Spoilers Discovery and the Novelverse - TV show discussion thread

[Damian]

I think Genesis stopped being a secret the moment it turned a nebula into a planet. ST III made it clear that the public knew about the Genesis Planet -- Morrow said it was "a galactic controversy," and of course there's "Genesis allowed is not! Is planet forbidden!" If some random Yoda-talking pilot-for-hire in a bar knew about Genesis, then I think the secret was out, even if the details were still classified.

What planet? I don't see any planet. Just a bunch of debris. Klingon propaganda probably.

Does have my favorite McCoy line "There aren't going to be any permits. How can you get a permit to do a damn illegal thing"

Almost as good as Tilly's "I'd cut your tongue out and use it to lick my boot"

 

[WebLurker]

I think what JMS meant by "some canon value" was that certain elements of the stories might be "true" in-universe even if the stories as a whole were not. Or that the events depicted may have happened, but not in the way shown.

Okay, my head hurts now and if I understand it correctly, makes the books useless in terms of having "canon value" (there's no key to tell you what's useful and what's just for the sake of this story).

So are the Star Trek TV shows and movies. But they're equally canonical because they're from the studio that owns the property rather than subcontracted out to a different company. It's exactly the same with Star Wars -- the TV shows and movies are equally canonical. The only difference is that in SW, the movies came first. (Although by this point, the vast majority of the franchise's running time consists of TV shows. I'm convinced there's a whole generation of kids growing up thinking of Star Wars as an animated TV franchise with occasional movies.)

Getting into comic books really killed the idea for me that a specific studio/group of persons/etc. has to produce something for it to "count," not to mention that we see it happen all the time in other mediums (pretty sure no one's going to be arguing that Tron: Legacy isn't canon to the original movie despite the fact that they had two different production crews).

It is? I thought it totally changed Han's whole backstory, and didn't take anything at all from the books.

No, it follows most of the beats of the AC Crispin books and Han being an ex-soldier first turned up in the Brian Daley books before those. The Maw around Kessel came from the Jedi Academy trilogy. Lando's stories about his past exploits come straight from the L. Neil Smith books about that character. Teras Kasi was cribbed from that infamous video game. Mimban was created for the Splinter of the Minds' Eye novel. There's a lot from the books.

It never made sense that Khan's revival was kept secret. Over 70 living people from the late 20th century, an era for which historical records were spotty? That would be an incredible gold mine for historians.

The old Star Trek Chronology theorized that Kirk broke the rules letting Khan go, so he never reported it. Makes a lot of sense, given that I it would seem likely that Starfleet or United Earth would want to put in on trial or something. Besides, all we know for sure was that no one came back to check up on Khan and that Captain Terell knew nothing about it all.

 

[STR]

The old Star Trek Chronology theorized that Kirk broke the rules letting Khan go, so he never reported it. Makes a lot of sense, given that I it would seem likely that Starfleet or United Earth would want to put in on trial or something. Besides, all we know for sure was that no one came back to check up on Khan and that Captain Terell knew nothing about it all.

Sentencing Khan to a (and this part bears emphasis) mutually agreed exile on an unclaimed world seems a lot more "in bounds" than half the solutions to TOS plots. He didn't even overthrow the fundamental power structure of a pre warp civilization or violate the laws of physics. Slow week, honestly.

And maybe Terrell just didn't read the memo on Ceti Alpha V? A lot of reasons it might have been overlooked.

 

[Damian]

Sentencing Khan to a (and this part bears emphasis) mutually agreed exile on an unclaimed world seems a lot more "in bounds" than half the solutions to TOS plots. He didn't even overthrow the fundamental power structure of a pre warp civilization or violate the laws of physics. Slow week, honestly.

And maybe Terrell just didn't read the memo on Ceti Alpha V? A lot of reasons it might have been overlooked.

Greg Cox's 3rd Khan book, "To Reign In Hell" does give some possible answers to why the Reliant was unaware of Khan being on Ceti Alpha V, and even how they apparently 'miscounted' the planets and thought they were around VI. I'm sure he had to wrack his brain trying to reconcile some of that, but I thought he did a pretty good job of explaining a lot of questions that might arise in TWOK.

 

[Christopher]

Okay, my head hurts now and if I understand it correctly, makes the books useless in terms of having "canon value" (there's no key to tell you what's useful and what's just for the sake of this story).

Well, it's a matter of individual judgment. In my case, I just disregarded most of the Dell novels, but I recall there were a couple that only had a few minor discrepancies with the established canon, and I may have "kept them in" with a bit of mental editing. It's the same sort of thing I'd already been doing with Trek novels for a long time.

Getting into comic books really killed the idea for me that a specific studio/group of persons/etc. has to produce something for it to "count," not to mention that we see it happen all the time in other mediums

It's not like there's a universal law here. "Canon" is just a rough metaphor fans and critics came up with to talk about the distinction between an original fictional series and its derivative works or imitations. It's not some formal doctrine that all creators are legally required to follow to the letter. Naturally each creative franchise has its own approach to how it creates and defines its continuity. You have to evaluate each case individually and not expect what applies in one case to be binding on any other.

But as a general rule, you can reason it out by thinking practically about the creative process. It's harder for two distinct bodies of work to stay consistent with each other unless they're being created under the same single supervisory entity. That can be a single creator overseeing a team, or it can be a single studio or publisher overseeing various teams. But it's a closer relationship than usually exists between, say, a TV studio and the book publisher it licenses to do tie-ins, or a comic book publisher and the movie studio that buys the adaptation rights to its characters.

(pretty sure no one's going to be arguing that Tron: Legacy isn't canon to the original movie despite the fact that they had two different production crews).

Oh, I don't consider TRON: Legacy to be in continuity with the original film at all, no matter how much it claims to be. It drastically reinterprets the intentions of that film on several levels. The original was an anthropomorphic fantasy vision of computers as an alternate world where programs were little people running around, with the programmers having no idea that any of this was happening on the other side of the screen. And the programs looked like their programmers, as if the programmers' souls were part of their creations (a very Shintoist notion). But Legacy is a science fiction film in which the Programs are intentionally created artificial intelligences inhabiting an intentionally created virtual world. It's an entirely different concept and genre -- like doing a sequel to Bambi and revealing that the animals talk because they were bioengineered AIs.

Also, Legacy completely retcons Kevin Flynn's motivations. The original film's Flynn didn't want information to be free and open-source. Just the opposite -- he wanted to reclaim his stolen intellectual property and the enormous profits from it that should've been his all along. Sure, in-story he wanted programs to be "free," but in the sense that he wanted individual creators to be free to control and profit from their own creations rather than having to surrender them to their employers. So when his son in Legacy made Encom's newest software available to everyone for free, thus depriving its developers of income, he wasn't standing up for Kevin Flynn's ideals, but betraying them.

It's also a complete reversal of the intended aesthetic of the original, and not just in being so monochrome and drab where the original was richly colored. The original was an attempt to simulate computer animation before the technology existed to create computer-animated human figures, so they tried to make live actors look animated and unreal and incorporate them into virtual sets. It had the aesthetics of an animated film and was trying to embrace the new, exotic quality of computer imagery. But Legacy embraces the reverse, modern aesthetic of trying to make computer animation look realistic and integrate it into live-action film. The makers of the original film would've done the entire Grid sequence as CG animation if they could have. The TV series TRON: Uprising came closer to their intent than the movie sequel did.

So for all that Legacy presents itself as a sequel, it's really a radical reimagining and one that conflicts with and misses the point of the original on many levels. I made the mistake of seeing Legacy the day after I rewatched the original on home video, and it was jarring how poorly they fit together. Legacy works better if you only have a vague memory of the original.

The old Star Trek Chronology theorized that Kirk broke the rules letting Khan go, so he never reported it. Makes a lot of sense, given that I it would seem likely that Starfleet or United Earth would want to put in on trial or something.

That's ridiculous on several levels. For one thing, the idea of Kirk as a habitual rulebreaker is a fan myth arising from the extraordinary circumstances in a couple of the movies. TOS showed Kirk as extremely diligent about following rules and orders. But it also showed that, as someone who was often the sole and highest Federation authority available on the scene, it was part of his rightful responsibilities as a starship captain to be able to interpret the rules and make exceptions to them when the situation required it. Something like deciding to "imprison" a large band of dangerous criminals on an uninhabited planet they couldn't escape from seems entirely within the purview of a captain on the frontier, who can't afford to keep them aboard the ship for as long as it would take to deliver them to a more conventional prison facility. So there was no reason why Kirk would have been so irresponsible as to hide the fact that he made a command decision he was entitled to make.

I mean, Kirk was no liar and no coward. If he felt that the situation obligated him to violate Starfleet regulations in a big way, he wouldn't hide from his responsibility for that choice. He would be the first to report his violation to Starfleet Command and stand before them to defend his choice -- and to take whatever penalties they saw fit to impose upon him, because that's part of being responsible too.

No, Kirk would have reported it to Starfleet, not only because it was his right to make that call, but because his choice to strand them there gave him the responsibility to make sure they were taken care of and not just abandoned to any disaster that befell them. It was a foolish story choice on the part of TWOK's writers to propose that he hadn't done so.

My personal retcon is that maybe the Prime version of Alexander Marcus was in Section 31 too, and he took an interest in the Augments and had Kirk's report covered up so that Section 31 could use the Augments for their own purposes -- a plan that was scuttled when Ceti Alpha VI exploded 6 months later.

 

[Damian]

That's ridiculous on several levels. For one thing, the idea of Kirk as a habitual rulebreaker is a fan myth arising from the extraordinary circumstances in a couple of the movies.

Yeah, I tend to agree. I mean he would never have been promoted if he was a rule 'breaker'. I think maybe he could be a rule 'bender'. Some of the original series novels have gone with that idea. That he was more about the 'spirit' of the rules as opposed to 'letter' of the rules. Some captains and even admirals have disapproved of his methods, usually ones that are more firm in following the letter of the regulations and rules.

When Captain Kirk bent the rules, or a few times when he may have broke them, at least from the literal standpoint, it was for good reason. Like the few times he broke the Prime Directive it was because of the spirit of the Prime Directive. Like when he helped destroy Landru, it was because it was not a growing society.

As far as TWOK, the movie itself doesn't really address why the Reliant and Captain Terrell were unaware of Khan and his followers. If I remember correctly didn't "To Reign in Hell" propose that maybe it was classified to an extent? I figure that might be just as good as reason as any--I mean, I'm not entirely sure why it would be classified but I guess maybe they didn't want the 'wrong' people to find out about Khan due to his augment status. It's also possible maybe he was just forgotten. Lots of things happened in the intervening 15 years and maybe it just sort of slipped people's minds.

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, I tend to agree. I mean he would never have been promoted if he was a rule 'breaker'. I think maybe he could be a rule 'bender'. Some of the original series novels have gone with that idea. That he was more about the 'spirit' of the rules as opposed to 'letter' of the rules. Some captains and even admirals have disapproved of his methods, usually ones that are more firm in following the letter of the regulations and rules.

And I still say that's misunderstanding the nature of his responsibilities. TOS presumed a universe where starship captains couldn't always call up Starfleet Command for a real-time consult, where orders from the home base could be days or weeks away, and thus captains rightfully had the ultimate authority to decide how to interpret and apply the rules, to use command judgment rather than just blindly following the letter of regulations. That wasn't about Kirk being a maverick -- that was an inherent responsibility of any and every starship commander.

Indeed, we saw several instances where other commanders went far more rogue than Kirk. Ron Tracey and R.M. Merik (not Starfleet but still a captain) threw out the Prime Directive and Kirk brought them to justice. Matt Decker inappropriately seized command of the Enterprise until Kirk regained contact and ordered him relieved according to regulations. Garth of Izar lost his mind and tried to exterminate a planet.

 

[STR]

Greg Cox's 3rd Khan book, "To Reign In Hell" does give some possible answers to why the Reliant was unaware of Khan being on Ceti Alpha V, and even how they apparently 'miscounted' the planets and thought they were around VI. I'm sure he had to wrack his brain trying to reconcile some of that, but I thought he did a pretty good job of explaining a lot of questions that might arise in TWOK.

I find the books tend to overexplain things. Khan, at this point, was a single obscure incident among countless crazy things that happen every day out there. Things like that get overlooked all the time.

They also take lines from the shows and movies way, way too literally. McCoy says something happened a hundred years ago and the books report it as 100 years to the date. Nobody, anywhere, talks like that. By extension,just because there was an explosion doesn't mean a planet is missing. Hell, if Ceti Alpha exploded, it's mass wouldn't disappear. It'd still be in its old orbit, just as a cloud. Ceti Alpha V would never move.

If the "explosion" was an impact that propelled the planet into a new orbit, that might throw V into chaos while keeping the number of planets the same. You just have to interpret "exploded" not 10000% literally.

 

[Christopher]

I find the books tend to overexplain things. Khan, at this point, was a single obscure incident among countless crazy things that happen every day out there. Things like that get overlooked all the time.

See, I just can't buy that a discovery like that would be obscure. It would be one of the most important historical finds of all time. It'd be like discovering a bunch of Revolutionary War soldiers who'd been miraculously preserved alive in a cave or something and could give us firsthand accounts of that era. It would be seismically important to Earth historians.

They also take lines from the shows and movies way, way too literally. McCoy says something happened a hundred years ago and the books report it as 100 years to the date. Nobody, anywhere, talks like that.

That was the assumption made by the Star Trek Chronology as a simplifying measure, and while the STC openly acknowledged that such things were merely conjecture, the studio nonetheless required the Pocket novels to remain consistent with the STC's dates unless later canon ovewrote them.

By extension,just because there was an explosion doesn't mean a planet is missing. Hell, if Ceti Alpha exploded, it's mass wouldn't disappear. It'd still be in its old orbit, just as a cloud. Ceti Alpha V would never move.

Blame the original movie for that. It claimed that VI exploded and that the Reliant crew somehow mistook V for VI because its orbit had shifted. It made no damned sense whatsoever, just like everything else in TWOK. TWOK is an incredibly stupid and nonsensical story with a third-grade understanding of science. But it's the story we're required to stay consistent with.

 

[Damian]

And I still say that's misunderstanding the nature of his responsibilities. TOS presumed a universe where starship captains couldn't always call up Starfleet Command for a real-time consult, where orders from the home base could be days or weeks away, and thus captains rightfully had the ultimate authority to decide how to interpret and apply the rules, to use command judgment rather than just blindly following the letter of regulations. That wasn't about Kirk being a maverick -- that was an inherent responsibility of any and every starship commander.

Indeed, we saw several instances where other commanders went far more rogue than Kirk. Ron Tracey and R.M. Merik (not Starfleet but still a captain) threw out the Prime Directive and Kirk brought them to justice. Matt Decker inappropriately seized command of the Enterprise until Kirk regained contact and ordered him relieved according to regulations. Garth of Izar lost his mind and tried to exterminate a planet.

I don't disagree with that. Captain Kirk was later considered a legendary captain. I don't mean 'bend' the rules in a bad way. I just mean in comparison to say a more by the book captain, like Captain Esteban from TSFS. He, and maybe Captain Styles from the same file, probably wouldn't approve of Kirk's command style.

Kirk knew when to follow the rules to the letter, and when it was necessary to interpret them a bit. But he didn't do it for personal gain or glory, and almost every time it was the right call.

So I don't mean bend in a derogatory, break the rules kind of way. Just that he knew the rule book couldn't capture every possible event and sometimes he had to interpret them a bit differently than someone like Esteban would.

TWOK is an incredibly stupid and nonsensical story with a third-grade understanding of science. But it's the story we're required to stay consistent with.

Don't mince words, tell us what you really think .

I personally always considered TWOK my 2nd favorite Trek film (behind TMP of course, probably the most 'pure' Star Trek film). But I can't disagree with a lot of your criticisms of it. For me at least, it's a case where I can be more forgiving because of the characterizations and overall story. Meyer got a great performance out of Shatner, Spock and McCoy, and who doesn't love Ricardo Montalban as a villain. Whatever the criticisms of his obsession, he did do a great job in the role, at least IMO. It also had some great tension in the Battle of the Mutara Nebula. It makes it a bit easier, at least for me, to maybe sugarcoat some of the films excesses and bad science. But then, I think Meyer was more interested in making an action-sci-fi film then a sci-fi action film.

 

[Damian]

I find the books tend to overexplain things. Khan, at this point, was a single obscure incident among countless crazy things that happen every day out there. Things like that get overlooked all the time.

They also take lines from the shows and movies way, way too literally. McCoy says something happened a hundred years ago and the books report it as 100 years to the date. Nobody, anywhere, talks like that. By extension,just because there was an explosion doesn't mean a planet is missing. Hell, if Ceti Alpha exploded, it's mass wouldn't disappear. It'd still be in its old orbit, just as a cloud. Ceti Alpha V would never move.

If the "explosion" was an impact that propelled the planet into a new orbit, that might throw V into chaos while keeping the number of planets the same. You just have to interpret "exploded" not 10000% literally.

I guess I come from a different angle. Star Trek has a lot of contradictions and sometimes errors in continuity. Some pretty minor, things I probably wouldn't pick up on right away, others a bit more glaring. I always like it when novels take an inconsistency and explain it, or reconcile it. "To Reign In Hell" was a good example of reconciling the many inconsistencies between Space Seed and TWOK, but that wasn't the whole reason for the book. The book had an excellent story to go along with it. Some books it may only be a simple paragraph explaining some inconsistency, others a bit more.

And Christopher is right in the sense that the novel writers have to follow on screen canon. Star Trek has always been pretty strict in that regard. If McCoy says it happened 100 years ago, that's what they are left with. Now if he said something like 'about 100 years ago' that might leave them a bit of wiggle room to use between 90 and 110 years ago.

 

[Christopher]

And Christopher is right in the sense that the novel writers have to follow on screen canon. Star Trek has always been pretty strict in that regard. If McCoy says it happened 100 years ago, that's what they are left with. Now if he said something like 'about 100 years ago' that might leave them a bit of wiggle room to use between 90 and 110 years ago.

No, the rules aren't that strict. Obviously it's common sense that someone saying "100 years" in casual conversation might be rounding, whether they qualify it or not. If anything, it's the opposite of what you say -- someone saying "100 years" or some other round number can be presumed to be approximating unless they specify otherwise by saying "exactly 100 years." (Similarly to how, if I said "It started raining at noon," you'd assume I meant somewhere roughly around noon, unless I specified "noon on the dot" or "to the minute" or something. In casual conversation, rounding is the default, precision the exception.) So as a rule, as long as we're within the approximate range, it's fine.

But the Star Trek Chronology gave exact dates in black-and-white, and even though they were acknowledged within the STC as conjectural, studio policy was that tie-ins should abide by those listed dates, that overriding them was the prerogative of canon rather than tie-ins, since the STC was by show staffers and thus was "closer" to canon. This is something specific to the STC and similar references like the Encyclopedia and tech manuals, not some universal rule about numbers spoken onscreen.

 

[Damian]

No, the rules aren't that strict. Obviously it's common sense that someone saying "100 years" in casual conversation might be rounding, whether they qualify it or not. If anything, it's the opposite of what you say -- someone saying "100 years" or some other round number can be presumed to be approximating unless they specify otherwise by saying "exactly 100 years." (Similarly to how, if I said "It started raining at noon," you'd assume I meant somewhere roughly around noon, unless I specified "noon on the dot" or "to the minute" or something. In casual conversation, rounding is the default, precision the exception.) So as a rule, as long as we're within the approximate range, it's fine.

But the Star Trek Chronology gave exact dates in black-and-white, and even though they were acknowledged within the STC as conjectural, studio policy was that tie-ins should abide by those listed dates, that overriding them was the prerogative of canon rather than tie-ins, since the STC was by show staffers and thus was "closer" to canon. This is something specific to the STC and similar references like the Encyclopedia and tech manuals, not some universal rule about numbers spoken onscreen.

Oh, ok, I misunderstood. I was putting the STC and things said on screen together. But I get what you're saying now. I guess what I meant was that tie-ins have to abide by canon in the sense that while, for instance, someone might had an issue with Ceti Alpha VI exploding and there not being any apparent evidence of such, you guys still have to run with that if writing a story about that event. Greg Cox did a pretty admirable job trying his best to explain some of the disparities there, but you have to end up in the same place at the end of the day. I guess that's what I mean by strict. But yeah, it'd make sense that you could use a little 'common sense' as far as the nitty gritty details. If you say something happened 94 years ago when McCoy said 100 years (in the absence of any other information or STC information) I'd imagine you'd probably be ok.

 

[WebLurker]

It's not like there's a universal law here. "Canon" is just a rough metaphor fans and critics came up with to talk about the distinction between an original fictional series and its derivative works or imitations. It's not some formal doctrine that all creators are legally required to follow to the letter. Naturally each creative franchise has its own approach to how it creates and defines its continuity. You have to evaluate each case individually and not expect what applies in one case to be binding on any other.

But as a general rule, you can reason it out by thinking practically about the creative process. It's harder for two distinct bodies of work to stay consistent with each other unless they're being created under the same single supervisory entity. That can be a single creator overseeing a team, or it can be a single studio or publisher overseeing various teams. But it's a closer relationship than usually exists between, say, a TV studio and the book publisher it licenses to do tie-ins, or a comic book publisher and the movie studio that buys the adaptation rights to its characters.

Sounds like the word means different things to different people.

Oh, I don't consider TRON: Legacy to be in continuity with the original film at all, no matter how much it claims to be.

Oh, boy, this'll be interesting.

It drastically reinterprets the intentions of that film on several levels. The original was an anthropomorphic fantasy vision of computers as an alternate world where programs were little people running around, with the programmers having no idea that any of this was happening on the other side of the screen. And the programs looked like their programmers, as if the programmers' souls were part of their creations (a very Shintoist notion). But Legacy is a science fiction film in which the Programs are intentionally created artificial intelligences inhabiting an intentionally created virtual world. It's an entirely different concept and genre -- like doing a sequel to Bambi and revealing that the animals talk because they were bioengineered AIs.

Not sure how the Grid being constructed on purpose invalidates the original premise that the computer world was all an accident that just happened to pop up as programmers did their stuff; Presumably that was still going on outside of the Grid (it was a closed system that had been left to its own devices for years). Besides, as I recall, only the ISOs in Legacy were free-standing creations (and not made by people at that), while everyone else was a Basic like we saw in the original movie (heck, it's a plot point that the ISO can grow and develop the way Basics can't).

On top of that, I don't get why two different genres can't coexist in the same world. We see it all the time (compare Guardians of the Galaxy with Captain America: The Winter Soldier).

Also, Legacy completely retcons Kevin Flynn's motivations. The original film's Flynn didn't want information to be free and open-source. Just the opposite -- he wanted to reclaim his stolen intellectual property and the enormous profits from it that should've been his all along. Sure, in-story he wanted programs to be "free," but in the sense that he wanted individual creators to be free to control and profit from their own creations rather than having to surrender them to their employers.

It is a plot point that the project of creating the Grid changed Flynn's perspective. Specifically, discovering the ISOs threw everything of the board and altered his plans. While being in exile in the Grid for years did affect him the most, it was explained that the ISOs are what shifted things and that this was what lead to Clu's revolt. (Besides, it wouldn't be inconsistent if Flynn wanted the credit for the work that was stolen from him but would decide later to open source materials he'd created by choice. It does happen.) I do think it's a plot hole that new programs can't be made in the Grid but there still seems to be a stable population despite years of Clue's hunting down and brainwashing his subjects, but that's not really a canon thing.

So when his son in Legacy made Encom's newest software available to everyone for free, thus depriving its developers of income, he wasn't standing up for Kevin Flynn's ideals, but betraying them.

For the sake of discussion, let's say that Flynn never changed his perspective and would not've been happy about his company's stuff being given away; Sam did it all as a prank on the company, not out of principles. The claim that it was a gift was a PR spin by corporate to save face. Alan Bradley may have approved of it personally, but that could still be true along side it not being in Flynn's worldview. (I will concede it's been quite awhile since I saw the movie, so I could be missing stuff.)

It's also a complete reversal of the intended aesthetic of the original, and not just in being so monochrome and drab where the original was richly colored.

The Grid is not the same computer world as the Encom hard drive circa the 1980s. Boom, done. (I think I like the contrast of Legacy's darker and lighter colors with the grainer pastels of the original; the original looks way it should for a movie set in an '80s computer, but there it is.)

The original was an attempt to simulate computer animation before the technology existed to create computer-animated human figures, so they tried to make live actors look animated and unreal and incorporate them into virtual sets. It had the aesthetics of an animated film and was trying to embrace the new, exotic quality of computer imagery. But Legacy embraces the reverse, modern aesthetic of trying to make computer animation look realistic and integrate it into live-action film.

As noted above the two movies are set in different computer worlds. Besides, a modern day movie would use current state of the art and modern techniques over older ones (as I specifically recall, the filmmakers made Legacy in live action with CGI effects as an artistic choice to make the Grid feel more real and so get the viewers more invested). I would also content that this's one of the few instances where the update makes sense within the logic of the world in question.

The makers of the original film would've done the entire Grid sequence as CG animation if they could have. The TV series TRON: Uprising came closer to their intent than the movie sequel did.

Never saw the cartoon, so I can't comment on that. I guess I don't see why the computer worlds needed to look exactly alike.

So for all that Legacy presents itself as a sequel, it's really a radical reimagining and one that conflicts with and misses the point of the original on many levels. I made the mistake of seeing Legacy the day after I rewatched the original on home video, and it was jarring how poorly they fit together. Legacy works better if you only have a vague memory of the original.

Funny, I has the opposite experience seeing both on consecutive days for the first time.

I guess I don't see any reason to question the canoncity (made the IP rights holders, don't think any of the counter arguments stick, the movie makes no sense without the backstory of the original). I'd find it more plausible that the cartoon is non-canon then anything else.

In regards to the following (whether the Chronology's theory that Kirk didn't report leaving Khan and the other Augments on Ceti Alpha V or not), I should clarify that I'm not dogmatic about it being the "right" answer; I do think that the movie's story works whether it was reported or not, but

That's ridiculous on several levels. For one thing, the idea of Kirk as a habitual rulebreaker is a fan myth arising from the extraordinary circumstances in a couple of the movies. TOS showed Kirk as extremely diligent about following rules and orders.

The show also had him falsify logs on a couple of occasions ("Where No Man Has Gone Before," "The Doomsday Machine") and breaking the Prime Directive on quite a few occasions ("Return of the Archons" "A Private Little War," "The Paradise Syndrome," for example). The latter is worth noting, since, by his own word: "A starship captain's most solemn oath is that he will give his life, even his entire crew, rather than violate the Prime Directive" ("The Omega Glory"). So, as established in the original TV show, the man who is "extremely diligent about following rules and orders" will break his "most solemn oath" when push comes to shove.

Now, I'm not going to argue that Kirk was a bad man (he wasn't) or that he doesn't deserve the respect and place in history that he was given within the Star Trek universe, or that I don't agree with what he did (the showmakers were pretty good about having him break regulations in situations where you can understand the ethics of it all and "The Drumhead" [TNG] did imply that there was protocol for one to essentially argue their case if they chose to break the rule). However, I think that, while the chronic rule-breaker exaggeration (seen in Chris Pine's work in the first two Kelvin movies) is an inaccurate image, so is the other opposite (even if I agree with you that we forget how much Kirk did follow the rules in both TOS/TAS and the original movies). From what I've seen, Kirk chose the way of "being good over being lawful," which would put him in the middle somewhere. So, based on what we've seen in the TV show, I think he would've not reported Khan if he'd thought that it was the right thing to do (whether it was or not can be debated).

But it also showed that, as someone who was often the sole and highest Federation authority available on the scene, it was part of his rightful responsibilities as a starship captain to be able to interpret the rules and make exceptions to them when the situation required it. Something like deciding to "imprison" a large band of dangerous criminals on an uninhabited planet they couldn't escape from seems entirely within the purview of a captain on the frontier, who can't afford to keep them aboard the ship for as long as it would take to deliver them to a more conventional prison facility. So there was no reason why Kirk would have been so irresponsible as to hide the fact that he made a command decision he was entitled to make.

Would his authority have extended so far? I have zero idea what kind of statute of limitations would or would not be in this case. Based on what we know know about the Eugenics Wars and the Augments, it seems a bit of a stretch that Starfleet Command and the Federation would just be okay with them left somewhere.

I mean, Kirk was no liar and no coward. If he felt that the situation obligated him to violate Starfleet regulations in a big way, he wouldn't hide from his responsibility for that choice. He would be the first to report his violation to Starfleet Command and stand before them to defend his choice -- and to take whatever penalties they saw fit to impose upon him, because that's part of being responsible too.

The only way I could see him not reporting it was if he thought that his superiors would override him and throw Khan and company in prison or something (putting lawfulness over goodness, I guess).

No, Kirk would have reported it to Starfleet, not only because it was his right to make that call, but because his choice to strand them there gave him the responsibility to make sure they were taken care of and not just abandoned to any disaster that befell them. It was a foolish story choice on the part of TWOK's writers to propose that he hadn't done so.

My personal retcon is that maybe the Prime version of Alexander Marcus was in Section 31 too, and he took an interest in the Augments and had Kirk's report covered up so that Section 31 could use the Augments for their own purposes -- a plan that was scuttled when Ceti Alpha VI exploded 6 months later.

If we assume Kirk did report it, maybe followups fell between the cracks (I mean, we know that Starfleet encountered the Borg in ENT, but failed to connect the dots between that mysterious encounter/collected data and the Beta Quadrant rumors of the Borg until Picard and co. were facing down a Cube in TNG).

Blame the original movie for that. It claimed that VI exploded and that the Reliant crew somehow mistook V for VI because its orbit had shifted. It made no damned sense whatsoever, just like everything else in TWOK. TWOK is an incredibly stupid and nonsensical story with a third-grade understanding of science. But it's the story we're required to stay consistent with.

Wow, I think that movie is the best film in the franchise to date and I will stand by that. I will concede that the science is kinda dodgy, but Star Trek has always been soft sci-fi from day one (transporters, anyone?) and prioritized characters and story over the techie stuff.

 

[Christopher]

Sounds like the word means different things to different people.

My point is, people worry too much about the word. The word isn't the point; it's just a shorthand for talking about an aspect of a fictional franchise. The focus should be on each individual franchise and how it approaches its continuity. Whether you can stick a certain label on it has no real importance or use to understanding it.

Not sure how the Grid being constructed on purpose invalidates the original premise that the computer world was all an accident that just happened to pop up as programmers did their stuff; Presumably that was still going on outside of the Grid (it was a closed system that had been left to its own devices for years). Besides, as I recall, only the ISOs in Legacy were free-standing creations (and not made by people at that), while everyone else was a Basic like we saw in the original movie (heck, it's a plot point that the ISO can grow and develop the way Basics can't).

On top of that, I don't get why two different genres can't coexist in the same world. We see it all the time (compare Guardians of the Galaxy with Captain America: The Winter Soldier).

It's not about genres coexisting, it's about one genre completely replacing and overwriting another, so that the intrinsic nature of the same entities is redefined. It's like making a Star Trek movie that suddenly declares that Vulcans and Klingons and such are magical fairy races rather than aliens, just the other way around. The change is not surprising given that computers are much more demystified in modern minds than they were in 1982, but it's still a radically different way of perceiving the intrinsic nature of the computer world. (Frankly, Ralph Breaks the Internet looks to me like a better continuation of the spirit of the original TRON in some ways, though I haven't seen it yet.)

Of course you can find ways to rationalize the changes and pretend they still fit, as you can do with anything if you're so inclined, but that requires reinterpreting the original film's premise and worldview to fit the retconned version in the sequel. And that's not something I want to do, because I think the sequel misses the point of the original in a lot of ways. The original film was more interesting to me, because it was trying to explore the utter novelty of computer animation, its ability to create images unlike anything ever seen in physical reality, and to embrace that unreal aesthetic. It was trying to simulate computer-animated characters before the technology was ready for that, so it tried to make live actors look as unreal as possible and use footage of them printed onto animation cels as part of essentially hand-animated scenes. But since TRON came out, computer animation has gone in the opposite direction, with artists trying to make it replicate reality more and more closely rather than explore its potential for unreality -- which I think is regrettably limiting from a purely artistic standpoint. And Legacy just conformed to that routine modern aesthetic, making the CGI as photoreal as possible and blending it with physical sets. Plus it stripped away the rich colors of the original, mistakenly imposing the monochrome look of the original films' characters onto the entire world. I just think it's too ordinary a modern FX film, too tame and routine in its use of CGI, and so it's much less interesting and creative than the original was. So I have no desire to force the original into the more drab, conventional mold of the sequel's mentality.

In short, not every discussion about the merits of fiction is about whether the continuity can fit together.

Besides, a modern day movie would use current state of the art and modern techniques over older ones (as I specifically recall, the filmmakers made Legacy in live action with CGI effects as an artistic choice to make the Grid feel more real and so get the viewers more invested).

It's not about the advancement of the techniques, it's about what you choose to do with them. The original filmmakers were innovating, pushing the envelope in new directions and trying to create images unlike anything ever seen or imagined before; they were just a few years short of having the technology to realize their ambitions. The last thing they wanted to do was to create something that looked photorealistic. If they'd wanted that, they'd have just made a regular film. What they wanted was to invent a new form of animation. If they'd had more advanced technology, they would've had an easier time achieving that. Imagine a more abstract version of Pixar -- that's the direction they were trying to go in, but they just didn't have the means to get there yet.

The problem is, I don't think it would've been possible for a sequel 30 years later to capture the same sensibilities as the original. We're so used to CGI now that it's become routine to us, hence what you say about realism being deemed necessary for audience investment. The original tried to catch audience interest by showing them something they'd never seen before, by trying to invent a whole new visual language of film. There are things you can do in pioneer days that just don't have the same effect a generation later.

I would also content that this's one of the few instances where the update makes sense within the logic of the world in question.

Only within the sequel's logic where the computer world is interpreted as a deliberate human creation and modeled on physical reality. Not in the original's logic or aesthetic, in which what we saw was a metaphor for the profoundly alien workings of computer systems themselves.

Never saw the cartoon, so I can't comment on that. I guess I don't see why the computer worlds needed to look exactly alike.

Again, it's not about anything as superficial as whether the look is identical. It's about the intent. The creators of TRON were trying to approximate computer animation of human figures but didn't have the technology to do it for real, so they had to use hand-modified live-action footage as a substitute for computer animation. They approached TRON (the Grid sequences, at least) as essentially an animated film. If they'd had the means, if the tech had been a decade more advanced, then they would have used actual computer animation. That's what I'm saying -- that since TRON: Uprising was a CGI cartoon, it's basically the actual thing that the original film's makers were trying to simulate, whereas a live-action film like Legacy is not.

I'd find it more plausible that the cartoon is non-canon then anything else.

I don't see why you'd think that. It's fully compatible with Legacy's continuity.

The show also had him falsify logs on a couple of occasions ("Where No Man Has Gone Before," "The Doomsday Machine")

To protect others' reputations from dishonor. Not to protect himself from consequences. There's a huge, huge difference.

and breaking the Prime Directive on quite a few occasions ("Return of the Archons" "A Private Little War," "The Paradise Syndrome," for example).

Wrong. As I've argued in these parts many times, it's misinterpreting TOS to impose the strict TNG-style interpretation of the Directive onto Kirk's actions. The TOS version of the Directive not only allowed but compelled a Starfleet officer to intervene in order to free a civilization from another source of interference with their free and natural societal development. Kirk was upholding the PD as far as TOS's writers were concerned, and modern audiences misread that because of how TNG retconned and rigidified the PD. And that's contributed to the lazy, ignorant "renegade Kirk" myth that's so popular today.

And how in blazes did "The Paradise Syndrome" get on your list? When Kirk was in his right mind, he diligently followed the rule to avoid contact with the natives. He can't be blamed for what happened after he got amnesia.

Would his authority have extended so far?

Yes. That's the point! Modern audiences don't understand that because we're used to the modern, interconnected world. TOS was modeled on the British Age of Sail, when naval captains could be months away from contact with any higher authority. They had to have the ultimate, final say on what decisions were made in the field, because there was nobody higher who could have a say. The whole reason you give someone a starship command and send them out into the great unknown where they'll be out of contact with you is because you trust them to have the judgment to make the right or necessary decisions when there's nobody watching over them or second-guessing them.

Based on what we know know about the Eugenics Wars and the Augments, it seems a bit of a stretch that Starfleet Command and the Federation would just be okay with them left somewhere.

Yes, that's my point! That's why Kirk would of course have notified Starfleet Command, so that they could send more ships to watch over the Augments and provide emergency support if necessary, maybe even administer Ceti Alpha V as a proper penal colony. Remember that the ship was named Botany Bay -- Carey Wilber's intent was that their exile was akin to the English settlement of Australia with convict labor. That wasn't some kind of furtive criminal act conducted in secret, it was a formal, official practice.

(I mean, we know that Starfleet encountered the Borg in ENT, but failed to connect the dots between that mysterious encounter/collected data and the Beta Quadrant rumors of the Borg until Picard and co. were facing down a Cube in TNG).

Actually we don't know that. Contrary to popular assumption, there's nothing in "Q Who" to preclude the existence of information about the Borg in the Enterprise's database. Picard relies on Guinan to tell him about them, yes, but that's because she was actually there (not an eyewitness, but closer than anyone else). Even if there was information about them in the computers, it would've come from the El-Aurian refugees anyway, so why not just ask the one who's actually on board?

 

[Damian]

As I've argued in these parts many times, it's misinterpreting TOS to impose the strict TNG-style interpretation of the Directive onto Kirk's actions. The TOS version of the Directive not only allowed but compelled a Starfleet officer to intervene in order to free a civilization from another source of interference with their free and natural societal development. Kirk was upholding the PD as far as TOS's writers were concerned, and modern audiences misread that because of how TNG retconned and rigidified the PD.

Even Captain Picard interpreted the Prime Directive similarly at times. And is it necessarily retconning. It seems reasonable that after a century there may have been modifications to the PD. I mean, no law or regulation is ever truly static. Starfleet probably modified how it was interpreted as the years passed based on prior experiences. For instance it might be reasonable that after "Bread and Circuses" and "Patterns of Force" that Starfleet felt the need to give more guidance, or even make the PD more strict. And other things probably happened over the years as well.

Actually we don't know that. Contrary to popular assumption, there's nothing in "Q Who" to preclude the existence of information about the Borg in the Enterprise's database.

And I noticed "Regeneration" was very careful not to name the Borg, and there was no cube. It's possible by the time of "Q, Who" that it was just one of those pages in history that got forgotten about. That unless you were looking for it specifically you probably wouldn't have thought much about it. Perhaps later someone remembered a similar situation and looked it up and then connected the dots. Guinan freely told Picard about the Borg (as did Q for that matter) and hey really didn't have time to do research, particularly if no one happened to be thinking about the earlier contact (I mean, we know of course the real world reason is it didn't happen yet, but in story it's easy enough to explain)

 

[Sci]

Spore drive just really bugs me, it's almost next level for me in the sense that it's such an integral part of the show, and I just can't understand if it can damage the very fabric of the universe what insanity makes them continue to use it.

Right! People never continue to use things they know are harmful to their environment.

All those other technologies didn't carry universal cataclysm on their backs (though still incredibly dangerous--they didn't threaten the very universe). And that goes back to something Christopher said a few pages back that basically something of that level is almost ridiculous.

So while I can let things like Genesis, thalaron or shrinking starships go, the spore drive is something beyond all that IMO.

My biggest problem with the spore drive isn't actually with the spore drive; it's with the story the spore drive is being used to tell. By which I mean -- almost nothing in DIS really needed to be set in the 23rd Century. They could have told the same basic story but set it in the 25th Century with no meaningful change. The 23rd Century elements are just arbitrary window dressing instead of being essential to the story being told. ("If Memory Serves" is really the only DIS episode so far whose connection to TOS is intrinsic to the story and genuine rather than tacked-on and superfluous.) And if they had set the story in the 25th Century, then the spore drive's presence would not, as an added bonus, have seemed like an implausible break from previous depictions of FTL tech in Trek history.

Mind you, I really like DIS and think we mostly just have to get over minor continuity glitches. But I do kind of wish it had been set later rather than earlier in the timeline.

I think Genesis stopped being a secret the moment it turned a nebula into a planet. ST III made it clear that the public knew about the Genesis Planet -- Morrow said it was "a galactic controversy," and of course there's "Genesis allowed is not! Is planet forbidden!" If some random Yoda-talking pilot-for-hire in a bar knew about Genesis, then I think the secret was out, even if the details were still classified.

Exactly. You can't hide the disappearance of an entire nebula -- or the appearance of a whole new planet.

The old Star Trek Chronology theorized that Kirk broke the rules letting Khan go, so he never reported it. Makes a lot of sense, given that I it would seem likely that Starfleet or United Earth would want to put in on trial or something. Besides, all we know for sure was that no one came back to check up on Khan and that Captain Terell knew nothing about it all.

I'm more interested in the legacy Khan has left for Earth and the Federation.

I mean, apparently the Eugenics Wars and World War III -- I'm guessing World War III partially grew out of the Eugenics Wars much the way World War II partially grew out of World War I, especially given that the two conflicts were conflated in TOS -- so traumatized Earth that they maintain a ban on genetic engineering hundreds of years after I would expect genetic engineering in the real world to become commonplace and acceptable. Which, okay -- so one Federation Member State, United Earth (and presumably its cultural off-shoots, like the Alpha Centauri Concordium, the Confederated Martian Colonies, Vega, Deneva, Cestus, etc.) has banned genetic engineering. But the Federation is comprised of (as of Articles of the Federation) 155 Member States. So why does one Member State's bad experience lead to the entire Federation banning it?

And if the Eugenics Wars/World War III were so existentially traumatic to humanity and its political manifestations... why didn't they demand Khan be brought home for trial? I mean, this would apparently be the equivalent of finding out that Adolf Hitler -- or at least Benito Mussolini -- was still alive somewhere. (Yeah, yeah, the Brits left Napoleon to rot on Elba and Saint Helena, but I really don't think the mindset that goes for exile over formal imprisonment is one that's ever coming back. Especially if the tyrant in question so traumatized a planet that they pressured all their fellow Federation Member States into banning the thing that produced him.)

 

[Damian]

My biggest problem with the spore drive isn't actually with the spore drive; it's with the story the spore drive is being used to tell. By which I mean -- almost nothing in DIS really needed to be set in the 23rd Century. They could have told the same basic story but set it in the 25th Century with no meaningful change.

That would have been my preference as well. Then they could have kept the spore drive as a 'new and advanced' FTL technology, and would not have had to put a kill switch in to drop it. They also would have not really had to explain all the various inconsistencies with the time period (well except maybe the Giger-Klingons). Any of that could have been explained away as it's 100 years post Nemesis. But it seems Star Trek has an original series fetish right now.

I just keep thinking they had to do all kinds of pretzel twists to keep the story consistent with the rest of the Star Trek canon, they have to kill their new amazing FTL technology at some point, and frankly it just doesn't 'feel' like an original series era show to me.

I mean, either that or just explain it as a reboot. Then they wouldn't even have to explain the various inconsistencies.

 

[Christopher]

And is it necessarily retconning. It seems reasonable that after a century there may have been modifications to the PD.

Yes, of course, which is exactly why it annoys me when people assume the 24th-century interpretation of the Directive should apply to Kirk's actions. It's created the oft-repeated myth that Kirk was constantly "violating" the Directive, but if you actually go back and watch the episodes, it's clear that the writers' intent was that he was upholding the Directive by putting an end to others' interference. It's just that in later years, observers of TOS came to see that as misguidedly cultural-imperialist and paternalistic, and so the writers of TNG took the more extreme tack that the PD forbade even well-intentioned interference to save a society from immediate, ongoing harm, which was an overcorrection in the opposite direction. And the mistake people make is in assuming that both versions of the PD were identical all along.

I mean, either that or just explain it as a reboot. Then they wouldn't even have to explain the various inconsistencies.

There are inconsistencies between TOS and the movies. There are inconsistencies between TOS and TNG, between TNG and DS9, etc. Trek has never been free of inconsistencies, because each new incarnation has interpreted the universe in a somewhat different way. And for decades, fans have been able to live with the inconsistencies and suspend disbelief about the pretense that these different works of fiction represented a uniform reality. Sure, they complained about every little inconsistency as much as fans do today, but they still got over it eventually.

 

[Damian]

Yes, of course, which is exactly why it annoys me when people assume the 24th-century interpretation of the Directive should apply to Kirk's actions.

Right. I just assumed the PD was adapted in the 24th century, like any rule or regulation would be after 100 years. And like I said, sometimes Captain Picard even 'bent' the PD in some ways when the need arose. He seemed to be a champion of the PD, but even he interpreted the spirit of the PD when the need arose.

It's interesting this comes up because it's a big issue in a book I'm reading now "The Rings of Tautee". An entire civilization, solar system in fact, was destroyed by an accident gone bad (I'm about halfway through) and Kirk and Captain Bogle of the Farragut are there to investigate. It's a pre-warp society so the PD applies. Kirk is contemplating how to save the survivors. At first there are only about 100, and he reasons that doesn't violate the PD because the civilization is effectively dead (the more literal minded Captain Bogle feels this stretches the PD but he'll accept it). But then they find there may be thousands of survivors, which would likely violate the PD if he were to rescue them. Kirk is trying to figure out a way that he can save them without violating the PD, while Bogle, knowing Kirk pretty well, is contemplating how to stop him since he feels it would violate the letter of the PD. It's a pretty good example of just what you guys are talking about. Kirk doesn't want to break the rules. He's trying to think of some loophole, some way of following the spirit of the PD in a way that allows him to rescue the remaining survivors. Bogle is an example of a more 'by the book' follow the letter of the regulations.

But overall, I think it's an excellent example that Kirk doesn't break the rules, that he's not a 'rules don't apply to me' maverick. Now other commanders may not like his command style. Some admirals may prefer he stick to the letter of the regulations more. But he's not breaking the rules.

An example in the novels of a maverick might be Captain Calhoun in NF. You could argue that he's a more break the rules and let the chips fall where they may type. But even he always seems to manage to not push it to the point of a court martial. It probably helped that his methods usually resulted in success (and he was patrolling an area of space that is an area of lawlessness, and I guess is technically outside the Federation I believe)