Curious how well the Discovery novels tie in with what's been canonically depicted onscreen!

[The Wormhole]

This isn't directed at anyone in this thread, it's just a general statement.
I think a lot of the people who have a problem with Discovery not looking like TOS forget that it isn't just set before TOS, it's also set 300 years from today. The people working on the show had the choice to emphasize one or the other, and they chose to emphasize 300 years from today, which for me was the right choice. I love the production design for Disco, and like I've said before, even the Klingons grew on me, once the initial shock of how different they look wore off.
The Discoprise if my favorite version of the pre-refit Enterprise, and I look forward to seeing a lot more of her in Strange New Worlds.

No one was expecting the 1960s look from TOS to be replicated exactly, but I doubt anyone was expecting as radical a redesign as we got in Disco either. I suspect a majority of us were probably expecting something similar to what we got with the Enterprise. Although that has itself become problematic since it completely disregards the Starfleet design lineage and aesthetic laid down in Disco in order to trip over itself at being a faithful update to TOS.

 

[Christopher]

No one was expecting the 1960s look from TOS to be replicated exactly, but I doubt anyone was expecting as radical a redesign as we got in Disco either.

They probably weren't in 1979 either.

I think people forget that the reason there was so much design consistency in Trek from TMP through VGR was more about budget and efficiency than continuity. Sets, miniatures, props, and FX footage were recycled because it was economical to do so. If money had been no object, we probably would've seen considerably more radical redesigns. Heck, even the makers of The Wrath of Khan would probably have redesigned and rebuilt the Enterprise from scratch if it hadn't been a low-budget production required to recycle stuff from TMP. And if TNG had had an unlimited budget, we probably would've seen more of Andrew Probert's curvilinear, organic starship designs rather than a bunch of Excelsior and Miranda and Oberth-class ships.

I'm not a fan of DSC's production design myself, but as a general rule, I think "not what the audience expected" is a feature, not a bug. Not every gamble succeeds, but it's good to take chances and push boundaries.

I suspect a majority of us were probably expecting something similar to what we got with the Enterprise. Although that has itself become problematic since it completely disregards the Starfleet design lineage and aesthetic laid down in Disco in order to trip over itself at being a faithful update to TOS.

I don't find it necessary to assume that every single Starfleet vessel in service at the same time had an identical technology design. After all, of the two main ships featured in seasons 1-2 of DSC, the Shenzhou was meant to be 20-some years old, while Discovery was a newly refitted experimental test bed. So there's no reason to expect either one to be typical of the mid-2250s Starfleet look.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

How do we even know that the DSC hull is the famous one that traveled to Talos IV? After all, the first time it intercepts Discovery we see specs based on Franz Joseph’s vision (though with somewhat updated drawings), suggesting there are at least two hulls to bear the name and registry number, and someone just happened to select a perfectly valid alternate screen.

There is still room for an end-of-Caprica retcon here (for those who know what I mean), especially now that PIC is closing ranks around that era by referencing DSC but also TNG which in turn references TOS. The DSC hull could’ve always been there: it just ended up on the sidelines of history.

 

[Tuskin38]

(though with somewhat updated drawings)

Those were concept art renders of the design we got, not very fare off from the final version. Those exact renders are in the booklet that come with the Eaglemoss model.

The size measurements on that screen also do not work with that version of the design (or the final), because the DSC design is proportionally different compared to the TOS design.

Even if you were to scale the length down to TOS numbers, the other measurements wouldn't line up.

Although that has itself become problematic since it completely disregards the Starfleet design lineage and aesthetic laid down in Disco in order to trip over itself at being a faithful update to TOS.

I don't agree with this. Look at the Mid-24th century+, Starfleet design aesthetic was hardly consistent, no reason to expect the TOS era to be the same. We only saw, what? 2 different starfleet starship designs in TOS/TAS? 3 if you want to count the Bonaventure.

Look at the Connie Refit/Miranda to the Excelsior, and then to the Ambssador, they went from having no big glowy bussards to having them again. The Galaxy-Class shrunk them down, but they were rounded and bulb like.

The post-Galaxy Class, bussards became integrated right into the nacelles (though still being glowy) with a lot of ships (Sovereign, Prometheus, Intrepid), though some kept the bulb style, like the Steamrunner, Norway and Defiant.

Plus we don't know when the other DSC ships we saw launched. Remember the Enterprise is 10 years old when DSC Starts, and we don't know how old the class itself is.

The DSC Ships could be from after that design aesthetic. A mid way between the Connie style and the TMP era style.

Maybe the evolution wasn't great enough like the TMP era for them to refit the connie with the new nacelles, or the ship was still 'new' enough that it didn't need to be refit.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

The recent art-of book specifically mentions that the DSC style was originally rationalized behind the scenes like aircraft from different projects in the same decades. It wasn’t just the fans wondering about the change. Of course, the total absence of TOS style doesn’t quite fit into that, but what if it was always there around the corner, like it was presumably still around the corner during TMP (hence the original shuttle in the DE)? What if Pike had a rock-solid, older exploration hull and an experimental hull for his NCC-1701, moving his crew back and forth as needed? What if the experimental hull later influenced the refit, so all the changes didn’t just appear out of nowhere?

 

[Tuskin38]

Not everything in the show needs to be rationalized or explained in universe. Sometimes a retcon is just a retcon, nothing more, nothing less.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

Never on Star Trek, which has a grand tradition of welding and hammering disparate pieces together (as opposed to an equally valid multiverse tradition).

 

[fireproof78]

Not everything in the show needs to be rationalized or explained in universe. Sometimes a retcon is just a retcon, nothing more, nothing less.

Yes, but fans insist on an explanation..

 

[Boris Skrbic]

Not just fans; TPTB eventually provide explanations (as with Klingon foreheads), which come to be expected by fans and therefore other creatives, many of whom are also fans. Star Trek just isn’t a multiverse, so eventually things are made to sort of fit together.

 

[Tuskin38]

Not just fans; TPTB eventually provide explanations (as with Klingon foreheads),

Which was completely unnecessary and went against what Roddenberry intended.

 

[Christopher]

DS9 originally seemed to go with the "ridged all along" interpretation in "Blood Oath." But when they decided to use "Trouble With Tribbles" footage in the anniversary episode, that forced them to acknowledge the makeup change, though they pointedly avoided actually explaining it.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

Which was completely unnecessary and went against what Roddenberry intended.

Original intent has become irrelevant since the franchise has evolved so that even successive productions have a fairly good idea of how far they can take their innovations in relation to what came before. It doesn’t matter what you or I think or even what Roddenberry thought; these solutions just come together as if by gravity, because the single-universe precedent is so well established.

One production would like Kang, Kor and Koloth to make an appearance a century later: great, but what do they look like? Then comes an episode which generates much of its fun from a literal insertion of the new into the old: “Trials” wouldn’t have worked as well with TNG-based updates. Fine, but now we’ve confirmed there is an explanation. ENT isn’t doing well, so how about an entire season calling forward to TOS? There is that open Klingon question, do we give it a shot?

Circling back to the topic, that’s why tie-in writers and fans have always had a tendency of looking for explanations to smooth out uneven patches in the franchise. The puzzle has continued to be a part of the fun.

 

[Enterprise1701]

Not everything in the show needs to be rationalized or explained in universe. Sometimes a retcon is just a retcon, nothing more, nothing less.

Well, I am still awaiting a canon explanation of the TNG Trill versus DS9-onward Trill. Excelsior: Forged in Fire did a clever take.

 

[Tuskin38]

Picard used both smooth and ridges Romulans. Though we already knew they must have both existed, since Spock was able to walk around on Romulus fine without having a ridge.

though they pointedly avoided actually explaining it.

Though it's funny, the explanation given in ENT, was a combination of the two theories O'Brien and Bashir threw out in that episode. Generic manipulation and a viral mutation. I wonder if that was just a coincidence.

 

[The Wormhole]

Plus we don't know when the other DSC ships we saw launched. Remember the Enterprise is 10 years old when DSC Starts, and we don't know how old the class itself is.

Disco itself is described as "fresh off the assembly line" and its look is clearly the same aesthetic as the Shenzhou, which was older than the Enterprise.

 

[Tuskin38]

Disco itself is described as "fresh off the assembly line" and its look is clearly the same aesthetic as the Shenzhou, which was older than the Enterprise.

It matches the other Discovery ships a lot more than the Shenzhou.

 

[The Wormhole]

Eh? It has its own unique computer displays and internal coloring scheme, different from Disco, Shenzhou and all other Starfleet ships seen during the first two seasons. The Enterprise crew even wear their own uniforms, which no one else in the first two seasons wore, not even the officers at Starfleet Command in the finale.

 

[Christopher]

Of course any in-universe explanation for a real-world design change is not going to be perfect, and it doesn't need to be. Illusions don't have to be perfect enough to actually convince us, they just have to be close enough that we're willing to suspend disbelief and play along.

Like I said, the gap of a few years between TAS and TMP isn't remotely enough to justify the wholesale, radical redesign of literally everything in between; it's a feeble excuse that we choose to accept for the sake of letting ourselves buy into the illusion. The same goes here. I'm not suggesting that there can ever be a perfectly cohesive design lineage between the different 23rd-century ships; I'm just saying the time difference can be used as a handwave for the design differences. Really, any illusion will fall apart if you examine it too closely, but enjoying fiction means choosing to accept the illusion.

 

[Tuskin38]

Eh? It has its own unique computer displays and internal coloring scheme, different from Disco, Shenzhou and all other Starfleet ships seen during the first two seasons. The Enterprise crew even wear their own uniforms, which no one else in the first two seasons wore, not even the officers at Starfleet Command in the finale.

I think we misunderstood each other. I was talking about the Discovery not the Enterprise.

 

[fireproof78]

Not just fans; TPTB eventually provide explanations (as with Klingon foreheads), which come to be expected by fans and therefore other creatives, many of whom are also fans. Star Trek just isn’t a multiverse, so eventually things are made to sort of fit together.

Still fan driven.