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

[lawman]

I thought Luke's story felt true in TLJ. It made him a richer character. I get the sense many fans upset had a much more idealized take on the character.

I've never quite grasped why anyone would have an idealized view of Luke. Through the entire original trilogy, he always came across to me — even as a kid — as shallow, credulous, impulsive, and basically a schmuck. Perhaps he matured off-screen, in various EU novels? I dunno, I've never read any of those.

I think I understand what you're saying. Personally, I disagree on that. As noted before, I assume that scenes set in the past take place in the pre-altered past unless it's shown otherwise, and more importantly I am positive that the First Contact changed the timeline idea has been disproven, since "Relativity" (VOY) has established that it actually was a predestination paradox (and "Regeneration" [ENT] supports that idea with it's plot), however, I will concede on paper that it's not a bad idea in and of itself.

I don't really understand the basis of that assumption as you describe it; from the moment a time-traveler arrives in the past, the previous course of events has obviously been altered, by dint of the traveler's presence. At any rate, though, there's no way the assumption could hold for FC, because as depicted, the Enterprise crew is traveling back into a past that has already been altered by the Borg's arrival (and interference with Cochrane's experiments) in a way that leads to the assimilated Earth in the 2370s.

(I've never seen "Relativity"; I gave up on VOY long before that, so I read up on it on Memory Alpha just now. FWIW it sounds like a dog's breakfast of an episode, with a take on temporal mechanics that's designed to allow amusing or exciting set-pieces far more than to make logical sense. But regardless, what Braxton says to Seven describes the events of FC as a "pogo paradox" — a change in the timeline that instigates its own undoing — which is a distinctly different thing from a predestination paradox.)

 

[jaime]

... thus he becomes angry and incensed that his expectations, based on the assumption he was getting a playstation, remain unmet. He becomes angry, enraged, deeply hurt.

But the Xbox didn't do any of those things to him, nor did the people who gave it to him. It's not like the Xbox controller grew legs, walked over and kicked him in the nuts now did it? Nor did the Xbox hack his account, steal his money and delete all the freebies he thought he was going to play on the PS4. Indeed, he cannot rationally say that the thing he received is a NEGATIVE in any way, because the product still provides him with services and games that he otherwise wouldn't have. They may not be the games he WANTED, but not getting exactly what you want isn't harmful to anyone.

Also, kindly be advised that at this point you are LITERALLY defending the puerile behavior of a ten year old who didn't get his choice of Christmas presents. You are starting down a path that leads only to hilarity.


... which is why the entire rest of your post is invalid.


Remember that time the Rebellion got their asses whupped at the Battle of Hoth, Han Solo got frozen in carbonite, Luke got his hand chopped off by the Emperor's brutal psychotic enforcer only to find out that said psychopath was his father and the Jedi master who had originally trained him and lead him to learn the ways of the force in the first place had been lying to him from the beginning?

Me either. Happily ever after!


... than the movie you didn't bother to watch because of all the butthurt fanboys that told you it was terrible.

Our survey said huh but thanks for playing.

I am pointing out that if the hypothetical ten year old had been led to believe he was getting a PS4, leading to him preparing accordingly, or had an existing history with the PlayStation, his disappointment at receiving an Xbox would be justified. I do t remember if he hypothetically threw his dolly out of the pram...I am just pointing out that if his expectation was intentionally created by a third party, him being sad could hardly be considered his fault. If he had secretly wished for a PlayStation, been given an Xbox, and screamed like Klingon at a TKuvma slumber party, yeah, sure, you’d be right. But if it’s down to oblivious parents not learning the difference between consoles, and easing expectation, then the parents need to up their game. Hypothetically. At the very least, making sure your kid is grateful for what they get, would require more open communication with said kid...not saying ‘it’s in the prime universe’...sorry, I mean it’s a a PlayStation.

I haven’t seen TLJ yet because I don’t go to the cinema. I will likely buy the Blu-ray for the Family collection, same as I did for TFA and rogue one, neither of which filled me with much hope from the spoilers I sought out. I had to wait the same way for Blade Runner 2049 too. I hope to be pleasantly surprised by TLJ, but I really don’t fancy my chances based on current info. Butthurt famboys don’t come into it...TFA was neither the second coming, nor the shitefest that either side called out at that time, so I really don’t place much stock in polarised fanbases. (Saying that, the Ghostbusters reboot really was shite. I should have waited for that one to be cheap in a sale, and should never have bought copies for people for Christmas.) TFA did put me into the ‘having doubts’ camp, with the death of Solo, and Luke’s fate puts me square in the ‘it ended with Jedi’ camp.

Empire is the famously said ‘down ending’ but it’s a cliff hanger, and Jedi solves it. Han was frozen, not dead, Luke had a cool new robot hand at the end, and Hoth was a victory because they got all our heroes out alive. All of the things you speak of were resolved positively in Jedi. The only ‘heroes’ who died across the first six films are Anakin, Obi-wan and at a stretch, Yoda. One dies of old age and serves a purpose, one is redeemed and the focus of the whole saga, and the last..the first death...comes back as a force ghost and died a meaningful death having lived a good life.
Han lost his son to the dark side, watched his marriage get broken (all the good bits off camera) before dying a meaningless death at the hands of his estranged son. By all accounts, Luke is decidedly in a grey area morally at some points, and his ultimate fate comes down to him exerting himself on some smoke and mirrors. Leia may have been looking forward to something positive in episode IX, but the real world has intervened, so that’s really unlikely to happen. But I hope JJ can fix some of that up, because I quite like Rey and Finn, BB8 and Poe is..meh...so more Star Wars with these guys actually doing something would be good, you don’t need to tear stuff down to build something up. (I am not even gonna mention the whole mess that is the resistance and First order.) I really really like Maz, but generally yeah...I think they are missing something.

So yeah, you got as much wrong in your response as you sem to think I did in my post.

Nice shooting Tex, the flowers are still standing.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

II don't really understand the basis of that assumption as you describe it; from the moment a time-traveler arrives in the past, the previous course of events has obviously been altered, by dint of the traveler's presence.

Not necessarily. There's a theory that the past cannot actually be changed and thus traveling into your own past only causes those events to unfold exactly the way you remember them. An interesting interpretation of this theory is that anything that could possibly be done by a time traveling entity, at any point in history has already happened. The only reason the time travelers (or us, for that matter) are unaware of this is because of limits of perception of those events and their actual causes.

Put another way: suppose a time traveler goes back in time with the intention of preventing JFK from being assassinated. JFK is dead, so he obviously failed... the only thing he doesn't know is WHY he failed. So maybe he travels back in time anyway and tries to shoot Lee Harvey Oswald, but as he pulls the trigger he gets started by a cat and accidentally hits Kennedy instead. This is already part of history, he just didn't KNOW it was part of history until he pulled the trigger.

At any rate, though, there's no way the assumption could hold for FC, because as depicted, the Enterprise crew is traveling back into a past that has already been altered by the Borg's arrival, interfering with Cochrane's experiments in a way that leads to the assimilated Earth in the 2370s.

True enough. One way or another, the timeline they arrive in FC is an alternate one, which means the one they RETURN to is an alternate one. Which means that somewhere out there is a version of the prime universe where the Enterprise-E flew into a temporal wake and never returned.

Unless they're implying that there is only ever one timeline and that they don't actually branch, just replace each other, which would have some really uncomfortable implications for Star Trek in general...

 

[jaime]

Not necessarily. There's a theory that the past cannot actually be changed and thus traveling into your own past only causes those events to unfold exactly the way you remember them. An interesting interpretation of this theory is that anything that could possibly be done by a time traveling entity, at any point in history has already happened. The only reason the time travelers (or us, for that matter) are unaware of this is because of limits of perception of those events and their actual causes.

Put another way: suppose a time traveler goes back in time with the intention of preventing JFK from being assassinated. JFK is dead, so he obviously failed... the only thing he doesn't know is WHY he failed. So maybe he travels back in time anyway and tries to shoot Lee Harvey Oswald, but as he pulls the trigger he gets started by a cat and accidentally hits Kennedy instead. This is already part of history, he just didn't KNOW it was part of history until he pulled the trigger.


True enough. One way or another, the timeline they arrive in FC is an alternate one, which means the one they RETURN to is an alternate one. Which means that somewhere out there is a version of the prime universe where the Enterprise-E flew into a temporal wake and never returned.

Unless they're implying that there is only ever one timeline and that they don't actually branch, just replace each other, which would have some really uncomfortable implications for Star Trek in general...

I’d add to that that in same way things form bubbles because of a sort of energy conservation principle, it’s easy to imagine the multiverse doing the same thing with something like First Contact...a bubble where the divergence happens, but closing off again once the universes created by said divergence realign. That fits with Treks approach of rewriting the timeline, with things like the crews in Past Tense and City on the Edge Of Forcer being stuck because the divergence was so big that it either won’t realign at all or won’t for such a long time as to make the point moot. The whole multiverse looks like a bubble in this theory anyway...all start at the Big Bang, and all end at some point, those two points are at either pole of the bubble, and every timeline is contained within...some longer, some shorter, some branching, some forming bubbles.
That’s how I like to think of it anyway.
Started a book about it, but wandered off after serialising it didn’t pan out.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I am pointing out that if the hypothetical ten year old had been led to believe he was getting a PS4, leading to him preparing accordingly, or had an existing history with the PlayStation, his disappointment at receiving an Xbox would be justified.

It would be understandable. Justified, though?

I mean, to what extent could a grown man acting like a spoiled child on Christmas really say his behavior is justifiable?

You're kind of overlooking the broader implication: the kid isn't buying the Xbox with his own money, it's a gift. So it isn't a choice between an Xbox and a Playstation, it's a choice between an Xbox and NOTHING.

In this case it isn't even a choice between an Xbox and a Playstation, it's a choice between what you thought a Playstation was and what a Playstation actually turned out to BE. Which makes the entire fan backlash all the more puerile and ridiculous.

But if it’s down to oblivious parents not learning the difference between consoles, and easing expectation, then the parents need to up their game.

... by whupping his little ass and teaching him to be thankful for what he's got.

When I was ten, wanted a Sega Genesis for christmas. I got a Super Nintendo instead. You know what would have happened if I had complained about the Genesis as loudly as Star Wars fanboys have complained about TLJ?

And then my dad would make me apologize for making him whup my ass.

The only ‘heroes’ who died across the first six films are Anakin, Obi-wan and at a stretch, Yoda. One dies of old age and serves a purpose, one is redeemed and the focus of the whole saga, and the last..the first death...comes back as a force ghost and died a meaningful death having lived a good life.

And this is where your not actually knowing what happens in this movie makes your opinion invalid. I'll leave you to figure out why.

 

[jaime]

It would be understandable. Justified, though?

I mean, to what extent could a grown man acting like a spoiled child on Christmas really say his behavior is justifiable?

You're kind of overlooking the broader implication: the kid isn't buying the Xbox with his own money, it's a gift. So it isn't a choice between an Xbox and a Playstation, it's a choice between an Xbox and NOTHING.


... by whupping his little ass and teaching him to be thankful for what he's got.


And this is where your not actually knowing what happens in this movie makes your opinion invalid. I'll leave you to figure out why.

I know what happens. I hope to be amazed by some nuance in the execution on screen of the events, because as it stands...I am prepared to be disapppointed. But I promise, once I see the film, to come back and tell you were right...if you were right.
And the bit you quoted is me talking about what happened in eps I to VI, which I have definitely seen.

The choice in the hypothetical is not as you describe, and the hypothetical I present more closely matches the DSC situation...at least some of the fan expectations have been down to the producers making certain statements, and expectations set up by experience with franchise going back many many years. We have psn accounts and we’re told we are getting a PlayStation.
Some people think we got an Xbox.
I have already said elsewhere that people at either end of this fan war are nuts

But nuance is not allowed in a world of binary, and that’s where we are now.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I know what happens.

Clearly you don't, considering you have three different times described what happens as examples of why the OTHER films were so much better.

The choice in the hypothetical is not as you describe, and the hypothetical I present more closely matches the DSC situation...at least some of the fan expectations have been down to the producers making certain statements, and expectations set up by experience with franchise going back many many years. We have psn accounts and we’re told we are getting a PlayStation.
Some people think we got an Xbox.

And now they're whining about it.
Like a bunch of spoiled ten year olds on christmas.
Which is just fine, right?

 

[jaime]

Clearly you don't, considering you have three different times described what happens as examples of why the OTHER films were so much better.


And now they're whining about it.
Like a bunch of spoiled ten year olds on christmas.
Which is just fine, right?

It’s about as fine as the ten year olds declaring their undying love for Xbox, despite it possibly not actually having a game to play with it, and they still need to pay for Xbox Gold.
It’s sort of where the hypothetical falls down, because the rawr is strong on both sides.

Does Luke Skywalker not disappear into the force after projecting himself as a sort of ghost across the Galaxy to distract the First Order and Kylo? Is there not, apparently, a scene where it transpires Luke knew Kylo was going to fall, and considered killing him? Does Luke not basically reject everything we watched him build up in IV to VI before doing this? Including tossing the lightsaber that was one of the focuses in the immediately preceding film?
Like I said, I know what happens, but the execution is gonna have to make my mind up...because I can’t imagine how you make that work in line with Star Wars existing traditions and set ups, without breaking something that shouldn’t have been, in my opinion. A lack of imagination is not something I have often been accused of. I am not hearing much about the execution that fills me with hope. If you can honestly tell me otherwise, that these things do not happen (or some of the other...wrinkles...) or that something in their execution makes them genuinely worthwhile then perhaps I shall have more hope.
I mentioned I have not seen it to explain my opinion on it is in a state of flux, based on incomplete information, not to say I have no intention of seeing it, after all. I am very aware of the events in the film though. It’s impossible to to be, so many attacks and defences raging across nerdspace, I would have detach myself from the force..I mean net...to not see it.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

It’s about as fine as the ten year olds declaring their undying love for Xbox, despite it possibly not actually having a game to play with it, and they still need to pay for Xbox Gold.
It’s sort of where the hypothetical falls down, because the rawr is strong on both sides.

That's just it, the people who were happy just to get A GAMING CONSOLE are relatively happy that they got an actual gift instead of the big box of nothing they usually get.

It's literally a contrast between "Yay, we got something we didn't have before and we will now use this thing to entertain ourselves!"
vs.
"Boo! We got something that isn't exactly what we expected and we will totally use this thing to entertain ourselves while also shouting angrily about how much we hate it and flinging invective at the people who gave it to us at every opportunity!"

There aren't two sides to this "war" as you mention. There's butthurt fanboys who feel entitled to having their very specific vision of Star Wars vindicated, and then there's LITERALLY EVERYONE ELSE. They're both paying money for the movie and the merch because even the haters are aware, on some level, that getting something that isn't exactly what you expected is preferable to getting nothing at all.

 

[jaime]

That's just it, the people who were happy just to get A GAMING CONSOLE are relatively happy that they got an actual gift instead of the big box of nothing they usually get.

It's literally a contrast between "Yay, we got something we didn't have before and we will now use this thing to entertain ourselves!"
vs.
"Boo! We got something that isn't exactly what we expected and we will totally use this thing to entertain ourselves while also shouting angrily about how much we hate it and flinging invective at the people who gave it to us at every opportunity!"

There aren't two sides to this "war" as you mention. There's butthurt fanboys who feel entitled to having their very specific vision of Star Wars vindicated, and then there's LITERALLY EVERYONE ELSE. They're both paying money for the movie and the merch because even the haters are aware, on some level, that getting something that isn't exactly what you expected is preferable to getting nothing at all.

Ok...I thought the PlayStation thing was about DSC? First and foremost.
Secondly, in terms of Star Wars, the analogy doesn’t work. For a start, we had the old EU, that was taken away (from a certain point of view) and replaced with something that isn’t necessarily better (again, from a certain point of view)
Narratively, the decisions being made in the Star Wars episode movies at the moment, are something I disagree with in a couple of Key areas, but maybe it will work out ok. People are entitled to their opinions, and who are you and I to call them out, as long as their opinions are formed around the work itself...it’s useless declaring it rubbish because Reys a girl, and useless declaring it good because Reys a girl, Reys gender is not a measure of the narrative worth of the story or its quality as a film.
The equivalent wasn’t an empty box...the equivalent was likely just finishing the the 3D Re masters of the first six, followed by a George Lucas penned trilogy. This was I named by fan behaviour anyway.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Ok...I thought the PlayStation thing was about DSC? First and foremost.

It's both. It's the same phenomenon with almost the same manifestation. The only difference is the details.

"Waaaaaahhhhh!!! Xbox One doesn't have consistent 60 frames per second when I play Call of Duty!" isn't substantially any different from "Waaaaaahhhh!!! I wanted an iPhone X but instead they got me an iPhone 7!!!" isn't substantially any different from "Waaaaaahhhh!!! I wanted to a story of flawless heroism in the face of an uncompromisingly malevolent villain but instead I got a story about inner conflict and the dichotomy between duty and ambition!!!"

People are entitled to their opinions

People are entitled to alot of things. Getting exactly what they want all the time isn't one of them.

Put another way:

KIRK: Charlie, there are a million things in this universe you can have and there are a million things you can't have. It's no fun facing that, but that's the way things are.
CHARLIE: Then what am I going to do?
KIRK: Hang on tight and survive. Everybody does.​

Learn to enjoy what you get, even if it wasn't exactly what you expected.

 

[lawman]

Seems like in your worldview, any sense of expectations (about gifts, entertainment, whatever) is unjustified, no matter what it's based on... and therefore any sense of disappointment, no matter how it's expressed, constitutes "butthurt whining."

Moreover, there's a Catch-22 for anyone taking a critical stance toward something: if you haven't seen it, you don't know what you're talking about, but if you have seen it, you're being a hypocrite because you're giving money to the creators then criticizing them. And anyway no one should criticize something unless they're prepared to go make something better themselves.

In this worldview, then, apparently the only proper role for fans is to bend over and say "thank you sir, may I have another"?...

 

[jaime]

It's both. It's the same phenomenon with almost the same manifestation. The only difference is the details.

"Waaaaaahhhhh!!! Xbox One doesn't have consistent 60 frames per second when I play Call of Duty!" isn't substantially any different from "Waaaaaahhhh!!! I wanted an iPhone X but instead they got me an iPhone 7!!!" isn't substantially any different from "Waaaaaahhhh!!! I wanted to a story of flawless heroism in the face of an uncompromisingly malevolent villain but instead I got a story about inner conflict and the dichotomy between duty and ambition!!!"


People are entitled to alot of things. Getting exactly what they want all the time isn't one of them.

Put another way:

KIRK: Charlie, there are a million things in this universe you can have and there are a million things you can't have. It's no fun facing that, but that's the way things are.
CHARLIE: Then what am I going to do?
KIRK: Hang on tight and survive. Everybody does.​

Learn to enjoy what you get, even if it wasn't exactly what you expected.

If i ordered a cheese burger, I don’t expect a filet o fish, and will not learn to like it. These things are not gifts. If I pay to see a Star Wars film, I expect it to be one, those expectations are set not by myself, but by previous Star Wars films...if it fails to live up to expectations, I am free to stop watching Star Wars films. The same is true of DSC. We were told to expect Star Trek, Prime Star Trek, and some people feel this is not what was delivered. I might feel in DSCs case, that my burger was missing the cheese, but as you say I am hungry, and the burger was pretty much OK. Maybe I will order another and see if it’s better.
In Star Wars case, I have a horrible feeling I am about to be served a Quorn burger, because beef burgers are so passé and Quorn is good for me. I will find out. But if it’s not as good as what I ordered, well, the Mouse can keep his cheeseburgers...my family will dine elsewhere. But, I am willing to try the damn burger, even though the kitchen has informed me there won’t be any cheese on it.

‘Shut up and be grateful for whatchoo git’ is rarely a positive approach to things, nor is ‘well I liked it, so there must be something wrong with you’ or ‘I hated it, there must be something wrong with you’.

DSC could do better at living up to its stated goals and Trek lineage. TLJ May or May not be any good, and I can see already why it’s split the fan base.

 

[cooleddie74]

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[fireproof78]

DSC could do better at living up to its stated goals and Trek lineage

"Could do better" doesn't mean "it isn't." I'm not saying DISCO is above criticism or that it could improve. Almost everything could improve. My contention is more against all the negativity with little, if any, ambition to make efforts to see it change.

 

[jaime]

"Could do better" doesn't mean "it isn't." I'm not saying DISCO is above criticism or that it could improve. Almost everything could improve. My contention is more against all the negativity with little, if any, ambition to make efforts to see it change.

Yup. Sums it up. I didn’t like DSC much, gave it a bit more time, felt it improved a lot in some areas, will be watching it again and hoping it keeps on that trajectory. *shrug* I can see why some do t like it, I can see why some do, I agree with some of both sides of that argument. I think the aspects that RAAAAAAAGGEEEEE need to calm down, whichever camp they are in.

 

[fireproof78]

Yup. Sums it up. I didn’t like DSC much, gave it a bit more time, felt it improved a lot in some areas, will be watching it again and hoping it keeps on that trajectory. *shrug* I can see why some do t like it, I can see why some do, I agree with some of both sides of that argument. I think the aspects that RAAAAAAAGGEEEEE need to calm down, whichever camp they are in.

I think my biggest thing (and this is the inner psychology student coming out) is what are the expectations of a "Star Trek" show. That is where I will ask questions and challenge some expectations of what "Star Trek" must be. DISCO may not be for everyone but it doesn't some how fail just because "Star Trek" isn't supposed to be like that.

 

[AlanC9]

Not necessarily. There's a theory that the past cannot actually be changed and thus traveling into your own past only causes those events to unfold exactly the way you remember them. An interesting interpretation of this theory is that anything that could possibly be done by a time traveling entity, at any point in history has already happened. The only reason the time travelers (or us, for that matter) are unaware of this is because of limits of perception of those events and their actual causes.

See, for instance, Interstellar. Cooper gives Murph what she needs to save the human race because he always has done it and always will do it. Same thing for the beings from the future who enabled him to do it.

I know a few people who simply cannot comprehend that there never was a timeline where these things didn't happen.

 

[lawman]

I very much liked Interstellar, despite the fact that I usually don't care for Matthew McConaughey. I also understood that it involved a predestination paradox, a self-consistent time loop. (To give the movie credit, it did an excellent job of setting that up from the start, and explaining it along the way, rather than springing it at the end or just letting it be implied.)

All the same, as a general rule I still don't care for predestination paradoxes, because IMHO they sidestep most of the interesting possibilities of time-travel stories, unless they're really well-written, which most aren't. (And also because they frustrate our ordinary sense of logical causality, FWIW.) The original Terminator springs to mind.

 

[WebLurker]

I don't really understand the basis of that assumption as you describe it; from the moment a time-traveler arrives in the past, the previous course of events has obviously been altered, by dint of the traveler's presence. At any rate, though, there's no way the assumption could hold for FC, because as depicted, the Enterprise crew is traveling back into a past that has already been altered by the Borg's arrival (and interference with Cochrane's experiments) in a way that leads to the assimilated Earth in the 2370s.

We do only see that in the temporal wake as the Enterprise is on its way to the past, possibly in-transit to it's place in history.

(I've never seen "Relativity"; I gave up on VOY long before that, so I read up on it on Memory Alpha just now. FWIW it sounds like a dog's breakfast of an episode, with a take on temporal mechanics that's designed to allow amusing or exciting set-pieces far more than to make logical sense. But regardless, what Braxton says to Seven describes the events of FC as a "pogo paradox" — a change in the timeline that instigates its own undoing — which is a distinctly different thing from a predestination paradox.)

It was actually a fun episode (and yes, it's written to go to all the weird brain stretchers that time travel opens up). The pogo paradox thing maybe the reverse, but it does suggest that one is supposed to come after the other. "Regeneration" (ENT) was written to fit the predestination paradox model, and, for what it's worth, the Powers That Be have been consistent that ENT was never a parallel universe but the same timeline that TOS and the rest were from.