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[Max™]

Can't replace your parts, that would make you like the Borg!

[Bumber]

Borg have hivemind-enforcing nanites, though. Without that you're just a regular cyborg, like Robert Cop.

[methylatedspirit]

He is a Robert,
He is a cop,
He is a Robert Cop,

[wierd]

I thought his name was Murhphy? (ducks)

[methylatedspirit]

Nah, that guy's the future of law enforcement.
This Robert guy, he's the furniture of law enforcement!

[Max™]

Borg have hivemind-enforcing nanites, though. Without that you're just a regular cyborg, like Robert Cop.

How many regular cyborgs are there in Star Trek though?

Fucking Geordi needs a goofy ass attachment linked with an interface when the whole multi-spectral vision thing should just be what you get after replacing your eyes with Eyes that look exactly the same as you want them to look but which you can Open to view other wavelengths and overlays and so forth.

Hell, we know they can replace parts really well because they've deborged people, but for some reason none of the post-borg folks seem to ever say "hey, can you just leave that awesome eye implant and my multi-tool hand socket in place along with the force field generator?" because... apparently it's better to be as not!God made you? Human and flawed and weak and fragile and dying slowly.

Actually I wonder something else, why does Geordi ever need a tricorder? Same with Data, what kinda shitty android is he that he is still limited to slow ass reaction speeds like human defaults, can only manage a few Tflops, and has PB of storage? Oh but hey, he can bend a bard of tritanium or some shit, wow!

I get that they were trying to make a show with broader appeal and so forth and the Culture was just in the early formative period as a setting but I was never so disgusted and horrified at presentations of the future as I am after reading the expansive tapestries of possibility guys like Banks and Baxter put forward.

We've got weird ass gadgets like this being put out there nowadays: https://www.techradar.com/reviews/huawei-mate-x

Smartphones and tablets were already star trek setpieces, this one-ups the show entirely doesn't it?

[wierd]

Well, there's a whole species of them on planet byanus...

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Bynar

[Trekkin]

presentations of the future

Who ever said Star Trek was about the future? It's always been about the present; they have to give the Soviets ridged foreheads and laser guns to sell merchandise, but the ship runs on nonsensical technobabble and dramatic explosions precisely because the technology isn't important enough to the plot to make it internally consistent.

[wierd]

word bro.

The creator produced the show to be a foil against the prevailing "politics of war" of the 60s and 70s. He presented a fictional "how military operations COULD be" in stark contrast to the "KILL ALL THE COMMIES!" rhetoric of the era. In addition, he encouraged his writers to take (then) modern events and spin them in new forms for plots of the show.  This is how we got such wondrous things as the space hippies episode. 

Inane technobabble? Oh, for sure!

Case in point-- how exactly does dilithium crystal somehow manage to survive direct exposure to antimatter?  (the technobabble suggests that it somehow is able to redirect all the enormous quantities of photons and hard neutrons produced by the reaction so that the energy can be harnessed, but really does not explain how. Considering that it would just be a pretty innocuous looking metallic prism, (and a highly reactive one at that, keep away from water and oxygen kids!) with a pretty low melting point.. this just does not make much sense at all.)

The romulan microsingularity engine makes much more sense in how it COULD arguably function. (it just has an energy problem. A big one.)

[Max™]

TNG was less "current cold war events recast" and more of a forward looking "how things could be" at least in presentation, last time I checked.

Also Bynars are barely modified and fall into the "can't be human and upgraded" area as badly as the Borg do.

[smjjames]

Picard has that artificial heart of his and I remember a DS9 episode involving a diplomat or some other VIP having part of his brain replaced with a positronic computer after an accident of some sort. The whole thing was apparently controversial in-universe (in what way though, I forget), though it was more of an exploration of 'how much is self if part of your brain gets replaced by a computer'.

TNG was less "current cold war events recast" and more of a forward looking "how things could be" at least in presentation, last time I checked.

Also Bynars are barely modified and fall into the "can't be human and upgraded" area as badly as the Borg do.

I suppose they didn't want to go into the cyberpunk realm? Dunno.

[wierd]

The "cannon" explanation for why humans are so tight-assed about body and brain enhancements, stems from the apochryphal (since no good records seem to have survived) Eugenics War.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Eugenics_Wars


The rationale is that when you make humans smarter, they get more ambitious, and that ambition is often pathologically deadly to not only other humans, but everyone else as well.  This seems to have carried over into a general ban/prohibition against genetic engineering or technologically founded enhancement of humans within the federation.


The REAL reason of course, is to avoid the creation of Mary Sue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue

NOBODY likes Mary Sue. NOBODY.

[smjjames]

I think you can have enhanced characters without them turning into a mary sue. Still, despite the Federations ban on such things, pockets did exist like the group in DS9 (including the doc there) who were illegally enhanced and there was that colony which was evacuated due to threat from a comet (why not just blast that comet apart or nudge it out of the way? Or maybe the comet had already impacted and they just needed to get out of there, I forget the exact circumstances.) which experimented with genetics and somehow got away with it.

So, I'd certainly expect it to be found in the underground or in remote places that the Federation doesn't have a huge presence or enforcement on.

[wierd]

Then there's the research station that made the telepathic kids with the deadly immune systems.. (So if they ever LEAVE that planet, they will cause a mass genocide against every other sentient species just by BEING...)

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Darwin_Genetic_Research_Station

[Max™]

Yeah, but that's why I mentioned the Culture, where it's taken for granted that everyone has full rights over their existence, so if they want glands which release drugs for various purposes grown in their body they get them (say you're in a sudden ambush you would "gland Focus" for a slowed down movement sensitive mindstate, or release some Chill if you're on a long trip and trying to kill time) plus things that happen without prompting like painkillers/blood clotting agents/antivenom, if they get bored being a human and want a spin on the wild side they might grow an entirely alien body and move their mindstate into it, which is helped because it's normal to have a Neural Lace woven into your brain to access information and shit like having a backup if you get killed.

These are things that might seem kinda over the top for a baseline background character, but any human in setting is basically just a pet for the Minds which wear the various Ships in setting as bodies.

Is the Enterprise smarter than a typical home assistant these days? Why not? Because the weird overarching shape the series inherited from Roddenberry in the 60's meant posthuman or transhuman were taboo subjects to be afraid of and shunned, with perhaps a token curiosity like Data or Seven here and there.