News Kurtzman: Discovery: The Finale And The Future

[AutoAdmin]

A new news article has been published at TrekToday:

In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Discovery‘s showrunner Alex Kurtzman speaks about the finale and the future of Discovery. Plus:...

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[thribs]

They could have solved that canon problem by setting a show in that timeline in the first place.

 

[Starflight]

Regardless of the messy sledgehammer way they quarantined Discovery from the regular timeline, it's encouraging that the writers have given themselves a totally blank canvas to work with now. His comments about having a "whole new universe" to explore" are exciting, because a lot of the basic ideas in Discovery have been really cool, and the opportunity for the writers to explore those ideas and play with all kinds of new ones without leaning on TOS characters and being restricted by the limitations of the setting should produce some quality material.

 

[Jedi Marso]

We knew how Kirk had died, and we wondered how we could put him in jeopardy to make it feel real. That’s what led us to go with an alternate timeline; suddenly we could tell the story in a very unpredictable way.

What a bucket of Hutt drool. Kirk was never going to die in any of the Abrahm's movies no matter what. The whole reason they went to the reboot was they wanted the classic Kirk/Spock/McCoy triumvirate. Otherwise there was no reason to do it at all.

 

[seigezunt]

I'm not going to lie, I find this news quite disappointing. It looks for everything like caving to the demands of people who never liked the show and never will. Guaranteed, it's just going to get worse with the Youtube-clickbait crowd.

I loved the season ender, but felt there was no need to "fix" any of the minor continuity issues.

As a TOS fan, I really enjoyed the show being set in the pre-TOS era, and for me, I worry that putting it in the far future may result in something that may not be recognizable as Star Trek. Ironic, considering that this is in part being done to satisfy fans who have claimed all along that DSC isn't recognizable as Trek, oddly. Be careful what you wish for, guys. I continue to maintain that setting something after Voyager raises more potential canon issues, because of the vast body of screen canon, rather than setting it TOS-adjacent, because the internal inconsistency of TOS allows for playing looser with the rules. We'll see.

I'm a little nervous that this is going to go all Voyager. But I refuse to be that kind of asshole fan, and will stick around to see what's in store. Because, unlike my experience with Voyager, I like and am invested in these characters.

 

[Campe]

They could have solved that canon problem by setting a show in that timeline in the first place.

But they didn't. And we got two seasons in the 23rd century. Now all the fanbois who want something deep into the future get their wish.

I'm not going to lie, I find this news quite disappointing. It looks for everything like caving to the demands of people who never liked the show and never will. Guaranteed, it's just going to get worse with the Youtube-clickbait crowd.

I loved the season ender, but felt there was no need to "fix" any of the minor continuity issues.

As a TOS fan, I really enjoyed the show being set in the pre-TOS era, and for me, I worry that putting it in the far future may result in something that may not be recognizable as Star Trek. Ironic, considering that this is in part being done to satisfy fans who have claimed all along that DSC isn't recognizable as Trek, oddly. Be careful what you wish for, guys. I continue to maintain that setting something after Voyager raises more potential canon issues, because of the vast body of screen canon, rather than setting it TOS-adjacent, because the internal inconsistency of TOS allows for playing looser with the rules. We'll see.

I'm a little nervous that this is going to go all Voyager. But I refuse to be that kind of asshole fan, and will stick around to see what's in store. Because, unlike my experience with Voyager, I like and am invested in these characters.

I liked the pre-TOS feel as well. And I share your same concerns. I hope they are unfounded.

 

[seigezunt]

What a bucket of Hutt drool. Kirk was never going to die in any of the Abrahm's movies no matter what. The whole reason they went to the reboot was they wanted the classic Kirk/Spock/McCoy triumvirate. Otherwise there was no reason to do it at all.

Exactly. Just because we knew Pike and the Enterprise would not go kerblooey didn't keep that episode from being amazingly exciting.

 

[XCV330]

I liked revisiting the TOS era, and I hope they do find a way to continue there with Pike and crew. It seems pretty obvious that CBS IS returning there with the Sec31 series. Georgiou finds her way back sometime during, or at the end of Season 3.

Thing is, now the show is completely unfettered. The spore drive is not damaged as far as we know, or if it is, it might be repairable. Stamets is aboard and they are in their own era now, so to speak. They have a ship that can go anywhere and anywhen. so while they might not be revisiting the TOS era, or if they do, extremely surreptitiously, they could hang around in the distant future, or pop in on events during the NX-01 period, or Romulan War, visit the Stargazer, hell even cross over into the Kevlin universe (I severely doubt that would happen, of course)

Thing is, it seems like that was always the idea, given the nature of the drive system on this ship. I'm looking forward to season 3.

 

[Starflight]

I continue to maintain that setting something after Voyager raises more potential canon issues, because of the vast body of screen canon, rather than setting it TOS-adjacent, because the internal inconsistency of TOS allows for playing looser with the rules. We'll see.

I don't know - the amount of time they've travelled is so vast that the writers can essentially do anything they want without really treading on any of the existing shows.

I think a pre-TOS show could definitely have harnessed TOS's looseness of continuity in its favour, but Discovery's decision to anchor itself right from the start to Spock and Sarek, and then later Pike and Talos IV, pretty much doomed them to work within a rather tight existing framework.

Having a show set in 2256 aboard a random non-Enterprise ship gives you a lot of room to maneuver and write whatever you like. Setting a show in 2256 where the main character is Spock's sister and the central plot of an entire season is on Spock, Sarek, Amanda, Pike, Talos IV, the Enterprise, and the fate of the entire universe is at stake despite the fact that everything's definitely going to be fine in 10 years leaves you a lot less room to maneuver.

 

[seigezunt]

or pop in on events during the NX-01 period, or Romulan War, visit the Stargazer,

They can time-travel? I thought the setup was they can't go back, and are stuck in the future.

 

[XCV330]

They can time-travel? I thought the setup was they can't go back, and are stuck in the future.

They've used the spore drive to time travel before, they just did it accidentally.

 

[Mudd]

They could have solved that canon problem by setting a show in that timeline in the first place.

They have finally faced up to that, it seems; the show's premise was made untenable by the way it was executed from the beginning.

Other shows set in the 23rd century may not even be married to the design aesthetic of STD; the first is two to three years away, after all, and Kurtzman said "We have to make sure each show is unique tonally, visually, and from a story perspective." So Section 31 may not inhabit a universe that's identical to STD's, and a hypothetical Star Trek featuring Pike might be more different still.

 

[NewHeavensNewEarth]

They could have solved that canon problem by setting a show in that timeline in the first place.

If it’s a future with no Starfleet, that wouldn’t have worked to start there.

 

[Sakonna]

As a choice, it feels weirdly responsive to what the show was last season. Season 1 Disco had no interest in being a prequel and fought against that at every turn. It would have been a great relief if the return from the MU landed them in the 33rd century.

Then, THIS season leaned hard into the prequel angle, and really earned it! They rehabbed the season 1 mess and did fantastic work with their TOS tie-in's. Implausibly, against all odds, they really developed their prequel placement into something special this year, and I wanted more of it. So what would have been the perfect ending for season 1 feels disappointing for season 2.

Ultimately it's probably for the best, if only because these writers are following what interests them, which will hopefully result in stronger scripts. The prequel setting was a holdover from Bryan Fuller, and it didn't seem to suit the skill sets or interests of those who inherited it.

 

[Terok Nor]

Discovery is leaving the 23rd century but Star Trek isn't. Georgiou's Section 31 show and, unless CBS is insane, Pike's Enterprise show will still set be in the 23rd century.

I probably would've just ended Discovery and went a thousand years into the future with a new cast of characters in a separate show but let's see what happens. It's so far in the future it might not even come to pass as a real timeline. For all we know something could happen in one of the other shows that renders Season 3 onwards obsolete. A possible future that doesn't come to pass in the Prime universe but still happens in a "Parallels" kind of way.

 

[Zander]

If it’s a future with no Starfleet, that wouldn’t have worked to start there.

It didn't have to be a future with no Starfleet. They could have just made a future Trek in the first place (e.g. different storyline to the one they've gone with).

 

[Jackson_Roykirk]

They could have solved that canon problem by setting a show in that timeline in the first place.

But all the stuff that already happened in the first two seasons wasn't a canon problem anyway.

Nothing presented story-wise and character-wise in the first two seasons necessarily contradicted anything on TOS and the other series. There's no reason why any subsequent seasons set in the pre-TOS 23rd century couldn't continue on with that.

 

[Mudd]

Nothing presented story-wise and character-wise in the first two seasons necessarily contradicted anything on TOS and the other series.

The key word there being "necessarily" - the statement is only true by the most careful parsing of events and hair-splitting.

 

[Jeyl]

Nothing presented story-wise and character-wise in the first two seasons necessarily contradicted anything on TOS and the other series. There's no reason why any subsequent seasons set in the pre-TOS 23rd century couldn't continue on with that.

Spock could actually blow up a whole planet with his mind, father over 12,000 children across 6,000 different species and finally travelling back in time to spit on some planet that inadvertently creates the Founders.

And Spock tells no one about it. See? I just did amazing things without breaking any of established Star Trek lore. I 'AM the great Star Trek writer of our era!

 

[Jackson_Roykirk]

Spock could actually blow up a whole planet with his mind, father over 12,000 children across 6,000 different species and finally travelling back in time to spit on some planet that inadvertently creates the Founders.

And Spock tells no one about it. See? I just did amazing things without breaking any of established Star Trek lore. I 'AM the great Star Trek writer of our era!

That's a great "what if...", but in the reality of what was actually presented on the show, what was the big thing that DID happen on DSC that was not talked about in TOS that would be similar to your example?

Granted, there's the Klingon War, but there were hints in TOS that there might have been at least some sorts of hostilities in the past. So the Klingon war is certainly a very plausible thing that could have happened in 2256-ish. Then there's the spore drive, but that could have simply been explained away by having the mycellial network harmed in such a way that it could no longer be used for jumping.

Other than that, I think everything else was pretty much in line. Nothing happened that could not have easily been a plausible history to TOS, and nothing nothing necessarily needed to happen in subsequent seasons set in the 23rd century that can't be a plausible history.