And I would say yes. There are several bands that I consider myself a fan of but only really know one or two songs.
What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?
- Thread starter Amasov
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The insecurity comes from fearing fan reaction now. Once bitten, twice shy as it were. Now they have to say "We promise its really Star Trek everyone! We promise. Please don't hate us!"
It's a fools errand. They lack the confidence just by sheer fan outcry alone.
Species 10-C. You're welcome.
SNW and Early-DSC take/took place in the Pre-TOS Era. They can't exactly introduce someone without people screaming, "Why didn't we hear about them before?!?!!??" That's the problem with prequels.
Later-DSC... I like the concept of the Emerald Chain. It's made of up different species and was perfect to be competition for the Federation. I already mentioned Species 10-C. As far as the Breen, hardly anything was done with them before. It's not as if the Breen were overused like the Klingons or the Romulans. When they introduced these species, they weren't intended to never be used again.
PIC is a special case. It was always more about giving Picard and TNG a better ending than Nemesis. Anyone looking for "Totally Brand-New!" there was looking in the wrong place and lying to themselves if they were.
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I'd say there's a genuine argument to be made in favour of the Kelpiens being a decent contribution to the franchise. The Ba'ul as well.Species 10-C. You're welcome.
SNW and Early-DSC take/took place in the Pre-TOS Era. They can't exactly introduce someone without people screaming, "Why didn't we hear about them before?!?!!??" That's the problem with prequels.
Later-DSC... I like the concept of the Emerald Chain. It's made of up different species and was perfect to be competition for the Federation. I already mentioned Species 10-C. As far as the Breen, hardly anything was done with them before. It's not as if the Breen were overused like the Klingons or the Romulans. When they introduced these species, they weren't intended to never be used again.
PIC is a special case. It was always more about giving Picard and TNG a better ending than Nemesis.
Also, while we're at it: People are crediting fans with too much power. If they really had that much sway, neither Section 31 nor Starfleet Academy would be coming up. Discovery would've ended after a season, if even. Legacy would've already been greenlit and would've already been filming. What else? The TOS Era in DSC and SNW would look like 1960s TOS.
Maybe, just maybe, I don't know, maybe this is wild-and-crazy talk, maybe it's totally insane, but maybe the writers just wanted to tell more stories with characters and species set up? Maybe, just maybe, they found something interesting there, and wanted to tell more stories with them? But I don't know. Maybe that's Crazy Talk.
Voyager was forced to introduce new species 90% of the time (blind estimate, I haven't done an exact count). There are diamonds in the rough. I know, I've been re-watching the series. But not in most cases. Constantly introducing forgettable races doesn't automatically make for better storytelling. And having a race that's already established doesn't automatically mean it's worse storytelling.
I think some of you just want to have that feeling you had in 1989 and 1990 with the Borg or 1994 with the Dominion. Or, if you're old enough, 1966 or 1967 with the Romulans and Klingons. I hate to break it to you, but that's not happening again. Why? Because you're not the age you were back then. You're not going to be as blown away by anything they come up with now, because you can't be. To quote an episode of Mission: Impossible from the 1960s, "When you're 10, everything feels more so."
Maybe, just maybe, I don't know, maybe this is wild-and-crazy talk, maybe it's totally insane, but maybe the writers just wanted to tell more stories with characters and species set up? Maybe, just maybe, they found something interesting there, and wanted to tell more stories with them? But I don't know. Maybe that's Crazy Talk.
Voyager was forced to introduce new species 90% of the time (blind estimate, I haven't done an exact count). There are diamonds in the rough. I know, I've been re-watching the series. But not in most cases. Constantly introducing forgettable races doesn't automatically make for better storytelling. And having a race that's already established doesn't automatically mean it's worse storytelling.
I think some of you just want to have that feeling you had in 1989 and 1990 with the Borg or 1994 with the Dominion. Or, if you're old enough, 1966 or 1967 with the Romulans and Klingons. I hate to break it to you, but that's not happening again. Why? Because you're not the age you were back then. You're not going to be as blown away by anything they come up with now, because you can't be. To quote an episode of Mission: Impossible from the 1960s, "When you're 10, everything feels more so."
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I think they were an interesting concept and idea, and admittedly Discovery's writers did create something new and different with it. But, frankly, they're closer to a one-off alien Star Trek civilization than they are something with permanence. They're too "alien" to work beyond the mystery of that season, in the same way no one has really figured out a way to go back to V'GER beyond what you see in The Motion Picture. That's evident by the fact there's 12 episodes in season 4, but only 2 or 3 of them deal directly with the concept of Species 10-C. Because once we know they're starfish aliens that twinkle to communicate, and somehow confused that they were killing other lifeforms when they were using their extragalactic hoover vacuum, there's nowhere else to go.Species 10-C. You're welcome.
If you're going with a vision that "reinterprets" the past, there's no reason why you can't add to that past.
I honestly think some of the ideas they had for the season 1 Klingons are interesting. A religious, xenophobic species that comes into conflict with the Federation because they want to "make their empire great again" is a good jumping off point for a story. Voq, as a member of an underclass within that society, who arguably becomes radicalized against his own interests is an interesting character for a story that touches on identity, cultural purity, and coexistence.
The problem was always that none of what they wanted to do with that really fit the history of the Klingons that we knew.
Instead of reinterpreting the Klingons, why not call them Tzenkethi or Kzinti or make up something new, and tell us a story using those ideas? They wouldn't have the baggage of decades of backstory, and they could have went in any direction they wanted with it. I feel the same way about the Gorn in Strange New Worlds. The concept of "what if Starfleet had to confront a threat akin to the xenomorphs?" which mixes horror elements and science fiction is interesting. But once you put the name Gorn on it, part of the audience is like "well how in the hell does this fit with TOS and "Arena"?" And another part of the audience is going to be like "who gives a shit?" My point is why even create that argument in the first place when you can tell your own story, with your own characters, and put those ideas on them?
At a certain point Star Trek starts to have the same problem Star Wars has with letting go of the Skywalkers and everything around the original trilogy if all it ever does is just a recurrence of the same concepts in different makeup and costumes. Disney has learned the hard way that once you're locked into a cycle of Jedi good, Sith bad, and how does all of this connect to either the Death Star, Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader, the potential of the IP becomes very limited creatively.
You already know what I think of prequels. It's very rare that one interests me. (Better Call Saul, Prometheus, early-Discovery and that's it.) I'm just saying that's what I'd expect the response to be. Don't blame the messenger.
EDITED TO ADD: I don't think that's a matter of "We're afraid of the fans!" I think it's a matter of "We want to still be able to say it's a prequel and we don't want to deal with explaining away why a Major New Adversary isn't around and never mentioned later!" Especially so close to TOS. There's no wiggle room. Something drastic would have to happen to take them so completely off the map.
In Better Call Saul, they show why every character who isn't in Breaking Bad isn't there. That's not out of Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould fearing their fans. That's out of respect for them.
But Star Trek is a different animal. We're talking about super-powers that rival the Federation, not criminals in the Cartel fighting in a Drug War. Completely taking out a new adversary in Star Trek so thoroughly involves a really ugly war that either forces cooperation after something brutal or reduces the enemy to nothing. DSC Season 1 wrestles with this argument. (More on the Klingons in that series later.) SNW, I don't know. I highly doubt a war would take over a series so completely in SNW. It doesn't strike me as the series' style. An episode or two per season, but that's it. So it's better that they don't get stuck with a story where they have to take out an enemy so completely. It's better for them to have an enemy that's around and they know will still be around when TOS comes around.
Well, that's why I liked DSC's use of the Breen. They're NOT the Klingons or the Romulans or, yes, the Borg.
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As far as the DSC Klingons. I disagree with the premise that they don't fit anything we ever heard of them. They're very much in keeping with TUC Klingons. In TUC, the Klingons didn't want their culture annihilated. In DSC, they very much want their culture preserved. In "Day of the Dove", Kang's wife mentions the horror stories she's heard about the Federation. In DSC, T'Kuvma paints the Federation as something truly horrendous. In TOS and the TOS Movies, the Klingons only respect strength. In DSC, L'Rell wins over the Klingons by looking like she's more powerful than they are. If you want to say DSC Klingons aren't like TNG Klingons, then I'd agree with you. But they weren't supposed to be TNG Klingons yet.
On a personal note, waaaayyyyyy back, before ENT, I always wondered what First Contact between the Federation and the Klingons would be like. And I had it in my head that this huge war broke out. Then ENT comes, and we get "Broken Bow", and, as I've said before I did watch the first six episodes before bailing. And I was HUGELY disappointed by the First Contact between the Federation and Klingons. I thought, "That's it?! That's what happened?!" Turned me off from the series almost instantly. One of a ton of things that turned me off from the series. Enterprise was Dead On Arrival as far as I was concerned.
Years later, in 2017, I find out the Klingons will be a major part of Discovery (at least in Season 1). Then, while watching "The Vulcan Hello", it's said they haven't had much interaction with the Federation over the past 100 years. (Didn't quite fit with TUC, but I was willing to overlook it and figured there were probably ways to explain it away.) And I thought to myself, "This is a second chance for me to see the way I thought First Contact would go between the Federation and Klingons!" And it delivered. It was exactly what I wanted to see. I wasn't a fan of the redesign of the Klingons, to be honest, but otherwise it was everything I wanted on the Klingon side of things.
Just explaining my point-of-view on this.
EDITED TO ADD: In 2020, while watching ENT during the Quarantine, I took note that they mentioned the Klingon Empire was deeply divided. It wasn't a stretch that they could've split into different factions, as we later see in DSC, before becoming united again. Klingon Politics have always been unstable. Even in TNG and DS9, to the point there was the Klingon Civil War in TNG, except they were divided into two factions instead of several.
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TNG Season 1. They introduce the Ferengi as the new enemies. They don't work out at all. And they've established peace with the Klingons. So they go back to the Romulans. The Romulans weren't used often in TOS. Which made them perfect to use more in TNG. Yet, if TPTB thought like some people here think, the Romulans never would've been brought back. In Season 3, it would've deprived us of "The Enemy" and "The Defector" as a result. Imagine the result if they stuck with the Ferengi. Don't even try to pretend those episodes would've been anywhere near as good.
Someone could've also argued that the TNG Klingons were nothing like the TOS Klingons and could've made the argument, "They should've just been a different species!" The only thing lost is the statement that "Yesterday's Enemies can become Today's Allies". Which I think was a powerful statement as the Cold War was ending, that resonates better if it's with an already-established race.
Someone could've also argued that the TNG Klingons were nothing like the TOS Klingons and could've made the argument, "They should've just been a different species!" The only thing lost is the statement that "Yesterday's Enemies can become Today's Allies". Which I think was a powerful statement as the Cold War was ending, that resonates better if it's with an already-established race.
Personally I think Star Trek works best when it finds a good balance between developing the familiar and introducing the new. TNG had as much success with its Klingon and Romulan stories as it did with its Borg and Cardassian episodes. DS9 would've been much weaker without the universe (and characters) it inherited from TNG, and I can't even imagine what it would've been without the Dominion.
That gets a bit trickier with prequels, as people start pointing out that TNG never mentioned the Xindi or Denobulans. But then the series barely mentioned the Andorians either and I'm not sure we saw a single Tellarite. It's already been well established that some things just don't come up in conversation much, so I can live with shows like Enterprise and Strange New Worlds adding something to the universe.
That gets a bit trickier with prequels, as people start pointing out that TNG never mentioned the Xindi or Denobulans. But then the series barely mentioned the Andorians either and I'm not sure we saw a single Tellarite. It's already been well established that some things just don't come up in conversation much, so I can live with shows like Enterprise and Strange New Worlds adding something to the universe.
Other than being in one of the best episodes of the series nope no Tellarites.
And one played by a friend of mine.
TNG barely mentioned the Enterprises and their Captains that preceded that series.
I don't agree with that.
NCC-1701: Mentioned as early as "The Naked Now", complete with Kirk name-dropped, even though it seems like Picard doesn't really know who he was. Looks like he did more reading up on him over the next 35 years. And probably especially after actually meeting him.
NCC-1701-A: Scotty says he actually served on two Enterprises in "Relics", referring to this one. Spock alludes to TUC in "Unification II" and says, "It was I who committed Captain Kirk to that peace mission and I who had the bear the consequences to him and to his crew."
NCC-1701-B: Technically it's Generations, not TNG itself, but I'll still count it. Especially since it was made by the same people and came out only six months after "All Good Things".
NCC-1701-C: "Yesterday's Enterprise". The events of what happened after the Enterprise-C go back are referred to by Guinan and Sela in "Redemption, Part II".
So, all the previous Enterprises and their Captains were mentioned and name-checked. Not all the time obviously, but they were all still accounted for.
EDITED TO ADD: Though a LOT more fans care about the history of the Enterprise than Andorians or Talerites. To be honest, as a TOS Fan, I never really cared about the Talerites. I wouldn't have minded if we never saw them again. If I want to see insults tossed, I'll go watch Marred With Children or Sanford & Son. The Andorians, because of when I grew up, I thought of them as Smurfs. Couldn't help it.
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This, along with the way they look, really makes me think it would have been better if they'd eventually been revealed to be the Hur'q.
Depends on your point of view of the word "barely."
It's not like previous Enterprises were mentioned every other episode or even every season. You referenced instances out of 176 episodes plus movies. Out of all that, 4 references to previous Enterprises might be considered rare by some people.
Just like I know for a fact that the Enterprise isn't mentioned in every episode of Discovery or Picard. Kind of has to be seen and mentioned in every episode of Strange New Worlds.
I'm not quite sure how we got here, but the point I was trying to make was they were accounted for. They didn't just never acknowledge them. Steering this back. If they have a Major Enemy Threat in SNW that's never seen or heard about in TOS, TNG, or DS9, it begs the explanation of "What happened to them?" That's why I can understand them using the Gorn. I can't say I'm a fan of turning them into Xenomorphs, but that's a whole other story.
The Xindi in ENT, I can't say I'm a huge fan of either them or the season they were in. But there was 110-year gap between ENT and TOS. There's now five years between where SNW is at and the beginning of TOS. SNW doesn't have the wiggle room that ENT did.
On the other hand, apparently there was a war going on with the Cardassians during the first three seasons of TNG that we never heard about until that series' fourth season. So, I guess it's not just a prequel thing. It's a "We're making it up as we go along!" thing.
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To your point, the previous Enterprises were much more than just passing remarks. They were all pretty integral or front and center in the particular episode or movie they appear in.
Not seeing that message in what is being done. They literally used footage from The Cage in DISCO. Nor has anyone said "TOS never happened". That's something a segment of fandom has come up with.
Fiction will always be reimagined. It's been happening since we first told stories around the fire. It's not a bad thing.
Both TOS and DSC/SNW of the 2250s are visual canon. Works for me. "The Cage" happened, and the DSC and SNW adventures of Pike happen four or five years afterwards and none erase the other from the continuity. The Enterprise looks like it does in 2254 and then in 2259 and finally in 2266.
Nothing's been overwritten, visually or verbally.
Nothing's been overwritten, visually or verbally.
Controversial opinion (or maybe not): Stamets and Culber are the most realistic relationship shown in all of Star Trek.
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