Okay, fine, you don't like the word "rules," I could make the exact same point using the word "conventions." Or "norms."
Except you couldn't. "Rules" implies there's some sort of penalty involved if you break them or that deviating from them is widely discouraged. But but "the norm" is just a loosely applied set of things that everyone does, either because they work very well or because nobody has come up with a better idea. People buck conventions all the time, it's the reason there's some much variation in fiction.
Still safely sticking with the incredibly obvious.
I point out the incredibly obvious because a moment ago you tried to assert that science fiction television/films were "simulations of reality." This is not the case: events in a simulation take place based on pre-defined rules and cause and effect relationships so that the final outcome cannot be known to anyone until the simulation has run its course. The fact that REALITY works much the same way is what makes these things "simulations" rather than just games or stories.p
In a narrative, both end-points are set artificially and the causal chain of events between them are equally artificial. The story unfolds precisely the way the author wants it to and cannot unfold any other way.
We have here a conclusion that absolutely does not follow from the uncontroversial premises set out beforehand.
You already conceded this point for every medium in fiction except for television and film, and even then you conceded that this is already true of musicals. So this is another obvious conclusion that does indeed follow directly from the uncontroversial premise: that all props, music, sets, makeup, visuals and special effects are just symbols meant to express the narrative.
Are you prepared to give a coherent reason why TOS' visuals have to be taken absolutely literally while "The Music Man" or "Grease" do not?
Hell, you can't even agree about what the boundaries of the narrative are.
Is that what you're confused about?
In television, the narrative of a particular episode begins at the opening scene and ends with the ending scene. A broader narrative begins with season premier and ends with the season finale. A series-wide narrative -- if there is one -- begins with the series premier and ends with the series finale.
TOS and Discovery share a common setting. They do not (yet) share a common narrative, but they very well might in the future if Discovery borrows some story elements directly from TOS.
Are there figurative or symbolic visual elements in Trek? Of course. For instance, I don't think the bridge in TOS actually has a light that's designed to shine across the eyes of the captain at moments when he makes particularly dramatic statements. But that's not the kind of thing we're talking about here.
We're talking about visuals, are we not? This is something we see, so we either interpret it literally or we don't.
Unless, of course, you're drawing some arbitrary distinction in your own head about what things must be taken literally and what things are probably just symbolic elements. THAT approach boils down entirely to personal preference, what any particular person does or does not choose to interpret as literally happening exactly the way the screen shows us. Which is entirely possible, and entirely NORMAL... but it also leaves you without some sort of universal rule you can use as a cudgel against the producers of Discovery when they fail to follow it.
Only if you completely failed to read (or to grasp) what I already painstakingly explained. The "rules" I'm talking about aren't absolute, of course; they're flexible.
So your earlier objection about the producers of Discovery having violated those "rules" (they're more like "guidelines" anyway!) is invalid.
The "contract" with the audience varies according to the medium and genre and format and other characteristics of the work under consideration.
More than that: it varies
from person to person. How you interpret the story you're being told depends on your unique point of view, your own life experiences, background and experience with other similar stories.
Not everyone agrees on which visual elements must be literally true. Not everyone has to. Everyone watching your show is going to disagree slightly on what the show actually looked like, but if the storyteller has done his job correctly, they will all agree on WHAT HAPPENED in the show.
Do people glow green and slowly vanish when they're vaporized, or do they glow bright orange and disintegrate like in Wrath of Khan? Do they fizzle and burn away like burning cotton or do they flash into little man-shaped puffs and vanish in the blink of an eye? Do phasers fire in pulses, beams, bolts, or are the beams invisible except for the flash when they hit something? It doesn't matter; a phaser set to a high enough setting will vaporize the person it's fired at. What this actually LOOKS LIKE will vary dramatically from one production to the next, but the narrative implications never change.
Until DSC, that is. DSC is unilaterally trying to rewrite that deal with the audience
Again, I didn't sign any deal with Star Trek where I agreed to always interpret the show's visuals a particular way. Obviously this is because been watching the show wrong my entire life and am not the "experienced audience member" you are.
