Text 16470, 88 rader
Skriven 2007-08-01 11:29:25 av Josh Hill (2943.babylon5)
     Kommentar till en text av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated
Ärende: Re: [OT] Nimoy at SDCC: "It was logical!"
=================================================
On Tue, 31 Jul 2007 23:16:01 -0500, "Carl" <cengman7@hotmail.com>
wrote:

>
>"Thunder Fantastic!" <deceptar@shaw.ca> wrote in message 
>news:26Tri.19751$_d2.2985@pd7urf3no...
>> Josh Hill wrote:
>>> I've no doubt that you'd want to drop the likes of slipstream drives.
>>> But you'd drop the silly (and non-canonical) TNG warp 10 limitation.
>>> Let the new Enterprise do Warp 16 or something.
>
>You couldn't let technology advance much in any direction.
>Stronger Phasers. Quantum torpedoes.  Faster engines, better shields.
>Big whoop.
>
>Other than that, the only real advances in TNG were
>
>1) The holodeck (which allowed more stories on board the ship
>    rather than having to build planet sets)
>
>2) Data  (Not really an advance since he couldn't be duplicated).
>
>3) Replicators (which couldn't replicate Data)
>
>Anything else ever shown as a technological advance always had
>some drawback that kept it from being used.

The main purpose of most technological advances would be the
maintenance of plausibility, e.g., we expect a future ship to be
somewhat faster and more capable. You might also glean some new story
possibilities out of the likes of portable intelligent computers --
they original series really did underestimate the power of AI's,
though lots of Kirk-destroys-the-computer-with-illogic episodes made
partial amends for that.

>Hmm. Bonus question...
>
>Can anyone think of a new technology that they could introduce in a
>Trek series set in the future that could be part of the ship that would
>make an interesting story?

How about a new-fangled computer terminal that reads your thoughts?
Endless story possibilities there -- the computer starts lying to make
people happy (stolen from Asimov's mind-reading robot story, of
course), the terminals were programmed by nasty aliens to control the
crew, a terminal malfunctions and someone on the ship discovers that
she can read the thoughts of everyone else, the computer is struck by
space lightning, malfunctions, and starts acting on the buried
impulses of the crew . . .

An experimental trial of a quantum state drive that oops puts them in
a different and very strange galaxy filled with very very alien
creatures and from which of course they have to find a way back before
the hour has elapsed.

A medical resynthesizer that repairs tissues. After her boyfriend is
killed on an away mission, a young nurse violates procedure and uses
it on her lover's corpse. It brings him back to life, but in the
absence of the body's natural repair mechanisms the repair is only
temporary, and he starts to deteriorate . . .

OK, it's not quite part of the ship, but -- a shady tradesman -- think
Mudd or the tribble guy -- sells what seems to be a phony bit of alien
technology to a crewman, a box that summons your race's deities. And
lo and behold, it really works. Or does it?

The psychoregenerator, used by the counselor to heal a crewman who has
been tortured. Something happens to it during a battle, it goes nuts,,
and suddenly everybody aboard ship has lost every trace of trauma,
phobia, neurosis -- and personality, everything that makes them
special and able to win the battle.

The psychoregenerator, used by the counselor to heal a crewman who has
been tortured. Something happens to it during a battle, it goes nuts,,
and the crewman is turned into a crafty lunatic intent on destroying
the ship. He's also the Captain's best friend from boyhood, or
something like that.

An advanced ship's computer falls -- haplessly, of course -- in love.

-- 
Josh

"Your manuscript is both good and original. But the part that is
good is not original, and the part that is original is not good."
	-- Samuel Johnson
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