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Spoilers Picard Prequel "Children of Mars"

Tell that to the writers of Discovery season 2. They tried so hard to bring "canon" in "sync" that they had to leave 23rd century completely behind. And they used exactly "convoluted fankwanky explanations" to do it.

Yes, I’m aware of that. And no, they absolutely did not need to do any of that. If they really couldn’t find a way to bring ‘canon’ in ‘sync,’ all they had to do was admit that DSC takes place in yet another alternate universe from the prime one and continue on with their version of the 23rd century.
 
Yes, I’m aware of that. And no, they absolutely did not need to do any of that. If they really couldn’t find a way to bring ‘canon’ in ‘sync,’ all they had to do was admit that DSC takes place in yet another alternate universe from the prime one and continue on with their version of the 23rd century.

I was hoping for a quick multiverse gag that showed the TOS style while flipping through the mycilial network during the mirror arc of season 1.
 
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Because if one thing goes wrong, then poof! At least with the regular spacesuits, if there's a leak, there's still some oxygen left. And you're still protected from direct exposure to whatever star you're orbiting. The forcefield belts are a really flimsy idea in practice.
There's tons of potentially useful technology that only pops up once, to never be seen again, this is just another one.
And the real world reason was because the people making TAS didn't have to budget to draw whole new versions of the characters in spacesuits, so they just did the belts so they could just draw a line around the characters and be done wit it.
Not without all kinds of retconning it isn’t.

For example, the last of the four Human-Kzinti wars was in 2069. That does not jibe with where humanity was during that time period according to everything that came after TAS.
There are bit and pieces of history thrown around in the other series that don't always line up perfectly, but it hasn't kept the other series from all being canon.
Once again the real world reason for this is because the episode with the Kzinti was based on story in Larry Niven's own sci-fi universe, and he just used the backstory from it.
 
...In any case, I'd love to see the TAS belts pop up in a suitable connection, establishing they were always there.

I mean, there's no reason they couldn't have been. In TOS "Squire of Gothos", we already see belts that protect the wearers from an utterly hostile environment. Sure, the supposed forcefield there is invisible - but those always were in TOS, unless challenged. And sure, the user also wears a breathing mask - but a belt and suspenders may sometimes be warranted.

Then we get ST:TMP where everybody on this new and untested starship wears prominent belt buckles that are never seen again. Safety belts, just in case?

Beyond this, Trek generally has very few situations where the belts should appear. We know they don't protect from weapons - in TAS, they were transparent to all types of attack, from grappling to phasering. We know spacesuits are worn when spacewalks are expected. But the belts could be for unexpected spacewalks, or for Goldilocks-mild special environments such as "Squire" or "Ambergris" or the interiors of a somewhat airtight alien derelict. It's just that those generally aren't part of our heroes' schedule...

Oh, well. I guess my preference would be for the belts to be the future umbrellas rather than the future flak jackets. And the military rarely dons umbrellas. But some Trek civilian literally might: having a belt-based forcefield deflect raindrops would be incredibly cool VFX, both conceptually and visually. :p

Timo Saloniemi
 
And since it is highly unlikely that we will ever see the Kzinti used or even mentioned in Trek again, personally I can ignore that particular episode without any problem.
Just like many other singular events we have had to retcon (or ignore) over the years.

Supposedly Many Coto was going to involve the Kzinti in Enterprise if it was greenlit for a fifth season.

Tell that to the writers of Discovery season 2. They tried so hard to bring "canon" in "sync" that they had to leave 23rd century completely behind. And they used exactly "convoluted fankwanky explanations" to do it.

The worst part about it though was that it still didn't make sense, but it wasn't fun either! Every time they tried to use fankwank to explain things the whole season arc just ground to a halt.

I mean, say what you want about DS9's choice to explicitly lampshade the difference in Klingon appearance between the TOS and Berman era. At least they had a shit-ton of fun doing it.

I was hoping for a quick multiverse gag that showed the TOS style while flipping through the mycilial network during the mirror aec of season 1.

The Spore Drive in general was just horribly used. I mean, you have a network which links together all points in space and time, along with any and all alternate universes within the multiverse. This really is a way to "boldly go" that has never happened before in Trek history. You can solve your mistakes by going back in time. You can become Sliders on a spaceship. It opens up tremendous storytelling possibilities. And they basically just ignored them, using it as a "jump" drive except for the oops of going to the MU, and the other oops of traveling forward in time a short duration.
 
Not without all kinds of retconning it isn’t.

For example, the last of the four Human-Kzinti wars was in 2069. That does not jibe with where humanity was during that time period according to everything that came after TAS.
Yeah - about that - how do you know? I mean hell ST:VOY pretty much retconned the Eugenics Wars out of existence, yet they're still mentioned of Star trek series post ST:VOY. ;)
 
The Spore Drive in general was just horribly used. I mean, you have a network which links together all points in space and time, along with any and all alternate universes within the multiverse. This really is a way to "boldly go" that has never happened before in Trek history. You can solve your mistakes by going back in time. You can become Sliders on a spaceship. It opens up tremendous storytelling possibilities. And they basically just ignored them, using it as a "jump" drive except for the oops of going to the MU, and the other oops of traveling forward in time a short duration.
Like many Trek concepts it started out interesting and was only marginally successful in execution. I personally think that Discovery's disappearance from the 23rd century could just as easily have been the Spore Drive consuming them in some fashion, cutting off access to the mycelial network. You could easily make the mycelial network have a level of sentience, causing them to reject any sort of artificial incursion in to their realm.

Stuff like that is what I'm more interested in. I mean, the MU was interesting enough, but I like the idea of a more unusual lifeform to explore.
 
Yeah - about that - how do you know? I mean hell ST:VOY pretty much retconned the Eugenics Wars out of existence, yet they're still mentioned of Star trek series post ST:VOY. ;)

I'm of a mind that newer information overwrites older information continuity-wise, which is pretty much de rigeur for all TV shows. Like you say, TOS seems to imply that the USA was involved in the Eugenics Wars; VOY showed that not to be the case. VOY trumps TOS. In M*A*S*H, Colonel Blake's wife was first named Mildred and was later changed to Lorraine. Lorraine trumps Mildred. In TAS it was established that humanity fought wars with an alien cat species four times in the mid-2000's; in FC it was established that humanity was recovering from a world war and had only just discovered warp drive and hadn't made contact with aliens yet. FC trumps TAS.

Supposedly Many Coto was going to involve the Kzinti in Enterprise if it was greenlit for a fifth season.

Nothing supposed about it. It would have happened. They even designed a Kzinti ship:

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net...20060825072947&format=original&path-prefix=en

Of course, if the Kzinti did show up in ENT, it would have been up to that show to decide whether to follow the TAS continuity (which was already in doubt because of FC), or retcon it. I'm sure they would have chosen the latter, if they even cared about TAS in the first place.
 
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Fortunately, the "TAS continuity" in this case would have been light. Sulu mentioned disastrous wars in the distant past to remind the ratcats of their place. Both halves of this could well be treated as exaggeration: the Kzinti might not have been complete pushovers, and the wars that concluded "two hundred years ago" might have ended just a tad over one century ago instead, right after Archer trailbazed Earth's entanglement in interstellar conflict.

Most of the Nivenverse pseudo-facts that people remember having been in there actually never made it through the transition, thankfully. We don't have to account for any specific version of how and when Earth first got its FTL drive, say, or how it influenced these four wars.

There are plenty of other TAS nuggets that would have required actual effort to navigate around. But nobody has ever really suggested a sequel to, say, "Counter-Clock Incident", right?

Timo Saloniemi
 
Fortunately, the "TAS continuity" in this case would have been light. Sulu mentioned disastrous wars in the distant past to remind the ratcats of their place. Both halves of this could well be treated as exaggeration: the Kzinti might not have been complete pushovers, and the wars that concluded "two hundred years ago" might have ended just a tad over one century ago instead, right after Archer trailbazed Earth's entanglement in interstellar conflict.

Most of the Nivenverse pseudo-facts that people remember having been in there actually never made it through the transition, thankfully. We don't have to account for any specific version of how and when Earth first got its FTL drive, say, or how it influenced these four wars.

There are plenty of other TAS nuggets that would have required actual effort to navigate around. But nobody has ever really suggested a sequel to, say, "Counter-Clock Incident", right?

I’m going by what was stated in the episode. There’s no reason to assume that it wasn’t correct in the context of TAS. It was just overwritten by later continuity.
 
Oh, I just wanted to point out that in-universe, there is a reason to assume it wasn't correct when spoken by Sulu: namely, because Sulu spoke it in mockery of the ratcats.

This independently of what one thinks of continuity or context.

Timo Saloniemi
 
Oh, I just wanted to point out that in-universe, there is a reason to assume it wasn't correct when spoken by Sulu: namely, because Sulu spoke it in mockery of the ratcats.

Except Chuft-Captain doesn’t correct Sulu when he makes that statement. So Sulu wasn’t stating a falsehood.
 
Or he wasn't worth correcting

I can’t speak for Chuft-Captain, but if some foreigner told me that his country fought four wars with the United States and won all four, and it was a falsehood, I’m not going to just ignore what he said.
 
Chuft-Captain does snap at Sulu (if only verbally), and refers to his ancestors having tasted human flesh. So not only is it possible that Sulu exaggerates the ease of human victory, it's possible he's being flippant about other things as well.

How many interstellar wars humans fought before Archer's time has never been specified. Zero is a possibility, perhaps supported by the idea that Vulcans would have been hovering above Earth more or less constantly between Cochrane's day and Archer's. But zero is never stated, nor is the concept of a Vulcan siege explicated; Earth does have pre-NX-01 warships of some potency, even if their drives can't take them into unexplored space yet.

Timo Saloniemi
 
Earth does have pre-NX-01 warships of some potency, even if their drives can't take them into unexplored space yet.

Entirely possible these 'wars' were skirmishes with boomers, maybe a raid on an outlying earth colony (like Terra Nova)
 
Chuft-Captain does snap at Sulu (if only verbally), and refers to his ancestors having tasted human flesh. So not only is it possible that Sulu exaggerates the ease of human victory, it's possible he's being flippant about other things as well.

Occam’s razor: Sulu made a statement about human-Kzinti history, Chuft-Captain didn’t argue or correct his statement. Therefore, Sulu made a factual statement.

How many interstellar wars humans fought before Archer's time has never been specified. Zero is a possibility, perhaps supported by the idea that Vulcans would have been hovering above Earth more or less constantly between Cochrane's day and Archer's. But zero is never stated, nor is the concept of a Vulcan siege explicated; Earth does have pre-NX-01 warships of some potency, even if their drives can't take them into unexplored space yet.

There’s simply no way that humans could have fought four interstellar wars with an alien race on their own, in the mid-2000’s, much less one war. During TAS it was fine because Earth’s history was never explicitly mentioned like in future Trek productions. It does not need convoluted explanations to make it fit in with current Trek history. It’s simply been retconned out of existence, and I’m fine with that.

Entirely possible these 'wars' were skirmishes with boomers, maybe a raid on an outlying earth colony (like Terra Nova)

Then if that was the case, I doubt the Kzinti would have lost those wars four times over.
 
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Occam’s razor: Sulu made a statement about human-Kzinti history, Chuft-Captain didn’t argue or correct his statement. Therefore, Sulu made a factual statement.

The Razor doesn't work that way. In fact, it doesn't work on fiction at all. Actually, it doesn't work at all, period, but that's another issue.

What we have here is a set of evidence, of which Sulu's statement is but a small fraction. Within that set, Sulu is making a counterfactual statement. Why should anybody have a problem with that? What some long-gone Makers once thought isn't particularly interesting.

There’s simply no way that humans could have fought four interstellar wars with an alien race on their own, in the mid-2000’s, much less one war.

Why not? They had the spaceships, they had the rayguns. And nobody said they fought anything "on their own".

Then if that was the case, I doubt the Kzinti would have lost those wars four times over.

Why? What about the species as seen in the one and only TAS episode would suggest otherwise? Their super-duper weaponry (Federation Phaser II pistols)? Their fancy flying saucer? Their search for better weapons?

The Boomers in ENT twice made short work of random space pirates with the firepower of a single freighter. A campaign of some sort might well work in their favor, then.

Timo Saloniemi
 
The Razor doesn't work that way. In fact, it doesn't work on fiction at all. Actually, it doesn't work at all, period, but that's another issue.

Occam’s Razor = In explaining a thing, no more assumptions should be made than is necessary. It works in this context just fine, fiction or otherwise.

What we have here is a set of evidence, of which Sulu's statement is but a small fraction. Within that set, Sulu is making a counterfactual statement. Why should anybody have a problem with that? What some long-gone Makers once thought isn't particularly interesting.

No, what we have is the writer’s intent. The writers didn’t make Sulu say one thing but mean something else. That’s just your contrarian interpretation.

Why not? They had the spaceships, they had the rayguns. And nobody said they fought anything "on their own".

Why? What about the species as seen in the one and only TAS episode would suggest otherwise? Their super-duper weaponry (Federation Phaser II pistols)? Their fancy flying saucer? Their search for better weapons?

Believe whatever you want. The evidence as presented in FC and ENT does not jibe with the info in TSW as far as I’m concerned.

The Boomers in ENT twice made short work of random space pirates with the firepower of a single freighter. A campaign of some sort might well work in their favor, then.

That was almost 100 years later. I’m talking about the period of 2063 to 2069.
 
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