I was on Psi Phi. Still went by the same username. Good times. Well, there were the Great Flame Wars of early-'98, but otherwise good times. It was a nice community, some of us started doing crazy Fanfic, we had retrospectives, birthday threads, etc. It was fun. Then we all just kind of gradually drifted away and moved on. There was also TrekWeb, but I mostly didn't post on that. It was more Ex-Trekkies than Trekkies. TOS & TNG ruled, DS9 & VOY sucked, was pretty much their motto. And by "TOS & TNG", they mostly meant "TNG". The vibe I got online in general that "TOS is meant to be seen and not heard!" (they usually wouldn't outright say it, but that's what they were thinking) and "DS9 sucks! It's Anti-Gene! It's a B5 Rip-Off!" were the Major Things I disagreed about with the Online Trek Community about in those days. I also thought Seven was a better character than the series she was in.
Why not? Dramatic retelling of the same in universe events. If you like, stage play vs. full film making. Or, as the TMP novel put it, TOS was a in-universe dramatization of Kirk's mission logs. They are all equally canon, though some continuity might be looser. To me, it is "James R. Kirk" and "Vulcan/Vulcanian" levels of continuity, i.e. really doesn't impact how they can be in the same timeline. Mileage varies quite often.
In terms of the overall franchise, they are equally canon because they are both part of the body of work. Consistency among works within a canon is a whole different matter. We even have different versions of episodes or movies; original, remastered, Director's Cut, whatever. Which versions of those are canon? All of them. Within any particular canon (literary, musical, religious, whatever), not everything necessarily lines up perfectly, and there are often multiple versions of the same work. It falls upon the scholars to explain any apparent discrepancies. Kor
I'm just going to make my life easier and continue assuming everything that's been canon is still canon, inconsistencies and all and try to enjoy it for what it is.
I see that some people here are confusing 'canon' with 'continuity.' Canon is the collected body of work, declared as such by whomever owns/is currently in charge of said collected body of work. For Star Trek, that canon includes: TOS TAS TNG DS9 VOY ENT DSC PIC SNW LD PRO Short Treks The prime universe films (TMP-NEM) The Kelvin timeline films (ST'09, STID, STB) And that canon list is declared as such by the current Star Trek IP holder, CBS/Paramount. Things like novels, comics, video games, etc. are not canon according to the IP holder, even though they are licensed products. Continuity however, is a completely different thing.
like i said in the other thread this really doesn't bode well what the hell does that even mean? big OOF giving RMB ''privileged access'' to stuff when that dickhead is actively courting the ''fandom menace'' crowd isn't a good look at all
He was the lead producer, writer and editor on several special features for the TNG blu-ray set. So he has a connection with the TNG cast. He was probably able to pull some strings. https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Robert_Meyer_Burnett
He also directed that "Free Enterprise" parody movie with William Shatner, released in 1998. In any case, even though he is in the industry, his opinion is just another opinion like anyone else's. He was never actually involved in the production or writing of TNG itself. His professional connections with TNG were after the fact. Kor
Based on the tweets made before that one, I don't think it was Terry who gave him access. Terry was surprised and even asked RMB was talking about, and RMB was very coy after that. They must have talked in private after that which lead to that tweet you quoted. RMB does have insiders, he has known things about Discovery weeks before the episodes aired.
Here's why I disagree. It's one to hand wave say the dialogue stating the massive distances covered in "That Which Survives", handwave the Galactic Barrier and the Great Barrier as both not literally being either at the very edge or very center of the galaxy, file James R Kirk under an in-joke between Kirk and Mitchell, and all the UESPA, Star Service stuff as Starfleet and the Federation as institutions were developed. Also, letting go of production errors like the deck count of the Enterprise-A in TFF, or rank pips. But it's something else to basically have the premise that the camera itself is consistently an unreliable narrator. To say ~ALL~ of TOS didn't reliably happen, especially when callbacks to TOS have been key plot points in other series. Where had you seen TOS, you could see what was coming. TNG, DS9, and ENT have all shown 2260s era Constitution class starships. So does that mean that the camera is an unreliable narrator there as well? One of the points of canon / continuity is that even the bad episodes "count" and can have an impact later, like say "Datalore". That having seen "The Tholian Web" you'd go holy shit at the midpoint of "In a Mirror, Darky Pt I" as you knew what was happening before the characters. Or even with Picard season 2, knowing oh damn that's the Gary Seven transporter effect... let alone the Traveler / Aegis connection. Something can be paid off 30, 40 etc years later. So if NuTrek is saying, well you can't trust anything your eyes have seen before 2005, then and then picks and choses what counts and what doesn't on an arbitrary basis, it breaks that implied contract with the audience. If nothing really counts, nothing really matters. Hence, why I think the best course of action is to just say ok STD / SNW are a reboot, essentially a do-over of the Abramsverse. What you all saw between 1966-2005 (TAS here or there) still happened, an still count. Which Lower Decks and Prodigy essentially have been doing, and Picard season 2 did. Ex Astra Scientia claims that Picard season 1, save for a glimpse of the Disco-prise, still holds up to the prior continuity as well. Let's assume Kurtzman has a partial stake in the Secret Hideout produced Star Trek shows. If/when his contract ends and Paramount goes with other people, they'll probably be constructively ambiguous about everything he did, lest they have to pay him royalties or a cut of future merchandising. Oh yeah. Something really interesting must have happened at the end of STD season 3, that's for sure hahahaha... RMB has mentioned several times he is friends with Bryan Fuller. Fuller apparently even gave him a Star Trek poster that was hanging in the Discovery writers room, advising him he might need to burn some sage(!) after accepting it. The general impression I get from watching his YouTube streams is he feels like Bryan Fuller was massively screwed over by Alex Kurtzman. He's also argued the basic premise for Picard was first pitched by Fuller as part of his anthology concept. This might be one reason he is so critical about NuTrek using concepts from Star Trek novels by DC Fontana and David Mack without credit, or cribbing from Ursula K Le Guin. Just imagine how you'd feel if someone got a nine-figure deal off the back of material from a friend, who was then left out in the cold? Let's say Picard season 3 is in fact "good" in that it would appeal to a broader segment of the fanbase than the more limited cross section targeted by other NuTrek. That major course corrections happened. It'd be good to signal that to the people who've been greatly antagonized over the last five years. RMB would be a good guy to leak something to to change the opposition fan narrative. But, yeah, there are many black pills and YouTube grifters that wouldn't like to see Star Trek, Star Wars, Marvel etc course correct. So they complain about everything, even when things have noticeably improved. I'd argue RMB and RLM were reasonably fair with Picard season 2, while Nerdrotic and Doomcock were not.
I mean, I guess...but I had that since TMP so I guess it doesn't get under my skin the way others treat it with the strict literalism. For me, the small details and the characters mean more than the verisimilitude. So, if a character is stated to be the same (Saavik, Cochrane, Kor) without any explanation as to why the change then it shows, to me, that the visuals are secondary or even tertiary to the characters themselves. Yes, the camera is an unreliable narrator. Why? Because Trek updates itself whenever it sees fit. So, as much as I see fans grasp to TOS as some strict literal truth, TMP shows that that truth can be updated within 18 months to 3 years. So, yeah, don't expect me to "trust the camera" when Trek has played with that trust in a way, at least from my experience. Now, to be blunt, would I prefer the TOS look? Absolutely. But, that's not the way Trek works, so I work within broader strokes and with characters, i.e. I want the characters to be reasonably consistent, barring developments as part of life changes, and the setting to be relatively consistent, i.e. use of technology in service to the stories and characters, not vice versa. That friend demonstrated horrendous mismanagement of the product and had to be let go. Fuller can claim disservice all he want but he was demonstrated to be responsible with what was given to him.
Roddenberry himself took on the view that TOS was kind of an exaggerated "tall tale" rendition of events that shouldn't be taken at face value. It's in the preface to his TMP novelization. Yes, he actually wrote that book. It wasn't ghost-written by someone else. It has the hallmarks of being written by a screenwriter who never wrote a prose novel before in their life. Kor
I need to find it and reread it and put it in my signature. Because this defined my fan experience with the films. And I treated TOS differently ever since.
Heh, it even says that any visual depictions or re-creations of the events surrounding V'Ger aren't necessarily trustworthy (i.e. the movie itself); only Roddenberry's own novel is the true and accurate account! Kor
He also called the script for the Axanar fan film, "the greatest Star Trek script ever written" which says EVERYTHING you need to know about his opinion. The script was pewpew and completely un-earned Garth worship.
Haha, thinks for bringing some levity... Again, it's the degree of a change. Recasting? Sure it happens. TOS to TMP was explained within the film (well it took until 2005 for the Klingon part!) and makes plausible sense. "The Cage" to "WNMHGB" and then "The Corbomite Maneuver" again a through line. But "The Cage" to the Disco-prise to "WNMHGB" and then "The Corbomite Maneuver".. well you just loose me. But I'm perfectly willing to concede that only what you can see on a 20" TV is what should be more or less held to in TOS. HD was just lack of detail we weren't meant to see. Which "In a Mirror, Darkley" did an awesome job of squaring the circle on. Bryan Fuller can't fully get his side out due to an NDA. So he could have legitimately done a bad job... or just been outplayed. That said, the same people then proceeded to purge Trek greats Nicholas Meyer and Joe Menosky, along with non-ST but genre experienced Aron Eli Coleite and Jesse Alexander, and replace them with writers from Revenge and Good Christian Bitches. And then CW vampire shows. Well if it had been people from The 100 or Nikita...