>It's still sort of shocking that Starfleet lost
>heavy cruisers in the 23rd more often than they'd lose runabouts a
>century later.

They didn't always pull it off, but there was always at least an attempt to portray the galaxy in the TOS era as sort of an interstellar Age of Sail—it shows in the broad latitude Starfleet captains were supposed to have, the occasional attempts at showing long-range communications as unreliable and large parts of the galaxy yet unexplored, and so forth. The show was sold to the network as Wagon Train to the Stars, but from those bits it's clear that at least some of the writers were thinking more of Horatio Hornblower in Outer Space.

TNG, by contrast, is the age of containerized freight. Ships still get lost in storms and meet other misadventures, but somehow it's not as romantic even when they do. :)

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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