I dunno I think they may have gotten the visual effect right more or less. Nukes aren’t particularly spectacular in space either from what I understand. No atmosphere to heat up and mushroom cloud.
Now what I don’t get is why an unshielded craft can take even 1 photon torpedo. 64 megatons, what can take that?
For that matter why didn’t 1 borg torpedo take out Zephren Cochran’s complex?
The point I was trying to make was even if the universe was different it’d make good stories because of the quality of the writing.
Not because of the setup. Voyager had that same setup and we all know how that turned out.
The problem with setting another story in the Star Trek Universe is that as a science fiction framework, the Star Trek unvierse sucks. It’s internally inconsistent, the structure of the Federation and its economy make no sense at all. And for good fiction, you need a universe with coherent rules, and the Star Trek universe isn’t it. Not when there are shape-shifting beings, energy beings with the power of Gods, time travel, and however many other Gods there are in that particular machine. It makes for lousy storytelling.
So, if it were me and I wanted to carry on the series, I’d do something that digs at those flaws. How about characters who aren’t too happy about the Federation. It’s pretty cool driving a Federation star ship, but I wonder how the designated sanitation worker feels about it? Let’s see a little dissention in the ranks - a plotline from the point of view of someone who’s trying to bring down the federation because it’s really just a fascist state.
Or how about a show about what it’s like to be a federation policeman or lawyer in a city where there are thousands of cultures mixed together, of many species. You could write some fascinating story lines around that.
That’s one set of problems, another is that the further in the future you set it the more advanced the Federation get.
I would have liked to have seen a series showing what happened to the crew of the USS Bozeman after they got transported to the TNG timeline.
Or failing that what about a group of dissafected adventurers not part of the Federation and the elitist Star Fleet find the original USS Defiant adrift in Tholian space and salvage her and set off out of the Federation looking for a new life. Ok so it would mess with continuity slightly, but when has that ever bothered the Trek Universe.
My personal gripe with Star Trek is that in all of the series to date we have only seen the so called cream of humanity i.e. those that made it into Star Fleet. What about the billions that didn’t make it?
Wiliam Shatner touched on this in Ashes of Eden where he has to queue for a transporter and has to wait for communicator time after retiring. Life doesn’t seem so great in the Federation if you’re not part of the elite. I can see how people would want to escape and if they have to use an old Constitution Class ship to do it then they might.
So my suggestion would be Star Trek: Defiant (the title also suggests defiance against the Federation as well as being the name of the ship).
Last time I checked, the sun was a self-sustaining nuclear explosion, I suspect a different phenom than a nuke going off.
Yeah, that’s pretty close. I think a more accurate comparison would be a tramp steamer working in Asia/Indonesia back at the turn of the 20th Century, when American influence wasn’t so great and there was the possibility of new discoveries on some remote island (the Komodo dragons weren’t discovered until 1912). Except the tech is way more advanced and the weirdness orders of magnitude greater.
No, it’s the willingness not to be bound by the minutiae of backstory that made TOS so much fun. That’s part of the problem that TNG, DS9 and Voyager had. I think writers get too bound by backstory. Tell an interesting story, let the nitpickers nitpick if it makes them happy, and lets face it, it does.
Damn right. Sounds good. The potential of an interstellar trade civilization works really well in that respect. And I agree with your point about the senseless economy. If it’s not based on money what’s it based on. What motivates people to do stuff. How are they rewarded if they do stuff well? How are they discouraged if they do stuff not well? Working out a coherent system for a non-monetary economy that’s an improvement over capitalism would probably make for a VERY interestng society – and I can’t think of anyone more qualified to do it than you, Sam.
:dubious: Look me in the eye and tell me that at least two of those shows wouldn’t be more popular than Voyager.
Comedicality aside, you will note that I specified that Star Trek should be emulating science fiction shows… although now that you mention it, it probably would be easy enough to adapt other popular contemporary TV genres. Federation agents who specialize in investigating unusual crimes, or “paranormal” (for Star Trek) events. Maybe a circle of hot young actors whose characters are really high-order psionics or emotional vampires, fighting a war between dimensions that is invisible to the average Federation citizen.
It doesn’t really matter, as long as it’s SF-friendly enough to be re-imagined as “Star Trek.”
I started that thread, and I thought this one was fairly distinct (though I would have waited longer before starting it just to keep from overloading people with Trek).
But seriously though, everthing’s pretty much been said above me. I thought things in the Enterprise got a little too easy after a while. Sure, they put in Ensign Ro to generate a little friction, but I didn’t think it worked as well as it could have.
Dial back the super science, make them work hard to fx problems. That kind of stuff.
