Unpopular Trek opinions game
- Thread starter ED-209
- Start date
Both unpopular and blindingly obvious,
Okay? I don't really give much of a care about what TPTB say. I watch it, and nothing about it makes me believe it takes place around the same time as TOS.
Everyone has their own feelings about what does and doesn't fit.
One thing I like to tell patients: feelings aren't facts.
Sure, everyone can have whatever kind of head canon they like. No harm in that.
But DSC and TOS are in the same universe. Whatever people feel about that, it's a fact.
As much as something can be "factual" about a pretend universe, anyway...
Yeah, but we aren't talking about something real, we're talking about an entertainment franchise. The next people up could very well then go, it is a different universe. It is all fluid. TAS was canon, then it wasn't, then it was. Roddenberry said Star Trek V was apocryphal. He also said TOS was a dramatization of events in the universe.
CBS owns it, but their decrees are only binding on the folks that actually work on the franchise.
*Desperate Hours was "canon" until season two pretty much ran it over.
Last edited:
Obvious =/= fact.
Same universe, but it looks like an alternate one. So far it's clashing with Enterprise concerning the Klingon Augment virus which should have taken hold by now. It looks like it either forgot or ignored the whole thing
There are a few things I like about the show, but I think the change in style and look and storyline was too much for some people.
There are a few things I like about the show, but I think the change in style and look and storyline was too much for some people.
I completely agree. The description here is from Memory Alpha's page on the episode, and the writer of the original draft had his name changed in the aired version to a pseudonym because it had shifted so much from his basic concept. It would have been interesting to see the early version carried through, since it actually focuses more on the concept of justice and there's a context for why seemingly minor crimes would have a severe penalty. "Justice" was actually the second episode written after "Encounter at Farpoint" but was the eighth to be filmed due to the heavy rewrites.
Agree, I'm not a fan of the Borg in general but the addition of a ruler turned them directly from boring-with-potential to just straight up boring for me. She didn't seem to have any sort of angle with which to understand her or negotiate with her, like the best Star Trek antagonists do, so she's just an evil floating torso who doesn't talk or act like any of the drones she represents.
My own unpopular opinion is that the Dominion War was completely nonsensical and should be largely disregarded by future works. It gave us more than a couple good episodes, but the scale of destruction by the end of it (Cardassia is pretty much a graveyard, Betazed and other worlds are devastated, billions are dead) is completely over-the-top, and the Section 31 presence in Starfleet + their genocide plan was deeply boring and clearly just Behr and others getting giddy over how Dark™ the Federation could get. I'm happy that, during the scenes set on Earth with Barclay and Troi in later Voyager episodes, the writers seemed to have largely just brushed the whole thing under the rug.
One thing I like to tell patients: feelings aren't facts.
Sure, everyone can have whatever kind of head canon they like. No harm in that.
But DSC and TOS are in the same universe. Whatever people feel about that, it's a fact.
As much as something can be "factual" about a pretend universe, anyway...
Creators of fiction are sort of like creator gods within their fictional universes. But they have no divine powers outside of their fictional universe. Within the real universe that readers and viewers of fiction live in, the creators of fiction don't have the power and authority to change logic and reason and mathematics. Thus a fictional setting is what the creators created it to be, not what they say or desire it to be.
For example, the internal story logic of Isaac Asimov's two novels The Stars Like Dust (1951) and The Currents of Space (1952) clearly makes The Currents of Space happen thousands of years after The Stars Like Dust. It is logically and rationally impossible for The Currents of Space to happen before The Stars Like Dust.
I read a paperback copy of Prelude to Foundation (1988), I think, with a introduction where Isaac Asimov says that he is putting all of his "Foundation" and "Robots" stories into one series of fiction and puts the books in fictional chronological order, the order in which the fictional events happen. And that list puts The Currents of Space (1952) before The Stars Like Dust (1951)!
No doubt that was a simple typographical error, or something, and if Asimov ever noticed it he may have changed the order in the list in later editions.
But if I pointed out the error to Isaac Asimov and he claimed that it wasn't an error but the correct relative chronology of the two novels, because he was the creator and could order his fictional creations anyway he wanted to, I would not have accepted that. I would have replied no, he didn't have the power and authority to say that his stories happened in a different order than the order he wrote them to happen in.
I would have said that the only way Asimov had the power to make The Currents of Space (1952) happen before The Stars Like Dust (1951) would be if Asimov extensively rewrote both novels so that their plots permitted and required the new The Currents of Space (1952,____) to happen before the new The Stars Like Dust (1951,___); and then, that would still only apply to the rewritten versions of the novels. The internal story logic of the original novels would still require that the original The Stars Like Dust (1951) happens thousands of years before the original The Currents of Space (1952).
And i have found many other examples of writers describing their fictional creations inaccurately and in contradiction to the data in their works of fiction.
For example, suppose that someone asked Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) if all of his Sherlock Holmes stories happened in the same alternate universe. They would probably have to explain the concept of alternate universes to him, and then he would probably have said, no, all the Sherlock Holmes stories happen in the same universe.
But when I was a teenage science fiction fan I borrowed a library book with all of the Sherlock Holmes stories and read them as fast as I could find time to. And I noticed such a vast contradiction between The Valley of Fear (1914-15) on one hand, and "The Final Problem" (1893) and "The Adventure of the Empty House" (1903) on the other hand that I decided that while "The Final Problem" and "The Adventure of the Empty House" could happen in the same universe, The Valley of Fear (1914-15) has to happen in an alternate universe to theirs.
So I don't care if the creators of Star Trek: Discovery say it happens in the same universe as TOS and intend for it to happen in the same timeline as TOS. The only thing that matters to the question of what universe the show is in must be the universe that the show they created fits into. Can Star Trek: Discovery fit into the "Prime Timeline" of TOS? When I get around to paying to watch Star Trek: Discovery I will study the evidence and deduce whether it happens in the same timeline as TOS.
And in the meantime I don't care who says that Star Trek: Discovery does or does not fit into the same timeline as TOS. Neither fans nor creators have the authority to arbitrarily say whether Star Trek: Discovery is in the same alternate universe as TOS, TAS, TNG, DS9, VOY, etc. Only the episodes and what is in them can say whether it is.
Last edited:
Which is of course delightful. But simply say it accomplishes nothing, it's really a matter of what is shown and heard on screen and what the audience makes of the presentation.
So if a patient "feels" chest pains just ignore it?
Obvious = easily perceived, understood, clear, self-evident, apparent.
Wouldn't that mean two different universes?
Canon is typically interchangeable with continuity, do you feel there should be no attempt at any level of continuity?
DS9 got Section 31 right, and only DS9 did.
Exactly what S31 is was left vague, part of the Federation governance, part of Starfleet, or purely a group of civilians, not clear.
Personally I lean toward a civilian organization with connections.
My take is that the Federation and Starfleet fight a awfully lot of wars, most small, some big.
For Starfleet, after a decade or so the significance of the Dominion War will be like the significance of World War Two to the modern US Navy, a historical event that has no effect on day to day operations.
They can say whatever they like. There's no rational way the two can coexist in the same continuity.
If they wanted it to be in the same continuity as TOS, they should have written it to reflect that.
Exasperated Liz Lemon makes some excellent points.
Yes, that was exactly my point. Well done.
As a psychologist, I don’t deal with a lot of cardiac issues...
“Feeling” something is so, doesn’t make it so.
"Trust your feelings, Fluke...and if you can't be good, be careful."
Exactly.Yes, that was exactly my point. Well done.
As a psychologist, I don’t deal with a lot of cardiac issues...
“Feeling” something is so, doesn’t make it so.
IIRC, the ep "Too Short A Season" was supposed to feature Kirk coming back to face the results of what he did in "A Private Little War". Shatner didn't want to return, so the setting was moved and Kirk was replaced with Jameson.
Similar threads
