Star Trek Discovery Writing Staff

[BillJ]

The problem with considering TOS to be the "gold standard" for canon is TOS wasn't concerned with internal consistency at all. Hell, it's not even entirely clear in the first half of Season 1 if the Federation exists...

I've yet to hear anyone here complain about the use of the Federation and Starfleet in Discovery. So, yes, TOS will have some of its ideas moored in favor of something better that comes along. But, it has to actually be something better.

Treating Spock as an uneducated idiot isn't something better...

 

[shapeshifter]

I am reminded of the years following the Kelvin Timeline release in that forum - thousands of similar complaints by JJ Trek haters being explained away by the same people who are now making the same complaints about Discovery. Weird world, man.

 

[Greg Cox]

For me (and I can only speak for me), it is an all or nothing proposition. .

See, that's the part I balk at. Why does it have to be either/or, all or nothing?

As I've written before, I'm perfectly happy to stipulate that DISCO is 80% consistent with the previous series, or 72% depending on your priorities, which is good enough for entertainment purposes. Continuity, visual or otherwise, is a virtue, but it's not the only virtue or even the most important. It's a means to an end, not an end to itself. Preserving the sacred "Canon" is not Job One.

It's the old continuity with a bit of a face lift. Nothing too confusing or distracting there, unless you insist on 100% fidelity to TOS, in which case you're just setting yourself up for disappointment.

 

[Noname Given]

I am reminded of the years following the Kelvin Timeline release in that forum - thousands of similar complaints by JJ Trek haters being explained away by the same people who are now making the same complaints about Discovery. Weird world, man.

JJ Abrams said up front ST2009 was a reboot, hence nothing to 'explain away'. The ST: D Executive Prodiction and Writing staff have claimed from day one that "It's in the Prime Universe" and "We know and respect Star trek canon, don't worry, it all works out in the end..." (This was prior to them knowing they had a Season 2; so going by Season 1 - no that latter statement is false or at best dishonest)

But ST2009 and ST: D are apples and oranges in that it's the ST: D who consistently claimed there's it's not a reboot or retcon. Alll evidence would point to the contrary of that statement to date.

 

[lawman]

To be fair, they walked back the Romulan cloak in the season four arc, and acknowledged the original appearance as a mistake.

They did? I honestly don't recall that. What episode are you thinking of?

The problem with considering TOS to be the "gold standard" for canon is TOS wasn't concerned with internal consistency at all. Hell, it's not even entirely clear in the first half of Season 1 if the Federation exists, or if the Enterprise is just an Earth vessel that Spock happens to have chose to serve upon. Aside from Mudd and Pike, I think TOS only referenced the events of a prior episode once. It wasn't until TAS, the movies, and early TNG that it was decided that Trek would build on what came before rather than endlessly come up with new one-off ideas.

I'll have to disagree with you here. I think the original Star Trek put a lot of effort into internal consistency... certainly more so than a lot of other TV series, especially given the parameters of the era when it was produced (which actively discouraged having episodes cross-reference one another, to facilitate syndication deals). The classic Making of Star Trek (and later books in a similar vein) shows the painstaking efforts the show's creators put into worldbuilding, in terms of both storytelling and design, precisely because it was SF and they couldn't take audience familiarity for granted. That doesn't mean they could anticipate everything, which is why there was inevitably some "early installment weirdness," as always happens when writers have to craft stories based on nothing but the show bible without having actually seen any episodes yet... but on the whole, I think TOS hangs together remarkably well.

I am reminded of the years following the Kelvin Timeline release in that forum - thousands of similar complaints by JJ Trek haters being explained away by the same people who are now making the same complaints about Discovery. Weird world, man.

It's been a few years, so I don't recall who exactly argued what at the time, and I'm loathe to toss around accusations of hypocrisy. For my own part, FWIW, I actively loathed the Abrams films, and whatever my complaints about DSC, I think the show is still a marked improvement over them in most respects.

 

[BillJ]

They did? I honestly don't recall that. What episode are you thinking of?

The three-parter they did. Where the Romulan ships were hiding themselves with holographic projectors.

 

[BillJ]

See, that's the part I balk at. Why does it have to be either/or, all or nothing?

As I've written before, I'm perfectly happy to stipulate that DISCO is 80% consistent with the previous series, or 72% depending on your priorities, which is good enough for entertainment purposes. Continuity, visual or otherwise, is a virtue, but it's not the only virtue or even the most important. It's a means to an end, not an end to itself. Preserving the sacred "Canon" is not Job One.

It's the old continuity with a bit of a face lift. Nothing too confusing or distracting there, unless you insist on 100% fidelity to TOS, in which case you're just setting yourself up for disappointment.

I'm not insisting on 100% fidelity with TOS, but it would've been nice if they had actually tried. Instead they gave us TNG rank pips, godawful uniforms and an unrecognizable "D-7".

I'm just of the mind that "we'll follow the story but torpedo the visuals" is non-sense. They could have made something that would've done the TOS look proud. That was undeniably TOS, but in a modern context.

YMMV.

 

[Christopher]

What's futuristic is subjective, granted, but either way, that doesn't mean Trek has to pretend to be portraying a vision of our particular future.

That's taking things too literally, thought. Trek's futurism is not about nitpicking whether this technology or that event might actually happen in our future. That's missing the whole point. Trek's futurism is symbolic. It's about the idea that we can build a better future, that our science and our wisdom will improve our lives if we trust in them, that we should be nostalgic for tomorrow instead of yesterday. So if Trek clings to depicting its future technology in exactly the same way that shows 30 or 50 years ago did, that's a retro, nostalgic element that gets in the way of the message. And the message matters more than the superficial details of its execution.

Of course nobody believes that our actual future will turn out like Star Trek. That's such an obviously ludicrous notion that it's a waste of everyone's time even to suggest it. Of course it's a fictitious, symbolic future. But it's still one that has meaning in the way it directs our attention forward rather than backward. So it should be extrapolated from today's ideas of what the future might hold, rather than the 1960s' ideas of same.

I realize that you were the author of the Eugenics Wars novels, for heaven's sake, and you did a nice job of re-imagining them as "covert" wars (not to mention of throwing in a lot of clever Easter eggs), but it struck me as quixotic in the first place to need to reimagine them. Why not just tell a story of the Eugenics Wars as an alternate history thing — as an open, global conflict, as they were (obviously) originally imagined in "Space Seed"? (Not a rhetorical question, BTW, I'm genuinely curious... was the choice of approach on those books originally your own idea, or Pocket's, or the licensors?...)

That version of the story has been told too, in IDW's Khan comics miniseries. The problem with "why" questions like that is that they presume there's some single "right" way to tell a story, and that's utter bull. The only right way is what feels right to the person telling the story, and if two different people tell the same story, they're going to make different choices in how they tell it. And that's the value of Trek not having a uniform tie-in continuity -- there's room for different variations on the same theme.

What's to update, if it's clearly not predicting our "own" future?

Science fiction does not "predict." Like I said, that's taking it way too literally. Only liars, charlatans, and delusional people claim they can predict the future. Science fiction writers are not attempting anything of the sort. We don't "predict," we speculate. We extrapolate. We explore possibilities and engage in allegory. So it's not about the superficial, literal surface level of things. It's about the underlying ideas and messages.

As I also said, any speculation an SF writer makes about the future today is likely to look ridiculous 20-30 years from now. So it's misguided to be too attached to speculations that were made decades ago. SF conjectures have expiration dates. That's the nature of the genre. What matters is not the specific individual projections; what matters is the ongoing process of looking to the future.

We'll have to agree to disagree about this, too. The "franchise," as the very word underscores, is a business enterprise... and I honestly, sincerely don't care whether CBS continues to profit from new iterations of it or not, because I have no financial stake in CBS. Nor am I Trek's creator, so I have no emotional stake in whether it lives on after me. I appreciate Trek to the extent that it resonates with me — which isn't unreasonable; indeed I think that's the approach most of us take to most of our entertainment, especially in today's media-saturated world where we have to pick and choose. To the extent that new versions of Trek don't resonate with me, I honestly couldn't care less whether they resonate with somebody else.

Well, I think that's a rather sad and lonely perspective on the world. Fandom is a community, something a lot of us value being a part of and sharing with other people. I would've thought that anyone who chose to participate in a discussion board would have at least some interest in the opinions of other people.

 

[lawman]

The three-parter they did. Where the Romulan ships were hiding themselves with holographic projectors.

It's been years since I watched these, so I did a little poking around Memory Alpha. Are you talking about "Babel One"/"United"/"The Aenar"? The Romulans used holo-projectors there to camouflage their drone ships as other kinds of ships, rather than a cloaking device... but at the same time the story acknowledged the earlier "Minefield" (where they did use a cloak) without explicitly retconning it, as best as I can determine without a rewatch...

 

[BillJ]

It's been years since I watched these, so I did a little poking around Memory Alpha. Are you talking about "Babel One"/"United"/"The Aenar"? The Romulans used holo-projectors there to camouflage their drone ships as other kinds of ships, rather than a cloaking device... but at the same time the story acknowledged the earlier "Minefield" (where they did use a cloak) without explicitly retconning it, as best as I can determine without a rewatch...

Been a while. I'm probably due for a rewatch as well after I finish Babylon 5.

 

[BillJ]

And that's the value of Trek not having a uniform tie-in continuity -- there's room for different variations on the same theme.

It seems like there would've been a ton of value in not tying Discovery to the TOS continuity. Where they could actually give us new takes on old characters without being beholden to what was done on TOS.

 

[fireproof78]

So our preferences are the same there. We both acknowledge past inconsistencies in this regard, and both wish Trek hadn't tried to reinvent its vision of "futurism" on the fly. Fair enough. It strikes me as odd, then, that you raised the need to do this as a defense of some of DSC's creative choices.

Because Trek is inconsistent. Always has been and always will be.

Just ask Leonard Nimoy.

I actually think it has a pretty significant impact on the actual story of "Balance of Terror," but YMMV. Either way, granting that ENT introduced this conflict first, IMHO that was a mistake, and not one DSC needed to double down on. ENT's "Minefield" was a fairly forgettable story, and as a general rule, when something else in Trek conflicts with TOS, my default position is to stand with TOS, unless the "something else" is so unreservedly awesome as to make the retcon worthwhile.

"Forgettable story" doesn't mean it ceases to be.

Well, like I said above... all else equal, if I have to choose between a moment from a spinoff show and a moment from TOS, I'll choose TOS, and let the other thing be the outlier.

TOS is the wellspring from which all later incarnations of Trek draw their sustenance. The attitude among some fans today that TOS is somehow hard to watch or outdated or inadequate compared to what came later irks me to no end.

I've not stated it is outdated, so I don't appreciate the implication at all. My attitude towards TOS is largely one that appreciates the show and story as it stands on its own. I don't need DISCO, TNG or any thing else to enjoy TOS. I just enjoy TOS. Period.

When it conflicts with other shows, then I go with the newer show. Largely, because, that's what GR did.

Well, that's precisely the problem with DSC, isn't it? If (to tie things back into this thread's ostensible topic) the folks in the writers' room had done a better job of telling a season of stories that knocked my socks off, that engaged me completely, I wouldn't be so distracted by nitpicking matters of continuity. They failed at that. Instead, what they put on screen was wildly uneven, and ended badly, and leaves lots of uncertainty about what they have to offer next.

And that's ok. If nitpicking helps, then it helps. Just don't expect others to agree on the nits that are being picked.

Because, Star Trek is a large universe, one that started as an extrapolation of optimism that humanity could survive to the future and work together. It was an action/adventure vehicle designed to entertain us. If DISCO doesn't entertain, that's fine. But it doesn't stop TOS from being entertaining.

See, that's the part I balk at. Why does it have to be either/or, all or nothing?

As I've written before, I'm perfectly happy to stipulate that DISCO is 80% consistent with the previous series, or 72% depending on your priorities, which is good enough for entertainment purposes. Continuity, visual or otherwise, is a virtue, but it's not the only virtue or even the most important. It's a means to an end, not an end to itself. Preserving the sacred "Canon" is not Job One.

It's the old continuity with a bit of a face lift. Nothing too confusing or distracting there, unless you insist on 100% fidelity to TOS, in which case you're just setting yourself up for disappointment.

Exactly. Thank you, Greg.

 

[eschaton]

I'll have to disagree with you here. I think the original Star Trek put a lot of effort into internal consistency... certainly more so than a lot of other TV series, especially given the parameters of the era when it was produced (which actively discouraged having episodes cross-reference one another, to facilitate syndication deals). The classic Making of Star Trek (and later books in a similar vein) shows the painstaking efforts the show's creators put into worldbuilding, in terms of both storytelling and design, precisely because it was SF and they couldn't take audience familiarity for granted. That doesn't mean they could anticipate everything, which is why there was inevitably some "early installment weirdness," as always happens when writers have to craft stories based on nothing but the show bible without having actually seen any episodes yet... but on the whole, I think TOS hangs together remarkably well.

I dunno. I feel like TOS really only got its sea legs once Gene Coon came on. The first half of the first season was all over the map. And I don't mean just in terms of the setting seemingly being ill-thought out. Character-wise it was totally different. Some of the episodes felt like "the adventures of Captain Kirk" and other episodes felt like a legit ensemble show. Rand was in most of them, Sulu and Uhura got a much larger role than they did later in the show, and there were minor crew members like Riley who appeared multiple times. The show didn't settle into the Kirk/Spock/McCoy beam down to a planet and have an adventure until the back half of the season. Early season 1 is interesting to watch, but it doesn't feel very Trek-like, or even TOS-like, when viewed in isolation.

 

[lawman]

...Trek's futurism is symbolic. It's about the idea that we can build a better future, that our science and our wisdom will improve our lives if we trust in them, that we should be nostalgic for tomorrow instead of yesterday. So if Trek clings to depicting its future technology in exactly the same way that shows 30 or 50 years ago did, that's a retro, nostalgic element that gets in the way of the message.

I'm not saying "exactly the same way." I am saying, however, that a show depicting the visual elements of the TOS-era Trek setting the way they've been depicted before — upgraded with current production values and effects, naturally, but not redesigned — would work just fine on its own merits, not merely as an exercise in nostalgia.

(I'd apply the same reasoning to story elements, as well... there's nothing inherent about holographic comms and a bridge window vs. viewscreens, as I commented to Greg... or for that matter about intraship beaming, or widespread cloaking in the 2250s, or a massive war with the Klingons... that's inherently "more futuristic" than anything from TOS, or makes for inherently better storytelling at either the allegorical level or even the plot level.)

If you really think a take that's closer to TOS would be primarily an exercise in nostalgia, though... or more to the point, if DSC's creators really thought that... then positioning the show as a near-term prequel to TOS seems like a pretty quixotic choice in the first place. That's just not something it's possible to do without people comparing the setting from one show to the other.

Science fiction does not "predict." Like I said, that's taking it way too literally. ... Science fiction writers are not attempting anything of the sort. We don't "predict," we speculate. We extrapolate. We explore possibilities and engage in allegory. So it's not about the superficial, literal surface level of things. It's about the underlying ideas and messages.

But that's precisely my point. SF doesn't predict the future, and its effectiveness in story terms has nothing to do with whether it does so. Given that, why does anyone argue that it's somehow necessary to "update" Trek to make it an allegedly more plausible extrapolation of "our" future in order for its stories to work? It shouldn't matter at all.

Well, I think that's a rather sad and lonely perspective on the world. Fandom is a community, something a lot of us value being a part of and sharing with other people. I would've thought that anyone who chose to participate in a discussion board would have at least some interest in the opinions of other people.

Allow me to clarify: of course I enjoy the sense of community that comes with fandom. I enjoy sharing Trek (and other enthusiasms) with others, and introducing it to people who haven't seen it before. I enjoy discussing my enthusiasms with people, even when they involve differences of opinion. None of that, however, entails any concern for the ongoing continuation of Trek or any other property as a "franchise"... nor does it require me to appreciate creative choices made to appeal to "new audiences" whose tastes differ significantly from mine. Neither of those things adds one jot to what makes Star Trek enjoyable in the first place.

I'm a Sherlock Holmes fan as well, for instance, and I still enjoy reading and talking about the character... even though a new Holmes story hasn't been written in 91 years, nor ever will be again. (Not including pastiches and adaptations, of course, which are sometime entertaining but don't really "count," and even at their best certainly aren't necessary for the original canon to merit ongoing appreciation.)

 

[eschaton]

Again, I'm far from a canon nerd. I think canon can, and should, be broken if it was nonsensical to begin with and it interferes with telling a good story. To present an extreme example, I don't think anyone would feel bad if a great story was told about exceeding Warp 10 which completely ignored Threshold. If you want, you could put in some handwavium to explain away that terrible episode (like it was all a practical joke by Q) but shit about salamander babies shouldn't stand in the way of telling a good future story.

As I said however, my concern is while breaking canon can work if the writer in question is a Trek fan - someone who understands the spirit of Trek and where the mistakes of the past could be improved upon - in the hands of a young staff writer who is not a particularly big Trek fan it's essentially license to asspull. What's worse, with the desire to now tell a serialized story, individual elements which seem out of place are not quickly dropped, but can become integral to the entire storyline. Thus while both Red Matter and the spore drive are McGuffins, you move on quickly from Red Matter, while the spore drive's seeming inconsistency with past Trek lore keeps smacking you in the face.

 

[lawman]

I dunno. I feel like TOS really only got its sea legs once Gene Coon came on. The first half of the first season was all over the map. And I don't mean just in terms of the setting seemingly being ill-thought out. Character-wise it was totally different. Some of the episodes felt like "the adventures of Captain Kirk" and other episodes felt like a legit ensemble show. Rand was in most of them, Sulu and Uhura got a much larger role than they did later in the show, and there were minor crew members like Riley who appeared multiple times. The show didn't settle into the Kirk/Spock/McCoy beam down to a planet and have an adventure until the back half of the season. Early season 1 is interesting to watch, but it doesn't feel very Trek-like, or even TOS-like, when viewed in isolation.

Huh. I agree that when watching TOS in production order season 1, especially the first half, stands out as somewhat different... but (aside from continuity nitpicks like UESPA) I think it's actually when the show was at its best. The more formulaic the series got as it went on, and the more it backgrounded characters beyond the "triad," the less interesting it became.

 

[eschaton]

I actually think it would have been a brave stance to take to suggest that what we saw in the TOS era was in part the result of passing fashions at the time. For example, maybe the tactile feel of the jellybean buttons was essentially a design fad, or human culture went through a more sexist era which it grew out of again by the 24th century. One reason why I like some of the more extreme interpretations of the Prime Directive when we get to TNG is because it shows that the UFP is somewhat culturally different from us. They aren't just like (secular humanist) Americans from the late 20th/early 21st century. The future should be at least somewhat alien, not totally comfortable and familiar.

 

[fireproof78]

But that's precisely my point. SF doesn't predict the future, and its effectiveness in story terms has nothing to do with whether it does so. Given that, why does anyone argue that it's somehow necessary to "update" Trek to make it an allegedly more plausible extrapolation of "our" future in order for its stories to work? It shouldn't matter at all.

There is believability of tech and behavior. That's why TNG suffers so greatly for me.

As I said however, my concern is while breaking canon can work if the writer in question is a Trek fan - someone who understands the spirit of Trek and where the mistakes of the past could be improved upon - in the hands of a young staff writer who is not a particularly big Trek fan it's essentially license to asspull. What's worse, with the desire to now tell a serialized story, individual elements which seem out of place are not quickly dropped, but can become integral to the entire storyline. Thus while both Red Matter and the spore drive are McGuffins, you move on quickly from Red Matter, while the spore drive's seeming inconsistency with past Trek lore keeps smacking you in the face.

Spore drive really doesn't though.

Also, writer as a "Trek fan": Nick Meyer would like a word.

 

[eschaton]

Also, writer as a "Trek fan": Nick Meyer would like a word.

I honestly think TWOK is a bit overrated. My main problem with it - which is somewhat shared by Space Seed in TOS honestly - is that Khan is a genetic superman and supposed to be a genius. He should be able to outthink Kirk without breaking a sweat, yet we see nothing in the story to suggest he's especially bright.

On the whole though, Meyer did do a bang-up job. Of course he famously didn't know that Chekhov wasn't on TOS at the time of Space Seed, which a Trekkie wouldn't forget.

 

[fireproof78]

I honestly think TWOK is a bit overrated. My main problem with it - which is somewhat shared by Space Seed in TOS honestly - is that Khan is a genetic superman and supposed to be a genius. He should be able to outthink Kirk without breaking a sweat, yet we see nothing in the story to suggest he's especially bright.

On the whole though, Meyer did do a bang-up job. Of course he famously didn't know that Chekhov wasn't on TOS at the time of Space Seed, which a Trekkie wouldn't forget.

He also hadn't watched a frame of Trek until he got the job, and didn't watch any more afterwards, and is self admitted to not be a "Star Trek fan". Meyer just told a story.