Kevin - honest question - did you watch "Star Trek: Discovery", particularly seasons 3-5? If you did, then the tech changes spurred by the jump to the 32nd century (personal transporters, programmable matter, etc.) shouldn't be a surprise. (Although you may be confusing the personal transporters - which are still range-limited - with Discovery's spore drive, which is decommissioned by the time ST:SA starts.)
As far as the "big bad" being pirates - it's more complicated than that. Again, later-season Disco fleshes this out, but here's the TL;dr: - There was a catastrophic event called "the Burn" which caused all dilithium to go inert, and anything with an active warp core to go boom - The Federation as we knew it largely fell apart, with many worlds (including Earth) going isolationist for their own protection - Starfleet - what was left of it - largely went into hiding to lick its wounds - Criminal elements, particularly those with access to FTL drives that weren't reliant on dilithium*, quickly rose to power and took control of former Federation territories - Later-season Discovery shows the Federation pulling itself back together and getting back to business, but a number of rogue elements remain * I had to qualify this because some ships - like Romulan vessels - use different energy sources to power their warp engines. The presumption was that these vessels, while not as numerous as ones equipped with traditional dilithium-powered engines, would have remained viable. I watched the first two episodes, and while yeah, it has its cringy moments, I'm willing to give it a shot. It has a number of things working in its favor - Robert Picardo is back as the Doctor, for one - but most of all, it's optimistic, and we can use a little optimism right about now. On Friday, January 16, 2026 at 1:03:56 AM UTC-5 Kevin M. wrote: > Do you want to know what they did? Here’s what they did: > > They created a universe where people can literally beam anywhere in > seconds. They created a universe where people can replicate anything. > > So anyone can go anywhere and have anything, yet who are the bad guys? > Pirates. Huh? > > Anyway, I concede there is an audience for this series. I further concede > I am not their audience. Conceding all that and more, what a giant crock of > flaming mooseturd. Yeah, yeah, decent actors. Yeah, yeah, pretty visuals. > Too bad this was what they did with it. > > It’ll probably last ten years, with the lead cadet characters having to > hide their ages like 90210 actors. > > Kevin M. (RPCV) > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/e85c31a2-7952-4238-b3fd-66e67f01bac2n%40googlegroups.com.
