I think your comment could reasonably apply to early Discovery and Picard, but not so much to the rest of nuTrek. It could equally apply to DS9 and Enterprise - but not so much to the rest oldTrek (Voyager might straddle the line).
I think it’s most accurate to say that Star Trek as a whole has generally shown alternating waves of reifying and challenging the utopian future concept. Overall that gives a message that a better society can be achieved, but the work of living up to that vision can never end. It works for me.
Definite big lipped alligator moment. But I dug it. If you can’t make your show good, at least make it weird. At least it wasn’t another pointless action scene.
Yeah, like I say, it's pretty nitpicky. I'd probably collapse everything from TSFS to Kelvin into one, if I were being more lax. I don't find the Kelvin design to be all that different from what came before, but I do find TMP to be really distinct in comparison. But I know some people who seem to be the exact opposite on that, so 🤷
I'd say there are up to 8 designs, depending on how much you want to nitpick:
TOS: Smooth. Unnaturally smooth.
TMP: Single column ridge with hair on either side. Behind the scenes the concept was that the spinal column continued up from the back all around the head.
TSFS: Ridges cover the forehead, are wider and flatter, and have a continuous hairline behind them. Female Klingons have substantially less pronounced ridges.
TUC: Chang has those same less pronounced ridges. Maybe it's not a male/female thing. Or maybe Chang is trans?
TNG: Those less pronounced ridges are gone. Male and female Klingons both get roughly the same degree of lumpyness.
Kelvin: Ridges look flatter and more pleated. I don't think we see any hair, but it's been a while.
Disco: Coneheads, quadruple nostrils, and no hair.
Disco S2: Partial retcon as the Klingons start growing their hair in and the heads appear less conical.
Picard/SNW: Fully revert to the TNG era look. Doesn't count since it isn't a new design.
Yeah, it's one of those "it's weird that it happened twice" situations. Not to mention TMP was just a mash up of The Changeling and One of Our Planets is Missing. At a certain point it feels like the characters should be asking each other why they keep experiencing the same situations over and over....
That's just a normal Star Trek plot. Hell, that's toned down for normies compared to half the stuff they get up to in any given series. At least it's an alien looking probe and not a giant green hand or space Lincoln.
Yes. Any object replicated on the Holodeck may leave. Unfortunately, it is sometimes hard to tell what is replicated, and what is not. Snow, such as the snowball thrown by Wesley in "The Naked Now" is easily replicated, and dampness is hard to simulate. The book thrown by Picard in "Ship In A Bottle" [TNG] would be easily simulated by force beams and thus was not replicated.
The paper in "Elementary, Dear Data" [TNG] was likely simulated until the computer realized that it was going to be carried off the Holodeck, at which point it would have been seamlessly replaced with a replicated copy.
That's a very good point, but I feel like it would just lead to an argument about which series (DS9) is somehow objectively "best" (it's DS9), and that's really not the sort of argument I'm here to start (because it's obviously DS9).
I think your comment could reasonably apply to early Discovery and Picard, but not so much to the rest of nuTrek. It could equally apply to DS9 and Enterprise - but not so much to the rest oldTrek (Voyager might straddle the line).
I think it’s most accurate to say that Star Trek as a whole has generally shown alternating waves of reifying and challenging the utopian future concept. Overall that gives a message that a better society can be achieved, but the work of living up to that vision can never end. It works for me.