Spoilers Discovery and the Novelverse - TV show discussion thread

[Christopher]

I probably shouldn't admit this, but I've only seen three or four episodes of TAS and am not very well-versed in it.

In my defense, TAS had been declared off-limits at the point I started writing Trek books so there was never any incentive to familiarize myself with it . . . ..

I think I discovered TAS (which was still in first run at the time) only a matter of weeks after I discovered TOS, so to 5-year-old me, there was just one show that was sometimes live-action in the evenings and sometimes a cartoon on Saturday mornings. My first Trek book was Foster's Star Trek Log Three. So I've always seen TAS as an inseparable part of the whole. I think the first time I got any indication that it wasn't universally seen that way was when The Star Trek Compendium came out and made no mention of it (though they added a cursory TAS section to the second edition a few years later).

 

[F. King Daniel]

Yes, they are. That's the point. DC has rebooted its continuity many times over the decades, but Marvel has always pretended that its universe has been a single continuous whole. Rather than doing discrete reboots to periodically replace or transform the continuity, they just incrementally update the timeframe -- the famous "sliding timescale" -- so that the original stories written in the 1960s are still considered part of the canon even though the period-specific details of them have been replaced and updated. They pretend it's a single continuous whole despite the inconsistencies of detail.

There is no one single way to handle continuity. Different franchises handle it differently. And they rarely treat it as a rigid, all-or-nothing affair. "Reboots" are a fairly modern concept; most long-running franchises have just snuck in continuity changes gradually and expected audiences to either not notice the incremental adjustments or just suspend disbelief about them and play along.

Until Disco, Trek crossed eras and always visually depicted them the same way. Trek's also spent half a century marketing technical manuals, encyclopedias and whatnot mapping out the specifics of the universe. It's fair to assume longtime Trek fans have been trained to expect greater continuity than Marvel fans (and yes, Discovery's changes are more drastic than The Motion Picture's and are harder to explain in-universe)

Discovery's internal continuity is fairy solid (Klingon re-redesign aside), but it's link to the greater Trek continuity is about on par with the X-Men movieverse. You can't drop DiscoPike into another established series/era as had previously been done in episodes like "Relics" and "Flashback" without breaking suspension of disbelief, since they'd already been crossed over with velour shirts and jellybean buttons, have far lesser technology etc.

It's gone from "TOS happened" to "something approximating TOS happened" which IMHO makes it a de facto reboot.

Does it make sense in a world where he had a human mother, spent at least 4 years at the Academy working alongside humans, and served for over 11 years with other humans on Pike's Enterprise? Spock's rejection of human perspectives is not a matter of unfamiliarity with humans, but a matter of choice. He's always been exposed to human points of view but has chosen to reject them as unsuitable for him.

"The Galileo Seven" was Spock's first command, and much of the drama stems from his inability to grasp the human responses of his crewmates. Since we didn't know how close he was to his mother it was far more plausible than it is with the idea he was raised alongside a human sister.

 

[Damian]

I probably shouldn't admit this, but I've only seen three or four episodes of TAS and am not very well-versed in it.

In my defense, TAS had been declared off-limits at the point I started writing Trek books so there was never any incentive to familiarize myself with it . . . ..

Gasp. Gowron eyes to Greg now. Though I guess I shouldn't throw stones since I thought Marvel and DC comics were all the same thing

Though I have to admit, even though I've seen them all and even have the series on DVD, I sometimes forget about it myself. I think of the original series to TMP and have to remind myself there was a series in between.

I know I probably don't have to say it but I'd recommend it. For what was nominally a children's show, it was actually pretty intelligent for the most part and some of the stories rivalled the original series stories.

 

[Yistaan]

Discovery's internal continuity is fairy solid (Klingon re-redesign aside), but it's link to the greater Trek continuity is about on par with the X-Men movieverse. You can't drop DiscoPike into another established series/era as had previously been done in episodes like "Relics" and "Flashback" without breaking suspension of disbelief, since they'd already been crossed over with velour shirts and jellybean buttons, have far lesser technology etc.

As a longtime reader of the X-Men since I was 7 (starting in 1990) and who has watched every single X-Men movie, it seems to hold up except for lack of explanation of Xavier's resurrection between X-Men 3 and Days of Future Past. (Even if it was a clone body, why would he still be in a wheelchair?)

What technology is Discovery violating? Holodecks were already violated with the Animated series/TNG (and it was TNG that made the violation, not the Animated show as it came first), so Discovery isn't doing any worse than that.

All we've seen is that TOS tech "looks" more primitive. But actual functionality? A recent Discovery episode revealed those primitive looking communicators could translate over 1,000 languages the whole time. And TOS ships were always said to have enough firepower to devastate an entire planet, specifically mentioned in 'Bread and Circuses'.

Looks aren't everything. See

and

The older device is the one that looks more "complex".

 

[Christopher]

Until Disco, Trek crossed eras and always visually depicted them the same way.

How many times do I have to remind you that Star Trek: The Motion Picture categorically disproves this assertion?

 

[F. King Daniel]

As a longtime reader of the X-Men since I was 7 (starting in 1990) and who has watched every single X-Men movie, it seems to hold up except for lack of explanation of Xavier's resurrection between X-Men 3 and Days of Future Past. (Even if it was a clone body, why would he still be in a wheelchair?)

What about Trask going from a big black guy in The Last Stand to a small white guy in Days of Future Past?

What technology is Discovery violating? Holodecks were already violated with the Animated series/TNG (and it was TNG that made the violation, not the Animated show as it came first), so Discovery isn't doing any worse than that.

All we've seen is that TOS tech "looks" more primitive. But actual functionality? A recent Discovery episode revealed those primitive looking communicators could translate over 1,000 languages the whole time. And TOS ships were always said to have enough firepower to devastate an entire planet, specifically mentioned in 'Bread and Circuses'.

Looks aren't everything. See

and

The older device is the one that looks more "complex".

Putting aside the advanced technology debate for one second, the "visual reboot" alone renders it impossible to drop a Disco character or ship into another era. Worf can't travel back in time and meet T'Kuvma, for example. It would take a lot more than the "Trials and Tribble-ations" gag to make sense of it, especially after "Affliction"/"Divergence" has mapped that gag out in detail (...and which Disco has ignored)

 

[Yistaan]

What about Trask going from a big black guy in The Last Stand to a small white guy in Days of Future Past?

Putting aside the advanced technology debate for one second, the "visual reboot" alone renders it impossible to drop a Disco character or ship into another era. Worf can't travel back in time and meet T'Kuvma, for example. It would take a lot more than the "Trials and Tribble-ations" gag to make sense of it, especially after "Affliction"/"Divergence" has mapped that gag out in detail (...and which Disco has ignored)

The African American guy was never called Bolivar.

Worf can't even go back in time to meet Azetbur or General Chang as it is. Or even his own grandfather. They aren't Augment Klingons but they aren't TNG Klingons but some bizarre in-between subrace. Discovery didn't do anything that hasn't already been done.

 

[F. King Daniel]

How many times do I have to remind you that Star Trek: The Motion Picture categorically disproves this assertion?

Except it doesn't. TMP is years after TOS. Everything looking more advanced makes sense, since it's technological progression and "an almost totally new Enterprise"

Disco fails because it makes everything look more advanced before TOS.

 

[Yistaan]

Except it doesn't. TMP is years after TOS. Everything looking more advanced makes sense, since it's technological progression and "an almost totally new Enterprise"

Disco fails because it makes everything look more advanced before TOS.

The Discovery was launched circa 2256, a decade after the 2245 launch of the Enterprise NCC-1701 actually.

 

[F. King Daniel]

The Discovery was launched circa 2256, a decade after the 2245 launch of the Enterprise NCC-1701 actually.

Except the Disco Enterprise is totally different, inside and out. In an adventure set BETWEEN "The Cage" and "Where No Man Has Gone Before". It's retconning and replacing.

 

[Yistaan]

Except the Disco Enterprise is totally different, inside and out. In an adventure set BETWEEN "The Cage" and "Where No Man Has Gone Before". It's retconning and replacing.

My PC that I bought 2009, which I used for 9 years until 2018 and continuously upgraded, looks more primitive (it even had a floppy drive!) but was more advanced internally than a lot of laptops coming out in 2015. As someone well versed in tech, I'm not fazed by looks at all.

 

[F. King Daniel]

My PC that I bought 2009, which I used for 9 years until 2018 and continuously upgraded, looks more primitive (it even had a floppy drive!) but was more advanced internally than a lot of laptops coming out in 2015. As someone well versed in tech, I'm not fazed by looks at all.

The point is, if you take the visuals literally the Disco Enterprise is upgraded, magically enlarged from 295m to 440m, then downgraded and shrunk again for TOS proper...

 

[Yistaan]

The point is, if you take the visuals literally the Disco Enterprise is upgraded, magically enlarged from 295m to 440m, then downgraded and shrunk again for TOS proper...

Are those measurements ever stated on screen? Otherwise they aren't canon.

 

[Greg Cox]

Trek's also spent half a century marketing technical manuals, encyclopedias and whatnot mapping out the specifics of the universe. It's fair to assume longtime Trek fans have been trained to expect greater continuity than Marvel fans (and yes, Discovery's changes are more drastic than The Motion Picture's and are harder to explain in-universe)

Trust me. There are innumerable encyclopedias and atlases and technical manuals and guides to DC and Marvel as well, and, yes, they are often rendered apocryphal or obsolete by subsequent stories, just like Trek tomes are sometimes. And, believe me, comics fans can be just as continuity-obsessed as your average Trekkie, and often fight the same sort of generational squabbles. ("That's not the 'true" Green Lantern I grew up with!")

In my experience, Trekkies are not all that more nitpicky than any other fandom.

(You should have seen some of the mail I used to get from UNDERWORLD fans arguing the finer points of UW lore. And you had the same sort of heated debates over discrepancies between the various movies, books, and comics.)

 

[F. King Daniel]

Are those measurements ever stated on screen? Otherwise they aren't canon.

Since the proportions of the massively change and then change back, the point is still valid.

 

[Yistaan]

Since the proportions of the massively change and then change back, the point is still valid.

Are discoverys cosmetic differences any worse than the actual functional difference of losing tas's life support belts in the movies and tng and other shows?

By your reasoning the movies and all tng era shows violate canon in not even mentioning the more advanced life support belts.

They sure would have been useful on first contact

 

[F. King Daniel]

Are discoverys cosmetic differences any worse than the actual functional difference of losing tas's life support belts in the movies and tng and other shows?

If we're bringing TAS into it, I want to know when we'll revisit the magic universe of "Megas Tu"...

"Yesteryear" is treated as fairly canonical (but where was Michael Burnham?), otherwise TAS fits as well as Discovery does but for a different host of reasons.


All this is boiling down to "continuity is utterly worthless and always has been so stop complaining", which I think is sad. Because I'm not saying Disco is bad or is ruining Trek, just that it stands apart. That allows me to watch the rest as they were concieved and intended rather than the messy clusterfuck where you have to mentally censor everything as you go.

 

[Greg Cox]

Since the proportions of the massively change and then change back, the point is still valid.

Except we only know those numbers from secondary sources. On screen, the Enterprise is just a big shiny object in space whose precise dimensions are never discussed or relevant to the plot. Heck, I'm not immediately recalling any onscreen dialogue about Discovery's square footage, let alone Enterprise, which has only been seen in a few establishing shots.

TV shows are not technical manuals and don't come with blueprints. The dramatic point of the Enterprise's (brief) appearance on DISCO was "Oh boy, it's the Enterprise!"

Not "Oh, boy! Look at the length and width of that Enterprise!"

It's got a saucer and two nacelles and the right serial number? It's the Enterprise as far as the narrative goes.

It's precise technical specs are just trivia that have nothing to do with the crisis at hand.

 

[Yistaan]

If we're bringing TAS into it, I want to know when we'll revisit the magic universe of "Megas Tu"...

"Yesteryear" is treated as fairly canonical (but where was Michael Burnham?), otherwise TAS fits as well as Discovery does but for a different host of reasons.


All this is boiling down to "continuity is utterly worthless and always has been so stop complaining", which I think is sad. Because I'm not saying Disco is bad or is ruining Trek, just that it stands apart. That allows me to watch the rest as they were concieved and intended rather than the messy clusterfuck where you have to mentally censor everything as you go.

Im already mentally censoring out that newer laptop computers don't even come with modern ethernet ports or optical drives that were common a decade ago.

Tech does and can go backwards in the real world, so i fond it odd that would suddenly be unbelievable in a fictional one.

 

[Greg Cox]

I think I discovered TAS (which was still in first run at the time) only a matter of weeks after I discovered TOS, so to 5-year-old me, there was just one show that was sometimes live-action in the evenings and sometimes a cartoon on Saturday mornings. My first Trek book was Foster's Star Trek Log Three. So I've always seen TAS as an inseparable part of the whole. I think the first time I got any indication that it wasn't universally seen that way was when The Star Trek Compendium came out and made no mention of it (though they added a cursory TAS section to the second edition a few years later).

I was 13 when TAS debuted and wasn't really watching Saturday morning cartoons anymore, so I kinda missed TAS the first time around. Keep meaning to catch up with it, but haven't gotten around to it yet.