Disco's version of TOS/TAS: Differences

[Lord Garth]

Klingons have always had cloaks. Now.

I'm going with it. Why not? We didn't even see a D7 until the third season, so whatever.

TOS had to introduce everything. So you had to have someone wondering "What's that?", so they can explain it to the audience. Otherwise, they wouldn't have. No need to do that here.

 

[Tuskin38]

srsly, Discovery was the only witness to that ship cloaking, as far as I know. So assuming there are no crew on DSC who would later be assigned to the Enterprise...we're still in the clear.

The klingons were using the cloaking devices all the time during this war, lots of other crews saw them.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The klingons were using the cloaking devices all the time during this war, lots of other crews saw them.

Oh. OK then.

I guess we can just chalk this up to Spock not knowing a lot about cloaking devices.

Same goes for Scotty and "their power is simple impulse". As we would later learn, Romulan ships use an artificial singularity as the source of their warp drive's power. Assuming Scotty didn't know that, he could have assumed that their ships were impulse-only when in fact they were not.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Oh yes, we saw exactly ONE ship with a cloaking device. That's definitive, all right.

srsly, Discovery was the only witness to that ship cloaking, as far as I know. So assuming there are no crew on DSC who would later be assigned to the Enterprise...we're still in the clear.

Rewatch Discovery. Kol distributes cloaking tech to any ship that swears allegiance to him. Many Klingon ships are seen cloaking and decloaking. Watch the battle with the USS Gagarin.

Indeed, IIRC the only one in TOS who expresses a huge amount of skepticism about cloaking devices is Spock, and he's definitely not there during the Klingon war.

They are explicitly purely theoretical until the Enterprise sees them in "Balance of Terror". Any other interpretation of the scene is...

And before anyone brings up ENT: It's obvious that the Romulan ship in that episode isn't exactly up to factory specs, as it were. It cloaks and decloaks at totally random moments. Looks like the cloak is malfunctioning. (In the novelverse, that's exactly how they rationalize it. The cloak takes so much power that it never works right and even destroys the ship.)

Obviously, that was never the intention of the ENT writers (the unmade movie The Beginning featured cloaked Romulan Drone ships also). ENT also directly contradicted TOS.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

the unmade movie The Beginning featured cloaked Romulan Drone ships

If it's unmade, it's irrelevant.

ENT also directly contradicted TOS.

And TOS directly contradicted itself.

 

[F. King Daniel]

And TOS directly contradicted itself.

Which essentially means "TOS doesn't count", making this entire debate utterly pointless.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Which essentially means "TOS doesn't count"

No, it simply means that it doesn't count MORE than any other series does.

Meaning: If a Trek series other than TOS appears to contradict what we believe to be actual Trek history, it's not evidence of said history being deliberately changed, because TOS was also guilty of the same offense. There will always be discrepancies, errors, or even retcons. It's unavoidable.

 

[Jinn]

They are explicitly purely theoretical until the Enterprise sees them in "Balance of Terror". Any other interpretation of the scene is...

The five seconds of "Balance of Terror" that don't fit with all of Discovery and most of Enterprise take place in a different universe than TOS, DSC and ENT.

 

[Dukhat]

No, it hasn't.

I’d be happy to give you a list of historical changes between DSC and TOS/TNG, but that’s already been discussed ad nauseum.

 

[F. King Daniel]

The five seconds of "Balance of Terror" that don't fit with all of Discovery and most of Enterprise take place in a different universe than TOS, DSC and ENT.

*steps off roof*

 

[Jinn]

*steps off roof*

That sounds unhealthy

 

[Mirror Mirror]

I’d be happy to give you a list of historical changes between DSC and TOS/TNG, but that’s already been discussed ad nauseum.

If you remove "Look" from it, you do not have a large list.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

He's got a point about the "ad nauseum" part, though...

 

[Blamo]

The only thing I get irritated about in terms of canon is giving Klingons cloaking devices. Had the same issue with Enterprise.

The rest of the changes are mostly unimportant. I can even handwave the Klingon ship designs, since it isn't the first time we've seen an alien species using another's ships while they integrate the technology.

 

[Mirror Mirror]

He's got a point about the "ad nauseum" part, though...

True, folks will not let it go. They act like a 2nd look reboot somehow effects canon.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Does anyone want to imagine how a Discoverse TOS is different, or does the mere idea that Disco version of TOS events may differ upset people too much?

 

[WarpFactorZ]

Same goes for Scotty and "their power is simple impulse". As we would later learn, Romulan ships use an artificial singularity as the source of their warp drive's power. Assuming Scotty didn't know that, he could have assumed that their ships were impulse-only when in fact they were not.

Right -- they don't have a Cochrane warp drive, but they have something different. Scotty wouldn't know one way or the other.

The whole "BOP runs on impulse only" premise is implausible and ridiculous. It's basic physics. The Romulans wouldn't have the time or resources to have a huge empire, because it would take way too long to get between any two solar systems. One meeting with an aggressive warp-faring civilization would decimate them, because their adversaries would literally be able to run circles around them before the Romulans got one shot off.

Chalk up that Balance of Terror line to a writer with a poor grasp of science, which was rather common in TOS. In fact, it's where most of the "canon-violation" sources seem to come from.

 

[Jinn]

Does anyone want to imagine how a Discoverse TOS is different, or does the mere idea that Disco version of TOS events may differ upset people too much?

Despite my earlier (not entirely serious post) I do find the idea of the thread interesting. I'd imagine everything to be toned down color-wise, having a bit of a colder feel to it. I find the idea of an animated Series that looks like Discovery (EVERYTHING IS BLUE) but has the movement and character design of TOS very... well, interesting? I dunno, I'd be genuinely curious about how that'd look.

 

[Lord Garth]

The whole "BOP runs on impulse only" premise is implausible and ridiculous. It's basic physics. They wouldn't have the time or resources to have a huge empire, because it would take way too long to get between any two solar systems. One meeting with a warp-faring civilization would decimate them, because they'd literally be able to run circles around them before they got one shot off.

Chalk up that Balance of Terror line to a writer with a poor grasp of science, which was rather common in TOS. In fact, it's where most of the "canon-violation" sources seem to come from.

I'm going to go with Romulans have a Singularity Drive in Disco "Balance of Terror" (here's another difference @King Daniel Beyond) and Scotty had no idea what that was. All he knew about was the impulse drive.

Hell, if the Romulans have an internal sensor cloak, the Enterprise might not even be able to detect that they have a Singularity Drive at all.

 

[Vger23]

Right -- they don't have a Cochrane warp drive, but they have something different. Scotty wouldn't know one way or the other.

The whole "BOP runs on impulse only" premise is implausible and ridiculous. It's basic physics. The Romulans wouldn't have the time or resources to have a huge empire, because it would take way too long to get between any two solar systems. One meeting with an aggressive warp-faring civilization would decimate them, because their adversaries would literally be able to run circles around them before the Romulans got one shot off.

Chalk up that Balance of Terror line to a writer with a poor grasp of science, which was rather common in TOS. In fact, it's where most of the "canon-violation" sources seem to come from.

I know this has been discussed a lot too, but I always believed (headcannon?) that Scotty meant their source of power was primarily the impulse drive, and not the matter-antimatter reactor of the warp drive. Again, maybe it has something to do with the use of a singularity instead of a reaction.

But I never took it to mean that they were incapable of FTL travel.