Chapel Character Teaser

[Serveaux]

• So here's my beef, and I've said this somewhere else, maybe in his thread. If they want to tell me it's the same universe, that this is "my" Christine Chapel, then she has to somehow go from being that clever, feisty person to being that dull, drab cypher, that null. It doesn't have to happen in SNW, but they at least need to provide some sort of path where she could realistically go from her SNW persona to her TOS persona, and ina pretty short time.

First, I'm pretty sure that they're not trying to tell you anything about "your" Christine Chapel. They're making a TV show, not taking orders at a diner.

Second, there's really zero chance that they'll "evolve" a clever, feisty character into a dull cypher and there's not a good reason in the world that anyone would want to do that.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

It's hard to accept a character being made more interesting as a valid complaint.

 

[Serveaux]

It's hard to accept a character being made more interesting as a valid complaint.

Exactly so.

I mean, there's "You think this is good, but I don't," which makes sense - I feel that way about some current entertainment, including some Trek. But "I don't like it because it/they are too good?"

 

[StarMan]

Watching this with an eye to how it perfectly segues into TOS is a recipe for a migraine. I'm happy to view it as an interpretation of this (fictional) historical period. TOS was one interpretation, this is another. Easy.

 

[Serveaux]

"That was then, this is now" pretty much covers it.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I'm reminded of Misery, where Kathy Bates is talking about watching the serials, where critical action changed from week to week, and she says something like "He didn't get out of the cockadoodie car!" She was frustrated that she was being told that last week's short and this week's short were the same story. That's how I feel every time I hear these guys say "It's all in same same universe." Maybe I could get Kathy Bates to hobble the producers.

I don't get a sense of sarcasm here. Without even considering whatever correlation there is between her extreme obsession with the author's works and her actions as the story unfolds, maybe you should process Misery in the context of Bates' character being criminally insane?

 

[Serveaux]

Uh, yeah, that business was supposed to clue us that Bates was pretty troubled.

 

[Sci]

I don't have to justify myself

That's a weirdly hostile reaction. Did I piss in your cornflakes this morning or something?

The point is that, either way, she doesn't act like she did in TOS. Call it being not blank and personality-less cardboard cut-out. Isn't that a significant difference, then?

Yes. A good significant difference. It's a prime example of taking an inferior element of an otherwise decent older work, and retroactively improving it by giving that inferior element greater quality in a related work. Giving Chapel an actual personality just makes TOS a better show retroactively.

It's a fair question. My thoughts are these:

• In TOS, Chapel is...not much. If she has a character at all, she's a wallflower, and she pines for Spock, and that's pretty much her. When she's introduced we're meant to think she's more, but even in "Little Girls" she's really a stereotypical 60s female character, searching space for her lost man. She a null cypher.
• She should never have been included in SNW. There's nothing to include except a name, and no indication that she'd been on the ship for years. So they included the name (along with Uhura, M'Benga, etc) to get TOS fans to watch. Sure, why not?

Well, I don't necessarily think they included her to get TOS fans to watch. Really, they had Spock for that already. I think if you look at the non-"Cage" legacy characters they added to SNW (Uhura, Chapel, M'Benga), the thing you'll notice they all have in common is that they are members of marginalized groups that weren't given three-dimensional personalities in TOS. I think this is an example of the writers deciding that they wanted to explore these characters in greater depth than their appearances in TOS allowed more than just attracting TOS fans per se.

• But he name is all they include. And, realistically, who would want to want a character who was a null cypher? So they give her a character. Clever, feisty, and seemingly on the brilliant side.
• So here's my beef, and I've said this somewhere else, maybe in his thread. If they want to tell me it's the same universe, that this is "my" Christine Chapel, then she has to somehow go from being that clever, feisty person to being that dull, drab cypher, that null. It doesn't have to happen in SNW, but they at least need to provide some sort of path where she could realistically go from her SNW persona to her TOS persona, and ina pretty short time.

I really don't think they need to do that. Creatively reinterpreting characters from older works to give them greater depth is a very common thing, and there's no reason they have to exactly match the bad decisions made in the past. Elphaba in Wicked doesn't need to resemble the version of the Wicked Witch of the West depicted in The Wizard of Oz, for instance.

 

[Belz...]

That's a weirdly hostile reaction.

The only hostility is your interpretation. You asked me to justify what I said based on your own opinion of the character, which makes no sense.

Yes. A good significant difference. It's a prime example of taking an inferior element of an otherwise decent older work, and retroactively improving it by giving that inferior element greater quality in a related work. Giving Chapel an actual personality just makes TOS a better show retroactively.

No it doesn't, because when you watch your TOS episodes again her old "inferior" personality is unchanged. Again, you're not making any sense.

And this is just a distraction anyway. That the character in a previous incarnation was bad or good is irrelevant. The point, as I've now said three times, is that the character is radically different, which I find jarring.

 

[Serveaux]

The only hostility is your interpretation. You asked me to justify what I said based on your own opinion of the character, which makes no sense.

It makes perfect sense.

 

[Belz...]

It makes perfect sense.

- "I prefer ketchup to mustard"
- "Given that ketchup tastes like feces, how can you even tell?"

See what I mean? The question assumes that everyone agrees that Chapel has no personality in TOS. Why would anyone ask someone else to operate from their personal opinions?

And again, it's irrelevant. I'm talking about the difference in personality, not the quality of it.

 

[Pauln6]

Starfleet can have a non-defense purpose and still legally be a military organization.

Either way, it's not like you can actually search for your lost fiance if your job is to be a nurse in sickbay on a single starship. You don't get any input into where the ship is going or what its mission is if you're a nurse. So the idea she became a Starfleet nurse to search for Korby just makes no sense.



How can you even tell, given what a blank, personality-less cardboard cut-out she was in TOS?



... I have no idea how you watched the same trailers I did and could possibly not see it as a modern spin on the TOS premise of episodic stories about a starship exploring alien planets never before contacted.



Don't be mean.



Nurse Chapel and Dr. M'Benga are not "well-known" characters to anyone who isn't a die-hard Trekkie.



Modern interpretations of old characters is a perfectly valid way to keep old characters alive. Just ask anyone who's ever seen the five million interpretations of Shakespeare.



Chuck Dixon's latest work includes the QAnon-glorifying propaganda series Alt-Hero: Q and a superhero whose costume glorifies the white supremacist slaver regime known as the Confederate States of America, both created for the vile white supremacist, misogynist, and antisemite Vox Day.

Absolutely nothing Dixon says about anything is of any value whatsoever, unless you're analyzing how a once-respectable conservative allowed himself to be seduced into supporting fascism.

I think the intimation was that she found out that the ship was scheduled to check on EXO3. It may be that Starfleet notifies next of kin in a scenario like that.

Then she said, well I want to come and they said no passengers so she said, I'm a trained research biologist, can't I sign on, and they said, not without proper training, and she said, what's the least amount of training, and they said, basic astronaut training and a medical course can get you in as a nurse, and she said, hold my coat.

It actually feels less realistic to put her on ship as a nurse at this point unless she is going to leave to branch out and study under Korby at some point in the future.

Chapel always has a bit of sass professionally. The character was just rarely asked for any input. She wasn't afraid to stand up to McCoy, which he even acknowledged in TMP.

She was attracted to emotionally distant men though, so her love life feels a mess.

Plenty there to work with IMHO.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

It actually feels less realistic to put her on ship as a nurse at this point unless she is going to leave to branch out and study under Korby at some point in the future.

Nah, I think what @UssGlenn said upthread nailed it in terms of what's plausible.

Chapel, however, has decided she wants to be a nurse in Starfleet (boldly go!), at least for a while, before going off and being a bio researcher with Korby.

 

[ChallengerHK]

It's hard to accept a character being made more interesting as a valid complaint.

If you understand the concept of bait and switch then you understand why this is a problem.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

If you understand the concept of bait and switch then you understand why this is a problem.

I understand it fine, thanks.

Feeling that it applies here sounds fairly pathetic.

To be clear, given that you feel wronged enough by the teaser to discuss hobbling the producers as you did upthread, whether you were "just kidding" or not, I pity you.

 

[Belz...]

It's hard to accept a character being made more interesting as a valid complaint.

Assuming that's directed at me, mind you I'm not complaining about that; just noting that continuity-wise it doesn't quite work.

 

[Belz...]

Watching this with an eye to how it perfectly segues into TOS is a recipe for a migraine. I'm happy to view it as an interpretation of this (fictional) historical period. TOS was one interpretation, this is another. Easy.

Right. If one just ignores continuity it's a lot easier to sit back and enjoy. That's how I got to enjoy Enterprise. But the slight obsession that I naturally have with continuity is always at the back of my head, nagging me. That's why I generally dislike prequels.

In TOS, Chapel is...not much. If she has a character at all, she's a wallflower, and she pines for Spock, and that's pretty much her. When she's introduced we're meant to think she's more, but even in "Little Girls" she's really a stereotypical 60s female character, searching space for her lost man. She a null cypher.

• She should never have been included in SNW. There's nothing to include except a name, and no indication that she'd been on the ship for years. So they included the name (along with Uhura, M'Benga, etc) to get TOS fans to watch. Sure, why not?
• But he name is all they include. And, realistically, who would want to want a character who was a null cypher? So they give her a character. Clever, feisty, and seemingly on the brilliant side.

Which, in a way, is a stereotypical 2020s female character.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Assuming that's directed at me, mind you I'm not complaining about that; just noting that continuity-wise it doesn't quite work.

It wasn't. A poster opined that in order for this to be the Prime Universe, a demonstration of the evolution of feisty-Chapel into drab-cypher-Chapel would be necessary. I was indicating that I do not agree. To elaborate as to why, boring characters are generally boring, so that sort of character arc would be the opposite of interesting.

Yes. A good significant difference. It's a prime example of taking an inferior element of an otherwise decent older work, and retroactively improving it by giving that inferior element greater quality in a related work. Giving Chapel an actual personality just makes TOS a better show retroactively.

Yep.

 

[UssGlenn]

Then she said, well I want to come and they said no passengers so she said, I'm a trained research biologist, can't I sign on, and they said, not without proper training, and she said, what's the least amount of training, and they said, basic astronaut training and a medical course can get you in as a nurse, and she said, hold my coat.

Then why didn't she she do that one of the the first two times?

Even if the writer picked 5 years to give her time to go though the full academy (which wasn't a thing yet), She'd have no way of knowing there was even going to be a third search after she missed the first two.

Slightly off topic but, is there any hint of an explanation why the first two teams didn't find anything? Korby clearly didn't want to be found yet, but I'm not sure why. Nothing about the use/capabilities of the alien equipment changed did it?

 

[Nerys Myk]

Christine Chapel, Star Trek’s most controversial character. Here’s why…

Coming soon to a click bait site near you.