Will TOS maintain its legendary status as Trek fandom gets younger?
- Thread starter BlueStuff
- Start date
What about those of us who like both?
I have black nails and usually wear all black. No tattoos, piercings, or mohawk, though.
"I just like the song!"What about those of us who like both?
About the discussion earlier about language in TOS, maybe it sounds weird in places to us but maybe people talk like that in the future?
What might our discussions sound like to people from year 1800 or 2200?
What might our discussions sound like to people from year 1800 or 2200?
Informal, impolite, use strange turns of phrase that are not relevant since the origin is lost to history.
TOS is already being "overwritten" by the new shows. Apparently they're what the TOS era looks like "now". Anything millennials and Gen Z can't take to in TOS has been joyfully taken out. Including the basic concept of what Vulcans are about. So it's already happened. They feel no reason to stay true to the original, except to cherry pick the bits they like only. Part of an anti-"boomer" mindset.
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We'll die off, so they win.
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We'll die off, so they win.
Generation Alpha.
Eh, I don’t know why this is considered a new phenomenon. TOS started getting overwritten starting with TWOK and even more so less than 20m into TNG’s first episode.
I can't imagine what you think I mean by "overwriting". The films and Next Gen depicted much later time periods, not the same era. They did not set stories in the general time period already covered by TOS, a time we've already seen onscreen, and show those times looking drastically different, as SNW/Disc did. Oh I get it .... you're thinking of the old vs. new Klingons. Just one alien race, and it wasn't even a total change, just a modification. And you think doing that with one thing means let's just change everything whenever we feel like it! The fact that they got away with it for that one issue means be careful not to do it again.
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Think of it this way: in one single story, you wouldn't start with TOS Klingons, change to blue Klingons in the middle, then orange in the last scene, claiming they'd always been orange. That's incompetent storytelling. Same for the very long story that is all of Star Trek.
In what way is the change in Klingon make-up from TOS-TMP any more or less a 'total change' than that between TNG-DSC?
TMP takes place 2.5 years after TOS. It looks extremely different and isn't set much later. We excuse that with an increase in budget and Robert Wise not thinking the pre-existing Phase II sets, props, and costumes passed muster.
There was a greater change between the look in Klingons in TMP than there was in DSC. The changes in Disco didn't even last. In DSC Season 2, the Klingons have hair again. "I heard the Klingons are growing their hair again." "The rumors are true." Apparently, they all shaved their heads in the first season. It's stupid, it's obvious that it's a retcon to a retcon, and everyone knows it, but just go with it... Then, in SNW, they went back to the Movie/TNG look. The extra nostrils and the overly elaborate necks were gone. I personally think the Klingons looked the way they did in DSC because they were trying to fix the Augment Virus and went too far by accident. Later on, they finally get it right. That's only a theory of mine, but there's no way the Klingons waited over 100 years to try to undo what was done to them, so there had to be attempts in-between and this was one of them. Viruses and mutations are tricky and Klingon Medical Science is notoriously not up-to-par.
I've said in other posts that I blame all the differences between TOS and SNW & DSC Seasons 1-2 on the Temporal War, and that's what I stick with as my go-to explanation.
It's even said so outright in SNW Season 2 Episode 3, when they say the Eugenics Wars happened in the 21st Century now instead of the 1990s because of changes to the timeline during the Temporal War. If one thing changed, other things probably changed too. Not exactly a huge leap.
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We're still Zoomers. I hear less of this, and more a just general dismissal of anything made before the late 90s.
I think TOS will always hold "legendary status" just for being the bedrock of Star Trek's iconic/enduring principles but I don't think it will remain particularly important to future fans of the show. It's been common to read online advice for new Trek fans to just skip TOS entirely or to only watch select episodes of it.
I'm under thirty myself and TOS is by far my favourite show so there are exceptions! But generally I think there's a big struggle to engage with it among millennials and zoomers.
Although it's interesting to consider whether ultimately the entirety of classic Trek becomes reappraised in a more ambivalent way as time goes on. Say it quietly but I think TNG is quite dated too, just in a different way. Maybe people will be less conflicted by Star Trek in the future when it all becomes quite clearly a piece of history and they stop comparing it to modern standards in media/culture?
I'm under thirty myself and TOS is by far my favourite show so there are exceptions! But generally I think there's a big struggle to engage with it among millennials and zoomers.
Although it's interesting to consider whether ultimately the entirety of classic Trek becomes reappraised in a more ambivalent way as time goes on. Say it quietly but I think TNG is quite dated too, just in a different way. Maybe people will be less conflicted by Star Trek in the future when it all becomes quite clearly a piece of history and they stop comparing it to modern standards in media/culture?
It's utterly preposterous that something like a major event moving 50 years can have changes to Pike's Enterprise and nothing much else but ultimately it's just a television show
15 year old me would be furious
Yes.
That's how art works.
It's not disrespectful, it's not overwriting, it's not a violation and it's not bad.
It's just different.
Except, that's not what happened. It was s modification, and far minor to the completely huge change in make up from TMP to TNG to TSFS and onwards.
Or the changes to the Klingons and Romulans in terms of glory vs. honor.
Not to mention other things.
It's ok change things.
Like this ?
When Klingons went from
to this
and then back to this
And a few years later
Yeah, welcome to Star Trek.
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