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

[jaime]

No. But they did recognize that they were doing something that was "out there" and tended to have fun with it.

The guest stars maybe, the main cast took it very seriously most of the time, so far as I can tell.

 

[BillJ]

I just don't see how you can separate the stories from the look of the original Star Trek. The stories, characters and visuals all have the same "60's vibe". If you take the "60's vibe" out of TOS, you are essentially boiling it down to the facts that don't conflict with our modern sensibilities. You are eliminating the flavor that makes TOS "TOS".

No one is expecting women to go around proclaiming they are frightened during a dangerous encounter, nor are we expecting recording equipment to not work without the ship's computer.

 

[BillJ]

The guest stars maybe, the main cast took it very seriously most of the time, so far as I can tell.

You can have fun with something while still being serious about it.

Not too many actors got to go on scene chewing rampages like Shatner in "The Enemy Within".

 

[jaime]

I just don't see how you can separate the stories from the look of the original Star Trek. The stories, characters and visuals all have the same "60's vibe". If you take the "60's vibe" out of TOS, you are essentially boiling it down to the facts that don't conflict with our modern sensibilities. You are eliminating the flavor that makes TOS "TOS".

No one is expecting women to go around proclaiming they are frightened during a dangerous encounter, nor are we expecting recording equipment to not work without the ship's computer.

I think miniskirts are the interesting factor in some ways...once upon a time, the mini was absolutely a sign of equality, feminism, liberation etc, a political statement by women for women...but now it is seen very differently in certain areas, particularly by media critics, and so something that was part of Treks visuals at one point isn't any more (it's successor in Trek, the catsuit, was again something that in its time was a bunch of mixed metaphors.) because it's reading hasn't changed. But critics eh. I am with Pratchett in Guards! Guards! On the providence of much of that xD

 

[jaime]

You can have fun with something while still being serious about it.

Not too many actors got to go on scene chewing rampages like Shatner in "The Enemy Within".

True,
I'M THE CAPTAIN!

 

[BillJ]

Once you cut away the TOS visuals, the things that are no longer socially acceptable, changes in technology that couldn't be predicted. You're left with very little of TOS outside of some facts. Kirk and Spock and the rest come off as anachronisms in their very own time period.

Which is why a reboot was always the better option, in my mind. Or, put TOS in its own timeline, which makes all the spinoffs part of a separate timeline.

 

[Christopher]

I completely agree on modernizing. Ive said that. Any projection into the future, unlike a period piece, has to be updated to reflect changes to preserve some reasonably futuristic depiction of the future. That doesnt apply here though.

The Klingon make up of 1990s and 2000s Trek was very high quality. The prosthetics were well conceived, well made, well fitted and well blended. They were then and remain today, very realistic and completely believable. They did a great job. Droopier faces is not any sense more "modern", and the prosthetic doesnt look any more lifelike or realistic than Worfs or the ENT Klingons.

As I said, the difference isn't about technology or modernity, it's simply a matter of art style. Makeup designers are artists, just like animators or comic-book artists are. Different artists have different character design styles. John Byrne's Superman looks very different from Curt Swan's Superman. Bruce Timm's animated Batman looks very different from Phil Bourassa's animated Batman. Star Trek aliens are artistic creations, and it's only natural to expect different artists to have different design styles. As I said, we have Phillips Klingons, Burman Klingons, Westmore Klingons, Snell Klingons, and Page Klingons, all different in design because they're the work of different artists.

All the technology does is to give the artists more freedom to put their designs on the screen. Fred Phillips was able to give us more elaborate Klingons in TMP than he could in TOS because he had more money and technology to do it with. Michael Westmore was able to create more elaborate Borg in First Contact than he could in TNG for the same reason. When it's the same artist working with different levels of budget and tech, then that's the explanation. But when it's different artists doing the creature designs, that alone is the primary explanation for the differences.

I don't understand. 'Freeing itself from the continuity and conceptual baggage of the past'. Take away the concept, take away the continuity, and what do you have left?

I'm not talking about the entire concept, obviously. I'm talking about the parts left over from 1960s or earlier pulp sensibilities, the parts that haven't aged as well as the rest. Stuff like a crew dominated by white men with only the odd token otherwise. In an "alternate timeline" TOS like Kelvin, one that's supposedly branched off of the same origin, the characters need to be the same people with different lives, so not too much can be changed. But in a wholesale reboot, you could have a female Kirk, a black McCoy, a cyborg Scotty, whatever you wanted. You could erase the chauvinism of the original completely rather than having to tiptoe around it while pretending it's still in continuity. There are also outdated ideas like the relatively primitive medicine in TOS, a grasp of neurology and genetics (and forensics, in "The Conscience of the King") that's less advanced than what we have today, let alone 300 years from now. There's the lack of nanotechnology and genetic medicine and other advances that will be commonplace long before the 2260s.

And of course there are the "near-future" historical events that have already not happened. We're 20 years past when the Eugenics Wars were supposed to occur. We're supposed to abandon interplanetary sleeper ships for faster space drives next year, in 2018. We're not far out from the Bell Riots or the Ares IV flight. The more time that passes, the more explicit Trek history is going to become outdated. What happens to Trek when it's actually 2063 in the real world? If it hasn't been rebooted by then, it's going to seem like a completely antiquated view of the future that never came to pass. If it's to remain relevant, sooner or later it'll have to start over with a new continuity that builds forward from the present rather than the 1960s.

The whole value of adaptations and reboots is that you can be selective in what you keep and discard. You can keep the core elements that are important -- the characters, their relationships, their values and goals, their overall situations -- but discard the side elements that age poorly and end up working against the intended message of the story. It's the same kind of updating that's been done to stories throughout history, keeping their essential ideas alive by adapting the elements around them to fit a new era and a new audience.

For me I still think the biggest issue are the uniforms and the color scheme of the computer consoles. When ever you think about each era isn't the first thing you notice being the uniforms?

Yes, but more viewers today probably associate the pre-TOS era with the blue jumpsuits from ENT and the Kelvin uniforms from ST '09 (which had three colors but used blue for command) than with the drab turtlenecks from the pilots. The older generation of dedicated TOS fans is nostalgic for those drab turtlenecks, but to the mass of people in the general public, ENT and the new movies are probably more familiar than the original pilots. And the DSC uniforms seem like they could be plausible descendants of those uniform styles.

Anyway, most viewers don't care that much about continuity details. They just want to be entertained. They want the stories to be engaging and they want the show to look good. As long as the uniforms look good, most audiences won't care much about how they line up with previous shows' uniforms.

 

[Mr Awe]

I just don't see how you can separate the stories from the look of the original Star Trek. The stories, characters and visuals all have the same "60's vibe". If you take the "60's vibe" out of TOS, you are essentially boiling it down to the facts that don't conflict with our modern sensibilities. You are eliminating the flavor that makes TOS "TOS".

Yep, it's pretty much the same thing that happened going from TOS to TMP. Totally different vibe. Discover just isn't going to have the same "vibe" as TOS just like all the different Trek series have had their own vibes. DS9 was very different from TNG even though they overlapped! Granted, everyone will have their own favorite "vibes" from the various series.

So, it's true. Discover will have it's own vibe and you may or may not like it as much as other Trek series. That's just how it goes.

 

[Mirror Mirror]

Stranger Things is not a period piece, it's a sci-if show that Is supposed to be humanities past.
Or more usefully, given the time-scales involved and the amount of supposition involved....Robin of Sherwood is not a period piece, it's a fantasy show that is supposed to be humanities past. (You can insert say...Outlander...if you like too.)
It's not about the real setting vs fictional setting...both are fictional settings. There's currently a film set in more or less contemporary Hampstead Heath that has all sorts of laughing criticism levelled at it for not really being very accurate to the actual place, despite being filmed there and based on some real people. It's about the approach. Trek has 700 episodes of future history documented...it has its own milieu and mis-en-scene, in just the way periods in in history do...comparing TOS to Enterprises episodes set on the defiant is roughly the same as comparing Blackadder to The Tudors basically. Comparing TOS to Voyager, is like comparing Elizabeth R to Elizabeth: The New World. This is the sense in which I suggest thinking of Trek as a period piece...I am not saying Trek is real, an actual event that will happen and has somehow been magically transmitted through time (despite what the Starfleet Technical Manual says, with its anachronistic components rendered suitable for us past dwellers.)
I am saying that the approach taken by production teams for many years, and a logical approach taken by us fans, and an approach that serves well going forwards is to approach it as a period piece...go far enough back in history and there is as much certainty and guesswork about what is what as there is going forwards after all...the history of the humble Bra was only recently thrown into disarray by new discoveries.
The dialogue in Trek is often compared, acting wise, to performing Shakespeare...a certain rhythm, terms that are not every day....in its difficulty. It's an approach. A period piece for Treks future is different to say...Buck Rogers. It is the same with Star Wars...Rogue One is a period piece, totally, in approach from the makers. Another good example is Alien: Isolation, albeit in video game form.
Star Trek Continues is even more of a period piece, in that they go as far as the replicate certain limitations, but it is plain to see that it is not a show shot on film in the sixties. It borders on an historical recreation, rather than just the general approach taken by other fan films.
Do you see?
When some daft hippy guitar tutor says 'you've got to treat your guitar like a woman' he's not saying the guitar is a woman, nor is he expecting you to buy it dinner and massage its back after a long day....though he may do, in which case, find a new guitar tutor.

The shows you listed are set within earths past, so have a set historical look. No one but a subset of trek fans think the 23rd century looks like 1966. If you make it look like TOS, it fails becase its not the 1960s, it supposed to be 2250, so people will demand it looks li ke what the future people in 2017 think it will look like.

 

[jaime]

The shows you listed are set within earths past, so have a set historical look. No one but a subset of trek fans think the 23rd century looks like 1966. If you make it look like TOS, it fails becase its not the 1960s, it supposed to be 2250, so people will demand it looks li ke what the future people in 2017 think it will look like.

If you look at the examples I give, from other shows, you will see that is not what I am saying at all. Not to mention, as someone who isn't really a big TOS fan, I am not desperately awaiting the bold colours and so much red everywhere that a TOS clone would warrant...nor the bland marks and Spencer's pyjamas, terrible wool, Fifties blue steels look of the Cage either. What I am saying is, there are certain events, figures, a general style, that belongs to Trek, and the approach DSC is taking seems in keeping with that..aside from the transporter room, which I can see what they are going for, but think they missed, on the limited evidence from that one photo. The body armour is also a step in the wrong direction, but again..we will see and there's some precedent for it from the Movie Era.

And no...a new show made now would be the future from 2017 as it is now...grow creative cojones and make that show Hollywood people. Trek is a future that started based in the sixties, and was informed as it went through later decades...2017 can inform it and change a few things, but there's no point getting knickers in a twist over PADDS vs IPad silliness. It's easily explained anyway.

 

[BillJ]

So, it's true. Discover will have it's own vibe and you may or may not like it as much as other Trek series. That's just how it goes.

Not a matter of "like", more a matter of fit. Essentially, it is a reboot. Regardless of what TPTB say.

 

[BillJ]

The shows you listed are set within earths past, so have a set historical look. No one but a subset of trek fans think the 23rd century looks like 1966. If you make it look like TOS, it fails becase its not the 1960s, it supposed to be 2250, so people will demand it looks li ke what the future people in 2017 think it will look like.

Except for the Flash Gordon transporter room...

 

[jaime]

Except for the Flash Gordon transporter room...

Maybe it's Captain Proton!
There are billions of different future imaginings...I come to Trek for for the Trek version...B5 had its, Dark matter has its Trek/cyberpunk hybrid with its heart in the late nineties...I like SF. Some futures bore me though, or are a bit rubbish...step forward Hunger Games.

 

[Jayson1]

As I said, the difference isn't about technology or modernity, it's simply a matter of art style. Makeup designers are artists, just like animators or comic-book artists are. Different artists have different character design styles. John Byrne's Superman looks very different from Curt Swan's Superman. Bruce Timm's animated Batman looks very different from Phil Bourassa's animated Batman. Star Trek aliens are artistic creations, and it's only natural to expect different artists to have different design styles. As I said, we have Phillips Klingons, Burman Klingons, Westmore Klingons, Snell Klingons, and Page Klingons, all different in design because they're the work of different artists.

All the technology does is to give the artists more freedom to put their designs on the screen. Fred Phillips was able to give us more elaborate Klingons in TMP than he could in TOS because he had more money and technology to do it with. Michael Westmore was able to create more elaborate Borg in First Contact than he could in TNG for the same reason. When it's the same artist working with different levels of budget and tech, then that's the explanation. But when it's different artists doing the creature designs, that alone is the primary explanation for the differences.




I'm not talking about the entire concept, obviously. I'm talking about the parts left over from 1960s or earlier pulp sensibilities, the parts that haven't aged as well as the rest. Stuff like a crew dominated by white men with only the odd token otherwise. In an "alternate timeline" TOS like Kelvin, one that's supposedly branched off of the same origin, the characters need to be the same people with different lives, so not too much can be changed. But in a wholesale reboot, you could have a female Kirk, a black McCoy, a cyborg Scotty, whatever you wanted. You could erase the chauvinism of the original completely rather than having to tiptoe around it while pretending it's still in continuity. There are also outdated ideas like the relatively primitive medicine in TOS, a grasp of neurology and genetics (and forensics, in "The Conscience of the King") that's less advanced than what we have today, let alone 300 years from now. There's the lack of nanotechnology and genetic medicine and other advances that will be commonplace long before the 2260s.

And of course there are the "near-future" historical events that have already not happened. We're 20 years past when the Eugenics Wars were supposed to occur. We're supposed to abandon interplanetary sleeper ships for faster space drives next year, in 2018. We're not far out from the Bell Riots or the Ares IV flight. The more time that passes, the more explicit Trek history is going to become outdated. What happens to Trek when it's actually 2063 in the real world? If it hasn't been rebooted by then, it's going to seem like a completely antiquated view of the future that never came to pass. If it's to remain relevant, sooner or later it'll have to start over with a new continuity that builds forward from the present rather than the 1960s.

The whole value of adaptations and reboots is that you can be selective in what you keep and discard. You can keep the core elements that are important -- the characters, their relationships, their values and goals, their overall situations -- but discard the side elements that age poorly and end up working against the intended message of the story. It's the same kind of updating that's been done to stories throughout history, keeping their essential ideas alive by adapting the elements around them to fit a new era and a new audience.




Yes, but more viewers today probably associate the pre-TOS era with the blue jumpsuits from ENT and the Kelvin uniforms from ST '09 (which had three colors but used blue for command) than with the drab turtlenecks from the pilots. The older generation of dedicated TOS fans is nostalgic for those drab turtlenecks, but to the mass of people in the general public, ENT and the new movies are probably more familiar than the original pilots. And the DSC uniforms seem like they could be plausible descendants of those uniform styles.

Anyway, most viewers don't care that much about continuity details. They just want to be entertained. They want the stories to be engaging and they want the show to look good. As long as the uniforms look good, most audiences won't care much about how they line up with previous shows' uniforms.

I'm sort of mixed on how I think people feel about canon and continuity. I think it does have value in a sci-fi or fantasy based show because that goes towards world building. Granted this is more for the hardcore fans but then again if it's their doesn't that help create new hardcore fans?

I think that is what helps make sci-fi shows feel more special to fans than a typical cop/doctor show might. It's when you can not only make people care about the characters but also about the made up universe they are in is when you know a show feels special. As good as "Bones" might have been doubt many people care to learn more about the "Bones" universe or setting.

As for the uniforms I disagree that the blue has taken over as what most modern fans think of when it comes to Trek. "Enterprise" was a failed show and while I think everyone thinks the Kelvin is cool we got to remember they did have multiple color uniforms on that ship. I wouldn't be shocked if most people still think first about the TOS and TNG uniforms when they think about that stuff. I do think people do like the idea of multiple kinds of uniforms being used which we saw in the Kelvin UNiverse movies. I think people would find it hokey if the characters always wore the exact same uniform no matter what situation they were in.

I would expect to see a increase in military battle gear,dress uniforms,civilian clothes when not on duty, desert garb like we do see in the teaser and maybe various types of jackets. Maybe even hats. Hat's didn't last long on Enterprise and i'm not sure how well they went over in the Kelvin Universe movies.

Jason

 

[Mr Awe]

Not a matter of "like", more a matter of fit. Essentially, it is a reboot. Regardless of what TPTB say.

I suppose it doesn't *fit* your preconceived notion of what it should be like so you're rejecting the claims of the showrunners.

Fine, consider it a reboot. It's really not but if that helps you accept it, then knock yourself out!

Unfortunately, your Luddite take on the matter is on the losing side of history. Space ship based SF series will usually update to the latest SFx technology and design sensibilities in order to appear futuristic and appeal to more viewers. If you don't like that, there's always the fan films for you.

 

[fireproof78]

Yep, it's pretty much the same thing that happened going from TOS to TMP. Totally different vibe. Discover just isn't going to have the same "vibe" as TOS just like all the different Trek series have had their own vibes. DS9 was very different from TNG even though they overlapped! Granted, everyone will have their own favorite "vibes" from the various series.

So, it's true. Discover will have it's own vibe and you may or may not like it as much as other Trek series. That's just how it goes.

I suppose it doesn't *fit* your preconceived notion of what it should be like so you're rejecting the claims of the showrunners.

Fine, consider it a reboot. It's really not but if that helps you accept it, then knock yourself out!

Unfortunately, your Luddite take on the matter is on the losing side of history. Space ship based SF series will usually update to the latest SFx technology and design sensibilities in order to appear futuristic and appeal to more viewers. If you don't like that, there's always the fan films for you.

As much as I agree with you about the feel, especially similar changes from TOS to TMP, there's no need to make it personal. "Luddite?" really? How is that helpful?

 

[USS Triumphant]

Perhaps...

We should take Trek as a future that is *always* in flux - as a reflection of the idea that our actions *now* really do still matter to the future. In the original series, the future involved a Eugenics War in the 1990s. We didn't really have that (books that suggest it happened secretly notwithstanding ), and Voyager showed a period in the 1990s that (while, yes, we don't know *everything* that was going on in the world) showed no indications of such a global war. TMP sort of retconned what TOS was supposed to look like - and then TWOK did the same thing to it a few years later. Presumably, a Trek made now could have a USS Malala Yousafzai, when none would have before, for example. Because our actions NOW change the future in little or sometimes even big ways.

Obviously, this would make a canon timeline of events very difficult to nail down. But, I think I, at least, am okay with that. Because a canon timeline of events that includes events described that are now in our past but that didn't happen would mean that WE aren't on the path to the bright future of Trek. I prefer the notion that the future is always in flux, but that Trek continues to show a bright future that we might still be on course to.

 

[Christopher]

I'm sort of mixed on how I think people feel about canon and continuity. I think it does have value in a sci-fi or fantasy based show because that goes towards world building. Granted this is more for the hardcore fans but then again if it's their doesn't that help create new hardcore fans?

I just don't see changes in artistic expression as changes in continuity. A new artist in a comic book can radically change a character's face, but it's still supposed to be the same character with the same face. For that matter, the same character played by two different actors is usually supposed to have the same face as far as the characters in the story are concerned. Recall that in the '09 movie, Spock Prime recognized the young Kirk and Scotty on sight. We see them as looking different, but the characters in-universe see them as looking the same. Maybe the same is true of the aliens, the technology, etc. It only looks different to us because the artists dramatizing the events are portraying it differently. (As I often bring up at this point, the foreword to Roddenberry's TMP novelization suggested that TOS had been a 23rd-century TV series dramatizing the Enterprise's real adventures but taking liberties with the details, and promised that TMP was a more accurate dramatization thanks to Admiral Kirk's personal vetting.)

As for the uniforms I disagree that the blue has taken over as what most modern fans think of when it comes to Trek. "Enterprise" was a failed show and while I think everyone thinks the Kelvin is cool we got to remember they did have multiple color uniforms on that ship I wouldn't be shocked if most people still think first about the TOS and TNG uniforms when they think about that stuff..

Well, of course it's impossible to say anything about "the fans" as a monolithic unit. The fact that fans constantly argue online is proof in and of itself that there is nothing that fandom universally agrees upon. But I'm not talking about the fans. I'm talking about the general public. A TV show or a movie cannot bring in a large enough audience to succeed unless it appeals to the general public -- to people who've never seen Trek at all or are only casual fans at best. To people who've maybe seen one or two of the recent movies and maybe caught a few episodes of ENT but never saw any other Trek series. The whole point of creating a new series is to create new fans, to catch the attention of people who weren't interested in Trek before and get them interested in it.

And my point was not about the TOS uniforms -- it was about the pilot uniforms. DSC is set in the 2250s, so we're talking about the era of "The Cage." But the pilot uniforms were only seen twice, so they're much less well-known than the TOS uniforms of 2266-70. To the general, non-fan audience that I'm talking about here, the look of the TOS uniforms will be familiar, but the look of the "Cage"/"Where No Man" uniforms will be an obscure bit of trivia. Again, today's casual viewers (as opposed to fans like us) thinking of the era before TOS are more likely to think of the Kelvin or NX-01 than they are to think of "The Cage" and "Where No Man."

Plus, of course, the pilot uniforms were drab and ugly. They were a product of a time when most TV was still black-and-white, so their hues were chosen to be distinguishable in grayscale more than anything else. And they look crude and cheap even compared to the regular TOS uniforms. DSC was never going to recreate the "Cage" uniforms faithfully, because it would've looked bad. So instead of trying for something broadly similar, they evidently decided that, since they had to do something different anyway, they might as well take full advantage of the freedom to be different.

I do think people do like the idea of multiple kinds of uniforms being used which we saw in the Kelvin UNiverse movies. I think people would find it hokey if the characters always wore the exact same uniform no matter what situation they were in.

That's why I like the TMP uniforms. They had so many variations, including logical, practical ones like field jackets, security armor, radiation armor, etc.

We should take Trek as a future that is *always* in flux - as a reflection of the idea that our actions *now* really do still matter to the future. In the original series, the future involved a Eugenics War in the 1990s. We didn't really have that (books that suggest it happened secretly notwithstanding ), and Voyager showed a period in the 1990s that (while, yes, we don't know *everything* that was going on in the world) showed no indications of such a global war.

I agree with your overall point, but I've never bought the argument about VGR's 1990s being incompatible with the Eugenics Wars. After all, no war in the entire 20th century was fought on United States soil (territories aside), except for a few failed attempts at infiltration and sabotage by the Germans and an almost entirely ineffectual fire balloon attack by the Japanese. And there was no evidence that the Eugenics Wars centered around the US. Khan ruled over India and Southeast Asia, and he was the most powerful of the Augment rulers. So there's no reason at all that the war couldn't have been going on elsewhere in the world and left Los Angeles untouched. That would make it essentially no different from every other 20th-century war.

 

[Mr Awe]

As much as I agree with you about the feel, especially similar changes from TOS to TMP, there's no need to make it personal. "Luddite?" really? How is that helpful?

I don't mean it as personal but it's a historical comparison that elucidates the matter. There are trends that you just can't resist. Wanting a space based SF series to not look modern will be about as effective as Luddites in trying to resist new machines. It's not going to happen.

But, I certainly didn't mean it as a negative to the poster. I'm assuming that BillJ is in fact *not* a Luddite!

 

[BillJ]

It's really not but if that helps you accept it, then knock yourself out!

Dismissing 60's visuals? Check.
Dismissing 60's attitudes? Check.
Dismissing 60's technology? Check.
Dismissing 60's geopolitical world? I imagine this is going to be a check as the Soviet Union won't exist in this version based on the real world.

So they're going to keep some minutiae, but pretty much dismiss everything else that made the original Star Trek "Star Trek". I think there are some people here deluding themselves on what is actually going on here.

Like it or not, the 1960's were a big contributor to what made Trek "Trek".