Really. After three seasons of TOS, how much did we know about Sulu or Uhura? Neither one of them even got a first name until the novels started coming out! We only knew Pavel Chekov's first name because it was mentioned in "The Trouble With Tribbles", and we only know he was an only child because it was a clue in "Day of the Dove". For that matter, what's Christine Chapel's background? What's Dr. Mbenga's first name? Where did we learn about McCoy's personal life prior to joining Starfleet?
Three full seasons, and they managed to give the impression of deep background that you accuse DSC of failing to provide, while in fact giving us less actual information.
That is not too unusual, TOS did not have an ensemble cast like most of the following series did. It had the traditional hero and one or two sidekicks plus regular supporting cast and then extras filling in where necessary, structure. In The Cage those three were Pike as the hero, Spock, and Number one as the sidekicks, and then the regular supporting cast lead by the doctor (who's role was more of a spotlight and lampshade for Pike instead of himself as a character). TOS had Kirk, Spock, and Bones along with the supporting cast, etc. Ignoring the movies, the first Trek series to have an ensemble cast was TNG, and even that was toned down somewhat by the time the episodes were filmed from what was originally planned.
DSC simply retuned to the traditional cast setup, probably because Fuller's original pitch was for anthologies (in essence two-to-four hour movies split into hour long segments) with two or three of them per season, featuring different ships, crews, and time periods for each. Typically, the traditional setup is the fastest type off the blocks, which is needed with that back-door-movie approach meaning the viewers had little time to get to know them.
The heroine of the pitch that the first part of DSC s1 was adapted from is Burnham so she gets the same camera time as Kirk did in TOS. Her main sidekick is Tilly but from there it gets rather blurry since they mixed several pitches, but is possibly Stamets if they stuck with two sidekicks, but I get the feeling they went to one in a Holms and Watson or Lone Ranger and Tonto model. The actual regulars corresponding to TOS's regulars were what you could call "middle decks" people, not the bridge crew.
DSC expanded to another ring of regulars compared to TOS, Lorca was an interesting spin of the villain-aboard like Dr. Smith of Lost in Space, but everyone else on the bridge were lowest-focus regular supporting cast on that secondary ring, just above the extras. They were just there to show the viewers what the rest of the ship was doing while the heroes did their thing on the science deck/remote locations, and as backdrop on the occasions Burnham came to the bridge for something.
It is nice they are getting more focus and fleshing out now, but the format* of the show and the half-season (or often one-third) length seasons streaming shows tend to have means they probably will not get a lot because unless it has direct impact on that single storyline there is almost no time to develop it, which can lead to spoilering itself when they do. Murder She Wrote was notorious for that kind of unintentional spoilering, the thing there was to look for the most famous or experienced actor and that was invariably the murderer since they had to be able to do the sudden switch believably (though in the last season or so of the show they started to mix it up a bit).
*The format is called a narrow or focused serial. And no, "narrow" is not a disparaging term in this case it just means that everything is part of a single long story with little or nothing else thrown in per season and Checkov's gun is adhered to tightly. In the past it was rare except for the occasional miniseries but seems to be gaining favor because of binge streaming.
Empress Blinky. I'm sure those that watch ST:D know which scene I'm referring to with this reference. I'm not watching ST:D, but I have seen this scene and it was mostly excellent, well acted, well shot, that is except for the actual writing which was atrocious.
The biggest problem I had with it was the ridiculous idea that blinking can destablize a hologram. It is the equivalent of a toddler putting their hands over their eyes and going "You can't see me!" In no way is it believable that the mere act of blinking can break a hologram across the room, it is just not plausible.
Now, I can't say if there was some lead up to this scene that would have made it believable, such as the empress having some implants she activates by blinking that could destablize a hologram. I'm also of the opinion, based on the tone of the scene, and the fact that they showed the Empress noticing the holograms not blinking, that this was a deliberate flaw, something to test the Empress in some way, and something that she should notice.
However as written, the blinking and the explanation for it were simply horrible. While it was more than just the blinking portion with bad dialogue, this was the worst part IMO. I have thought up a way to salvage the scene, merely with different dialogue.
Holo: Why are you blinking?
PG: Why aren't you? [blinks a lot]
[scene proceeds as it did, the holograms deactivate]
MIB: You broke my holograms!
PG: I told them to go 'F' themselves.
MIB: There's no need to be crude. What did you do?
PG: [Laughs] Simplistic programs with optical and audio inputs can be tricked into executing code if they detect inputs in binary patterns, such as flashing lights, repeating sounds, or even blinking. I simply told them to go format themselves.
MIB: And you assumed it would work because they weren't blinking?
PG: It is a very basic algorithm they clearly lacked, which suggested other lacking algorithms, like an equally simple one to prevent them from executing malicious code that their optical inputs detect.
It is a simple change, but one I feel that turns a scene from ridiculous magic into something that is actually plausible.
Empress Blinky. I'm sure those that watch ST:D know which scene I'm referring to with this reference. I'm not watching ST:D, but I have seen this scene and it was mostly excellent, well acted, well shot, that is except for the actual writing which was atrocious.
The biggest problem I had with it was the ridiculous idea that blinking can destablize a hologram. It is the equivalent of a toddler putting their hands over their eyes and going "You can't see me!" In no way is it believable that the mere act of blinking can break a hologram across the room, it is just not plausible.
Now, I can't say if there was some lead up to this scene that would have made it believable, such as the empress having some implants she activates by blinking that could destablize a hologram. I'm also of the opinion, based on the tone of the scene, and the fact that they showed the Empress noticing the holograms not blinking, that this was a deliberate flaw, something to test the Empress in some way, and something that she should notice.
However as written, the blinking and the explanation for it were simply horrible. While it was more than just the blinking portion with bad dialogue, this was the worst part IMO. I have thought up a way to salvage the scene, merely with different dialogue.
Holo: Why are you blinking?
PG: Why aren't you? [blinks a lot]
[scene proceeds as it did, the holograms deactivate]
MIB: You broke my holograms!
PG: I told them to go 'F' themselves.
MIB: There's no need to be crude. What did you do?
PG: [Laughs] Simplistic programs with optical and audio inputs can be tricked into executing code if they detect inputs in binary patterns, such as flashing lights, repeating sounds, or even blinking. I simply told them to go format themselves.
MIB: And you assumed it would work because they weren't blinking?
PG: It is a very basic algorithm they clearly lacked, which suggested other lacking algorithms, like an equally simple one to prevent them from executing malicious code that their optical inputs detect.
It is a simple change, but one I feel that turns a scene from ridiculous magic into something that is actually plausible.
That does sound a little less idiotic. Another approach they could have used with a little thought into the script would be that she noticed the AI had dropped some of its human-simulation functions like blinking (perhaps the strain of too many interviews going on at once) and surmised that she could possibly stress it more and tangle it up via weird behavior like the blinking that it would have trouble interpreting (an idea that actually has precedent in the show as far back as TOS).
Her reason for doing it may have even been just her sense of humor and wanted to make the computer "work for it" instead of a smooth interrogation, and she could have been just as surprised as the natives that she actually crashed the thing, but of course she would never admit something like that except maybe to Burnham later.
-The Discovery gets upgraded with new programmable matter devices, new hull plating, and the nacelles are detached from the ship, which is stated to help with maneuverability. The deflector dish is revamped, and there are now cutouts in the secondary hull. The crew gets the new combadges, which function as personal transporters, PADDs, and tricorders.
There was also nice references to self sealing stem bolts, and a VOY era Type 2 phaser.
some new screen caps of the new Discovery. Taken from Reddit.
It will be interesting to see if we get the Discovery-A.
Do I have to point out the issues of servicing physically disconnected ship parts if power fails to transporters, drones, and/or whatever field is keeping them psuedo-attached? Or how it would be far easier to disrupt said field than to cut through the entire pylon's armor? Then there is the response time issue for commands issue to anything nacelles as it now has to be wireless. Also doesn't the entire ship spin to do the mushroom drive? How does that not cause issues with the nacelles?
I mean I'm sure they hand wave these issues away, but it defies logic on so many levels.
Do I have to point out the issues of servicing physically disconnected ship parts if power fails to transporters, drones, and/or whatever field is keeping them psuedo-attached? Or how it would be far easier to disrupt said field than to cut through the entire pylon's armor? Then there is the response time issue for commands issue to anything nacelles as it now has to be wireless. Also doesn't the entire ship spin to do the mushroom drive? How does that not cause issues with the nacelles?
I mean I'm sure they hand wave these issues away, but it defies logic on so many levels.
The only part that physically spins are the two washer-shaped plates attached to the upper and lower surfaces of the of the middle ring, the sideways stutter-tumble thing is supposed to be an illusion of its transition to the string layer of the universe, similar to the way that a ship going to warp does not really stretch like a rubberband, it just looks like it does to an outside observer.
As for the other issues, I agree, they stretch believability past what would have been acceptable in traditonal Trek for the most part though they did have a few similar points, like the holographic matter "ablative armor" Voyager had in its last episode.
Do I have to point out the issues of servicing physically disconnected ship parts if power fails to transporters, drones, and/or whatever field is keeping them psuedo-attached? Or how it would be far easier to disrupt said field than to cut through the entire pylon's armor? Then there is the response time issue for commands issue to anything nacelles as it now has to be wireless. Also doesn't the entire ship spin to do the mushroom drive? How does that not cause issues with the nacelles?
I mean I'm sure they hand wave these issues away, but it defies logic on so many levels.
Why would it be far easier to disrupt said field than it would be to cut through the armor? Haven't force fields in Star Trek typically been much tougher than the hull of ships?
Only ablative armor seemed to make them a bit tougher again. I guess they were able to improve force fields again in the 800 years or so since we last them.
If you don't have power, you don't need the nacelles attached anymore, because they need a lot of power to do anything useful.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Do I have to point out the issues of servicing physically disconnected ship parts if power fails to transporters, drones, and/or whatever field is keeping them psuedo-attached? Or how it would be far easier to disrupt said field than to cut through the entire pylon's armor? Then there is the response time issue for commands issue to anything nacelles as it now has to be wireless. Also doesn't the entire ship spin to do the mushroom drive? How does that not cause issues with the nacelles?
I mean I'm sure they hand wave these issues away, but it defies logic on so many levels.
Why would it be far easier to disrupt said field than it would be to cut through the armor? Haven't force fields in Star Trek typically been much tougher than the hull of ships?
Only ablative armor seemed to make them a bit tougher again. I guess they were able to improve force fields again in the 800 years or so since we last them.
If you don't have power, you don't need the nacelles attached anymore, because they need a lot of power to do anything useful.
True, they would not need the nacelles without power to use them, but there is also the problem of a possible momentary power interruption causing them to become detached from the system while in warp, and as pointed out in ENT things falling off at warp could be spread out far enough to make them difficult to find, not to mention take months or years to collect at impulse speeds.
I think at this point we are all Scotty in “Relics”. We don’t know enough about this technology to try to address its limitations
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.
It is one thing that suggests a believable advancement in technology at least. Otherwise the show reuses the same ship models over and over again, suggesting DSC era ships en masse in service in PIC and beyond. Also, Discovery's interior sets and tech is hardly distinguishable from future versions. The floaty future ships at least suggest something happened.
^ 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
It is one thing that suggests a believable advancement in technology at least. Otherwise the show reuses the same ship models over and over again, suggesting DSC era ships en masse in service in PIC and beyond. Also, Discovery's interior sets and tech is hardly distinguishable from future versions. The floaty future ships at least suggest something happened.
It is a very clumsy and lazy way to show "advancement" at best. Jumping to the future is a worse idea than keeping them in their original time would have been.
It is one thing that suggests a believable advancement in technology at least. Otherwise the show reuses the same ship models over and over again, suggesting DSC era ships en masse in service in PIC and beyond. Also, Discovery's interior sets and tech is hardly distinguishable from future versions. The floaty future ships at least suggest something happened.
It is a very clumsy and lazy way to show "advancement" at best. Jumping to the future is a worse idea than keeping them in their original time would have been.
I disagree. While I dislike DSC for various reasons, putting them in the far flung future is actually what is a saving grace for the show since here they can play out everything they wanted in the first place, including weird ship models, because it's so far out (and possibly going to get erased when they fix the burn) they don't come into conflict with any established era's aesthetics. DSC interior settings already looked like future from the get-go - they easily could have scrapped the entirety of season 1 and started with season two, then jump forward in time. Or just have the pilot play in the 23rd century.
^ 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
I think at this point we are all Scotty in “Relics”. We don’t know enough about this technology to try to address its limitations
Absolutely. The people who should have the most questions are the crew of the Discovery. Are they going to get an explanation? The audience has the same questions because we've never seen anything like this in Star Trek before, as far as I can remember, so actually addressing them is important for helping suspension of disbelief.
I don't like it, personally, but I am happy to give it a pass if they take it seriously and address it in a way that is somewhat believable.
Do I have to point out the issues of servicing physically disconnected ship parts if power fails to transporters, drones, and/or whatever field is keeping them psuedo-attached? Or how it would be far easier to disrupt said field than to cut through the entire pylon's armor? Then there is the response time issue for commands issue to anything nacelles as it now has to be wireless. Also doesn't the entire ship spin to do the mushroom drive? How does that not cause issues with the nacelles?
I mean I'm sure they hand wave these issues away, but it defies logic on so many levels.
Why would it be far easier to disrupt said field than it would be to cut through the armor? Haven't force fields in Star Trek typically been much tougher than the hull of ships?
Only ablative armor seemed to make them a bit tougher again. I guess they were able to improve force fields again in the 800 years or so since we last them.
If you don't have power, you don't need the nacelles attached anymore, because they need a lot of power to do anything useful.
True, they would not need the nacelles without power to use them, but there is also the problem of a possible momentary power interruption causing them to become detached from the system while in warp, and as pointed out in ENT things falling off at warp could be spread out far enough to make them difficult to find, not to mention take months or years to collect at impulse speeds.
Well, they use subspace microstrings entangled along the longitudal axis create a stable tether between the nacelle and the engineering section. This also allows easy transfer of energy (and control input) via a series of polarized nadion-tachyon transceiver arrays even at any warp speed.
It should be obvious that this ensures that even a momentary power failure would keep things attached, especially when there is a strong subspace tensor field present.
A thing to remember with force fields - the real world is assembled by force fields. The matter you're made off is mostly "empty", with only tiny points in there being protons or electrons or neutrons. Except... There is also the forces between these particles. Electromagnetic, weak and strong nuclear force, they all keep things together. And you don't need to plug in a power cable to keep this going. I mean, of course its force, energy transfer and all that involved. But it's basically self-sustaining in some manner. Maybe with sufficiently advanced technology (almost indistinguishable from magic for us) you can create force fields that are just as lasting and stable, but don't have the usual other properties related to normal matter.
They can already disassemble people and reassemble them somewhere else in the 22nd century! Why not keep stuff assembled without a serious power failure risk?
Mustrum "Just making up some technobabble" Ridcully
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Do I have to point out the issues of servicing physically disconnected ship parts if power fails to transporters, drones, and/or whatever field is keeping them psuedo-attached? Or how it would be far easier to disrupt said field than to cut through the entire pylon's armor? Then there is the response time issue for commands issue to anything nacelles as it now has to be wireless. Also doesn't the entire ship spin to do the mushroom drive? How does that not cause issues with the nacelles?
I mean I'm sure they hand wave these issues away, but it defies logic on so many levels.
Why would it be far easier to disrupt said field than it would be to cut through the armor? Haven't force fields in Star Trek typically been much tougher than the hull of ships?
Only ablative armor seemed to make them a bit tougher again. I guess they were able to improve force fields again in the 800 years or so since we last them.
If you don't have power, you don't need the nacelles attached anymore, because they need a lot of power to do anything useful.
True, they would not need the nacelles without power to use them, but there is also the problem of a possible momentary power interruption causing them to become detached from the system while in warp, and as pointed out in ENT things falling off at warp could be spread out far enough to make them difficult to find, not to mention take months or years to collect at impulse speeds.
Well, they use subspace microstrings entangled along the longitudal axis create a stable tether between the nacelle and the engineering section. This also allows easy transfer of energy (and control input) via a series of polarized nadion-tachyon transceiver arrays even at any warp speed.
It should be obvious that this ensures that even a momentary power failure would keep things attached, especially when there is a strong subspace tensor field present.
A thing to remember with force fields - the real world is assembled by force fields. The matter you're made off is mostly "empty", with only tiny points in there being protons or electrons or neutrons. Except... There is also the forces between these particles. Electromagnetic, weak and strong nuclear force, they all keep things together. And you don't need to plug in a power cable to keep this going. I mean, of course its force, energy transfer and all that involved. But it's basically self-sustaining in some manner. Maybe with sufficiently advanced technology (almost indistinguishable from magic for us) you can create force fields that are just as lasting and stable, but don't have the usual other properties related to normal matter.
They can already disassemble people and reassemble them somewhere else in the 22nd century! Why not keep stuff assembled without a serious power failure risk?
Mustrum "Just making up some technobabble" Ridcully
Well the thing is for all the subatomic forces, they still get split pretty easily from a stray energetic particle or counter force field. Its why radiation can be deadly, because high energy particles impact the human body's particles and break those bonds, killing the cells that were made up of those particles. Too much of that and the body can't deal with all the dead cells and organ failure leads to death.
So when you're dealing with high energy directed energy weapons, that would be one of the most dangerous things to a disconnected ship part, because you have high energy going through/impacting against some force field that lacks all the short range forces that bond subatomic particles, atoms, and molecules to keep it together. Obviously shields should defeat most of that stuff, until they fail. Strictly speaking if you want to take advantage of those forces, you want everything attached!
By all means they can just make it up as long as they don't make it pure magic with no downsides. Nothing works that way, and it makes for better stories when the magic teleporter breaks or otherwise encounters a fail condition.
For sure the floaty ship bits have some benefit we can take at face value, otherwise they wouldn't do it. But how does it work? And I ask not because it can reasonably be explained to modern audiences. It can't. But it needs explained because it has requirements to maintain, downsides, and benefits that can be used to give limitations to the tech that the audience can understand on some level, and can be good fodder for future stories, if they actually stick to those rules.
It is one thing that suggests a believable advancement in technology at least. Otherwise the show reuses the same ship models over and over again, suggesting DSC era ships en masse in service in PIC and beyond. Also, Discovery's interior sets and tech is hardly distinguishable from future versions. The floaty future ships at least suggest something happened.
It is a very clumsy and lazy way to show "advancement" at best. Jumping to the future is a worse idea than keeping them in their original time would have been.
I disagree. While I dislike DSC for various reasons, putting them in the far flung future is actually what is a saving grace for the show since here they can play out everything they wanted in the first place, including weird ship models, because it's so far out (and possibly going to get erased when they fix the burn) they don't come into conflict with any established era's aesthetics. DSC interior settings already looked like future from the get-go - they easily could have scrapped the entirety of season 1 and started with season two, then jump forward in time. Or just have the pilot play in the 23rd century.
I don't think it is a saving grace, more of a knee-jerk reaction to the same vocal minority of fans who objected to ENT being a "prequel" in the hope that it will quell the constant criticism and heal the breaches in the fanbase. And at the time ENT came out sci-fi fans were predisposed by Star Wars towards hating prequels, something that is still hanging around after all of these years.
The problem is that the prequel position of the original DSC setting was not the root of the problem in the first place, it was that DSC designers and writers seemed to know very little about the era they were setting it in and totally contemptuous of what little they did think they knew, and much the same reaction would have happened no matter where they placed it with that kind of attitude. In essence they are treating one of the symptoms without addressing the underlaying cause at all.
Kicking the show forward in time to a different era each time isn't a way of dealing with the complexities of a shared universe (and yes, a series broken up with long downtime gaps with different writing and production teams does constitute a form of shared universe), it is a way of ignoring them, usually to the detriment of the overall setting.
As for "futuristic", I guess that is in the eye of the beholder. To me the interior designs are not futuristic at all, it takes more than just off the shelf contemporary large format LCD screens dropped into "console" panels, and pretty metal walls in a sort of checklist approach to modern sci-fi to sell that idea.
It is one thing that suggests a believable advancement in technology at least. Otherwise the show reuses the same ship models over and over again, suggesting DSC era ships en masse in service in PIC and beyond. Also, Discovery's interior sets and tech is hardly distinguishable from future versions. The floaty future ships at least suggest something happened.
It is a very clumsy and lazy way to show "advancement" at best. Jumping to the future is a worse idea than keeping them in their original time would have been.
I disagree. While I dislike DSC for various reasons, putting them in the far flung future is actually what is a saving grace for the show since here they can play out everything they wanted in the first place, including weird ship models, because it's so far out (and possibly going to get erased when they fix the burn) they don't come into conflict with any established era's aesthetics. DSC interior settings already looked like future from the get-go - they easily could have scrapped the entirety of season 1 and started with season two, then jump forward in time. Or just have the pilot play in the 23rd century.
I don't think it is a saving grace, more of a knee-jerk reaction to the same vocal minority of fans who objected to ENT being a "prequel" in the hope that it will quell the constant criticism and heal the breaches in the fanbase. And at the time ENT came out sci-fi fans were predisposed by Star Wars towards hating prequels, something that is still hanging around after all of these years.
The problem is that the prequel position of the original DSC setting was not the root of the problem in the first place, it was that DSC designers and writers seemed to know very little about the era they were setting it in and totally contemptuous of what little they did think they knew, and much the same reaction would have happened no matter where they placed it with that kind of attitude. In essence they are treating one of the symptoms without addressing the underlaying cause at all.
Kicking the show forward in time to a different era each time isn't a way of dealing with the complexities of a shared universe (and yes, a series broken up with long downtime gaps with different writing and production teams does constitute a form of shared universe), it is a way of ignoring them, usually to the detriment of the overall setting.
As for "futuristic", I guess that is in the eye of the beholder. To me the interior designs are not futuristic at all, it takes more than just off the shelf contemporary large format LCD screens dropped into "console" panels, and pretty metal walls in a sort of checklist approach to modern sci-fi to sell that idea.
The problem with Enterprise is that its focus was split between the years before the Federation and the Temporal Cold War. One of the problems with Discovery is that it introduced technology that belongs in the 24th Century not the mid-23rd Century like holographic displays that are more advanced than TNG. With Discovery now set in the 32nd Century, it doesn't matter what advanced technology they come out with. All that matters now is, it looks cool.
I'm already preparing to be disappointed that Unification 3 next week will not feature an in-person XRT-55D Retrofitted Dorsal Carrier. The ship, and possibly the entire class, is only 64 years old. I mean yeah that makes it old by the time of these events but the Miranda and Excelsior were much older and were still able to hold their own on the frontlines.
The problem with Enterprise is that its focus was split between the years before the Federation and the Temporal Cold War. One of the problems with Discovery is that it introduced technology that belongs in the 24th Century not the mid-23rd Century like holographic displays that are more advanced than TNG. With Discovery now set in the 32nd Century, it doesn't matter what advanced technology they come out with. All that matters now is, it looks cool.
Except none of that technology is more advanced than TNG.
Even back in TOS the people who made the show were talking about how there was supposed to be a lot of holographic stuff on the Enterprise, they just couldn't show it because of budget limitations, and the effects looking bad. But we see in TAS that they had holodecks, the way they pan and move the viewscreen images suggests 3D imaging(something confirmed in TNG when we see the viewscreen from the side and get to see its actually a 3D image), and in the official novelization of TMP by Gene Roddenberry which has Kirk using the same holographic communication tech seen in Discovery.
Likewise, we see in TNG several uses of holographic displays. Be it the memorial devices the bridge crew is given after Tasha Yar dies, in the S1 episode "The Last Outpost" where a hologram is projected out of the conference desk in the ENT-D to show the T'kon Empire symbol, and the T'kon Empire's reach before its collapse, and some Risa postcard thing Riker has in one episode. Holographics displays where a widespread thing in TNG, we just didn't see the effect used often because it was very budget intensive.
So this technology simply isn't more advanced then TNG, or even TOS, its par for the course. They just have the budget to show it now.
The simple fact is that holographic communications was used extensively in Discovery, but disappeared for about 120 years until DS9. I don't buy the budget limitation excuse since it is easy to implement holographic communication in TOS and TNG. Just have a ring on the ground and use a simple special effect to have the 'hologram' appear. Holodecks in TOS would just require a fake door that they keep closed. So TOS had the budget for holographic technology, but it was not used for whatever reason. There is no need for expensive special effects for holographic technology. If TOS didn't have holograms, then Discovery should have none as well since Discovery has to come up with an excuse why it has holographic technology and TOS doesn't which ruins the flow of the story. Voyager had the EMH confined to sickbay until he obtained the mobile emitter while Burnham had a holo-emitter in her own room to use as a mirror.
(...)Voyager had the EMH confined to sickbay until he obtained the mobile emitter while Burnham had a holo-emitter in her own room to use as a mirror.
This is one thing that bothers me in particular: Burnham's quarters and that holo-mirror was the exact same technology we see in the 31st century!
Since Kurtzman's Trek shows reuse everything, from sets over general visual fx to ship models, it seems like the world is technologically stagnant for a millenium. And that is something many people in this debate miss:
If you watch TOS, then the movies, then TNG/DS9/VOY/TNG Movies (since they take place in the same era) you see a believable change in the world around the characters. It was annoying that sometimes each show needed to have it's own flavour, but the change in visuals and technology made sense, and the tech was constant when it made sense (advancement from TNG to Nemesis was subtle). DSC uses all the VFX the audience is used to today from other shows and movies like the Marvel universe (they use tech Tony Stark uses throughout the MCU as a 1:1 adaptation). And they do not change that, Discovery's holo controls are the same as the La Sirena's are the same as the 31st century ships'. Yes, there is the "programmable matter" thing, but the consoles just look like Wakanda's computers from 'Black Panther'.
^ 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
The mirror in your bathroom is the same technology as the mirrors used in 1835. Does that indicate that Earth's technology has been stagnant for 185 years?
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That is not too unusual, TOS did not have an ensemble cast like most of the following series did. It had the traditional hero and one or two sidekicks plus regular supporting cast and then extras filling in where necessary, structure. In The Cage those three were Pike as the hero, Spock, and Number one as the sidekicks, and then the regular supporting cast lead by the doctor (who's role was more of a spotlight and lampshade for Pike instead of himself as a character). TOS had Kirk, Spock, and Bones along with the supporting cast, etc. Ignoring the movies, the first Trek series to have an ensemble cast was TNG, and even that was toned down somewhat by the time the episodes were filmed from what was originally planned.
DSC simply retuned to the traditional cast setup, probably because Fuller's original pitch was for anthologies (in essence two-to-four hour movies split into hour long segments) with two or three of them per season, featuring different ships, crews, and time periods for each. Typically, the traditional setup is the fastest type off the blocks, which is needed with that back-door-movie approach meaning the viewers had little time to get to know them.
The heroine of the pitch that the first part of DSC s1 was adapted from is Burnham so she gets the same camera time as Kirk did in TOS. Her main sidekick is Tilly but from there it gets rather blurry since they mixed several pitches, but is possibly Stamets if they stuck with two sidekicks, but I get the feeling they went to one in a Holms and Watson or Lone Ranger and Tonto model. The actual regulars corresponding to TOS's regulars were what you could call "middle decks" people, not the bridge crew.
DSC expanded to another ring of regulars compared to TOS, Lorca was an interesting spin of the villain-aboard like Dr. Smith of Lost in Space, but everyone else on the bridge were lowest-focus regular supporting cast on that secondary ring, just above the extras. They were just there to show the viewers what the rest of the ship was doing while the heroes did their thing on the science deck/remote locations, and as backdrop on the occasions Burnham came to the bridge for something.
It is nice they are getting more focus and fleshing out now, but the format* of the show and the half-season (or often one-third) length seasons streaming shows tend to have means they probably will not get a lot because unless it has direct impact on that single storyline there is almost no time to develop it, which can lead to spoilering itself when they do. Murder She Wrote was notorious for that kind of unintentional spoilering, the thing there was to look for the most famous or experienced actor and that was invariably the murderer since they had to be able to do the sudden switch believably (though in the last season or so of the show they started to mix it up a bit).
*The format is called a narrow or focused serial. And no, "narrow" is not a disparaging term in this case it just means that everything is part of a single long story with little or nothing else thrown in per season and Checkov's gun is adhered to tightly. In the past it was rare except for the occasional miniseries but seems to be gaining favor because of binge streaming.
The biggest problem I had with it was the ridiculous idea that blinking can destablize a hologram. It is the equivalent of a toddler putting their hands over their eyes and going "You can't see me!" In no way is it believable that the mere act of blinking can break a hologram across the room, it is just not plausible.
Now, I can't say if there was some lead up to this scene that would have made it believable, such as the empress having some implants she activates by blinking that could destablize a hologram. I'm also of the opinion, based on the tone of the scene, and the fact that they showed the Empress noticing the holograms not blinking, that this was a deliberate flaw, something to test the Empress in some way, and something that she should notice.
However as written, the blinking and the explanation for it were simply horrible. While it was more than just the blinking portion with bad dialogue, this was the worst part IMO. I have thought up a way to salvage the scene, merely with different dialogue.
Holo: Why are you blinking?
PG: Why aren't you? [blinks a lot]
[scene proceeds as it did, the holograms deactivate]
MIB: You broke my holograms!
PG: I told them to go 'F' themselves.
MIB: There's no need to be crude. What did you do?
PG: [Laughs] Simplistic programs with optical and audio inputs can be tricked into executing code if they detect inputs in binary patterns, such as flashing lights, repeating sounds, or even blinking. I simply told them to go format themselves.
MIB: And you assumed it would work because they weren't blinking?
PG: It is a very basic algorithm they clearly lacked, which suggested other lacking algorithms, like an equally simple one to prevent them from executing malicious code that their optical inputs detect.
It is a simple change, but one I feel that turns a scene from ridiculous magic into something that is actually plausible.
That does sound a little less idiotic. Another approach they could have used with a little thought into the script would be that she noticed the AI had dropped some of its human-simulation functions like blinking (perhaps the strain of too many interviews going on at once) and surmised that she could possibly stress it more and tangle it up via weird behavior like the blinking that it would have trouble interpreting (an idea that actually has precedent in the show as far back as TOS).
Her reason for doing it may have even been just her sense of humor and wanted to make the computer "work for it" instead of a smooth interrogation, and she could have been just as surprised as the natives that she actually crashed the thing, but of course she would never admit something like that except maybe to Burnham later.
It will be interesting to see if we get the Discovery-A.
I mean I'm sure they hand wave these issues away, but it defies logic on so many levels.
The only part that physically spins are the two washer-shaped plates attached to the upper and lower surfaces of the of the middle ring, the sideways stutter-tumble thing is supposed to be an illusion of its transition to the string layer of the universe, similar to the way that a ship going to warp does not really stretch like a rubberband, it just looks like it does to an outside observer.
As for the other issues, I agree, they stretch believability past what would have been acceptable in traditonal Trek for the most part though they did have a few similar points, like the holographic matter "ablative armor" Voyager had in its last episode.
Why would it be far easier to disrupt said field than it would be to cut through the armor? Haven't force fields in Star Trek typically been much tougher than the hull of ships?
Only ablative armor seemed to make them a bit tougher again. I guess they were able to improve force fields again in the 800 years or so since we last them.
If you don't have power, you don't need the nacelles attached anymore, because they need a lot of power to do anything useful.
True, they would not need the nacelles without power to use them, but there is also the problem of a possible momentary power interruption causing them to become detached from the system while in warp, and as pointed out in ENT things falling off at warp could be spread out far enough to make them difficult to find, not to mention take months or years to collect at impulse speeds.
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It is a very clumsy and lazy way to show "advancement" at best. Jumping to the future is a worse idea than keeping them in their original time would have been.
I disagree. While I dislike DSC for various reasons, putting them in the far flung future is actually what is a saving grace for the show since here they can play out everything they wanted in the first place, including weird ship models, because it's so far out (and possibly going to get erased when they fix the burn) they don't come into conflict with any established era's aesthetics. DSC interior settings already looked like future from the get-go - they easily could have scrapped the entirety of season 1 and started with season two, then jump forward in time. Or just have the pilot play in the 23rd century.
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Absolutely. The people who should have the most questions are the crew of the Discovery. Are they going to get an explanation? The audience has the same questions because we've never seen anything like this in Star Trek before, as far as I can remember, so actually addressing them is important for helping suspension of disbelief.
I don't like it, personally, but I am happy to give it a pass if they take it seriously and address it in a way that is somewhat believable.
Well, they use subspace microstrings entangled along the longitudal axis create a stable tether between the nacelle and the engineering section. This also allows easy transfer of energy (and control input) via a series of polarized nadion-tachyon transceiver arrays even at any warp speed.
It should be obvious that this ensures that even a momentary power failure would keep things attached, especially when there is a strong subspace tensor field present.
A thing to remember with force fields - the real world is assembled by force fields. The matter you're made off is mostly "empty", with only tiny points in there being protons or electrons or neutrons. Except... There is also the forces between these particles. Electromagnetic, weak and strong nuclear force, they all keep things together. And you don't need to plug in a power cable to keep this going. I mean, of course its force, energy transfer and all that involved. But it's basically self-sustaining in some manner. Maybe with sufficiently advanced technology (almost indistinguishable from magic for us) you can create force fields that are just as lasting and stable, but don't have the usual other properties related to normal matter.
They can already disassemble people and reassemble them somewhere else in the 22nd century! Why not keep stuff assembled without a serious power failure risk?
Mustrum "Just making up some technobabble" Ridcully
Well the thing is for all the subatomic forces, they still get split pretty easily from a stray energetic particle or counter force field. Its why radiation can be deadly, because high energy particles impact the human body's particles and break those bonds, killing the cells that were made up of those particles. Too much of that and the body can't deal with all the dead cells and organ failure leads to death.
So when you're dealing with high energy directed energy weapons, that would be one of the most dangerous things to a disconnected ship part, because you have high energy going through/impacting against some force field that lacks all the short range forces that bond subatomic particles, atoms, and molecules to keep it together. Obviously shields should defeat most of that stuff, until they fail. Strictly speaking if you want to take advantage of those forces, you want everything attached!
By all means they can just make it up as long as they don't make it pure magic with no downsides. Nothing works that way, and it makes for better stories when the magic teleporter breaks or otherwise encounters a fail condition.
For sure the floaty ship bits have some benefit we can take at face value, otherwise they wouldn't do it. But how does it work? And I ask not because it can reasonably be explained to modern audiences. It can't. But it needs explained because it has requirements to maintain, downsides, and benefits that can be used to give limitations to the tech that the audience can understand on some level, and can be good fodder for future stories, if they actually stick to those rules.
I don't think it is a saving grace, more of a knee-jerk reaction to the same vocal minority of fans who objected to ENT being a "prequel" in the hope that it will quell the constant criticism and heal the breaches in the fanbase. And at the time ENT came out sci-fi fans were predisposed by Star Wars towards hating prequels, something that is still hanging around after all of these years.
The problem is that the prequel position of the original DSC setting was not the root of the problem in the first place, it was that DSC designers and writers seemed to know very little about the era they were setting it in and totally contemptuous of what little they did think they knew, and much the same reaction would have happened no matter where they placed it with that kind of attitude. In essence they are treating one of the symptoms without addressing the underlaying cause at all.
Kicking the show forward in time to a different era each time isn't a way of dealing with the complexities of a shared universe (and yes, a series broken up with long downtime gaps with different writing and production teams does constitute a form of shared universe), it is a way of ignoring them, usually to the detriment of the overall setting.
As for "futuristic", I guess that is in the eye of the beholder. To me the interior designs are not futuristic at all, it takes more than just off the shelf contemporary large format LCD screens dropped into "console" panels, and pretty metal walls in a sort of checklist approach to modern sci-fi to sell that idea.
The problem with Enterprise is that its focus was split between the years before the Federation and the Temporal Cold War. One of the problems with Discovery is that it introduced technology that belongs in the 24th Century not the mid-23rd Century like holographic displays that are more advanced than TNG. With Discovery now set in the 32nd Century, it doesn't matter what advanced technology they come out with. All that matters now is, it looks cool.
The simple fact is that holographic communications was used extensively in Discovery, but disappeared for about 120 years until DS9. I don't buy the budget limitation excuse since it is easy to implement holographic communication in TOS and TNG. Just have a ring on the ground and use a simple special effect to have the 'hologram' appear. Holodecks in TOS would just require a fake door that they keep closed. So TOS had the budget for holographic technology, but it was not used for whatever reason. There is no need for expensive special effects for holographic technology. If TOS didn't have holograms, then Discovery should have none as well since Discovery has to come up with an excuse why it has holographic technology and TOS doesn't which ruins the flow of the story. Voyager had the EMH confined to sickbay until he obtained the mobile emitter while Burnham had a holo-emitter in her own room to use as a mirror.
This is one thing that bothers me in particular: Burnham's quarters and that holo-mirror was the exact same technology we see in the 31st century!
Since Kurtzman's Trek shows reuse everything, from sets over general visual fx to ship models, it seems like the world is technologically stagnant for a millenium. And that is something many people in this debate miss:
If you watch TOS, then the movies, then TNG/DS9/VOY/TNG Movies (since they take place in the same era) you see a believable change in the world around the characters. It was annoying that sometimes each show needed to have it's own flavour, but the change in visuals and technology made sense, and the tech was constant when it made sense (advancement from TNG to Nemesis was subtle). DSC uses all the VFX the audience is used to today from other shows and movies like the Marvel universe (they use tech Tony Stark uses throughout the MCU as a 1:1 adaptation). And they do not change that, Discovery's holo controls are the same as the La Sirena's are the same as the 31st century ships'. Yes, there is the "programmable matter" thing, but the consoles just look like Wakanda's computers from 'Black Panther'.
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