Disco's version of TOS/TAS: Differences

Yes, they say it's PRIME UNIVERSE, but that means they're retconned and rewritten an lot. Let's take a look ahead at Disco's version of TOS and speculate about what TOS might look like today...

We've already seen that the USS Enterprise herself looks different with movie-style swept-back nacelles.

We've already seen the Pike-era uniforms apply the Star Trek Beyond colours and rank stripes, and black collars to the Disco costumes. The arrowhead is a badge now, and the miniskirts have black tights underneath.

The characters obviously now look like their modern versions, with Anson Mount as Pike, Ethan Peck as Spock etc.

Klingons likely still have bumpy heads and purple skin, and although it's likely ones looking more human will appear too they will be one type among many rather than the norm.

"Balance of Terror" would occur differently since cloaking devices are well known in this era, and the Romulan ship would certainly have warp drive also. Would the Romulan Commander look like James Frain?

Instant communication across the cosmos will also alter "Balance of Terror" in that Kirk won't make the judgement call by himself to enter the zone... or they'd set the whole thing in the green communications-jamming nebulae on the Romulan border from Nemesis.

"Errand of Mercy" wouldn't so much be a cold war turning hot as it would be resuming open hostilities, with comments to that effect. Perhaps the Klingons shave their heads again briefly.

Holographic communication will alter episodes where Kirk and company spoke on a little monitor to the Admiral of the Week, he will be in the actual room speaking to them.

"Yesteryear" would either have Micheal at the Sarek home or some excuse why her (and Sybok, for that matter) aren't.

"The Slaver Weapon" would be extensively different, to fit with ENT's version of Trek prehistory.

What else?

 

Good grief, this is reaching. One, TOS/TAS already retconned itself as it was finding its way 50 years ago. Two, the appearance or non-appearance of a thing hardly requires it is ubiquitous or non-existent, respectively, nor does it need an "excuse". Three, multiple actors for the same character has happened since approximately forever. That's a summary of the next 50 pages of this thread. Alternatively, you can just stop beating a dead horse now and have a happy Thanksgiving. Toodloo.

 

Something I noticed while re-watching the show on Blu-ray, we regularly see site-to-site transports from one location within Discovery to another. For example, Lorca arranged to have himself and Michael beamed from his ready room to his Mancave, then later Michael had herself and Commander Landry beamed from the Mancave to Sickbay. Yet in Day of the Dove, site-to-site transporters within the Enterprise were risky and only done due to the desperate circumstances.

 

Thanksgiving Today and I have obligations... so, to quote Spaceballs: "The short short version!"

• All references to the 20th Century are "300 years ago". All references to the 19th Century, "400 years ago", and so on.
• Everything from TMP on is the same. Or the same enough.
• Earth has clouds.
• The Disco-TOS Uniforms are what the Enterprise crew wears in the 2250s. In the 2260s, it could be some other modification.
• DSC takes into account technological innovations made up through our time and extrapolates from there.
• Any and all sexism in TOS is to be retconned out.
• The Eugenics Wars: Don't ask, don't tell.

And that's it. Short short? So much for that.

 

This is really the crux of the issue about DSC/TOS continuity. The problem is that TOS, while loved by millions, looks ridiculously out of date now. Why? Because it was a ‘60’s vision of what the future would look like. DSC is a 2018 vision of what the future will look like. And visually, DSC looks great and realistic tech-wise. But it is folly (and quite frankly, an insult to my intelligence) for someone to say, “yeah, in ten years everything in this show will look like TOS, because it’s the ‘prime’ universe.” And saying it’s a ‘visual reboot’ doesn’t really hold water either, because if it’s not supposed to look like TOS, then it doesn’t take place in the same universe TOS does.

I’ve been watching the show now that I have the Blu-ray’s, and I really like it. But I’m not kidding myself that it actually takes place ten years before that show made in the ‘60’s. It takes place ten years before some other (as yet nonexistent) show that looks kinda similar to TOS but with 2018 aesthetics.

 

Last post before I really have to go. Any further replies from me will have to wait until tomorrow. Can't keep the family waiting.

Discovery can still be "Prime", just that TOS is retconned out of Prime and DSC takes place before a 2018-looking "TOS". That's how I view it. And it doesn't effect the rest of Star Trek, except when they would've shown the Mid-23rd Century.

On that note: See everyone tomorrow! Or maybe not. I'll probably spend a lot of time on the exercise bike, because of how much food I'll probably end up eating today.

 

Totally agree. Spock was either lying or incompetent in the original version of the history.

And OMG yes the romulan commander would definitely be James Frain!

Wasn’t there also something about scrambler codes in that episode too? Or was it one of the Klingon episodes? Kirk tells Uhura to use a code he knows the enemy has broken - is that the Enterprise incident I’m thinking of? Anyway, i wonder whether the higher bandwidth of hologram communications (referenced a hundred years later in voyager when they’re trying to send the doctor through the comm relay) would allow for scrambler-code style encryption? So that’d be another plot element rendered irrelevant.

Also, in the episode where Sulu is stuck on the planet and it’s getting colder and colder and they can’t beam him up because they hadn’t built the shuttle craft prop yet, that would also be rendered unnecessary because we saw the Shenzhou enter a planet’s atmosphere and hover above the ground like some kind of helicopter. So what exactly was stopping the Enterprise from doing the same thing? They could have dropped a rope ladder to Sulu for goodness sake. So the better CG technology of today could have made it possible to have a scene with the Big E almost landing to rescue the landing party. Episode over in the same amount of time it took the Shenzhou bridge crew to *see* the delta shape Captain Georgiou *drew with her feet* in the sand.

Drew with her feet.

 

This isn't about TOS' retconning, it's about imagining TOS as it would look today by the Discovery team. Don't take it personally.

In England, we call it Thursday. And I am, so yay!

 

Huh? Anson Mount is a dead ringer for Jeffrey Hunter. Looks nothing like Bruce Greenwood. The only character who remotely looks like the Kelvinverse version is Spock -- but then again, Quinto was chosen because he had the Nimoy thing going.

 

I meant Ethan Peck and Anson Mount were the modern versions.

(Also, I have never felt older now that Zachary Quinto is the "old" Spock)

 

For another thread, how DSC TOS/TAS changes would affect TNG-VOY.

 

Is it weird that I think when it comes down the the look of classic Star Trek iconography (the Enterprise, Spock, Pike), I think TAS actually overwrites DIS as far as the main overall continuity is considered?

 

I don't think people get what the producers of DSC are saying, in regards to the PRIME UNIVERSE. I believe that the producers means that key events within the TIMELINE of the Prime Universe is unchanged; "history" will be as it was. However, what is different is that the aesthetics of the Star Trek franchise will be "updated" for modern sensibilities (example: holographic technology). In other words, it will be as if the producers of DSC had produced TOS in 2018, instead of in 1965. I don't know if that is necessary to do, and is perhaps a tad annoying for a long-time 'Trek fan, such as myself, but I do think the producers' hearts are in the right places. But, we'll see.

 

Looks are unimportant and Balance of terror has been out of date for at lest a decade.

 

Then that would make it a reboot, not a prequel.

 

No, TMP did this very thing as well.

 

No it didn't. TMP takes place after TOS, not before it.

 

3 years after nd they changed the look of everything. It does the very same thing DSC did, it tossed the old look and made one that reflected the idea of the year it was made.

 

And there's a difference between things changing in a linear fashion. The Wrath of Khan didn't go back to looking like TOS ten years after TMP.