What's happening with Prime Directive

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

To be fair, that's one of my problems with new trek: with the exception (so far) of SNW, it doesn't respect the basic premise of “humanity gets its **** together”.

Some of the things you dislike about non-TOS ST franchises might just be a product of age.

SF, especially media SF, saw some huge changes starting in the late 1960s. By the 1980s, television and movie executives were starting to allow smarter shows with more complex characters and plots. Fans required much richer and more detailed worlds. (As a thought experiment, name one TV or movie SF franchise from before ST, which isn't a reboot, which modern SF fans know or care about. Other than Godzilla I can't think of any.)

All those changes resulted in characters with more complex personalities and motivations. When the writing was bad, or the show demanded drama without resorting to fight scenes or special effects, the characters could sometimes act in ways that were unrealistically stupid and dysfunctional. Even the TOS characters lost a bit of their shine when they were reworked for the movies.

Another huge difference in American media SF from the 1970s on is that most of the writers, actors, etc. had no military experience. Just about every American male from 1942 to 1965 had either seen military service or knew people who did. That allowed a fair bit of "shorthand" in SF storytelling, since writers didn't have to explain things like chain of command, standing watch/guard duty, leave procedures, etc. It had a subtle but pervasive effect on just about all SF of the 1940s and 50s. Certainly, Gene Roddenberry lived in that world, having been both a WW2 USAAF combat pilot and a police officer.

Originally Posted by dataweaver

But that's beside the point. The point that I was contesting was the idea that Starfleet universe is somehow inferior to other Star Trek RPGs because it doesn't embrace the, in my phrasing, Renaissance Trek viewpoint.

Poor phrasing on my part. The idea I was trying to communicate is that people who expect the Prime Directive to be a canon ST setting might be disappointed if they don't read the label on the package. If they understand that the SFB setting is "TOS-like" and non-canon, then they can better enjoy the game for what it is. Not inferior to canon Trek, just different.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by whswhs

He's a doctor, not a historian!.

This particular continuity goof is more severe when you realize that Bread and Circuses aired several months after Who Mourns for Adonis. You know the episode in which McCoy actually [met] one of the Roman solar deities....

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by maximara

I Heck, Reich-5 likely come closes to being a Myth parallel (The Man in the High Castle)

Reich-2 I think. That's described as Germany and Japan winnign the war but then lapsing into stagnation.

Reich-5 would be a different myth. Something about winning the war and maintaining a war-like speed of scientific advance.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by maximara

If we are going Infinite Worlds and assume the reality of Star Trek is "real" (ie a Myth parallel) going Watsonian comes with the territory.

I thought we were talking about the pedigree of Prime Directive, not inserting it into Infinite Worlds.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by maximara

If we are going Infinite Worlds and assume the reality of Star Trek is "real" (ie a Myth parallel) going Watsonian comes with the territory.

I don't see that. The actual historical events that are shown as taking place may require Watsonian explanation. But the statements characters in the show make in dialogue need not. Of course you can play the game that Dorothy Sayers played when she explained that Dr. Watson's wife called him "James" rather than "John" not because she had forgotten his first name, or because Dr. Watson had forgotten his own name when he wrote an account of that adventure, but because it was her affectionate nickname for him, from his Scots middle name "Hamish," or that the Hulk's alter ego was called "Bob Banner" rather than "Bruce Banner" because his actual name was "Robert Bruce Banner"; but you can also just recognize that Arthur Conan Doyle and Stan Lee occasionally slipped up and that, for example, Mrs. Watson actually said "John" or "Jack" or "Johnny" and Doyle's story misreported it. Sometimes it's simpler just to write something off in Doylist terms as author error and not bother to contrive a Watsonian account.

[Inky]

As has been mentioned earlier in the thread, TOS isn't always 100% consistent with itself either, so it seems a bit of a waste of time reading any parallel-history significance into the fact that it's not always 100% consistent with the real world.

The same thing can be said about its occasional scientific howlers (when it dips into real-world science, rather than discussing purely hypothetical/made-up things). In "Operation: Annihilate", for instance, Kirk suggests that the creature they're dealing with may be like it is because it comes from another galaxy where the laws of physics are different - and Spock agrees with him. Maybe that actually does make sense in Star Trek's universe, or maybe it's just that the writer of that episode didn't know what he was talking about.

[Qoltar]

Instead of debating or quibbling about whether or not "Star Trek" keeps continuity with itself - can we get back to 'How to adapt it to GURPS Better" as a topic?

- Ed C.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Qoltar

Instead of debating or quibbling about whether or not "Star Trek" keeps continuity with itself - can we get back to 'How to adapt it to GURPS Better" as a topic?

- Ed C.

My own suggestion would be to create a setting that fits GURPS but is close enough to Star Trek, though I do admit that not everyone would find that version 'close enough.'

[Witchking]

Well I would be tempted to use SFB for ship battles.

However those who have not swallowed the 600+ odd pages of that ruleset might not be so tempted.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Reich-2 I think. That's described as Germany and Japan winnign the war but then lapsing into stagnation. Reich-5 would be a different myth. Something about winning the war and maintaining a war-like speed of scientific advance.

"The Man in the High Castle (1962), by Philip K. Dick, is an alternative history novel wherein the Axis Powers won World War II. The story occurs in 1962, fifteen years after the end of the war in 1947, and depicts the political intrigues between Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany as they rule the partitioned United States." - wikiperida

By contrast Reich-2 Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and the British Empire fight an ever-shifting cold war of espionage and sabotage as the United States and Imperial Japan jockey for position and allies.

So The Man in the High Castle is closer to Reich-5 than it is Reich-2 in terms of being a myth parallel. As Camelot, Nottingham, and Sherlock realities show myth parallels don't have to be a perfect match - just reasonably close.