Yay, the novelverse is temporarily saved again!
Spoilers Discovery and the Novelverse - TV show discussion thread
- Thread starter F. King Daniel
- Start date
Or maybe she's a human that identified as a spiky alien and had surgery to become one after "The Cage". She's trans-species.
"The Cage" has already occurred by the time DSC takes place.
It's not just saving the novelverse. It's saving DSC's status as being part of the prime timeline.
Obviously, Colt is either human OR alien. She can't be both. If "The Cage" shows her as human, and DSC depicts her as an alien...then which is it? They can't both be correct.
Look, I love DSC, and I want it to take place in the prime timeline as much as anyone else does (especially since the showrunners have repeatedly stated that DSC is prime). But you can't just dismiss a contradction this obvious. Either Colt is human, or she's an alien. You have to pick one or the other. So which is it?
Last edited:
Colt used Kralls life extension tech between the Cage and Discovery on a hapless spiky alien.
True, but Roddenberry's original description of the character made a point of stating that she was known only as "Number One," indicating an element of mystery. It was never just supposed to be a common term of address; her lack of a name was meant to be a thing, an enigma.
So that, honestly, after fifty-plus years of speculation, it would feel anti-climatic to reveal that, oh, she's just Betty Sue Robbins and the "Number One" thing doesn't have any special significance beyond its conventional meaning.
"Una" was about preserving the "cool" factor, while giving us a name we could actually use when she wasn't serving as a first officer. Or at least that was the intent. YMMV.
Last edited:
New Frontier references are always appreciated.Am I the only one who want her to be Morgan Primus then?
(Probably)
Credits don't count either. "Tomorrow is Yesterday" credited Roger Perry as "Major Christopher" even though he was a captain in the actual episode. "Turnabout Intruder" credited David L. Ross as Galloway even though Galloway died a year before (but he wasn't given a name in dialogue, so we're free to assume he was actually Johnson from "Day of the Dove").
Besides, "canon" is not about granular details. The canon is just the overall narrative being told by the creators, and that narrative often has minor details that don't add up or that conflict with each other.
INTERVIEW: Michelle Paradise on DISCO's S2 Finale confirms that the spiky alien seen in Such Sweet Sorrow Parts 1 and 2 is Yeoman Colt.
Ah, another victim of the Augment virus.
Or she's just come back from a survey mission of a pre-warp planet where she was disguised as one of the natives, and she hasn't had time to remove her prosthetics.
Or maybe she's Yeoman K'oll't Ap'ostro'fee instead of Yeoman J.M. Colt, a redheaded human who just had a coincidentally similar name.
Exactly, rather than being a problem, this is the kind of "inconsistency" Trek fans and/or writers have always loved to sink their teeth into. Who knows, maybe there's a whole novel in how Colt went from a humanoid to her current form, a few years after "The Cage."
By saying both of those things, didn't you just kill the possibility that they could ever be used, because of the Fucking Lawyers (tm)?
Yup, I was the one who put that notion into the mix. It was also intended by me as a sly nod to fellow Star Trek novelist Una McCormack.To give credit where it's due, I believe it was Dave Mack who came up with Una when he and Kevin and Dayton and I were plotting the LEGACIES trilogy. I just got to use it first because I wrote Book One.
And the idea isn't that "Number One" or "Una" is her actual name. It's that her actual name is impossible to pronounce so she early on picked up on the nickname of "Una" because as she aways first in her class, number one in athletics, and so on.
Basically, we were riffing on the old idea (from D.C. Fontana?) that her alien name was too hard to pronounce. And having her go by "Una" just seemed cooler than revealing that she was named Janet or Susan or something.
It’s one thing if the fans suggest something - if an author is the one suggesting it and then writing it, I think the technical term for that is “sneak peak.”
But what if the author suggesting it isn't writiing it?
In any case, I propose an even easier explanation:
With all due respect to Michelle Paradise...in this instance, she's wrong.
That's the part that seemed incongruous to me. DSC's take on Number One seems to be a lot more down-to-Earth than her being from another planet where she is categorically the top-ranked person, concieved as Spock before Spock was Spock. Having a good ol' American cheeseburger in her first cameo, and then in this episode, complaining that fellow space-pilot Detmer had the temerity to use geometry when describing specific helm-things and preferring she just give a general idea of "Fly close enough to make the good thing happen, but far enough away so the bad thing doesn't happen," which seems far less useful to me, a person who covets precise instruction in these sorts of situation and also understands how measures of arc work.
It seems weird to humanize her to the point of giving her an "In english, please!" line, but then nod to her old backstory of being so embarrassingly superior to everyone else on the ship, and possibly in the whole fleet, that you can just call her the Number One and everyone knows who you're talking about.
I would have cringed less if she had said, "In Standard, please!"
I have no idea if they’ll ever explain the apparent Colt discrepancy, but if we’re invoking how things are spelled in the credits, Kirk was attacked by a “Gumato” in “A Private Little War” and the Enterprise communications officer in Star Trek VI was “Uhuru.”
Last edited:
They did seem to be subtly reworking her character, probably because, as noted, many of her original traits were transferred to Spock when they shot the second pilot. My impression of Romjin's Number One is that she's briskly efficient, super-competent, unflappable, and no-nonsense . . . as opposed, perhaps, to the coolly cerebral, proto-Vulcan character she was originally conceived as, before Spock assumed that role.
Here's hoping we see more of her.
I have no idea if they’ll ever explain the apparent Colt discrepancy, but if we’re invoking how things are spelled in the credits, Kirk was attached by a “Gumato” in “A Private Little War” and the Enterprise communications officer in Star Trek VI was “Uhuru.”
Kirk was attached by a Gumato? How did he get it off?