i liked how they dropped the reason why we have not seen that tech in other Star Trek series - too easy to hijack. This reminds me of DS9 classic episode In The Pale Moonlight when Sisko and Garak hired a criminal to modify a data rod with holographic imagery. I thought it was brilliant.
No more holographic comms
- Thread starter Krog
- Start date
Interestingly enough the hack job on the data rod did not pass inspection, and it never would have.
Same for Section 31 operating semi openly, and the reasons why they’re virtually unheard of later on. This is not a show that’s going to spoon feed things, so when people got upset about S31 and holograms, it was because they weren’t willing to wait to see how things would align with canon throughout the course of events. Hopefully the haters are recognizing the error of their ways, but I won’t hold my breath waiting for that.
Not necessarily, no.
That's a waste of time. It also brings into question why a Starfleet captain would have the power to rip a Starfleet designed, approved, installed system out of a ship.
Starfleet captains are shown to have pretty broad discretion.
I don't think they would have that much latitude.
Yeah, the thing with the holographic communicator, among many other things this season, just feels like more course correction away from the stuff they were saddled with in the first season because of Fuller that they are gleefully doing away with this year. They're especially laying it on thick with the holographic communicator, particularly with Number One's line about "all holographic communicators removed from this ship. Permanently. There will never be a holographic communication on this ship again. Ever. It's done."
That line really threw me out of the episode.
Given the broad amount of responsibility that captains are given in terms of negotiating power, protecting the Federation's interests, and security, I think that such latitude in terms of ship's security and personal preference is allowed.
Was there a security reason for getting rid of the holographic communicators? I just thought the engineer was having trouble with them, so Pike's solution was remove them because "it feels like we're talking to ghosts."
Honestly holo-communication is kinda stupid, and never should have been introduced. I mean, I know that technically speaking it's feasible. It's almost feasible today after all. But what advantage is there to seeing a person in three dimensions versus their face on a screen? You can see if they angrily pace around a room? You can see if they're wearing pants? I'm at a loss here. Particularly when you consider the "camera" side needs to distinguish between the person and the background, so that everything in the scene isn't brought along in the hologram, and needs to interpret things like if you show a chair when they sit and such.
I've never seen life work that way, where you can take someone's stuff (especially military) and change it to your specification. What keeps a captain from ripping out his weapons system and putting in something more to his liking? Or deciding the warp drive isn't too his liking? Or Sick Bay is taking up too much space?
You want people to forget about holographic communications either just quit using them, or roll with the criticism until it dies down. There are times the show is just painful because they are trying to explain things that just bring the narrative to a halt to try and please folks who you will never be able to please.
I highly doubt that that was the original intent. That's just how things are seeming to go after other showrunners took the helm. Don't delude yourself into thinking there was some kind of 'master plan' all along.
There's a world of difference between true haters like the idiots at Midnight's Edge and people here who justifiably critique the show.
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But they're also still updating visuals and recontextualizing facts and logical inferences, just like Fuller was doing. Pick a lane, are you doing Star Trek with a fresh and updated 23rd century for the 21st century, or a retro-futuristic nostalgia trip? Don't keep switching back and forth based on what whoever is responsible at that moment personally thinks is too big an ask ("I can imagine everything looked different in TOS from how we saw it, but imagining they had holograms is a bridge too far!").
I can't properly enjoy Discovery's fanservice because it's all a jumble of all-new remake stuff, changes for change's sake, and then odd, stray elements that are intentionally retro that are excessively highlighted, like the double-retcon that holograms do exist in the 23rd century, but they're just not on the Enterprise, or the tight shot of Pike grabbing the handle in the turbolift, or the fact that the Enterprise used TOS's sound palette rather than incorporating random audio effects from all of the previous series like they do on the Discovery. I don't feel like something I love and respect is being celebrated by season 2's TOS call-outs, I feel like I'm being patronized for thinking that that old campy crap is good on its own terms.
It's the same level of justification for TOS level tech in the future as when "Lorca kept it dark" was why season 1 was so dark, insofar as the lighting never got less dark. It's meant to brush aside discrepancies with a very specific thing applied to a broad set of values. Unfortunately, it only serves to draw attention to those discrepancies. I don't give a hoot that DSC doesn't look like TOS, as far as the show itself is concerned, and this kind of dialogue drags me out of the episode more than any visual discontinuity between DSC and TOS ever would have.
The idea that people only hate S31 being in the open because they aren't willing to go with the narrative of DSC is just plain silly. It's making people with legit criticisms into: "you only hate it because it's different, you just don't understand, it's too smart for you" kind of nonsense. S31 being in the open isn't bad because it's contradictory, it's just not nearly as dramatically interesting as the clandestine organization as it was presented in DS9.
It reminds me of how the creators talked about why they set the show before TOS and a big talking point was the "creative shackles of so many years of Trek" and the ethos that if they made a sequel, it would be hard to keep all the random Memory Alpha tidbits straight. What they were ignoring (willfully or not) was that those same "creative shackles" apply to a prequel as well, and if anything even more restricting if you want to fit it into the existing universe. Not that they need to make it fit. It would be fine if they did their own thing.
Now we have a scene where Number One talks to the audience and assures them there will not be any of those pesky nonTOS holograms in the future. The reason I don't like the holograms is because they are boring (though that might not have been the case if they were implemented better) and they distract from the scene (ie Sarek hologram sitting on a surface where he is not - sure, many have explained it away, but I don't want to even be thinking about it in the first place).
The idea that people only hate S31 being in the open because they aren't willing to go with the narrative of DSC is just plain silly. It's making people with legit criticisms into: "you only hate it because it's different, you just don't understand, it's too smart for you" kind of nonsense. S31 being in the open isn't bad because it's contradictory, it's just not nearly as dramatically interesting as the clandestine organization as it was presented in DS9.
It reminds me of how the creators talked about why they set the show before TOS and a big talking point was the "creative shackles of so many years of Trek" and the ethos that if they made a sequel, it would be hard to keep all the random Memory Alpha tidbits straight. What they were ignoring (willfully or not) was that those same "creative shackles" apply to a prequel as well, and if anything even more restricting if you want to fit it into the existing universe. Not that they need to make it fit. It would be fine if they did their own thing.
Now we have a scene where Number One talks to the audience and assures them there will not be any of those pesky nonTOS holograms in the future. The reason I don't like the holograms is because they are boring (though that might not have been the case if they were implemented better) and they distract from the scene (ie Sarek hologram sitting on a surface where he is not - sure, many have explained it away, but I don't want to even be thinking about it in the first place).
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