What's happening with Prime Directive

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by maximara

Agreed but even before The Motion Picture Star Trek had continuity issues either with itself or with history up to that time

I'll give you the dates, TOS was intentionally vague about them on purpose, but what constitutes efficient government or sun worship are open to considerable definitional debate, and war casualty numbers are *endlessly* debated and uncertain.

And Nazi superweapon programs are so embedded in popular culture (particularly when the show was written), and so played with in modern fiction as whole, that I'm not sure that's a fair critique. They're even in the franchise canon in some versions of the timeline thanks to the time war in Enterprise. Who knows what historical records of alien or time traveler meddling in WWII Spock has access to that we don't.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by maximara

Agreed but even before The Motion Picture Star Trek had continuity issues either with itself or with history up to that time:

*"Space Seed" vs "The Squire of Gothos": Star Trek takes place in late 22nd to early 23rd century...or is it around the 2780s?

*Rome Had No Sun Worshipers: In OTL Rome had several cults that revered sun gods including Helios Apollo (Sol) from the Greeks, Mithras from the Persians, and Elagabalus from the Syrians. Then from the 3rd century on there was Sol Invictus ("Unconquered Sun") which may have been a new sect or a revival of an old one. So two of these gods in English would have been called "Sun".

*6 million died in WWI. In OTL 15 to 19 million died (9 to 11 million military personal with about 6 million civilian casualties) in WWI.

*11 million died in WWII. In OTL the range is 50 to more then 80 million. (50–56 million directly killed by the war with an additional estimated 19 to 28 million deaths from war-related disease and famine.)

*Spock states the Nazis were close to inventing the atomic bomb and would have used the V2 rocket to deliver it in "City on the Edge of Forever" as a summation of what his tricorder has recorded of the alternate timeline McCoy would create. In OTL the Nazis didn't even start seriously look at the atom bomb or V2 until they started loosing the war.

*John Gill, who is supposed to be a major historian, claims Nazi Germany was the most efficient state Earth ever knew In OTL per the 1960 book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich the Nazi hierarchy was a web of competition, with many high officials bitterly opposed to each other. Consequently, their jurisdictions often overlapped and/or collided. Hence, this conflict actually reduced or even, in some cases, completely negated governmental efficiency.

So the effort to keep the idea Star Trek could be our future was basically DOA and there was no need to go mucking around with the timeline.

"Continuity" and "Could it be our future" don't seem to be the same issue. Only the first of your starred items is one that I would call a matter of continuity.

Your second item doesn't seem to be a historical error, but a question of how the phrasing is meant. Uhura says "It's not the sun in the sky; it's the son of God." That does not assert that the ancient Romans, or this analogous society on another planet, didn't have solar cults; it asserts that this specific group of believers are not such a cult. (The early Christians were contamporaneous with Mithraists and with worshipers of Sol Invictus, but they worshiped the son of God, not the sun in the sky.)

The points about twentieth century military and political history are attributible to differences of opinion, changes of interpretation, and/or scriptwriter ignorance (and failure of research). In dealing with such matters I think it's usually best not to take them literally as representing the factual state of affairs. I mean, back in the early days of New Teen Titans, they used to say that Cyborg's white noise generator put out a million decibels, and since decibels are a logarithmic scale (+10 dB multiplies power density by 10), that was louder than the Big Bang and would annihilate the Earth, and perhaps the entire Local Group; obviously that statement can't be taken literally.

As for the claim about German efficiency, one of the points of the script is that John Gill is an unsound historian. He may be akin to the people who believed for decades that the Soviet Union's centrally planned economy was, and indeed had to be, more efficient than the market economies of the West. Indeed, the National Socialist economy was centrally planned, and no less an economic figure than Lord Keynes wrote in the second edition of The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money that Germany was better suited than England or the United States to the implementation of his proposals because of its reliance on central planning. Perhaps the Federation also has economists who think that way.

[dataweaver]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Perhaps the Federation also has economists who think that way.

…and this is one of those changes I was talking about. The way the notion of “economy” is approached is vastly different in “Renaissance Trek” than it was in “Original Trek”. In the latter, there were several implicit and explicit references to currency and commerce being a thing; but throughout the Renaissance era (with the possible exception of Enterprise), the constant refrain was “we don't use money”.

[Stormcrow]

I daresay minor differences like "they said 'credits' in Star Trek but 'don't have money' in The Voyage Home have little to do with how closely Prime Directive does or does not reflect Star Trek.

Does Prime Directive do its best to agree with facts in Star Trek in order to bring itself in line with Star Fleet Battles? Yes, it tries to fill in the gaps of knowledge left by Star Trek after its run. Does Prime Directive match the ethos and messages implied in Star Trek? Not really: Star Trek is about exploring ways to resolve conflicts and finding better ways to live; Prime Directive is mostly about experiencing exciting conflicts between adversaries.

So is Prime Directive Star Trek? Eh. Kinda-sorta. Depends what you like.

[dataweaver]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

I daresay minor differences like "they said 'credits' in Star Trek but 'don't have money' in The Voyage Home have little to do with how closely Prime Directive does or does not reflect Star Trek.

I would differ with you on that point. It's at least as much of a point in favor of PD being compatible with TOS as the phaser thing that was brought up earlier as an argument against it.

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

Does Prime Directive do its best to agree with facts in Star Trek in order to bring itself in line with Star Fleet Battles? Yes, it tries to fill in the gaps of knowledge left by Star Trek after its run.

I wouldn't phrase it that way. Rather, it does its best to agree with the facts in TOS because that's what the SFU does.

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

Does Prime Directive match the ethos and messages implied in Star Trek? Not really: Star Trek is about exploring ways to resolve conflicts and finding better ways to live; Prime Directive is mostly about experiencing exciting conflicts between adversaries.

This gets back to the “what Star Trek became” line. While “exploring ways to resolve conflicts and finding better ways to live” was present to an extent in TOS, it wasn't nearly as prominent as it became in TNG and its spinoffs. But more importantly, that's what the GM and the players bring to the table: “exploring ways to resolve conflicts and finding better ways to live” isn't the sort of thing that lends itself to game mechanics, so there's very little for GPD to say on the subject. I'll say that it kept close enough to the world seen in TOS that one could easily buy into the bottom that virtually everything that happened in TOS happened in the SFU with virtually no changes. Especially since one of the conceits of the SFU is exactly that: one of the Federation Heavy Cruisers was the NCC-1701 Enterprise, commanded by Captain Kirk and crewed by Spock, McCoy, etc.; And that Heavy Cruiser engaged in a five-year mission of exploration some years prior to the other of the General War. The history of the Gorn Commonwealth includes a reference to “The Arena”, but says that once the diplomats sat down and started to talk things out, things went much more smoothly. Just to mention a couple of examples off the top of my head.

Where the Star Fleet Universe deviates from Star Trek lies far more in what it added to TOS (Lyrans, Hydrans, Vudar, Jindarans, Carnivons, the General War, the Interstellar Concordat, the Neo-Tholians and Seltorans, the Andromedans, etc.) than what it changed about TOS.

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

So is Prime Directive Star Trek? Eh. Kinda-sorta. Depends what you like.

Depends more on how you use it.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Just to mention a couple of examples off the top of my head. Where the Star Fleet Universe deviates from Star Trek lies far more in what it added to TOS (Lyrans, Hydrans, Vudar, Jindarans, Carnivons, the General War, the Interstellar Concordat, the Neo-Tholians and Seltorans, the Andromedans, etc.) than what it changed about TOS.

I think this gets back to a core fact about adaptations. The stuff we want to see in them is of course the familiar stuff about the property we loved in the first place. But that's the most useless elements in terms of making the game fun. When you play a game (or tell a story) in a familiar setting, you [need] to add or change stuff, or your characters will never, ever do anything actually important.

This is something that dates right back to the dawn of the hobby. Much of the fun of wargames is in throwing out the canon - they let you do stuff the historical commanders did and perhaps would not, and change the outcome of the battle, or to fight wars that did not happen to see how they might have gone. Who wants to play a game where your decisions as a player don't matter to the outcome?

[Infornific]

Originally Posted by whswhs

As for the claim about German efficiency, one of the points of the script is that John Gill is an unsound historian. He may be akin to the people who believed for decades that the Soviet Union's centrally planned economy was, and indeed had to be, more efficient than the market economies of the West. Indeed, the National Socialist economy was centrally planned, and no less an economic figure than Lord Keynes wrote in the second edition of The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money that Germany was better suited than England or the United States to the implementation of his proposals because of its reliance on central planning. Perhaps the Federation also has economists who think that way.

Also remember this is the 1960s. The case against central planning was weaker. The Soviets were the first to put a satellite and a man in orbit so at the time there was reason to fear their economy might be more efficient. There's some remarks on TOS about the Klingons (then partly analogous to the Soviet Union) being very efficient. And after all the Nazis were one country that managed to conquer Europe and nearly took out the Soviet Union - not a shock if casual observers assumed the Nazis had to be highly efficient to get such results. In practice I think you could make the case they were less centrally planned than the US during World War II.

Even in modern times, it's not hard to find intellectuals across the political spectrum who see the Chinese government and economy as more efficient and dynamic than Western governments.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Infornific

Even in modern times, it's not hard to find intellectuals across the political spectrum who see the Chinese government and economy as more efficient and dynamic than Western governments.

As it doubtless is for some measure of "efficient". I suspect China beats out the US in value produced per unit of wages paid for example. I hope so anyway. If not, then income inequality is less in China than the US, and you could spin that as a Chinese win instead.

These sorts of debates often turn on your precise definitions, where "positive" or "negative" sounding words, as appropriate for your philosophical or political or religious bias, are used to label almost exactly the same things (or vice versa) to "prove" your a priori biases.

[ronwit]

Originally Posted by maximara

*Rome Had No Sun Worshipers: In OTL Rome had several cults that revered sun gods including Helios Apollo (Sol) from the Greeks, Mithras from the Persians, and Elagabalus from the Syrians. Then from the 3rd century on there was Sol Invictus ("Unconquered Sun") which may have been a new sect or a revival of an old one. So two of these gods in English would have been called "Sun".

Of course there is the point that son and sun only works in English.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Of the various Trek-based RPGs on the market, Prime Directive is the only one that's built around Original Trek.

That's not quite fair.

The ancient FASA Star Trek game, which was just about contemporary with SFB, was also TOS-focused. Later supplements covered the early movies and possibly TNG, though.

At least one of the more recent franchise holders (Last Unicorn?) specifically tried to create a TOS-focused setting.

I'm not sure what the current license holders are up to.