Come on, Trek fans have been coming up with convoluted excuses for nearly fifty years! It's part of the fun.
Yes. No. Maybe? But you would think self-proclaimed "superfans" would've had their shit together more than this bunch has.
Spoilers Visual continuity - Does Discovery strictly need to show past designs... at all?
- Thread starter INACTIVERedDwarf
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Yes. No. Maybe? But you would think self-proclaimed "superfans" would've had their shit together more than this bunch has.
It's a fair point. I just feel like we tried the slavish fan service in Enterprise's last season, with less than stellar results.
You can't expect a new creative team pitching a new Trek series to be beholden to what has gone before. The essence is there - the ships have saucers and nacelles, the bridge has a viewscreen, a big chair and a helm console at the front, there's a recognisable transporter room etc.
I know this stuff is important to a lot of people, and imagine if you haven't particularly enjoyed the characters or the story, it would really irritate you. I've enjoyed the series so I've been able to gloss over and accept the stylistic changes.
I guess that's the bottom line. If you otherwise like the show, you'll go with it. If you don't enjoy it, the visual changes likely only increase the alienation.
I think the show has had a couple of real highs, a couple of real lows and the rest is decidedly "meh". It is just the nagging feeling that nothing of real consequence can happen in the universe because they've hemmed themselves into the "Prime" narrative.
The visual changes just underscore what a huge waste Discovery is in the grand scheme of the Trek universe. It is like a Pocket Books novel that has to put all the toys back the way they found them.
It could've blazed its own trail storywise, but chose to play it safe.
For one or two things, sure. But in Discovery it's pretty much every single thing! Brief list:Come on, Trek fans have been coming up with convoluted excuses for nearly fifty years! It's part of the fun.
Holographic technology
forcefield technology
Starfleet designs
Starfleet uniforms
Size of Federation ships
Klingon makeup and costuming
Klingon ship design
Cloaking devices being common
Using insanely invasive surgery to convert Ash Tyler into a human when the Augment virus should do
total absence of Augment virus/TOS-style Klingons
Spock having a secret soul sister
a pre-TOS war with the Klingons
site-to-site beaming
spore jump technology
women captains in the 23rd century (although that is a shitty one I'm putting it in for completeness' sake)
And probably loads more. It's like trying to reconcile Jumanji with the Star Trek universe, for the amount of headcanon it requires.
I got that feeling with Enterprise, but not with Discovery. They've already introduced the idea of parallel universes as a key part of the narrative so there's no reason to take the suggestion it's the "prime" universe at face value. Let's see how the series ends.
Burnham has to have the best! She's on a bigger ship than Spock. Made First Officer before Spock. Was in line to be a Captain before Spock. Interacted with the Mirror Universe before Spock. Got into a war with the Klingons before Spock. Mutinied before Spock.
I sort of agree. Except I always argued for Prime Timeline. I also argued for why prequels are generally bad idea. It’s the prequel part that is the problem, and we are left wondering HOW they will sort things out rather than IF, pretty early on. In two universes now...because we know that the Terran Empire is still an ongoing concern about 12 years from now. The problem isn’t that it’s not a reboot, it’s that it’s a prequel, and all the big things have already been done to a certain extent. Which should mean focussing on the characters...but they too are tightly bound already to elements of continuity. Every new thing they put in is either not really a new thing or has to be taken out before the end (toys in the box as you say.)
It’s a bit like the Tim Lebbon Alien book...it’s a great sequel to Alien, but the things we see aren’t really new to us, even if they are to Ripley, and fun as it is, at the end it has to all be taken away (literally from a certain point of view) because we know where Ripley is where Aliens begins.
Meh. I could come up with a similar list for Enterprise or the Abrams films. Or even within any of the other shows. Whenever a new Trek series comes out there's a load of changes that aren't consistent with another production team's take.
But the Abrams films are a reboot. Which means they can run whatever direction they want with the universe. See: destruction of Vulcan, death of Amanda. It is a shame we never got to see more of Sarek's story in that timeline.
Only partially, they used the convoluted explanation of the differences as a story point, which just meant fans nitpicked everything that should have been unaffected by the Narada. I'd rather they had just done a reboot, and I'd rather the DIS producers didn't even address whether their show was "Prime" or not. I guess it was contractural so Bad Robot wouldn't kick off.
There were forcefields in TOS
Visual Reboot, plus 10-15 years after the Enterprise launched, no reason to be exact duplicates of the aesthetic.
Visual Reboot
Nothing wrong with that, nothing in TOS runs counter to it.
Visual reboot
Visual reboot
Was possible in TOS.
Will be explained according to the writers.
And considered dangerous, twelve-years later in-universe.
The Day of the Dove said:
Of course, now we know that Spock is pretty much wrong about everything.
Lorca doesn't give a shit.
Plus it was his personal lab, he could have had a receiver installed in it.
We also had Burnham order a site-to-site transport to Sick Bay in one of the episodes. People just need to get over this lining up with TOS. At least if lining up means "actually following the story points and technological level and limits in-universe as defined in TOS".
I was there for both and I'm not sure you can to this extent. ENT has the same cloaking issue and a bunch of "secret" first contacts, and the Kelvin movies are now officially their own separate thing with time ripples affecting the past and future (although in that case there was gnashing of teeth for years)
That's just a pedantic way of saying "reboot". Imagine a DSC Klingon and Worf in the same room and try and explain the differences in anatomy - Worf doesn't have ridges down his neck, for example. It doesn't work, thus they're not part of the same world. Thus Discovery is a different version of the Star Trek world.
explained ad nauseam
existed in TOS, no contradiction there
I see no contradiction yet
judging by the changes in uniforms during DS9, redesigns every 5 years or so seems absolutely normal for Starfleet
I don't think we have seen Federation ship classes yet that were featured in other shows, so I really see no contradiction here
changes quite often in universe. I don't see the point
not a fan of the new D7 either, but the rest of the ships look great and are no contradiction
the whole 'they are not common' thing was a huge plot point earlier this season. Klingons were killed over that fact
the less aknowledgement the Augment virus gets, the better
thank Cthulhu. Nothing makes me throw my remote at the screen like that stupid shit virus
yeah, it's like Spock never talks about his family until he has to for reasons. like Sybock, who he endlessly chats about during TOS
totally in-canon
was possible in TOS, no contradiction here
will never be mentioned again. that's part of the plot
really?
we don't talk about it with outsiders
Now they're actually common enough that Starfleet had to come up with counter-measures or risk losing the war.
Worf would be updated to fit the new design.
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