Discoverse Discontinuities

For all your discussion of canon policies, evidentiary standards, and other meta-debate issues.

Discussion is to remain cordial at all times.
Post Reply
User avatar
2046
Starship Captain
Posts: 2040
Joined: Sat Sep 02, 2006 9:14 pm
Contact:

Discoverse Discontinuities

Post by 2046 » Wed Nov 17, 2021 5:48 am

Much like the Warp Speeds List thread, I envision this as a central hub for noting aspects where, in the words of MisterNobody86, the Discoverse, a.k.a. the CBS Universe of Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, Prodigy, Strange New Worlds, et cetera, is 'wildly out of whack and incongruent with what's come before. From Ash's skin job to NCCs to xenobiology, there's a ton of spots where the Star Trek Original Universe as seen in productions from the mid-1960s to the mid-2000s has been contradicted, abandoned, mixed with the JJ Abrams Kelvin Universe, et cetera.

In some cases the issues have been discussed already, amidst other threads, which has seemingly ruined Mike D.'s mood. I trust this will help alleviate some of those issues.

Bernd at EAS already has a good start going here: https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inco ... inuity.htm

misternobody86
Redshirt
Posts: 14
Joined: Mon Nov 15, 2021 5:27 am

Re: Discoverse Discontinuities

Post by misternobody86 » Wed Nov 17, 2021 5:45 pm

I'd be happy to continue the discussion here. Through I feel a little humbled that my shooting my mouth off has, however slightly, prompted an analysis thread. I'm not sure I'm up to such standards but I'm happy to try.
Bernd at EAS already has a good start going here: https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inco ... inuity.htm
That list! I think it would have been shorter to list the things that weren't a discrepancy. And it seems to only go up to Season 2 of Discovery. Obviously some, like space-borne creatures being too numerous, are less of a hard discrepancy but that's still an impressive list.

As for my original point, while I'm not outright saying you couldn't find a way to reconcile everything the fleet number information from NuTrek, specifically from "Discovery" and Picard, seem high. Especially the former when the Federation should be smaller and generally less industrialized than its 24th century counterpart. Yet "Discovery" establishes that Starfleet apparently has seven thousands vessels and that after a devastating war against the Klingons that destroyed, IIRC, a third of the fleet. Suggesting numbers pretty close to what we'd have ballparked for the Federation during the Dominion War roughly a century later and which, until now, showed a straightforward and gradually increasing curve of growth in ship numbers. Starting with Star Trek: Enterprise showing a very small starfleet of likely dozens of ships to the hundreds to low thousands suggested by the TOS era to the 10,000+ of the 24th century.

Now instead of seductive curves, the Federation ship numbers appear melon-shaped starting small before ballooning outward only to taper off again as we approach the 24th century. Where we have examples of much smaller ship production/ship numbers. Ie It taking starfleet the better part of a year to replace 39 ship losses incurred by the Borg attack, the Seventh fleet starting the Dominion War with only one hundred-twelve ships, that even well into the war when the Federation industry should have been ramping up it had to scrap to scrounge up roughly six hundred starships to retake Deep Space Nine as well as the suggestion that the additional "couple of thousand" of Dominion ships waiting on the other end of the wormhole was going to be enough to tip the balance of the war in the Dominion's favor.

Lastly, to my knowledge, while NCC numbers have ballooned in the 24th century matching the suggestion of the fleet we ultimately observed,we don't see any such thing in either TOS or Discovery. Ie. We have the NCC 1031 Discovery but no NCC 7031 Randomprize.

User avatar
2046
Starship Captain
Posts: 2040
Joined: Sat Sep 02, 2006 9:14 pm
Contact:

Re: Discoverse Discontinuities

Post by 2046 » Thu Nov 18, 2021 5:49 am

Well, if it helps your humbleness, this came about because I'm senile and didn't see or remember this thread title: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=46676

But, since that's in Trek/Wars and I'm not sure it really fits there, I'm just gonna roll on with this.

Broadly speaking, I'm open to the idea of higher-than-expected shipbuilding rates during the 23rd Century and the 'cold war' with the Klingons.

(( I say 'cold war' since, with apologies to Axanar and Discovery both, there's simply no evidence for a war with the Klingons in the Original Universe, and plenty against, e.g. Carol Marcus, in 2285, noting to her twenty-something son (implying a likely minimum age of 45 or so, compared to Kirk's 53) that Starfleet had kept the peace for a hundred years. The notion that they'd actually had a war while she was a teenager and that she sort of forgot after bearing the child of a Starfleet officer is rather weird. ))

With such a 'cold war', the united planets of the UFP would've been needing to try to maintain some sort of deterrence value to the Klingons, with a big fleet as reasonable as any other idea. Of course, by the 2260s (and perhaps before) there were poor planets among the Klingon-controlled systems, so there's not much telling what their ship counts looked like anyway.

However, without the higher-than-expected shipbuilding rates during the 23rd Century showing up in NCC numbers . . .

misternobody86
Redshirt
Posts: 14
Joined: Mon Nov 15, 2021 5:27 am

Re: Discoverse Discontinuities

Post by misternobody86 » Mon Nov 22, 2021 2:57 am

2046 wrote:Broadly speaking, I'm open to the idea of higher-than-expected shipbuilding rates during the 23rd Century and the 'cold war' with the Klingons.

(( I say 'cold war' since, with apologies to Axanar and Discovery both, there's simply no evidence for a war with the Klingons in the Original Universe, and plenty against, e.g. Carol Marcus, in 2285, noting to her twenty-something son (implying a likely minimum age of 45 or so, compared to Kirk's 53) that Starfleet had kept the peace for a hundred years. The notion that they'd actually had a war while she was a teenager and that she sort of forgot after bearing the child of a Starfleet officer is rather weird. ))
Well there being a tenuous Cold War which boils over into skirmishes and power plays via proxies would match with the Klingons being Russian analogs, especially in TOS and to a smaller extent in the TNG forward, and certainly an interpretation I've leaned towards. I mean we heard of the Romulan-Earth War, despite it being a century over by that time, with feelings still running passionate among at least some of the descendants in those that fought it. Yet we've never in canon heard of any similar concerning the Federation.

Through of course an actual war is far more cinematic than Klingon D-7's staring daggers at Federation Cruisers. So I do understand the appeal of why Axanar or Discovery would assume otherwise.
2046 wrote:However, without the higher-than-expected shipbuilding rates during the 23rd Century showing up in NCC numbers . . .
Suppose I'm a bit on the opposite side. I'd be willing to overlook discrepancies in NCC numbers if there was evidence to support such numbers. As it is, the NuTrek numbers feel random and tacked on. My opinion of course.

Post Reply