today's production technology and viewer expectations.
The thing is, the easy way is not always the best way and while making something simply look different from TOS is very easy (just use generic stuff from current sci-fi shows and file off the serial numbers and throw in a few token references from past shows like they did for DSC), making something different from the current TV sci-fi standard that actually works well is far, far harder. Putting in that greater effort could have made DSC something truly phenomenal instead of merely adequate, but that ship has already sailed.
Yeah, no. No one in their right mind would try to sell a modern series that looks like a 60s B-movie unless it was meant to be a comedy or satire of some sort.
> @phoenixc#0738 said:
> (Quote)
>
> Possibly, but it would be a different Kirk, Spock, and McCoy from the TOS ones just like the Kelvin timeline ones are not quite the same ones because of the changes in their timeline.
>
> I am fairly sure that the "reboot" is rooted in all the temporal distortions that happened between the temporal cold war, the red angel manipulations, the "First Contact" temporal incursion, and the Defiant grab distorting the causal sync relationship between the prime and mirror universes all cumulating into the DSC alterations. CBS calls DSC prime universe, but that in turn begs the question of whether the original Desilu/Paramount productions are part of that same "prime" or if alternate versions of them are part of this "prime" instead.
>
> If that is the case, Picard show may not even be directly connected to TNG, it may be descended from a "Discoized" TNG instead. It may even be a good thing for CBS to do it that way anyway since it would free them from having to research plot points so thoroughly, and that way the fans would not get so worked up about the details of the mistakes.
>
> While the differences between DSC and The Cage/TOS were because Moonves reportedly hated TOS more than all other science fiction, it undoubtedly made making DSC a lot easier since the production team never had to leave their comfort zone and try to understand the '60s zeitgeist and the other foundations of the TOS era Trek and adapt it to today's production technology and viewer expectations.
>
> The thing is, the easy way is not always the best way and while making something simply look different from TOS is very easy (just use generic stuff from current sci-fi shows and file off the serial numbers and throw in a few token references from past shows like they did for DSC), making something different from the current TV sci-fi standard that actually works well is far, far harder. Putting in that greater effort could have made DSC something truly phenomenal instead of merely adequate, but that ship has already sailed.
I don’t think it’s a Disco-ized TNG since they’ve used pictures of Worf that looks like the Worf we know and the Ent-D looks to be the same ship.
It would not have to be that visually different from old TNG actually, since the set designer said the Federation stuff is mostly based on "The Undiscovered Country", which in turn has a lot of style cues in common with TNG and other later Trek series.
Looking at what they did to the Enterprise to get the Discoprise (which is a great looking ship, it has more "cool" factor but it lacks the simple organic-curves elegance of the original) I suspect that it was the futuristic googie style touches that Moonves hated the most design-wise (just like he apparently hated the supposed "utopian" optimism), and TNG never had any googie or futuristic style to begin with. TNG was basically a down to earth procedural like CSI, NCIS, and the like, but in space, and they seemed to have made an effort to make sure the technology felt like todays (or the 1980s and '90s anyway), only a bit more compact and with a touch of exotic particle space magic.
TOS was based on a sort of futuristic minimalist idea, instead of evoking the familiar it was supposed to hover on the knife edge between fantastic and alien, with just enough of the familiar so the viewers would be able to realize what they were looking at. It is a completely different mindset from all the shows that were made after TOS and TAS, a mindset that seemed to slowly but steadily drain away from Hollywood during the 1970s.
Weird as it sounds, if TOS was made today using today's equivalent of the mindset that went into TOS in the '60s the closest thing to it would not be DSC at all, it would be much more like "Valerian and Laureline" in style the way it bucked the trends of the time and went its own way instead of embracing the norm.
DSC is about as mainline as you can get, not only is it not thinking outside of the box, it is in a box inside of the box.
> @phoenixc#0738 said:
> (Quote)
>
> Possibly, but it would be a different Kirk, Spock, and McCoy from the TOS ones just like the Kelvin timeline ones are not quite the same ones because of the changes in their timeline.
>
> I am fairly sure that the "reboot" is rooted in all the temporal distortions that happened between the temporal cold war, the red angel manipulations, the "First Contact" temporal incursion, and the Defiant grab distorting the causal sync relationship between the prime and mirror universes all cumulating into the DSC alterations. CBS calls DSC prime universe, but that in turn begs the question of whether the original Desilu/Paramount productions are part of that same "prime" or if alternate versions of them are part of this "prime" instead.
>
> If that is the case, Picard show may not even be directly connected to TNG, it may be descended from a "Discoized" TNG instead. It may even be a good thing for CBS to do it that way anyway since it would free them from having to research plot points so thoroughly, and that way the fans would not get so worked up about the details of the mistakes.
>
> While the differences between DSC and The Cage/TOS were because Moonves reportedly hated TOS more than all other science fiction, it undoubtedly made making DSC a lot easier since the production team never had to leave their comfort zone and try to understand the '60s zeitgeist and the other foundations of the TOS era Trek and adapt it to today's production technology and viewer expectations.
>
> The thing is, the easy way is not always the best way and while making something simply look different from TOS is very easy (just use generic stuff from current sci-fi shows and file off the serial numbers and throw in a few token references from past shows like they did for DSC), making something different from the current TV sci-fi standard that actually works well is far, far harder. Putting in that greater effort could have made DSC something truly phenomenal instead of merely adequate, but that ship has already sailed.
I don’t think it’s a Disco-ized TNG since they’ve used pictures of Worf that looks like the Worf we know and the Ent-D looks to be the same ship.
It would not have to be that visually different from old TNG actually, since the set designer said the Federation stuff is mostly based on "The Undiscovered Country", which in turn has a lot of style cues in common with TNG and other later Trek series.
Looking at what they did to the Enterprise to get the Discoprise (which is a great looking ship, it has more "cool" factor but it lacks the simple organic-curves elegance of the original) I suspect that it was the futuristic googie style touches that Moonves hated the most design-wise (just like he apparently hated the supposed "utopian" optimism), and TNG never had any googie or futuristic style to begin with. TNG was basically a down to earth procedural like CSI, NCIS, and the like, but in space, and they seemed to have made an effort to make sure the technology felt like todays (or the 1980s and '90s anyway), only a bit more compact and with a touch of exotic particle space magic.
TOS was based on a sort of futuristic minimalist idea, instead of evoking the familiar it was supposed to hover on the knife edge between fantastic and alien, with just enough of the familiar so the viewers would be able to realize what they were looking at. It is a completely different mindset from all the shows that were made after TOS and TAS, a mindset that seemed to slowly but steadily drain away from Hollywood during the 1970s.
Weird as it sounds, if TOS was made today using today's equivalent of the mindset that went into TOS in the '60s the closest thing to it would not be DSC at all, it would be much more like "Valerian and Laureline" in style the way it bucked the trends of the time and went its own way instead of embracing the norm.
DSC is about as mainline as you can get, not only is it not thinking outside of the box, it is in a box inside of the box.
What style/design trend did TOS buck?
Your pain runs deep.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
the trend of using TRIBBLE wood and plastic for ships, cement-covered windsocks for superweapons and formless blobs for torpedoes - oh, and jellybeans for jewel buttons...like, i know they needed to budget, but they were seriously too fluffing cheap to go to the nearest craft store and buy a bag of those fake jewels people use in crafts all the time?
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.
I think this is why as soon as someone gave Roddenberry money to do a Star Trek Film things started changing.
Your pain runs deep.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
Here’s my unpopular opinion: Discovery is a visual reboot of TOS. I don’t think there’s gonna be a refit that makes the Donnie look like the Connie. We see the Donnie in Starfleet Command. Why show that ship and not Kirk’s enterprise? Because that is Kirk’s enterprise. Kirk, Spock and McCoy boldly go in that ship and in those uniforms. This is why Discovery doesn’t match up with TOS. It wasn’t meant to.
And my opinion is that Discovery is a sequel of Enterprise not a prequel of TOS due to the aftermath of the Temporal Cold War in the 22nd Century. So most discrepancies between Discovery and TOS can be explained by temporal changes in the 22nd Century. This explanation gives an in-universe explanation for a visual reboot of TOS. The original timeline used a TOS aesthetic in the mid 23rd Century while the current timeline uses a Discovery aesthetic.
> @phoenixc#0738 said:
> (Quote)
>
> Possibly, but it would be a different Kirk, Spock, and McCoy from the TOS ones just like the Kelvin timeline ones are not quite the same ones because of the changes in their timeline.
>
> I am fairly sure that the "reboot" is rooted in all the temporal distortions that happened between the temporal cold war, the red angel manipulations, the "First Contact" temporal incursion, and the Defiant grab distorting the causal sync relationship between the prime and mirror universes all cumulating into the DSC alterations. CBS calls DSC prime universe, but that in turn begs the question of whether the original Desilu/Paramount productions are part of that same "prime" or if alternate versions of them are part of this "prime" instead.
>
> If that is the case, Picard show may not even be directly connected to TNG, it may be descended from a "Discoized" TNG instead. It may even be a good thing for CBS to do it that way anyway since it would free them from having to research plot points so thoroughly, and that way the fans would not get so worked up about the details of the mistakes.
>
> While the differences between DSC and The Cage/TOS were because Moonves reportedly hated TOS more than all other science fiction, it undoubtedly made making DSC a lot easier since the production team never had to leave their comfort zone and try to understand the '60s zeitgeist and the other foundations of the TOS era Trek and adapt it to today's production technology and viewer expectations.
>
> The thing is, the easy way is not always the best way and while making something simply look different from TOS is very easy (just use generic stuff from current sci-fi shows and file off the serial numbers and throw in a few token references from past shows like they did for DSC), making something different from the current TV sci-fi standard that actually works well is far, far harder. Putting in that greater effort could have made DSC something truly phenomenal instead of merely adequate, but that ship has already sailed.
I don’t think it’s a Disco-ized TNG since they’ve used pictures of Worf that looks like the Worf we know and the Ent-D looks to be the same ship.
It would not have to be that visually different from old TNG actually, since the set designer said the Federation stuff is mostly based on "The Undiscovered Country", which in turn has a lot of style cues in common with TNG and other later Trek series.
Looking at what they did to the Enterprise to get the Discoprise (which is a great looking ship, it has more "cool" factor but it lacks the simple organic-curves elegance of the original) I suspect that it was the futuristic googie style touches that Moonves hated the most design-wise (just like he apparently hated the supposed "utopian" optimism), and TNG never had any googie or futuristic style to begin with. TNG was basically a down to earth procedural like CSI, NCIS, and the like, but in space, and they seemed to have made an effort to make sure the technology felt like todays (or the 1980s and '90s anyway), only a bit more compact and with a touch of exotic particle space magic.
TOS was based on a sort of futuristic minimalist idea, instead of evoking the familiar it was supposed to hover on the knife edge between fantastic and alien, with just enough of the familiar so the viewers would be able to realize what they were looking at. It is a completely different mindset from all the shows that were made after TOS and TAS, a mindset that seemed to slowly but steadily drain away from Hollywood during the 1970s.
Weird as it sounds, if TOS was made today using today's equivalent of the mindset that went into TOS in the '60s the closest thing to it would not be DSC at all, it would be much more like "Valerian and Laureline" in style the way it bucked the trends of the time and went its own way instead of embracing the norm.
DSC is about as mainline as you can get, not only is it not thinking outside of the box, it is in a box inside of the box.
What style/design trend did TOS buck?
Just about every one Hollywood had for sci-fi at the time actually. I am beginning to think that to actually understand it you had to be there from some of the replies I have seen when I try to point it out over the past few years though.
I started to write a long post detailing some of the most glaring differences, but it all really boils down to the differences between Star Trek and its main competition at the time, Lost in Space. Lost in Space was a perfect example of the archetypical Hollywood sci-fi style of the time. It had practically all of them from the silver suits to the lasers with cooling rings, the robot, the spinning radar screens, and the fact that it was a flying saucer (though the chemical rocket ship was slightly more popular) and the very ambiguous way they treated faster-than-light travel.
Most of the typical ships used a kind of industrial/art deco style that utilized spherical and conical segments for most of the features, while Star Trek used a futuristic googie style that relied on the golden ratio for proportion and spiral cross-section curves instead. None of the other live action TV shows used the googie style much though some cartoons, like The Jetsons, used a kind of usually exaggerated version of it (also a few live action movies did to some extent).
The idea of the jewel buttons was rather clever though they were not implemented very well. They were supposed to go along with the context-sensitive panel displays as a lit direction-of-pressure sensitive extrusion of the panel surface (in theory the set crew would swap out transparencies and button sets between takes to represent the panels changing configuration) but since it was not practical to show the things actually extruding and sinking back into the surface they never bothered to do that swapping in practice since the audience probably would not notice it without the SFX to point out that they do that in the first place.
Anyway, if DSC was made in the mid 1960s with the same generic mindset it uses today but with the "in the box" conventions of that time it would have looked a lot like Lost in Space. On the other hand, TOS is so familiar after all these years that many people simply do not realize how different and innovative it was for its time.
> @flash525 said:
> Their focus may have been on technology, but to imply they didn't add biologicals when on their technological quest is a little absurd. Even with technology, they still need drones, and the Borg don't reproduce in the normal manner.
They did. There were Borg children. Yes Voyager showed children and we can sloppily retcon everything. But fact is when the Borg showed up there were not different species and they reproduced, because it was a cautionary tale of a society bevoming too dependant on technology. They were not Zombies yet.
Because the Borg don't assimilate children?
Unless I am very much mistaken, the Borg do not reproduce in the same manor as any other known Trek species. The Borg assimilate - not just adults, but children, and babies too. It's possible that cybernetic implants aren't added to infants straight away, but to imply the Borg get down and dirty with each other is, quite frankly, just being silly.
We know that infant drones are placed in maturation chambers until they reach a certain age. The only known case where a Borg has been birthed was that episode on VOY where nanoprobes came into contact with the EMH mobile emitter (so 29th century tech or whatever). In no other instance has it been implied or shown that the Borg grow drones. Even in that episode, Seven specifically stated "I don't understand. The Borg assimilate. They do not reproduce in this fashion."
Here’s my unpopular opinion: Discovery is a visual reboot of TOS. I don’t think there’s gonna be a refit that makes the Donnie look like the Connie. We see the Donnie in Starfleet Command. Why show that ship and not Kirk’s enterprise? Because that is Kirk’s enterprise. Kirk, Spock and McCoy boldly go in that ship and in those uniforms. This is why Discovery doesn’t match up with TOS. It wasn’t meant to.
And my opinion is that Discovery is a sequel of Enterprise not a prequel of TOS due to the aftermath of the Temporal Cold War in the 22nd Century. So most discrepancies between Discovery and TOS can be explained by temporal changes in the 22nd Century. This explanation gives an in-universe explanation for a visual reboot of TOS. The original timeline used a TOS aesthetic in the mid 23rd Century while the current timeline uses a Discovery aesthetic.
You're implying that ENT initiated a new timeline; one that has erased (of branched off from) TOS?
That being the case, where does this place TNG, DS9, VOY and PIC?
> @flash525 said: > (Quote) > Because the Borg don't assimilate children? > > Unless I am very much mistaken, the Borg do not reproduce in the same manor as any other known Trek species. The Borg assimilate - not just adults, but children, and babies too. It's possible that cybernetic implants aren't added to infants straight away, but to imply the Borg get down and dirty with each other is, quite frankly, just being silly. > > We know that infant drones are placed in maturation chambers until they reach a certain age. The only known case where a Borg has been birthed was that episode on VOY where nanoprobes came into contact with the EMH mobile emitter (so 29th century tech or whatever). In no other instance has it been implied or shown that the Borg grow drones. Even in that episode, Seven specifically stated "I don't understand. The Borg assimilate. They do not reproduce in this fashion."
Did you read anything I have actually written? I specifically said it has been retconned, but the original Borg did not assimilate. The idea that anyone even implied Borg have to have intercourse in order to procreate is ludicrous - it's a point entirely made up by you to sound ridiculous. A classic straw man if you will. Borg infants were grown in chambers, possibly cloned but in any case artificially created ex-situ. The rewrite told us children are assimilated and put in maturation chambers until they reach adulthood, yet this doesn't make much sense from a 'efficiency' point of view (hardly anything the Borg actually do does).
The Borg theme was to be completely self-sufficient, searching for technology unknown to integrate into it's society since the former Borg have reached the pinacle of their technological advancements. Having to hunt and assimilate individuals doesn't fit that theme. It makes them Zombies in lieu of it's original message of being 'the ultimate user'.
^ 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
they didn't start assimilating biologicals until BoBW, though - the neutral zone happened at least a year prior to that
That is absurd. Ignoring the obvious fact that the Borg had to have been assimilating civilizations for hundreds of years, Seven-of-Nine was assimilated in 2356 and BoBW took place in 2366, ten years later.
That was a retcon after TNG S2 - "Q-Who". The original line about the physicallity of Borg Drones from Q in that episode was: http://www.chakoteya.net/NextGen/142.htm
Q: Interesting, isn't it? Not a he, not a she. Not like anything you've ever seen. An enhanced humanoid.
^^^
So yeah, later writers started to de-fang the true horror of the Borg - That they were like locusts, just swarming in and grabbing any useful technology they found; not AT ALL interested in holding territory, or having any real political motivations (why would they, as they are all one Hive mind). They couldn't be negotiated AND they didn't go around announcing themselves as hostile to any/everything they encountered. Again in "Q-Who", they first sent over a couple of Drones (because Worf blasted the first one) - surveyed the Technology of the 1701-D and then said:
BORG: (many voices speaking as one) We have analysed your defensive capabilities as being unable to withstand us. If you defend yourselves, you will be punished.
So, (IMO) the Borg as ORIGINALLY conceived and presented in "Q-Who" were much more terrifying as an enemy to the Federtaion then what they were slowly turned into starting with TNG S3 - "Best of Both Worlds"; until they were finally reduced to just another Alien of the Week who suddenly were 'humanized' and made something that now could be negotiated with and had political motives, etc. with the introduction of the 'Borg Queen' in the film Star Trek: First Contact.
I REALLY wish we'd gotten at least one more encounter with the truly frightening (to a political body like The Federation who believed ANYTHING can be negotiated in time) Borg that were more like a truly alien force of nature - and not one Woman's Zombie Army.
Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012 PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
It seems to me the arguments about the retcon of the Borg have been exchanged plenty in the past, in this thread in others. But it is what it is. Borg work like that now, and that's what the writers are going to use until they feel the need for another retcon, alternate universe or timeline.
I am really more interested in this new Picard show and what story it is telling, or might be telling.
Soji/Dajh goals and purpose are still unclear to me. I distinguish the two because apparently both had some kind of "sleeper" programming. Dajh might have just wanted to work with the Daystrom Institute, but I wonder if she had another purpose in being there? Soji seems to be trying to help the liberated drones, but might she be looking for something else?
I could imagine that Dajh's purpose was to look through the Daystrom data and figure out who "TRIBBLE" the Synth to start their attack on Mars. Possibly delivering proof against the Zhat Vash or some similar conspiracy?
And Soji's interest seemed to have been particularly for the Romulan drones? Is that perhaps another angle to get information about the Zhat Vash?
What I hope the aren't doing is to frame the Borg as the boogeyman the Zhat Vash are fighting against - the Borg are specifically cybernetic lifeforms, not synthetics. Or is the truth that they didn't start as organics, but in fact as synthetics? Maybe that epxlains why they don't care much for Androids - they were them, and they are trying to go beyond that. (Of course, this would be on of the retcons I mentioned...)
Some speculate that either the Romulan or the Vulcans might be secretly synthetics. Interesting idea, but the point about Vulcans usually has been that they are too emotional and need logic to keep their emotions in check, so they would have been "odd" Synthetics that were overly emotional rather than too logical.
Hugh or Soji mentioned that the Borg ship experienced colony collapse (not sure what term they actually used) after the Romulans were assimilated - apparently the last one. Is there a connection between the ship collapsing and assimilating (these) Romulans?
And of course, why did the Romulan Ex-Drones seem to hate so strongly on the undercover Android?
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Here’s my unpopular opinion: Discovery is a visual reboot of TOS. I don’t think there’s gonna be a refit that makes the Donnie look like the Connie. We see the Donnie in Starfleet Command. Why show that ship and not Kirk’s enterprise? Because that is Kirk’s enterprise. Kirk, Spock and McCoy boldly go in that ship and in those uniforms. This is why Discovery doesn’t match up with TOS. It wasn’t meant to.
And my opinion is that Discovery is a sequel of Enterprise not a prequel of TOS due to the aftermath of the Temporal Cold War in the 22nd Century. So most discrepancies between Discovery and TOS can be explained by temporal changes in the 22nd Century. This explanation gives an in-universe explanation for a visual reboot of TOS. The original timeline used a TOS aesthetic in the mid 23rd Century while the current timeline uses a Discovery aesthetic.
You're implying that ENT initiated a new timeline; one that has erased (of branched off from) TOS?
That being the case, where does this place TNG, DS9, VOY and PIC?
Some events would stay the same while others will change. The timeline in Star Trek is constantly being changed, but Star Trek likes to gloss over it. Killing millions of people in the Xindi attack and encountering the Xindi earlier than the original timeline would certainly cause some changes so as a result certain crew members might not exist and replaced with someone else or look different due to their original ancestor died in the Xindi attack.
There is also the possibility that the larger the temporal change, the longer it takes for the effects to be minimized. So Discovery and TOS would see some changes due to Enterprise, but any changes to TNG, DS9, VOY, and PIC would be minimized since it happened 200 years ago. Only major temporal events like destroying planets would have lasting effects while everything else will be swept away by the flow of time. After all, if my grandfather died to a time traveller and my grandmother married someone else, then that would change my DNA considerably, but if it happened to my ancestor that lived 500 years ago, then my DNA would mostly stay the same.
I think it is easier to simply understand the reality that the writers of nutrek don't really care to be consistent with old trek and aren't seriously trying to be. They've all had continuity issues and retcon/evolution over their seasons, like the changes to the Borg over time (Yes the original was best, Voyager did stupid things to the Borg.) However, the old shows mostly did try to respect and keep to established canon and themes.
There are a lot of little details in Picard that simply are unnecessary departures from established stuff, like cloning Data or however they put it when they could have just downloaded him from B4. Why do it some ridiculous fantasy way? Or why does no one in Starfleet show any respect to Picard?
When you ask these questions and notice stuff like the magic Romulan scanner time camera thingy, the incompetent Romulan death squads, the fight scene with phasers hidden all over the room yet they wait to grab them, F-bombs, JL, and obnoxious dialogue, the lack of police/security force involvement, etc. its just all so much easier explained as bad writing. They aren't just inconsistent with the old stuff, they aren't even internally consistent and don't answer obvious questions.
I think it is easier to simply understand the reality that the writers of nutrek don't really care to be consistent with old trek and aren't seriously trying to be. They've all had continuity issues and retcon/evolution over their seasons, like the changes to the Borg over time (Yes the original was best, Voyager did stupid things to the Borg.) However, the old shows mostly did try to respect and keep to established canon and themes.
There are a lot of little details in Picard that simply are unnecessary departures from established stuff, like cloning Data or however they put it when they could have just downloaded him from B4. Why do it some ridiculous fantasy way? Or why does no one in Starfleet show any respect to Picard?
When you ask these questions and notice stuff like the magic Romulan scanner time camera thingy, the incompetent Romulan death squads, the fight scene with phasers hidden all over the room yet they wait to grab them, F-bombs, JL, and obnoxious dialogue, the lack of police/security force involvement, etc. its just all so much easier explained as bad writing. They aren't just inconsistent with the old stuff, they aren't even internally consistent and don't answer obvious questions.
No. I think the issue is fans are willing to overlook the majority of plot holes and inconsistencies in TOS, TNG, DS9, Voy and Ent but when some of these same plot holes and inconsistencies crop up in Discovery and Picard they are seen as the unforgivable sin.
1) Why didn’t Data return in B4? We haven’t seen the whole series yet. We dont really know whats going on.
2) Why no one respects Picard? I look at it like this...Sisko cant be the only person that blames Picard for what happened in BOBW. It doesnt matter how many times he’s done the right thing people may still see him as the reason why Star Fleet lost 39 ships and 11,000 personnel. Perhaps we saw this when the Borg attacked Earth in First Contact and Picard was ordered to patrol the Romulan Neutral Zone. Add to that Picard puts The Federation and Star Fleet on blast on Galactic television and its not hard to see that some people may not hold Picard on that pedestal he once had.
Just because you don’t like the writing or a plot point doesnt make it bad. Just because you have questions about whats going on doesnt mean its bad writing.
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I think this is why as soon as someone gave Roddenberry money to do a Star Trek Film things started changing.
Yeah really. TOS looked like TOS because Roddenberry didn't have the budget to make it look like TMP or TNG. No one on the TOS production staff wanted it to look like it did.
I think this is why as soon as someone gave Roddenberry money to do a Star Trek Film things started changing.
Yeah really. TOS looked like TOS because Roddenberry didn't have the budget to make it look like TMP or TNG. No one on the TOS production staff wanted it to look like it did.
Actually, while money was a big part of the reason it looked like it did, production technology was just as big a factor. Even if they had a huge budget and modern CGI it would not have looked much like TMP or TNG. TOS was made before the "realism" craze of the 1970s swept through Hollywood sci-fi and it was designed in a more fantastic futuristic style.
The original bridge design was an oblate spheroid instead of that octagon for instance (Jefferies had to redesign the bridge to use the flat lumber, plywood, and dark glass they had available to build it with), and the shapes had more flowing organic curves and such. The station ring floor and central platform were supposed to be grills and there was no carpet, but the budget would not stretch for the metal grills, and a flaw in the subflooring made sound dampening foam and carpet a necessity.
The main screen was supposed to be bigger and each station had a single large screen over it (in addition to the little eye-level screens on the stations). The whole depressed area over each station was originaly one big screen, but they had to use the mats to cut them into two considerably smaller "screens" in order for the transparencies to survive the level of light needed to make them visible after they made the bridge brighter at the insistence of NBC (you can see the original overhead screen configuration in The Cage btw).
The stations did have something similar to TNG's LCARS panels (though they were strips and not the entire surface) but they too would burn in the hot incandescent lights so they had to be kept off. Ideally the control station chairs were supposed to extrude or at least rise up from the deck as needed and were powered instead of free-turning (they did not have the budget to even try to build them however and just used those pedestal chairs from an office supply).
The blank black areas between the control semicircles on the bridge station surface were meant for the occasional holographic display, but after a few tests showed the film compositors could not do it believably they dropped that idea.
The only thing that they did for TMP that was supposed to be in the TOS design but wasn't was the ribbed ceiling with the glowing holoprojector/bridge defense blister that was finally seen in TMP. The rest of the TMP bridge design was that mundane "realistic" style because that was the fashion in Hollywood in the late 1970s, not because TOS could not build something like that (the only thing they could not have built were the synchronized monitor screens they used in TMP, and of course they had to build the set in sections so they could pull parts out to fit the huge heavy cameras of the '60 and their tracks in to film the show.
The three engineering rooms (though they only had one physical room on the set the internal stuff was moved around to represent three rooms, impulse engineering with the stacks (the tunnel thing behind the big grill) laid flat, and the port and starboard warp engineering rooms (with the tunnel pulled up at an angle matching the Jefferies tubes and nacelle pylons, along with the camera being set up on the opposite sides of the room so it would either be stage left or stage right as appropriate) and one of them had the dilithium crystal access port in it (the warp core was horizontal and ran under the deck of the warp engineering rooms, they actually show that transverse warp core in one TAS episode). The reason they never showed the tunnels raised for the warp engineering rooms is that the hinge did not work right and the first time they tried raising it the assembly almost broke so they left it down.
The corridors had flat walls, not because they could not afford to build the odd angles of the barn-roof style walls TNG had, it was because the idea was that on long deployments it would be less hard on the fictional crew if the corridors reminded them of buildings rather than something like a submarine. An added benefit was that they could use the colored lights more effectively on flat surfaces to make it look a little less like the same short stretch of corridor it really was. Probably the only thing a bigger budget would have done with them would have been to make the corners flow a bit more or something like that, and maybe even have a working section bulkhead door (similar to the one that comes down to seal off engineering in TNG). They certainly would not have had the floor-level lights that shined upward at an unnatural and probably annoying angle that TNG corridors did.
Last, and possibly best, is that the shuttles also had the organic curves of the rest of the ship, they really looked great in Jefferies blueprints and sketches:
and a 3d Model someone did from those plans, parked alongside the less expensive aired shuttle:
> @flash525 said:
> (Quote)
> Because the Borg don't assimilate children?
>
> Unless I am very much mistaken, the Borg do not reproduce in the same manor as any other known Trek species. The Borg assimilate - not just adults, but children, and babies too. It's possible that cybernetic implants aren't added to infants straight away, but to imply the Borg get down and dirty with each other is, quite frankly, just being silly.
>
> We know that infant drones are placed in maturation chambers until they reach a certain age. The only known case where a Borg has been birthed was that episode on VOY where nanoprobes came into contact with the EMH mobile emitter (so 29th century tech or whatever). In no other instance has it been implied or shown that the Borg grow drones. Even in that episode, Seven specifically stated "I don't understand. The Borg assimilate. They do not reproduce in this fashion."
Did you read anything I have actually written? I specifically said it has been retconned, but the original Borg did not assimilate. The idea that anyone even implied Borg have to have intercourse in order to procreate is ludicrous - it's a point entirely made up by you to sound ridiculous. A classic straw man if you will. Borg infants were grown in chambers, possibly cloned but in any case artificially created ex-situ. The rewrite told us children are assimilated and put in maturation chambers until they reach adulthood, yet this doesn't make much sense from a 'efficiency' point of view (hardly anything the Borg actually do does).
The Borg theme was to be completely self-sufficient, searching for technology unknown to integrate into it's society since the former Borg have reached the pinacle of their technological advancements. Having to hunt and assimilate individuals doesn't fit that theme. It makes them Zombies in lieu of it's original message of being 'the ultimate user'.
Well I see someone stepped off the wrong transporter pad this morning.
You're right in that nobody specifically said the Borg would (or even could) reproduce naturally, but then there hasn't been a single reference (as far as I can remember) that the Borg endorse cloning methods either, so your speculation about the Baby Borg possibly being clones is equally as ludicrous as mine was about intercourse.
You've specifically mentioned that the Borg have been retconned, so why are you rambling on about things that no longer matter in universe? Per your latter paragraph too, where has this information come from? Are you quoting somebody, or are you just voicing your opinion, if not simply speculating..?
The Borg seek to acquire technology - just as we seek to acquire resources. In the same way we make use of the land we destroy to acquire our resources, why wouldn't the Borg make use of the individuals that stands in their collective way by assimilating them into their collective? Furthermore technology and advancement isn't just objects; design and innovation are things the Borg would no doubt wish to assimilate too - and you get that from assimilating the people with the thoughts and inspiration.
Here’s my unpopular opinion: Discovery is a visual reboot of TOS. I don’t think there’s gonna be a refit that makes the Donnie look like the Connie. We see the Donnie in Starfleet Command. Why show that ship and not Kirk’s enterprise? Because that is Kirk’s enterprise. Kirk, Spock and McCoy boldly go in that ship and in those uniforms. This is why Discovery doesn’t match up with TOS. It wasn’t meant to.
And my opinion is that Discovery is a sequel of Enterprise not a prequel of TOS due to the aftermath of the Temporal Cold War in the 22nd Century. So most discrepancies between Discovery and TOS can be explained by temporal changes in the 22nd Century. This explanation gives an in-universe explanation for a visual reboot of TOS. The original timeline used a TOS aesthetic in the mid 23rd Century while the current timeline uses a Discovery aesthetic.
You're implying that ENT initiated a new timeline; one that has erased (of branched off from) TOS?
That being the case, where does this place TNG, DS9, VOY and PIC?
Some events would stay the same while others will change. The timeline in Star Trek is constantly being changed, but Star Trek likes to gloss over it. Killing millions of people in the Xindi attack and encountering the Xindi earlier than the original timeline would certainly cause some changes so as a result certain crew members might not exist and replaced with someone else or look different due to their original ancestor died in the Xindi attack.
There is also the possibility that the larger the temporal change, the longer it takes for the effects to be minimized. So Discovery and TOS would see some changes due to Enterprise, but any changes to TNG, DS9, VOY, and PIC would be minimized since it happened 200 years ago. Only major temporal events like destroying planets would have lasting effects while everything else will be swept away by the flow of time. After all, if my grandfather died to a time traveller and my grandmother married someone else, then that would change my DNA considerably, but if it happened to my ancestor that lived 500 years ago, then my DNA would mostly stay the same.
To be totally honest, where time travel is concerned, Trek is a mess.
You've got the future of the USS Relativity, you've got Captain Braxton, you've got the faction that Daniels was part of, all of which should've played a part in the Voyager final (and/or Year of Hell for that matter), or the JJ verse, heck, the fact that the HMS Bounty went back in time and saved some whales should've had a ripple effect on the timeline.
We've got all these temporal police, but they don't seem to manage the timeline all that well, unless they're simply not quick enough to intervene and ultimately become erased themselves, but then they'd presumably not be able to interfere in the first place!
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> Their focus may have been on technology, but to imply they didn't add biologicals when on their technological quest is a little absurd. Even with technology, they still need drones, and the Borg don't reproduce in the normal manner.
They did. There were Borg children. Yes Voyager showed children and we can sloppily retcon everything. But fact is when the Borg showed up there were not different species and they reproduced, because it was a cautionary tale of a society bevoming too dependant on technology. They were not Zombies yet.
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I don't think we know of any other potential energy technology that ST uses with the kind of efficiency and output necessary for the incredible amount of energy they utilize in ST. Matter-antimatter reactions are really the only thing that makes sense. Someone might say fusion, but I'm fairly sure that is conspicuously absent in ST. It is also arguably much more dangerous and less practical due to the massive amount of shielding needed to protect from the normal reactions so we wouldn't see it on a ship.
I find solar roads to be the most comically stupid idea. Driving over them causes wear from dirt, gravel, rubber, etc. grinding them down. The materials matter greatly, not just for durability of the road itself, but for the cars, the traction, the tire life, and so on, however no matter what material is used there WILL be wear and tear, it is unavoidable. Then you add to that the gross inefficiencies of the road not being aimed at the sun, the shadows of the cars blocking the sun, and of course the rubber/gravel deposits left on the road by the cars reducing efficiency further. Weather is also a huge issue in wear and tear as winter is notoriously rough on roads. They are a stupidly bad idea.
Instead of something as dumb as paving a road with solar panels, they could just mount them above the road instead where not only is there no wear and tear or even shadows on them from cars, they can track the sun or at least be better inclined.
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In the first season of Discovery, the holograms were like Star Wars, but in the second season, Burnham was using a hologram as a mirror in her quarters with the same resolution as the holodeck. Only holographic communications seems to have the problem with Star Wars quality holograms likely due to transmission issues and not with the holoprojectors. TNG only had their solid holograms on the holodeck while regular holograms were rarely used and limited to floating above Picard's desk not as a life-size hologram of a person wherever they want in a room.
that and physicly some things don't change much. The computer on my desk doesn't look much differant from the one I had on my desk as a kid 30 years ago. The only way you'd be able to tell one is more advanced then the other is the flatscreen monitor.
Likewise let's take a F-16 vs a F-15. the F-16 has a notable technological advance over the f-15 (Fly by wire controls) you'd not know that just by LOOKING at it.
sometimes you can tell sure, but thats mostly because of changing aestetic sensabilities, or a change to how we understand apperance impacting performance. (modern cars are more aerodynamic because we understand it improves fuel effiancy etc)
that doesn't mean that attention to detail should be ignored but it does mean you can shrug off some odd chocies of design
The reason given for not using non-solid holograms outside of the holodeck in TNG was that it simply did not add anything to the story and would instead tend to confuse viewers as to who was actually there and who was a hologram, they had already established that holograms were indistinguishable from the real objects and people so it would all just be actors, and they did not want some silly marker to tell which was which (like for instance the "H" on the foreheads of holograms in Red Dwarf).
Ironically, the second season holographic controls that read gestures (like Spock's private terminal that Burnham used) were what TOS was going for in addition to the "tophat" action jewel buttons but they did not have the budget to try to do that with mulit-layer film compositors, and the back lit transparencies they tried projecting on the panels from underneath burned too fast to even do LCARS style controls.
What they did show though was the equivalent of electronic paper (most people don't notice it but the labels on the buttons on the command chair arm change on their own (they would change the slips of paper with the typed labels between takes) though they never showed it while it actually changed since it would have been a small but unnecessary waste of SFX budget to do it.
That is why the control stations had so few buttons in The Cage compared to TOS, they added more jewel "buttons" over where the backlit stuff was supposed to be (and just dropped the free-air idea completely even before filming Cage) in the remodel for the series itself.
If DSC had paid attention to the aesthetics (which is overall look and style, not just "technology") instead of ignoring it out of contempt they could have added the context sensitive controls and holographic controls back in to TOS era Trek in a way that meshed and kept the sense that time and technology were advancing the same way they were in the various series before DSC. The three eras shown before CBS took over each had their own distinctive looks that were immediately recognizable by aesthetics, not just by what tech they had or didn't have.
A real-world example would be the roaring '20s, the 1950s/early 1960s, and today. All three have cars, telephones, medicine, clothing, makeup, and culture, but it is all different and immediately recognizable for each era. DSC broke that progression with their weird aversion to TOS, and compounded it by deliberately drawing on "The Undiscovered Country" and other out-of-era sources that were common to both the movie and TNG era (along with the almost ENT-like ugly uniforms and whatever they got the NuKlingon aesthetic from).
Actually, the biggest zeitgeist error in DSC is that the subspace relay network is way, way to dense (and therefore too fast) for the time period, and that "headquarters is just a videocall away" thing totally changes the dynamic and makes it feel more like the TNG era. They could get by with it in the pilot since Shenzhou was sitting right on top of one of the relays, but a major plot point in TOS was the fact that ships were on their own almost as much as sailing ships were since while the backhaul between relays was almost instant the ship-to-relay link always had at least a few seconds and often minutes, hours, or even a day or two of transmission lag if they were way out from the nearest relay or they did not have a lot of energy to spare to throw into speeding the information packets up.
TOS era communications were more a matter of subspace radio dispatches for the most part, sort of like texting or email, rather than like the cell phone network the way DSC makes it out to be. "Balance of Terror" is probably the best example of the drama that semi-isolation adds.
As for solar roads, the main idea is not to be an efficient way of generating power for the power grid, it is that the roadway would be at least partially self-sufficient, like clearing its own snow and ice away and for streetlighting and dynamic lane marking, along with carrying at least some power and possibly communication signals to reduce dependence on wooden utility poles and their all-too-vulnerable wires.
While the solar tiles are more expensive than the same area of current concrete-and-asphalt roadway topping they are tougher and would theoretically last longer, and the combination of passive and active lane markings built into the tiles would eliminate the constant lane marking and remarking that counties have to do with conventional roadways as they wear. In theory (they have not been deployed long enough to know for sure) it has the same sort of higher up front cost but lower maintenance profile that brick paved streets do (the ones with real bricks, not the textured brick-colored concrete ones).
As for Borg children, originally the idea was that they would use artificially produced cyborg babies in cloning drawers (they actually filmed a scene were one of the Enterprise crew pulls open one of those drawers and finds some) but they cut that idea (and scene) before the filming ended for that first episode showing a cube interior. Instead, they went with reproduction by assimilation only, the assimilated children shown on Voyager were just like Annika Hansen was, children who were injected with the nanites the same way the adults were and they eventually grow into adult drones like Seven of Nine.
#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!"
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
My character Tsin'xing
> (Quote)
> Yeah, I've said it several times already, but if TOS was made today it wouldn't look like TOS.
I agree with this 1000%
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
Possibly, but it would be a different Kirk, Spock, and McCoy from the TOS ones just like the Kelvin timeline ones are not quite the same ones because of the changes in their timeline.
I am fairly sure that the "reboot" is rooted in all the temporal distortions that happened between the temporal cold war, the red angel manipulations, the "First Contact" temporal incursion, and the Defiant grab distorting the causal sync relationship between the prime and mirror universes all cumulating into the DSC alterations. CBS calls DSC prime universe, but that in turn begs the question of whether the original Desilu/Paramount productions are part of that same "prime" or if alternate versions of them are part of this "prime" instead.
If that is the case, Picard show may not even be directly connected to TNG, it may be descended from a "Discoized" TNG instead. It may even be a good thing for CBS to do it that way anyway since it would free them from having to research plot points so thoroughly, and that way the fans would not get so worked up about the details of the mistakes.
While the differences between DSC and The Cage/TOS were because Moonves reportedly hated TOS more than all other science fiction, it undoubtedly made making DSC a lot easier since the production team never had to leave their comfort zone and try to understand the '60s zeitgeist and the other foundations of the TOS era Trek and adapt it to today's production technology and viewer expectations.
The thing is, the easy way is not always the best way and while making something simply look different from TOS is very easy (just use generic stuff from current sci-fi shows and file off the serial numbers and throw in a few token references from past shows like they did for DSC), making something different from the current TV sci-fi standard that actually works well is far, far harder. Putting in that greater effort could have made DSC something truly phenomenal instead of merely adequate, but that ship has already sailed.
> (Quote)
>
> Possibly, but it would be a different Kirk, Spock, and McCoy from the TOS ones just like the Kelvin timeline ones are not quite the same ones because of the changes in their timeline.
>
> I am fairly sure that the "reboot" is rooted in all the temporal distortions that happened between the temporal cold war, the red angel manipulations, the "First Contact" temporal incursion, and the Defiant grab distorting the causal sync relationship between the prime and mirror universes all cumulating into the DSC alterations. CBS calls DSC prime universe, but that in turn begs the question of whether the original Desilu/Paramount productions are part of that same "prime" or if alternate versions of them are part of this "prime" instead.
>
> If that is the case, Picard show may not even be directly connected to TNG, it may be descended from a "Discoized" TNG instead. It may even be a good thing for CBS to do it that way anyway since it would free them from having to research plot points so thoroughly, and that way the fans would not get so worked up about the details of the mistakes.
>
> While the differences between DSC and The Cage/TOS were because Moonves reportedly hated TOS more than all other science fiction, it undoubtedly made making DSC a lot easier since the production team never had to leave their comfort zone and try to understand the '60s zeitgeist and the other foundations of the TOS era Trek and adapt it to today's production technology and viewer expectations.
>
> The thing is, the easy way is not always the best way and while making something simply look different from TOS is very easy (just use generic stuff from current sci-fi shows and file off the serial numbers and throw in a few token references from past shows like they did for DSC), making something different from the current TV sci-fi standard that actually works well is far, far harder. Putting in that greater effort could have made DSC something truly phenomenal instead of merely adequate, but that ship has already sailed.
I don’t think it’s a Disco-ized TNG since they’ve used pictures of Worf that looks like the Worf we know and the Ent-D looks to be the same ship.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
My character Tsin'xing
It would not have to be that visually different from old TNG actually, since the set designer said the Federation stuff is mostly based on "The Undiscovered Country", which in turn has a lot of style cues in common with TNG and other later Trek series.
Looking at what they did to the Enterprise to get the Discoprise (which is a great looking ship, it has more "cool" factor but it lacks the simple organic-curves elegance of the original) I suspect that it was the futuristic googie style touches that Moonves hated the most design-wise (just like he apparently hated the supposed "utopian" optimism), and TNG never had any googie or futuristic style to begin with. TNG was basically a down to earth procedural like CSI, NCIS, and the like, but in space, and they seemed to have made an effort to make sure the technology felt like todays (or the 1980s and '90s anyway), only a bit more compact and with a touch of exotic particle space magic.
TOS was based on a sort of futuristic minimalist idea, instead of evoking the familiar it was supposed to hover on the knife edge between fantastic and alien, with just enough of the familiar so the viewers would be able to realize what they were looking at. It is a completely different mindset from all the shows that were made after TOS and TAS, a mindset that seemed to slowly but steadily drain away from Hollywood during the 1970s.
Weird as it sounds, if TOS was made today using today's equivalent of the mindset that went into TOS in the '60s the closest thing to it would not be DSC at all, it would be much more like "Valerian and Laureline" in style the way it bucked the trends of the time and went its own way instead of embracing the norm.
DSC is about as mainline as you can get, not only is it not thinking outside of the box, it is in a box inside of the box.
What style/design trend did TOS buck?
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
#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!"
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
And my opinion is that Discovery is a sequel of Enterprise not a prequel of TOS due to the aftermath of the Temporal Cold War in the 22nd Century. So most discrepancies between Discovery and TOS can be explained by temporal changes in the 22nd Century. This explanation gives an in-universe explanation for a visual reboot of TOS. The original timeline used a TOS aesthetic in the mid 23rd Century while the current timeline uses a Discovery aesthetic.
Just about every one Hollywood had for sci-fi at the time actually. I am beginning to think that to actually understand it you had to be there from some of the replies I have seen when I try to point it out over the past few years though.
I started to write a long post detailing some of the most glaring differences, but it all really boils down to the differences between Star Trek and its main competition at the time, Lost in Space. Lost in Space was a perfect example of the archetypical Hollywood sci-fi style of the time. It had practically all of them from the silver suits to the lasers with cooling rings, the robot, the spinning radar screens, and the fact that it was a flying saucer (though the chemical rocket ship was slightly more popular) and the very ambiguous way they treated faster-than-light travel.
Most of the typical ships used a kind of industrial/art deco style that utilized spherical and conical segments for most of the features, while Star Trek used a futuristic googie style that relied on the golden ratio for proportion and spiral cross-section curves instead. None of the other live action TV shows used the googie style much though some cartoons, like The Jetsons, used a kind of usually exaggerated version of it (also a few live action movies did to some extent).
The idea of the jewel buttons was rather clever though they were not implemented very well. They were supposed to go along with the context-sensitive panel displays as a lit direction-of-pressure sensitive extrusion of the panel surface (in theory the set crew would swap out transparencies and button sets between takes to represent the panels changing configuration) but since it was not practical to show the things actually extruding and sinking back into the surface they never bothered to do that swapping in practice since the audience probably would not notice it without the SFX to point out that they do that in the first place.
Anyway, if DSC was made in the mid 1960s with the same generic mindset it uses today but with the "in the box" conventions of that time it would have looked a lot like Lost in Space. On the other hand, TOS is so familiar after all these years that many people simply do not realize how different and innovative it was for its time.
Unless I am very much mistaken, the Borg do not reproduce in the same manor as any other known Trek species. The Borg assimilate - not just adults, but children, and babies too. It's possible that cybernetic implants aren't added to infants straight away, but to imply the Borg get down and dirty with each other is, quite frankly, just being silly.
We know that infant drones are placed in maturation chambers until they reach a certain age. The only known case where a Borg has been birthed was that episode on VOY where nanoprobes came into contact with the EMH mobile emitter (so 29th century tech or whatever). In no other instance has it been implied or shown that the Borg grow drones. Even in that episode, Seven specifically stated "I don't understand. The Borg assimilate. They do not reproduce in this fashion."
You're implying that ENT initiated a new timeline; one that has erased (of branched off from) TOS?
That being the case, where does this place TNG, DS9, VOY and PIC?
> (Quote)
> Because the Borg don't assimilate children?
>
> Unless I am very much mistaken, the Borg do not reproduce in the same manor as any other known Trek species. The Borg assimilate - not just adults, but children, and babies too. It's possible that cybernetic implants aren't added to infants straight away, but to imply the Borg get down and dirty with each other is, quite frankly, just being silly.
>
> We know that infant drones are placed in maturation chambers until they reach a certain age. The only known case where a Borg has been birthed was that episode on VOY where nanoprobes came into contact with the EMH mobile emitter (so 29th century tech or whatever). In no other instance has it been implied or shown that the Borg grow drones. Even in that episode, Seven specifically stated "I don't understand. The Borg assimilate. They do not reproduce in this fashion."
Did you read anything I have actually written? I specifically said it has been retconned, but the original Borg did not assimilate. The idea that anyone even implied Borg have to have intercourse in order to procreate is ludicrous - it's a point entirely made up by you to sound ridiculous. A classic straw man if you will. Borg infants were grown in chambers, possibly cloned but in any case artificially created ex-situ. The rewrite told us children are assimilated and put in maturation chambers until they reach adulthood, yet this doesn't make much sense from a 'efficiency' point of view (hardly anything the Borg actually do does).
The Borg theme was to be completely self-sufficient, searching for technology unknown to integrate into it's society since the former Borg have reached the pinacle of their technological advancements. Having to hunt and assimilate individuals doesn't fit that theme. It makes them Zombies in lieu of it's original message of being 'the ultimate user'.
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That was a retcon after TNG S2 - "Q-Who". The original line about the physicallity of Borg Drones from Q in that episode was:
http://www.chakoteya.net/NextGen/142.htm
^^^
So yeah, later writers started to de-fang the true horror of the Borg - That they were like locusts, just swarming in and grabbing any useful technology they found; not AT ALL interested in holding territory, or having any real political motivations (why would they, as they are all one Hive mind). They couldn't be negotiated AND they didn't go around announcing themselves as hostile to any/everything they encountered. Again in "Q-Who", they first sent over a couple of Drones (because Worf blasted the first one) - surveyed the Technology of the 1701-D and then said:
So, (IMO) the Borg as ORIGINALLY conceived and presented in "Q-Who" were much more terrifying as an enemy to the Federtaion then what they were slowly turned into starting with TNG S3 - "Best of Both Worlds"; until they were finally reduced to just another Alien of the Week who suddenly were 'humanized' and made something that now could be negotiated with and had political motives, etc. with the introduction of the 'Borg Queen' in the film Star Trek: First Contact.
I REALLY wish we'd gotten at least one more encounter with the truly frightening (to a political body like The Federation who believed ANYTHING can be negotiated in time) Borg that were more like a truly alien force of nature - and not one Woman's Zombie Army.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
I am really more interested in this new Picard show and what story it is telling, or might be telling.
Soji/Dajh goals and purpose are still unclear to me. I distinguish the two because apparently both had some kind of "sleeper" programming. Dajh might have just wanted to work with the Daystrom Institute, but I wonder if she had another purpose in being there? Soji seems to be trying to help the liberated drones, but might she be looking for something else?
I could imagine that Dajh's purpose was to look through the Daystrom data and figure out who "TRIBBLE" the Synth to start their attack on Mars. Possibly delivering proof against the Zhat Vash or some similar conspiracy?
And Soji's interest seemed to have been particularly for the Romulan drones? Is that perhaps another angle to get information about the Zhat Vash?
What I hope the aren't doing is to frame the Borg as the boogeyman the Zhat Vash are fighting against - the Borg are specifically cybernetic lifeforms, not synthetics. Or is the truth that they didn't start as organics, but in fact as synthetics? Maybe that epxlains why they don't care much for Androids - they were them, and they are trying to go beyond that. (Of course, this would be on of the retcons I mentioned...)
Some speculate that either the Romulan or the Vulcans might be secretly synthetics. Interesting idea, but the point about Vulcans usually has been that they are too emotional and need logic to keep their emotions in check, so they would have been "odd" Synthetics that were overly emotional rather than too logical.
Hugh or Soji mentioned that the Borg ship experienced colony collapse (not sure what term they actually used) after the Romulans were assimilated - apparently the last one. Is there a connection between the ship collapsing and assimilating (these) Romulans?
And of course, why did the Romulan Ex-Drones seem to hate so strongly on the undercover Android?
Some events would stay the same while others will change. The timeline in Star Trek is constantly being changed, but Star Trek likes to gloss over it. Killing millions of people in the Xindi attack and encountering the Xindi earlier than the original timeline would certainly cause some changes so as a result certain crew members might not exist and replaced with someone else or look different due to their original ancestor died in the Xindi attack.
There is also the possibility that the larger the temporal change, the longer it takes for the effects to be minimized. So Discovery and TOS would see some changes due to Enterprise, but any changes to TNG, DS9, VOY, and PIC would be minimized since it happened 200 years ago. Only major temporal events like destroying planets would have lasting effects while everything else will be swept away by the flow of time. After all, if my grandfather died to a time traveller and my grandmother married someone else, then that would change my DNA considerably, but if it happened to my ancestor that lived 500 years ago, then my DNA would mostly stay the same.
There are a lot of little details in Picard that simply are unnecessary departures from established stuff, like cloning Data or however they put it when they could have just downloaded him from B4. Why do it some ridiculous fantasy way? Or why does no one in Starfleet show any respect to Picard?
When you ask these questions and notice stuff like the magic Romulan scanner time camera thingy, the incompetent Romulan death squads, the fight scene with phasers hidden all over the room yet they wait to grab them, F-bombs, JL, and obnoxious dialogue, the lack of police/security force involvement, etc. its just all so much easier explained as bad writing. They aren't just inconsistent with the old stuff, they aren't even internally consistent and don't answer obvious questions.
No. I think the issue is fans are willing to overlook the majority of plot holes and inconsistencies in TOS, TNG, DS9, Voy and Ent but when some of these same plot holes and inconsistencies crop up in Discovery and Picard they are seen as the unforgivable sin.
1) Why didn’t Data return in B4? We haven’t seen the whole series yet. We dont really know whats going on.
2) Why no one respects Picard? I look at it like this...Sisko cant be the only person that blames Picard for what happened in BOBW. It doesnt matter how many times he’s done the right thing people may still see him as the reason why Star Fleet lost 39 ships and 11,000 personnel. Perhaps we saw this when the Borg attacked Earth in First Contact and Picard was ordered to patrol the Romulan Neutral Zone. Add to that Picard puts The Federation and Star Fleet on blast on Galactic television and its not hard to see that some people may not hold Picard on that pedestal he once had.
Just because you don’t like the writing or a plot point doesnt make it bad. Just because you have questions about whats going on doesnt mean its bad writing.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
My character Tsin'xing
Actually, while money was a big part of the reason it looked like it did, production technology was just as big a factor. Even if they had a huge budget and modern CGI it would not have looked much like TMP or TNG. TOS was made before the "realism" craze of the 1970s swept through Hollywood sci-fi and it was designed in a more fantastic futuristic style.
The original bridge design was an oblate spheroid instead of that octagon for instance (Jefferies had to redesign the bridge to use the flat lumber, plywood, and dark glass they had available to build it with), and the shapes had more flowing organic curves and such. The station ring floor and central platform were supposed to be grills and there was no carpet, but the budget would not stretch for the metal grills, and a flaw in the subflooring made sound dampening foam and carpet a necessity.
The main screen was supposed to be bigger and each station had a single large screen over it (in addition to the little eye-level screens on the stations). The whole depressed area over each station was originaly one big screen, but they had to use the mats to cut them into two considerably smaller "screens" in order for the transparencies to survive the level of light needed to make them visible after they made the bridge brighter at the insistence of NBC (you can see the original overhead screen configuration in The Cage btw).
The stations did have something similar to TNG's LCARS panels (though they were strips and not the entire surface) but they too would burn in the hot incandescent lights so they had to be kept off. Ideally the control station chairs were supposed to extrude or at least rise up from the deck as needed and were powered instead of free-turning (they did not have the budget to even try to build them however and just used those pedestal chairs from an office supply).
The blank black areas between the control semicircles on the bridge station surface were meant for the occasional holographic display, but after a few tests showed the film compositors could not do it believably they dropped that idea.
The only thing that they did for TMP that was supposed to be in the TOS design but wasn't was the ribbed ceiling with the glowing holoprojector/bridge defense blister that was finally seen in TMP. The rest of the TMP bridge design was that mundane "realistic" style because that was the fashion in Hollywood in the late 1970s, not because TOS could not build something like that (the only thing they could not have built were the synchronized monitor screens they used in TMP, and of course they had to build the set in sections so they could pull parts out to fit the huge heavy cameras of the '60 and their tracks in to film the show.
The three engineering rooms (though they only had one physical room on the set the internal stuff was moved around to represent three rooms, impulse engineering with the stacks (the tunnel thing behind the big grill) laid flat, and the port and starboard warp engineering rooms (with the tunnel pulled up at an angle matching the Jefferies tubes and nacelle pylons, along with the camera being set up on the opposite sides of the room so it would either be stage left or stage right as appropriate) and one of them had the dilithium crystal access port in it (the warp core was horizontal and ran under the deck of the warp engineering rooms, they actually show that transverse warp core in one TAS episode). The reason they never showed the tunnels raised for the warp engineering rooms is that the hinge did not work right and the first time they tried raising it the assembly almost broke so they left it down.
The corridors had flat walls, not because they could not afford to build the odd angles of the barn-roof style walls TNG had, it was because the idea was that on long deployments it would be less hard on the fictional crew if the corridors reminded them of buildings rather than something like a submarine. An added benefit was that they could use the colored lights more effectively on flat surfaces to make it look a little less like the same short stretch of corridor it really was. Probably the only thing a bigger budget would have done with them would have been to make the corners flow a bit more or something like that, and maybe even have a working section bulkhead door (similar to the one that comes down to seal off engineering in TNG). They certainly would not have had the floor-level lights that shined upward at an unnatural and probably annoying angle that TNG corridors did.
Last, and possibly best, is that the shuttles also had the organic curves of the rest of the ship, they really looked great in Jefferies blueprints and sketches:
and a 3d Model someone did from those plans, parked alongside the less expensive aired shuttle:
You're right in that nobody specifically said the Borg would (or even could) reproduce naturally, but then there hasn't been a single reference (as far as I can remember) that the Borg endorse cloning methods either, so your speculation about the Baby Borg possibly being clones is equally as ludicrous as mine was about intercourse.
You've specifically mentioned that the Borg have been retconned, so why are you rambling on about things that no longer matter in universe? Per your latter paragraph too, where has this information come from? Are you quoting somebody, or are you just voicing your opinion, if not simply speculating..?
The Borg seek to acquire technology - just as we seek to acquire resources. In the same way we make use of the land we destroy to acquire our resources, why wouldn't the Borg make use of the individuals that stands in their collective way by assimilating them into their collective? Furthermore technology and advancement isn't just objects; design and innovation are things the Borg would no doubt wish to assimilate too - and you get that from assimilating the people with the thoughts and inspiration.
You've got the future of the USS Relativity, you've got Captain Braxton, you've got the faction that Daniels was part of, all of which should've played a part in the Voyager final (and/or Year of Hell for that matter), or the JJ verse, heck, the fact that the HMS Bounty went back in time and saved some whales should've had a ripple effect on the timeline.
We've got all these temporal police, but they don't seem to manage the timeline all that well, unless they're simply not quick enough to intervene and ultimately become erased themselves, but then they'd presumably not be able to interfere in the first place!