[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

I meant in the sense that where super-ish powers appear, they either clearly come from biology, or they look like something that could plausibly be psionics. Meanwhile, the superscience technology doesn't contradict the idea that they could be psychotronics. Maybe I should have said 'a core conceit of this setting,' instead of 'a core conceit of the setting?' If I'm reading you right, there's where the disconnect came in. Sorry. I'll edit it so that later readers don't get confused.

Gotcha. Well, I agree that psychic powers in Star Trek tend to be biological rather than technological in origin, even if they can be technologically created in biology (e.g., "Plato's Stepchildren").

I still don't see that you'd get particularly close to Star Trek by including psionics (in the sense of psychic-power-inducing technology).

Yes, but it would be nice to have a reason for that. In this setting, the reason is that psychotronics work best when there's a sapient being present. Without that, you get a lot of arguments about how the civilizations who do a lot of automating would stomp all over the ones who don't.

Except the civilizations who do a lot of automating would run into the same technology-run-amok problem that humans do. It's a basic philosophy of Star Trek that technology is never better than people.

I don't mean to say you shouldn't be doing this. I just don't think it's quite the fit you seem to think it is.

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

There was a reason why Blish moved the setting 700 years farther into the future.

Yeah, it was because in "The Squire of Gothos" Trelane tried to replicate the 19th century and Kirk said it was 900 years past.

Which century or year Star Trek took place in was not solidly established until the movies. During the series individual writers just picked numbers they liked.