Alex Kurtzman: 'Star Trek: Discovery' Will Spark Debate And Adhere To Canon

[Vger23]

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.

I no longer need to post on this board because you say exactly what I want to say but with far greater clarity and conviction.

I also loved Ex Machina...but that's another point.

Haha!

 

[Refuge]

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

You make a lot of good points, though I would prefer Discovery to be part of the TV franchise Universe.

 

[JD]

Different plays are not in continuity with each other. They are derived from the same source material. And it doesn't matter what they "make clear". Either it will be consistent or not. Their say so has nothing to do with anything. And the "look" is no different from the "events". Like historical fiction, the look of the time should be maintained unless there is some compelling reason to change it. Like, 50 years later, we decided on to update the computers and consoles to seem more like a plausible vision of the future. That doesn't apply here. Kurn, Worf and Martoks makeup looks completely plausible and realistic. And after ENT went to some length to explain these two basic looks, it is absolutely a discontinuity to change it.

But we still don't know for sure that there isn't an explanation for why these Klingons look different. It looks like all we've seen so far is one group of Klingons, on one ship, so for all we know they could be some new type of Klingon who looks different for an in universe reason.
Even if their isn't one, makeup techniques and general aesthetics have changed a lot since the 1983 or 4, so I can see why they might want to update an old design. I believe the TOS movie, which is where the forehead Klingon design came from originally, were fairly low budget movies, so they also didn't have the kind of money behind them that Discovery does. I can understand wanting to use that money to update things. They want this to stand up there with things like Game of Thrones, and the Walking Dead, and you can't do that with designs from the 1960s and '80s.

And we have to bury this preposterous idea that the cultural artifacts, art, music, clothing, hair, make up or architectural styles of a time and culture are not part and parcel of that time, place and culture. They are deeply embedded and central, not some peripheral window dressing.

Yes, but in this case what is important is the differences between 1966 and 1983/4, and 2016. As real as the things we've seen in Trek might feel to us, the fact is they are not, and they are heavily influenced by the real world at the time they were made. So as time goes on things in Trek are going to have to change to stay relevant.

It is a radical and dramatic change. They don't even look like the same species. Style? Having a different shaped face and skin color is not a "style". Nothing compared to the very slight differences between previous incarnations of Andorians and Klingons, where, contrary to your implications of "radical" changes, they obviously tried hard to maintain a considerable continuity, unlike the Disco creatives who said they were deliberately "reimagining". Their looking very different was the whole point of the change. Not for them to be the same. I think you may have missed that "reimagination" would likely mean substantial change, not nip and tuck tweaks.

The thing to keep in mind with the amount of changes from TNG - ENT, and Discovery, is that the earlier shows were made by the same people very close together, while Discovery is being made by a new group of people almost 20 years after production started on the last show.

You know I was thinking about this canon issue and their might actually be no way to every really answer the question for sure simply because nothing that happens on "Disocovery" can ever impact any of the other shows.

It's not like Burnham might someday show up in a TNG episode or we can't ever see a flashback scene on DS9 where we see starfleet people wearing the new uniforms. Can something really be canon if their is no way to connect it to the other stuff beyond what we imagine in our heads?

Seems to me the only way this show will ever really be able to offically become part of the prime universe is if you somehow get Shatner to play Kirk on the show or some kind of other connection like that. In the past you could have character/actor crossovers or you can have something like the Maquis get set up in TNG, established and named in DS9 and then used as series regulars on "Voyager."

Every connection made on the new show can simply be seen as a new version of previous character or backstory, instead of a continuation of that character or backstory. It will all come down to how people view it in their minds unless they can find a more solid way to connect the 2. I think I now I understand just why every other show felt the need to have a character from the previous show to show up in the pilot and basically establish that this new show is indeed part of the trek universe you have been following. Will "Discovery" have that moment were you feel like their is no other option but to think of it as being in the prime universe without any doubt?

Jason

They could always give us an episode where the Discovery is shot forward in time to the 24th century, and runs into characters from TNG, DS9, and/or Voyager all played by their original actors, with clear references back to episodes of the shows.

I'm talking about different productions of the same play. Remember the controversy about the recent production of Julius Caesar that costumed their Caesar to look like Trump? Years earlier, they did it with a Caesar who looked like Obama. Many different productions of that play have updated its sets, costumes, casting, etc. from Ancient Rome to something that paralleled their own modern times. But they did not change the words or events of the play. The actual story remained unchanged. The characters were the same, the sequence of events was the same, and the world they inhabited was the same in substance even if it looked superficially different. (That actually bugged me about the David Tennant/Patrick Stewart BBC production of Hamlet that was updated to a more modern-dystopia setting. The stage/video direction incorporated security cameras everywhere, ubiquitously watching, to create the feel of an oppressive surveillance state -- but the script was unchanged, so the characters were still relying on hiding behind arrases and eavesdropping on each other. Some changes fit better than others.)




.

My favorite examples of this are Baz Luhrman's Rome +Juliet

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and Joseph Finnes's Coriolanus

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which I thought both did a good job of bringing things forward in a way that made as much sense as something like that can, and still worked for the story.

 

[BillJ]

So as time goes on things in Trek are going to have to change to stay relevant.

I don't think it is a problem with change. I think it is a problem with these changes that are somehow supposed to fit in with an already known timeline.

I think I'd be much more excited (outside of the uniforms) for Discovery if it was just a straight reboot/new timeline. The visual changes for me just don't say this is the Prime timeline of 2355.

 

[Tarek71]

But they don't change a single word of the story. That's the point.

No, the point is that they are not in the same continuity with each other. The basic story of superman can be kept from one iteration to another, but they are not in continuity with each other.

You could have different cast, different costumes and different sets for the same play with the same script every single night. But each night it's the story starting over from the beginning. Endless retelling of the same tale. Over and over. And each performance is not in the same continuity of even last night's performance. There is no linear progression. So every night can be a reboot if they want, and no continuity error has occured.

One more time: Discovery is in continuity with all prior Trek TV series.

It doesn't matter what they say it is. It matters what they do.

 

[Nerys Myk]

But each night it's the story starting over from the beginning. Endless retelling of the same tale. Over and over. And each performance is not in the same continuity of even last night's performance. There is no linear progression. So every night can be a reboot if they want.

The play's the thing.

 

[BillJ]

It doesn't matter what they tell is. It matters what they do.

This is how I'm feeling. I just don't see Prime 2255 in what they've shown me so far. Could it change? Absolutely. But from where I'm sitting, Discovery looks like a reboot.

I guess my biggest question is: would it be a terrible thing for Discovery to be a reboot? Who exactly isn't going to watch if it only respects the broad strokes of what came before?

 

[Michael]

Truth be told, personally I don't care if it's a reboot, reimagining or remake. I just want it to be good and I just want it to be Star Trek.

 

[BillJ]

My God, I've figured out how I feel about Discovery trying to work in the Prime timeline...

MADDOX: Your memories and knowledge will remain intact.
DATA: Reduced to the mere facts of the events. The substance, the flavour of the moment, could be lost.

Thank you, Mr. Data!

 

[{ Emilia }]

Truth be told, personally I don't care if it's a reboot, reimagining or remake. I just want it to be good and I just want it to be Star Trek.

This.
I don't even think about whether or not I consider it a reboot or a reimagining or a continuation of some timeline...
It just needs to be good and feel like Trek.

 

[CorporalClegg]

Data spells flavor with a "u"? Even the android gets it wrong.

 

[Mudd]

I don't care whether it feels like Trek or not, if it's good enough.

 

[Kemaiku]

Or for all we know, TOS only showed us the boring, extremely retro themed portion of the fleet that everyone else was laughing at.

 

[Tarek71]

This is how I'm feeling. I just don't see Prime 2255 in what they've shown me so far. Could it change? Absolutely. But from where I'm sitting, Discovery looks like a reboot.

Exactly. It is a reboot. In most other universes and properties, thats exactly what they would call it. And I have no problem with that in principle. I love reboots. Viva La Reboot!

Main thing is that it's good. Because if it sucks, it won't matter what timeline it's set in.

 

[Christopher]

But we still don't know for sure that there isn't an explanation for why these Klingons look different. It looks like all we've seen so far is one group of Klingons, on one ship, so for all we know they could be some new type of Klingon who looks different for an in universe reason.
Even if their isn't one, makeup techniques and general aesthetics have changed a lot since the 1983 or 4, so I can see why they might want to update an old design. I believe the TOS movie, which is where the forehead Klingon design came from originally, were fairly low budget movies, so they also didn't have the kind of money behind them that Discovery does.

No, TMP was quite an expensive movie for its day -- in fact, it was in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most expensive movie ever made up to that time, though that was misleading because it included the development costs of Phase II and all the earlier abortive movie projects like Planet of the Titans thrown in.

This change isn't about money or technology. It's simply about different producers and different makeup artists having different design sensibilities. Discovery and the Kelvin films have executive producer Alex Kurtzman and creature designer Neville Page in common, and probably other art/production staffers as well, and therefore they have a similarity in design styles. The look of a show is the combination of the design concepts of the art department and the aesthetic preferences of the producers. So different works sharing producers and art staff will have similarities, and different works with different producers and art staffs will have differences, regardless of their in-story continuity relationship. DSC is set in the Prime timeline, but it has more aesthetic similarity to the Kelvin timeline because it has some of the same people making the aesthetic decisions. The key is to understand the difference between aesthetic continuity and story continuity.

The thing to keep in mind with the amount of changes from TNG - ENT, and Discovery, is that the earlier shows were made by the same people very close together, while Discovery is being made by a new group of people almost 20 years after production started on the last show.

Yes, I agree. I think we got so used to having everything in Star Trek for nearly a quarter-century being filtered through either Harve Bennett or Rick Berman that we got used to a certain standardization of design. Now there's a completely new set of people bringing their own different visual tastes to the universe and we're not accustomed to that level of change.

 

[Kemaiku]

But still the Prime timeline, as the studio has indicated. No one else is an authority to announce otherwise.

 

[fireproof78]

This is how I'm feeling. I just don't see Prime 2255 in what they've shown me so far. Could it change? Absolutely. But from where I'm sitting, Discovery looks like a reboot.

I guess my biggest question is: would it be a terrible thing for Discovery to be a reboot? Who exactly isn't going to watch if it only respects the broad strokes of what came before?

There is always the argument that the spirit of Trek is lost, because it is no longer a part of "our" future. It's one of the reasons I saw given for why Kelvin Universe doesn't resonate with some, is that these characters are bereft of the history that made Kirk and Spock more relatable.

Similarly, with my dad, he doesn't watch TNG-period. That's not "Star Trek" for him. He enjoys TOS and the Kelvin films, and that's about it.

Finally, I really feel like I'm being told not to trust the production team, and that they are wrong. Not to be skeptical, but that they are wrong. Wrong in the production redesign, wrong about Prime timeline, wrong, wrong wrong.

It's like Guinan in "Yesterday's Enterprise." The timeline "feels" wrong. Well, sorry, it doesn't feel wrong to me.

 

[Christopher]

There is always the argument that the spirit of Trek is lost, because it is no longer a part of "our" future.

I think that's taking things too literally. It was never a future that could really happen, because the real future was never going to have humanoid aliens and godlike psychic superbeings and alien planets that coincidentally duplicated Ancient Rome or whatever. Even if you just look at historical events, there were discontinuities with reality all along. An American pacifist movement would've been unlikely to lead to Hitler's victory, and besides, Clark Gable was still an unknown in 1930. Adult eugenics supermen coming to power in 1992 would have to be the result of a project already underway in the 1960s, if not generations earlier (I still think Carey Wilber intended it to be a continuation of the real-life eugenics programs of the late 19th and early 20th centuries). As far as I can tell, there was not a rash of women being knifed to death in Shanghai in 1932. There was no real program of launching orbital nuclear platforms in 1968. And there were never any Native American populations abducted by the Preservers, certainly not ones whose appearance and culture matched those of Miramanee's people.

So ST was never "our future" in the sense that it could really happen -- just in that it represented a vision of a possible future that we could aspire toward in terms of its general nature (e.g. humanity survives, overcomes its differences, thrives, and expands peacefully into space). That aspirational element is still there even if there are more obvious factual discrepancies.

Granted, I've often said that I think ST will eventually need a wholesale reboot, that it would benefit from starting over completely and freeing itself from the continuity and conceptual baggage of the past. I was a little disappointed when Discovery turned out to be set in Prime again; after Kelvin, I figured a complete reboot was the logical next step. But that doesn't mean it can't still work. It's a challenging balance to strike, being faithful both to an aging Trek canon and to modern knowledge and sensibilities. It would certainly be simpler to do a complete reboot. But then, simpler isn't necessarily better. They're taking a gamble, yes, but it'll be impressive if it succeeds.

It's one of the reasons I saw given for why Kelvin Universe doesn't resonate with some, is that these characters are bereft of the history that made Kirk and Spock more relatable.

I think that's less the case now that there have been three movies and the timeline of the films has almost caught up with TOS. (Beyond was set in 2263, just 2 years before "Where No Man Has Gone Before.") The idea was always to have the trilogy be the origin story of the characters we knew (albeit an alternate-history version thereof), to have them gradually grow into the familiar team. I can see why some might not be as interested in their nascent characters as in their mature characters. But I think the film series has now moved past that early phase. In Beyond, they were characterized much more like their familiar selves, and by the next film, the timeline will have caught up with TOS and we won't be in an origin story anymore. (Indeed, the change of writers and directors on the third film means that they may have abandoned the origin-story thing one film earlier than intended.)

 

[Mr Awe]

If the look isn't important to the story, why change it at all?

Because the modern audience won't watch a series that looks like it's from the 60s. At least not enough to make it viable. That's pretty obvious really. It's all about making it palatable to the audience that is watching it now.

 

[Mr Awe]

This is how I'm feeling. I just don't see Prime 2255 in what they've shown me so far.

Because we're all so qualified at knowing what a warp capable multi-stellar Federation of planets should properly look like, right? We'll know it when we see it! Clearly, a single pilot from a 60s show nailed that look!