Poll Do you consider Discovery to truly be in the Prime Timeline at this point?

Thanks a lot, Obama™!

 

Nope. NARRATIVE is part of world building. Art design serves to provide visual impact to the narrative.

Sure he can. All he has to do is justify it in the narrative. Good example: "Lawnmower Man" establishes its timeframe as one of those "five minutes into the future" stories where a new revolution in modern-day (for the 1980s) virtual reality accidentally creates a monster. Lawnmower Man 2 leaps slightly farther into the future (a year or two maybe?) and shows the world has devolved into a distopian hellscape where people use VR as a form of escapism.

Take the "Alien" films. LV-426 was originally described as "primordial" with an unbreathable atmosphere and active volcanism. Alien 2 turned this into a bleak but otherwise habitable planet Because James Cameron didn't want his actors running around in clunky space suits. So they justified the change through the magic of "terraforming."

How about "Back to the Future?" Marty McFly somehow doesn't notice that his girlfriend looks completely different between the first and second movie, so the recasting has absolutely NO narrative consequence. But the DeLorean not being able to drive on its own because its engine runs on "ordinary gas and always has?" that's actually a RETCON to explain why they can't just dump a bunch of garbage in the Mr. Fusion and get the car driving without having to hitch it to the front of a train. The retcon justifies the narrative, even if it doesn't make a lot of sense in context.

All of this works because the NARRATIVE is what holds the story together, not the visuals. You can change all kinds of things about the art style, the environment, the setting, costumes, even change actors between installments. They're all just symbols used to tell the story and are about as meaningful as the typeface in whatever novel you're reading.

 

I like the redesigned Enterprise just fine and don't mind the way it looks. I'm cool with many of the design aspects of Starfleet in this decade of history. I just think that it wouldn't bankrupt the production budget or destroy their narrative to acknowledge that other Klingons exist. We know they do, not just from seeing them but also from direct dialogue and storylines.

It's not being "toxic" to be part of a "tiny minority" of Trek fans(which I don't buy, by the way) that would like to see diversity in the species now that the differences have been set in canon. Just throw a few other makeup designs in there. Done. It worked for ENT, a series I might add got higher ratings and was seen by more people on a weekly basis than DSC has probably seen on average. The studio didn't lose money on ENT or have to cancel it because of makeup choices or production budgets. It got poor ratings and a new regime at UPN no longer wanted to actively support a weekly Trek series.

Just sayin'.

 

I would imagine that a writer who states that the main character has horns, orange skin, tufts of purple fur and three fingered hands would likely influence at least some of the choices made by the makeup designers.

 

Haven't watched Bond since

It is toxic to accuse the writers and production teams of being lazy or incompetent just because we don't agree with design choices, which I believe was @Crazy Eddie's overall point.

 

The phasers keep changing colour too! It's almost as of their consoles have RGB sliders and sparkle FX controls.

 

When Star Trek Online first launched you can change you weapon colour using a chat command, but Cryptic removed it shortly after.

They said they removed it because they had to keep the weapon colours mostly canon. It was a CBS thing.

 

I haven't accussed them of being 'lazy' - I've accussed them of being dishonest when they say - "It's the Prime Timeline of Kirk/Spock/TOS...no it's not a retcon or a reboot.." <--- Which is what the production leads were saying. Given the major redesign of the 1701 (again, the original look of the Starship/Constitution Class was used as recently as 2005 in ENT - "In a Mirror Darkly") for this production IMO that claim that it's not a retcon or reboot doesn't hold up. <--- I just wish they'd be honest and finally admit that, but that's me.

 

What would them admitting it accomplish, though? Even if it was visual changed (simple enough to do) would that mean it is no longer a reboot?

 

Well look at it this way. Now the Admiral in Star Trek III will be correct when he says "the Enterprise is twenty years old." He's just talking about the refit we didn't previously know about between Discovery and Star Trek. You would have to ask him why that one and not any of the other refits, but we've always had to ask that question with that guy, his statement never made sense. Maybe he was a fan of that refit in particular, a lot of us are.

 

This assumes that the writers/producer actually think they were being dishonest. Because I don't think they do. They very well might believe that they are writing stories that fit in "the Prime Timeline of Kirk/Spock/TOS". Their perception/perspective of what constitutes a "retcon or a reboot" is probably different than a fan's. They're thinking of actual changes to story continuity and not redesigns of make up, models and props

 

Exactly. If I can handle the shift from TOS to TMP to TWOK in visuals, I can handle DISCO's

 

Which makes their interpretations disappointing to some (not me), but not “wrong”.

 

The question that this all seems to dance around is: "Does changing visual information (alien and ship designs, planetscapes, costumes, etc.) count as continuity errors when they clash with how those things were presented in other stories that ostensibly are part of the same larger world (like how DSC uses different uniforms then what the TOS pilots showed us were being used)?"

 

This will vary from person to person. In my opinion, no it doesn't. First of all, the idea that all Starfleet and Klingon designs were seen in TOS is borderline ridiculous.

Secondly, TMP was the first time it was done. It won't be the last, and that's ok, at least for me.

YMMV and all that.

 

I suppose that's up to how one prioritizes continuity. Like if I were to take the continuity of costumes literally, then I suppose we saw the Romulans in NEMESIS go through a retro fad with outfits that their ancestors wore two hundred years earlier from ENTERPRISE, when the real reason is that it was simply a money saving measure. Kind of makes it fortunate that we didn't get Klingons in ENTERPRISE wearing the old TMP outfits that lasted all the way to DS9.

I do prefer the uniforms of DISCOVERY over the pilot turtleneck uniforms of TOS. I think that was a worthy change because they look like a good transition between the uniforms we saw in ENT and TOS. At some point they will very likely transition towards the more classic looking uniforms, albeit likely updated in the same manner as the Enterprise. That's fine by me.

 

I don’t think it does (but that’s me). I look at any TV show or movie set in non-contemporary or non-historical settings (anything fantastical, basically) as no more bound to a particular “style” than comics. As the settings are unreal, I don’t expect exact consistency from one art direction team to another. I just view it as Steve Ditko Spider-Man compared to John Romita (Sr. or Jr.) Spider-Man. Same continuity, different looks. Again, that’s me.

 

I think that's a good statement of the issue. It seems there are two main schools of thought: the "world building" school (which seems to be me and lawman and others) and the "flexible representation" school (Ovation, MakeshiftPython, fireproof78, and others). Not that I presume to speak for anyone.

I should say that I agree that changes that are explained in a plausible, sensible way don't bother me. And I do hope Discovery succeeds and I think they have done a lot of strong work on the show.

 

If they explain everything on screen would that solve the issue?

 

I have seen far too many movie and TV scripts compromised by far too many production design compromises to think that WRITERS have any say in the matter.

Hell, Star Trek has plenty of examples of that even in the spinoff series. Have you ever seen Probert's original concept drawings for Armus?

Nope.