What if — Star Trek without FTL

[Patrick Degan]

Suppose that back in 1963, when Gene Roddenberry was creating Star Trek, he had made a decision to stick a lot closer to scientific plausibility by rejecting faster-than-light travel and instead depicting the Enterprise voyaging the galaxy via very fast sublight journeys taking the crew to the various planets of their mission within days or weeks subjectively while, due to time dilation, years and centuries would pass outside? The series could still have had planet-of-the-week stories and ship stories, but as the intrepid crew ventured forth, the galaxy beyond them would be changing. Certain story situations, such as members of the crew getting stranded on one world while the Enterprise dealt with some other situation in deep space would be ruled out, since by the time the ship got back to the planet any landing party they left behind would be long dead. But a whole host of other story possibilities would have opened up.

How would the crew of the Enterprise have coped with leaving Earth or whichever starbase world they began their missions from to find the people they left behind greatly aged or gone and buried by the time they got back? Would they have starbases also traveling at very high relativistic velocities which they would rendezvous with? How would wars be conducted? Would they run into civilisations based on worldships (like Yonada) traveling the galaxy at relativistic velocities? The stardate calendrical system would certainly have taken on a much greater significance as the crew would have had to calculate comparative datings based on the differentials between ship's subjective and galactic objective time. The various cultures (other than the truly alien) encountered by the Enterprise crew could easily have been presented as the descendants of human colony expeditions that had launched from Earth over the centuries. The conception of the Federation galactic civilisation would certainly have taken on a much different shape given the limitations of relativistic travel, as would concepts of warfare and commerce or cultural exchange. And what sort of changes would the Enterprise crew have found whenever they returned to base or to Earth? Perhaps Gene Roddenberry might have beaten Alan Toffler in presenting the concept of future shock.

In retrospect, it almost is a pity that the series took the easy way out by opting for FTL travel as a plot mechanism. Relativistic star travel might have given the Star Trek audience a much deeper sense of being out where no one had gone before. Viewers could have gotten both adventure and science artfully mixed together by seeing every week that space travel is also time travel. The human future in such a version of Star Trek wouldn't simply have encompassed one distant century but have stretched ever forward across hundreds and thousands of years —a message that in itself would have been most evocative.

[Sea Skimmer]

Well, one problem I see out of hand is the technology found on planets would rapidly advance past anything found on Enterprise. So warfare would be near impossible for everyone unless you only attacked people vastly inferior to yourselves with overwhelming numbers. Still even then the enemy might have decades of warning time in which to prepare. That could be ignored, if the series was kept focused on peaceful exploration, but the general issue would still be a problem, as the technology of Enterprise should be outclassed every time they meet someone else from the federation who hasn't been out even longer. Given the limited special effects technology, never mind the limited budget of the show that would have been hard to portray.

[Patrick Degan]

It might be possible to fudge the technology issue by assuming an "ultimate limit" to technological development which everybody has reached (the limit imposed by known physical principles). Yes, it's very arbitrary but still has less attendant plausibility problems than FTL and transporters. The aforementioned limitations of a television budget would almost demand the imposition of such a plot device.

There was the very situation you describe in Joe Haldeman's The Forever War, when an Earth warship found itself facing drone missiles far more advanced than anything previously seen from their enemies, the Taurans, or anything that Earth had at the time they last left base. That in itself made for a tense situation in the book:

"This is the first manifestation of a very important effect that has heretofore been of interest only to theorists. Tell me, soldier." He pointed at Negulesco. "How long has it been since we first fought the Taurans, at Aleph?"

"That depends on your frame of reference, Commodore," she answered dutifully. "To me, it's been about eight months."

"Exactly. You've lost about nine years, though, to time dilation, while we maneuvered between collapsar jumps. In an engineering sense, as we haven't done any important research and development aboard ship … that enemy vessel comes from our future!" He paused to let that sink in. "As the war progresses, this can only become more and more pronounced. The Taurans don't have any cure for relativity, of course, so it will be to our benefit as often as to theirs. For the present, though, it is we who are operating with a handicap. As the Tauran pursuit vessel draws closer, this handicap will become more severe. They can simply outshoot us."

[Sea Skimmer]

Plausibility was never a very big deal with FTL, sure its implausible, so was the basic shape of the ship, many of the aliens, and a bunch of other stuff. Who really cares? Very little sci fi manages to stay truly hard sci fi, and lack of FTL would make relations between aliens and stuff like the interseller cold wars going on much harder to deal with. That'd all go out the window, and yet that was a popular part of the show as far as I can tell.

Transporters existed specifically because of budget limits. You aren't getting rid of those, and frankly even if you could afford it I doubt people would really want to see low quality 1960s model shots of a shuttle craft launching/landing multiple times per episode just to get from scene to scene. The transporter didn't just save money, it provided a mechanism to place characters directly into the situation they wanted to be in even if it was underground or in a building. Beaming down into a unknown, unseen world has a certain appeal in its own right.

Books have all kinds of things in them that work in a paper format, but don't necessarily translate well into an open ended 50 minute TV series. Your idea would work better if the show was written like Babylon Five, everything at least partly planned from the onset so that issues like technology could be managed, but nothing like this seems to have ever been considered for Star Trek. Nor would I believe that TV studios of the time would have accepted such a plan had it been presented. They'd want room for tinkering.

[Patrick Degan]

Well, such pre-planning just wasn't a component of 60s television at all. In an environment where there were only the Big Three broadcast networks and it was a crapshoot if a series won continuation past thirteen episodes, it just did not make sense to even think in terms of story arcs. Also, independent episodes are easier to handle in reruns as they can be aired in any order, and that was another factor against the continuing plot continuity line concept.

I know the argument about transporters v. shuttlecraft, but really, once they would have had the stock footage of takeoffs and landings the budget argument would go out the window. With transporters, the dynamic is different but it's not essential to good storytelling. The Twilight Zone episode "Death Ship" is a perfect example, as is the movie Forbidden Planet. I suspect that the real reason for the transporter had less to do with production budgets or plot mechanics and more with the fact that no other series had such a thing. It looked cool.

A non-FTL Star Trek series would have made a galactic cold war plotting dynamic impossible, but the conflicts between the various space powers could have been rendered much closer to an Age of Sail metaphor and the entire series would have leaned much more heavily upon that metaphor as a result.

[Sea Skimmer]

I know the argument about transporters v. shuttlecraft, but really, once they would have had the stock footage of takeoffs and landings the budget argument would go out the window.

That would look crummy though. Every planet background looks the same now ect... and you'd still need to show how they arrive at specific points on the ground. As for everything else, you are asking for a completely different show. I think its more then likely it would have flopped in one season because the audience would have trouble with the time warping aspect and the fact that everyone they see not on enterprise is going to be dead by the next episode no matter what.

[PREDATOR490]

This sounds more like the premise for something like Stargate Universe but ultimately will be a load of shit in a Star Trek setting.

Very first episode - Woosh... everyone we have seen is dead
Next Episode - Woosh... everyone we have seen is dead
Next Episode - Woosh... everyone we have seen is dead

That is gonna get extremely old, really fast and makes any kind of drama mute.

To boldy go where noone has gone before... oh wait... WOOSH... In the time it took the big E to reach its destination the galaxy has advanced so that the E-A, B, C and D have all been launched with better technologies and been there before. How the hell your gonna have any kind of war is beyond me... War Starts... WOOSH... War ended centuries ago.

Doctor Who did it better and he can actually go BACK in time. Star Trek would be stuck with the constant situation of a 1910 battleship suddenly arriving in 2010. Then it will be a 1910 battleship arriving in 2110... 2210...2310...2410...2510...2610. That is an extremely shit premise for a show which is going to quickly become obvious when each episode effectively has to show x years of history since the last episode.

[Grumman]

People apparently like The Forever War so my view might be the minority, but to me the idea of SF on an interstellar scale without FTL seems kind of horrible. It's not a challenge you can hope to overcome, so it just casts a depressing shadow over the series.

[Patrick Degan]

I've been away for a couple of days with a baby coming down with an ear infection, so this has to be a global reply.

Whether an interstellar SF series without FTL would be "depressing" depends entirely on how it's written. Larry Niven handled such an environment in the earlier stories of his Known Space series to build the history of his universe and made the focus in those particular stories on that particular set of characters and the world being visited. Given this necessary focus even as the series turned out, a non-FTL Star Trek in this aspect would bear little difference from the series we actually got. As for "everybody we've seen is dead" issue, it would be likely that only one or two episodes a season (out of 26) would touch upon it, so other than as a piece of background detail, this objection is a non-starter. The Enterprise will not be revisiting the same worlds three and four times. As for the time-dilation concept and an audience having difficulty with it, that same argument can be applied against FTL or every world having humanoids on it. The only requirement is that the writers make it reasonably plausible and the audience will accept it as long as it works the same way each time the subject is depicted or discussed. In this case, time-dilation at least has the virtue of being scientifically-real and vastly reduces the bullshit factor the writers have to handle in explaining anything.

As for "how you're going to have a war" without FTL, there have also been any number of SF stories and novels dealing with this very concept, so this is a non-argument. The enemy power would be just as restricted by relativity in this series construction as the Federation and would be facing the same complications. Besides, Star Trek TOS' focus was never on war in the first place, nor was any sort of plot arc concept even conceived of in writing 60s television, so this issue would probably have never come up at all.

The issue of the Enterprise encountering worlds that have "already been visited" by more advanced successor starships ignores that a) the galaxy is a very big place, with millions of star systems to explore, b) the Federation would not be sending starships to the same worlds at such frequency (especially given the relativity limitations) unless they were already settled colonies, c) that it would be possible for the writers to posit the idea that the Enterprise represents technology at the limits of engineering and physical possibility (particularly if the ship can do 30-50g accelerations in a week or less to get up, to and decelerate from, .99999999+c and without squashing the crew into tomato paste in the process) and so whatever future starships our crew might encounter would not be so very different in form or capability —and given budgetary limitations the series would almost have to have that little fiat incorporated into the writers' bible. That also disposes of the "1910 battleship arriving in 2110... 2210...2310...2410...2510...2610" argument as well.

Every planet background looks the same now etc...

And every planet the Enterprise visited in the actual series more or less looked the same from orbit; they just switched coloured gels in the matting process to "create" different worlds. Also, the orbits were always in the same directions, so this would be less of an issue with depicting shuttlecraft traveling down planetside. So this objection doesn't really obtain.

and you'd still need to show how they arrive at specific points on the ground.

Or, they would depict most of these touchdown scenes from the POV of the crew cabin, with some stock-footage landings for the odd exterior shot for a given episode if the planet from orbit is shown with the same sky. Or they cut away from a shuttle descent to some scene on the ground and then cut to a scene of the crew after debarking from their craft and going into the action. These are not problems which are beyond the reach of any clever enough production team to figure out.

As to why any non-FTL space exploration series must fail simply for the lack of FTL travel, this begs a whole host of questions. Why would an audience particularly notice that the ship is limited to sublight propulsion if the series shows our explorers visiting a different world each week and with an unchanging crew on board? Why must it be any different, given the planet-of-the-week format, from a series with FTL? Given that shuttlecraft transits would constitute maybe five minutes out of fifty-two at most, why should this aspect constitute a particular difficulty in storytelling? If the main focus of an episode is the crew solving the problem they've been confronted with, or the captain having to make a critical decision central to the episode's dilemma, then how would this result in a series that is radically different than the Star Trek that we wound up with? The background details change certain aspects of the production, but the central dynamic remains intact as well as the message of hope: that mankind survived long enough to reach the stars and that he's going to be there for hundreds, even thousands of years beyond that.

[Stofsk]

I've thought about the concept of a 'FTL-less Star Trek' and it has promise. The arguments against it, such as the above 'lol everyone you know will be dead after you leave' isn't true at all, if you sprinkle transhumanist stuff into it like immortality, or increased lifespans. Immortality could be in the form of uploaded conciousness into robotic replica bodies (itself the premise of at least two TOS episodes), fountain of youth style genetic engineering or simply an anagathic drug - the latter being perhaps more reasonable to extrapolate as a future piece of technology the Federation ought to have.

What it would mean is you could return to the same planet twice (not that the Enterprise really did, although it did visit Starbases which I think would be a good candidate for this sort of thing), and maybe a few decades had passed since their last visit. Everyone they knew may well be alive to look up, and if everyone is on anagathics then nobody has really 'aged' per se, though the passage of time for the people on the planet would be longer than it would on the subjective time onboard the Enterprise. You could have interesting stories develop where someone's family has been waiting for them to come home for decades, maybe even centuries, only to discover Ensign Redshirt got killed early into the voyage; or someone left that girl behind at the last port, only to find she's moved on. But she actually waited a long time. Stuff like that could be really interesting. Anyway the explore space angle doesn't have to be 'lets go visit the entire galaxy' - simply exploring the stars that are close to earth, relatively speaking, should be enough.

Changes in society would be interesting to explore as well, but TOS didn't really do this (it never returned to earth except via time travel anyway - which is sort of the same concept but in this case it would be the reverse). Anyway you could do that too, or you could have a thing where returning crews have 'retro' habitats constructed purely for them. As an analogy, think of TNG's 'Relics' where Picard and Scotty share a drink on the bridge of the classic Enterprise. Now imagine a habitat like that for returning crews so that they can feel at home even if the larger part of their home has changed.

The only thing I disagree with is the use of shuttlecraft every week. I am almost certain that transporters were much more cheaper than using and reusing the shuttlecraft sets as well as the special effects associated with flying them as well. Remember, it is not just the use of stock footage, but the sets as well. Every script which has 'new areas to explore' bring the cost up, and when you think about it, the times we did see the shuttlecraft tended to be in bottle shows anyway ('The Galileo Seven' was the first time it was used so that gets a pass, but I believe the very next time we see the shuttlecraft wasn't until season two, and 'Metemorphosis' only had the shuttlecraft sets and the alien planet sets. After that, there were a handful of episodes - 'The Doomsday Machine', 'The Immunity Syndrome' and 'Journey to Babel' which featured the shuttlecraft, and they were ALL bottle shows). Reusing stock footage of the Enterprise entering orbit of the same planet every week got old, it would be a hundred times worse if you're reusing stock footage of shuttlecraft leaving the Enterprise bay and flying down to a new planet that has just had a colour swap and nothing else. Besides which, the transporter is one of the signature pieces of trek technology IMO. So are warp drive and phasers, but warp drive doesn't necessarily have to mean FTL, it just means 'this ship can go really fast by warping space/time and making it her bitch'.

For added lulz you could have FTL be developed halfway through the Enterprise's five year mission and the newer, better Enterprise-2 - with a bald captain no less - catches up with them much to everyone's surprise and chagrin.

EDIT Also I don't know exactly how you would prosecute a war with relativity being a factor in your spacefleet's ability to travel, but on the other hand this could make a Cold War more likely, not less. If FTL doesn't exist, or rather if relativity remains an issue even if it exists, then I can totally see wars being over and won really quickly - from one perspective. So there's more emphasis on taking strategic action and making sure the first person who fires also happens to be the last person that fires. This could mean a lot of jockeying into position and stuff, treaties being signed between major powers but fighting still continuing for decades afterwards because the frontline troops or ships that are way off the beaten path just haven't received the news. You could have a story of a planet that's basically been at war for decades, with the resistance holding out against all hope against klingon invaders or whatever, finally receiving reinforcements - and all it is is a peace envoy saying 'yeah sup guys, war's over, go home'. At that point what do the contested parties do? You can do a similar story but swap it around, like the Enterprise gets word that a major colony has fallen and it is to escort a flottila of troop transports there to retake it, and when it gets there a hundred years have passed and it turns out that the colony capitulated quite quickly and is now happily a member of the klingon empire. From their perspective, this is ancient history, but for Kirk he got the news like last week. So what does he do? What can he do? What should he do? What if the klingons weren't merciless, because the commander in charge reasoned the same thing Kirk would, that help is too far away and really, invading a planet doesn't make sense, so why not try to get along with everyone? What if the colony resisted and the invaders kept up the fight, but they settled their differences after it became clear neither side would triumph and it would actually make a lot of sense to integrate everyone together - planet's a big place after all, no reason they can't share. That would be a very Star Trek premise for an episode actually.

[Patrick Degan]

As an alternative concept to either shuttlecraft or teleportation, one could posit a "transporter" which is actually a forcefield-based space elevator —the transportees ride to and from the planet surface along the beam, within an air-bubble. It would be an outgrowth of the existing tractor beam technology of the starship and have more or less the same effect plot-wise without resorting to goofy-talk devices which disintegrate people and then reassemble them at the destination. The SFX in this case would be a glowing pillar that would appear on the surface and then fade to reveal the landing party. A similar device was seen in the Babylon: 5 movie In The Beginning to transport Lennon from the surface of Minbar to a vessel which then docked with the Grey Council flagship in orbit.

I agree with the idea that, with a non-FTL galactic civilisation, cold war would be far more likely than a shooting war. Besides which, the aforementioned absence of a season plot-arc concept for television back then would rule out a war story. Also, it would be a lot more imaginative than simply going for yet another space war.

[Patrick Degan]

Also I don't know exactly how you would prosecute a war with relativity being a factor in your spacefleet's ability to travel, but on the other hand this could make a Cold War more likely, not less. If FTL doesn't exist, or rather if relativity remains an issue even if it exists, then I can totally see wars being over and won really quickly - from one perspective.

Or, what wars are fought end up lasting centuries and end inconclusively. Such events would be history in this version of the Star Trek universe. You could even imagine a briefing room scene in which the officers discuss "The 500 Year War" during which Starfleet sent over the decades of the conflict several dozen strike forces of ever-greater size and firepower to the enemy home system, all scheduled in advance, and each task force got beaten off with heavier casualties each sortie because the enemy always had enough time to rebuild their defences after an attack. With the same thing happening in turn to the enemy power's own strike forces as they attempted their invasions of Federation space. In the end, such wars simply fizzle out because neither side can ever gain an advantage and the galaxy sinks into the cold war posture as suggested.

[aussiemuscle308]

Take away FTL and you end up with a series that literally never goes anywhere. They'd maybe have to consent themselves to traveling between the moon and Earth. It wouldn't have been any different to any other show and wouldn't be the world-wide phenomenon it is today.

[Stofsk]

Wow, you necroed a thread that was two months gone and all you had to say was basically 'dur idea sucks because of (totally unrelated and manufactured reason for why it would suck)'?

[Rossum]

If Star Trek didn't have access to FTL then the replicators could have increased importance as a way of upgrading their ships to compensate for the time dilatation.

Basically, the Enterprise leaves Earth (or wherever) while being more or less equipped with the latest technology. Their years-long trip to their destination could include occasional transmissions from home which include the latest updates for their systems. While they travel, they can then replicate the upgrades and install them during the trip... both keep in the game for when they reach their destination and to pass the time.

Of course, transmitting the upgrades to the ships would have its problems since sending things at light speed wouldn't really help that much. If they had FTL communication but not ships then it would help keep the replicator upgrade things relevant. Also, depending on the safety and speed of the communication, one could have transporters send people (or just probes) across space. Though... if you're sending probes then it would make just as much sense to send a pattern for a probe, have a replicator make the probe at the destination, then have the probe send the information back.

It would be kind of neat in such a setting to come across a race of AI who have a way to bypass the FTL limitation by spreading replicator ships across various systems and then transmitting their data through FTL communication. Or it could be that the Borg are dangerous in such a setting because their ships are modular and the networked drones can keep inventing and upgrading their ship during the flight. In a setting where travel between star systems inevitably results in the 'attacker' being spotted light-years away and getting greeted by the systems defenses, a race that can keep their own tech from going obsolete mid-flight would have an advantage.

Or maybe cloaking devices would be more important? If someone invents a perfect cloak that lets attackers sneak up on systems over their year-long trips then cloaks would become alot more commonplace. In retrospect, its kind of odd that Federation ships don't use cloaks to keep from "contaminating pre-warp civilizations" since one doesn't necessarily need warp drives to detect huge flying saucers in orbit around your planet.

[Purple]

In retrospect, its kind of odd that Federation ships don't use cloaks to keep from "contaminating pre-warp civilizations" since one doesn't necessarily need warp drives to detect huge flying saucers in orbit around your planet.

They would love to. But they signed a treaty with the Romulans (IIRC) that bans them from developing cloaking technology.

[Rossum]

In retrospect, its kind of odd that Federation ships don't use cloaks to keep from "contaminating pre-warp civilizations" since one doesn't necessarily need warp drives to detect huge flying saucers in orbit around your planet.

They would love to. But they signed a treaty with the Romulans (IIRC) that bans them from developing cloaking technology.

Romulans: Okay, did you guys build any invisible spaceships without telling us?

Federation: *Gestures to a seemingly empty spacedoc* Do you see any?

Romulans: ... Liar!



Yeah, though from what I understand the real reason for this was because Roddenberry didn't want the good guys to be sneaking around all the time.

[edaw1982]

It would lead to the likes of the space-forces, even those amongst hostile militaries having a certain comradeliness because of how different they are to the civilians left behind and how they can only go forward and never go back.
There'd be the same problems, whether you're Klingon, Romulan or Terran. Grammatic shifts, changes in social mores.

'Oh silly Kirk, you only have sex with women? And...single-partner marriages? Oh how quaint, if not a little barbaric. Anyway, here's a seashell to wipe your bottom with.'

[Enigma]

In retrospect, its kind of odd that Federation ships don't use cloaks to keep from "contaminating pre-warp civilizations" since one doesn't necessarily need warp drives to detect huge flying saucers in orbit around your planet.

They would love to. But they signed a treaty with the Romulans (IIRC) that bans them from developing cloaking technology.

Yet the Feds have a cloak suit, cloaked holodeck ship, cloaked outpost to check on pre-warp civilizations.....

[Eternal_Freedom]

The suits and the outposts were hologram chameleon type things IIRC. The holoship, well, I blame the writers or the Son'a for that one.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

In retrospect, its kind of odd that Federation ships don't use cloaks to keep from "contaminating pre-warp civilizations" since one doesn't necessarily need warp drives to detect huge flying saucers in orbit around your planet.

They would love to. But they signed a treaty with the Romulans (IIRC) that bans them from developing cloaking technology.

Yet the Feds have a cloak suit, cloaked holodeck ship, cloaked outpost to check on pre-warp civilizations.....

Damn Treaty of Algeron- and TATV passed up the perfect opportunity to clarify what the Federation gained in exchange for not using cloaking tech, as opposed to just defining the Neutral Zone

Transmitting upgrades and replicating them enroute would work for modular ships like the Borg cubes, but not for the Federation ships- there's only so much you can do to the inside of the ship before it becomes impractical since there's not much you can do with the hull. It would be like kitting out an early B-52 bomber with the latest technological upgrades while in flight, there's only so much you can do before it's more economical to build a new model. That would be sidestepped by writing that the Enterprise is the pinnacle of technology- problem with that is that there's precisely zero room for innovation if no new tech is invented. It also means that every other civilisation would by definition be at best technologically equal, if not inferior since there wouldn't be anyone with superior technology.

All this means, that while there's no FTL, there needs to be some pretty amazing technology already invented, since it's going to make for a really boring premise if there's no cool tech and literally nothing forthcoming to look forward to.

[Patrick Degan]

You're concentrating too much on flashy toys.

[aussiemuscle308]

Reading this story immediately reminded me of this thread
How to Write a Killer Space Adventure Without Breaking the Speed of Light
by Charlie Jane Anders
http://io9.com/5943934/how-to-write-a-k ... ag=physics

[Korgeta]

Suppose that back in 1963, when Gene Roddenberry was creating Star Trek, he had made a decision to stick a lot closer to scientific plausibility by rejecting faster-than-light travel and instead depicting the Enterprise voyaging the galaxy via very fast sublight journeys taking the crew to the various planets of their mission within days or weeks subjectively while, due to time dilation, years and centuries would pass outside? The series could still have had planet-of-the-week stories and ship stories, but as the intrepid crew ventured forth, the galaxy beyond them would be changing. Certain story situations, such as members of the crew getting stranded on one world while the Enterprise dealt with some other situation in deep space would be ruled out, since by the time the ship got back to the planet any landing party they left behind would be long dead. But a whole host of other story possibilities would have opened up.

How would the crew of the Enterprise have coped with leaving Earth or whichever starbase world they began their missions from to find the people they left behind greatly aged or gone and buried by the time they got back? Would they have starbases also traveling at very high relativistic velocities which they would rendezvous with? How would wars be conducted? Would they run into civilisations based on worldships (like Yonada) traveling the galaxy at relativistic velocities? The stardate calendrical system would certainly have taken on a much greater significance as the crew would have had to calculate comparative datings based on the differentials between ship's subjective and galactic objective time. The various cultures (other than the truly alien) encountered by the Enterprise crew could easily have been presented as the descendants of human colony expeditions that had launched from Earth over the centuries. The conception of the Federation galactic civilisation would certainly have taken on a much different shape given the limitations of relativistic travel, as would concepts of warfare and commerce or cultural exchange. And what sort of changes would the Enterprise crew have found whenever they returned to base or to Earth? Perhaps Gene Roddenberry might have beaten Alan Toffler in presenting the concept of future shock.

In retrospect, it almost is a pity that the series took the easy way out by opting for FTL travel as a plot mechanism. Relativistic star travel might have given the Star Trek audience a much deeper sense of being out where no one had gone before. Viewers could have gotten both adventure and science artfully mixed together by seeing every week that space travel is also time travel. The human future in such a version of Star Trek wouldn't simply have encompassed one distant century but have stretched ever forward across hundreds and thousands of years —a message that in itself would have been most evocative.

Would we still get the short skirt uniform procedure still? *ahem*


Well to be honest the story is a no seller, where's the imagniation for it? It was the era of the space race the idea Gene shouldn't make journey's to other planets in limitless speed would have no appeal to a generation of people who liked to think we go to the moon and beyond, there would be no story for it, if they planet a and it took them 30yrs to get to Planet B then whatever happens on Planet A will be gone, what business they had for Planet B would be long done as well. You would have just a endless unconnecting episodes to each other. Which would beg the question how could the federation exist as a intersteller goverment if each colony has to wait 30yrs for assistance, each world would breakaway from the federation. And there is no way any studio will want to rip down props for say a starfleet HQ and redesign it because it'll look different in 30yrs time, they would like to reuse props if they were going back to same location again. Along with hiring and rehiring.

Any sci-fi show needs a FTL means for their ships, and why should the science aspect of gene's time (and ours) be the one to declare how fast we will be able to go into space in the future? For all we know FTL could be a possible in some form in 200yrs from now.

[Patrick Degan]

Suppose that back in 1963, when Gene Roddenberry was creating Star Trek, he had made a decision to stick a lot closer to scientific plausibility by rejecting faster-than-light travel and instead depicting the Enterprise voyaging the galaxy via very fast sublight journeys taking the crew to the various planets of their mission within days or weeks subjectively while, due to time dilation, years and centuries would pass outside? The series could still have had planet-of-the-week stories and ship stories, but as the intrepid crew ventured forth, the galaxy beyond them would be changing. Certain story situations, such as members of the crew getting stranded on one world while the Enterprise dealt with some other situation in deep space would be ruled out, since by the time the ship got back to the planet any landing party they left behind would be long dead. But a whole host of other story possibilities would have opened up.

How would the crew of the Enterprise have coped with leaving Earth or whichever starbase world they began their missions from to find the people they left behind greatly aged or gone and buried by the time they got back? Would they have starbases also traveling at very high relativistic velocities which they would rendezvous with? How would wars be conducted? Would they run into civilisations based on worldships (like Yonada) traveling the galaxy at relativistic velocities? The stardate calendrical system would certainly have taken on a much greater significance as the crew would have had to calculate comparative datings based on the differentials between ship's subjective and galactic objective time. The various cultures (other than the truly alien) encountered by the Enterprise crew could easily have been presented as the descendants of human colony expeditions that had launched from Earth over the centuries. The conception of the Federation galactic civilisation would certainly have taken on a much different shape given the limitations of relativistic travel, as would concepts of warfare and commerce or cultural exchange. And what sort of changes would the Enterprise crew have found whenever they returned to base or to Earth? Perhaps Gene Roddenberry might have beaten Alan Toffler in presenting the concept of future shock.

In retrospect, it almost is a pity that the series took the easy way out by opting for FTL travel as a plot mechanism. Relativistic star travel might have given the Star Trek audience a much deeper sense of being out where no one had gone before. Viewers could have gotten both adventure and science artfully mixed together by seeing every week that space travel is also time travel. The human future in such a version of Star Trek wouldn't simply have encompassed one distant century but have stretched ever forward across hundreds and thousands of years —a message that in itself would have been most evocative.

Would we still get the short skirt uniform procedure still? *ahem*


Well to be honest the story is a no seller, where's the imagniation for it? It was the era of the space race the idea Gene shouldn't make journey's to other planets in limitless speed would have no appeal to a generation of people who liked to think we go to the moon and beyond, there would be no story for it, if they planet a and it took them 30yrs to get to Planet B then whatever happens on Planet A will be gone, what business they had for Planet B would be long done as well. You would have just a endless unconnecting episodes to each other.

Um, watch TOS sometime. Except for maybe two or three series entries, it was a series of "endless unconnecting episodes to each other". There was no story arc, no ongoing plot thread. This was 1960s television, when "connected stories" meant the very occasional two-parter.

The rest of your objections do not obtain. In this paradigm, the Enterprise is still out in galactic space, and because of relativistic time dilation at very high sublight velocities, each planet comes up on their voyage days/weeks apart from one another for them. The only thing, operationally, that changes between this version of Star Trek and the actual filmed series is the exact mechanism of travel. To say there's "no imagination" for this version of Star Trek is nonsensical. FTL starflight is not an absolute requirement for essentially telling the same stories and getting the crew from one planet to the next one.

Which would beg the question how could the federation exist as a intersteller goverment if each colony has to wait 30yrs for assistance, each world would breakaway from the federation.

Robert Heinlein, Larry Niven and Joe Haldeman are among the various writers in science fiction who have dealt with this very issue in their works.

And there is no way any studio will want to rip down props for say a starfleet HQ and redesign it because it'll look different in 30yrs time, they would like to reuse props if they were going back to same location again. Along with hiring and rehiring.

And artistic license takes care of that issue as well. See The Twilight Zone episode "The Long Morrow" (1964) as example.

Any sci-fi show needs a FTL means for their ships, and why should the science aspect of gene's time (and ours) be the one to declare how fast we will be able to go into space in the future? For all we know FTL could be a possible in some form in 200yrs from now.

Actually, we pretty much know FTL is ruled out in principle, and the few mathematical solutions to the problem that have been worked out as exercises assume techniques which will never be within the realm of engineering practicality, nevermind within 200 years. And asking as to why science should have any influence in the crafting of a science fiction series is... somewhat missing the whole point.