Was it ever really possible to do a pure prime prequel in the "TOS" era?

Yes, I think it's possible. But I don't think the show runners care enough to even try. Of the many problems Enterprise had, looking to advanced wasn't one of them. Because it's just that, looks. We don't know all the tech the Kirk's Enterprise had hidden behind all those panels. We just assume we know based on the fact that they carried little boxes around and called them tapes. Then we say how outdated it is becasue we assume we know what is really going on. My point being that the look of Kirk's era leaves TONS of room for advanced technology. But people are too concerned with how they think that technology should LOOK. Enterprise only LOOKED more advanced than Kirk's era becasue people assumed they knew the level of tech in Kirk's era.

My dream would be to make a twenty season long series which includes the adventures of Captains April, Pike, Kirk aboard the Enterprise.And I would do it is such a way that the episodes that were filmed in the 60's would match in seamlessly with the other episodes. I don't think such a production would impossible.

As far as a prequel/parallelquel in the Star Trek era. I think you could keep give it the same general feel, while modifying the look just enough so that it feels like it's set in the same era, while still getting all the greeblie HD textury stuff you want. But Discovery hasn't even tried. Just like JJ trek didn't even try. They just took the lazy reboot route.

See if I had done ST2009 I would have set done it as the origin story of Captain April that way all your uniforms and treknology could be greebled up just enough so that it would look amazing on screen and still allow for it to be a predecessor to Kirk's era.

TOS-R had the perfect opportunity to do this. They could have kept the show looking exactly as it did, but then subtle details to the planets, matte paintings, and special effects to make it really pop. Instead they went the lazy money grab route.

To be honest, all the people who say that canon needs to be jettisoned for the sake of story freedom, sound just like that people who say Trek needs to be set in another Galaxy to allow more freedom. So just what stories could you tell in a canon free universe that you couldn't tell in a canon universe? What is this mythical creative freedom that seems to only exist in a place where there are no rules?

I don't think its creativity that people are looking for I think it's laziness. They're too lazy to take existing information to inform a story and instead want a license to give us crap. But hey at least the crap has with greeblies and flashy lights. Because 'MUH CREATIVE FREEDUMB.

 

I don't see "retro futurism" in the original Star Wars trilogy at all. It has this brutish, dirty, cluttered, "lived-in," industrial look to it... which happens to work very well for that setting.

The prequel trilogy was actually much heavier on "retro futurism" than the original trilogy ever was, as designs of ships, weapons, buildings, etc. were clearly strongly influenced by the Art Deco era and the sleek, smooth, chrome-ey design aesthetic of 1930s/40s Saturday afternoon serials such as Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers.

Kor

 

The original Star Wars is swimming in Word War II iconography. Depicting a future in terms of historical elements, or in other words sometimes extrapolating backwards instead of exclusively forwards, is not the same as "retro-futurism." According to wiki:

Retrofuturism (adjective retrofuturistic or retrofuture) is a trend in the creative arts showing the influence of depictions of the future produced in an earlier era. If "futurism is sometimes called a 'science' bent on anticipating what will come, retrofuturism is the remembering of that anticipation."​

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrofuturism

By that definition, I agree with @Kor that the SW PT is more retro-futuristic than the OT, much more. You need only look to the Naboo Queen's silver spaceship for a prominent example.

 

@Captain of the USS Averof

Fair enough. But the point I was just trying (and totally failed) to make is that with Star Wars being set in another galaxy, you can get away with a retro look, since nobody has ever seen technology from another galaxy before. As far as we know, 70s futurism is 'in' in other galaxies.

 

It isn't lazy to maximize creative freedom and allow the writers and production crew to give a more contemporary look and draw in new and younger audiences.

A great example is the "Augment virus" with the Klingons. There was, honestly, no reason to retcon that explanation as part of the canon. It crafted a set of rules that didn't require explanation. If I recall correctly, even GR stated that the makeup for the Klingons in TMP were done as if they had always been that way. It needed no explanation, but it got one.

The aesthetic is what feels like it gets inherently limited, as well as the technological capability. Save for things like FTL, and transporters (which are "magic beans") a lot of the technical capability that started off in TOS has been exceeded by technology now, and continues to improve. So, there is some measure of suspension of disbelief that gets ruined when this is, supposedly, humanity's future.

 

No.

 

You see a little of that in Star Trek Beyond. Kralls bees on that thin tower/spire--very 1950's--after a fasion. The simple ship from After Earth which seems like the tech we see near the end of Clud Atlas. There is a move away from Star Wars Space 1999 level detail...

 

I think reboots and prequels rest too much on other people's laurels. Then when the the reboot cross references something familiar comparisons are going to be made, and the result is not always flattering. Anything alluding to The Original is going to fail if it compares badly and it is the risk someone takes if they go down that path. If they exploit the affection of something and then don't measure up. Someone brought up the Mona Lisa in another thread and to take that further I see the risk of a prequel and reboot as trying to paint the Mona Lisa when she was kid. Except they don't want to paint her they want to take a photograph instead and digitally remove life's imperfections leaving different imperfections.

Reboots need to be given the boot. If it is an era thing then why not borrow a concept from Voyager. I don't mean reboot Voyager but change the quadrant, be in that time frame but be your own story. Avoid the comparisons.

However if that trailer had been post Voyager and in the Alpha quadrant I actually think it would make more sense to see those ridiculous Klingons because time may have made them that way. No need to desperately make excuses why they might be from sect or something else equally implausible. The stinky uniforms might make sense too.. at least their mark would be the 'new' way.

 

Do you mean like they (the trailer version) were that way first or earlier before TOS? Like we are meant to believe now?

I don't feel confidant that there was enough time in the window between these new guys and the ones that came not so long after. Seems too radical.

 

You focus on technology, but we are not talking about technology. We are talking about aesthetics and set design. Star Trek looks like it was made in the 60's because it WAS made in the 60's. No amount of mental gymnastics are going to change bright primary colored sets designed to sell color televisions, or sets that look like they were grey painted plywood because... they were grey painted plywood. Or giant switched where today would be a capacitive button. Or alien worlds that look like a sound stage decorated with a few plastic trees or Styrofoam rocks combined with a pretty unrealistic looking matte painting in the background. It all looked like a set on a sound stage, and being "faithful" to that look makes anything now look like a set on a sound stage. Our minds indelibly link all of that with the 1960s because that is the era we KNOW it was created, and it falls in line with other productions of its era. It doesn't matter if they have integrated bio-neural circuitry behind the wall, if the wall itself looks like something a 10 year old would use as a tree house.

And only a small amount of super fans would want that. The more casual audience, which is no doubt what CBS is going for, would expect if not demand something that looks like it was designed in the late 2010s, not the 1960s.

Which is where you seem to misunderstand. ALL of television is a money grab. They want as many eyeballs as possible so that any show is as profitable as possible. They are not making art, they are making commerce.

 

Given that ENT alludes to different castes within Klingon society, there are many facets to their culture that simply have not been seen.

Star Trek has never been for profit!!!! How dare you!!!!? GR's vision must be preserved.

 

It didn't say it couldn't be a money grab, I just said it was a lazy one as opposed to a high quality money grab.

 

I doubt that they see it as worth the risk right now. The market is extremely capricious.

 

That same painted plywood is still being used today. The basic construction materials for sets haven't really changed at all since (or even before) TOS--it's still mostly paint and wood. What has changed, however, is the addition of video screens with animated computer graphics to replace the more static images and additional random "blinky" panels.

 

I would disagree that that is all that has changed. In 1966, a plywood wall looked like a painted plywood wall. The consoles of the original enterprise sets looked like, painted sets. We now can make the sets look like so much more than plywood through modern techniques. They made the 1701-D look like a Hampton Inn, for example.

 

But it was still made out of the same basic materials as the TOS sets though. There really hasn't been much change in what sets are built out of since TV began (even stuff that looks like they might be made of plastic or metal is just very nicely painted wood--the illusion of Hollywood). One could definitely argue that aesthetics and designs have changed over the decades, but that occurs naturally with the progression of time. It was kind of expected that the TNG sets should look more elaborate or advanced than the ones in TOS, but look close enough behind the scenes and both are still painted sets. The later sets had better monitor screens and computer graphics...

 

But the point under discussion is whether you can use the TOS aesthetic in this day and age. To which my argument to Uniderth is no, because our set design techniques have moved so far past what they were then that you can't just add a few touchscreen displays to the TOS bridge and call it modern. Any viewer who is not a hardcore TOS fan would change channels in a heartbeat.

 

The point I was making was in regards to your statement about painted plywood in TOS. It's still being used today for DIS.

 

Maybe in the future they actually prefer to use painted wood for starship interior design, for some reason we 21st-century primitives don't fully comprehend.

Kor