Great post.
Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2x01 - "The Broken Circle"
- Thread starter Commander Richard
- Start date
Great post.
Spock looks so young in that close-up moment when he thinks he's killed Chapel and M'Benga. Ethan Peck managed to embody Spock's youth in the face of hard decisions and it was really poignant I thought.
Perhaps SB1 got sucked back in time ala Babylon 4. Or else it's also orbiting Athan Prime along with the SF Museum and we just didn't see it.
But why? Why doesn't Chapel deserve a decent backstory? Why must she live in our memories as the moony-eyed, love-sick, dishrag we assumed she was from brief appearances in TOS?
I mean as long as we're giving other people backstories...
Who says it moved? There is still a 'Jupiter Station' mentioned in all the Berman era 24th century series. Maybe it just was renamed/re-designated at some point in the intervening 100 years. Also, the station orbiting Earth has usually been refered to as "Earth Space Dock" or "ESD". I don't think it's even been referred to as "Starbase 1".
Indeed, that's my big question. "These characters are nothing like what we saw*"
*Saw being brief snippets of caricature that was never the focus of development in TOS. A prequel shouldn't tell me stuff I already know; it gives new perspective on characters I thought I knew.
Two reasons.
1. Because that is how the character was originally portrayed and developed. So what if she was pathetic? A lot of people are- that's life.
2. Using old characters in a prequel restricts what can be done with them. At least, as long as the studio insists this is the actual, no-shit TOS timeline and not some derivative of it. New characters have no such handicaps- they can be developed, killed off, scapegoated, turncoated, whatever you want to do with them for story and dramatic effect, without consequence.
Someone else nailed the point: if you don't want the internal consistency with these characters to start with, why use them at all?
Well…they need new sensors/security personnel then because that Borg installation would be hard to miss
You're missing the most compelling element of prequels though. The idea that a prequel can present a character as different as possible from the one portrayed in the original work and the audience interest is maintained by promising an extremely emotional story arc that transforms the prequel character into the character shown in the original work. This is what literally upheld interest in the 3 Star Wars prequel movies for example.
That being said, while a story showing how Chapel goes from being an extroverted, outgoing, and progressive woman into a broken wallflower pining for Spock would be compelling in my opinion, there's no indication at all that SNW is actually going to tell such a story and far more indications that they're just using the same character name without regards to ever bridging the wildly different characterizations between the prequel and the original work.
Exactly, 100%. I love this portrayal of Chapel and really love the deepening (not cheapening or cynical deconstruction) of the character. I have no problem believing this is the same Chapel either. The characters had lives we didn’t see. Now we get to and that’s good.
I fully expect them to do so and in fact look forward to it.
This is on point. Exactly my thoughts. Don't tell me what I already know; show me how they become that way.
Because there is always more to people than just 'Oh, you're pathetic." That's bullshit, pure and simple. People become different things because of what happens to them, not just in a vacuum. That some are uninterested in Chapel becoming like TOS does not negate the power in that story that can be done.
Because in TOS it was stated, they had no fighting skills whatsoever....right?
Because this isn't expanding someone's backstory. This is completely changing someone's characterization with new backstory.
Just like when they say they just wanted to expand on the Gorn concept ... Well completely changing is not expanding.
Remains to be seen.
THIIIIIIIS.
Yes, I believe both M'Benga and Chapel stated to Kirk "We suck at fighting. Please don't ever put us in a combat situation." I believe that episode was titled "Please, Captain, send someone else."
Because people are static beings who never change?
Humanity is fucked then.
I don't see this as changing Chapel's characterization so much as instead giving her a characterization to begin with. I have enjoyed watching her TOS scenes with Spock and seeing them in a new light: her simply "pining" for Spock has become something more substantial, wanting to recapture something that she lost.
TOS M'Benga, knew Vulcan physiology, was second to McCoy. What else did we no about him? Nothing, because he wasn't a main character. But in SNW he is, so what characterisation changed that you knew before?
It was actually the opposite, I think in "The Apple" they showed all the characters in the away team, even the redshirts, doing hand to hand combat. Admittedly such sequences that didn't involve Kirk were rare since the redshirts usually use phasers.