Are you saying you finally acknowledge that the producers of Discovery aren't committing "plagiarism"?
Alex Kurtzman: 'Star Trek: Discovery' Will Spark Debate And Adhere To Canon
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Are you saying you finally acknowledge that the producers of Discovery aren't committing "plagiarism"?
I agree completely. I've said that many times even in this thread. But Mr Droopy Face doesn't have make up that looks any more "modern". How billions of dollars does a SW movie have to make to show that radically redesigning the look of Chewbacca, for instance was apparently not necessary for it to be successful.
Is anyone here going to say that if the Klingons in DIS looked more like the TNG variety, they would refuse to watch the show? Some people like Droopy. It may grow on others as time goes by. But absolutely no one will not watch for that reason.
Which is naturally more feasible one decade later than five. In this case, we just have to make more use of our own imaginations to bridge the gap.
Granted, I am surprised at how completely the look has been changed. But I believe we'll get used to it as long as the stories and characters are engaging enough. And really, let's face it, the pilot uniforms looked terrible. I can understand why they washed their hands of those and went for something more like an update of the Kelvin uniforms.
The Kelvin Timeline is part of the same canon. It's explicitly an alternate timeline within that continuity, in the same way that the Mirror Universe is, or the "Other Side" in Fringe, or Earth-2 and Earth-38 in the Arrowverse. One fictional universe can contain multiple parallel timelines side by side.
An alternate timeline within the same continuity is not the same thing as an alternate continuity, like old and new Battlestar Galactica, or the three different Spider-Man movie universes, or Sherlock vs. Elementary. In those cases, each version is merely a different real-world interpretation of the fictional premise, independent of the others. Those are not shared universes, just alternative adaptations. In the case of something like the Kelvin Timeline or Supergirl's Earth-38, the two timeline are treated within the fiction as being connected and part of the same larger reality.
So the key isn't about how big the differences are. It's about how the differences are defined within the stories themselves. The Kelvin films explicitly used time travel branching off an alternate history as the explanation for its changes. Discovery is simply presenting itself as part of the same history as the previous series, and the differences in its look will either be explained somehow or just unmentioned, like all the other redesigns of aliens and technology in Trek history.
That's exactly what I'm saying. Different productions of even the same play or story are drawn from the same source material, and yet they are not in continuity with each other. So they can change the century it set, the look, costumes, etc. That's whats great about being in different continuities.
Different variations on Arthur, Merlin and Lancelot for instance actually do keep a number of the same events. But these various shows and films are not in continuity with each other. They can change as much or as little about anything they want.
To be in the same continuity, unlike those plays, they do need to be consistent. Again, tweaks to modernize a dated take on the future is necessary. Even alot more than a tweak can be justified. But not otherwise.
Not really. Because they can decide in the future to say ENT is no longer canon, and if they did, it is no longer canon. The owners of the property could de-canonize TOS if they wanted to. I highly suspect they wont, but could if they wanted to.
In that sense, canon is "whatever they say it is" and not "the events" or "the look". But whether it does agree with the events can only be determined by waiting to see what they do. A statement beforehand that they promise it will be doesn't mean anything. It either will be consistent or not. Their actions, not their words will determine that is what I was driving at.
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And even DS9 wouldn't have commented if the nature of their episode hadn't necessitated it. We didn't get an "explanation" until ENT - the way some people talk here, they must have wondered who these guys with weird foreheads were for years.
For me i'm not sure if my suspension of disbelief is enough to buy the new look. I think at this point I could only buy into if it was in the future of "Voyager" or a bigger gap between the new show and a old one. Well that or if they did do the Spock thing going back in time to create a in universe reason only with some other reason of course. Like you said it is easier to do a shared universe one decade apart more than 5.
For me this isn't a bad thing. I am very open to a New "Battlestar Galatica" that takes something and starts from scratch. I'm not exactly sure why Trek needs to be set in the prime universe anymore. The kelvin movies were a good start in going in a different direction. It was a a sort of reboot/prequel but still connected to Prime setting.
I wouldn't mind if "Discovery" was that but I just don't like the idea of pretending the old look never happened just to make way for this new one. At least with Kelvin being in a alternate universe it felt like the old shows weren't being erased. Which I know isn't logical because it's not like all are old dvd's or whatnot is going to disapear but I kind of like having the illusion of them not being touched. I shudder at the thought of someone thinking Mark Leonard's Sarek for example doesn't fit in with canon anymore because something he does ends up conflicting with the new Sarek.
Jason
And this gets back to the Kurtzman interview where he talks about how they know how the timelines work.
But they don't change a single word of the story. That's the point. Everything on the page is exactly the same. The dialogue is still delivered verbatim in Elizabethan English even when the surface trappings are modernized. Everything about the characters, their histories, their view of their world, their goals, their interactions, and the consequences of their actions remains unchanged. Everything that actually matters remains unchanged. Altering the look does not change the substance.
One more time: Discovery is in continuity with all prior Trek TV series. The producers have explicitly, repeatedly told us that this is not a reinvention of the sort you're talking about. The only thing they've reinvented is how the show looks. They're keeping all of the same events -- they've just changed the art direction.
Sure, it's something that will take getting used to, but that doesn't mean we can't adjust. That's why I'm using theater analogies. A lot of the things that movie and TV fans have trouble accepting, like recasting characters or changing their ethnicities or changing the look of their environment, are routine in the theater. It's easier to accept them because the theater requires suspension of disbelief -- you know the actors are standing right in front of you on a small raised platform, but you choose to pretend they're actually far away in the distant past or whatever. So other breaks with reality are easier to accept; you just move past them and get into the story. Early film and TV were extensions of theater and often weren't much different in their production limitations, so the same voluntary acceptance of artifice on the audience's part was still necessary. But modern TV and film have gotten so much better at creating the illusion of reality that screen audiences haven't needed to develop that same skill of suspending disbelief. Which is why it's valuable to take an interest in the theater, not to mention reading books -- because those forms of entertainment require you to use your own imagination more to fill in the gaps. And that's excellent mental exercise for learning to cope with the imperfections that still crop up in screen entertainment from time to time.
What I'm told is that they're taking care to avoid just that sort of thing. If nothing else, my friend Kirsten Beyer is on the writing staff, and she's an expert in Trek continuity, plus she's friends with a bunch of other experts in Trek continuity.
Of course, Trek continuity has been full of contradictions ever since TOS's earliest episodes (James R. Kirk, lithium crystals, UESPA, Kirk's disappearing nephews, etc.). It's impossible for any long-running canon to be completely free of discontinuity. So of course there will be inconsistencies, and as always, some fans will yell and scream as if there have never been continuity errors in Trek before, even though the new errors are no greater than all the many, many old ones. It happened with the movies, it happened with TNG, it happened with Enterprise, it happened with Kelvin, and it will happen here. This is at least the third time I've seen this same cycle play out since I became active on the Internet, and that's not counting the non-Star Trek revivals. (On a local BBS way back when, there was a poster who fanatically despised the 1996 Doctor Who TV movie because it wasn't consistent in every exact detail with the original series, ignoring the fact that the original series contradicted itself wildly and extensively over the years.)
If the look isn't important to the story, why change it at all?
I also don't see anything wrong with changing things that do matter.
Because it's not 1964.
Not really my point. People bend over backwards to defend the look (which I have no problem with, as a reboot), but then double-back and say that looks aren't important.
I'll watch Discovery, I'm a sucker for anything Trek. But, I'll simply treat it as a reboot because it looks like they took no effort to match up with what came before.
I think the argument is the looks aren't important to the story. The story continuity won't be changed by the color or cut of the costumes or the shape of a nacelle. A blue gold trimmed uniform wont erase "The Cage" from continuity or make Christopher Pike a twelve year old redheaded girl.
Looks are important in inducing people to watch the show. A show that looks like it was made in 1964 is less likely to succeed in 2017.
They have. The humans have a greater variety of skin colors and eye shapes now.
But their foreheads remain the same!
They need Peyton Manning to guest star?
To some people, that's not a "just".
So we lack skills, huh? We should take in more theater? That sounds rather snobbish.
Beyond suspension of disbelief there is simply a subjective preference for one look or another.
TV is not radio drama. The look is part of what made someone a fan in the first place. Change the look and you may take away part of what made you love it in the first place.
I understand that you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, but that's the risk the producers take every time they change things. Sometimes it will fly and sometimes it won't. I liked the Enterprise refit but I did not like the JJ-Prise or the brewery. I liked the Monster Maroons but do not like these new outfits. It goes beyond simply making something more modern and whatever that entails. It's a matter of pure subjecive taste.
To downplay the look as inconsequential is an insult to the creativity that goes into art direction in the first place. Film and TV is a visual medium and it is experienced viscerally as well as through the core storyline.
But isn't it premature to decide that before you've even seen the show? For all you know, you'll like the stories so much that you'll be willing to accept the visual changes. It's hard to know how high a priority it'll be for you when it's the only thing you're aware of.
On the contrary -- it's an invitation, not a condemnation. Is it snobbish to invite someone to try a new cuisine they've never sampled, or listen to a genre of music they've never heard? Or to offer to teach them a skill they could find useful in their lives, like car maintenance or cooking? Or is it merely trying to be helpful, to offer someone something they might appreciate?
That's a weird thing to say, because what they've done is to be creative, to invent a new look rather than merely copying the old. How am I insulting their creativity by saying they have a right to be creative? I'm not saying the art direction doesn't matter. Of course it matters aesthetically, and that's the whole reason they should be free to innovate. But the point is, this is a work of art. It's not a documentary. Art is a process of interpreting ideas, and changing the interpretation does not necessarily alter the underlying ideas.
Every new Trek TV and movie series has interpreted the universe differently to some degree or other, both visually and conceptually, because it's been made by different creators with different styles and perspectives. We just choose to pretend that they fit together despite their differences. And the differences in the newest incarnation always seem greater to us because we haven't yet had time to integrate them into our mental model of the Trek universe. Like I said, this is at least the third time I've seen this happen, and every time, the fans who have a problem with it react as though it's never happened before. That's because our memories smooth out the past and make us forget or rationalize away the bits that don't fit our narrative. Come September and after, I have no doubt that Trek fans -- and novelists -- will invest a lot of energy and creativity into rationalizing and justifying Discovery's differences with prior Trek series. It's what we always do with new Trek. But it's hard to begin that process of reconciliation before we've seen the actual show.
Beats me. Chewbacca is a tertiary character who adds some charm to Star Wars but has never had a line of "dialogue" that moved a story meaningfully forward or offers any insight into him. He's a shaggy prop, essentially, and there wouldn't be a significant effect on the SW saga if he'd been four feet tall, green and bald. SW would be just as popular and successful today if he'd never existed.
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