Poll Do you consider Discovery to truly be in the Prime Timeline at this point?
- Thread starter Annorax849
- Start date
Umm, you kinda lost me here. You're being a very friendly and civil interlocutor, even when we disagree (and believe me, I appreciate that, especially when compared to some other posters), but in this bit you really seem to be doing a 180 from one paragraph to the other, and drawing two contrary conclusions from the same premise.
Here's the thing. We're still talking about it. The old saying of "No such thing as bad press" applies doubly so with the advent of the internet. Simply put, even as we are raging, whinging, carrying on and the like, it simply keeps the news cycle going.
In other words, we're not teaching CBS any lessons here.
Not really. I guess my larger point is that I hold TOS as one thing and the rest of Star Trek as another. In some weird way, one that I have never really noticed or articulated, TOS has always existed as the original Trek, and nothing will ever stand up to it. So, I don't try. I have been disappointed by TNG, DS9 VOY and ENT in some way or another, all largely because they didn't hook me like TOS did. It's when I realized that TOS really was something so incredibly unique that I was able to appreciate the other shows as they are not how I wish them to be.Umm, you kinda lost me here. You're being a very friendly and civil interlocutor, even when we disagree (and believe me, I appreciate that, especially when compared to some other posters), but in this bit you really seem to be doing a 180 from one paragraph to the other.
It isn't a 180 in the sense that I am flipping my opinion. I simply hold two rather extreme points of view at the same time. 'Tis the nature of humanity
As a product they have to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. Only a small minority of fans demand nothing but the old designs, you're just stuck in an echo chamber. The majority either like it or are fine with it. Star Trek is supposed to make money, rehashing TOS will not make money anymore. The demands of the audience expects certain things now. That's why most shows go for a serialized format, strive for movie level production quality and focus more on characters. It's the era of prestige television and they clearly want to have Star Trek join them. That's why DIscovery looks the way it does. It's supposed to compete with shows like Game of Thrones, Doctor Who, and Black Mirror. It's just the nature of the beast now.
Just like TOS was a production of it's time when it came to the writing, it's also a product of it's time when it came to production. It looks like other 60s scifi shows. The same goes for TNG and the 80s/90s followed by the other shows in their era. Enterprise is closer to modern television and has a weird balance of serialized and episodic television. But TOS as it looked and was written is never going to happen again. That doesn't mean the other shows are wrong, they're just different. I get that you have nostalgia for it. I like TNG and VOY because I grew up watching them. I can't help but love them, they're comforting to me. But I don't expect a new Star Trek show to look exactly like TNG. I even tried to watch The Orville because it's basically just more TNG, but it just reminded me how much I liked TNG so I stopped watching it and started binging TNG episodes instead.
Please, no.
Pretty much this. It's like trying to get a rock band back together and expecting them to sound like their first album. It is not possible.
In a sense, that's a problem for any show or movie, and one of the reasons that art and commerce are such a famously bad mix. From a strictly commercial POV, the producers of DSC (or anything else) only care whether people watch what they make, they don't care whether people like it.
Fortunately, very few people who go into creative professions actually view things from a strictly mercenary perspective (although I'm sure Les Moonves is one of them). Most of them actually do care what people think and say about what they make, because they want it to be liked. It's just human nature.
Who is a business man. I would expect that from him. He is largely running the day to day of CBS' business, not the actual production side of shows.
Or, should we also hold it against Lucille Ball for thinking "Star Trek" was a show going across the country with movie stars?
So it's like you view all the later shows with an asterisk next to them? Seems like a lot of cognitive dissonance to me, but whatever works for you!...Not really. I guess my larger point is that I hold TOS as one thing and the rest of Star Trek as another. ...
It isn't a 180 in the sense that I am flipping my opinion. I simply hold two rather extreme points of view at the same time. 'Tis the nature of humanity
(As for Moonves... from past accounts he personally hates Trek, so if he's producing it anyway for strictly mercenary reasons I suppose we shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. I just hope no one with that attitude is in charge at a level closer to the production.)
I'd be fine with things looking more like ENT, but seeing as the production designers who worked for the franchise under the old regime and with Berman and Braga are long gone that's not likely to happen. As I said, there are things I like or love about DSC and other things that make me sigh and cringe in disappointment. But that's the nature of the beast with Trek.
There are still people who think that ENT urinated all over the franchise and won't shut up about all the alleged continuity and timeline problems and that series went off the air 13 years ago. Trek is polarizing. And it always will be. It's Star Trek, and we Trekkies are serious about this to the point of fanaticism.
There are still people who think that ENT urinated all over the franchise and won't shut up about all the alleged continuity and timeline problems and that series went off the air 13 years ago. Trek is polarizing. And it always will be. It's Star Trek, and we Trekkies are serious about this to the point of fanaticism.
I felt they relied on big "surprises" like Tyler being a Klingon and Lorca being from the MU too much. I like the serial storytelling, so maybe it would be better to just reveal it quickly after being introduced so a sense of dread could develop. I think Tyler would have been interesting if we knew he was a Klingon, but didn't really figure out that he didn't know it until later. We would've been waiting for the other shoe to drop when he attacks the ship, thinking he was just getting close to Burnham in order to kill her as revenge. Then use our expectations against us.
Exactly, TOS is lightning in a bottle. The best we can hope for is for Discovery to honor the legacy, not so much the style and tone. I'm happy with space adventures with social commentary that appeals to our better nature by condemning our current sins. That's very fertile ground right now.
I honestly do not care about Moonves or his opinion on Star Trek. It seems like a rather odd thing to worry about, when his day-to-day involves overseeing an entire corporation and he is beholden to making it money. Star Trek is a CBS money maker, as evidenced by their marketing strategy guide from 2009 to 2012, including things like TOS merchandise, even as Kelvin films were being made.
He may be a mercenary, but that's ok.
I don't think a lot of the complaints are about production values and packaging. We all know we are not in the Sixties anymore. It's when we know for example a Klingon will look a certain way in TOS (something Discovery and its team marketed as a reference) and we get these incongruent looking versions instead. I can even force myself to try and accept the spore drive was such a failure it was never ever mentioned again, but the Klingons don't fit.
Klingons change. Done it all of my life with Star Trek. Discovery just happens to be the latest iteration.
Moonves probably only cares that Discovery makes enough profit to justify making it. Sabotaging it because he hates it and wants it to fail would probably get him fired and keep him from ever getting another high level position, except Sony.
The people making it want to make the best show possible, some fans just don't like their vision for the show. But that's why shows get retooled as they air. They've already started making adjustments to the second season. But I don't think we're going to see a major shift in art design, probably a sort of blend of Discovery and an updated TOS.
The people making it want to make the best show possible, some fans just don't like their vision for the show. But that's why shows get retooled as they air. They've already started making adjustments to the second season. But I don't think we're going to see a major shift in art design, probably a sort of blend of Discovery and an updated TOS.
Making a thing out of why the Klingons look different in TOS was the dumbest thing ENT did. It was better off as a joke in DS9.
If you want to get fanwanky about it, the Discovery Klingons keep to have a lot of variation to them. Many of the ones in crowd scenes are fairly close to the TNG era designs with minor changes. It's possible those Klingons exist and were able to rise the social ladder after the events of Discovery, we just haven't seen them on the show yet. Honestly Tyler's facial hair seems like a deliberate reference to that, he's just not an exaggerated version of them.
Umm, you seem to have reversed yourself here. A few posts ago you were saying viewers don't have a right to demand anything... now you're saying the show has to cater to them?
Moreover, I hate it when anyone uses theoretical viewer "expectations" to justify their own personal opinions or preferences, as if there were market research or something. There isn't. It's a completely non-falsifiable claim.
And moreover some more, if the producers didn't think the TOS connection would make money, they wouldn't have done a prequel, and marketed that angle so prominently. What's quixotic here is choosing to set the show in an established context, presumably to leverage viewer familiarity with and affection for that context, and then doing a show that's almost nothing like the thing the viewers know and like.
I'm sure they want to, but they're failing. DSC isn't pushing any creative boundaries or setting any high-water marks in terms of sophisticated writing, or acting, or art design, or really anything at all. All continuity issues aside, it's been a mixed bag... some good, some bad, and mostly just mediocre. As I posted just yesterday, the new SF (and espionage) show Counterpart (which just finished its own first season) really demonstrates what prestige TV can achieve these days, and in the process it overshadows DSC in almost every way.
But it wasn't and didn't. TOS very deliberately devised a look that was distinctively different from other shows of the era, and sought out a different level of writing as well, especially in the first season. That's why it developed such a loyal following and had such a cultural impact, while (e.g.) Lost in Space and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea didn't.
Nah. In ten years they will take such an implausible evolutionary turn that they will sprout hair and become more humanoid.
(Do you think my emoticon fits the timeline?)
It's funny, because I just realized something. Every time a new Star Trek show comes out, it makes its own distinct splash, then has to fall back on the "TOS feel." TNG was a little more literal in using unused Star Trek scripts or concepts, or sequels to a random story. Many of the shows did it trying to have the "Big 3" like Kirk-Spock-McCoy. ST Beyond attempted to recapture it as well, trying to have Spock and McCoy play off of each other, rather than seeing the dynamics that had already come from the prior films.
And, now, Discovery is moving towards a TOS feel.
Let it fail, then.
Nope.Nah. In ten years they will take such an implausible evolutionary turn that they will sprout hair and become more humanoid.
Similar threads
