Comment on Crystals good, fungus bad

• USSBurritoTruck@startrek.website ⁨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.

  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.

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  • 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!”

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    • 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.”

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      • marcos@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        It looks much more like a joke. A more veiled version of the Lower Decks people referring to the Kirk’s Enterprise as TOS.

        And, honestly, I can’t understand an implicit “sorry” there at all. It sounds much more like “fuck the purists, our ship is going to look good”.

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      • GreenMario@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        This will forever be a problem every time they set a Star Trek before TOS.

        I felt the same way with ENT: it looked too advanced. Of course now I know that’s a non-issue, especially after Kelvin.

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• Stamets@startrek.website ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Discovery also had hologram communication technology that I guess was also a secret?

  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.

  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.

  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.

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  • 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.

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    • Stamets@startrek.website ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I am honestly drawing a blank on any of these contradictions you’re talking about. Have any examples?

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      • USSBurritoTruck@startrek.website ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        The big one – relatively speaking, of course – in my mind is the site to site transporting.

        In “Day of the Dove”, Kirk asks Spock, ”Intra-ship beaming, is it possible?” and Spock rattled off a litany of reasons why it was considered too dangerous in all but the most necessary circumstances.

        However, we see in Disco, starting with “Context is for Kings”, that they can just order the computer to transport them from one room of the ship to another without hesitation.

        It’s a minor quibble all things considered. And clearly something most of the Disco detractors aren’t even aware of.

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  • Ganbat@lemmyonline.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    You’re right, it doesn’t violate the canon.

    It just cheapens it.

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    • USSBurritoTruck@startrek.website ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      This is just petty.

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      • Ganbat@lemmyonline.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        So you think going from “This didn’t exist” to “This existed, it just wasn’t used,” doesn’t in any way cheapen the older stories?

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• VindictiveJudge@startrek.website ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  TNG’s and VOY’s viewscreens are technically holographic, but the effect is applied inconsistently.

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  • 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.

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• 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.

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