What did you think of ENT season 4? That's the closest thing I can compare it to.
writers' strike and Trek
- Thread starter F. King Daniel
- Start date
Season 4 is kinda similar in the fannish respects.
That's so sad. They forget that TNG didn't succeed by constantly rehashing characters and ideas from TOS, but by developing original characters, worldbuilding, and stories that expanded the universe. Its appeals to nostalgia were very infrequent, so that they were special events when they did happen. And yes, there were plenty of TOS purists who hated it and denounced TNG as "not real Trek."
I mean, come on, this is a franchise whose literal mission statement is to boldly explore the new. Yet there have always been people who resent it for doing exactly that.
To a degree, but it worked better in the context of a prequel, because it was showing how the universe we knew came to be, and filling in richer background on parts of Trek history we knew little about. It wasn't nearly as contrived for a show set in the franchise's past to have stories exploring its past -- and it was still moving the characters forward rather than revisiting their own pasts, so it didn't feel as nostalgic. And IMHO ENT season 4 was just generally better-written. If it had been just about the continuity porn, it wouldn't have been so good. As with anything else, the quality isn't in what you do, but how well you do it.
I’m really depressed coming to realise that all the fans really want is continuity porn and fanwankery now. Strip all of that out of PIC S3 and there’s just a hackneyed, plot hole ridden meander with inconsistent characterisations (“you’ve killed us all!”). Between that, Lower Decks and SNW, Trek is so backward looking now. It’s a case of Easter eggs and excitement about the next legacy character cameo. Until Star Trek starts moving forward and stops relying on past glories, I’m kind of out, now.
It's been said before, but it bears repeating, season 3 of Picard is the same kind of story and tropes we got in the first two seasons and even in all four seasons of Disco. Picard S3 just manages to distract the audience with superficial nonsense like LCARS screens, a TNG cast reunion and a restored Enterprise D thus causing it to appeal to the more vocal critics of modern Trek for some reason.
And really, aside from being a white male, Jack Crusher is basically the exact same character as Michael Burnham.
And really, aside from being a white male, Jack Crusher is basically the exact same character as Michael Burnham.
I don't understand that comparison at all (surely Jack is much more a ripoff of David Marcus), but even if it were true, I'll say what I always say: Category does not determine quality. Two sets of creators can tackle the exact same character type, and one can turn out superbly and the other terribly, depending on the skill, choices, and luck of the creators.
As they often say on TV Tropes, "tropes are not bad." They're just ingredients. They can be used well or they can be used poorly.
Most important person in the universe, retconned previously unheard of relative of main character (although in Jack's case, it does make a bit more sense why we never heard of him before). That's off the top of my head, I'm sure there are probably others. The point is, Jack is the same kind of character we've seen in other modern shows which fans are always complaining about, yet all those complaints disappear when it comes to Jack for now real reason other than the shade of his skin or the fact he goes to a different bathroom than the others.
I don't think that's any more true of Burnham than it is of most TV series leads. Also, the comparison falls apart because Burnham actually is the lead character while Jack is a supporting character.
Again, like David Marcus. Also like George Kirk, Sarek, Amanda, Peter Preston, Sybok, Demora Sulu, Lore, Kurn, Robert Picard, Ishara Yar, Kestra Troi, Joran Dax (by a loose definition of "relative"), etc.
One can always cherrypick a few variables to claim two things are similar, as long as one ignores all the differences. It proves nothing.
What are you talking about? What world do you live in where people aren't complaining about Jack Crusher? I think he's one of the worst things about PIC season 3, and that's saying something.
The same kind of people who insist Picard S3 is the best Star Trek since Roddenberry died are also known to praise Jack as the best character not created by (or at least credited to) Roddenberry.
I hear you. I find it very annoying when I hear stuff like “I want a show with Captain Seven of Nine on the Enterprise-G!!!” Or “I want Lower Decks to reference this, or that, or whatever!!!”
It’s getting old and tiresome. But if that’s what the fans want, that’s what’s going to be produced. Or maybe it’s not what the fans want. Like, does anybody actually want a Section 31 movie? I sure don’t. But apparently that’s what they think the fans want.
Usually debates in the past about NuTrek always end up reflecting the willingness or unwillingness (more like ability or inability) of the franchise fan to suspend disbelief over continuity issues in a contested series, Doylist vs Watsonian perspectives, "you just don't like it", and ultimately reboot vs continuation. That said...
Many NuTrek critics have said many of their criticisms of DISCOVERY would have been greatly diminished had it been set say 75 years after TNG. Instead it made a massive mess of continuity from the get go ostensibly being set at the same time as "The Cage". Then it went into the far future and managed to break practically everything VGR and ENT had established about that period, while also spawning a back door quasi-reboot spin off that does even more damage to TOS. Like, let's say Pocket Books starts putting out more Star Trek novels again, and I see a new TOS novel on the shelf. Is it really a TOS novel, or a SNW one? Can you even reconcile both in-universe, without either saying TOS didn't really happen and was some kind of dramatic adaptation, or that DISCOVERY/SNW are an alternate timeline (which is what a few PICARD season 3 people have implied).
Whereas TNG overwhelming stayed in its own lane, and when it brought back McCoy, Sarek, Spock, Scotty, and the TOS Enterprise, it respected what came before. DISCOVERY/SNW... not so much.
Onto PICARD season 1... this week I've been rewatching the TOS films. Yesterday I looked up Keith DeCandido's Tor TWOK review. In the comments section you said "The story is full of gigantic logic holes and absurdities. And the violence and gore are distastefully overdone." I would say the exact same thing about PS1, but even more so...
If you just don't like a NuTrek series, sure, don't watch it. But as a fan of the franchise, each series doesn't exist in its own vacuum.
I'd argue PS2 actually has far more continuity call backs (Gary 7, TVH, "Time's Arrow", "Past Tense", Wesley and the Traveler, Guinan and Q) than PS3. PS3 basically just builds on the major arcs of TNG (Picard and the Borg), DS9 (the conclusion of the Dominion War), and VGR (Janeway/Seven and the Borg) with Easter eggs and Ro Laren thrown in. Picard having a son plays off GEN. The Borg are back, but at least with a personal stakes twist. The Replicant body arc from PS1 at least has some weight thanks to the Irumadic syndrome / Borg DNA alteration plot point.
I didn't like “you’ve killed us all!”... but it is running with the face palm level plot arc from PS1 of Riker's son dying of the silicon based virus that can only be fixed by a positronic matrix head scratcher (such technobabble would be beneath even Brannon Braga).
Is it perfect? No. But it's far better for many fans than anything else post-2005.
What's really funny is that if you try and crowd source the consensus opinion of fans about the Future of Trek, you do end up with quasi-DISCOVERY The Next Next Next Generation set 50-75 years after TNG with equal parts new stuff and follow up. I'd be fine with that as a fallback to Legacy, provided the writing is good!
No it didn't.
If it has the TOS Branding, it's a TOS novel.
People who have no baring over the canon.
I'm sure such people exist, but there are certainly other people who feel differently. You seemed to be suggesting that there were no negative opinions of Jack Crusher out there, and that's very much not the case.
No. I've seen it over and over and over again for decades: the continuity issues they insist are "insoluble" in the new stuff are no worse than the continuity issues they gloss over in the old stuff. For instance, in 1979, people were saying TMP couldn't be the same reality as TOS because its Klingons had ridges, but decades later, they were saying that Kelvin or DSC couldn't be in the same reality as TOS/the movies/TNG etc. because the Klingons had different ridges than the multiple different ridge designs they'd had in the other stuff. The only difference is that they've had time to rationalize the older contradictions to themselves.
Comics commentator Brian Cronin recently suggested a name for this: "chronological privilege." Fans are always more accepting of changes made before their time than they are of changes made after they became fans. Because the old stuff is just what the series was when they discovered it, so they don't realize how big a change it would've seemed to someone who was already a fan at the time.
The official stance is that it's all one reality regardless of differences in the interpretation, in the same way that Marvel Comics's official position is that the comics stories they published in the 1960s are in the same continuity as the comics they publish today even though the characters are presumed to have aged no more than 10-15 years in between. Continuity, like everything else in fiction, is an illusion that the audience is invited to play along with. The underlying reality being depicted is presumed to be the same even if the specifics of the depiction are modified over time to be suitable for modern audiences.
Thus, as tie-in authors, our responsibility would be exactly the same as it's always been: To treat all Trek as a unified reality and reconcile or gloss over its many, many inconsistencies as best we can. It's the same now with DSC and SNW as it was decades ago with TNG.
I disagree entirely. DSC and SNW have, for the most part, done marvelous jobs threading the needle, reinterpreting TOS continuity in ways that are still reconcilable with it (in broad strokes, which is all one should expect after more than half a century and massive changes in the worldviews of the audience it's being made for) and actually add greater depth to it. For instance, DSC: "Lethe" deepened the backstory of "Journey to Babel" in a startlingly powerful way, and SNW's approach to Chapel & Spock actually improves Chapel's portrayal in TOS immensely by making her feelings for Spock a lost love rather than a pathetic unrequited crush.
Of course, there are some things that don't mesh so well, like the portrayal of the Gorn, but any human-created work is imperfect, and buying into the illusion of its reality requires a willingness to shrug off its imperfections, something that TOS fans had to do plenty of long before there were any other series to compare it to. Pretending that Trek worked as a unified reality has always, always required choosing a turn a blind eye to its inconsistencies. You're allowed to pretend things fit together even when they don't, since it's only make-believe.
No, it didn't.
And nor does the past need as much respect as is insisted upon.
Indeed. Picard S1 pales in comparison to discomfort I have with TWOK.
HAHAHA...no.
Exactly.
Similarly, there is the willingness to accept flaws if a work is liked while one that is disliked will be pecked to death.
"Love " mustean different things.
I mean, it's all a matter of degree. Did TMP and TNG go over the speed limit vis a vis TOS? Sure. But it's the difference between going 5 over and like 50 over. ENT had a relatively easy fix for the Klingon foreheads (which a novel then adapted to retcon the Trill differences between TNG and DS9). Reconciling NuTrek and past Trek might take a temporal wars or crisis on infinite earths style miniseries.
This also will come down to just what follows SNW and if/when Legacy happens. So even though this thread is drifting off topic, it also is very topical at the same time...
At the same time pre-Crisis DC at least had the Earth-1 and Earth-2 routes to reconcile their golden age and silver age differences.
TOS novel wise, it probably comes down to what the market research says. There's likely a good reason all those TOS stand alones kept coming out when the Berman era post NEM went quite serialized.
Ok, this helps to identify a major live wire and point of disagreement. Many would object to essentially re-writing the past, and preferring Star Trek to be a period piece.
I mean, they could have done a xenomorph without tying it into the Gorn. But they chose to go that route anyway.
I saw TWOK on TV when I was like 8. Still have an ear phobia... I'd argue the eyeball ripping from PS1 (at least the fragments Red Letter Media put in their video -- I highly dislike body horror graphic violence so skipped the actual scene) was a lot worse.
TWOK does kinda prove that one.
Over is over.
I dislike body horror as well but Picard felt like it used it to serve the story, rather than linger on it for shock value like TWOK did.
Far more than is acknowledged. Directed by a nonfan, changes things for no reason, depressing tone, more violent, action oriented, ignores past continuity.
Nowadays, it's blindly accepted.
Hahaha, well, I remember in drivers ed being taken onto the freeway and being yelled at for not going somewhat over the speed limit. Lessen being, Star Trek shouldn't be so devoted to the past it doesn't at least go the speed of traffic, but at the same time going too far over can have negative consequences. Just have to find the happy balance.
It's really interesting how Meyer locked onto Star Trek as Horatio Hornblower just as Roddenberry, but then took it into a different direction. Probably would be viewed very differently had Spock stayed dead! Instead you have the excellent yet unplanned Genesis trilogy.
Not really. All it requires is a little imagination. Trek fans have been coming up with reasons for supposed "Canon Violations" since the very beginning.
It's not.
What negative consequences?
That some people don't like it? Isn't that the nature of art?
I've been pulled over for 5 over, or 10 over. Consequences are the same. Over is over as far as I'm concerned.
Yup. That's always been part of the fan experience for me.
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