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Spoilers Discovery and the Novelverse - TV show discussion thread

Roddenberry himself saw Star Trek as an imperfect dramatization of the future it represented, filtered through the 20th-century writers and artists who created that dramatization. He would've said that the dated elements are merely errors in the recreation rather than part of the "real" underlying story,

No, Roddenberry was just a sexist piece of crap pure and simple, from most accounts and based on a goodly portion of what he wrote.
 
An aside: it's kind of annoying that Memory Beta doesn't make the distinction between the two clear, because their backstories are incompatible and it gives the wrong impression.

Memory Alpha rarely does that. Most of their articles are a mishmash of info from different book and comics series that were never supposed to fit together in the first place.

No, it wasn't only there. That was just one example illustrating his philosophy. I already gave the second example, of asking audiences at conventions and such to pretend the Klingons had always looked that way.

Missed that. Sorry.

I'm not talking about the "facts" onscreen, I'm talking about interpretation, the philosophy you bring to a work of fiction. Creators like Roddenberry understand that what they create is unreal and mutable, because the act of creation is itself a lengthy process of trial and error and change. Creators of TV shows and movies in particular are aware that much of what ends up on screen falls far, far short of what they imagined due to various compromises and limitations, so they're often disappointed in the result and would gladly change it to something closer to their original vision given the chance.

Fair enough, but, unless you're going to George Lucas it (or spend forever tinkering with it and never finishing), there reaches a point where you have to let it go and let it be what it is.

It's not about "word of God" or anything like that. I'm just pointing out that fans are free to take a Doylist interpretation of Trek, to accept the inconsistent details as just quirks or errors of the artistic interpretation rather than being "real" in the putative reality being portrayed. Some fans think that the only way to be "true" to Star Trek is to be obsessively literal about every last detail, that any divergence from that would be a betrayal of its creators. I'm pointing out that Roddenberry, like most creators, would've thought quite differently. He openly invited fans to be flexible in their interpretation of the franchise, to acknowledge that it was an imperfect creation and that they didn't have to take every last bit of it as immutable gospel. Of course we don't need Roddenberry's permission to use our own judgment in deciding what parts to accept, but it's significant that we have his permission. And it's likely that every subsequent creator has felt the same way, for the reasons I mentioned above.

I guess, although there is a fine line between allegory and applicability, to borrow from JRR Tolkien. I mean, one could interpret ENT as being set in the antimatter universe, not the prime one (or DSC not being canon or set in the prime universe, either), but there still the fact that those shows were not intended to be interpreted in that manner. Not sure if that makes any sense, but there it is,

Don't take it so literally. The "show within the universe" conceit Roddenberry used in the TMP novelization was just that, a conceit. It was a figurative, playful way of telling the audience that he saw the movie as being a truer version of the reality he envisioned than the show had been, that he was taking the opportunity in the movie to improve on what he'd done before. It was just a cheeky way to handwave the changes, not something I'm suggesting you should take as a literal in-universe fact.

Huh.

No, Roddenberry was just a sexist piece of crap pure and simple, from most accounts and based on a goodly portion of what he wrote.

Eh, I don't think Roddenberry had a very good moral compass myself and honestly, the more I've learned about him, the more I can say that I like Star Trek in spite of him, not because of him. That said, while I do believe that humans are very, very flawed by nature (at best), I don't think the man was purely bad or that he didn't have any good impulses.
 
No, Roddenberry was just a sexist piece of crap pure and simple, from most accounts and based on a goodly portion of what he wrote.

Of course he was, but that's not the point. The point is that if even creators see their own creations as imperfect and don't require their audiences to be slavisly literal about every detail, then there's no reason why audiences should require themselves to be slavishly literal about every detail. We're allowed to acknowledge things as mistakes and just ignore them, to pretend there's a "truer" Platonic reality underneath that doesn't include those mistakes.

I know I've made mistakes in some of my published works and made sure to cut them out of later collected versions. Most other writers do the same when they get the chance. We all make mistakes, but we have a right to correct them, put them behind us, and try to do better.


Fair enough, but, unless you're going to George Lucas it (or spend forever tinkering with it and never finishing), there reaches a point where you have to let it go and let it be what it is.

But "what it is," in the case of a long-running franchise, is a loose agglomeration of works from multiple different artists attempting their own respective approximations of the same underlying idea. If six painters do a portrait of the same model, every single one will look different, but that doesn't mean the model is different. It just means that the same idea is filtered through different artists' interpretations. John Romita, Jr.'s Peter Parker doesn't look like his father's Peter Parker, but the difference is in the artists, not the character. So if DSC's Pike isn't exactly identical to "The Cage"'s Pike, if DSC's writing is less sexist than TOS's writing, that doesn't mean they're in different universes, it just means they're different writers' interpretations of the same characters and world.

We as viewers do not "have to" do anything. We are not employees of the creators; we are their customers. So we don't "have to" accept every last element of the works they provide for our entertainment. We have the right to critique them, to challenge them, to revise them in our minds.


I guess, although there is a fine line between allegory and applicability, to borrow from JRR Tolkien. I mean, one could interpret ENT as being set in the antimatter universe, not the prime one (or DSC not being canon or set in the prime universe, either), but there still the fact that those shows were not intended to be interpreted in that manner. Not sure if that makes any sense, but there it is,

That actually makes my point. Discovery is not intended to be interpreted as an alternate reality from TOS. It's intended to be the same reality, but its portrayal of that reality is filtered through more modern sensibilities and techniques. Mistaking that for separate realities is confusing the technique of the artist with the nature of the subject.[/QUOTE]
 
But Markonian was talking about it as if they had to be separate names, which is just weird.
Sorry. To clarify, I am aware that they can be nickname of a proper name, but because the words are so different, my base assumption is that they’re separate until proven otherwise.

In my native Germany, nicknames are usually just the main name minus a few letters at the end. My nickname is Mark, from the original Marko.

Whereas in English nicknames may share little or little to no structure with the name, e.g. William/Bill. It’s an error on my part, but I tend not to make a connection between such disparate forms. (My experience is based on my workplace in England.)
 
In my native Germany, nicknames are usually just the main name minus a few letters at the end. My nickname is Mark, from the original Marko.

Whereas in English nicknames may share little or little to no structure with the name, e.g. William/Bill. It’s an error on my part, but I tend not to make a connection between such disparate forms. (My experience is based on my workplace in England.)

Oh, I see. I can understand how many English nicknames could be confusing for a non-native. Part of it is the spelling change, I guess. "Mike" is pronounced the same as the first syllable as "Michael," but its spelling is changed to reflect that pronunciation. (In the same way, "mike" is short for "microphone," though people these days are increasingly spelling it "mic" because that's the abbreviation used on audio equipment and computer jacks.) "Jim" or "Jimmy" being short for "James" is more of a stretch, though, since there's a change in pronunciation as well.

And then there are the ones that confuse even native speakers, like "Peg" or "Peggy" being short for "Margaret." Changes like that, William/Bill, and Richard/Dick apparently date back to a time when rhyming nicknames were common. Here are a couple of articles I found, mostly covering the same weird nicknames but not always agreeing on their origins:

https://people.howstuffworks.com/why-is-chuck-short-for-charles-and-dick-short-for-richard.htm
http://mentalfloss.com/article/24761/origins-10-nicknames
 
^ Wow, there are lot of names in those examples that I didn’t think of as nicknames, like Daisy and Jack.

Thinking of it, arriving at all these varying nicknames by rhyming and even translating (English marguerite/Margaret to French daisy) is actually quite clever.
 
My dad's name is Keith, so his nickname is of course Danny.

Then of course you all sorts of complex reasons why Prince Henry is known around the world as Prince Harry.
 
An aside: it's kind of annoying that Memory Beta doesn't make the distinction between the two clear, because their backstories are incompatible and it gives the wrong impression.
There have been numerous discussions on here in the past where we've expressed frustration that Memory Beta does this--in a way that's impossible for users to change, because the one admin who could adopt a more adaptive system (as many other wikis for fictional franchises have) has a stranglehold on control (so to speak) of Memory Beta and refuses to accept any different practice.
 
Yeah, I got into a massive fight with a bunch of the people there when I complained about them mashing everything together and tried to get them to change the way they did it.
Looking forward to reading Enterprise War but having it under the Discovery title is a bit misleading. Shame there is no hardback version meaning they could do a reversible cover.
I’ll be interested if they’ll be able to incorporate this version of Control into the novel verse version. @Christopher is really good in doing things like that.

I'd suggest the differences in technology, backstory and characterisation go way beyond the visuals (i.e. Pike's character in Disco is based on the movie version and not the sexist original), but each to their own.
It also looks like most of the cast besides Pike, Spock, and Number One will be characters from Discovery rather than the supporting cast from The Cage/The Menagerie.
 
An aside: it's kind of annoying that Memory Beta doesn't make the distinction between the two clear, because their backstories are incompatible and it gives the wrong impression.

There have been numerous discussions on here in the past where we've expressed frustration that Memory Beta does this--in a way that's impossible for users to change, because the one admin who could adopt a more adaptive system (as many other wikis for fictional franchises have) has a stranglehold on control (so to speak) of Memory Beta and refuses to accept any different practice.

Yeah, I got into a massive fight with a bunch of the people there when I complained about them mashing everything together and tried to get them to change the way they did it.

What kind of wankers think it helps anyone to treat story details from Pocket Books and Star Trek Online under the same banner?

.....whyyyyyy???
 
the one admin who could adopt a more adaptive system (as many other wikis for fictional franchises have) has a stranglehold on control (so to speak) of Memory Beta and refuses to accept any different practice.

Sense rarely applies when someone’s having a fit of ego and their little slice of a kingdom is “threatened” by those questioning how they rule.
Ah yes, good old Captain Mike. :rolleyes:
 
I'm finally watching season 2 of Discovery, and I just saw "Saints of Imperfection" and how openly everyone talked about Section 31 as a known intelligence/covert ops division. So I finally took a look at Section 31: Cloak to see if it was irreconcilable, and it sure seemed to be, since the epilogue had Kirk and others talking about S31 as some hypothetical conspiracy they'd never even heard of before. But on further examination, I found that it's only in the epilogue that S31 is mentioned at all. So I think if you just disregard that one chapter, the rest of the book can still be reconciled with DSC continuity. Which is a relief to me, since I referenced Cloak directly in Ex Machina and at least indirectly in one or two later works (including a reference to its Centaurus class of starships in my upcoming The Captain's Oath).
 
Memory-Beta definitely needs a reformat. The biggest thing that bugs me is how they accept the Strange New Worlds short stories as EU canon, despite the fact that A): They were just written for fun and B): They are very incompatible with the rest of the novelverse.

I'm finally watching season 2 of Discovery, and I just saw "Saints of Imperfection" and how openly everyone talked about Section 31 as a known intelligence/covert ops division.
That's probably one of the things that's bugged me and "fans" of S31 the most (not exactly "fans", but people who find the organization to be fascinating). The writers seemed to completely miss the point of '31 just to add it as layers to the already complicated time travel plot, and there will more than likely be a clumsy retcon to make it "fit" back into the way we saw it in ENT or DS9 (probably Ash and Evil!Georgiou will erase every trace of it - "It's like we never existed!') You know, the kind of thing people gave ENT a lot of shit for (the Ferengi, the Borg)
 
Memory-Beta definitely needs a reformat. The biggest thing that bugs me is how they accept the Strange New Worlds short stories as EU canon, despite the fact that A): They were just written for fun and B): They are very incompatible with the rest of the novelverse.

No, the SNW stories were not "written for fun." They were written for pay and for professional credit, plus an additional monetary prize for the three top winners. They were written in the attempt to get published in a professional market (the pay rate per word was more than enough to qualify, and Pocket is one of the biggest publishers in the nation) and to begin or advance a professional writing career. It wasn't amateur fiction, but an opportunity for amateurs to break into professional fiction. It started the careers of a number of pro writers, such as Dayton Ward, Ilsa J. Bick, R.S. Belcher, and Geoffrey Thorne.

And while most of the SNW stories were incompatible with the primary novel continuity, some of them did use concepts from it (for instance, "The Immortality Blues" uses the portrayal of WWIII established in The Lost Era: The Sundered), while others have no particular conflicts with it.

Besides, there never has been an overall "EU" in Trek Lit. Continuity between works has always been optional, not mandatory or universal. The main novel continuity has constituted the bulk of the prose tie-ins over the past couple of decades, but by no means all of them. And of course, the comics and games have their own separate continuities as well. Memory Beta's job should simply be to catalog all of them without bias, and without trying to create a single "correct" continuity out of them. They should all be presented separately and fairly without any ranking of worth or legitimacy. It's not the job of a reference work to impose an editorial bias.
 
Memory-Beta definitely needs a reformat. The biggest thing that bugs me is how they accept the Strange New Worlds short stories as EU canon, despite the fact that A): They were just written for fun and B): They are very incompatible with the rest of the novelverse.

To be fair, some of the MBeta articles do allow for different continuities, such as the entries for Sela and Alexander Rozhenko.
 
Pike referred to Number One as "Una" in the finale, and she gave her name in an official interview as "Number One," so that's exciting.

The closing minutes of the episode said that Section 31 was due for a reorg, and Kurtzman says in an interview a key part of the 31 series is going to be how they went from "fleet of ships and snazzy branding" to "illegal cabal that many audience members plausibly believe was, in fact, mostly Luther Sloan." They also wiped out the spore drive, the Sarek family's relationship with Michael, and even the existence of a ship called Discovery by pulling the Tamzarian Maneuver and classifying them all and forbidding any discussion of them on pain of torture... that is, treason, in order to prevent anyone from being tempted to go looking for data about the Red Memory Sphere or the future version of Control to gain an advantage through knowledge of future events.
 
Pike referred to Number One as "Una" in the finale, and she gave her name in an official interview as "Number One," so that's exciting.

Subtitles actually had it as Noona - now I know that could be a mispelling but it's up in the air (Noona seems to be Korean for Older sister).
 
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