Poll Do You Believe STD Is Actually a Reboot [After Seeing It]?

IMO this 'Prime Timeline' statement is just something pushed by CBS and the showrunners to sell the series to fans.

Everything about the first two episodes screamed reboot. From the visuals, to the tech, to the heavy Abrams 2009 influence.

I remember on DS9 when they made such a big deal about holographic communication... yet here it is in the pre-TOS era. This show comes across more advanced than Voyager.


I'm fine with a reboot if it brings in general audiences back to Trek and makes it popular again. But IMO they need to stop being dishonest, and admit that this is a reboot.

Do you consider STD a reboot [a standalone not connected with the Prime Trek Timeline]?

 

Absolutely not. This is Prime Star Trek as it always was meant to be.

 

I think it's a reboot, but I also don't care if it is or it isn't.

 

When I start thinking this, I repeat to myself it's just a show, I should really just relax.

 

The look and tech are definitely a blend of ST Enterprise and the 2009 films, but nothing else about it suggests it's not in the 'prime' universe. It's a modern take on Star Trek and I think it's great so far (though I personally would've preferred less of the rotating camera business (which was also ever-present in the latter seasons of Enterprise) and lens flares).

 

Based on these two episodes? Yes.

I didn't see anything that intrinsically ties this to the prime timeline.

That's neither bad nor good but early on this seems to not be linked to that universe in any noticeable way.

I wonder if the paramount split prohibits them from being in the KT for some reason.

 

I was starting to pick apart the tech details as well (I definitely had a crazy fan moment over the holographic communication, after DS9 made it out as such a new innovation, for 2 episodes), but after thinking about it for a minute, Discovery fits as well with the Prime TV series as the Prime movies did. They also felt significantly more upgraded and futuristic, and I was fine just going with it because I understood the movie had more money and it would be stupid not to put it on screen.

So I'm going to adopt the same philosophy here. Just going with it.

 

Difference is the Prime movies came AFTER TOS, whereas Discovery takes place just before it (and during it, if we include The Cage).


Easy to accept that advances and tech upgrades were made after TOS,

 

The problem is you can only present the future with the means you presently have to do it with. Technology is only getting better and styles change.

Discovery looks and feels far more advanced than all the other Trek shows and first 10 movies put together, but on the flip side, this is what those shows would look like had they come out today. Would you really want Enterprise and Discovery to look like a more primitive TOS? Forget the tech, it's the story that makes it fit in the timeline or makes it a completely separate thing.

 

These are the arguments Bryan Fuller probably had with Les Moonves and CBS before departing from STD.

 

Yes, but then 100 years after the Prime TOS movies, TNG is back to looking cheap again, then we have TNG's own upscaled Prime films happening contemporaneously with much more modest DS9/VOY.

Not that I think your view is crazy or anything. I think there's different valid ways to regard continuity on a franchise that has spanned multiple formats with massively shifting production values over 50+ years.

 

It's no more of a 'reboot' than TNG was in 1987. (Take that as you will.)

 

It's in the Prime universe, set 10 years before TOS. Does it "look" like it? Absolutely. Check your vision. You may have changed between 1967 and 2017, but sure as shit the setting is the same.

Let's all practice using our imaginations. When I used to read Star Trek novels, I'd set them in whatever era I imagined they were supposed to be in. Same difference here.

 

A reboot in some sense, sure. Visually, technologically on other levels, but like a canon reboot? Nah. It has the same rebootishness of every other Star Trek series pilot.

 

That would make it 'vague continuity' Like Superman Returns with the Donner films.

Honestly, I'm fine with Trek not being a reflection of advancements in modern day tech. We can't keep retconning Trek to fit with the modern day anyway.

In the Trek verse, we already had the Eugenics Wars in the 1990s. The Trek verse always seemed like a separate reality that doesn't need to connect with our modern reality.

 

I believe the show looks pretty close to how Fuller wanted it to look. It doesn't sound like he ever intended Discovery to go out of its way to match the TOS look.

 

Well, it's hard. I think it is meant to be prime universe. Much of it feels that way when you're on the Starfleet ships, such as the care they have gone to to use old sound effects and so on............and then you get those awful Klingons which piss all over decades of Klingon world building and make you think, why even bother with all those other little touches?

 

The JJ Reboot films (which Discovery is very close to) used the classic TOS sounds as well.

 

Yes.

But I think every incarnation of Star Trek is a reboot at some level or another.

 

The Eugenics Wars form the part of hardly any of the back story of the Trek universe. I think when it comes to technology you're going to see every week it's a lot harder to credibly retain it. I mean, just look at TNG, let along TOS. The desk top monitors now look archaic compared with flat screens we had a decade ago. I think they have to tread a fine line between retaining as much as they can and also retaining story credibility.