Spoilers Discovery and the Novelverse - TV show discussion thread

[F. King Daniel]

It makes no difference whether you think it's the same continuity, because you don't dictate what happens in future episodes or productions. The producers and the studio decide that. And they intend it to be in the Prime continuity, and all future series and movies and novels and comics from now on will treat it as part of the Prime continuity. Good grief, David Mack just wrote a whole book that reconciles DSC with the Prime continuity as we know it, and apparently even acknowledges the novel continuity along the way. At least give Dave a chance to convince you before you jump to conclusions. Or have you suddenly stopped trusting us novelists to be able to reconcile inconsistencies in Trek canon?

Good for them, and whatever plans they have for Trek's future. Doesn't mean I have to agree with it.

I hope David Mack's got something better in mind to explain the DSC/TOS discontinuities (if he does, my impression was that it'd be glossed over) than ENT: Kobayashi Maru's attempt to explain why ENT looked different to TOS.

I guess that's why I see it differently from many fans. When I see an inconsistency in Trek, my reaction isn't "OMG this is unprecedented it breaks the universe it's impossible to resolve!" -- it's "Oh, there's one more thing I have to reconcile... Let's see, I guess I could explain it this way or that way or..." What's a dealbreaker for you is just another creative challenge for me. Dealing with this stuff is literally my job.

Whereas I've gone from looking at Star Trek in a Watsonian way to a Doylist perspective. It works for me.

 

[Leto_II]

Spoiler

Also, despite supposedly there being no contact with the Klingons for a century, Michael's parents were killed in a Klingon attack when she was a child. Fairly certain that would have less than a century earlier.

Spoiler: Battle at the Binary Stars

Plus, the Battle (or Skirmish?) of Donatu V in 2244 was also referenced in the second episode, so we know that canonically there have been multiple military encounters with the Klingons since the 2150s, just very little actual face-to-face contact.

 

[Shon T'Hara]

I'm sure fans have been saying that ever since TMP. We've always had to squint a little to fit different versions together.

Ever since The Menagerie, probably.

 

[Christopher]

Ever since The Menagerie, probably.

Well, at least since TAS. "Hold on, the crew of the Enterprise weren't cartoon characters before!"

 

[JD]

For me the big thing is the Klingons, I don't mind that they changed the designs, but the whole presentation and feel of them is just so different from what we've gotten before. I'm very curious to see how the books are going to handle them, or if they're just going to ignore them for now and see where DSC takes them. I've loved what the books have done with the Klingons, and I'd hate to see them have to throw all of that out. Luckily we've got over a century between DSC and the 24th century stuff, but the TOS era stuff is another matter.

 

[Christopher]

For me the big thing is the Klingons, I don't mind that they changed the designs, but the whole presentation and feel of them is just so different from what we've gotten before.

I don't see that. They spoke Mark Okrand's Klingonese, which is more than you can say about the Klingons in a lot of Berman-era episodes. Their culture and behavior were recognizably Klingon and their politics was based on the Great Houses. They used the "Heart of Glory" death ritual. For me, the familiar elements outweighed the unfamiliar ones. But maybe that's because, as a writer, I focus more on the words and ideas than the visuals and stylistic aspects.

 

[F. King Daniel]

For me the big thing is the Klingons, I don't mind that they changed the designs, but the whole presentation and feel of them is just so different from what we've gotten before. I'm very curious to see how the books are going to handle them, or if they're just going to ignore them for now and see where DSC takes them. I've loved what the books have done with the Klingons, and I'd hate to see them have to throw all of that out. Luckily we've got over a century between DSC and the 24th century stuff, but the TOS era stuff is another matter.

I was never a fan of the 24th century (and ENT) Klingons. I saw honor-obsessed, drunken, singalong cartoon fools. DSC made them into dangerous fanatics, emphasising warrior rituals and jettisoning the comic relief.

 

[Shon T'Hara]

I didn't see anything with the Klingons that couldn't be written off as "T'kuvma is a weirdo cult leader." Okay, so he doesn't treat the bodies of fallen warriors as empty shells. Doesn't mean the rest of Klingon society is the same way. But I'm sure KRAD will sort everything out when he gets around to writing a Discovery novel.

One thing I haven't seen anyone mention is how Starfleet seems to be a bunch of peaceniks at this point. Even Picard would've taken a more aggressive posture while trying to negotiate than Georgiou did. And don't get me started on that Admiral. I'm wondering if the series will show an evolution of Starfleet towards the gunboat diplomacy style of Kirk's time.

 

[Christopher]

One thing I haven't seen anyone mention is how Starfleet seems to be a bunch of peaceniks at this point. Even Picard would've taken a more aggressive posture while trying to negotiate than Georgiou did. And don't get me started on that Admiral. I'm wondering if the series will show an evolution of Starfleet towards the gunboat diplomacy style of Kirk's time.

I don't see TOS as "gunboat diplomacy." Kirk always tried "We come in peace" first. He only got tough with those who attacked first, like the Romulans or the Gorn.

 

[Tuskin38]

but the whole presentation and feel of them is just so different from what we've gotten before.

They felt like Klingons to me. I didn't feel anything out of place in the way they acted.

 

[Idran]

Whereas I've gone from looking at Star Trek in a Watsonian way to a Doylist perspective. It works for me.

But the Doylist perspective would be that there's no need for reconciling, that continuity discrepancies can just be ignored as a result of the changing needs and directions (and at times errors) of production because there is no truth to the fiction

A Doylist view cares even less about continuity than a Watsonian one because it acknowledges that continuity differences have nothing to do with an underlying reality being askew, that they can be chalked up to the choice or fault of the author rather than needing to do this "severe discrepancies mean different continuities" thing

Like for example, in the original Holmes stories that the terms refer to, a Doylist would say "Watson's name was James in some stories and John in others because Doyle forgot his name, so just ignore it and stick the stories all together despite that", not "Doyle screwed up, so let's say there's James Watson stories and John Watson stories"; it ignores a need for reconciling while putting them in the same continuity anyway by just eliding the differences regardless of scope

 

[Shon T'Hara]

I don't see TOS as "gunboat diplomacy." Kirk always tried "We come in peace" first. He only got tough with those who attacked first, like the Romulans or the Gorn.

Talking was Kirk's first option, but he was always ready to draw his gun if the situation called for it. I got the impression that Georgiou and the admiral were ready to pull out of the sector if it would've avoided a fight with the Klingons.

 

[Christopher]

A Doylist view cares even less about continuity than a Watsonian one because it acknowledges that continuity differences have nothing to do with an underlying reality being askew, that they can be chalked up to the choice or fault of the author rather than needing to do this "severe discrepancies mean different continuities" thing

Right. That's basically Roddenberry's take, that TOS was an imperfect dramatization of the crew's adventures and that later Trek productions were able to come closer to getting it right. It wasn't the Trek universe that was changing, just the way in which it was dramatically recreated for 20th-century television viewers.

After all, we're talking about a guy who got his start in TV developing content for Dragnet, a show that consisted entirely of dramatic re-enactments of real police cases, in which "the names have been changed to protect the innocent." It may not be a coincidence that both Dragnet and TOS were framed by narration in the form of the lead character's official report for the record.

 

[JD]

I don't see that. They spoke Mark Okrand's Klingonese, which is more than you can say about the Klingons in a lot of Berman-era episodes. Their culture and behavior were recognizably Klingon and their politics was based on the Great Houses. They used the "Heart of Glory" death ritual. For me, the familiar elements outweighed the unfamiliar ones. But maybe that's because, as a writer, I focus more on the words and ideas than the visuals and stylistic aspects.

They felt like Klingons to me. I didn't feel anything out of place in the way they acted.

After these posts I decided to take another look at the scene with T'Kuvma, Voq, and the High Council but imaging them as TNG-Ent Klingons on a bird of prey bridge, and it did fit right in. As much as I thought I could get past it, I think I was just so thrown by the different style, that that was all I could see.

 

[Jinn]

This is not a knock on the quality of the show - which I love so far - just CBS' bizarre repeated claims that this is the same world where Spock will summon a paper printout report on Talos IV, or that Chief O'Brien will crow about a new holographic communicator on the USS Defiant when apparently they were doing it commonplace long before.

I think Peter David's Pike novel explained that Pike just liked reading stuff on paper and as we've seen in the first two episodes the holo-technology was far from perfect. Maybe they decided that it'd be just better to switch to screen communication at one point or it was too much of a drain on the energy systems to justify when you can have literally the same effect with putting some admiral's face on a screen.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Kirk doesn't like being able to walk through the guy he's talking to - it creeps him out. Or it gave McCoy the willies and he removed it for the doctor's sake.

 

[Christopher]

Or the Klingons found a way to exploit an aspect of holographic subspace transmissions that let them decrypt them, so Starfleet went back to using 2D signals.

 

[DS9forever]

Ron Moore outright said that, while he had a copy of the Klingon Dictionary, he seldom used it as it was confusing.

 

[F. King Daniel]

But the Doylist perspective would be that there's no need for reconciling, that continuity discrepancies can just be ignored as a result of the changing needs and directions (and at times errors) of production because there is no truth to the fiction

A Doylist view cares even less about continuity than a Watsonian one because it acknowledges that continuity differences have nothing to do with an underlying reality being askew, that they can be chalked up to the choice or fault of the author rather than needing to do this "severe discrepancies mean different continuities" thing

Like for example, in the original Holmes stories that the terms refer to, a Doylist would say "Watson's name was James in some stories and John in others because Doyle forgot his name, so just ignore it and stick the stories all together despite that", not "Doyle screwed up, so let's say there's James Watson stories and John Watson stories"; it ignores a need for reconciling while putting them in the same continuity anyway by just eliding the differences regardless of scope

Thanks for the clarification.

...so what am I???

 

[Burning Hearts of Qo'nos]

I think Peter David's Pike novel explained that Pike just liked reading stuff on paper and as we've seen in the first two episodes the holo-technology was far from perfect. Maybe they decided that it'd be just better to switch to screen communication at one point or it was too much of a drain on the energy systems to justify when you can have literally the same effect with putting some admiral's face on a screen.

Starfleet R&D: 'Look, everyone, I know the holograms look cool but the buffering time is insane. That's enough ping to fly a dreadnaught into.'