Star Trek General Discussion

The Predaking

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Citizen
Well, it says after a 100 years, the academy is opening up again, so that makes us think its after the Burn in the Discovery future era.
 

Dekafox

Fabulously Foxy Dragon
Citizen
They haven't officially said, but the post about it mentioned the Academy being opened for the first time in 100 years, which was a thing in the episode with the cadets and Tilly becoming a teacher. Seems like this is meant to be the replacement for Discovery to continue that part of the timeline, given the timing, and I wouldn't be surprised if DIscovery characters pop in now and then. Also wondering if it's going to use the same characters from said Discovery episode or not. If it does, it may hopefully be more than "Stardate 90210", given that episode did involve them going on a mission that turned into the usual "shuttle crash incident" episode.
 

The Predaking

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Good point. I am sure that we will see the Cadets go on training missions as well. Heck, they might even be part of various ship crews later on. I doubt that they will be on Earth the whole time, as that would be kind of boring.
 

Axaday

Well-known member
Citizen
Good point. I am sure that we will see the Cadets go on training missions as well. Heck, they might even be part of various ship crews later on. I doubt that they will be on Earth the whole time, as that would be kind of boring.
To be fair, you and I are on the Earth all the time and often find interesting things to do.
 

Cybersnark

Well-known member
Citizen
Well, if this is a replacement for Star Trek: Epic, expect these students to encounter universe-ending crises at least once a season.

I don't like Discovery and most of what it has accomplished, but the Burn did not make all the other shows meaningless. The things they explore are still explored and the people they meet are still met. The Federation is springing back because of all the foundations that had been set before.
More to the point, DSC establishes that the Federation still exists as far ahead as the 32nd century. If anything, from a historical perspective, that's amazingly optimistic; cultures don't tend to last a thousand years without collapsing and being replaced. It speaks to the Federation's resilience in being able to survive cataclysms and the periodic generational swings between fascism and inclusive democracy that all long-lasting cultures encounter.

The early 25th-century Federation that we see in Picard hasn't even begun to reach its full height. in the next five hundred years the Federation will grow to include the Delta and Gamma quadrants; ancient enemies and as-yet-undiscovered civilizations will become allies, partners, and full members. Technology will also continue to grow by leaps and bounds (we've already seen 29th-century time-ships and mobile holoemitters, and the programmable matter and portable transporters of the 32nd century have to come from somewhere).
 

wonko the sane?

You may test that assumption at your convinience.
Citizen
I mean kudos to them for determination.

But... I mean: every frozen corpse on mt. everest was once a determined person... so...
 

Copper Bezel

Revenge against God for the crime of Being.
Citizen
More to the point, DSC establishes that the Federation still exists as far ahead as the 32nd century. If anything, from a historical perspective, that's amazingly optimistic; cultures don't tend to last a thousand years without collapsing and being replaced. It speaks to the Federation's resilience in being able to survive cataclysms and the periodic generational swings between fascism and inclusive democracy that all long-lasting cultures encounter.
Yeah, when you really put it in context like that, we just happen to see the Federation and Starfleet in what's likely their darkest time in the next millennium, which is good for Discovery because there's a problem to help solve, and a little easier to write than a Federation at its apex would be.

And since we know divergent timelines can happen, it is exactly as possible that a given show we're watching is the divergence point for a new bad future as it was ever possible that this week the anomaly was going to eat the ship and everyone would die, which is to say, we know it won't happen, but both the everyday and the galaxy-spanning threats in the present aren't really undercut by having a future play out that happens to be the one we periodically visit or have crossovers with or whatever. Most franchises would really suffer a little from having a the-future that was 1000 years out ahead of the present, but Star Trek seems to pretty much get away with it without losing anything.

So there's no cost, I'm just not convinced of the benefit. It gave Disco as a show somewhere to be displaced to, and that was good for Disco. The geometric ships with shiny-sleek hulls and detached bits really are pretty much the exact way I'd want to imagine incomprehensible deep-future Trek technology, and all the wildly convenient personal teleportation and commbadge tricorders are really pretty inevitable progress and sometimes cool. Star Trek has to maintain a balance between, on the one hand, relatably human characters doing stageably interesting things on screen, and on the other, the implications of what the technology could really do, and the Disco future just shaves a thin little slice off that block of normal relatably human spatially embodied action. (And programmable matter has been a bit underexplored and underutilized for ship functions IMO, while using it for adaptive interfaces instead of the ubiquitous, cheap solid object holography of the late 24th and early 25th C. actually seems to rein in some of that potential detached virtualness.)

It was all very good choices for Disco.

But space is still the same space and most of the species around are the ones we know, so it hasn't really opened anything up on that front. There aren't any other ships or locations we've got to know and care about. There's nothing to really attach to. I hate to say it, since I'm not watching it, but Prodigy seems to have done a lot more of that literal and figurative groundwork in making a new space in the Trek universe I'd want to go play in ... and it's within this couple of decades constituting the Trek franchise "present".
 

wonko the sane?

You may test that assumption at your convinience.
Citizen
Just a heads up for folks: There is a transformers VS star trek by IDW book available, I'm unsure of how old it is, but it is GLORIOUS B-grade sci-fi schlock.
 

wonko the sane?

You may test that assumption at your convinience.
Citizen
Even before I read this, I wanted actual star trek transformers. I could easily army build with type 9 shuttles, and they could redeco megatron with a klingon (or romulan.) disruptor. There's a ridiculous variety of vehicles in star trek that we largely never get to see due to time and budget constraints.
 


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