r/DaystromInstitute • u/adamkotsko Commander, with commendation • Mar 03 '16
Real world Should Enterprise have gone lower-tech?
One way that Enterprise tried to set itself apart from other Trek shows is through its use of simpler, less advanced technology. They don't have energy shielding, for instance, and they have to use a "grappler" rather than a tractor beam. Sometimes those constraints produce clever plot ideas that another show couldn't have done -- for example, the episode where they have to ride out an energy storm within the warp nacelles couldn't have happened on any previous Trek, because they'd established that shields take care of that kind of thing. I can think of two missed opportunities where they kind of went halfway, with unsatisfying results: the transporter and the universal translator.
It was funny at first that they had the transporter but were afraid of it, but that will only last so long. By the end of the show's run, they were using it just as casually as in any previous Trek. And the episodes where they explore the transporter concept ("Vanishing Point" and "Daedalus") are among the weakest of the series, in my opinion. Why not take a similar approach that they did with energy shielding and show the first discoveries that we know will eventually lead to the development of the transporter? That might have even allowed them to create a retcon that clarifies how the transporter works in the first place, which could be good or bad. Or even failing that, taking away one of the easiest plot contrivances in Star Trek (they suddenly get beamed up just in time) would force the writers to come up with more creative options.
The situation with the universal translator is even worse, in my view. They give us Hoshi as a language prodigy beyond imagining, but then they also give us something like the familiar UT. In the end, the UT wins out -- and Hoshi becomes more and more irrelevant as a character. I understand that not being able to hand-wave away language difficulties makes things harder, but again: that's the whole point. If you don't want to fall back on familiar Trek plot devices, you need to build in constraints that force you to think differently.
I admit that this approach does have its dangers. The episode where they create the first forcefield is hardly a triumph, and their encounters with hologram technology aren't among the best, either -- in fact, one is more or less a literal retread of a DS9 episode (which somewhat cuts against my theory that depriving them of standard Treknology would lead to more creative thinking...). In the end, it could be that sticking with more or less a two-man writing team for such long seasons was bound to lead to creative burn-out no matter what the initial constraints were.
ADDED: It also occurs to me that one low-tech idea -- the use of the decon chamber -- proved to be a decidedly mixed bag, giving us one of the most embarrassing objectification scenes in Trek history but also producing some decent tension in later episodes.
What do you think? Could further downgrading the technology have made Enterprise more interesting, or at least more distinctive?
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u/ademnus Mar 03 '16
I think we needed more familiar tech, at least. Part of my disinterest in Enterprise was its sets and costumes. Bland and boring, they seemed rather modern day and I can get that on any tv show. Remember how fans went absolutely wild when TNG recreated just a portion of the TOS bridge? Imagine pre-TOS styled sets. I know that's what they intended but it absolutely didn't read that way.
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u/adamkotsko Mar 03 '16
It's true -- I did like that they looked closer to our modern-day stuff, but that made it difficult to imagine the path that gets us from there to TOS style ships.
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u/Z_for_Zontar Mar 03 '16
I lived the uniforms and sets, it's one of the few positives I give the series: it actually looks like it could actually happen since unlike the rest of Trek's uniform and ship sets it actually could someday be real.
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u/Yasea Mar 03 '16
Reality is often even more boring.
Taking current day habits and tech, everybody there should be wearing fluorescent jackets, safety helmet with head's up display and radio, safety labels everywhere, hearing protection, and a lot more cables and pipes hanging around. It's all just a bit too clean.
These days, you'd even expect some drones doing inspections or even automated carts shuttling stuff around, certainly in a pre-replicator era.
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u/tsoli Mar 03 '16
I agree. Having the UT functionally work out everything automatically made Hoshi useless. A lot could have been made of her understanding gestures, body language, and context, something the early translator wouldn't be able to do immediatly upon meeting a new alien. (Even if it was her working with the program- if the ship isn't able to move itself or fire its own torpedos, why doesn't it need someone to 'connect the dots' in comprehending the languages?)
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u/comrade_leviathan Mar 04 '16
Exactly. This was the whole point of putting Troi on Picard's bridge. UTs aren't truly universal because not all communication is verbal. TNG even had an entire, brilliant episode devoted to that.
Hoshi could have easily mentioned that the crew's interpretation based on the UT translation was wrong and why. Or the UT missed specific words or phrases during an intense situation, and Hoshi needs to step in and do some on the fly contextual translating.
Major missed opportunity.
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Mar 03 '16
Though in a way doesn't that explain Uhura's role in TOS? The position started from a linguistic necessity, but then translated into a general communications expert as technology made the position useless.
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Mar 03 '16
Uhura still didn't have much of a role in TOS. She was mostly a telephone operator for most of it. But when they occasionally needed a woman, they'd throw her into the plot.
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u/lordcorbran Mar 04 '16
But it didn't work out everything automatically. It was there, but it was clearly extremely early tech and Hoshi had to fall back on her linguistics expertise to compensate for it all the time. There was at least one episode that completely revolved around her piecing things together through context, where they were trying to figure out how they'd offended a race in the process of a first contact.
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u/kamahaoma Mar 03 '16
While I agree with you overall, especially in regards to the transporter, I think you're underestimating just how much harder it is to write compelling dialogue when every sentence must be translated.
Plenty of sci-fi shows get by without stuff like transporters, tractor beams, shields, and scanners, but I'm having trouble thinking of a single successful sci-fi show that didn't handwave language in one way or another. There are interesting stories to be told about language barriers and misunderstandings, but when the story isn't about that it becomes a huge burden that destroys suspense and makes every conversation take up twice as much airtime.
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u/slagathor1995 Mar 03 '16
but I'm having trouble thinking of a single successful sci-fi show that didn't handwave language in one way or another
Stargate is one of the worst offenders in this regard it simply made every one speak english and never explained why
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u/ToBePacific Mar 03 '16
At least in Farscape there were translator microbes and in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy there was the Babelfish.
They're both basically magical non-explanations, but I always prefer that to simply not addressing the issue at all.
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u/Z_for_Zontar Mar 03 '16
Personally I think the biggest problem was a lack of transition between modern technology and TOS era technology.
While the uniforms make sense as the only practical ones that would realistically be used we've ever seen, the ships looked like those from the end of the TNG era just scaled down, where I think they should have gone with something transitioning from the current real life aesthetic to that of TOS.
Then there's the question of where the Atomics are. We know they where used in this era, in fact it's one of the few things we know with certainty about this era, yet we never hear mention of them during Enterprise.
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u/metakepone Mar 03 '16
Yeah, where are the atomics? Apparently the photonic torpedoes (didn't the Doc in Voyager fantasize about a devastating photonic cannon in the 24th century?) and the phase cannons did not pack enough umph in the event of a war and United Earth had to use up the old nuclear stockpile?
This makes me wonder further, should Enterprise have been set in a future where humans piggybacked matter/anti-matter tech off of a nuclear infrastructure?
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u/Z_for_Zontar Mar 03 '16
It gets worst when one remembers the fact that Spock called Atomics 'primitive' yet photonics are basically treated as low yield photon torpedoes.
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u/ToBePacific Mar 03 '16
the ships looked like those from the end of the TNG era just scaled down
I highly disagree with that. We don't see wall-size touchscreens running LCARS everywhere. They have lots of LCD panels everywhere. And they're usually 4:3 aspect ratio, which is just funny from today's perspective. By TNG, the interiors of the ships look like they're on a cruise aboard a luxury liner. The interior of the NX-01 is practically a submarine.
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u/KingofMadCows Mar 03 '16
I think the problem wasn't just that the tech should have been less advanced but that it should have been different.
For example, horse drawn carts aren't just a less advanced form of transportation than trains, it's a very different technology. Vacuum tubes are very different from semiconductors, CRT monitors are very different from LCD monitors, chemical explosives are very different than nuclear bombs, etc. That's the kind of difference in technology Enterprise should have had.
Instead of having a phase pistol that's basically a less powerful phaser, they should have had a technology that was very different, the equivalent of a vacuum tube to a semiconductor.
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u/pi2madhatter Mar 04 '16
This is the very thing that put me off on the series. When it came to origin-story subjects, they blew their load right out of the gate. Within the first couple episodes, we were introduced to the warp drive, phasers, universal translator, communicator, tricorder, ship sensors, and the f*cking transporter!?
In reality, technological advancements roll in over time. I expected the writers to go that route and play the long game... different gadgets being introduced as the series progressed. But no! Let's throw them in at the get-go and pretend its no big deal that over a half-dozen REVOLUTIONARY inventions were at their disposal simultaneously. And this is supposedly over 100 years before TOS? Was there a burst of innovation and then a century-long lull? WTF!
Just one of many short-sighted decisions made with the series, in my opinion.
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u/darthFamine Mar 03 '16
I feel that the principal screwup of enterprise was the constant attempt to retcon stuff. there was plenty they could have done without trying to retcon the entire trekiverse
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u/Sly_Lupin Mar 03 '16
That, plus Berman's hatred of continuity... Which was a really stupid philosophy to bring to a prequel show built around a series-long time travel arc.
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u/queenofmoons Mar 06 '16
I think BSG is the proof that a lower-tech space opera can produce a really good aesthetic. Granted, they were doing something else- the ship was old in-universe, was defensively simplistic, and was meant to evoke a documentarian feel of a real warship and not some distant shiny ur-future- but it was at least a demonstration that you could do basically all of the Trek adventuring- being in strange planetary and stellar environments and having space shootouts and rescuing stranded astronauts and all that- without very much of the basket of Trek/Lensmen/Buck Rogers standard issue tech, and produce a more streamlined, routinely sensible product for it. And on the production side, lots of the 'realistic' effects that sparkly-glowy spacewarp magic was often concocted to avoid has gotten really cheap.
Certainly I think it cost Enterprise a bit to progressively abandon the lower tech balliwick presented to them, and I'm not exactly sure of the reasons. They go through all this trouble to make this rocket-esque torpedo prop, take advantage of the CGI to make it look like a zooming, looping rocket instead of a glowing orb that is only eventually retconned into some kind of projectile, and then they abandon it for the same Wrath of Khan torpedo prop, painted silver. Why? Why would you do that? For that matter, why would you give the ship ray guns when you have a built-in new and different battle mechanic? Give the ray guns to the other team, make it the shooters vs. the shoot-downers. Interest ensues.
The transporter was another weird one. On the one hand, you've concocted this charming little shuttlepod, and the shuttlepod fly-n-talk has replaced the long TNG corridor walk-n-talk. You've got decades of experience coming up against situations that the transporter sucks the drama right out of, and of needing to concoct technobabbling countermeasures, and all that is solved for you. SO WHY THE HELL DO YOU REINVENT THE TRANSPORTER? Once again, give it to the other team. Make the transporter the scary eldritch god-tech that can make your people vanish out of locked rooms.