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What story elements would you remove or just forget exist from canon?

Agreed, I've been a fan since 1987, mainly due to the TOS movies and TNG, but I'm still waiting for Star Trek to evolve beyond TWOK. It can still stand as a great movie and when I'm in the mood to watch it then it's available, but I'm tired of tuning into new Star Trek and still seeing TWOK elements repeated over and over.

SO agreed!
Also, having owned TWoK on Betamax, VHS, LaserDisc, DVD and Blu-Ray, and I think I have an MP4 file somewhere, reading "watch it when it's available" threw me for a second. ;) I know, I know, "okay boomer". :)
 
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Just because we CAN do a thing doesn't mean we MUST do a thing.
Agreed. Or that we SHOULD do said thing.
They could have given Kirk a beagle in his quarters. Wisely, they didn't.
They could have given Spock a purple mohawk. Wisely, they didn't.
They could have given McCoy an adorable robot sidekick. Wisely, they didn't.
They could have had Scotty get mysteriously reduced to age 11, and left him that way. Wisely, they didn't.
They could have made Chekov walk around with cheese on his head. Wisely, they didn't.
They could have paraded Uhura around in a degradingly sexy unifo... all right, they did that. Nice going, guys. :shifty:
 
Interesting thread topic:
-The Vulcans being such jerks on ENT (though Manny Coto mended that as best he could in the fourth season).
-I wouldn't have made Burnham Spock's sister. Perhaps a rival student at the Vulcan Science Academy, and maybe even a former girlfriend, but I think making them siblings was a bit too much.
-Section 31 being so out in the open in the DISCO era.
-DISCO Klingons unless there was a stated explanation, by someone on screen, about why they looked so different. As well as their ships.
-Killing off Captain Georgiou, or rather so soon anyway.
-No Gorn in SNW. I would've just made them a brand-new species.
-No Noonien Singh on the Enterprise before "Space Seed". Keep the actress, and even her character's past, but name her after someone else from the Eugenics Wars, or maybe a descendant of Colonel Green or ENT's Paxton.
-I wish that VOY hadn't said that Kirk only had one five-year mission. I would've left that more ambiguous, and The Motion Picture date, which isn't set in stone, vaguer as well.
-Stating that Decker was Enterprise captain for only like 18 months. Potential was missed there for novels and comics if they had established that already had completed a five year mission, or was close to it. It would make Kirk taking over even more of a jerk move and perhaps that could've led to more tension on the bridge with officers torn between two proven commanders.
-Retcon Natasha's death in "Skin of Evil." I'm okay with killing off the character, but hopefully in a more meaningful way. (Though that did lead to "Yesterday's Enterprise", an episode I loved).
-I agree with those who didn't want Kirk to die. I didn't mind it so much at the time, but over the years I wish that they hadn't done it, because I would like to see Kirk again but don't know how to really make that work.
-The first two seasons of ST: Picard didn't happen.
-Change the cause of The Burn in DISCO Season 3.
 
-The Vulcans being such jerks on ENT (though Manny Coto mended that as best he could in the fourth season).
Then you'd have remove all the times Sarek, and in some cases Spock, was a prick about Humans. The first time we saw Sarek, he wasn't that crazy about Humans despite being married to one. And there's that comment he made when Spock was born, in TFF.

Enterprise didn't invent it. It was already a thing since TOS.

Seriously, it'd been hard to believe Vulcans not being like that. We saw how Cochrane was with them at end of FC.

-No Gorn in SNW. I would've just made them a brand-new species.
Or at least have them appear like normal sapient reptiles, not like Alien.

Change the cause of The Burn in DISCO Season 3.
agreed. But I'd add make the nature of it different, and I don't buy the shortage of dilithium.
 
-The Vulcans being such jerks on ENT (though Manny Coto mended that as best he could in the fourth season).
I've heard it rationalized as the Vulcans of the Enterprise era are meant to represent the United Kingdom at the height of its empire, arrogant in their ways and sure of their cultural superiority in all the areas where their influence reaches. United Earth is the United States pre-World War II, an up-and-coming power who supplants the influence of the Vulcans galactically after the Earth-Romulan War.

-I wouldn't have made Burnham Spock's sister. Perhaps a rival student at the Vulcan Science Academy, and maybe even a former girlfriend, but I think making them siblings was a bit too much.
-Section 31 being so out in the open in the DISCO era.
-DISCO Klingons unless there was a stated explanation, by someone on screen, about why they looked so different. As well as their ships.
I've always had the sneaking suspicion that the only reason Discovery is set in the 23rd century is that they wanted that familial connection to Sarek and Spock, and whether that was a studio note that they needed some tangible connection to characters we had seen before. Because without that, there's no reason Discovery couldn't have been set in the 25th or 31st century to begin with.

If you eliminate the Spock connection and redo the setting from episode 1, it makes most of the problems people have with aspects of Discovery more tolerable. And I don't think having the Sarek/Spock connection does much for the Burnham character. You could have achieved the same backstory with new characters and without having to wedge her into Sarek's family issues.

-Killing off Captain Georgiou, or rather so soon anyway.
Agreed. And they had written themselves into a way of bringing her back at the end of season 1. I thought for sure that after returning from the Mirror Universe, they would bring Discovery back before the events of the Battle of the Binary Stars, instead of after they left, and make it a decision to attempt stopping the Klingon-Federation War from ever happening in the first place. To me, that would have been a better close to the season than the "let's go plant a bomb in the center of Qo'Nos" ending we got.

-The first two seasons of ST: Picard didn't happen.
There's a lot I would throw out. Not so much from season 2, since I think it's just a bad story idea (i.e., let's redo The Voyage Home) instead of creating weird canon elements. Season 1 on the other hand has stuff like making Mars uninhabitable (we're told its atmosphere is still burning years after the synthetic attack). And making Picard a synthetic is a writing decision that they backtrack from almost immediately after doing it. Instead of saying okay let's dangle how might this affect the character, the writers seem afraid of the choice and have to reassure the audience that, no, this does not mean Picard has any of Data's strength or suped-up-speed or intelligence capabilities, he's just the same-old-Picard in an android body. However, if you're going to make a distinction without a difference, why do it in the first place?

-Change the cause of The Burn in DISCO Season 3.
I think the idea of running out of dilithium had some merit, but the ultimate cause of The Burn they went with was ridiculous. I thought it cheapened the whole threat of it.
 
Then you'd have remove all the times Sarek, and in some cases Spock, was a prick about Humans. The first time we saw Sarek, he wasn't that crazy about Humans despite being married to one. And there's that comment he made when Spock was born, in TFF.

Enterprise didn't invent it. It was already a thing since TOS.

Seriously, it'd been hard to believe Vulcans not being like that. We saw how Cochrane was with them at end of FC.

Or at least have them appear like normal sapient reptiles, not like Alien.

agreed. But I'd add make the nature of it different, and I don't buy the shortage of dilithium.

Regarding Sarek, that presupposes that all Vulcans acted like him, versus just him having his own singular quirks or hang-ups. We already had seen decades of Sarek before ENT came out, and it wasn't necessary to depict prequel era Vulcans all like him, if that was what they were aiming for. I should've included the DS9 Vulcan baseball episode because that's the first time I caught the Berman era take on the Vulcans that ENT would run with. I wanted more balance. And I wanted the Vulcans to be right sometimes and humans to be wrong. I wanted to see humans humbled and have to learn from Vulcans and other species, which really should've been the case in the ENT era when Vulcans were so further ahead when it came to space travel.

Regarding the Gorn, it runs into canon issues with TOS's "Arena". I'm sure someone has figured out a way to slide around that, but why go there anyway? From what I read, the creators just liked the Gorn so they didn't care about the canon implications. I suspect that's what happened with La'an Noonien-Singh as well. One can make the argument that they no one should be bound to the canon (and sometimes loose canon) of a fifty-plus year old series. However the fun for some of us fans is seeing how well newer series fit with the older series, how creators can use canon in creative ways instead of just seeing it as an impediment to ignore whenever they choose to. It's their right, of course, but I think it weakens the entire franchise overall when its done in blatant ways.
 
I've always had the sneaking suspicion that the only reason Discovery is set in the 23rd century is that they wanted that familial connection to Sarek and Spock, and whether that was a studio note that they needed some tangible connection to characters we had seen before. Because without that, there's no reason Discovery couldn't have been set in the 25th or 31st century to begin with.
The reason Disco is set in the 23rd century specifically had to do with Fuller's original plan, which was to build the series around a throwaway line from TOS. No, no one knows what that line was, the other writers who took over after Fuller left abandoned that idea, and he's never elaborated on it since.
 
The reason Disco is set in the 23rd century specifically had to do with Fuller's original plan, which was to build the series around a throwaway line from TOS. No, no one knows what that line was, the other writers who took over after Fuller left abandoned that idea, and he's never elaborated on it since.
I remember that shortly before Discovery debuted, Paramount/CBS got really touchy about the "Axanar" crowdsourced film which used past Trek actors, to the point of suing over it. "Axanar" is based around a throwaway line in "Whom Gods Destroy" that implies a Klingon-Federation War which was the basis for FASA's "The Four Years War" role-playing game in the 1980s.

To me, it made sense that Paramount/CBS got so bent out of shape about "Axanar" because they were already planning for Discovery to cover similar ground.
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I've never seen any of the fan made stuff but watching that is actually pretty cool.

I know that the guy involved has got himself into some problems but the production there is mint
 
I remember that shortly before Discovery debuted, Paramount/CBS got really touchy about the "Axanar" crowdsourced film which used past Trek actors, to the point of suing over it. "Axanar" is based around a throwaway line in "Whom Gods Destroy" that implies a Klingon-Federation War which was the basis for FASA's "The Four Years War" role-playing game in the 1980s.

To me, it made sense that Paramount/CBS got so bent out of shape about "Axanar" because they were already planning for Discovery to cover similar ground.
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It had a lot more to do with the $1.4 million+ that was raised and how it was used. Spoiler: It wasn't on a fan film. Also bootleg Trek merchandise, which they're still shilling years later.
 
Not this line from "The Squires of Gothos"?

DESALLE: Iron-silica body, planet sized, magnitude one E. We'll be passing close.
SPOCK: Inconceivable this body has gone unnoted on all our records.
KIRK: And yet, here it is. No time to investigate. Science stations, gather data for computer banks. Uhura, notify the discovery on subspace radio.
UHURA: Strong interference on subspace, Captain. The planet must be a natural radio source.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Talk:USS_Discovery#the_Discovery
 
It had a lot more to do with the $1.4 million+ that was raised and how it was used. Spoiler: It wasn't on a fan film. Also bootleg Trek merchandise, which they're still shilling years later.
This is the reason, you need to enforce trademarks or you lose them.

CBS had been weirdly tolerant of high production value fan films for years and really needed to stop them as there was potential to confuse the market, particularly since they were planning on doing a new show. Most of these productions tried to play by unwritten rules around not making a profit, but Axanar's flagrant IP violations made them an easy target and give CBS the perfect group to point to and say "those guys ruined it for everyone" when they established written rules around fundraising and fan films.

The lawsuit was served a month after CBS announced they were going to do a new show, but Fuller being named showrunner and his ideas for the show weren't announced until well afterwards, which reinforces that it was likely less the content and more the fact that Axanar existed at all.
 
Regarding Sarek, that presupposes that all Vulcans acted like him, versus just him having his own singular quirks or hang-ups. We already had seen decades of Sarek before ENT came out, and it wasn't necessary to depict prequel era Vulcans all like him, if that was what they were aiming for. I should've included the DS9 Vulcan baseball episode because that's the first time I caught the Berman era take on the Vulcans that ENT would run with. I wanted more balance. And I wanted the Vulcans to be right sometimes and humans to be wrong. I wanted to see humans humbled and have to learn from Vulcans and other species, which really should've been the case in the ENT era when Vulcans were so further ahead when it came to space travel.
Sarek, even in Journey to Babel, probably were more progressive regarding attitudes toward Humans compared to other Vulcans who lived throughout their lives without interacting with Humans. There were still Vulcans old enough to remember when Humans were barely capable of warp one.


Regarding the Gorn, it runs into canon issues with TOS's "Arena". I'm sure someone has figured out a way to slide around that, but why go there anyway? From what I read, the creators just liked the Gorn so they didn't care about the canon implications. I suspect that's what happened with La'an Noonien-Singh as well. One can make the argument that they no one should be bound to the canon (and sometimes loose canon) of a fifty-plus year old series. However the fun for some of us fans is seeing how well newer series fit with the older series, how creators can use canon in creative ways instead of just seeing it as an impediment to ignore whenever they choose to. It's their right, of course, but I think it weakens the entire franchise overall when its done in blatant ways.

What canon problems? I took a look at the dialogue log. KIrk is definitely unfamiliar with the Gorn, but it's not clear Spock never heard of them, from what I'm reading. I'm not up to watching it on Paramount plus, with the Ads.

It's possible some who knew about the Gorn thought they occupied a region quite a distance from Cestus III.
 
Sarek, even in Journey to Babel, probably were more progressive regarding attitudes toward Humans compared to other Vulcans who lived throughout their lives without interacting with Humans.

Indeed.

If Sarek truly had anything against humans, he would never have married Amanda. And she definitely wouldn't have wanted anything to do with him.
 
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