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WickedHate posted:A lot of TOS' incidental lines should definitely be glossed over. However, they totally could have sold the view screen thing if they didn't play the entire thing like a typical Star Trek show with the typical Star Trek formula. Of course view screen communication is essential if you're gonna be doing TNG type stories, and that's Enterprise's whole problem. view screen communications have always been important to the various tv series and movies before tng. It's part of pop culture and it's expected for Star Trek.
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Jan 1, 2017 20:28
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Viewscreens have been in Trek since the original series. It's just not plausible for those ships not to have a technology we have now. I can install a huge tv into my wall which displays a meadow or a view of some city, then it shows some dudes face when I get a Skype call. Video conference has been around for years, and it's simply a key part of Star Trek.
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Jan 1, 2017 20:30
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WickedHate posted:A lot of TOS' incidental lines should definitely be glossed over. Especially in the early goings, before Gene Coon came aboard and really started building an actual mythos, there's so much stuff that just has to be ignored. For example, there's this throwaway exchange in The Conscience of the King, when McCoy offers Spock a drink, Spock says something like "my father's race was spared the attraction to alcohol," and McCoy says, "No wonder they were conquered."
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Jan 1, 2017 20:32
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Plus they portray the Federation more like a space UN than a unified political entity.
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Jan 1, 2017 21:08
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WickedHate posted:A lot of TOS' incidental lines should definitely be glossed over. However, they totally could have sold the view screen thing if they didn't play the entire thing like a typical Star Trek show with the typical Star Trek formula. Of course view screen communication is essential if you're gonna be doing TNG type stories, and that's Enterprise's whole problem. If they really wanted to hedge their bets, they could have started off with none of the 'typical' trek things at all, and had part of the story be assembling a standard trek ship bit by bit.
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Jan 1, 2017 21:14
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Or just go with it was a space thing. Because of the inverse polarity of the phase inverter used in Federation and Romunlan communication protocols, they were never able to establish a visual comlink. Luckily on Stardate whatever, the Federation developed variable pulse communications *Voyager writers nod sagely*
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Jan 1, 2017 21:19
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Visual communications weren't official until the Treaty of Cygnus VI, when it was agreed that everyone points their ships the bow to bow with their tops "up" when they meet each other.
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Jan 1, 2017 21:22
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Pwnstar posted:Or just go with it was a space thing. Because of the inverse polarity of the phase inverter used in Federation and Romunlan communication protocols, they were never able to establish a visual comlink. Luckily on Stardate whatever, the Federation developed variable pulse communications It doesn't even have to be that complicated. The romulans simply didn't turn on their cameras.
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Jan 1, 2017 21:23
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Sir they've covered their bridge cameras with Rigellian duck tape. We don't have a visual.
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Jan 1, 2017 21:31
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Article 9 of the Treaty of Cygnus VI: Romulan commanders no longer allowed to tell Starfleet captains that "the red light means it's charging."
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Jan 1, 2017 21:43
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MrJacobs posted:view screen communications have always been important to the various tv series and movies before tng. It's part of pop culture and it's expected for Star Trek. Still, B5 and BSG managed without them.
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Jan 1, 2017 21:49
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Data Graham posted:Still, B5 and BSG managed without them. B5 totally did viewscreen conversations:  The Agamemnon's captain is looking at the "front" of his bridge set, and Ivanova's looking at the front of the White Star bridge set. It may not be "big-screen TV" but it's definitely fulfilling the same purpose.
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Jan 1, 2017 21:58
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Starfleet: Starfleet here. Why isn't your video feed working? Romulan: Uh, it's working just fine. I can see you. Starfleet: Who the hell is this? Romulan:I could tell you but then I'd have to kill you. Starfleet: Oh? A wise guy, huh? Look, I'm locking onto you right now, pal. We'll see how smart you feel with a photon torpedo up your fricking rear end. Dickhead! Romulan: You're putting a lock on me? Well, I'm putting a lock on you too, pal Several years of war follow.
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Jan 1, 2017 22:02
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That said, BSG is a great example, because it's deliberately constructed with throwback aesthetics, and it worked. Blade_of_tyshalle posted:Viewscreens have been in Trek since the original series. It's just not plausible for those ships not to have a technology we have now. I can install a huge tv into my wall which displays a meadow or a view of some city, then it shows some dudes face when I get a Skype call. Video conference has been around for years, and it's simply a key part of Star Trek. In Star Trek proper, they have magic technology like universal translators, so yeah of course everyone they meet can also immediately do video conferencing with them. In a prequel series where they wouldn't yet have that convenience, it's also trivial to posit that one of the challenges of establishing communications with a newly-encountered civilization is figuring out what the hell kind of video codecs and transmissions standards they use.
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Jan 1, 2017 22:03
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"Can you clear that image up, Lieutenant?" "Sorry, sir, they appear to be using something similar to an ancient Earth codec called RealMedia. There's nothing I can do on our end."
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Jan 1, 2017 22:07
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Data Graham posted:Still, B5 and BSG managed without them. You are right, and they aren't expected to have them because they aren't Star Trek. Pwnstar posted:Starfleet: Starfleet here. Why isn't your video feed working? This should be canon.
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Jan 1, 2017 22:12
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:In Star Trek proper, they have magic technology like universal translators, so yeah of course everyone they meet can also immediately do video conferencing with them. Which is fine and fair. My old CRT can't interpret the modern digital tv signals, after all, it needs an interpolating device. I was responding to the weird idea that the show could just not have viewscreens at all because prequel, especially in a real life world where we've been able to video chat since before Enterprise aired. Of course Enterprise would have viewscreens, and of course there would be no guarantee of being able to talk to strangers at first. Especially Romulans.
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Jan 1, 2017 22:18
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:"Can you clear that image up, Lieutenant?"
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Jan 1, 2017 22:22
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:That said, BSG is a great example, because it's deliberately constructed with throwback aesthetics, and it worked. I'm picturing a "lower decks" type of episode starring a crew of IT/computer janitor types solving interstellar connectivity issues.
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Jan 1, 2017 22:27
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"Sir I think I figured out a solution to our communications issues. What if we attached a can to both ends of a really long string and fired it at the other ship through the torpedo launcher?"
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Jan 1, 2017 22:31
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Gorewar posted:I'm picturing a "lower decks" type of episode starring a crew of IT/computer janitor types solving interstellar connectivity issues. "Jesus christ, what kind of protocol are they even using? Try.. gently caress, I don't know. Uh.. get me a HDMI to isolinear converter and tune in the upper VHF band?"
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Jan 1, 2017 22:48
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Switch it off and then back on. Oh you already did that? Have you tried changing the gravitational constant of the universe?
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Jan 1, 2017 22:57
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Clearly the answer is to put the viewscreen on the OUTSIDE of your ship. Then you can just show a video of yourself smiling and waving at the other ship. No codecs required, they can just look. Of course, you have to hope they see in the same frequencies of light as you do. And that in their culture, smiling and waving doesn't mean "screw you and the Rigellian horse you rode in on, pal". But that's true even when you have viewscreens, so hey, it's a win.
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Jan 1, 2017 23:25
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In my culture, it is a sign of respect to piss on things. Please take this in the spirit it was intended. I am a beagle.
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Jan 1, 2017 23:28
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Powered Descent posted:Clearly the answer is to put the viewscreen on the OUTSIDE of your ship. Then you can just show a video of yourself smiling and waving at the other ship. No codecs required, they can just look. The Kramer reverse peephole.
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Jan 1, 2017 23:56
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Timby posted:Especially in the early goings, before Gene Coon came aboard and really started building an actual mythos, there's so much stuff that just has to be ignored. For example, there's this throwaway exchange in The Conscience of the King, when McCoy offers Spock a drink, Spock says something like "my father's race was spared the attraction to alcohol," and McCoy says, "No wonder they were conquered." That fits perfectly into canon when you consider McCoy just liked to shittalk Spock whenever he could.
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Jan 2, 2017 00:26
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Blade_of_tyshalle posted:Viewscreens have been in Trek since the original series. It's just not plausible for those ships not to have a technology we have now. I can install a huge tv into my wall which displays a meadow or a view of some city, then it shows some dudes face when I get a Skype call. Video conference has been around for years, and it's simply a key part of Star Trek. What's the point of doing a somewhat distant prequel like Enterprise if you aren't going to remove or seriously alter some key parts of the setting? If you want to do a show with the same stories as TOS/TNG/VOY then you might as well just set the show in the same time period and be done with it. Not that I really blame Enterprise for this specifically, since Voyager had its own version of the same problem. Post-TNG Trek (other than DS9) just steadfastly refused to do anything interesting with the setting.
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Jan 2, 2017 00:31
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MrJacobs posted:If they removed view screens it would be a really stupid idea for casual audiences that the show needed to stay afloat. It had a lot of problems but view screens were not one of them. Why the gently caress would they not have anything like that when vulcans did and they did share a lot of basic technology between the species otherwise Earth would have still been a radioactive hellhole by the time of ENT I stand corrected; clearly no casual tv scifi watcher could handle the lack of drama that we have with face to face, ship vs ship conversations in shows like Star Trek.   McNally posted:I recently watched Balance of Terror and would like to make a couple spergy points: The lack of FTL ships is a problematic line to be sure, but while I have no technical concern with the retcon they did to use viewscreens by not having the Romulans choose to use them to talk, it's no better a retcon than the Augment Klingons, which so many people ITT hate. The point is that Enterprise had a great opportunity to show a more primitive, dangerous Star Trek that clearly took place in the wild frontier days of early Earth exploration, and instead they chose to make the technology 1:1 to TNG/DS9/VOY which was a lazy storytelling choice. In the end they just couldn't figure out how to write stories in the Star Trek universe without communicators, viewscreens, phasers, transporters (after a few seasons), etc. Now we get to see if Discovery can avoid the same problem, which they chose to take on by doing yet another prequel.
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Jan 2, 2017 00:32
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In Voyager the crew came across another Federation ship that was trapped in the Delta quadrant like them but decided that getting home was more important than upholding Starfleet values. They were using ground up aliens as fuel. Janeway like immediately goes full psycho and tries to murder all these dudes at every opportunity because she's the maddest dog in the quadrant. Chakotay rescues one of the Bad Starfleet dudes from a murder room Janeway left him in and is like "hey how about we try some, not murder based plans?" Janeway immediately relieves him of duty and confines him to quarters in case he fucks everything up for her.
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Jan 2, 2017 00:46
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I don't get the no communicators thing. Did we lose handheld telecommunications in WW3?
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Jan 2, 2017 00:50
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Transporters are more of tool for the show not to have everyone pile into the Previa and leave the docking bay to travel down to the planet.
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Jan 2, 2017 01:35
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twistedmentat posted:Transporters are more of tool for the show not to have everyone pile into the Previa and leave the docking bay to travel down to the planet. Yeah, but that's exactly the problem. Like, okay, you don't have the budget for a shuttle take-off/landing sequence every episode or maybe you just don't want to waste time on that. Fine, so instead of falling back on a lazy option like transporters, how about you find a way to tell stories that don't involve putting a small away team onto a planet every other episode? This is the perfect example of a situation where you can use the fact that the show is a prequel to play with the Star Trek formula and come at the setting from a different angle.
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Jan 2, 2017 02:08
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Enterprise's biggest crime was finally doing good stories about the beginnings of the Federation in their final season when the show was not going to continue. Then they decide not to show the 'famous speech' by Archer in the final episode which they had been building up as this big deal.
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Jan 2, 2017 02:17
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FlamingLiberal posted:Enterprise's biggest crime was finally doing good stories about the beginnings of the Federation in their final season when the show was not going to continue. If they built it up the writers probably would have had a hard time writing a speech that was actually fitting and meaningful. We're about a third of the way through the third season and my wife is already tiring of the whole Xindi arc and she's a HUGE Trekkie. It does seem awfully tacked on from out of nowhere. I'm in agreement with those here who said they should have focused on the Romulan-Earth war instead of making up a new group of aliens.
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Jan 2, 2017 03:15
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MrJacobs posted:You are right, and they aren't expected to have them because they aren't Star Trek. Enterprise doing everything that was expected of Trek at the time worked out so well.
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Jan 2, 2017 03:18
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Enterprise is arguably the most frustrating Star Trek show to watch as a fan because you see it get close to doing something interesting or cool really loving often and then they go and run back to being lame and pointless 95% of the time, just like Voyager. And then, after 3 years of pissing away good ideas and making you hate the main characters, suddenly it starts acting and even beginning to look like the show you wanted when it was first announced- all on a reduced budget. Only then does it get canceled. Shiiiiiiiit.
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Jan 2, 2017 03:22
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Tikifire posted:If they built it up the writers probably would have had a hard time writing a speech that was actually fitting and meaningful. If I were in that situation, I would quite literally hire a speechwriter. Then it would have that authenticity of inauthenticity
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Jan 2, 2017 03:29
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Duckbag posted:Well no, we could find Earth 2 only a few stars away, the odds are just astronomically against such a thing happening (also the star would presumably have to be just like ours and we would have noticed that). That's really the point of the whole "infinite universe" thing -- even the things that seem stupendously unlikely will still happen somewhere as long as they're not actually impossible. Of course, we don't know how infinite the universe really is. It may be infinitely large, but not have infinite matter. The whole thing's a little unclear. Yeah true, I phrased badly. It could happen but the realistic odds are if the infinities are true the Earth copies aren't going to be anywhere we'll ever run across them.
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Jan 2, 2017 03:38
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Grand Fromage posted:Yeah true, I phrased badly. It could happen but the realistic odds are if the infinities are true the Earth copies aren't going to be anywhere we'll ever run across them. Now I want to see a sci-fi show which explicitly goes into this and then we find identical Earths at Proxima b, Tau Ceti, and all three of Wolf 1061b, c, and d.
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Jan 2, 2017 04:04
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Honestly I think the Xindi arc was to distract from the Temporal Cold War stuff that was not working. Granted at the end they tied it into the TCW but the Suliban for instance were dumb enemies.
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Jan 2, 2017 04:08
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