• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

They killed Hengist!

Unlike all those other Easter eggs and references that only hard core fans notice.

That's the point. Only we notice them, and they're invisible to the general audience. Even if they're mentioned in dialogue, the casual viewer won't recognize them as references, and they won't contradict anything the casual viewer already knows. Having characters refer to Vulcans as Vulcanians in dialogue is an overt inconsistency that would distract and confuse the uninitiated.
 
Unless you’re setting a story during the early part of season 1 when the usage of Vulcanian was done fairly consistently.

I guess you missed my post where I demonstrated that "Vulcanian" was not used at all consistently in season 1. Out of the 11 episodes that used a demonym for Spock's species, only 5 used "Vulcanian" and only 3 used it exclusively. It wasn't consistent because they were trying things out as they went, just as it took them time to settle on "Starfleet" over "Space Central," "Space Command," "UESPA," etc.

When TNG flashed back to "Encounter at Farpoint" in "All Good Things...," they didn't try to recreate Worf's season 1 forehead design or Troi's season 1 accent. They just went with the later, revised versions, because those had supplanted the originals as the officially "correct" depiction of the characters.

Art is a process of trial and error, of constant refinement. Your depictions start out rough or experimental, and you refine things as you go. There's no sense expecting artists to deliberately downgrade their work and revert to the early rough-draft version just because they're revisiting an earlier point in the narrative timeline. That's taking extradiegetic changes in how the story is told too literally.
 
When TNG flashed back to "Encounter at Farpoint" in "All Good Things...," they didn't try to recreate Worf's season 1 forehead design or Troi's season 1 accent. They just went with the later, revised versions, because those had supplanted the originals as the officially "correct" depiction of the characters.
It would have cost them too much to recreate that forehead just for a couple scenes. It would have cost next to nothing for characters to utter the word "Vulcanian" unless it was trademarked somehow...
 
I got your point. I just disagree. I don't believe casual viewers will be perplexed much at all.

But hey, your mileage may vary.

It's not about being "perplexed," it's about being unnecessarily distracted, pulled out of the moment. If it serves no story purpose, it's just in the way.

I mean, heck, I was distracted by the gratuitous business in SNW: "Lost in Translation" about Pike being temporary fleet captain when he met James Kirk, a bit that was only thrown in to reconcile with a single line from "The Menagerie." I feel that was just pandering to continuity purists and was a needless intrusion into a story to which it had no relevance. I would've been happier if they'd left that out, and to hell with the continuity glitch. I mean, they ignored Spock saying in "Dagger of the Mind" that he'd never melded with a human, because they did the wise thing and placed the needs of their own stories above niggly consistency with earlier stories.

I mean, TOS itself is full of internal contradictions because it was making things up as it went. The whole "Vulcan/Vulcanian" thing is a symptom of that. So what does it matter if there are inconsistencies with a series that was never that consistent with itself to begin with?
 
That sounds like perplexed to me, but whatever.

That's odd, because it's a completely different concept. I'm not perplexed or confused if I see a fly land on my TV screen, but I'm still annoyed by the distraction.

But what of Hengist?

But what of Lazarus? What of Lazarus?

(I always thought that was a Biblical or literary quote, given that Kirk and Spock said it four times in the final two scenes of "The Alternative Factor." But apparently it isn't, and the writers were just being pretentious or something.)
 
It would have cost them too much to recreate that forehead just for a couple scenes. It would have cost next to nothing for characters to utter the word "Vulcanian" unless it was trademarked somehow...
Same with the Captain's chair on the D's bridge. They didn't have the time or money to retrofit the thing back to its season 1 armrests.
 
*pushes up glasses* Well you see, it was an anti-time version of the original events, so details don't have to completely match.

Well, yes, I've always assumed the flashback in "All Good Things..." was a slightly alternate timeline. Tasha's hair was longer, she hadn't previously met Picard as "Legacy" had established, the stardate of the official transfer of command to Picard was different, and O'Brien was main bridge conn instead of battle bridge. Also, having it be an alternate timeline explained why its changes didn't affect anything in the later time frames.

But of course, we're not supposed to believe Worf actually had a completely different forehead in season 1. Some changes, like redesigned makeups or recast actors, are just in the presentation of the story, not within the story itself.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top