Spoilers New Picard TV Series and Litverse Continuity (may contain TV show spoilers)

We did see the original uniforms in Ephraim and Dot.

 

It is gone where TV is concerned.

 

The TOS uniforms and Enterprise were gone for decades...until they weren't. They'll be back.

 

For Pete's sake, people, why should I care that the Enterprise doesn't appear identical in TOS and DIS? The differences don't even register to my eyes!

 

I don't think anyone said you should care. I could be wrong though.

 

I mean, we saw the old Design in Season 2 during the 'Previously On' for 'The Cage', and we saw the TOS Uniforms in one of the animated shorts.

 

I recall reading that was all done during the edit, as a fun way to recap The Cage’s events. Really well done too. I think that could be the extent of it.

I have seen it explained a handful of times, that in the show the characters can’t see the difference between TOS or Discovery designs for 1701 or their uniforms. But is that something CBS mandates? That it’s not dwelled upon too much?

 

CBS wants you to see it all as the same. Whether you do or not, is up to you.

 

It's not a CBS thing. That's just how movies and TV have worked for probably a century now. Characters get recast between movies, sets and costumes and props get revamped between productions, and yet, story-wise, they're supposed to be the same people and locations so, of course, the characters onscreen are not supposed to notice any differences.

"Me, Tarzan. You, different Jane? Why treehouse look different?"

Here's the thing: not every change in art direction or production design requires an "in-universe" explanation or needs to be acknowledged onscreen. Sometimes a change in the art direction is just . . . a change in the art direction.

Just chalk it up to artistic license and move on.

 

Oh, I’m sure that once there’s a gap away from the TOS era, the next time they return to it, they’ll go back to basics and modernize the ‘60s design again in a different way, rather than build on the current version. I mean, they won’t even commit to the retcon now, whatever the reason may be, so there’s no reason to expect it to be any more binding than anything else has been.

 

Yeah, that's probably the case for a lot of franchises.

I'll admit, I kind of get, um, a bit tied up in knots about the production design changes in Discovery. Part of it was I was spoiled by years and years of Star Trek that adhered to a certain consistency in that area (not in every last detail but from an overall perspective). The Abramsverse movies upended a lot---BUT they gave you a plot device to help poo poo a lot of that away. It's an alternate universe so things will look different (doesn't explain a lot about the Kelvin---though I can stretch my imagination a bit and see that at least partially as being consistent with 70 years post Enterprise and 30 years pre-original series). But Discovery really shook things up and while in the past you could do some creative story telling to explain design changes, with Discovery that's a lot harder to do.

And I guess that's what I'm getting at. Up to Enterprise (and maybe the Abramsverse movies) you COULD provide in-universe explanations for many inconsistencies in production design and technology. But with Discovery that's a lot harder to do. I have noticed some Discovery books have explained some of the variations to a limited degree. But usually in things that don't require tons of explanations, things that could be easily explained away. I haven't seen any authors tie themselves in pretzel knots to explain everything. Just if it can be explained they do, if not, they just let it go (at least up to now).

 

Oddly enough, though, I don't get hung up about new actors playing characters. I might critique an actors performance (I loved Karl Urban as McCoy for instance, Yelchin (RIP) as Chekov though maybe was a bit over the top at times)---but I don't have an issue with the idea of recasting previous characters.

Just one of my many inconsistencies

 

I'd argue having it in the Walmart Super Bowl ad and in Picard is committing. There is also an onslaught of Discoverised TOS era artwork coming - does this sub have the regular illustrators on it? Have they commented?

 

I don't think my problem is that they made some changes. It is that they've changed everything. Nothing of TOS remained in Discovery season one. If they had started with a look that was closer to that of their reimagined Enterprise and uniforms, it probably wouldn't have went over so poorly for me.

 

Yeah, that was part of the issue I had. I understand the show runners want to show their vision for the show and all that. I just wish there was a bit of balance and they didn't get so crazy with the redesigns. Every time I watched the show I had a hard time visualizing it in the correct time period.

It does seem the people running the show are trying to reverse course a little bit on ALL the changes. It's still Discovery and all, but they seem to be trying to incorporate a little bit of the original series' feel to it.

 

Such as?

 

So licensees like Modiphius can replace imagery like this:



with this:



and get the go-ahead to re-release their merch.

 

And you know they will how?

 

So far as I am aware, there are no plans to substitute TOS imagery in any TOS-branded product or merchandising efforts.