Which version of TOS is canon??
- Thread starter Lt. Tyler
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Of course not, but this is art, not a documentary. What's important about the visuals is not whether it's "right" or whether it "fits." What's important is aesthetics and individual expression. In an art class, would you expect the teacher to insist that all the students paint the subject in exactly the same way, or to encourage them to find their own individual styles? Creativity is about individuality, not lockstep conformity.
Look at Star Wars animated series. Each one has its own distinctive art and design style, and when characters cross over from one series to another, like R2-D2 or Yoda or Ahsoka, they have a different design in each series, redone to fit that show's distinctive look. But we still understand they're the same character. They're just being interpreted differently.
Shoot, it's probably time to just accept these interpretations for what they are and don't sweat the canon stuff because none of the things these producers had done connects. If you like these interpretations, which I do, then just like them and accept them as their own universe. Will any of this stuff ever connect with TOS? Never but does it really have to?
I don't think so anymore. I'm betting the way Hollywood never likes being 1st and LOVES being second, CBSAA will jump on the multi-universe bandwagon DC/AT&T and MARVEL/ DISNEY will do. This copycat idea will solve a lot of problems with the canon issues I had since TWOK.
Timeline is off. First, Kirk and Khan say it was 15 years since Space Seed. Twenty years puts it 5 years before that, or around 2263-2265. The refit was about 5 years after Space Seed or around 2273, so, the refit Enterprise was only around 10 years old. Twenty years takes us back to the beginning of the Kirk era and TOS implying that the Enterprise was brand new at the beginning of TOS. Maybe the Pike Enterprise got destroyed and replaced with a new ship with the same registry number but they didn't start using the "-A" suffix, yet. Explains the Constellation's low registry number, too.
TOS Movies are their own thing, like TNG Movies were its own thing and for what's it is worth they are canon. There are startling issues with these movies which a fan can either ponder on them, make silly explanations for them or ignore them. Making these things a separate universe I can accept Khan Noonien Singh remembering Chekov when in reality the character was not in the episode "Space Seed" and those goofy threads he was wearing in TWOK didn't remotely had the simplicity and creative flair I loved in that episode.
I can accept the Enterprise being 20 years old and needs to be decommissioned because it is not in the same universe, heck Harve Bennett and the bunch, including Leonard Nimoy, didn't feel it was necessary to do their homework to make it canon. Now DISCO is doing their own thing where their Enterprise looks dramatically different from TOS, even the bridge and the uniforms look no where near what TOS had done but it's suppose to be before Matt Jefferies great design. Okay, for CBS and fans who love these things it is canon... even though none of that shit makes any logical sense. Yes, the movie Enterprise was 20 years old because Admiral Morrow said so and James Kirk didn't correct him because the script was written as so... and is of course canon.
You and me and much of fandom. The Spaceflight Chronology was a wonderful resource until then, wasn't it?
Honestly, to this day I've still never owned a copy of the SFC (though I borrowed it from the library once). I based my chronology on an article in one of the Best of Trek collections, which was based in turn on the SFC.
But they still looked like themselves, even if the art style was different. R2 didn't suddenly look like an R5 unit with a conical style head and red markings.
Since we keep using Star Wars as a touchstone... The look goes a lot toward the feel of the universe. The new Disney Star Wars attractions LOOK like Star Wars. They don't look like Star Trek. A fan with even the minimalist appreciation for the difference between the two is not going to be confused and think Galaxy's Edge looks like Star Trek. Bill Sienkiewicz art style is different from Pablo Marcos, but they both drew Geordi or Crusher similar to their live-action counterparts.
It's not like someone is going to present the Enterprise D with a triangle engineering section, and 16 nacelles unless the plot called for it.
Yes, and the Enterprise is still a saucer and three cylinders even if the proportions aren't exactly the same. The bridge is still a big round room with a big chair in the middle even if the hardware and color scheme are different. You can still recognize what it's meant to be, and that's how art design works. When Lower Decks turns Riker into a big-headed, bug-eyed cartoon character, you can still tell it's Riker because the broad strokes are there even though the details are changed.
And nobody is actually doing anything like that, so it's a specious straw man.
I'm going to pause at this point because Star Wars and Star Trek have two very different design concepts. Star Wars is its own universe, set in a galaxy far, far, away. Even looking at Old Republic designs there is a distinct sameness of the technology, even with thousands of years passing. It is a fairy tale type story with no real connection to us here, aside from how we relate to the characters.
Star Trek is not. Star Trek's design conceit is based on the idea that it is our humanity's future, and will have some familiar reference points, as well as a need to keep up with technological understanding. Having visuals change is a part of that design path, as evidenced by TMP and then TWOK. And @Christopher makes an excellent point that even with the artistic differences the Enterprise is still a saucer and two cylinders that is recognizable as such.
Exactly. There's nothing new about Star Trek massively reinventing its design aesthetic. My generation went through that four decades ago, and we adapted and got used to the change.
There is interpreted and then there is changed. What Star Wars has done is interpretation. The animated series have stylized the live action designs. But when Rogue One and The Force Awakens came along, they didn't stylize anything, they returned to the original designs and made subtle changes. The stormtrooper helmet has indented grills along the side where the original was just painted. The Star Destroyer is the ANH design, but with lights and a finished top surface which the original model did not have. The same with Doctor Who. They revisited the 1960's Tardis and recreated nearly everything exact, but the original had one wall that was a curtain backdrop and they made it solid. They did change some little things.
What Star Trek did with Discovery is a complete visual redesign. It is not an interpretation, it is redone. The design is fundamentally changed. And they couldn't even manage to do it right. The starship models are designed on one scale and yet on screen we see the original Franz Joseph Constitution Class dimensions and stats (in meters based on Matt Jefferies dimensions in feet) made canon.
So there is no way to align what Star Wars did with animation to what Discovery did to live action. Under CBS the production royally messed up. It was at CBS's direction, let's not forget that. It was not copyright, it was not copyright. It was more greed than anything - wanting new designs for merchandising most likely. Previous to Discovery, care was taken to at least honor the past, if not replicate it. Discovery took that and threw it out the window in a way that would make Star Wars fans go ballistic. Instead so many Star Trek fans defend it as if it was the norm rather than quite the exception.
Yes, and Star Trek has changed things before, starting with TMP. It's allowed to. There's nothing wrong with it. This is a franchise whose literal mission statement is to boldly seek out the new.
Yes, that is my whole damn point, that it's wrong to expect Star Trek to duplicate the way Star Wars does things. Star Wars does not rule the whole universe. It is not the absolute standard that everything else has to conform to. I only cited the Star Wars animation redesigns as an example of the wider principle, nothing more.
No, it's individuality. Creativity is not about marching in lockstep to some rigid dogma. It's about individual expression. Every artist, every designer, has their own style. Every film or TV producer has their own sense of aesthetics that guides them in choosing designers and deciding among the designs they offer. So naturally the design choices are going to be different from production to production. It's naive to expect otherwise.
No, it bloody wasn't. I was there in 1979. They changed the look of the universe just as drastically in TMP as they did in DSC.
People keep going back to that, but IT WAS CHANGED IN THE STORY. Sure, we don't get an explanation for the different look of the Klingons for over 20 years, but all the changes to the Enterprise were explained in the story. IT was not just presented to us as the same. We even saw an old connie on screen from time to time. The movies had Franz Joseph's drawings appear on screen. TNG showed us the old TOS style connie on the library screen and on the wall in the conference room. It was there in the story. They honored and moved on in a way that worked.
And you think Star Wars and Star Trek technophiles are different? All were given birth from Star Trek and Franz Joseph's tech manual and general plans. If anything, fans have gotten picker as time has gone on. I could never find accurate plans of the Excelsior so I have ended up drawing my own. Gary Kerr has created the most accurate plans of the TOS Enterprise (though he hasn't released them publicly). And in Star Wars you would think that they might fix the Millennium Falcon set so it would actually make sense, but no, the TFA set, Solo set, and the Galaxy's Edge attraction all follow the same messed up ANH layout that can't possibly fit inside the model/exterior set. And right here on this site there are discussions about the TOS Enterprise and how to fit the Bridge inside the dome on the 11 foot model. The answers range from changing the scale to changing the decks to a combination. So yeah, I hold Star Trek to the same standards I hold Star Wars. I expect the story to fit and the visuals to match. Otherwise it is just a reboot.
If you want individuality and creativity, MAKE A NEW SETTING!!!!! If you are going to go back to TOS or TNG or Enterprise eras, FOLLOW THE ESTABLISHED DESIGNS! Previous Trek productions recognized this and followed this and I expect future Trek productions to do the same. If you want to be creative then be creative. Shoehorning something where it does not belong is not being creative. At worst it plays as bad fanfiction and best a reboot.
I was there in 1979. They changed the look and.... WROTE IT INTO THE STORY. It is part of the story that the ship is different. And it's not like that was the first uniform change or phaser change or communicator change. That happened between WNMHGB and the series. It is in the story. How to you write the changes in Discovery into the story? How? The Enterprise gets a total refit between the Cage and Discovery and then again between Discovery and WNMHGB. As well as changing uniforms and changing back. But the story discontinuity is too great to reconcile the stories. Discovery is a full reboot. TMP was a minor cosmetic facelift. And right there on the rec deck was the TOS Enterprise, acknowledging the original look of the ship. And then Trials and Tibbleations went back and went into a TOS story. Then Ent went to when Defiant came out of interphase and it was the same ship (they did have some new sets as well). So before Discovery, Trek acknowledged its visual past so what happened in TMP was an in universe visual change. The old still exists and the new exists beside it. Discovery creates change to that timeline of existing visual looks for the first time. TMP did not demand that of us.
The studio is not responsible for fans pickiness.
No, they are not responsible, but they are quite stupid if they don't take it into account. And let's face it, the CBS brass passed on Star Trek the first time so they don't exactly have a good track record with it.
And? Whatever the brass may think that doesn't invalidate changes. I can reconcile Discovery just like TMP. I don't need it explained to me and Star Trek not following the Star Wars model is probably the best thing that could be done with a property supposedly about our humanity's future. Star Trek isn't about consistent visuals-it is about our humanity.
An area where Discovery blew it. In the first Episode!!!! But previously Trek was about following what came before. With Discovery it is rewritten and not done well. It is pathetic compared to Picard.
Mileage will vary. Because I see no harm done. Star Trek being treated like Star Wars is a fool's errand. TOS still exists, is still a part of the greater continuity. Changed visuals are not invalidating that.
It's rude to shout, you know. And Discovery seasons 1-2 were set nearly a decade before TOS, so you can justify the change in the same way, as a refit in the intervening years. I find it bizarre that people get so upset about it.
No, I think the series themselves are different, and it's an invalid and incompetent argument to claim that just because Star Wars does things a certain way, that somehow constitutes a force of law that compels unrelated franchises to do things the same way.
You really shouldn't. They don't have the same goals or approach in any meaningful way.
You've just dismissed and insulted the work of every theatrical designer who stages a new production of Hamlet or Our Town or any other play. It's culturally illiterate to believe it's somehow wrong to redo an existing concept in a new way.
Screaming in people's faces does not make you right.
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