I could go on for days about all the stuff that makes no sense. In fact I disliked the movie so much upon first viewing, I felt I had to vent my spleen about it, and I wrote out all my complaints in a Word doc that was 10 pages long. It's an exasperating movie logic/plot-wise.
Alex Kurtzman Gets New Deal With CBS, Will Expand 'Star Trek' TV
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I could go on for days about all the stuff that makes no sense. In fact I disliked the movie so much upon first viewing, I felt I had to vent my spleen about it, and I wrote out all my complaints in a Word doc that was 10 pages long. It's an exasperating movie logic/plot-wise.
That's it - a cliche line of dialogue did in the whole thing for you?
How do you even watch Star Trek?
Season 4 was mostly continutiy-pandering to the tiny group of hard core fans who'd hung in until the end. More of that kind of stuff will just render the remnants of Trek even less worthwhile in terms of intelligence, imagination, and storytelling ambition.
How do you even watch Star Trek?
Season 4 was mostly continutiy-pandering to the tiny group of hard core fans who'd hung in until the end. More of that kind of stuff will just render the remnants of Trek even less worthwhile in terms of intelligence, imagination, and storytelling ambition.
I think more highly of season four than you do. But, at least they waited to start pandering to the hard core crowd until the end.
No, that line of dialog is called an example. One of very many examples of how the quality of season 3 was not that much of an improvement over seasons 1 and 2. I enjoy parts/much of all of Star Trek, but after I got bored and tired of the poor quality of seasons 1 and 2 of Enterprise I stopped watching season 2 (the first time I had stopped watching Trek since TNG started). I started again with season 3 given its change of direction, and preferred 3 to 1 and 2, but it was still not what I would call good. (Reviewing Ent seasons 1-3, I think just under half of all of their episodes are "good or better", whereas season 4 is about at 75% good or better. For all of Trek, including Animated Series, I think about 63% are good or better.)
Rather than continuity pandering, I felt season 4 simply sought to explore elements of Trek history or new Enterprise elements (like the behavior of Season 1-3 Vulcans) and do so in a way that was more respectful of the idea of a prequel series. I don't know how you can have a prequel series and not expect that there should be or would be some significant effort put into elements of continuity? Isn't that what people are complaining Discovery isn't doing enough of?
Let's be fair-even if Discovery did more of that, there would still be complaints.
Perfectly said. Discovery was an instantly available target for the ire of every TOS fandamentalist and 24th-century-or-bust stalwart that had soured over years of not getting things exactly their way. They inhabit an echo chamber that gives them support and causes them to assume that their umwelt is in fact some universal truth. There was and is absolutely nothing that show runners can do to break through that level of toxicity except to bulldoze over it and embrace new viewers and keep providing a good show for the existing fans.
You can't win with those people. If you cater to them you're accused of fanwank. If you chart your own course you're accused of apostasy against St Gene. If you make the barest most subtlest of hints you're bringing an old cast member back you're instantly told your project is doomed. If you get your show renewed, you'll be told you're not getting renewed again.
Yup. "STD sucks!" Therefore the Usual Suspects must automatically take the opposite position of whatever it does. Kind of like Tea Party tactics. "If he's for it, we're against it."
Again, to be fair, "us vs them" tactics are not limited to one political ideology
Or fandom, for that matter.
If the mission statement of a prequel series is to set the pieces on the board up for a series that aired 50 years ago, that's very introverted, un-expansive, and self-limiting in terms of audience growth. Connecting dots with continuity should be only of tertiary significance at most.
That means for best results "prequel series" should only be a nominal term. It's a hobbling term, though, like "spin-off." The best spin-offs are shows that stand on their own without leaning on the show that spawned them. How many people thought of Frasier only in terms of how it related to Cheers? Or of The Jeffersons and Good TImes only in terms of how they related to All in the Family? How many fans of Olivia Benson consider her only in relation to what's going on in homicide at the 27th? The answer I'm looking for here is "few or none." When a show stands on its own, its characters become the focus, and significant events are those that relate to those characters, not the characters of the parent show.
This is why involving TOS characters in the premise of DSC was such a risky move.
That means for best results "prequel series" should only be a nominal term. It's a hobbling term, though, like "spin-off." The best spin-offs are shows that stand on their own without leaning on the show that spawned them. How many people thought of Frasier only in terms of how it related to Cheers? Or of The Jeffersons and Good TImes only in terms of how they related to All in the Family? How many fans of Olivia Benson consider her only in relation to what's going on in homicide at the 27th? The answer I'm looking for here is "few or none." When a show stands on its own, its characters become the focus, and significant events are those that relate to those characters, not the characters of the parent show.
This is why involving TOS characters in the premise of DSC was such a risky move.
Agreed. Which was why it was so dumb for CBS to make the claim that DSC takes place ten years before TOS just to get more trufans to sign up for CBSAA, and then proceed to make the show look nothing like TOS. They should have just ditched the whole 'prequel to TOS' thing and just called it what it is; a reboot. Because calling it a prequel to TOS will automatically make people compare it with TOS, which no one should be doing. And to add insult to injury, now it seems like TOS is being retconned out of existence anyway (at least the TOS that I've been watching for the last 40-some years).
i wasn't aware TOS was disappearing o_O
Also, didn't GR attempt that any way? What's the big deal now?
TOS isn't disappearing. My TOS dvds still exist. I was referring to the inconsistencies between DSC and TOS.
Also, didn't GR attempt that any way? What's the big deal now?
Well, I don't really care what Gene attempted to do, since it didn't seem to work anyway.
Honestly, given Discovery is so close in time period to TOS, yet shares virtually no common characters (Sarek and Mudd aside) I think of it as more of a "sidequel" than a prequel.
I mean, what outstanding TOS threads have been addressed? Basically just why Sarek doesn't seem to get along with Spock. We got some more elaboration of Mudd's character, but nothing which really helped to explain the Mudd better (indeed, it arguably made things a bit more confusing for some). Otherwise, the events of DIS have very little to do with TOS indeed - at least to date.
In contrast, ENT was more of a true prequel, at least conceptually. Obviously there were no crossover characters till T'Pau was introduced at the very very end. But for the big picture it was supposed to tell the story of how the Humans, Vulcans, Andorians, and Tellarites founded the Federation. Of course it completely screwed the pooch on that for the first three seasons, but thankfully Manny Coto remembered what a prequel is supposed to be for the end run of the show.
I mean, what outstanding TOS threads have been addressed? Basically just why Sarek doesn't seem to get along with Spock. We got some more elaboration of Mudd's character, but nothing which really helped to explain the Mudd better (indeed, it arguably made things a bit more confusing for some). Otherwise, the events of DIS have very little to do with TOS indeed - at least to date.
In contrast, ENT was more of a true prequel, at least conceptually. Obviously there were no crossover characters till T'Pau was introduced at the very very end. But for the big picture it was supposed to tell the story of how the Humans, Vulcans, Andorians, and Tellarites founded the Federation. Of course it completely screwed the pooch on that for the first three seasons, but thankfully Manny Coto remembered what a prequel is supposed to be for the end run of the show.
What about the inconsistencies between TOS and every other series?
Again, to be fair, "us vs them" tactics are not limited to one political ideology
I'm not denying it. It's why I want to watch some Meryl Streep movies, now that I've heard she's "overrated". She must be a phenomenal actor.
According to some on the forum, TOS is always right in that case.
Which I find hilarious, because TOS is by far the most internally inconsistent of Trek shows. Particularly the first half of its first season. You can tell they were just winging it and had no "mythos" planned for the series.
Tell me what they are.
One smart thing that Gene did, on point with my previous post, is he kept TOS references in the first season of TNG low. Sure, you had McCoy in the premier and the god-awful rehash of "The Naked Time" right after. But after that, it was all about the 24th century for a while (even to the point of not mentioning obvious TOS references, like how the Horta might have been appropriate to bring up in "Home Soil"). Vulcans, the species of the breakout character of TOS, were verboten, at least until TNG was standing on its own. By the time Sarek guest-starred, TNG was arguably in the midst of its strongest season with one great episode after another; "Sarek" was just one great episode among many.
But Gene also didn't want the Klingons involved in the show, which would have meant no Worf, and thus possibly none of the later Klingon development at all. He also didn't want the Romulans, IIRC, which would have been less consequential, but would have demolished a bunch of great TNG stories (and a few DS9 stories) as well. He just wanted totally new alien races divorced from past continuity. Given what an (early) failure the Ferengi were, this could have turned out quite bad.
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