The problem is that none of those character is as iconic as Spock. No offense to any of them, but they simply don't have the same marquee value. "Spock's sister!" is a jaw-dropper. "Tuvok's foster daughter" just doesn't have the same "Wow!" effect.
It's like substituting Martian Manhunter for Batman. They just aren't equivalent in terms of fame and pop-culture cachet.
Yeah, but I just disagree with the idea of Spock having (yet another) unrevealed sibling as a matter of subjective taste. This is totally subjective, but I prefer to literalize the idea of Spock's sense of isolation by having him be an only child for whom Kirk became the only person he ever had a brotherhood connection with.
Add to this a -- I mean, it's not a
continuity issue, but it seems to me that DIS!Spock has the same emotional journey over the course of DIS S2 with Michael that TOS!Spock had over the course of all of TOS, TMP, and TWOK with Kirk. So it feels like he's gone on this emotional journey twice, and that's -- well, it's not a continuity error, but it's dramatically dissatisfying.
And DIS!Sarek just does not feel like the same person to me as TOS!Sarek. He's too emotionally available for Michael.
All in all, while I liked the writing and performances of Michael's Vulcan family in DIS, I would have found it more dramatically satisfying if they had been different Vulcan characters.
Why did the show's writers even think it made sense to say that no one in the Federation had seen a Klingon face-to-face in a century despite acknowledging the Battle of Donatu V?
I do not care that it is technically plausible; it is a ridiculous premise.
I don't know if it's truly ridiculous. Space is
big, and it feels legit to me that they might make contact with the Klingons in the 2150s and then mostly fall out of contact except for intermittent conflicts here and there. I mean, hell, Europe and China had intermittent contact for centuries before they had regular contact. The Vikings made contact with Native Americans centuries before Columbus; etc.
Yeah, I agree. That made no sense. And besides plausibility I don't understand the original reasoning there. Just to make the Klingons more mysterious?
I don't actually know Bryan Fuller's creative intent here, but I suspect that was the idea, yeah. And honestly I think that if you're going to use the Klingons in a TOS prequel, you
should make them more mysterious. Not only should the Federation just not have that much information about this hostile species by that point in the timeline, but it also does help to create more tension or even occasionally dread in the audience if your protagonists don't know or understand your antagonists.
Also, I do think the Klingons had become a bit too familiar to be an effective antagonist if they were only presented as they were in TNG/DS9/VOY/ENT. A bit too cuddly -- Martok was practically an Emotional Support Klingon at times. Even in ENT, the characters acted like they had the kind of social exposure to Klingons the TNG characters had. Mostly I think DIS de-familiarized the Klingons through the new makeup and design aesthetic, and through the extensive use of Klingonese dialogue, to re-establish a sense of mystery and danger to them. But I think adding that "almost no contact" thing helpd.
A lack of contact is also a plausible consequence of the Augment virus from ENT. As
@Christopher conjectured in his
Rise of the Federation novels, it makes sense that the Klingons would spend the post-ENT era focusing inward on the social problems created by the virus. (Personally, I rationalize the makeup redesign from DIS as being another Augment Virus variant.)
So the bottom line is: I disagree with doing DIS as a TOS prequel, but if you
are going to do it as a TOS prequel, I agree with the idea of having the UFP and Klingons not have a lot of contact with each other in the meantime.
It just seemed unnecessary. The Klingons were a growing threat in Enterprise
Were they though? When I watched ENT, to me they mostly seemed more like cranky neighbors the next block over than a growing threat.
Yeah, I agree. I was never fond of the idea of them trying to squeeze it 10 years before the original series. I know they were trying to tie into the mother show, the original series, more closely. But I think at this point existing Trekkies have gotten used to the idea of Star Trek outside the original series and new fans probably only have a passing familiarity with it. I don't think it's as critical to be tied closely to the original series era anymore.
I mean, I think you need to consider that if you're sitting down to create the next ST series in 2015, the most popular incarnation of ST in decades was the Kelvin films using the TOS characters and a variation on the TOS setting. No
Star Trek film had ever made as much money as ST09, and no
Star Trek film or TV show in decades had reached that level of presence in the zeitgeist. That was probably a significant contributor to the decision to set the show around the TOS era and to use Kelvin film aesthetics.
I always thought moving forward in time was the best way to avoid continuity issues and my own pet peeve, set design issues that don't line up. It can always be answered in story that it's in the future.
Like Christopher, I don't really care about those. I mean, I would consider it a nice bonus if setting them in the 2390s avoids those issues, but for the most part I think discontinuities can be rationalized* and aesthetic changes don't even need to be justified. But they're not my biggest reason for not agreeing with the idea of setting DIS in the TOS era; my biggest reason is just that I think putting it in the TOS era is dramatically arbitrary and doesn't add anything meaningful to the story.
* The only discontinuity that I
do find frustrating is the spore drive. The Federation having instant-travel technology in the 2250s just really undermines the verisimilitude of VOY. It's like, "These guys had the ability to travel instantly over a century earlier; why is this taking 75 years now? Why didn't Starfleet send
Voyager the specs for the spore drive after they re-established regular contact in VOY S4? They could have had someone take Stamets's tardigrade DNA modifier and spore-jump back to Earth within a month." But that's the only discontinuity I find truly frustrating.
My issue with the setting is not just the continuity conflicts. Those are the prerogative of fiction, since it's all made up anyway. I prefer it when they're minimized, and the inconsistencies were annoying, but keeping the facts straight is by no means the highest or exclusive priority of fiction. And keeping the designs straight is incidental. Every artist has the right to interpret their subject in their own style. It doesn't have to be "explained" in-universe -- that's taking art too literally. I don't need an explanation for why DSC communicators look different from "Cage" communicators any more than I need an explanation for why Saavik's face and voice changed between movies, or why Riker and Troi are two-dimensional drawings in Lower Decks rather than flesh-and-blood people. That's just surface, not substance.
100% agreed.
No, my issue is the overuse of continuity, the overdependence on what's come before. Prior Trek sequel/spinoff series have mostly told their own stories and done maybe a couple of episodes in their first season or two that tied into plotlines or characters from a previous series. TNG's first season had the McCoy cameo in "Farpoint" and "The Naked Now," and that was about it. DS9's first season had Picard in "Emissary," the Duras sisters in "Past Prologue," Q and Vash in "Q-Less," and that was about it. VGR's first season only had Quark and Gul Evek in "Caretaker" and that was it. But DSC's first two seasons were constantly relying on past continuity elements -- Klingons, Sarek and Spock, Harry Mudd, the Mirror Universe, Captain Pike, Talos IV, Section 31, etc. There was more continuity porn in just 29 episodes than most previous series have had in multiple seasons, or even in their entire runs.
I sort-of agree here and sort-of don't. I suppose this might be nitpicking on my end, but I think my problem with DIS is that those previous continuity elements didn't
hurt the story being told, but they didn't
add anything to the story being told, either. The Klingon War could have been set in the 2390s as easily as the 2250s; Sarek and Spock could just as easily have been Sontak and S'Tor; Harry Mudd could have been any interstellar con artist; Pike could have been any generic white guy; Section 31 could just as easily have been Starfleet Intelligence.
The only times DIS's use of TOS or prior continuity elements actually added anything to the show was the use of the Terran Empire as a deliberate contrast to the Federation (and an implicit attack on the rise of American nationalism and xenophobia in the real world) and the use of the Talosians and of Vina in "If Memory Serves." Those were the only times the use of prior continuity elements contributed meaningfully to the story being told, and Vina/Talosians was the first time a prior continuity element had an emotional impact on the story that could not have been replicated with an different character or element.
So I suppose my attitude is, I don't mind them using prior continuity elements, but it's frustrating when they do so but those elements don't add anything meaningful. DIS-Spock doesn't
feel like Spock, so what's the point of bringing him on? DIS-Pike doesn't
feel like Pike, his personality is totally different; so why bring him on? Etc.
Now that they're in completely uncharted territory, hopefully that means we'll get a better ratio of new ideas to recycled ones. They have an opportunity now to build a whole new wing of the Trek universe, rather than just moving around the furniture in an existing wing. I hope they take advantage of it.
That's a really good point -- I really do enjoy DIS S1 and S2, but ultimately it was forced to use plot devices in those seasons that prevented it from having the "big picture" be too different from what it was in TOS. They focused on more character-driven stories, and those were great, but moving to the 33rd Century gives them an opportunity to do character-driven stories
and to have a totally unique "big picture" arc that doesn't have to restore the TOS status quo.
