Prime A, B, and Kelvin

[KirkPicard]

Here is my rationalization of Trek universe now. There is "prime" timeline, but it has been manipulated as a result of temporal Cold War. What we see on Enterprise into Discovery is the result. A rewritten Prime if you will, without rechristening as a third alternate timeline.

TIMELINE 1 (2 versions)
Prime Timeline A:

ENT (pre Suliban, Temporal Cold War interventions)
TOS
TOS films
TNG/DS9/TNG films/VOY

Prime Timeline B:
ENT (post Temporal Cold War)
DISC

TIMELINE 2
Kelvin Timeline:
JJ films

 

[The Wormhole]

Meh, I just look at Disco as its own thing separate from Prime and Kelvin.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Why are people so obsessed with removing Discovery from the universe? It's not like plot holes are a new thing to the Trek prime universe.

If there were absolutely no plot holes, THAT would be an argument it's not in the prime universe. Or massive changes in the aesthetic of the universe.

Also the argument that season 4 of ENT happened in another universe doesn't explain why so much of the season sets up stuff from previous series.

If you need to rationalize the differences between production styles, look at it this way. The things we see on screen are different people's second hand observations of the same universe. Imagine different time travelers going to the future, observing what they see, and then telling a story based on their own interpretation, focusing on what's important to them in their own time and editing the content based on the audience they are writing for.

 

[KirkPicard]

Same universe, we now see depiction of events resulting from an altered prime timeline beginning with Enterprise.

 

[F. King Daniel]

If I feel the need to reconcile everything, I headcanon that Discovery is what's left of the Prime Universe after the Temporal War that landed Alien Nazis in the White House, after countless temporal shockwaves from Annorax's magic Krenim delete gun is fired all over the Delta Quadrant, after the Borg attacked Zefram Cohrane's launch, after prime-verse ripples from angry future Romulans upsetting Kirk's birth and after they changed up Benny Russell's meds.

Spoiler: fun repercussions to think about

TOS isn't happening the way you remember. Data's no longer the only Android in Starfleet. Voyager will be totally different because they have much better holographic technology so the EMH won't be limited to sickbay for 3 seasons. Oh yeah, and the Spore Drive means crossing the universe is no biggie, rendering Voyager's journey home and DS9's wormhole rather moot.

Of course, in real life it's an obvious reboot but they're just saying "prime universe" because CBS' market research probably showed that 10% of fans say they'll cancel their subscriptions if it's anything other and they want to keep every subscriber they can get their mitts on.

 

[BillJ]

Same universe, we now see depiction of events resulting from an altered prime timeline beginning with Enterprise.

If I feel the need to reconcile everything, I headcanon that Discovery is what's left of the Prime Universe after the Temporal War that landed Alien Nazis in the White House...

Then it really isn't the Prime timeline. Though I have no issue with the idea of the Temporal Cold War affecting the timeline and Discovery is a result of the changes.

 

[Graham]

It seems pretty obvious to me that STD is not in the Prime universe - all but officially confirmed by the last shot of the last episode, yes?

I don't really see the point of calling it "Prime B", though. If it's different it's different, and may as well have a different name to distinguish it. So call it the Disco timeline, the funkiest of the Trek timelines!

Don't see any real reason to put Enterprise into it either. We could certainly rationalise that the TCW messed up the Enterprise timeline, but they did pretty much state flat out loud on screen that the ending of Storm Front reset everything. "It's quite a sight. The timeline's resetting itself. You did it. Vosk is dead. He didn't make it back. All of the damage he caused, it never happened."

So as things stand I see it as :

Prime - TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT
Kelvin - The JJ movies.
Disco - Discovery.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Discovery references "In a Mirror, Darkly" repeatedly but ignores "Affliction"/"Divergence" which should have been HUGE influences on the era. The DSC people are being picky about what they use and what they ignore.

 

[The Wormhole]

Discovery references "In a Mirror, Darkly" repeatedly but ignores "Affliction"/"Divergence" which should have been HUGE influences on the era. The DSC people are being picky about what they use and what they ignore.

Actually, I kind of wonder, if the current writing staff had been in charge from the very start if we would have had such radically different Klingons. IIRC, the whole reinvent the Klingons was Fuller's idea and by the time he left significant money and time had already been sunk coming up with the new make-up, costumes and sets, meaning that his replacements were likely told from up above "your stuck with it now."

 

[Lord Garth]

Marty: "I don't get it. It's like we're in Hell or something!"

Doc: "No, it's Hill Valley, although I can't imagine Hell being much worse! I'm sorry, Einie, the lab is an awful, awful, awful mess!"

Doc (continuing): "Obviously the timeline has been disrupted, creating a new temporal event sequence, resulting in this Alternate Reality."

Marty: "English Doc!"

Doc (writing on a chalk board): "Here, here, here! Let me illustrate. Imagine that this line represents time: the future, the present, the past. Part of this point in time, somewhere in the past, the timeline skewed into a tangent, creating an Alternate 1985. Alternate to you, me, and Einstein, but reality for everyone else."

Doc (pulling out something): "Recognize this? It's the bag the sports book came in. I know because the receipt was still inside. I found them in the time machine... along with THIS!"

Marty: "It's the top of Biff's cane. I mean Old Biff, from the future!"

Doc: "Correct! It was in the time machine because Biff was in the time machine, with the Sports Almanac! You see, while we were in the future, Biff got the sports book, stole the time machine, went back in time and gave the book to himself at some point in the past."

Doc (reaching for Newspapers): "Look! It says right here that Biff made his first million dollar betting on a horse race in 1958. He wasn't just lucky. He knew because he had all the race results in the Sports Almanac! That's how he made his entire fortune! Look at his pocket with the magnifying glass."

Marty: "The Almanac. Son of a bitch! Stole my idea! He must've been listening when... It's my fault. The whole thing is my fault! If I hadn't bought that damn book, none of this would've ever happened!"

Doc: "It's all in the past."

Marty: "You mean the future."

Doc: "Whatever! It demonstrates precisely how time travel can be misused and why the time machine must be destroyed after we straighten all of this out."

Marty: "Right, so we go back to the future and we stop Biff from stealing the time machine!"

Doc: "We can't because if we travel into the future from this point in time it will be future of THIS reality! A reality in which Biff is corrupt, and powerful, and married to your mother, and in which this has happened to me!" (Doc holds up a newspaper that says he's been committed)

Doc (continuing): "No. The only way to repair the present is in the past, at the point in which the timeline skewed into this tangent! In order put the universe back as we remember it and get back to our reality, we have to figure out the exact date and the specific circumstances of how, where, and when Young Biff got his hands on that Sports Almanac."

Marty: "I'll ask him."

 

[pst]

i guess i've been thinking of this more in terms of storytelling.

discovery is taking place in the prime universe in the same way that sam raimi's "oz the great and powerful" takes place in oz, a fictional realm that contains a history and geography, but which has been depicted in many different ways across many different mediums. or how the new tolkien amazon series will still take place in middle earth, wether or not it's peter jackson's version, or a different take... it doesn't mean it's an alternate universe of middle earth, it's just different portrayal.

really trying not to be so hung up about continuity. really. trying. really.

 

[fireproof78]

Meh, I just look at Disco as its own thing separate from Prime and Kelvin.

Isn't that, in essence, what the OP is advocating?

 

[Tim Walker]

Trek is diversifying. Similar to Gundam.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gundam

 

[Doom Shepherd]

I have a new one, and I think I'll stick with it, especially since it's pretty much guaranteed to piss some people off:

TOS takes place in the Prime Timeline, as do all other shows except NuTrek.

With one important caveat. TOS is entertainment, in the future of the Prime Timeline.
Everything in TOS more-or-less actually happened, BUT... those logs have been adapted and sanitized and simplified and reproduced to create a series of morality plays. For children.

TOS is the far future equivalent of Veggie Tales, or Prince Valiant. Morality tales set in the nebulous past, romanticized and cuted-up for easy consumption.

Starfleet is Mother. Starfleet is Father.

 

[Lord Garth]

Rand getting raped by the evil half of Kirk in "The Enemy Within" and Kirk and Spock getting whipped by Nazis in "Patterns of Force". Not what I'd define as "cute". The scene in "The Enemy Within" still bothers me to this day. It -- by intention -- is hard to watch.

Then there's "A Private Little War" where a world is stuck fighting a Vietnam-like war and, in the end, neither side on the planet has peace. One of now battle-hardened warriors, who used to be a peaceful man, asks Kirk to help him to make more weapons at the end. An "optimistic" outcome right there, if I ever saw one...

Then there's all the torture, nearly fatal and particularly gruesome-looking at one point, that Gem has to go through in "The Empath". After McCoy endures a lot of torture of his own.

 

[Ceridwen]

Spoiler: Discovery

If the Enterprise's appearance at the end of "Will You Take My Hand" necessitates a new timeline, does re-used visual effects of the Enterprise from "The Cage" necessitate a new timeline for those appearances?

There is no other way to reconcile the visual differences, after all. What about the differences between the six-foot Enterprise-D and the smaller models? Do we blink from one timeline to another in the span of the same episode? Hell, Christopher Pike is a whole different human being between "The Cage" and "The Menagerie", they must also be two different realities, which becomes particularly confusing when footage from one ends up in the other.

 

[Ralphis]

Before any episode of DSC was released, I had wrote here several times that I wished DSC was 'officially' set in its own timeline, apart from the Prime and Kelvin, and create a Star Trek multiverse. After seeing all of season one now, my desire for this move has grown by, like, 900%. The TNG episode 'Parallels' provides some in-universe groundwork to do this.

Spoiler

I did like how DSC established that their 'Prime' timeline and their Mirror Universe were just two of an infinite number of possible timelines. So maybe they can still retroactively do this - set DSC in its own timeline. I don't *need* this to enjoy DSC, I actually enjoyed it a lot, but I think it would salve a lot of issues for them.

 

[Doom Shepherd]

Rand getting raped by the evil half of Kirk in "The Enemy Within" and Kirk and Spock getting whipped by Nazis in "Patterns of Force". Not what I'd define as "cute". The scene in "The Enemy Within" still bothers me to this day. It -- by intention -- is hard to watch.

Then there's "A Private Little War" where a world is stuck fighting a Vietnam-like war and, in the end, neither side on the planet has peace. One of now battle-hardened warriors, who used to be a peaceful man, asks Kirk to help him to make more weapons at the end. An "optimistic" outcome right there, if I ever saw one...

Then there's all the torture, nearly fatal and particularly gruesome-looking at one point, that Gem has to go through in "The Empath". After McCoy endures a lot of torture of his own.

I’m guessing you haven’t been familiarized with the uncensored versions of the Grimm fairy tales. We live in a brief Disney Age, when parents fear telling their kids about the universe’s nastiness and indifference.

 

[Ceridwen]

I’m guessing you haven’t been familiarized with the uncensored versions of the Grimm fairy tales. We live in a brief Disney Age, when parents fear telling their kids about the universe’s nastiness and indifference.

What does that have to do with your assertion that Star Trek is essentially the Disney version of the "real" Enterprise's five year mission?

(Also apologies to the mod who had to edit my above post; thank you!)

 

[lawman]

discovery is taking place in the prime universe in the same way that sam raimi's "oz the great and powerful" takes place in oz, a fictional realm that contains a history and geography, but which has been depicted in many different ways across many different mediums. or how the new tolkien amazon series will still take place in middle earth, wether or not it's peter jackson's version, or a different take... it doesn't mean it's an alternate universe of middle earth, it's just different portrayal.

really trying not to be so hung up about continuity. really. trying. really.

Personally I kinda like being hung up on continuity. It's one of the main things that makes (franchise) fiction interesting to me: worldbuilding beyond the scope of any single story.

Regardless, though, I don't see what difference you're getting at here. You're talking about different portrayals of familiar fictional settings. Clearly, though, these are mutually exclusive: it's not as if Judy Garland's Dorothy is going to show up in Sam Raimi's Oz. They're distinctly different versions. Your examples are of fantasy settings, but really... in science-fictional terms, what is a "different version" other than an "alternate reality"? Same difference.

...does re-used visual effects of the Enterprise from "The Cage" necessitate a new timeline for those appearances? There is no other way to reconcile the visual differences, after all. What about the differences between the six-foot Enterprise-D and the smaller models? Do we blink from one timeline to another in the span of the same episode? Hell, Christopher Pike is a whole different human being between "The Cage" and "The Menagerie", they must also be two different realities, which becomes particularly confusing when footage from one ends up in the other.

You're obviously attempting a reductio ad absurdum here, but it's not really persuasive. The differences you're talking about are not all commensurate. Some are downright trivial; they're easy not to notice, and indeed the show's producers made efforts to prevent them from being noticed. Others (in DSC) are more significant differences, and the producers put effort into making them different when they could've chosen otherwise.