What TL is the original Star Trek?

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I think that may be too narrow a definition. Yes, Reed Richards is useless, as TV Tropes puts it. But consider Heinlein's "Magic, Inc.," Anderson's Operation Chaos, or Turtledove's The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump. The magic in all three is functionally a technology; it's radically divergent from electronics and nuclear energy and antibiotics; but it also permeates everyday life, from diet foods that magically vanish from your digestive system to a 100% reliable herb-based contraceptive method—it's basically "imagine the 20th century if we did all these things magically."

Yeah. None of those are retrotech and none of them are emergent superscience. They're just examples of divergent technology based on superscience.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Yeah. None of those are retrotech and none of them are emergent superscience. They're just examples of divergent technology based on superscience.

Why isn't it "emergent superscience"? Can you cite the technical definition?

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Why isn't it "emergent superscience"? Can you cite the technical definition?

Originally Posted by Ultra-Tech

EMERGENT SUPERSCIENCE
Matter transmission or force screens at TL9? Go ahead!
Ultra-Tech assigns a default TL for most superscience technologies
to give GMs a ready-to-use catalog and provide
handy guidelines for gadgeteering. However, there is no
reason superscience can’t appear earlier.

The "magic" technologies of those three works are not examples of technologies in Ultra-Tech appearing earlier than the "default" TL because they aren't technologies that are even represented in Ultra-Tech. It's true though that emergent superscience can in fact be integrated into society at large. You could have a TL 7 society in every way except with anti-gravity so that you have flying cars in every garage and easy space travel leading to wars on Mars.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

The "magic" technologies of those three works are not examples of technologies in Ultra-Tech appearing earlier than the "default" TL because they aren't technologies that are even represented in Ultra-Tech. It's true though that emergent superscience can in fact be integrated into society at large. You could have a TL 7 society in every way except with anti-gravity so that you have flying cars in every garage and easy space travel leading to wars on Mars.

Yes, that's what I was thinking of. I cited the technomantic versions because, though the spells are called "magic," they seem to be effectively "technology" for most purposes, and they are integrated into society in general. And I don't think that "emergent superscience" is limited to only devices that appear in UT as "^" (nor do I suppose you think that, actually).

[rkbrown419]

Originally Posted by tanksoldier

I do tend to think of Star Trek as being a "Holo-V" series about Starfleet, much as Top Gun or JAG depict fictional versions of the US Navy.

Based on things I've read on the ADB message boards this is exactly the approach the Star Fleet Universe uses regarding TOS. It's treated as source materiel for the universe but they go their own way when discrepancies crop up.
Unfortunately GURPS Prime Directive doesn't help the original question much. They use a Tech Level scale based on the third edition rules that goes up to TL 16 and is considerably varied from the standard 3rd ed version.

[Mark Skarr]

I'll be honest, when working on a Star Trek game like my Supers Trek game, I usually just declare the TL to be TL/ST. I don't concern myself with any specific numbers as it's more a hodgepodge than a unified level as arbitrarily assigned by the creator of the game trying to cover as many areas as possible. I find what works best from the various books, and if I can't find what I'm looking for, I make it up.

Like many external sci-fi settings, Star Trek doesn't fit conveniently into GURPS Tech Levels. I find, it's best to familiarize yourself with the source material and use GURPS as a guideline.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Yes, that's what I was thinking of. I cited the technomantic versions because, though the spells are called "magic," they seem to be effectively "technology" for most purposes, and they are integrated into society in general. And I don't think that "emergent superscience" is limited to only devices that appear in UT as "^" (nor do I suppose you think that, actually).

Yes, powered armour is not hatcheted, but it's still superscience if you're doing a campaign with powered armour being built to fight in the Japanese Warring States era.

Here's the thing though. The TL 7 society with flying cars in the garage and a war over Mars? Although clearly it has an effect on the population, it hasn't had enough of an effect to change the average income of a TL 7 American. That's the difference between emergent super science and retrotech. With retrotech you have, for example, TL 10 people with TL 10 average incomes, but for some reason they never invented a hand weapon or a computer better than those of the 20th century. With emergent super-science you have, functional flying machines in the 16th century, but the average income is still far less than that of the 20th century.

A retrotech setting with emergent superscience would be one in which people have say a lifestyle equivalent to TL9, but they still don't have hand weapons and computers better than TL 7...but they also have matter transmitters, brain transplants and antigravity.

This doesn't describe Star Trek, though because the base income of the Federation is very high to match Roddenberry's aspirations to utopia which were present even back then.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I've never heard of World of the Federation. I'm going by what was actually shown on the television episodes of the original series. Admittedly C and I haven't rewatched all of them; we just saw "Amok Time" a couple of days ago (one of the very best episodes, to my mind even better than "City on the Edge of Forever"). So I could be overlooking something shown in a later episode. But I've been getting sustained exposure to what Roddenberry's original vision of future tech was like.

The Worlds of the Federation is a reference book regarding all the worlds known to the Federation at that time. In fact the idea of what happened after "The Piece of the Action" actually came from a story idea the DS9 writing staff were planning. In the planned story the DS9 crew visit Sigma Iotia II and find the Iotians have recreated much of TOS era Federation technology using only their understanding of the transtator. The story idea was reworked into "A Piece of Reaction" of the Star Trek Unlimited comic book.

"City on the Edge of Forever" establishes that Spock can build a primitive low grade interface equivalent of the Enterprise's computer with TL6 supplies. TL9 would put this at a reasonable -5 to skill within reason for Spock if he is in the 18-20 skill range.

Scotty indicates that the Star Trek timeline deviated from our own because transistors were the technology of choice for spaceships in the 1990s ("Space Seed") and there is no reference to computer chips for 20th century Earth anywhere in TOS.

I should mention that chakoteya.net has the transcripts of a lot of shows including Star Trek. I use it regularly to make sure I am quoting an episode correctly.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

No. If Star Trek was Retrotech, their guns would shoot bullets, their cars would burn gasoline, their surgeons would use scalpels. Or things like that. It would be first edition Traveller or Firefly. Retrotech isn't divergent tech. It isn't "our steam engines are super-advanced and as good or better than your internal combustion engines. Just more steamy." It's "Yes our starships are lit with torches and transport knights on horses to new planets to conquer them. Wanna make something of it?"

A TL 7 setting with "emergent superscience" isn't retrotech either.

Not exactly. "A retrotech setting is best defined as TL6 or TL7 plus whatever elements of emergent superscience the GM wishes to add. [...] For a less retro feel, adding a limited set of nonsuperscience TL8-9 technologies – usually beam weapons, space drives, and energy or power supplies – will cover most space-opera scenarios."

TOS computers (or at least the terminals that tie into the main ship's computer) are bulky things with lots of flashing lights and control panels have manual switches; way different from even the TL7 computers of the 1970s. TNG upgraded the computers so they were more inline with what TL8 could do but TOS is in a kind of "Gernsback Continuum" land where technology has changed to the point a lot of it looks insanely primitive. It for all practical purposes has become Divergent Technology.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Yes, that's what I was thinking of. I cited the technomantic versions because, though the spells are called "magic," they seem to be effectively "technology" for most purposes, and they are integrated into society in general. And I don't think that "emergent superscience" is limited to only devices that appear in UT as "^" (nor do I suppose you think that, actually).

Personally I wish Ultra-Tech had been like Bio-tech with regards to superscience (use the "^" without association with a particular TL) and that it had addressed the issue of when realistic tech invented far in advance of when it is "supposed" to ie Britannica-5's TL5^ antimatter (normally TL10)