I wonder if these will ever see the light of day.
so the producers and writers said that discovery will lead into TOS (60's aesthetics and all)...
- Thread starter crashchaos
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Talking about rationalizing the continuity problems in Discovery reminds me of that TNG episode "Remember" where the universe kept changing and everyone was able to logically rationalize the changes except Crusher.
CRUSHER: Are all members of the crew accounted for?
DATA: Yes, Doctor.
CRUSHER: How many are there?
DATA: There are one hundred and fourteen people on the Enterprise.
CRUSHER: What?
DATA: That is the exact number there should be.
CRUSHER: There are now over nine hundred missing. Deck after deck of this ship is deserted now. How do you account for all the empty rooms? If there are supposed to be only a hundred and fourteen people on board, why all the extra space?
DATA: Transportation of colonists, diplomatic missions, emergency evacuations.
...(when picard and crusher are the only ones left)
PICARD: Beverly, perhaps it would be best if you were to confine yourself to Sickbay until we arrive.
CRUSHER: It's all perfectly logical to you, isn't it? The two of us roaming about the galaxy in the flagship of the Federation. No crew at all.
PICARD: We've never needed a crew before.
Maybe Discovery is taking place in one of those warp static bubbles
CRUSHER: Are all members of the crew accounted for?
DATA: Yes, Doctor.
CRUSHER: How many are there?
DATA: There are one hundred and fourteen people on the Enterprise.
CRUSHER: What?
DATA: That is the exact number there should be.
CRUSHER: There are now over nine hundred missing. Deck after deck of this ship is deserted now. How do you account for all the empty rooms? If there are supposed to be only a hundred and fourteen people on board, why all the extra space?
DATA: Transportation of colonists, diplomatic missions, emergency evacuations.
...(when picard and crusher are the only ones left)
PICARD: Beverly, perhaps it would be best if you were to confine yourself to Sickbay until we arrive.
CRUSHER: It's all perfectly logical to you, isn't it? The two of us roaming about the galaxy in the flagship of the Federation. No crew at all.
PICARD: We've never needed a crew before.
Maybe Discovery is taking place in one of those warp static bubbles
QFT.
QFT.
Except it isn't true at all.
People managed to rationalize away the constant continuity errors in TOS. And in everything ever since. After that, Discovery should be child's play.
And that's exactly what it was MEANT to be. This does not, strictly speaking, appear to be the case for Discovery.
Of course they are, in various small and large ways. It's just that this is the first time since TMP that the contradictions have not been directly reconciled within the fourth wall. That was something unique to the Spinoff Era where everything HAD to have an explanation for why it was different, even when the explanation didn't make any sense. It's more likely that Trek's standard of continuity is being loosened a bit, in the sense that the production team is no longer made up of people who think everything HAS to be explained in order to avoid confusing the viewers.
IMO, it's a different attitude about the expectations of the audience. The Spinoff series torpedoed a lot of creative decisions because they were afraid of confusing or annoying viewers. Berman's famous "sonic wallpaper" was a deliberate attempt to make the background music as boring as possible so people with crappy TVs wouldn't complain about the soundtrack, and their refusal to include a Constitution class or a sovereign class anywhere in the regular series was just thinly-veiled vanity. Their story choices had a similar atmosphere of risk aversion, and ultimately their approach to continuity probably suffers from this as well. Discovery, by contrast, seems to be helmed by people who are making NONE of those same assumptions; they don't think their viewers are so easily confused (even though some of us legitimately are) and the soundtrack is easily the best music Star Trek has had on a TV series since at least "Way of the Warrior". Their approach to continuity seems to be similar: they're pushing the boundaries of what previous series was possible and are not at all concerned with how the viewers are going to reconcile the changes with what they've seen in the past. They're expecting us to do the math, enjoy the ride, and use our imaginations a little bit.
Which means it's a whole new era and a whole new approach. Our assumptions about how continuity actually works are no longer valid because the producers are making VASTLY different assumptions about what their audience is looking for. This is a good thing.
Nice post. I agree with this wholeheartedly.
I think the other thing that's important to acknowledge is that Star Trek was never meant to be a franchise that tells one long story (continuity). It was episodic television, that then had spin-offs within the same universe because people found that branding and universe fun and interesting to revisit. As the Okudas, as authors of the Star Trek Chronology said "it's actually pretty amazing how well it all holds up."
But, it was never MEANT to hold up very well.
Also, people confuse the continuity that was accomplished during the Berman era with how things should be across all 51 years, and that's not really realistic. Those shows were all run under the same producers, writers, etc. There was crossover in the writing staffs and production staffs...and they were often being made concurrently (or right on the heels of each other) so it was much easier and made more sense to hold to some form of continuity in that structure at that time.
It's never been important to me. Ever. So, it's hard for me to walk in the shoes of the people who tie their enjoyment of the franchise to the quality of continuity. I just don't relate to that as being a measure of something that determines whether something is "good" or not. I couldn't really care less.
Because...you know....it's not real.
I contend that this conclusion is based almost solely on your (and others') lack of imagination and/or faith in what has been repeatedly communicated to us by the production team. And whatever its basis, it's entirely premature. We are halfway through the first season. This is way too early to judge. Not nearly enough evidence has been presented to us to make such a determination, even if it were up to us to make it.
Total BS. As @King Daniel Paid CBS Plant can tell you, there are lots and lots of perceived contradictions in post-TMP Treks that have never been directly reconciled onscreen. Of course, I emphasize perceived, because many of them are not actual contradictions at all. Some are, of course, but that never kept any of them from being "straight sequels/prequels" to TOS, as you put it. (The only ones that haven't been are the Kelvin films...and their production teams never tried to pretend or deceive anyone into thinking otherwise, so far as I recall.)
-MMoM
Except the writers and producers have said DSC is, just like they did with Enterprise.
Has this been addressed? http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/2223 There's supposed to be a cold war with "unremitting hostility" between the Klingons and Federation from 2223 to 2293. Mentioned on Star Trek 6 and shown on a computer screen in ENT episode "In the Mirror Darkly Part 2". But in the pilot episode the captain says "Almost no one has seen a Klingon in a hundred years" which would cover a time span from 2156 to 2256. An admiral also says "Next time, you might try not disturbing the property of a warrior race we've hardly spoken to for a hundred years." That would be over 3 decades where they are having unremitting hostility with the Klingons while almost never seeing the Klingons at the same time.
Episode "The Trouble with Tribbles"
KIRK: Mister Spock, immediate past history of the quadrant?
SPOCK: Under dispute between the two parties since initial contact. The battle of Donatu Five was fought near here twenty three solar years ago. Inconclusive.
KIRK: Analysis of disputed area?
SPOCK: Undeveloped. Sherman's Planet is claimed by both sides, our Federation and the Klingon Empire. We do have the better claim.
States in 2245 there was a battle between the federation and klingons during the time period where almost no one had seen the klingons.
Episode "The Trouble with Tribbles"
KIRK: Mister Spock, immediate past history of the quadrant?
SPOCK: Under dispute between the two parties since initial contact. The battle of Donatu Five was fought near here twenty three solar years ago. Inconclusive.
KIRK: Analysis of disputed area?
SPOCK: Undeveloped. Sherman's Planet is claimed by both sides, our Federation and the Klingon Empire. We do have the better claim.
States in 2245 there was a battle between the federation and klingons during the time period where almost no one had seen the klingons.
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^Yes, all directly addressed in "The Vulcan Hello" (DSC) itself. The key words in "almost no one" and "hardly spoken to" are almost and hardly. There were intermittent "terror raids" (like the one that orphaned Michael) and other "fleeting run-ins" in between which the Klingons remained "relentlessly hostile" toward the Federation. T'Kuvma specifically mentions the Battle of Donatu V as the last time they had battled the Feds in "Battle At The Binary Stars" (DSC).
Note that Spock's "almost seventy years of unremitting hostility"—not "hostilities" in the sense of open fighting—also includes the period of TOS in which the two powers only briefly came to the point of war in "Errand Of Mercy" before the Organians imposed a nominal peace treaty, but despite which there continued to be hostility and occasional skirmishes; see "The Trouble With Tribbles" (TOS), "Elaan Of Troyius" (TOS), "Day Of The Dove" (TOS), etc.
-MMoM
Note that Spock's "almost seventy years of unremitting hostility"—not "hostilities" in the sense of open fighting—also includes the period of TOS in which the two powers only briefly came to the point of war in "Errand Of Mercy" before the Organians imposed a nominal peace treaty, but despite which there continued to be hostility and occasional skirmishes; see "The Trouble With Tribbles" (TOS), "Elaan Of Troyius" (TOS), "Day Of The Dove" (TOS), etc.
-MMoM
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^Yes, all directly addressed in "The Vulcan Hello" (DSC) itself. The key words in "almost no one" and "hardly spoken to" are almost and hardly. There were intermittent "terror raids" (like the one that orphaned Michael) and other "fleeting run-ins" in between which the Klingons remained "relentlessly hostile" toward the Federation. T'Kuvma specifically mentions the Battle of Donatu V as the last time they had battled the Feds in "Battle At The Binary Stars" (DSC).
Note that Spock's "almost seventy years of unremitting hostility"—not "hostilities" in the sense of open fighting—also includes the period of TOS in which the two powers only briefly came to the point of war in "Errand Of Mercy" before the Organians imposed a nominal peace treaty, but despite which there continued to be hostility and occasional skirmishes; see "The Trouble With Tribbles" (TOS), "Elaan Of Troyius" (TOS), "Day Of The Dove" (TOS), etc.
-MMoM
That seems uncharacteristic for them to hide for 100 years like that. I would have expected that to be more of a romulan thing. I'd keep an eye on this one. I have a feeling we'll probably see what the linguistical limits of "almost no one" and "hardly spoken to" are. I'll put it in the future contradiction category.
Space is big so it depends on which way they were expanding.
Oddly enough, that episode is held by me as the most pivotal episode in Doctor Who history, as its basic principles are what I believe is part of the physics behind warp matrix engineering and transdimensional engineering. Love that episode!
This is exactly what TOS posits with regard to the Romulans - fought an entire war without even seeing each other once. I'm sure you'd be the first to moan if that were ignored.
Firstly, the quotes are all caveated - "almost", "hardly" etc. They're not saying there has been exactly zero contact of any kind between the two empires. A couple of isolated battles over a century and a "fuck you" response to a Christmas card ever now and then is both unremittingly hostile (especially viewed from the point of view of someone at the other end of open hostilities) and consistent with 'hardly ever' seeing them pre Discovery.
Here's an issue from TNG "The Nth Degree"
BARCLAY [OC]: We have always perceived the maximum speed of the Enterprise as a function of warp, but I know now there are no limits. We will explore new worlds that we could never before have reached in our lifetime.
That's not technically true... Spore drive
BARCLAY [OC]: We have always perceived the maximum speed of the Enterprise as a function of warp, but I know now there are no limits. We will explore new worlds that we could never before have reached in our lifetime.
That's not technically true... Spore drive
Here's an issue from TNG "The Nth Degree"
BARCLAY [OC]: We have always perceived the maximum speed of the Enterprise as a function of warp, but I know now there are no limits. We will explore new worlds that we could never before have reached in our lifetime.
That's not technically true... Spore drive
If the spore drive is retired or otherwise classified Barclay wouldn't know about it.
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