Spoilers Tech issue with 1x06

IT'S A VISUAL REIMAGINING!!!

 

A couple of points touched on in this thread were explicitly commented on here:

https://trekmovie.com/2017/10/09/pr...-will-address-apparent-deviations-from-canon/

1.
"We talked about [site-to-site transport] a lot because we knew it was a controversial thing. And we just made the decision that on this ship, you can do it. Since Lorca is a different kind of captain he does it and other captains do not because there are dangers involved."

2.
@Dr. San Guinary suggested there were more than two Crossfield class ships built, but that seems to be confirmed false here:
"We are not the Kelvin timeline…which is a reboot of the original timeline…We are not part of that timeline, we are the original timeline with the TV shows and the movies that fit into that. We are ten years before The Original Series…Where Constitution Class ships are in comparison to where this Discovery prototype – well one of two prototypes, well now one of one prototypes – are technologically is obviously a variant. We are wildly aware of everything that appears to be a deviation from canon. We will will close out each of those issues before we arrive at the 10 year period and hit TOS."

 

Then why isn't it the Glenn or Discovery class?

 

Maybe the Glenn was originally called Crossfield but was renamed. Although I'll admit I can't come up with a good reason for that.

Also, why wasn't Archer's Enterprise called the NX? Maybe there are just some deviations from the pattern sometimes.

 

Earth Starfleet and the Federation Starfleet are two different organizations.

 

IDK - Doing soi wasn't much of a stretch for fans when ST:TMP released in 1979 so IDK what makes ST so special that their version of Klingons can't be shoehorned in the same way.

 

They line up fine with ENT and TMP+ though.

 

Yeah, they really don't, at least from my vantage point. But, even if they did, the last time I checked TOS was just as "Prime" as any of the other series or movies.

 

^^^
We actually don't know that for sure in that I have a feeling neither of the other Star Empires (Vulcan, Andorian, Tellerite) that founded 'The Federation' along with Earth felt like co-opting their space military organizations to form 'Star Fleet'. IMO - I have a feeling they all said - Hey let the Humans do it as THEY'RE the ones championing this alliance.

I mean Star Fleet effectively kept Earth's Starship Registry scheme. So why not everything else?

 

I dunno, they're still going on about honour and Kahless, they love their blades and disruptors.

Kol reminds me of a TOS 'ish Klingon.

 

That's a fair point I must admit I never really liked the name NX class and would have prefered Enterprise class even though that might have felt a bit fan service-y.

However I don't think that the lack of a USS Crossfield is such a huge continuity problem. IIRC it was never definitely established that there needed to be a prototype ship named after the class (or the class is named after?).

 

More like a death by a thousand paper cuts. Little things here and there begin to add up. But, I haven't treated Trek as one big continuity for a long time now.

 

Discovery and Glenn could've been part of an established class and still be prototypes modified with special equipment for the Spore Drive. Kirk's Enterprise was part of an established class, but it still ended up being a prototype, likely one of a kind when first rebuilt in TMP. There still would've been plenty of other Constitution-class ships around, just ones that looked a bit different. Same with the -D in the "All Good Things" timeline.

 

People have been saying that for years, but I've never seen any evidence that this is actually the case.

 

Was it ever established that was the naming convention in the 23rd Century?

 

No need for name-calling, now. Speaking as someone who might well be considered to fall under that description by any reasonable standard, I quite agree with your gist otherwise.

It could be that we have been trolled, yes...but I can remember making some pretty ridiculous and specious arguments in earnest, and occasionally sticking by them to embarrassing lengths, back when I was too young and unoccupied for my own good and new to internet fandom (not that either of these is necessarily true of any poster involved here) and relied more on the Okuda Chronology and Encyclopedia for reference—fantastically fun and invaluable resources to have had, but far from perfectly accurate or complete, much as can be said of Memory Alpha today—than upon close review of the episodes themselves, which weren't as available then, not even all out on DVD, let alone to be streamed instantly on Netflix or CBS All Access. There weren't even sites up with searchable scripts for or transcripts of them quite yet, at least not that I knew about.

My thinking was often simplistic and narrow; I had that whole quasi-religious "what is written in this book must be canon, because they checked it all out, and it's official!" thing going on. I recall how inexplicable and infuriating I would find it when someone like @Timo would suggest (or insist with absolute conviction and tenacity, at times) that just maybe they had actually gotten it all wrong and we were really looking at a completely different situation than was thought by them, and consequently me. Boy, was I ever the charmer!

Nowadays, I always try (time allowing, of course) to check stuff out for myself, get the exact quote in context from the aired episode, which one sometimes finds to slightly differ from what was scripted, or from what was transcribed. After all, actors and transcribers are only human, just like the art department and the effects crew and the writers and the viewers...including we nitpicking fan boys! (And yes, the irony is not lost on me that this is really just substituting one quasi-religious "canon" for another, even if it's one closer and more "accurate" to the original source. I'm still a nitpicker and a fan at heart, I guess.)

And now, I really appreciate the creative thinking and "outside the box" (but almost always still grounded and well-founded) interpretations of people like @Timo, and see sense in their approach and (maybe not all, but many) of their arguments that I did not before. I've learned to better recognize and value the "wiggle room" and the innumerable ways it can be exploited and finessed to open up further storytelling possibilities, or to fill in plot holes and reconcile inconsistencies in existing stories—which again, there will always be, whatever the extent to which the people making a given show or film at a given time strive and take care to avoid it, or don't.

Hmm...what was my point in all of this blathering? (And how many more times shall I put poor @Timo on the spot in recounting such reminiscences? It's just that the memories are so vivid to this day!) I suppose it was that one needn't be a troll to stubbornly persist in a flawed argument that flouts the evidence. I've never been a troll, but I've certainly done that, sometimes obnoxiously, though I hope not recently. So just maybe we should give @marsh8472 the benefit of the doubt, there. It may very well be as you say, that he won't change his mind, but maybe later if he looks back on this after it's had some time to sink in he'll see the logic in what some of us have said. And even if not, aren't false statements and faulty arguments better refuted and challenged when repeated than allowed to stand with no response?

Basically, it's a susceptibility this old chestnut in action, and believe me when I say I've been on all sides of the scenario at one time or another:


In any case, though it has gone on and around a bit long now (not least because of me), I will say that this discussion among others here has been stimulating (if frustrating at times) and has actually helped me both clarify my thoughts on the matter and find my entrance into the ongoing discourse about the new show. Plus it led me to review some of the dialogue in these early TNG episodes and find a few differences to the scripts and a few minor errors in the online transcripts, which can now be amended (see below). So, as wastes of time go, it hasn't exactly been a total waste.

That snowball came two episodes later, in "Angel One" (TNG).

Then this, the week after:

It wasn't that Minuet was realistic-looking or seemed to exhibit aspects of personality that distinguished her from the holocharacters of "The Big Goodbye" (who I think arguably were and did as well) but rather her "uncanny" ability to respond intuitively and adaptively (even preemptively) to "subtle" and seemingly "subconscious" cues. She was specifically programmed and tailored to be a lure, and is effective to the point of captivating the genuine romantic interest and eliciting the personal emotional attachment of a character known to get around a fair bit with the ladies who doesn't seem to otherwise have a preference for holograms over flesh and blood.

And I notice that while there ultimately is something extraordinary going on with Minuet, each time our heroes twig to it, they dismiss it as something which, while remarkable, could reasonably be accounted for by ordinary circumstances, as they initially believe that the Bynars have performed "nothing more" than an "enhancement" to correct the "problems" they had with the Holodeck in "The Big Goodbye"...

PICARD: Captain's log, stardate 41365.9... The Enterprise has been ordered to Starbase 74, in orbit around Tarsas III. A routine maintenance check of all systems will be made, and certain upgrades completed, including the Holodeck, with which we've had problems. I anticipate a glowing report. The ship has performed magnificently, beyond anyone's expectations.

[...]

RIKER: How much has been changed? What exactly did you do?
ONE ONE: Enhancement...
ZERO ZERO: ...nothing more.

[...]

PICARD: The sophistication of this programming is remarkable.
MINUET: In what way?
PICARD: The Holodeck has given us woodlands and ski slopes, figures that fight, and fictional characters with whom we can interact, but you...you're very different. You adapt. You spoke to me in French.
MINUET: It was very simple. When I heard your name, I merely accessed the foreign language bank.
PICARD: That's very impressive.

[...]

PICARD: She's so very different from the other images we've experienced on the Holodeck, isn't she? She's...she's more intuitive.
RIKER: It's as though she'd been plugged into my subconscious. She already knows what I want her to say before I'm aware of it myself.
PICARD: I suppose it's an understandable progression. Computers make decisions based on inputs, and we humans give off a multitude of subtle signs that...that communicate our emotions.
RIKER: It's uncanny. I could develop feelings for Minuet, exactly as I would for any woman.
PICARD: Doesn't love always begin that way, with the illusion more real than the woman?

[...]

RIKER: She's gone. I tried variations of the program, others appeared, but not Minuet.
PICARD: Maybe it was all part of the Bynars' programming. But you know, Number One, some relationships just can't work.

At the end there is even ostensibly some small hope/doubt left as to whether the Holodeck might have sustained Minuet on its own without the Bynars, and even after Riker repeatedly fails to reproduce her, Picard only gently suggests that "maybe" she owed her existence solely to their tinkering. (Though it was later reiterated in "Future Imperfect" that she was uniquely "part of a very special program" and ultimately persisted only as a fantasy in Riker's mind.) Essentially, it can be seen as a reset button being hit at the end of the episode, with the Holodeck having gained a little "something extra" temporarily (or did it?) and then lost it again (or did it?). We did later see sentience emerge in other holograms, so...there's that. I'll leave others to delve into the details further for now, and see what shakes out.

Incidentally, as I said above, this episode is a good example of how there are sometimes slight differences (though not particularly important ones to the argument here in this case) between the dialogue as scripted, as delivered, and as transcribed. Only discovered it by checking those scenes in the episode against Chakoteya's transcript (which she may have done herself or may have had submitted by someone else) and the script itself. Anyway, the above is corrected by me. (Full disclosure: I'll be sending my corrected version of these bits her way, so it may replace her current version soon. I have submitted corrections to her before, and she is quite welcoming and agreeable about it, so I encourage everyone else to do the same if anyone happens to notice further errors.)

Continuity is indeed exactly what those examples were, though. I don't find them egregiously problematic in any way on that front today, and am mystified that anyone still does after all this time. Both the Ferengi and the Borg were established as having repeatedly had fleeting and incompletely documented encounters with humans and Starfleet and allies that significantly predated the "first" contacts with them that we saw play out in TNG, long before ENT came around. It had already been implied to some extent before the first episodes in which they each were seen, in fact, and had been followed up on to some extent in each series from TNG on, in "The Battle" (TNG), "Little Green Men" (DS9), and "Dark Frontier" (VGR) to name a few. It all hangs together, give or take.

Heck, "Regeneration" was just following up on natural implications of the First Contact movie, to which ENT was the chronological successor storywise—remember the Phoenix in the credits and Cochrane in the pilot, and all the story threads with the Vulcans, etc.—and in doing so it managed to bring the whole complete Borg saga from all the previous shows together by connecting back to "Q Who?" and closing the loop on the "Pogo paradox" that the events of FC were described as being part of in "Relativity" (VGR). And since they're all tied up and locked into that crazy business temporally, it explains why we never had more trouble with them in the interim—i.e., they never pop up in TOS, though of course, there's nothing to say there couldn't be other bits to the puzzle that could be revealed in DSC if they wanted to, it seems to me—and why, if they have time travel capability, they don't continue to meddle further in history and pop up everywhere, and weren't (bigger) players in the Temporal Cold War, and so on. Perhaps it wasn't needed, but I like the package better with it than without it.

(I had stronger reservations about the Klingon forehead "resolution" personally, which felt a tad too forced to me, but I'll be re-watching that sometime soon when I have time, and also waiting to see what if anything DSC does with that storyline. I suspect that the Augment virus from ENT may be among the bag of "impossible" tricks at the disposal of Mókai's House of Spies mentioned by L'Rell in "The Butcher's Knife..." along with, probably, the surgical techniques used to alter Arne Darvin in "The Trouble With Tribbles" and the mind-sifter from "Errand of Mercy" [TOS]...but we shall have to wait and see how and if any of that bears out in any way and what larger implications may follow as DSC continues. I might end up being really glad those ENT eps were there to build on. Or not, we'll see.)

-MMoM

 

I guess the closest we came would be the Excelsior and Excelsior-class.

 

Then again, what else could the convention be? I get "Town class" for a bunch of ships named after towns, none of which is USS Town. Heck, perhaps "Starship class" is the same thing, declaring that every ship in this class is named after famed starships. And there could be dozens of Starship classes, just like there are plenty of Town classes or County classes or River classes in the Royal Navy.

But are Glenn and Discovery examples of various kinds of Crossfield?

Timo Saloniemi

 

Well Glenn and Crossfield were test pilots (Glenn was also an astronaut), Discovery is the odd one out here.

 

Sometimes there is an outlier in a class. USS Kearsarge (BB-5) was an American battleship built around 1900. All the other 70 or so battleships planned, built, cancelled or otherwise named, were named after states of the United States of America. Kearsarge is the only ship of all of the American battleship to not be named after a state? Why?

Because it was named after a famous American warship that was wrecked shortly before this battleship was ordered. Congress gets to name ships. That was one reason that battleships were named after states and many class ships are named after landlocked states, as that gets funding from those states and approval from their congressmen to get the ships built. Kearsarge was a famous name, like Enterprise is today, so they made an exception to get this ship funded.

Perhaps USS Discovery (NCC-1031) was named after a recently lost starship, or a much older vessel that was retired, and the Federation Council wanted a new ship to carry that name, and to get funding what more Crossfield-class ships, one was named Discovery. What would be worse would be if USS Crossfield was never completed with that name. Her name is still the class name, but the ship was renamed to say, Discovery, before she was completed.