posted
As a lot of Trek tech is getting old and stale, one might imagine that the Trek-universe scientists are getting as bored by it as we geeks are. It got me to thinking about technical advancements that we could imagine livening up future incarnations of Trek in film and tv particularly. Here are some I thought of:
1. High-efficiency replicators - this basically means that, with a low enough energy requirement, you could replicate starships or space stations or similar structures such as the Sovereign-class in a matter of hours instead of years in a drydock. What would be the most immediate result of this? Cheaper, more widespread access to more advanced craft and technology by civilians throughout the galaxy. Space would fill up rapidly. Yet, there is a more significant result I can foresee, taking into account the human desire to do things bigger and better. Why just take hours to replicate an existing ship (saving years in construction time) when you can use the same technology to build a ship 100 times its size and complexity taking the same time to replicate as the 1/100th size ship did to manufacture the old way. Talk about an intimidation factor against foes like the Borg, Species 8472, the Romulans, and the Dominion.
2. Instantaneous short-range transporters - These much-larger vessels (30,000 meters long +) would not be practically traversed from stem to stern via corridors and turbolifts. To cross those huge distances, transporters would be used. Beaming from the bridge to engineering would become a common, workaday part of the job. All this beaming around calls for a dedicated m/ara, separate from the two powering the warp nacelles and the 2 providing general power to the ship.
3. Trans-trans-warp drive - The galaxy is becoming too small a stage for Trek, or at least it's being presented that way. They've got to wow the audience. Take us someplace noone has ever imagined before. Take us to Andromeda, or another member of the Local Group. It's about time. Make the galaxy as busy as the SW galaxy. Make the core so bustling and sprawled that Deep Space Nine is now a suburb. Put it 1000 years into the future if you have to. Just surprise us with what we haven't really imagined. Make it real, but make it optimistic.
Any ideas?
-------------------- This is just fun...it's not life...keep this in mind and we'll all enjoy it much more
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quote:Originally posted by Irishman: As a lot of Trek tech is getting old and stale, one might imagine that the Trek-universe scientists are getting as bored by it as we geeks are. It got me to thinking about technical advancements that we could imagine livening up future incarnations of Trek in film and tv particularly. Here are some I thought of:
Right from the start you're operating under a false premise: that the tech shown in the films and TV has anything to do with declining ratings and receipts. There was plenty of new tech introduced in Voyager but it didn't do anything for the show. And Enterprise's troubles have nothing to do with the fact they haven't any replicators at all.
quote:1. High-efficiency replicators - this basically means that, with a low enough energy requirement, you could replicate starships or space stations or similar structures such as the Sovereign-class in a matter of hours instead of years in a drydock. What would be the most immediate result of this? Cheaper, more widespread access to more advanced craft and technology by civilians throughout the galaxy. Space would fill up rapidly. Yet, there is a more significant result I can foresee, taking into account the human desire to do things bigger and better. Why just take hours to replicate an existing ship (saving years in construction time) when you can use the same technology to build a ship 100 times its size and complexity taking the same time to replicate as the 1/100th size ship did to manufacture the old way. Talk about an intimidation factor against foes like the Borg, Species 8472, the Romulans, and the Dominion.
So basically you want to see lots more ships? *BEEP BEEP BEEP* Damn! I must remember to switch off my fanboy alarm before I come anywhere near this particular Forum. . . The ease of making ships or how many there are has nothing to do with Trek's problems either. And where's the thrill factor in knowing the goodies can just make more ships whenever they need them?
quote:2. Instantaneous short-range transporters - These much-larger vessels (30,000 meters long +) would not be practically traversed from stem to stern via corridors and turbolifts. To cross those huge distances, transporters would be used. Beaming from the bridge to engineering would become a common, workaday part of the job. All this beaming around calls for a dedicated m/ara, separate from the two powering the warp nacelles and the 2 providing general power to the ship.
Do your research. They once considered putting a transporter pad directly on the bridge but decided against it because the walk to the transporter room gave time for character interaction & exposition. And so do all the other corridors. By your logic they needn't show any ships at all, just show them on whatever planet they're going to. It's not the destination that's important in the great journey that is Trek, it's how they get there. Think how much they used the pad in Ops on DS9 - not a lot, hmm?
quote:3. Trans-trans-warp drive - The galaxy is becoming too small a stage for Trek, or at least it's being presented that way. They've got to wow the audience. Take us someplace noone has ever imagined before. Take us to Andromeda, or another member of the Local Group. It's about time. Make the galaxy as busy as the SW galaxy. Make the core so bustling and sprawled that Deep Space Nine is now a suburb. Put it 1000 years into the future if you have to. Just surprise us with what we haven't really imagined. Make it real, but make it optimistic.
Again, you had seven years with a ship farther away than any had been before. TOS and TNG and DS9 still managed to elicit plenty of drama from discovering new life and new civilisations that weren't that far from home. Space is big and there's plenty more to be found where you least expect it. You might be better off watching Stargate: Atlantis if all you're interested in is how many miles they put on the odometer each week!
posted
Or we can just see how much the ratings jump by shoving an Irishman out the airlock without a space suit and have the crew and the audience at home poll in and see how long he can last without air. Closest one wins a trip to Paramount studios to be cast as an extra on the next show.
-------------------- "Who cares if we bomb a few hospitals, it just means we got them a second time" Warrant Officer Robert Clift, CVN-71 OEF
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Teh PW
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posted
quote:1. High-efficiency replicators - this basically means that, with a low enough energy requirement, you could replicate starships or space stations or similar structures such as the Sovereign-class in a matter of hours instead of years in a drydock. What would be the most immediate result of this? Cheaper, more widespread access to more advanced craft and technology by civilians throughout the galaxy. Space would fill up rapidly. Yet, there is a more significant result I can foresee, taking into account the human desire to do things bigger and better. Why just take hours to replicate an existing ship (saving years in construction time) when you can use the same technology to build a ship 100 times its size and complexity taking the same time to replicate as the 1/100th size ship did to manufacture the old way. Talk about an intimidation factor against foes like the Borg, Species 8472, the Romulans, and the Dominion.
Does that include the replicated crew you need for those big ships?
posted
IMHO, it's just not worth it to speculate along these lines.
Forget Star Trek for the moment. Think of the advancement of technology we're observing today. It's extremely likely that within the next 100 years (I'm betting close to 50) we'll hit what SF author Vernor Vinge calls a technological singularity. Google on "vinge singularity" and pick the definition and discussion which suits you best.
Short definition: At any point in time there is a horizon past which any reasonable prediction of the future is pointless. One might argue, for example, that circa 1000 CE the horizon was unbounded. Circa 1900 CE, the horizon might be 2000 CE - someone alive in 1900 would be on the edge of being unable to cope if dropped into modern society. They'd probably do fine - after all, we're still all human. For now.
As the rate of technologically driven change increases, the distance between now and the horizon drops. I'd say that at the outside, and barring any catastrophe that takes devastates the developed world (nuclear war, dramatic climate change, disease, nanotech gray-goo, etc), what the world will be like in 100 years is effectively unpredictable.
The singularity concept points out that at some point the horizon shrinks until it's literally *now* - the rate of change is so fast that a transition point is hit and everything is effectively swept away by the change. Common SF thoughts on this are that self-replicating, self-improving AI develops which nearly instantly surpasses human intelligence and replaces humans; or human interconnectedness and ability increases and the result is radically different behavior (e.g. 10 billion people plugged directly into the Internet).
Whether or not you think any particular outcome is likely, if you're serious about thinking about the progression of technology and society you have to come to the conclusion that either (1) advancement continues at a frantic pace, (2) advancement stops/plateaus, or (3) advancement regresses.
(3) is unpalatable; we nuke ourselves back to the stone age, or go luddite and smash the machines, or starve ourselves, etc. Depressing but either over fast or just a temporary setback before the same point is reached again.
I don't believe that (2) is stable, but it's an interesting fiction. And i think it's the premise that SF worlds like Star Wars and Star Trek *must* make; the technology has plateaued at some point and it requires a very dramatic shift to advance to the next level. You could use that excuse in Star Trek, since they love to show humanoids turning into energy beings. Star Wars has potential here - imagine that the technology seen in the movies was the most advanced that could be built: that R2-D2 is the epitome of machine intelligence, that an X-Wing is the best fighter achievable within the laws of physics. Alas, Lucas *and* the fan-boys like to depict technological advancement (same as Star Trek geeks, as this thread shows!) so it's unlikely.
(As an aside: in the Foundation's Triumph sequel to Asimov's Foundation books by Brin, Brin rationalizes the 10k years of stagnation of galactic society by having a conspiracy of robots stomping out any technology advancement!)
Which leaves (1). And I think both DS9 and Voyager - more than TNG - showed continued technological development at a fast pace.
This is where the TNG:TM comment "if you could replicate a starship, you wouldn't need to" makes sense. If you grant the Federation powers like replicators, memory engram recorders, and androids, you will invariably have to think, "why not put a copy of Data, with uploaded people along for the ride, into a self-replicating starship and have it replicate its way through the galaxy exploring and spreading the Federation?" In the TNG era we could come up with excuses like "Data can't be quantum replicated" - so the minute you allow any technology advancement these objections go away.
Summary: since I think we're already (2004 CE) less than 50 years from a singularity with our measly 21st Century technology, it's impossible to speculate on any sort of progression of the 24th Century technology shown in TNG/DS9/Voy for many more years without having to cripple the speculation and throw logic out the window in the name of dramatic necessity.
Whew! After spending time on the phone with my DSL provider arguing about who�s fault it was that their router configuration sucked, I had to get that off my chest.
posted
Sorry, that all comes across as cold water. Okay, what should you do as a Starfleet engineer with time on your hands?
Building on the site-to-site transport concept, why bother materializing at the destination? Just stay phased out as energy. Then take the transporter with you. Now you're one of those sparkly energy beings which poke lesser species with force fields for fun. Add a subspace generator for FTL travel. Tap one of the various trekoton particle fields for endless supplies of energy. Add a chronoton generator and you're time travelling. Crank up the replicator and use Voyager's transwarp drive and you're at every point in the universe. Boom - you're Q in less than 10 easy steps.
posted
Actually, I've ben thinking recently that a lot of the tech you see on Trek these days is old hat - and not just because it's a prequel! If you read any modern hard SF you'll see all kinds of exotic space drives and weaponry being postulated. Iain M Banks, Greg Egan, Robert Reed, Stephen Baxter, people like that.
posted
Who reads SF?
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posted
"It's extremely likely that within the next 100 years (I'm betting close to 50) we'll hit what SF author Vernor Vinge calls a technological singularity."
This is really neither here nor there, but Vinge wasn't the first to propose the idea. Toffler's 1970 Future Shock (which, funnily enough, was published just as the microchip revolution was kicking into full gear) also dealt with a super-industrial society that was changing at such rapid pace that people were overwhelmed, disoriented, disconnected, whathaveyou, and that was crumbling under the social problems brought about by it. Which is an argument in favor of Asimov's Foundation: without the occasional plateau we'd all go bonkers. If we haven't already.
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In DS-9, Rom had the revolutionary breakthrough that allowed self replicating mines. That's a lot of replication power and they where treating it like a nobel prize level breakthrough. That was really, just a few years prior to the 'present' as given in NEMISIS.
Look at the whole topic in another way. In ALL GOOD THINGS, Picard is in three time periods at the same time, over a span of about 30-ish years. When he asks Data about some device, the 'season 1' data responds that it's an experimental device he's heard of. In 'season 7' Data respnds that they can cobble one up, fairly easily, and in 'the future' data responds that it's standard equipment.
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posted
Hmmm, thinking along the plateau thing, another idea. One that'll make Roddenberry roll over in his grave.
Notice how we only ever see technological development involving our favorite crew? Perhaps the effectively communal "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" Federation is effectively stagnant. Those Starfleet engineers back on earth couldn't ever come up with anything more than the NX-01 and by the 24rd Century could hardly join two boards together without a *self-sealing* stem-bolt. The average, and even above average Federation citizen just can't be bothered to turn on the creative or logical parts of their brain in the morning.
It takes throwing these crews out into the unknown to develop any new technologies. And once they're brought back, the dulled minds of the Federation can't make heads or tails of the new gizmos.
It would explain why we will almost never have a major technological innovation in the Star Trek universe without a camera rolling.
posted
I feel like noone understood much of what I was saying. I'm not suggesting that all of Trek's ills or even most of them are due to stagnant technology. I'm saying, I'm tired of seeing the same technology over and over again. I want to see something new that expands the rules of the game, so to speak. Shake things up...the way Starfleet was shaken up when the zombie-like Borg were introduced. But don't make it something that the only way we experience it is in a slightly different dialogue between captain and weapons officer. Having Lt. Commander Worf fire quantum torpedoes instead of having him fire photon torpedoes is not the kind of change I'm talking about.
Irishman
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posted
Well, the problem is, if the franchise continues to move along in the same era, they can't just jump ahead in technological development... it wouldn't be realistic. Unless they use the Voyager tech... but let's not think about that.
The only way to explore radically new technology would be to create a series that takes place farther in the future, say the 26th or 27th century. And I cringe at the thought of a series created solely for the purpose of exploring the tech from that time period.
posted
I think, frankly, it'd be kick-ass to see a ship with replicating ablative armour, regenerative enhanced metaphasic shielding, transwarp drive, chronotorpedoes, folded-space transport, etc. ...If we have enemies that are on the same level, that is. Otherwise it's gods and ants.
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Star Wars has potential here - imagine that the technology seen in the movies was the most advanced that could be built: that R2-D2 is the epitome of machine intelligence, that an X-Wing is the best fighter achievable within the laws of physics. Alas, Lucas *and* the fan-boys like to depict technological advancement (same as Star Trek geeks, as this thread shows!) so it's unlikely.
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