Movies based on Shakespeare plays aren't designed to fit together with the original play or each other. DSC is "supposed" to be a TOS prequel, an intent that the redesigns of things we've already seen undermines.
Alex Kurtzman on the Fine Line Between Adding to, and Staying True to, Star Trek's Canon
- Thread starter Danja
- Start date
Movies based on Shakespeare plays aren't designed to fit together with the original play or each other. DSC is "supposed" to be a TOS prequel, an intent that the redesigns of things we've already seen undermines.
People don't claim a new performance of Hamlet isn't what Shakespeare intended because the costuming and staging is different from the previous Hamlet they watched. IMO, Star Trek isn't a documentary of the future. It was produced with what they had at the time, what they could at the time. Disco is produced with what we have right now and what we can do right now. Roddenberry said kind of the same thing when people noted how different TMP was from the series.
That's literally got nothing to do with what I was saying.
You complained the redesigns disqualify the series in your mind from being a prequel because it doesn't look like a 60s series produced on a shoestring budget and saturated primary colors because they were also in the business of selling color TVs.
Last edited:
What part of "supposed to fit together in one world" vs. "disconnected retellings of the same source material" doesn't make any sense?
Because, from my perspective, that 'one world' of 2 1/2 centuries from now you speak of looks very different when viewed from 2019 than it did from 1964. If the 2250s are to be imagined from today, then they aren't going to look like the 2250s as imagined in 1964. Just as Olivier's and Gibson's Hamlet are both set in the same place in time but appear very different because of different sensibilities between a 1940s view of medieval Denmark and a 1980s view of medieval Denmark. Star Trek is about the future. IMO, it's appropriate to see it from today, and not demand it must be presented as though we are still living in 1964. When I watch Disco I see 2250s Star Trek presented with higher production values and a modern sensibility. Its easy for me to handle the difference because I understand the differences inherent between productions separated by 50 years and accept that they won't be identical and shouldn't be with the kinds of production values we enjoy today.
But why do these arguments always leave it implicit that ”Of course Star Trek must be about the Nth reimagination of young Spock’s era, what else?” I’ll keep saying it: the solution to changing tech and sensibilities was to update them in-universe as the timeline moved forward. The present according to Bermanverse should be 2396, when Picard is old and and Pike is dead. New iterations must risk creating their own characters and failing, trying again until they manage to outdo Kirk, Spock, McCoy. They were the first draft: the franchise must keep going with the second, third, fourth, fifth, rather than rest on its laurels and give the fans what they know they want.
Just imagine if Doctor Who gave up and decided that Tom Baker’s was the “quintessential Doctor”, then went ahead with a reboot that included Sarah Jane Smith (as the “quintessential companion”) and a more serious K-9. What is it doing instead? The base setting is always present-day, up-to-date Great Britain, with everything that came before that being acknowledged as the past you’re trying to outdo (often failing, but you keep trying). That’s what Roddenberry wanted with TNG and that’s what the franchise has given up on ever since 2001, when it started circling back to TOS and the proven elements surrounding it.
Star Trek is not a comic book with a pantheon. It’s a soft-anthology storytelling framework that evolves with time, adding and losing elements as required. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Picard are all entirely optional and part of their time, characters to be supplemented with newer characters that stand a great chance of becoming just as iconic in parallel.
I've been waiting for someone to really reboot Doctor Who for quite some time.
Also, Spock may have wanted to keep that part of his life private, much as he kept having a stepbrother private.
DW is hardly an example of not circling back to what was popular in the past.
Doctor Who, which has starred the same character as its lead for almost 60 years basically soft reboots with every new regeneration of The Doctor, and then repeatedly goes back to the same well, circling back to old favorites. How often does the Master show up? Davros? The Daleks? The Cybermen? To keep older fans interested. Not to mention that it retcons like crazy because of the nature of the show which is at this point an insane mosiac of contradictions that each new showrunner ignores while they make things up as they go along.
You also might not remember, but TNG and DS9 felt the need to circle back to TOS a number of times with Spock, Sarek, Scotty and Klingons from TOS showing up as those two shows also felt they needed to go back to the well time and time again as well.
Last edited:
Soft reboots are better than reimagining because they still place some restrictions on writers. A regenerated Doctor can’t be precisely the same character as one that came before, so if someone was looking for a major callback to Tom Baker, not to mention a fan-favorite companion, they’d be out of luck. Same with the Master, while Davros hasn’t showed up that much in proportion to the dozens of seasons. The Daleks and the Cybermen are large-scale threats like Klingons and Romulans, but other than Davros, I don’t remember any recurring characters among them. Sure, I’d rather these were avoided also, but the constraints are still there and they help move things forward.
As for TOS references in TNG and DS9, we must be careful to count them in proportion to 14 seasons of 26 episodes. The current free-for-all trend didn’t really begin until the kitchen-sink S4 of ENT, and DSC of course had no problem introducing familiar characters such as Spock’s family, Mudd and finally Spock himself as part of Pike’s crew. They even let Pike take over during S2 even though it could’ve been any Starfleet captain, or better yet Saru in order to focus on character building specific to DSC.
As for TOS references in TNG and DS9, we must be careful to count them in proportion to 14 seasons of 26 episodes. The current free-for-all trend didn’t really begin until the kitchen-sink S4 of ENT, and DSC of course had no problem introducing familiar characters such as Spock’s family, Mudd and finally Spock himself as part of Pike’s crew. They even let Pike take over during S2 even though it could’ve been any Starfleet captain, or better yet Saru in order to focus on character building specific to DSC.
Except Tom Baker *has* reappeared in Doctor Who. And Elizabeth Sladen showed up again and even got her own spinnoff show for several years with an upgraded K9. Brigadier General Lethbridge Stewart showed up during the runs of 4 different Doctors, River Song, 3. Even the first Doctor has been brought back up multiple times, recast twice. Fanservice is alive and well in Doctor Who TV, not to mention the hundreds of audio dramas Big Finish produces with the previous Doctors as main characters performed by the actors and companions actors, something which is entirely unavailable to Star Trek fans and have even been referred to in the live action series. Callbacks and fanservice in Doctor Who is alive and well and has been for decades, thank you very much.
Neither Pike nor Mudd or Spock's family showing up in Disco in the grand sceme of things is any different from Spock's and Sarek's multiple appearances in TNG, not to mention Kor, Koloth and Kang in DS9. They are a couple of characters who appeared exactly twice in the TOS and appear in Disco to serve as supporting cast for the show's main characters who get quite enough character development since the show itself only has 4 main characters, where's previous installments had up to 7.
Each and every long-running series as old as Trek and Who engages in the same kinds of fanservice to appeal to both new and old fans. To suggest that Doctor Who is superior to Trek where it comes to how they do it is a highly subjective call.
You’re comparing the reimagining of the 2250s setting to fit modern times with mere age-appropriate appearances or recasting in case of rare flashbacks. There is a definite difference in degree which has only become greater since ENT S4: Sarek was heavily tied into a main DSC character and the overall S1 plot, whereas he only had two widely-spaced and totally unrelated appearances on TNG (the second one merely taking advantage of the prior mind-meld with Picard). Amanda of course couldn’t live that long, allowing for Perrin to be created as a new character.
DSC has a number of bridge characters that very much feature in behind-the-scenes coverage, except that onscreen they had to take a backseat to those from TOS: why? The DW audio dramas aren’t canon, and I haven’t been looking at non-canon Star Trek either (which I understand is even more fan-serving because of the flexible media in question). Yes, Doctor Who became slightly superior when ST started doing wedge-in prequels, but ST was superior before; as noted, the fan service in the Berman era was widely spaced and small in proportion to the large number of episodes. Not only that, but even shows set in the same era weren’t allowed to rely much on their successful predecessors: TNG introduced DS9 and DS9 introduced VGR, but what did DS9, VGR and TNG have in common despite the extensive overlap? Barclay and the Maquis for the most part.
The key here is the overall trend: Star Trek has been moving in the direction of increasing fan service, whereas it should’ve been moving away from it. Rather than continue expanding its range like it did when DS9 was created, the sporadic references to TOS led to a prequel show with a fan-serving final season, then the Kelvin Timeline and finally DSC. I can only hope that PIC and DSC S3 are indicative of a different trend and that comparisons with Shakespeare will become redundant as the franchise keeps expanding in new directions that do not require controversial insertions into a reimagined past.
DSC has a number of bridge characters that very much feature in behind-the-scenes coverage, except that onscreen they had to take a backseat to those from TOS: why? The DW audio dramas aren’t canon, and I haven’t been looking at non-canon Star Trek either (which I understand is even more fan-serving because of the flexible media in question). Yes, Doctor Who became slightly superior when ST started doing wedge-in prequels, but ST was superior before; as noted, the fan service in the Berman era was widely spaced and small in proportion to the large number of episodes. Not only that, but even shows set in the same era weren’t allowed to rely much on their successful predecessors: TNG introduced DS9 and DS9 introduced VGR, but what did DS9, VGR and TNG have in common despite the extensive overlap? Barclay and the Maquis for the most part.
The key here is the overall trend: Star Trek has been moving in the direction of increasing fan service, whereas it should’ve been moving away from it. Rather than continue expanding its range like it did when DS9 was created, the sporadic references to TOS led to a prequel show with a fan-serving final season, then the Kelvin Timeline and finally DSC. I can only hope that PIC and DSC S3 are indicative of a different trend and that comparisons with Shakespeare will become redundant as the franchise keeps expanding in new directions that do not require controversial insertions into a reimagined past.
Last edited:
Focusing on the bridge crew is not a new direction, it is the most conservative thing a Star Trek show could do. Its what 4 out of 5 Star Trek series did before Disco. Fan service in the case we have been discussing is acting in service of nostalgia, but that is not what Disco has done. What they have engaged in is deconstruction, which is only controversial to those who want things to remain in service of unchallenging nostalgia only. Its telling that the most vigorous complaints about Disco have been it isn't the Star Trek they remember, which suggests that the series has been expanding in new directions all along.
I agree in general. But, more specifically, I think Trek needs a full reboot, utilizing 2019 as the launch point, current technological knowhow for looking forward from human history. That would be the best way to combat the nostalgia, in my opinion.
No more Kirk, no more Picard, no more of referencing their adventures. Full on new story, updated technology, updated history.
Then don’t feature them in behind-the-scenes coverage either and stick to rotating personnel, which doesn’t mean one couldn’t introduce brand-new characters with other functions on the ship or elsewhere (eg. an S2 captain other than Pike). But TOS also truly focused only on Kirk, Spock and McCoy (though the other characters had much greater roles) so it’s not that conservative.
The problem is you can only do that to a point while claiming in official timelines that the continuity is the same (hence the eyebrows raised on Mudd’s violent portayal), and even with a reboot the question is what is gained by using a legacy character. Is the show saying something new that entirely makes sense in context, is there a story-driven need to do that as opposed to merely using the character as a named audience hook?
Picard in particular is going to be an exercise in nostalgia. The entire appeal of the show is, remember Star Trek: The Next Generation?
I would reboot Trek using Netflix's Lost in Space as the template. Similar jist, same character names but a totally new start.
It depends on whether they stick to an exploration of Picard with callbacks to his former crew or also manage to introduce memorable new characters that end up stealing the show.
Lost in Space is just a nice reboot for today, better than DSC to be sure but also forgettable when you’re done with a season. It gives the new/casual viewer what they expect from the franchise (“Danger, Will Robinson”) but with a modern twist.
Actually that's The Orville's appeal.
Similar threads
