There's an old observation that nothing actually stops the Jeeves and Wooster stories being back plot for Trek... or Who, or 1999, or Midsomer... or anything where 1930s London happened.
Spoilers Discovery and the Novelverse - TV show discussion thread
- Thread starter F. King Daniel
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There's an old observation that nothing actually stops the Jeeves and Wooster stories being back plot for Trek... or Who, or 1999, or Midsomer... or anything where 1930s London happened.
Probably a savvy branding decision by Emory Erickson to downplay that.
Well for me continuity can be an issue. I dwell on it a lot, and I'll admit I'm not always consistent about it. Some things get on my nerves, others don't. Like the computer lie detector test in "Wolf In the Fold" disappearing by TNG. That doesn't bother me. Nu-Klingons drive me up a wall. Some of the changes in Data's personality that you brought up, nope, not a big deal for me. Intra-ship beaming drives me crazy. I know, it's probably frustrating for people to debate me on consistency. Some of what I consider macro inconsistencies others would think not a problem, and others I poo-poo others may think are a pretty big deal.
Yeah, I agree with you there. I mean, there was apparently some revision in WWIII's time frame and what it involved, but nothing that I thought that was too reconcilable. In "Space Seed" it seemed to be noted that the Eugenics Wars and WWIII were one in the same. In "Breads and Circuses" only WWIII was mentioned, but some may have thought it was still the Eugenics Wars at the time. It seemed later they were split up.
And yeah, 37 million dead would seem to indicate an extremely deadly war. Commander Riker, in a nod to "Bread and Circuses" made mention of the same 37 million in First Contact. And I agree, using nuclear weapons made sense, it would cause that death toll, but as there are different types of nuclear weapons, they obviously didn't use the big mama bombs that would wipe out all life on Earth (a la the omega bomb from Beneath the Planet of the Apes say).
And in a way it actually makes sense to me. Sometimes something has to get really bad, sometimes you have to hit rock bottom before you start to recover. That's how I felt about humanity. We got worse and worse as the 21st century wore on, and finally it took a World War for us to finally turn a corner and start climbing out of the pit. To become the paradise Earth would be by the 23rd century (maybe even 22nd century) we needed to hit rock bottom first.
Yeah, that was a bit of a difference. I figured something happened to Klingon civilization between the 23rd and 24th century that altered their world outlook. I have noticed some novels have run with that a bit, that the Klingons rediscovered Kahless. That Klingons were in ancient times an honorable people but became corrupted (Enterprise picked up on this a bit as well, particularly in the episode where Archer is imprisoned and his advocate is bemoaning the loss of honor of Klingons by the 22nd century). TUC started showing a bit of a conversion in some Klingons, like Gorkon for instance, and later his daughter. In retrospect they were obviously trying to explain why Klingons in the 24th century weren't so treacherous. I mean, they still loved a good fight, but they weren't mindless killers. And I liked the more honorable Klingons ultimately. Had they continued to be mindless killers I think they would have become a bit one dimensionable. The whole honor angle gave them more dimension, made them more complicated.
As for Romulans, I still think they had their own code of honor in a way, though not as martial oriented as Klingons, and they were certainly sneaky. But they really weren't seen a whole lot in the original series so in canon it wasn't precisely clear what kind of code they followed. Even a devious species would have to have some code they lived by, otherwise they would wipe themselves out.
That's it for me in a nutshell. Now I'll grant everyone that for 18 years Star Trek was overseen by Rick Berman, and production design managed by many of the same people, and I was a bit spoiled by that. It just seemed they were very conscientious about production design elements and trying to maintain some consistency. And yes, on Enterprise I found a great balance. It looked futuristic, but still, somehow they made it feel less advanced than the 1701. Some of it was their top speed was warp 5, the transporter was still very experimental, space medicine wasn't quite as advanced as the original series. Even things like the corridors, they were narrower and more utilitarian, they still needed a chef to prepare most foods.
With Discovery production design is one very inconsistent area, and it bugs me. People either accept it, or they don't.
And to be clear, I have some of these issues with other shows/movies as well, not just Star Trek. The 2nd season of Buck Rogers for instance totally upended the show. I didn't mind the new premise, but there was no transition (even Gil Gerard said he wished there was a transition episode or two, that it was too abrupt even for him). I particularly noticed it when the Searcher returned to Earth for Buck to stand trial for treason. I was waiting for at least a mention that Dr. Huer and Theopolis provided their support for Buck (assuming they wouldn't be in the show). But it was like Season 1 never happened. So it's not just in Star Trek. The Exorcist movies was another. Like Nemesis, I'm one of the 10 people that liked Exorcist II (ok, maybe I'm only one of five people in that case
) and it bugged me that The Exorcist III pretended it never happened (though I did read somewhere as much as Blatty hated it, when they filmed the scenes at the steps they avoided showing the house that was destroyed in II--just a happenstance or intentional I don't know--and thinking back I guess I have to admit it's not necessarily contradictory, there's nothing that says II and III didn't happen, and they both focus on different characters, II on Father Merrin, III on Father Carras). The prequel Exorcist movie(s), well forget trying to make sense of that. In any event, I like a certain amount of consistency, and the more things that are inconsistent, the more cumulative it gets and the more it bugs me.
Anyway, time for bed, I'm starting to ramble and I'm too tired to edit
I think this one is easy enough to reconcile: Since joining the interstellar community, Saurians have had increasing levels of communicable diseases as a result of exposure to aliens like those icky, hairy Humans, but of course Federation medical science is advanced enough that those diseases do not cause substantial harm. There -- diseases are still a rare thing that freak them out in the 22nd Century and are common enough that it's not an issue for a space-going Saurian by the 2250s.
Well, a lot of the Mirror Universe novels of 2007-2014 are going to need to be creatively reinterpreted. The Sorrows of Empire explicitly depicts the Klingon Empire as standing, nearly in equal strength to the Terran Empire, with Qo'noS still existing; but "Will You Take My Hand?" establishes that the Terrans had nuked Qo'noS and decimated the Klingon species's population levels. Sorrows also strongly implied, if not outright established, that the Sato dynasty as of 2277 had reigned continuously from Hoshi's coup in 2155, and that Sturka had been Regent of the Klingon Empire since around 2268.
On the other hand -- hey, the Terrans nuked Qo'noS some time before before 2257, but "Hand" established their species survived, so it's not impossible that the Klingons had enough time to rebuild their numbers and forces throughout the rest of their Empire before moving against the Terran Republic in the 2280s -- in fact, the decimation of their numbers from Georgiou's nuking of Qo'noS might explain why they needed to ally with the Cardassians to conquer the pacifistic Republic in the first place. DIS's Mirror Universe arc only gives us a snapshot of Terran politics in 2256 -- it's entirely possible that Georgiou's reign represents a coup d'etat against Empress Sato II (whom Sorrows had established had had a long and bloody reign), and that Sato II then re-took control of the Empire after the ISS Charon's destruction. (Maybe Georgiou took power as a direct consequence of nuking Qo'noS?) We probably have to squint a bit at the finer details (if the canon had established the Terran nuking of Qo'noS when he wrote the book, I'm sure David Mack would have made rage at the Terrans for Qo'noS's fate a significant part of why Gorkon overthrew Regent Sturka, for instance), but we can probably broadly reconcile the two.
Oh, and the Talosian thing? Well, hey, who's to say that Georgiou is even telling the truth when she claims to have genocided them? Her whole shtick is manipulation, after all.
That works too!
I mean, 200 is "several," right?
Yeah, this is just a clear continuity error with ENT's "The Forge." That episode was very clear that Vulcan's Forge is a giant desert.
I'm more inclined to assume that either Michael was mis-speaking, or that there are two different areas with the same name. (Or maybe, different names in different Vulcan languages that both translate into English as "Vulcan's Forge?") I mean, if there can be Great Lakes in North America and Great Lakes in Africa...
Re: Section 31 and novelverse continuity.
So far, the biggest issue is that Section 31 seems to be an openly-known division of Starfleet that answers to the admiralty, rather than a rogue faction that illegally operates without accountability... But I think things are still vague enough we can finesse it a bit. We've seen Section 31's agents answer to four particular admirals -- but what if those admirals were themselves just Section 31 Directors who serve in the admiralty as their day jobs, infiltrating Starfleet a la Hydra infiltrating SHIELD? Perhaps in the course of the war, they took certain actions that led to certain particular senior officers hearing about their existence and being under the mistaken impression that they're a legit part of Starfleet, and Control is using this misunderstanding of what Section 31 is to issue fraudulent orders to Starfleet vessels like Discovery?
We can actually still sort-of reconcile DIS's depiction of people knowing what Section 31 is with the Section 31 novel Cloak. IIRC, Kirk only learns about the existence of Section 31 towards the end of that novel, after he has Uhura decode a secret message and deduces that a conspiracy exists within Starfleet that was responsible for ordering him to steal the Romulan cloaking device in "The Enterprise Incident" and for the Lantaru Sector disaster. He does not, to the best of my memory, share this knowledge with Spock or any other Enterprise officer, but instead convenes his own conspiracy of fellow starship and starbase commanding officers to alert them to Section 31's existence and to the eventual need to move against them. Given that Kirk (again, I'm going off of 18-year-old memory here, so please correct me if I'm wrong) doesn't alert Spock to Section 31's existence in 2269, then Spock knowing about Section 31 as of 2256 actually does nothing in particular to contradict Cloak.
Re: Aesthetics and continuity.
It took me a while to get into the new aesthetics of DIS, but once I did, I came to really enjoy the show. I still wish they hadn't so totally redesigned the Klingons, but I understand why they did and would prefer them to have the creative freedom to make decisions like that rather than always be stuck with old design aesthetics. I miss the "Starfleet Clean" look though.
Really my biggest thing with DIS and continuity is this: So far, the three major story arcs DIS has had -- the Klingon/Federation War; the Mirror Universe; and the Red Angel... the show didn't really need to have been set in the TOS era to tell those stories.
Seriously. They could easily have set the Klingon/Federation War in, say, the 2450s. The key points of the story -- Klingons freaking out over the possibility of losing their cultural identity, the Federation developing a new, nigh-instantaneous FTL tech and using it to win the war, Michael's being raised by Vulcans and then her mutiny and redemption... These are all story elements that could have been set in the 25th Century with no meaningful difference between that and the show we got.
The Mirror Universe arc? Hell, they literally could have had the crew of the Discovery be temporally displaced from the 2450s into the 2250s Mirror Universe. The only substantive differences are that they wouldn't have needed that side quest about retrieving a "Rebel Alliance" data core to get exposition on what the Terran Empire was -- they'd just know it from looking up their own files -- and the writers would have needed to come up with a different explanation for how Lorca infiltrated the Prime Universe. But it could easily have been, "Lorca gave himself cosmetic surgery" or some such hand-wave. The substance of the story does not require the Discovery to be from the TOS era.
Same thing, so far, with the Red Angel arc and Michael's family. So far, nothing about Michael's story has demanded that her family be Sarek, Amanda, and Spock in particular; they could easily have had the same basic story with a different set of characters. Maybe this version of her from the 2450s has her Human parents divorcing; her Human mother marries a widowed Vulcan with a son, and she's staying with her father on Doctari Alpha when a resurgent Klingon nationalist faction attacks, and that's when she goes to live with her mother on Vulcan. The same basic dynamic is preserved and the key elements are the same in that instance; again, nothing about this story requires her family to have been Spock's in particular.
Really, "If Memory Serves" is notable because it is the first DIS episode that actually couldn't have worked if it had been set in a post-TNG era. It had to be set in the TOS era, because only Christopher Pike had that vital emotional connection to the Talosians and what they represent, and only Spock would have had the insight to recognize that Vina and the Talosians would be open to helping him because of his prior encounter.
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Oops. My bad. It was 600 million in Breads and Circuses too. Not sure why I said 37.
Because you were right. In "Bread and Circuses," Spock cites 6 million deaths in WWI, 11 million in WWII, and 37 million in WWIII. First Contact later upped that last number to 600 million.
It's worth noting Spock was "wrong" about the first two, as well, though it's likely a citation of what was known in 1968. Current estimates are between 15-20 million deaths (military and civilian) for WWI and anywhere between 75-85 million for WWII.
Couldn't you just make them alternate universes. Maybe their Earths are Earth-A and Earth-FC.
Pffft! Only 600? Should be billions.
The whole Horror is ripe for a proper retcon that actually makes it hurt, that puts the planet's biosphere at risk of collapse and that makes our survival and eventual unity mean something beyond a backstory.
Yes, of course. But you can't cope with life if the only reactions you ever think about are your own. Considering other people's reactions to things, how people before you and around you have coped with problems analogous to your own or even greater, can give you perspective and insight into dealing with your own problems. That's what I'm trying to convey to you -- that your experience is not unique or unprecedented, that Trek fans have coped with larger adjustments in the past and gotten over it.
It wasn't until "Farpoint" that WWII was retconned to the mid-21st century. I'm sure that Roddenberry intended to remove the 1990s Eugenics Wars from continuity altogether, since they were only a few years in the future at that point and audiences would see that they didn't happen, but DS9 and ENT later re-established them as part of Trek history even though it was after they were supposed to have happened.
I've come to realize that that basically already happened with WWII. It was the most horrifically destructive war the world had ever seen, and it led to a renewed commitment to building a unified world with alternatives to war (the UN, the Marshall Plan, etc.) -- and though obviously we did have lots of smaller-scale wars and terrorism and the threat of nuclear armageddon, we haven't had a full-scale world war since, and we've built large global alliances that have endured for generations (at least until recently). Things are looking relatively bleak at the moment, and a lot of people seem to have forgotten the hard lessons of WWII and the Depression before it, but it's possible that history will record WWII as the moment that finally started us on the path to recovery, without needing a WWIII.
Of course, the reason WWII vets like Roddenberry believed a bigger WWIII would be necessary to really shock us straight was because they'd seen the impact WWII had on society and its view of war.
Season 2 showrunner John Mantley wanted to do a transitional episode, but the network nixed it. The retool happened because of season 1's sagging ratings, so I guess they didn't want any reminder of that season.
Well, that episode altered the date of the nuclear holocaust anyway. The Gary Coleman episode in season 1 implied that it had happened around 2008-9 (since Coleman's child-genius character was born 493 years before an episode set in 2491 and was 10 at the time of the Holocaust), but "Testimony of a Traitor" changed it to just 6 months after Buck was lost in space in 1987.
Season 2 changed a lot of the worldbuilding too. The season 1 characters lived in a peaceful but fairly sterile society that had forgotten most of 20th-century culture and idioms, ate only artificial food, lived in artificial environments, etc. and were constantly bewildered by Buck's speech and attitudes. But in season 2, their speech and attitudes were much more familiar to 20th-century audiences, the Searcher's mess hall had plants growing in it and served regular food, etc. And Buck's role became more vaguely defined. In season 1, Buck's old-fashioned, independent, robust way of living gave him an edge over the sterile, controlled, computerized society of the future; he had skills and knowledge they had forgotten, and he made a useful secret agent because he hadn't been tracked and catalogued from birth like everyone else. Plus he was able to keep bad guys off balance by saying and doing things they didn't understand. (I realized that it was basically The Six Million Dollar Man in reverse -- it was a show about a charming, wisecracking Air Force pilot doing clandestine work for a government intelligence and law enforcement agency, but in this case, he was the normal human being and it was the people around him who had superpowers or other unusual attributes. Being a regular 20th-century guy was his superpower.) But in season 2, with the differences between Buck and the 25th-century culture downplayed, it was never clear why this guy was so special, why he was such a central part of the Searcher's crew when he didn't even seem to be a formal member of its hierarchy or have a clearly defined position aboard it. He was just at the center of everything because his name was in the title.
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A few Litverse-related things I was thinking about, after having rewatched this latest episode:
1. Mirror Georgiou's mention of having "[wiped] the Talosians and their stupid singing plants off the face of their planet" (or words to that effect) in her own universe seems to be incompatible with the Litverse Mirror Universe stories, specifically "The Greater Good" from the Shards and Shadows anthology, which depicts the Mirror Pike still under the control of the Mirror Talosians as late as 2264, with the Terran Empire deciding to quarantine the Talos star system in that same year.
My possible retfix for this? What Mirror Georgiou thought she experienced was simply another Talosian illusion (which would be consistent with onscreen dialogue in "The Cage" regarding the sheer ability of the Talosians to make a starship crew obey their commands), and at some point between 2257 and 2264 (after Empress Georgiou's disappearance), the empire somehow realizes that the Talosians are still around (through as-yet-unrevealed means), ultimately leading to the events of the Shards and Shadows short story. She also would have had to have ventured to Talos IV at some point between 2254 and late 2257, after the I.S.S. Enterprise's initial visit in that story, which could've very easily have been a follow-up investigation into Mirror Pike's original encounter there, perhaps leading to the Talosians tricking her into believing she committed genocide against their entire race.
2. The shuttlecraft in the previous episode ("Light and Shadows") establishes a much-narrower timeframe for the Talos IV cataclysm than described in previous canon, with the computer in the episode mentioning that the event occurred "several thousand years ago," but this is massively contradictory to both Vina's own dialogue in "The Cage" ("War...thousands of centuries ago") as well as to Burning Dreams, which uses the TOS onscreen figure as the basis for its estimation of approximately 200,000 years prior to the episode. That said, the DSC episode is highly consistent with the novel with regards to its mention of a nuclear war having devastated the planetary surface, the first time a canonical source has confirmed this (though the general implication was always sorta there even way back in the 1964 episode).
3. Forests on the edge of Vulcan's Forge -- I think this is the first time that this has ever been seen (IIRC, not even ENT depicted this in its fourth season...indeed, Trip outright describes the Forge as separating Shi'Kahr from the Forge in those books. TAS: "Yesteryear" doesn't give any indicator of this, either.
EDIT: Just double-checked Memory Alpha, and it looks like the "Gateway" site on Vulcan (sitting at the very edge of the Forge, leading directly into it) from ENT has absolutely no visible vegetation to speak of, at least according to the screenshots I've looked at:
...So maybe the forests are simply further back in the opposite direction, "offscreen" towards the city itself?
That would be my thought as well. When you think of War of the Worlds for instance, the Martians hadn't had to fight any illnesses in generations. They came to Earth and were wiped out by, um, chicken pox was it? I figure the same for Saurians. It's pretty easy to reconcile.
Thanks for the tip. I could have sworn Riker's comment was lifted from "Bread and Circuses" that they picked the figure precisely because it was an 'Easter egg'. For all my complaints about continuity I can't even remember correct continuity
.Yeah, I know. I get what you're saying. And even before coming on Trek BBS I found Trek fans come in all types. It's interesting to see there are some that I would probably agree with, some that are more purist in nature (for all my arguing here, I don't consider myself a 'purist', a continuity generalist would probably be better--I'd prefer a general continuity from beginning to end, "Broken Bow" to "Nemesis at this point, and some production design continuity of course, but I don't sweat the small stuff). And then there are some that could care less, or maybe even like the radical transformations, people that wouldn't mind if they turned Klingons to blue blob people. I tend to all somewhere in the middle, maybe a bit right of center like my um, er, never mind
.And as I love to point out I love a good argument. Sometimes I'll jump in one that isn't hugely important to me. Like the whole Burnham being Spock's foster sister. I dove into an argument some time back on that one, but it's not one that's particularly a big deal for me. I was initially, mildly put off by it I'll admit. Like 'where the Hell did she come from?' But since Spock had a 'long lost' half brother he never even told Kirk about it, well, I guess the same is true of Burnham. That's not a continuity issue for me. Spore drive, well
bigger deal. And yes, sometimes I'll take a break. Usually when I realize I'm starting to get repetitious in my arguments and beating a dead horse, though I guess I'm well past that point already with Discovery. But I just can't resist sometimes
Yeah, in many ways it was almost like 2 different shows. There was minimal carry over. Star gates was one of the few things that carried over, other than Buck, Wilma and Twiki (and even there characters underwent some significant alterations, though Twiki was probably the closest to season 1, outside the voice for 6 episodes). But otherwise it's like Season 1 never happened.
In a way it's probably why I liked Dallas so much. Other than the 'dream year' debacle (ugh, I have to still point out worse move EVER) it was pretty consistent. Some actors changed for characters here and there (Jenna Wade for instance), and the dream year made an awkward, even bad transition to season 10 before things settled down again. But sometimes things from much earlier in the show continued to have consequences years later.
Come on Christopher, Greg Cox already explained all that. The Eugenics Wars happened, you just never knew it
.Sort of ironic in a way. Greg Cox seems pretty nonchalant about continuity, it doesn't seem to bug him too much, yet he writes whole books explaining away inconsistencies
. Though as you noted earlier, it's probably the same reason, sort of a challenge, can you take a war that obviously never happened and explain how it 'could' have happened. Or explaining away the various inconsistencies between 'Space Seed' and TWOK, and even explain why Khan was so singularly focused in TWOK on getting Kirk (though that was less of an issue for me since mankind can become obsessed with vengeance under the right circumstances).
They used stargates a couple of times, yeah, but they also freely referred to the ship using "plasma drive" or even "warp drive" to get around. There was no consistent worldbuilding in season 2; they also couldn't make up their minds whether there was a Federation, a Galactic Alliance, or whatever. Ironically, despite changing from a largely Earth-based format to a fully space-based one, season 2 did a much worse job of conveying a feel for the larger universe of the series.
Sort of ironic in a way. Greg Cox seems pretty nonchalant about continuity, it doesn't seem to bug him too much, yet he writes whole books explaining away inconsistencies
Sure. We reconcile continuity issues because it's an interesting creative exercise, not because we're trying to right some objective moral wrong. Stories are basically just consensual lies for fun, so they don't have to share a common "truth." It's just that sometimes it's enjoyable to imagine ways they can fit together, because it's a way to exercise your creativity and problem-solving skills. But it's missing the whole point of fiction and creativity to insist that it has to be done exactly the same way with every story, that they should all be compelled to fit together and that they're doing something wrong if they don't. That's now how imagination works, not how storytelling works. Imagination is about exploring possibilities, and inventing mutually incompatible continuities -- even for the same world and characters -- is as valid a way to do that as creating an internally consistent continuity.
I think this one is easy enough to reconcile: Since joining the interstellar community, Saurians have had increasing levels of communicable diseases as a result of exposure to aliens like those icky, hairy Humans, but of course Federation medical science is advanced enough that those diseases do not cause substantial harm. There -- diseases are still a rare thing that freak them out in the 22nd Century and are common enough that it's not an issue for a space-going Saurian by the 2250s.
I guess that would explain why their culture never developed the nicety of “covering your mouth when you sneeze”!
Ha-ha. Yeah. True. It had potential, and I liked Hawk a lot, even if he was a bit underused at times. But they didn't explore it enough. Season 1 was pretty campy, but in many ways that was part of the charm. I don't think it was meant to be taken too seriously, yet there were still some great stories in season 1 at the same time. It seemed to have a good balance of stories and campiness. Almost like this is a serious story, but we can have a little fun too. Season 2 lost a lot of the 'fun'. Unfortunately it seems Gil Gerard had a lot to do with the change in tone, something he regrets doing these days. Season 2 could have been better if they retained some of what made season 1 so good, not take itself too seriously, and expanded a bit more.
Yeah, and they're fun to read. In many ways it can enhance the canon. Here is something that is inconsistent in canon, here's a novel explaining how maybe it's not really inconsistent and I'll watch the affected episodes/movies in a different light. "The Good that Men Do" helped make "These are the Voyages" watchable. It was the closest I can to hating a Star Trek episode. I don't love it, mind you, but I watch it with a different perspective now. That's an extreme example mind you, but there are many such examples. So in addition to enjoying Star Trek novels for the expanded universe and additional voyages they give us of the various series, they also serve to 'fix' some canon issues which at least for me enhances the shows. And they've even fixed some things I didn't realize were broken
. Even the "Discovery" novels in some ways have done some of that reconciling so far.