Yes; by the time Star Trek came to a close, the technology became a little too godlike. The coin-transporter in this version is the latest example.
Good plots form because there are limitations to what people can do, which are consistent throughout an entire story, or in the case of a serial, an entire universe. Babylon 5 never had transporters or deflector shields, humans generated gravity "the hard way", FTL travel was a little complicated, and most importantly, time travel was an exotic technology which was used only twice in the series, to describe the same incident. And they stuck to that. Star Trek used to have that, too: vessels couldn't fire while cloaked, the transporter wouldn't work through shields, and, well, the rest is just random I suppose. But now they have a McGuffin for any occasion.
Enterprise looks like it has more limitations, but the time travel thing could get messy as hell, fast. That Daniels guy seems to have godlike powers over space and time, factoring in last season's cliffhanger as a simple mistake that can occur when you get really sloppy with time travel. We'll probabyl never learn what rules govern the use of time travel, probably because there are none above the "er, try not to INTERFERE" one....
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timeasmymeasure
Re:
Date: 2002-12-15 12:10 pm (UTC)Good plots form because there are limitations to what people can do, which are consistent throughout an entire story, or in the case of a serial, an entire universe. Babylon 5 never had transporters or deflector shields, humans generated gravity "the hard way", FTL travel was a little complicated, and most importantly, time travel was an exotic technology which was used only twice in the series, to describe the same incident. And they stuck to that. Star Trek used to have that, too: vessels couldn't fire while cloaked, the transporter wouldn't work through shields, and, well, the rest is just random I suppose. But now they have a McGuffin for any occasion.
Enterprise looks like it has more limitations, but the time travel thing could get messy as hell, fast. That Daniels guy seems to have godlike powers over space and time, factoring in last season's cliffhanger as a simple mistake that can occur when you get really sloppy with time travel. We'll probabyl never learn what rules govern the use of time travel, probably because there are none above the "er, try not to INTERFERE" one....