Comment on Crystals good, fungus bad
Stamets@startrek.website 11 months agoIt requires incredibly specific tech, a ship that has been designed for it, and generic engineering which is outlawed by starfleet. It is also insanely classified and had black badges posted on board.
Whether it’s a prequel or not is kinda irrelevant. Secrets are secrets.
That’s all well and good for the lore, but it doesn’t make it feel any less like a way of getting out of the corner they wrote themselves into. It would also probably be little comfort for the version of the Voyager crew that took something like 70 years to get home.
I’ve enjoyed Discovery. Not as much as other series, but I have enjoyed it. I still think the spore drive is a story that should’ve been told later in the timeline, though.
They chose to start there. The classified tech was something from the beginning. Same with the tech on board being specific to the ship. In no way did they “write themselves into a corner”. Also Janeway is completely irrelevant but also she would have completely understood. This is the woman who destroyed the Caretaker array and has sacrified ways home in order to benefit the majority. Do you honestly think she would ever even bat an eye if she found out about that tech? She’d probably be interested because she’s a scientist but then completely understand why it was shelved.
Unless it gave her access to coffee, then she’d install that on the Delta flyer and make weekly secret trips to Seattle to stock up.
FaeDrifter@midwest.social 11 months ago
Discovery also had hologram communication technology that I guess was also a secret? Starfleet went back to flatscreens for everything and didn’t use holograms again until the 24th century.
If it was just one thing, okay, but there were such numerous inconsistencies, it was like the writers and designers did not care about trek, they were writing a sci-fi show with the trek name slapped on top.
It’s totally possible to respect the heritage of old sci-fi - look at The Mandalorian and Andor - maintaining consistency with the old retro sci-fi aesthetic actually elevates them above what a modern redesign would have done.
USSBurritoTruck@startrek.website 11 months ago
In “The Undiscovered Country” we see the Klingons are watching the Federation President’s discussion with Azetbur using a grainy hologram. If they’re able to receive a holographic signal, that implies that the Federation is transmitting one. Hell, even in the TOS episode, “Return of the Archons” when confronted with the holographic projection of Landru, Kirk and Spock recognize it for what it is right away, but the things they remark upon are the fact that there’s no visible projectors, and Kirk says it’s “Beautiful.”
I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch based on what we’ve see to say that Starfleet decided that holographic projections were too low fidelity compared to viewscreens.
Hell, it even happens again. As you note, they made another attempt at holographic communication in the 24th century, which we see in DS9 the Defiant is kitted out with the new holo-communicator, allowing a fully realized, high fidelity, holodeck quality real time holographic communication. And where else have we seen it? We never see the Enterprise E use that technology; In “Nemesis” Shinzon is able to broadcast a hologram of himself from the Scimitar to Picard’s ready room, but he claims it’s through the use of his own holo-emitters. We’ve never seen it in LDecks, PRO, or PIC, all of which take place after DS9.
So yeah, Starfleet went back to flat screens for everything.
marcos@lemmy.world 11 months ago
You don’t have to go very far. There’s an episode on Discovery where Pike just goes and say something like “Enough with the problems with holograms! From now on the Enterprise will have only flat screens!”
USSBurritoTruck@startrek.website 11 months ago
You’re not wrong, but I do feel like that’s an over correction. They might as well have had text flashing at the bottom of the screen which read, “Sorry for the holograms, we didn’t realize how angry some of you would get.”
Stamets@startrek.website 11 months ago
No, it wasn’t secret but that also wasn’t invented by Discovery. It was invented by Voyager. Flashback. The episode where Tuvok goes back onboard the Excelsior and they start talking about holographic imagers. Those imagers were created specifically to take holographic image. You cannot take a holographic image without the ability to project a hologram. Moreover, Enterprise showed the crew interacting with holographic technology them. So if you want to complain about inconsistency of holograms in canon, you cannot point the finger so easily at Discovery.
This complaint gets trotted out constantly. It’s tired and old and frankly it’s dead. There are no violations of established canon in Star Trek Discovery, as much as everyone wants to say that it is. The only examples I’ve ever come across from people, and I use the word examples quite wrongly, are the DOTs, Burnham being Spocks sister, Holographic Tech, and the klingons looks.
It simply does not violate canon.
USSBurritoTruck@startrek.website 11 months ago
I think to say that Disco has nothing that contradicts established canon is overselling it a bit. But, I will say that all Trek has violated established canon at one point or another, up to and including TOS itself, which was created by people who had no idea at the time that anyone would even remember it some 57 years later, let alone be obsessed with all this minutiae.
If we ignore visual continuity – which, as a life long comic book reader, I am more than happy to do – Disco still has some few contradictions here and there, but I will say that it actually toes the line without crossing over it too frequently fairly well, allowing it to have some interesting and new approaches to Trek.
Stamets@startrek.website 11 months ago
I am honestly drawing a blank on any of these contradictions you’re talking about. Have any examples?
Ganbat@lemmyonline.com 11 months ago
You’re right, it doesn’t violate the canon.
It just cheapens it.
USSBurritoTruck@startrek.website 11 months ago
This is just petty.
VindictiveJudge@startrek.website 11 months ago
TNG’s and VOY’s viewscreens are technically holographic, but the effect is applied inconsistently.
CeruleanRuin@lemmings.world 11 months ago
That’s a great point. They’re certainly at least 3-dimensional, as seen most clearly when someone is on the main viewscreen but their eyeline matches the smaller figures on the bridge, rather than looking more like a zoom window as it would if it was a simple camera-flatscreen configuration.
CeruleanRuin@lemmings.world 11 months ago
I’ve headcanoned it that Discovery was covertly part of a Section 31 collaboration with the Department of Temporal Investigations to test technologies and materials acquired or implied through various temporal incursions, the goal being to see which ones could be arrived at and used without causing potential disturbance to the timeline. The updated look of Federation ships is also a result of that, producing a 23rd century which looks quite different but in which events play out functionally the same.