Finally Watching Discovery - Was I Supoosed to Hate This?

Someone ( @Nerys Myk maybe?) posted links to some of that old TNG stuff once. It made for a great read.

 

It's interesting...I never, ever hated ENT. I was, however, just completely disinterested in it after watching about 6 episodes after Broken Bow. It wasn't for fanrage reasons (theme song, canon, whatever). I just found it to be a weak copy of VOY, which I had subsequently found to be a weak copy of TNG, which itself was derivative of TOS. So, replicative fading set in and I was cooked on that format of Star Trek.

That said, with 15 years in the rear view mirror, I re-watched / watched for the first time ENT on Netfilx last year. With the separation of time and not being in "franchise fatigue" mode, I found it a fun and entertaining little series in its own right.

I suspect they changed the title for branding/marketing reasons. The ratings were disappointing, and they wanted to make a change there.

 

Yeah, I can see that. A few things people will get over. But if there's a whole bunch I can see people getting upset.

Spock eating meat though, I think that would cross over to macro. I think it's pretty common knowledge among Trekkies that Vulcans are vegetarians. It's one of those things that has been a constant since the original series so I think that would get noticed and fans would be like WTF.....and what would make it worse is I can't imagine any reason to change that. I know it's just an example and no one is suggesting they will do something like that, but it's probably a good example of a line crossed that would probably bother a lot of people (now I know someone is going to come on here and say, nope, no big deal, IDC, but I do think a lot would).

I get that new showrunners want to update things to match their vision. And yes, I freely admit, I'm one of those that likes some continuity with Star Trek. I'm not obsessive about it. I don't look for every last detail, I'd like to think I'm flexible. But it's hard for me to see Discovery as anything other than a full reboot. When I view the show I cannot see any way it can reasonably fit 10 years prior to the original series. It goes far beyond set design, which I can adjust to. It's the technology they supposedly have (spore drive, intraship beaming, holodecks) and the plotlines. But I just like it more if I don't try to fit it in the Enterprise-Original Series-TNG-DS9-Voyager timeframe. And yes, each show brought in it's own vision. But in general I can follow an overall logical progression in the timeline from one show to the next. I think it makes sense to a reasonable person that exercises a little flexibility. Throw Discovery in there and it doesn't fit IMHO. So it's easier for me to think of it outside all that and basically it's own entity.

 

Nope. The 'macro' is limited to that which can be explained in an elevator pitch. Anything beyond that is micro and changes made to it insignificant.

 

I believe what you meant to say was...

 

It's an "offshoot" of a statement that was made by one of the members of the Lucasfilm Story Group.

 

There’s a YouTube video that explains why Discovery is so different from all the prime treks. Because of licensing and marketing agreements, they had to make the show look different.
Ironic that Roddenberry’s vision of a moneyless society was scuttled by crass commercialism.

 

Star Trek is fully owned by Star Trek. I would think that would allow them to do anything they want with Star Trek. I didn't think there were any strings attached (except for some Bad Robot stuff but I don't think that really applies to Discovery anyway).

 

That isn't true at all.
Don't just believe random youtube videos you find online..

Roddenberry was in it for the money. Yes, he also wanted to tell a tale about how humans would better themselves, but he was also making the show for money.

He didn't make it out of some sense of altruism.

 

Is the YouTube video from Midnight's Edge? If so, it's likely to be baseless hogwash.

As for Roddenberry, let's not think that his vision was selfless; he was out to make money, and his mobilization of Trek as a property was enthusiastically (and understandably) commercial. Also, let's not pretend that TOS was a moneyless society; money and economy is mentioned multiple times in the show. It's only in TNG that this higher ideal emerges.

 

Based on everything I've ever been able to find, Roddenberry did a lot of retconning and hoop-jumping in TNG to claim that Starfleet and the "Star Trek future" were this post-commercial utopian society, and it honestly makes that series feel out-of-place.

 

and even in later shows there was still money, just much different then what we have. Gold pressed latinum for instance. Federation citizens didn't need money like we do. But it was still out there.

 

You know though, even in the original series, money wasn't really a big thing. Sure they had some sort of credit system, but it seemed to be more for luxuries, Tribbles for instance . But it never seemed to be needed for the basics, food, medicine, that sort of thing. I really don't see a contradiction between the original series and later shows, only that later shows made it a bit more explicit that money was not needed for basic survival.

 

It's more the retroactive claim that "the Star Trek future was a utopia" that puts TNG as the "odd series out" with regards to the rest of the franchise, especially with Discovery in the mix now.

 

True. The original series didn't focus on the geopolitics or economics of the future, whereas TNG and future shows gave us a lot more background.

Still, I never thought the original series was contradictory to what was revealed in later shows. It just didn't get into it all that much. Part of it probably because the showrunners at the time didn't have all that pinned down at that point in time, and it wasn't really important to the show at the time it was produced.

 

ENT, TOS, DS9, and VOY make it clear that the Federation and the "Star Trek future" isn't even remotely close to the utopia that Roddenberry tried to claim that it was with TNG.

 

Pretty much this. The idea that commercial interests are somehow "ruining" Star Trek is laughable to me. Star Trek was always a commercial venture.

 

Wasn't the IDIC thing created so Roddenberry could sell replicas of it?

 

Yeah, true. I was actually glad when some of the later shows put some of that in perspective. I don't need the Federation to be the perfect ideal. I rather look at the Federation as usually trying to do the right thing. But as any organization run by imperfect beings it makes mistakes.

I think of the Federation as close to ideal as we can get, but still learning and growing. It may take a step back from time to time, but in the long run it's usually moving in the right direction.

 

That's at least the story that Nimoy recounts, and one that Gross and Altman's The Fifty-Year Mission seems to suggest, yep.