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Star Trek Discovery Writing Staff

It's perhaps worth noting that even the idea that Khan was "genetically-engineered" was a bit of a retcon. "Space Seed" speaks only of "eugenics" and "selective breeding."

You can certainly rationalize, after the fact, that this might have involved genetic engineering as well, but that wasn't the original intent. Again, the movie updated the technobabble to make it sound more impressive to movie audiences in the 1980s.

To be clear, this not about trying to accurately reflect or predict the future so much as about what sounds and looks "cooler" and more "sci-fi" to contemporary viewers.

It's like comic-book origin stories. Back in the Golden Age, writers threw around terms like "gravity" and "heavy water" to justify outlandish super-powers. By the sixties, those were passe so every other superhero got their powers from "radiation" or "mutation" or some combination thereof. Nowadays everything is "quantum" this and "nano" that.

Same with STAR TREK. Instead of "dilithium crystals" we have "mycelial" spore drives or whatever. But we're still telling morality plays in space. It's just that the technobabble and window dressing has gotten a makeover.
 
But, but...there is actual SCIENCE behind a warp bubble to travel faster than light! The mycelial network is nothing but made up magic and not Star Trek science at all! Rabble, rabble, rabble!
 
lawman said:
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.
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If you snip out the few instances of characters referring to cloaking as a novelty, how exactly does that have a significant impact on the actual story? It's still about heroes trying to track down an invisible enemy, much like any other episode we got after whether in TNG, TUC, ENT, ect. It doesn't matter whether it was a novelty or whether it was 100 years old. If I'm trying to watch it with the context of the history we have had so far since ENTERPRISE showed dozens of instances of cloaking since "Broken Bow", I would disregard any instance of cloaking being treated as a novelty in "Balance of Terror" and file it under "early installment weirdness", like we do with a lot of things from that first season of TOS. Doesn't harm anything. I simply disregard Spock's "theoretical" line much like I disregard Wesley's line about Klingons having joined the Federation. OR, I just watch the episode isolated from the rest of Trek and enjoy it on that level, not letting the canon of other Trek bother me, which is how I typically watch all of Trek because I have a firm understanding that minutia canon is not a strong suit of the franchise and trying to treat it as such is only going to leave me in circles.

BillJ said:
To be fair, they walked back the Romulan cloak in the season four arc, and acknowledged the original appearance as a mistake.
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You're forgetting the Romulans were not the only ones capable of cloaking their ships. I'm rewatching the first season of ENTERPRISE four episodes in there already have been two episodes featuring aliens with cloaking tech.
 
MakeshiftPython said:
I just watch the episode isolated from the rest of Trek and enjoy it on that level, not letting the canon of other Trek bother me, which is how I typically watch all of Trek because I have a firm understanding that minutia canon is not a strong suit of the franchise and trying to treat it as such is only going to leave me in circles.
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And really isn't worth it.
 
fireproof78 said:
Not even going to touch the "fanwank" nonsense label.
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Yeah, I usually ignore the fanwank comments. It's got to be the lamest criticism that I see here. What exactly is fanwank? If they show a Vulcan character is that fanwank? If it implies a hand job given only to the fans then why is that a bad thing? ;)

I recently rewatched ENT IaMD episodes. It had a TOS ship, ENT crew wearing TOS uniforms, Tholian ships and Tholians! and a Gorn. And I loved it!! There is nothing wrong with fanwank, a new Trek show should have them. I could sympathize with the criticism if the show did nothing but that, but that is not the case here.
 
You gotta pass 1st and 2nd base before going to third. Otherwise you'd come off as prostituting yourself.
 
Episodes like those are fun as one offs, I love them, but can't see how they'd work as a long running series unless you refine it somehow. I expect the Enterprise in DISCO to look very familiar but more updated rather than just a redressing of the Discovery sets... we shall see.
 
Yeah, I don't get the fanwank criticism either. Is it that people are upset when Trek tells stories where the primary appeal is just to people who already like the franchise? I mean, to give a more mainstream example than Trek, few people who didn't like and watch/read the Harry Potter series are going to pick up Fantastic Beasts. So what?

I honestly think in general when telling a story within the confines of Trek, a writer should ask themselves why bother telling it within the Trekverse. If the story doesn't in some way involve the Trek setting, or isn't logically built upon an established character, there's no reason (other than crass marketing I suppose) not to tell it in some different fictional setting.
 
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eschaton said:
I honestly think in general when telling a story within the confines of Trek, a writer should ask themselves why bother telling it within the Trekverse. If the story doesn't in some way involve the Trek setting, or isn't logically built upon an established character, there's no reason (other than crass marketing I suppose) not to tell it in some different fictional setting.
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I think DISCO has more than enough reason to be in that setting.
 
fireproof78 said:
I think DISCO has more than enough reason to be in that setting.
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I'm not talking about Discovery in particular here. While I have issues with execution, and ultimately was left wondering why the story in the first season was told at all, don't agree with the criticism that it's telling a non-Trek story within the Trek canon.
 
eschaton said:
I'm not talking about Discovery in particular here. While I have issues with execution, and ultimately was left wondering why the story in the first season was told at all, don't agree with the criticism that it's telling a non-Trek story within the Trek canon.
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Then why bring it up? I must have must have missed something here. :shrug:

A story doesn't have a "right" to exist, any more than it has to "earn" it's place within a certain universe.
 
fireproof78 said:
Then why bring it up? I must have must have missed something here. :shrug:

A story doesn't have a "right" to exist, any more than it has to "earn" it's place within a certain universe.
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I was bringing it up in defense of "fanwank." What's called fanwank by a lot of critical Trek fans is tying in Trek stories to the greater Trek universe. I fail to see why it's a bad thing, or why it's preferable to tell stories which are basically unconnected to anything which came before.
 
A good current reason for throwing fans some bones - some of us are in a 50th Anniversary Celebration cycle. Four episodes which aired 50 years ago this month:

*The Alternative Factor
*The Devil in the Dark
*Errand of Mercy
*This Side of Paradise

So called 'warts' and all, Discovery is the Valentine to the fans I never in my wildest Trek dreams thought we'd see. I am not going to let Klingon redesign or holograms spoil the fun I and my friends and family are having watching the show.

So far as what non-hard-core Trek watchers think of it, I haven't heard any complaints of fan wank. In fact, having watched Discovery with some of them I can say I've seen them get a kick out of the nods to TOS, are excited to see where the tie-ins go next as much as I am.

All that said, it's time for a Rick Dance.
 
eschaton said:
I fail to see why it's a bad thing...
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I guess I just wanted something new and engaging from Discovery. Not constant jabs to the ribs that this is Star Trek. It comes across as such an emotionally empty experience for me. I have the same reaction at the end of an episode as I do when I watch paint dry.

Watching Babylon 5 for the first time, when one episode ends I can't wait to get to the next one. The characters are fairly well-crafted, as is the story. It has made me care about the universe and what is going on. Even though it has inferior acting, sets, effects to Discovery.
 
Indeed, B5 was always a relentlessly compelling show, largely due to its brilliant writing. (Although I have a higher opinion of the acting, sets, and effects than you do... at least, as compared to the ones on DSC.)
 
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