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Old 07-16-2018, 09:26 PM   #1
AlexanderHowl
 
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Default What TL is the original Star Trek?

The TL of original Star Trek came up in another thread, so I was curious what everyone thought the TL of the original Star Trek TV was? I think that it is TL (7+5)^ with elements of safetech. The technology looks like what a mid-TL 7 society would expect future society to be, but they possessed a number of incredibly advanced technologies. Let us look at them for a moment:

1) They possessed pills that could regrow missing organs in minutes, which represents the equivalent of a mature TL 12 biotechnology.

2) They possessed disintigrators (also known as phasors), which are a TL 12^ weapon in Ultra-Tech.

3) They possessed force screens that offered complete immunity to lasers, with performance equal to the TL 12^ technology in Spaceships.

4) They incredibly efficient antimatter technology that was the equivalent to the TL 12^ antimatter reactors found in Spaceships.

5) Their civilization developed and then abandoned the equivalent of TL 12 genetic engineering by the 1990s because they found it to be too dangerous for a civilized society to deal with (they seemed to have kept a number of more utilitarian biotechnologies though).

Now, I know that there are a lot of original Star Trek technologies that are just TL^ because they are beyond our understanding, but I think that what we see in the original Star Trek is overall a TL (7+5)^ society with safetech. What do you think?
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Old 07-16-2018, 09:45 PM   #2
David Johnston2
 
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Default Re: What TL is the original Star Trek?

Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
The TL of original Star Trek came up in another thread, so I was curious what everyone thought the TL of the original Star Trek TV was? I think that it is TL (7+5)^ with elements of safetech. The technology looks like what a mid-TL 7 society would expect future society to be, but they possessed a number of incredibly advanced technologies. Let us look at them for a moment:

1) They possessed pills that could regrow missing organs in minutes, which represents the equivalent of a mature TL 12 biotechnology.

2) They possessed disintigrators (also known as phasors), which are a TL 12^ weapon in Ultra-Tech.

3) They possessed force screens that offered complete immunity to lasers, with performance equal to the TL 12^ technology in Spaceships.

4) They incredibly efficient antimatter technology that was the equivalent to the TL 12^ antimatter reactors found in Spaceships.

5) Their civilization developed and then abandoned the equivalent of TL 12 genetic engineering by the 1990s because they found it to be too dangerous for a civilized society to deal with (they seemed to have kept a number of more utilitarian biotechnologies though).

Now, I know that there are a lot of original Star Trek technologies that are just TL^ because they are beyond our understanding, but I think that what we see in the original Star Trek is overall a TL (7+5)^ society with safetech. What do you think?
I would say that they're an early TL 12/late TL 11. By the time of TNG with the advent of replicators they're a bit more solidly in the TL 12 range.

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
How do you figure that? It seems to me there were things they couldn't do at all that are certainly listed as TL12 devices; they had no nanotech, no genetic engineering, one very large computer to a starship—my goodness, even we have more advanced computers than they did, in most ways. .
Nobody has ALL the things that are listed as TL12 devices.

Last edited by David Johnston2; 07-16-2018 at 09:49 PM.
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Old 07-16-2018, 11:02 PM   #3
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Default Re: What TL is the original Star Trek?

Quote:
How do you figure that? It seems to me there were things they couldn't do at all that are certainly listed as TL12 devices; they had no nanotech,
They did, they just didn't use it. By the TNG/DS9/Voy era they were able to deal with borg nanotechnology fairly effectively. I suspect nano tech was used more in the Federation that is seen on screen.

Quote:
no genetic engineering,
Because of the Eugenics Wars genetic engineering was extremely restricted. They had and understood the technology they just didn't use it. Dr. Bashir is genetically modified but the technology existed long before that.

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one very large computer to a starship—my goodness, even we have more advanced computers than they did, in most ways. .
We have large computers that can manage a warp drive?

TOS computer technology is a little off but I chalk it up to the computing power required to balance the warp field, navigate and generate firing solutions for weapons moving at and firing at targets moving may times faster than light.
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Old 07-16-2018, 11:24 PM   #4
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Default Re: What TL is the original Star Trek?

I would be more inclined to say that the ST:TOS/TAS era is closer to TL10^ with some limited TL12^ devices in widespread use. They have some emergent superscience, but the rest of the technology appears closer to TL10 at first glance than TL12, IMO.

That's not counting the discrepancies between TOS and the TOS-cast movies. (For example, at some point between the ST:TOS episode "The Trouble With Tribbles" - which made explicit mention of "credits" as a form of currency - and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, the Federation stopped using money....) How much of that we can chalk up to special effects improving (and Roddenberry shrugging off his producers to become one himself) between the late '60s and the early '80s, and how much is meant to be taken as-seen in the time between the two time frames is a matter of contention.
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Old 07-16-2018, 11:29 PM   #5
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Default Re: What TL is the original Star Trek?

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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
4) They incredibly efficient antimatter technology that was the equivalent to the TL 12^ antimatter reactors found in Spaceships.
Antimatter reactors are TL10 in Spaceships. TL12^ gives total conversion with unlimited endurance and so concern of it blowing up, which doesn't match my memory of TOS Startrek.
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Old 07-16-2018, 11:34 PM   #6
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Default Re: What TL is the original Star Trek?

What does GURPS Prime Directive (4e) say it is? While Prime Directive technically isn't Star Trek, I've found that it's arguably more faithful to the original series than anything that's come out of Paramount, CBS, etc. since before Star Trek: the Motion Picture.
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Old 07-16-2018, 11:38 PM   #7
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Default Re: What TL is the original Star Trek?

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Originally Posted by tanksoldier View Post
They did, they just didn't use it. By the TNG/DS9/Voy era they were able to deal with borg nanotechnology fairly effectively. I suspect nano tech was used more in the Federation that is seen on screen.
I thought we were talking about the original series. What was imagined in the 1980s reflected a slightly more advanced vision of the future, though most of it is still Campbell-era SF tropes; I don't think it's evidential about the TL of original Trek.

Quote:
We have large computers that can manage a warp drive?

TOS computer technology is a little off but I chalk it up to the computing power required to balance the warp field, navigate and generate firing solutions for weapons moving at and firing at targets moving may times faster than light.
How do you know that the computers were even doing that? In "Amok Time" I just heard Mr. Chekhov tell Captain Kirk that the course for a particular destination was "plotted and laid in"; that sounds very much as if Chekhov did it himself. And when the Enterprise is in combat, we see Sulu or Chekhov at the helm flying the ship, and they had human officers operating the weapons. There were 1940s-1960s SF stories where extensive computation was required to do FTL (see for example Heinlein's Starman Jones or Correy's Starship through Space), but they were characteristically stories about dropping through a hole into hyperdimensional space and then coming out somewhere else (Correy described the Blind Spot long before Niven wrote about it); the Enterprise was moving about in the same three-dimensional space as sublight craft.

If the Enterprise had had mature TL8 computers it would have had not just one big ship's computer doing whatever it did, but at least a smart terminal at every duty station, and likely a smaller smart computer in every communicator and tricorder. I will grant that their communicators and tricorders do plausibly foreshadow TL8 (in part because the architects of TL8 were Trekkies). But the original series didn't begin to envision ubiquitous computing. We are shown that Spock could download visual images from his tricorder with an apparatus made up of vacuum tubes and a small CRT (itself probably anachronistic); that hardly makes sense if you are thinking the data were stored as a digital video file.

I think that you're thinking of original Trek capabilities in terms of what you imagine behind the scenes as necessary to achieve their capabilities, based on your experience as a TL8 person; not in terms of what is actually said in dialogue or shown on the screen.
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Old 07-17-2018, 12:16 AM   #8
David Johnston2
 
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Default Re: What TL is the original Star Trek?

That Star Trek couldn't predict exactly what TL 8 would look like doesn't make it TL 7.
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Old 07-17-2018, 12:21 AM   #9
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Default Re: What TL is the original Star Trek?

But it might make it TL(7+x). Which, from what I understand, is “what of TL7 progressed without some key TL8+ innovations being developed?”
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Old 07-17-2018, 12:38 AM   #10
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Default Re: What TL is the original Star Trek?

By that logic, every fictional future conceived of now would be TL 8+X. We can't make a TL 9 setting, because it would require things we don't know about the future.
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