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Alex Kurtzman: 'Star Trek: Discovery' Will Spark Debate And Adhere To Canon

Which was basicly true for all Star Trek shows after TOS. Fans learned to live with it then, they will now. Or they will GTFO, which will make this forum a lot more fun to read.

Or, they'll simply treat it as a reboot... Or, they simply won't care...

It is probably a sliver of TV watchers who will care one way or the other.
 
To paraphrase:

You need to know the different timelines, the different universes.

Maybe referring to the mirror universe. Maybe not. Maybe referring to 'Parallels'.

You're taking it too literally, I think. It seems to me that he was just talking generally about being true to whatever universe you're writing in. I can't get the video to play, but I'm guessing he was answering a question about working in the Prime timeline as opposed to his movie work in the Kelvin timeline, and he was talking about how Discovery's writers are keeping it true to the timeline it's set in, i.e. Prime.


Remember, it's about what she finds at the end of the Universe.

Oh, that's just a promotional tagline. "At the end of the universe, Discovery begins" sounds like a riff on The Wrath of Khan's nonsensical tagline "At the end of the universe lies the beginning of vengeance."


Burnham makes a decision that changes her, changes StarFleet, changes the Federation. Changes the universe.

That probably just means it'll have an effect on events going forward in the timeline we know, that it'll turn out to have a causative influence on things we already saw in TOS. That's something prequels tend to do, to show the origin of something that we already knew about, like how Enterprise showed the origin of TOS-style Klingons, the backstory of T'Pau, the beginnings of the process that led to the Federation, etc.




Everytime that throwaway line from BoT about "simple impulse" comes up, we have to re-explain how absurd the idea of slower than light Romulans is...

I just take it to mean that he said their sublight drive was a simple form of impulse power instead of the more sophisticated form Starfleet used, so that they'd be at a disadvantage in sublight combat.


Well, there was the Orion syndicate in DS9, which seemed to have no green Orions.

I kinda like that idea, that it evolved from a monocultural thing into a more expansive crime syndicate. Honestly, Trek has far too much of a tendency to equate all forms of identity with racial identity, and it's nice when they occasionally get away from that simplistic essentialism.
 
Captain Pike once considered becoming an Orion trader.
"Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me." What a way for a righteous Starfleet captain to retire! :lol:

Kor
 
But lots were, like the visuals and silly lack of Romulan warp drive, just to name a few.

It was a silly line, the interstellar societies of Trek would be near impossible without some form of FTL travel. Like much of TOS's inconsistent technobabble, it should be taken with a large pinch of salt. The narrative requirement is for a slower ship, that's it.

I think the line is ambiguous. Since lack of FTL is silly, I have always reasoned that it was referring to the present state of the Romulan vessel, i.e. maybe it could only engage impulse engines while cloaked. Or perhaps it was a suggestion that the Romulans only operated nuclear reactors to heat their warp plasma as opposed to antimatter, which may have acquired the general term "impulse power" the way people sometimes use scientifically inaccurate phrasing today (because impulse engines are nuclear powered). People interpret it as lack of FTL warp drive because the Chronology, etc, did, and it was probably originally intended that way in the script - but there are always ways around things in Star Trek that don't require lines being outright ignored I feel - if they need mentioning at all.
 
I think the official reason for warp nacelles only came in after TOS, and they were just seen as some sort of nondescript 'engine pod' during the 60s. We have been conditioned by decades of TNG era assumptions and can't see them as anything other than a warp nacelle.
 
Trek's worst enemy is its fans, many who are more interested in an incestuous regurgitation for Trek than anything new or innovative.

Anyone interested in new Trek is interested in regurgitation to one degree or another. Or else they wouldn't want more of it.
 
I have always reasoned that it was referring to the present state of the Romulan vessel, i.e. maybe it could only engage impulse engines while cloaked.

I believe that is how the novels portrayed it, the cloak was too powerful to have the warp drive running at the same time.
 
I think the official reason for warp nacelles only came in after TOS, and they were just seen as some sort of nondescript 'engine pod' during the 60s. We have been conditioned by decades of TNG era assumptions and can't see them as anything other than a warp nacelle.

No, they were always meant to be the warp engines. Remember Kirk to Scotty in "The Apple": "Discard the warp drive nacelles if you have to and crack out of there with the main section, but get that ship out of there!" Similarly in "The Savage Curtain," when the warp drive was building to overload: "Disengage nacelles, jettison if possible." Scotty also referenced "the matter-antimatter nacelles" in "By Any Other Name," and "antimatter nacelles" were referenced in "Bread and Circuses" and "One of Our Planets is Missing."

After all, the whole reason Matt Jefferies put the nacelles out on long pylons was because he assumed the energies required to warp space were so massive that the engines would emit dangerous levels of heat and radiation -- although that idea was ignored in later designs that put the warp reactor right in the same room with the engineers.
 
Anyone interested in new Trek is interested in regurgitation to one degree or another. Or else they wouldn't want more of it.
I'm not so certain. At least for me, I would rather see an exploration of different aspects of Star Trek universe, and I don't think that counts as "regurgitation."
 
I'm not so certain. At least for me, I would rather see an exploration of different aspects of Star Trek universe, and I don't think that counts as "regurgitation."

Klingons, Harry Mudd, Sarek are just the tip of the iceberg on what they are reusing. There's nothing wrong if you love steak a certain way and go to a place because they make it that way.
 
@Christopher - Sorry, I got carried away and should have been more specifric - they were always intended to be the warp engines on the USS Enterprise, and were referred to as nacelles (Star Trek is remarkably consistent despite what some people say) - but I was trying to make the wider point that the similar structures on a Romulan Bird of Prey in that era might not necessarily have been conceptualized by staff as being there for the same reason - I do not know how "firm" the TOS staff's conception of a warp engine being present on all alien vessels was.

As far as I am aware, and correct me if I am wrong here, the concept they they generated a field that warped Einsteinian space-time was not solid, or written in a series bible, as of TOS - there may have been speculation amongst advisors, fans and scientists in this direction, but as far as I remember the field-coil warp-plasma thing only got set in stone with TNG and the Tech Manual - so I genuinely don't know whether the Klingon D7 or Romulan Bird of Prey, which were the only significant alien starship models in the show intended them to represent alien forms of warp drive, as we now conceive it, or just indicate general parallels in technology level.

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@sumbuddyx - To elucidate: A type 15 shuttlepod from TNG has what looks like two warp nacelles, and most people would assume that is what they are, if they were just familiar with the concept that a shuttlecraft has scaled down warp engines for low velocity trips. In fact, they are impulse engine pods. So the outriggers on the Bird of Prey might not necessarily have been seen as warp nacelles by the staff I guess - I think they are - but that's because I've seen 50 years of other ships since - and because an interstellar empire without FTL is absolutely stupid.
 
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Klingons, Harry Mudd, Sarek are just the tip of the iceberg on what they are reusing. There's nothing wrong if you love steak a certain way and go to a place because they make it that way.
I guess I see regurgitation as rehash without a new twist. Which, since we haven't seen how Mudd, Sarek or the Klingons are actually going to be used leaves me less calling it "regurgitation" and more "name recognition" that may or may not go the same way.
 
I guess I see regurgitation as rehash without a new twist. Which, since we haven't seen how Mudd, Sarek or the Klingons are actually going to be used leaves me less calling it "regurgitation" and more "name recognition" that may or may not go the same way.

But you're (and me and everyone here) coming back to it because its "Star Trek". That implies there was something there before that you liked and are expecting at least somethin in the same general vein.
 
But you're (and me and everyone here) coming back to it because its "Star Trek". That implies there was something there before that you liked and are expecting at least somethin in the same general vein.
Does general vein automatically mean regurgitation? :shrug:

To me, that's saying that "Hacksaw Ridge" is a "regurgitation" of "Saving Private Ryan" because WW2.
 
To me, that's saying that "Hacksaw Ridge" is a "regurgitation" of "Saving Private Ryan" because WW2.

No. But neither is claiming to be part of the same universe. Discovery is. Seriously, what was your interest in this before we knew anything about it besides it being "Star Trek"? What about a show reusing many, many things that have already been created means its "new"? It is by its very nature recycling many ideas and concepts that have been used before by the Star Trek brand.

"Regurgitation" isn't necessarily a bad thing. We were/are interested in Discovery exactly because Star Trek is something we know and are comfortable with.

It seems like some folks are embarrassed to be Star Trek fans and are desperate for any way to separate this show from what came before (except for a wildly incoherent timeline for some reason). I'm proud to be a Star Trek fan. I am unabashedly a Star Trek fan. I'm not embarrassed by what came before. What came before is what made me a fan and the reason why Discovery is even on my radar.
 
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