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this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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Gotta admit that introducing big fancy transwarp highway in a prequel wasn't the most clever move... Especially considering Voyager...
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.
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.
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!"
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.”
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".
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.
TNG's and VOY's viewscreens are technically holographic, but the effect is applied inconsistently.
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.
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.
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.
Lorca's not the only one who uses it in Disco, though. It actually happens relatively frequently in the first two season. Obviously for seasons three and four things have changed and it's no longer an issue.
Hell, in SNW while Kirk is on the Enterprise in "Subspace Rhapsody" he prepares some samples collected outside the ship to be beamed to engineering and thinks nothing of that instance of intra-ship beaming. I guess he forgot that whole event where people broke out into song by the time he was mid-way through his own five year mission.
You're right, it doesn't violate the canon.
It just cheapens it.
This is just petty.
So you think going from "This didn't exist yet" to "This existed, it just wasn't used," doesn't in any way cheapen the older stories?
Not for the most part.
I would probably be more annoyed by the Klingon cloaking devices in season one if not for the fact that ship had already sailed when ENT established that the Romulans already had that technology a hundred years before “Balance of Terror”, and oh, so did the Suliban and the XyrIllians whom the crew of the Nx-01 also encountered.
Not to mention there’s a throw away line in one episode of season one about how the sensors are picking up massive power readings but can’t actually pinpoint the ships, and in “Balance of Terror” Spock notes that the Romulans must have figured out a way to bend light around their ship without the tremendous power draw. I have to assume someone on the writing team was trying to square that circle.
But yeah, the idea of a technology existing but not being widely used doesn’t bump me at all. This is like getting mad that when you go into watch the latest Marvel movie and they’re not using Smell-O-Vision. The technology exists! Hell, I can’t remember the last movie I saw in theatre that was 3d. Obviously they still exist, but it’s not a technology that’s really taken off once the gimmick lost its lustre. Or think about how many people, especially young people, prefer to text over talking on the phone.
So yeah, I don’t think anything is cheapened by the idea that a technology exists by is not widely used, and I do think it’s silly that anyone would make that argument.
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.
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.
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.