Cardassians in TOS

[Dukhat]

If SNW was actually in the same continuity with TOS, you wouldn't have to say "well this was the intent in 1967, but now to make it fit with SNW I'm going to change it to..." You wouldn't have to do that because the intent of SNW would be the same as the intent in TOS. It would just fit. I don't feel the need to jump through hoops to try to make SNW the same continuity with TOS when the producers of SNW are clearly not making any such effort themselves.

This.

They declare that some.. mysterious unidentified space threat that is in any area with no known threats... is unidentified until a third party identifies them. At which point this fact is noted in Kirk's log.

Yes, it's a retcon but it holds together logically IMO.

You are welcome to embrace the retcon. To me it is flimsy evidence at best, especially considering what the context of the lines have been for the last 50-odd years.

Again, the idea that some Klingons look more like humans and some don't has been known to Starfleet since prior to the founding of the Federation, I'm pretty sure most Starfleet officers have their surprise on that point out of their system.

Again, not sure why this is an objectively difficult idea for you to accept?

I accept that lots of liberties are being taken. I accept the changes as being too different from the core material to be shoehorned in seamlessly without needing some retconny explanation every time. I accept that shows like DSC and SNW are reboots.

Now, let’s get back to talking about Cardassians in TOS, because I feel the thread is being highjacked with CBSTrek talk.

I like this guy as a TOS Cardassian. Presumably, much like the Klingons, in the original production they'd just use some makeup, there wouldn't be the latex prosthetics, etc., of the later productions.

Actually, he looks more like what we should be seeing in SNW if they wanted to show Klingons like how they looked in TOS, but with extra makeup.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

I was always okay with depicting Klingons in all their prosthetic glory for SNW, because I hand wave the 1960s makeup as much as I do with the very outdated sets. I took to heart Gene’s comments that the Klingons “always” looked like they did starting in TMP. I only wish DISCO had gone with that aesthetic rather than the orcs in S1.

ENT trying to actually address the Klingon make up change is one of the silliest things that season could have done. It was not something I needed explained.

 

[Poltargyst]

I was always okay with depicting Klingons in all their prosthetic glory for SNW, because I hand wave the 1960s makeup as much as I do with the very outdated sets. I took to heart Gene’s comments that the Klingons “always” looked like they did starting in TMP. I only wish DISCO had gone with that aesthetic rather than the orcs in S1.

ENT trying to actually address the Klingon make up change is one of the silliest things that season could have done. It was not something I needed explained.

I was glad they did it.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I was always okay with depicting Klingons in all their prosthetic glory for SNW, because I hand wave the 1960s makeup as much as I do with the very outdated sets. I took to heart Gene’s comments that the Klingons “always” looked like they did starting in TMP. I only wish DISCO had gone with that aesthetic rather than the orcs in S1.

ENT trying to actually address the Klingon make up change is one of the silliest things that season could have done. It was not something I needed explained.

Word. I found it truly fun-sucking.

 

[fireproof78]

I was always okay with depicting Klingons in all their prosthetic glory for SNW, because I hand wave the 1960s makeup as much as I do with the very outdated sets. I took to heart Gene’s comments that the Klingons “always” looked like they did starting in TMP. I only wish DISCO had gone with that aesthetic rather than the orcs in S1.

ENT trying to actually address the Klingon make up change is one of the silliest things that season could have done. It was not something I needed explained.

Agreed. It's an illustration of fan overthinking this that requires an actual addressing on screen rather than assuming fans are somehow smart enough to understand that make up changed.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

Agreed. It's an illustration of fan overthinking this that requires an actual addressing on screen rather than assuming fans are somehow smart enough to understand that make up changed.

Part of that is fandom that likes to treat Star Trek almost as close as possible to a docudrama, as if it treating it as close as possible to reality. I never subscribed to that.

When it comes to explaining away make up changes, I thought the most clever way of doing that was with the Romulans in Kurtzman productions. Some have forehead ridges like in TNG, some are smooth like in TOS. Didn’t even need a two parter for that. It was simple and to the point.

Which for me also makes it more frustrating when Glenn Hetrick keeps changing up make up designs for DISCO. The most confounding for me wasn’t the Klingons but rather the Orions. Instead of just applying green make up, he has the actors wear masks… which I just don’t get. If not only obscures the actors’ emoting but it looks even more fake than the TOS make up. Funnily, SNW doesn’t even do that with their Orion appearances, since Kurtzman productions don’t have a blanket production team the way Berman Trek had Michael Westmore was juggling between two shows and movies.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

That’s a lot of projection there. I’m very critical of Orci and Kurtzman, but Uhura mentioning a Cardassian drink wouldn’t be egregious in my book.

Could have been acquired secondhand from a race who had made contact with them. No reason the Federation rushes to make first contact with every race that another known race happens to have acquired a cocktail recipe from sometime in the past.

Spoiler

http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/10.htm
What Are Little Girls Made Of?

CHAPEL: Have you ever been engaged, Mister Spock?

Strange indeed that Chapel could be an old girlfriend of Spock's as seen in SNW but not know anything about T'Pring.

Sometimes people ask questions where they know full well what the answer is, in an attempt to remind people that "well, you should understand, you've been there".

Easy, I reinterpret it as Chapel throwing some rhetorical sass at Spock, even though that was not the intent when originally written.

I’ve done the same with “Space Seed”, which originally stated that the Eugenics Wars and WWIII were one and the same.

SPOCK: No such vessel listed. Records of that period are fragmentary, however. The mid=1990s was the era of your last so-called World War.
MCCOY: The Eugenics Wars.

At the time McCoy was simply clarifying what the name of that “last” world war was, but given how they’ve been separated by decades in later retconning, I can reinterpret Bones’ line as correcting Spock. “No, Mr Spock, not WWIII, the Eugenics Wars”.

Again, obviously not the intent in 1967. But that’s how I can interpret it today with how WWIII became a totally separate event from the Eugenics Wars.

Or not correcting him (as in "you're dead wrong") but being more specific than Spock (oddly enough, though perhaps McCoy knows more about Earth history than Spock). Just as WWI and WWII had different battles and fronts, WWIII had normal humans fighting each other in some battles, and normal humans fighting augments in others.

 

[Poltargyst]

Sometimes people ask questions where they know full well what the answer is, in an attempt to remind people that "well, you should understand, you've been there".

For 50 years we all understood that she was really asking him that question.

 

[Dukhat]

When fans have to constantly come up with retcons to justify dialogue or actions that aren’t consistent with the source material, then the new material fails in its job to be part of that same continuity. It’s not a bad thing, per se, but that’s the reality.

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

When fans have to constantly come up with retcons to justify dialogue or actions that aren’t consistent with the source material, then the new material fails in its job to be part of that same continuity. It’s not a bad thing, per se, but that’s the reality.

You say that like that's a new problem for Star Trek fans -- but even if we give TOS a pass -- retcons, inconsistences and workarounds have been an issue for the fandom since at least early TNG (Where Silence Has Lease vs The Immunity Syndrome (TOS), a "hole in space" for example).

 

[Dukhat]

You say that like that's a new problem for Star Trek fans -- but even if we give TOS a pass -- retcons, inconsistences and workarounds have been an issue for the fandom since at least early TNG (Where Silence Has Lease vs The Immunity Syndrome (TOS), a "hole in space" for example).

Please explain the workaround for why everything looks different in SNW from TOS in an in-universe way.

 

[fireproof78]

You say that like that's a new problem for Star Trek fans -- but even if we give TOS a pass -- retcons, inconsistences and workarounds have been an issue for the fandom since at least early TNG (Where Silence Has Lease vs The Immunity Syndrome (TOS), a "hole in space" for example).

Indeed.

Workarounds are par for the course for me.

 

[Poltargyst]

Please explain the workaround for why everything looks different in SNW from TOS in an in-universe way.

Not just how things look but how characters act. Someone please provide me with a viable explanation of how Christine Chapel goes from acting the way she does in SNW to the way she does in TOS. They are not the same character.

Don't get me wrong. I LIKE SNW Christine Chapel. I like her more than TOS Chapel. But SNW Chapel is NOT TOS Chapel.

 

[Dukhat]

I also like SNW T’Pring. To think that she is destined to become some conniving bitch who doesn’t give a crap if Spock or Kirk gets killed on her behalf just so she can hook up with some other dude is pretty ludicrous.

 

[Poltargyst]

You say that like that's a new problem for Star Trek fans -- but even if we give TOS a pass -- retcons, inconsistences and workarounds have been an issue for the fandom since at least early TNG (Where Silence Has Lease vs The Immunity Syndrome (TOS), a "hole in space" for example).

Maybe I don't care for TNG's retcons either.

 

[Dukhat]

I’m not even sure what his example is supposed to prove.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

When fans have to constantly come up with retcons to justify dialogue or actions that aren’t consistent with the source material, then the new material fails in its job to be part of that same continuity.

...which can boiled down to people--only laughingly referred to as "writers" and "showrunners"--working on a franchise allegedly part of a running continuity, but are Hell-bent on remaking it over for reasons having nothing to do with building on an existing universe. In the case of NuTrek, thankfully, their efforts have not watered down or erased TOS' standing in the franchise.

 

[fireproof78]

Not just how things look but how characters act. Someone please provide me with a viable explanation of how Christine Chapel goes from acting the way she does in SNW to the way she does in TOS. They are not the same character.

Don't get me wrong. I LIKE SNW Christine Chapel. I like her more than TOS Chapel. But SNW Chapel is NOT TOS Chapel.

I would.

But it's a futile exercise since people don't seem to believe in how people can change.

There is not the same willingness to play with the material. Instead, it must be taken without question.

 

[Dukhat]

Not just how things look but how characters act. Someone please provide me with a viable explanation of how Christine Chapel goes from acting the way she does in SNW to the way she does in TOS. They are not the same character.

Don't get me wrong. I LIKE SNW Christine Chapel. I like her more than TOS Chapel. But SNW Chapel is NOT TOS Chapel.

To think that characters written with 21st century sensibilities will eventually morph into characters written with 1960’s sensibilities is indeed a futile exercise.

BTW, isn’t this topic supposed to be about Cardassians in TOS?

 

[Shawnster]

To think that characters written with 21st century sensibilities will eventually morph into characters written with 1960’s sensibilities is indeed a futile exercise.

Sensibilities aside, personality is personality. I could easily accept Jess Bush's character in SNW as Janice Rand. I have difficulty accepting her as Christine Chapel.

Heck, I could even see how TOS could be interpreted as Rand having had a relationship with Spock in the past.

So, no. In my case it's not a matter of tryiing to shoe horn 21st cent writing into 20th century sensibilities.