Do you like the Discovery Klingon look?

[jackoverfull]

Replicating production design aesthetics is not the same thing as "respecting the previous canon," and using a different production design aesthetic is not "disrespecting the previous canon."

whatever. Discovery also introduces a never seen before revolutionary FTL drive, never seen before very long range holocommunicators, totally reworks sarek into a very different character, introduces the mirror universe a decade earlier and plenty of other problematic stuff, and this just in the first season.

 

[Yistaan]

whatever. Discovery also introduces a never seen before revolutionary FTL drive, never seen before very long range holocommunicators, totally reworks sarek into a very different character, introduces the mirror universe a decade earlier and plenty of other problematic stuff, and this just in the first season.

You're worried about Sarek? They turned Spock into a deceitful mastermind of coverups and purposely covering up Federation propulsion technology, while the Spock I remember just wouldn't hold back progress like that.

 

[jackoverfull]

You're worried about Sarek? They turned Spock into a deceitful mastermind of coverups and purposely covering up Federation propulsion technology, while the Spock I remember just wouldn't hold back progress like that.

but that was in season 2.

 

[JoaquinSlowly]

Retroactive continuity isn’t “disrespecting previous canon,” it’s a literary tool used to grow canon through previously unrevealed backstory, and doesn’t begin in Star Trek with Discovery.

 

[Yistaan]

For what it's worth, we also see Spock tell Pike in the Menagerie that he's never disobeyed Pike's orders before. So what do we see in Discovery? Spock immediately disobeying Pike's orders to shut off the bizarre experiment to "kill" Burnham to summon the red angel.

 

[STEPhon IT]

short answer: because prequels sell. Or at least they think they do.

Do they??? Prequels are now considered "Old Hat" every franchise has done it and it's weak and boring. Kurtzman's Star Trek looks very movie like, still believed DISCO should transition to cinemas, if someone could convince him to steer closer to what Matt Jefferies and the pioneers of Star Trek did; his work could be more in line with his mentor JJ Abrams' movies. Something he was a part of. Strange tho, in PICARD aliens appeared just as I remembered them but with DISCO they're altered, but I have no problem with the HR Giger Klingons maybe this was his way of dismissing the Augment crap.

 

[Yistaan]

Prequels are now considered "Old Hat" every franchise has done it and it's weak and boring.

Well supposedly fans demanded a Pike tv show and we got one. Don't know if CBS just made that up.

 

[Dukhat]

Retroactive continuity isn’t “disrespecting previous canon,” it’s a literary tool used to grow canon through previously unrevealed backstory, and doesn’t begin in Star Trek with Discovery.

I agree with you in theory, but I think there’s a difference between ‘retroactive continuity’ (i.e. Spock has an adopted human sister nobody knew about before, which is fine because it doesn’t contradict anything and the whole story is about said sister), and ‘changing things just to change things’ (i.e. the Klingon redesign, which serves no purpose story-wise other than to hide the fact that Shazad Latif was playing two roles, which was not the reason why they did it.)

 

[Sci]

whatever. Discovery also introduces a never seen before revolutionary FTL drive, never seen before very long range holocommunicators, totally reworks sarek into a very different character, introduces the mirror universe a decade earlier and plenty of other problematic stuff, and this just in the first season.

I know some segments of fandom treat keeping strict continuity as an uncontested good and deviations from continuity as inherently bad, but the simple fact is that choosing to break continuity does not mean you do not respect prior canon. An artist can have immense respect for prior works yet also decide to make different artistic choices.

I agree with you in theory, but I think there’s a difference between ‘retroactive continuity’ (i.e. Spock has an adopted human sister nobody knew about before, which is fine because it doesn’t contradict anything and the whole story is about said sister), and ‘changing things just to change things’

There is nothing wrong with changing things to change things.

(i.e. the Klingon redesign, which serves no purpose story-wise

Nope. It serves a story function. By defamiliarizing the audience from the Klingons, the new makeup design creates a feeling of, pardon the unintentional pun, "alienation" between the Klingon characters and the audience. This makes the Klingons scarier and emphasizes their status as aliens who have a vastly different culture, and it reinforces the overall S1 theme that even vast cultural differences can be bridged and even fundamentally different cultures deserve respect and equality.

 

[Sci]

Nope, it only establishes that Pike isn’t comfortable having women on the bridge.

He doesn't say, "not comfortable." He says, "not used." The only way he could not be used to it is if the space service has been discriminating against women.

nope, it only establishes that Lester, a deeply troubled person, attributes her being unable to obtain a captaince to her being a woman, but it’s very obvious that she’s not mentally fit to command anything.

From "Turnabout Intruder:"

JANICE: Your world of starship captains doesn't admit women. It isn't fair.
KIRK: No, it isn't. And you punished and tortured me because of it.​

Kirk literally affirms that her assertion that Starfleet does not allow women to be starship captains is accurate, and he objects to her punishing him for Starfleet policy.

 

[Dukhat]

Considering the backpedaling that was done in season 2 to make the Klingons and their ships more recognizable to the status quo, it’s obvious that change for the sake of change didn’t work out as well as they thought.

 

[Sci]

Considering the backpedaling that was done in season 2 to make the Klingons and their ships more recognizable to the status quo, it’s obvious that change for the sake of change didn’t work out as well as they thought.

Or maybe it means Berg and Harberts, the showrunners for the first part of S2, had a different aesthetic sensibility than Fuller. Which is also totally valid.

 

[Dukhat]

“Different aesthetic sensibility” translation: “Fuller fucked up, so we’re changing things back to what the audience is familiar with.”

 

[Sci]

“Different aesthetic sensibility” translation: “Fuller fucked up, so we’re changing things back to what the audience is familiar with.”

Except that's not what they did either. They reduced the size of the back of the heads and they added hair, but the rest of the new design remains basically unchanged. Tenavik and Kol-Sha still look radically different from the Westmore makeup design; they're still distinctly Fuller-ian.

 

[fireproof78]

only Star Wars wasn't ever spanked for doing so

Depends on which portion of the franchise you visit.

now, if rogue one showed a cubical Death Star we would be looking at something similar to what starvtrek has been doing and I suspect it wouldn’t sit well with many fans.

Rogue One has issues that this fan does not particularly like. Doesn't keep it from being a part of Star Wars.

In both cases, a new Star Trek production (TMP/DIS) is introducing a radically changed Klingon makeup design with no onscreen explanation for changes in previous depictions, and simultaneously introduces familiar Klingon cultural elements (the K't'inga class in TMP, the Klingonese language and references to Kahless in DIS) to ensure we know it's the same species.

I just don't see a meaningful difference between TMP radically changing the Klingons with no explanation and DIS radically changing the Klingons with no explanation. Yet people don't mind the former and whine about the latter.

Emphasis added for my whole sale agreement. This is the essence of my argument. If I went from TOS to TMP with no context I could not say that the aliens in the ships were Klingons. However, context provides the information sufficiently to make that determination and now I can go with it. More than that, I actually enjoy it because the Klingons have broadened out as a culture.

exactly: discovery pretty much decided that looks are no longer canon and can be changed anytime, that what we see on screen isn’t necessarily a precise portrait of how things appears in universe.

Which is what TMP did. It did not treat TOS as a "precise portrait" of in universe. I am sure I am beating a dead horse but that is probably the dividing line of fan interpretation on how to record on screen portrayals. Is it a strict literalism or is it a dramatic presentation that is mutable? My answers is on the dramatic presentation because I value the artistic interpretation rather than trying to recreate the past. To me, Star Trek is a franchise about our humanity exploring in to the future and taking technological understanding and applying that in universe.

Discovery did so in a different way. I don't agree with all of it but I can work with it in universe. Mileage will vary but I think the interpretation is what is making the difference between fan opinion.

 

[Dukhat]

Except that's not what they did either. They reduced the size of the back of the heads and they added hair, but the rest of the new design remains basically unchanged. Tenavik and Kol-Sha still look radically different from the Westmore makeup design; they're still distinctly Fuller-ian.

I never said that reverting to the Westmore era was their intent. I said that they realized that they needed to change the Klingons as presented in season 1 (and their ships) to something clearly more recognizable to the audience.

 

[Sci]

I never said that reverting to the Westmore era was their intent. I said that they realized that they needed to change the Klingons as presented in season 1 (and their ships) to something clearly more recognizable to the audience.

Do you actually have evidence that the S2 change was motivated by a desire to appease Internet whiners? 'Cos it's just as likely that Berg and Harberts just had a different artistic preference from Fuller.

 

[Dukhat]

I don’t need someone to tell me the reasoning behind the change. It’s quite obvious why they did it. You’re welcome to believe that they had a ‘different artistic preference’ if that’s what you think. Considering that the Klingons played an extremely small role in S2, there would be no reason to change them from the Fuller design unless they had a specific reason for doing so other than ‘more change for the sake of change,’ especially when that change makes them look far more like what the audience has been used to seeing for the last 40-odd years.

 

[fireproof78]

Safe and familiar is now Trek's approach.

 

[eschaton]

I don't know how active you are in Star Wars fandom, but as someone who is very much active in it and has been for decades, there has been a lot (to put it mildly) of criticism of the stagnation of Star Wars technology. At its height when Legends was still Canon, fans regularly remarked on the absurdity of tech not changing for literally thousands of years or in the case of the Knights of the Old Republic game, ships from thousands of years ago like the Ebon Hawk actually being more advanced than the Millennium Falcon.

Eh. Tech in the Star Wars universe is just meant to be there as a patina to put over what would otherwise be a more-or-less high fantasy setting (plenty of which have technology stagnant at medieval levels for thousands of years). Technological progress would kind of ruin the setting, because eventually you end up with post-scarcity godtech and 90% of the conflict goes out of the setting entirely (and the characters themselves become unrelatable).