"Balance of Terror" is a touchstone for the Discovery story arc
- Thread starter elric428
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Get Gloria Gaynor to do the theme song."Discoverse"...
Space...the disco inferno. These are the voyages of the Mothership Connection Discovery. Its five-year boogie: To explore strange new dance floors. To seek out new mirrorballs and new polyester civilizations. To boldly groove where no one has grooved before!
"Captain! There is a 50-foot high hump directly in our path."
"Can we evade?"
"Negative, sir. It's so high we can't get over it and so wide we can't get around it."
"Very well. Da Bomb must be deployed immediately. We have no choice but to tear the roof off the sucker."
If the robots say "roger, roger" I'm phoning up the CBS offices...I won't stand for it.
RAMA
I will be highly disappointed if the USS Discovery doesn't have a 23rd century discotheque in its recreation deck.
I forgot about the robots... Fuller is the new Lucas
We have 700 hours of Star Trek taking place over roughly 200 years covering on average a few cubic kilometers (say 100 ) of the universe, plus stray references to events happening elsewhere. Take 700 hrs / 200 yrs + 100 km3/ size of Trek Universe. This back of the envelope calculation shows that the entire Star Trek universe is essentially a vacuum. This series wont fill any gaps, it will just add a little detail. The only way the show would be meaty enough to fill the gaps is if it was high speed Guardian of Forever footage of the trek timeline.
It very obviously could mean that, but it's undeniable that the idea of a Romulan spy tracks very well with several of the other comments Fuller has made about the show already. It's clearly nowhere near definitive, but it lines up well enough that it can't be summarily dismissed without more information.
Back story is the laziest, least dramatic and usually least effective approach to characterisation - which is probably why we see it so often and certainly why it dominates in fan fiction. It's a form of exposition.
It's not obvious from later Trek, but Michael Piller particularly disliked "let's bring in someone from one of our characters' pasts" as a way to launch a story.
It's not obvious from later Trek, but Michael Piller particularly disliked "let's bring in someone from one of our characters' pasts" as a way to launch a story.
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I don't think the statement made was about content but about tone. However if they do touch upon the romulans, maybe the political backdrop could be that the federation have concerns about the warming of relations between the Klingon Empire and the Romulan Empire (that lead to the brief allience resulting in tech sharing) and discovery is sent on missions to gather intelligence and to try to sabotage their efforts to unite as an alliance.
That's what I took from it, they'll be trying to make Discovery that little bit more claustrophobic compared to the more relaxed setting of the other ships.
In the TOS era, they did come across as being more on edge about potential problems with their neighbours erupting at any moment.
More submarine, less cruise ship.
I could be wrong but Fuller's quote was ""Balance of Terror" is a touchstone for the Discovery story arc". Story arc as an extended or continuing storyline. As in actual narrative arc. As a writer I don't think he chose the very specific phrase "story arc" simply meaning setting or tone.
Submarine warfare in space and geopolitics is all well and good, but I think the show is going to get pretty boring pretty quickly if that is all it consists of. I hope somewhere in these plans there will still be some space for the odd well told morality play or touching heartfelt storyline, i.e. the sort of stuff TNG used to specialise in.
I had always assumed from interviews and articles back then that Piller was the Teddy bear of the production staff. Not true according to the 50-yr mission Vol2. He had his way through season 3, he was tough on the writers, rewrote them or told them their script sucked, and Spiner is quoted as saying "Piller? Who's that? The guy in the baseball hat?" He never talked the actors and handed the writers their asses if they were caught on set other than when their script was being shot. I was shocked. In some ways he was more tyrannical than Hurley. BUT he also course corrected the shite out of that show. He made it possible for creativity to flourish again which is in no small part why s4 and s5 are some of the show's best.
Balance of Terror is an excellent episode, so they could certainly do worse than use it as inspiration. Whether it means it'll be a touchstone tonally, or even actual dialogue, I'm good either way.
Writer, physisist, medium or footballer....
....not many think before they tweet. Not to the extent of choosing their words wisely enough beyond "Hah, this'll be cool!" *tap tap tap*
The tone of Balance of Terror makes perfect sense, especially with Meyer on board. The story of Balance of Terror being an inspiration for anything more than one single episode would be a painful viewing.
I think they'll take the Cold War, naval submarine battle elements from Balance of Terror and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country for use in the first season. We know there will be a Klingon captain as part of the regular cast, so I assume he'll be one of the "NEW VILLAINS" we hear about in the very first teaser.
It won't be the Battle of Axanar specifically and it won't be the Romulan War (or most likely anything to do with the Romulans), we already know that, but I think it'll have to do with the Federation-Klingon Cold War with a cloaking device being involved in the story going by the cloaking device noise we hear at the end of the second teaser. Gave me the same vibes I got when they hinted at Luke's lightsaber being apart of The Force Awakens when they included its sound at the end of the first teaser.
Could be way off, could be reaching, that's just what I'm thinking atm going by the few hints and bits of news we've heard.
It won't be the Battle of Axanar specifically and it won't be the Romulan War (or most likely anything to do with the Romulans), we already know that, but I think it'll have to do with the Federation-Klingon Cold War with a cloaking device being involved in the story going by the cloaking device noise we hear at the end of the second teaser. Gave me the same vibes I got when they hinted at Luke's lightsaber being apart of The Force Awakens when they included its sound at the end of the first teaser.
Could be way off, could be reaching, that's just what I'm thinking atm going by the few hints and bits of news we've heard.
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