Trek Musing.

[swestrup]

I just finished rewatching Balance of Terror, the Star Trek episode that first introduced the Romulans, the cloaking device and the plasma torpedo. This is one of my favorite TOS episodes, despite the many inconsistencies of the story with the rest of the series (such as the 'proximity phasers' which are never mentioned again) and the fact that the author admits its basically a rip-off of a major motion picture.

I don't want to harp on the inconsistencies though. What I want to do is look at the differences in the basic technology of storytelling that have changed since then. Nowadays any ongoing series that tries to keep consistent in the face of futuristic or fantastic elements has a whole set of tools to draw upon that didn't exist back then. It is now common to produce show bibles detailing the traits of characters, places and special features. They can draw upon any one of a number of role-playing games to build quantized descriptions of people's abilities and how they compare. These days there are often blueprints and/or CAD designs built of many of the fantastic places and elements, all in the name of consistency.

So, I'm not surprised that an episode from 1966 has huge consistency holes. What I want to know is: why does it still happen today?

Comments

[joenotcharles.livejournal.com]

Were the consistency holes internal to the episode, or was it just things that were established there that were later ignored?

[joenotcharles.livejournal.com]

Actually, a better question is, did this episode contradict anything that came before it, or were the inconsistencies introduced later?

[swestrup]

Well, there were both things that made no sense at all given previous explanations of the Enterprise's technology. (the enemy ship didn't have warp power, just impulse, and the 'proximity' phasers to name two), and things that were later contradicted by other episodes (some to a lesser degree, some to a greater).

[baronscartop.livejournal.com]

I'm not as willing as you are to let a show from 1966 off the hook for inconsistency. Either they had someone paying attention, or they didn't. If they didn't, why not?

And by someone, of course, I mean on staff as opposed to in fandom.

Today, well, if we're talking only about Trek, it happens because they don't think continuity is important. For other shows, it's more of a trade-off. According to Cheers, Frasier Crane's dad was a shrink, but you can see why they would have wanted to change that. I have less respect for the Battlestar Galactica update, which will contradict itself just so it can have a shot they think looks cool.

t!

[swestrup]

Its quite clear from that episode that most of the technology in the first season of Star Trek was made up as they went along. Technology they should have had and used (like photon torpedoes) weren't mentioned because the episode where they were written in hadn't happened yet.

The Romulans were given impulse drives rather than warp because the author wanted them slower than the Enterprise and at that point all warp drives were equal. It was only later that it was determined that impulse drives were slower than light and therefor completely inadequate for crossing the neutral zone, and that there were different types of warp drive.

That's what happens when you make things up as you go along. These days a new SF show tries to work a lot of that stuff out ahead of time. As for the things that the show DID work out ahead of time which were boneheadedly stupid, I'll stay mum, or this will turn into a very long rant.

[hendrikboom.livejournal.com]

It is very, very difficult to make up a world ahead of time for a story, unless you already know the story.
It is very vry difficult to make up a story, unless you already know the world the story is happening in.

Which is why
-- most stories are in a world the author knows about already
-- most sci-fi or fantasy stories are short.
.. long sci-fi stories are usually written in many drafts, to avoid the conceptual deadlock by iteration.

Sci-fi serials are extremely hard to pull off.

And, yes, I think they didn't care about technical consistency too much. Perhaps they were trying for emotional consistency. or perhaps the really didn't care.
The TV-viewing public is not as critical as the science-fiction reading public.

It's still the case, especially with movies. They spend 400 million on special effects, and they don't bother to hire a decent writer. The money men are in charge. And money is what they can control. So whetever costs money goes in; that's the ground unmonied can't compete on.

[swestrup]

> It is very, very difficult to make up a world ahead of time for a story,
> unless you already know the story.
> It is very vry difficult to make up a story, unless you already know the
> world the story is happening in.

I disagree. Every time someone creates a role-playing setting, they are making a consistent setting from which to hang a story. The fact that role-playing games were unknown in 1969 is why I'm willing to let that episode off the hook. Nowadays though, we have the experience of building consistent shared storytelling environments, and we have writers who are experienced in doing just that.

[hendrikboom.livejournal.com]

Compared to previous TV sci-fi series, they were doing fairly well in terms of continuity. Even excellent shows like the Twilight Zone were organized to have *no* plot, character, or environmental continuity.