Poll Do you consider Discovery to truly be in the Prime Timeline at this point?

[Leo Walsh]

Other than large scale sets, I don't see a resemblance. STD's design is generic, bland and dark. There's no style worth mentioning, nothing really unexpected, nothing that brings a new point of view that illuminates earlier designs in the series.

A lot of people don't like the design in the Abrams films, and that's fine. The design is, nonetheless, brilliant and exciting. And very Star Trek. It shows a lot of attention to the original series, not by copying specific elements of it - as STD does, here and there - but by trying to evoke the feeling that the designers perhaps imagined TOS might have carried in its original context (that is, 1960s "modern" aesthetics).

 

[Doc Mugatu]

Other than large scale sets, I don't see a resemblance. STD's design is generic, bland and dark. There's no style worth mentioning, nothing really unexpected, nothing that brings a new point of view that illuminates earlier designs in the series.

A lot of people don't like the design in the Abrams films, and that's fine. The design is, nonetheless, brilliant and exciting. And very Star Trek.

I don't hate any of the designs mentioned. I appreciate the look and effort of each one. Star Trek's art direction has always been brilliant. Not saying there is any link but for some reason, when Chris Pine is sitting in the chair with Spock and McCoy at his side the physicality of it calls to my mind the Gold Key comics. Then again Pablo Picasso works have always struck me as photo realistic.

 

[fireproof78]

It is fantastic you don't. I do. I make no demand that others see it as I do, so what's the problem?

Personal curiosity of mine. I like learning other POVs.

 

[Doc Mugatu]

Why? Who are you?

Personal curiosity of mine. I like learning other POVs.

Then bask in it, my friend, and let it fill your senses.

Shoot. Waitasecond.

That could be the Mexican food I had for dinner. Hold your breath a few minutes and then bask in it.

 

[fireproof78]

Then bask in it, my friend, and let it fill your senses.

Shoot. Waitasecond.

That could be the Mexican food I had for dinner. Hold your breath a few minutes and then bask in it.

I have kids. You can't scare me.

 

[GhoulEddie74]

I'll give the Kelvin Timeline Enterprise bridge this much: it may look like an Apple store but at least it's bright, cheerful and draws your eye in a generally pleasing way to all the luminescent colors and bright whites. It's a bridge the TOS or TNG crews could have felt at home on.

It feels like classic Trek with a 21st century twist, and that's something the perpetually gloomy, shockingly dull and cavernous bridges of starships on DSC lack. They're like the Batcave if Adam West and Burt Ward walked around having lost the will to keep fighting crime - or pay the light bill.

 

[PumpkinSpiceFoodCube]

It is fantastic you don't. I do. I make no demand that others see it as I do, so what's the problem?

There is none

 

[Leo Walsh]

I don't hate any of the designs mentioned. I appreciate the look and effort of each one. Star Trek's art direction has always been brilliant. Not saying there is any link but for some reason, when Chris Pine is sitting in the chair with Spock and McCoy at his side the physicality of it calls to my mind the Gold Key comics. Then again Pablo Picasso works have always struck me as photo realistic.

Well yes, and what's notable about those Gold Key comics is that they were a product of artists working from a few stills and (possibly) memory and using the tools and vocabulary of another medium to conjure a sense of overall familiarity.

 

[Rahul]

I can see why people see a Kelvin connection. Not just because of the bridge windows and the sstarships and sets being supersized.

It is made by the same people. Who have a very similat style to them, even if they "change up" things. A Christopher Nolan movie will always feel like a Christpher Nolan movie, weather he does Batman, WWII or some magician feud. A Kubrick film will always feel like a Kubrick film, no matter the subject, Vietnam War, Napoleon era or near future.

DIS is a series whose main producers is one of the original creators of Kelvin Trek. Of course there will be similarities, beyond some similar thing. Phasers shooting pulses, long camera tracking shots from outer space through the bridge window. Flippant dialogue in serious situations. A lot of similar topics and theme, being handled in the same way, with the same thoughts and conclusion.

But that being said, DIS is also super obviously intended to be a completely different product by the same people. There are just as many things where it directly contradics Kelvin Trek, not just the history (age and look of the Enterprise, Klingons, Pike), but also the series mechanic, technology and internal logic.

It's as if Rick Berman had made ENT not as a prequel, but as a reboot set in the same time. It's both obviously very different, but also very much a Berman/Braga show. DIS is a Kurtzman show. That tries to directly seperate itself from the Kelvin movies. But that is still notiecably in part made by the same mind.

 

[Tuskin38]

Why? Who are you?

Why are you so confrontational?

I just asked a simple question.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Uh what? That makes no sense.

Show me where it resembles the Kelvin Timeline.

And then there's future Paris in the final episode, right out of Into Darkness' future Earth. The visual influences are obvious. Even Pike's uniform is very similar to Kirk's in Beyond.

 

[Tuskin38]

Thank you! That's all I wanted as pictures.

Even Pike's uniform is very similar to Kirk's in Beyond.

It really isn't. The DSC Enterprise uniforms are just a colour swapped Discovery uniform minus the deltas on the side.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Thank you! That's all I wanted.


It really isn't. The DSC Enterprise uniforms are just a colour swapped Discovery uniform minus the deltas on the side.

Which goes to show how similar the cut of the uniforms are. I think the Disco blues quite closely resemble the black Earthside unis from ST'09/ID which Spock, Pike and Tom Harewood wore.

 

[Tuskin38]

Sure the Shenzhou's bridge looks some what similar to the Kelvin's, but the DSC's bridge doesn't and it doesn't look anything like the Enterprise's bridge in the movies.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Sure the Shenzhou's bridge looks some what similar to the Kelvin's, but the DSC's bridge doesn't and it doesn't look anything like the Enterprise's bridge in the movies.

They're still from the same films and thus it's 100% valid to say they look like part of the same world, or at least influenced heavily by it.

 

[Marynator]

Oh, but aren't those photographs of things built way before the Kelvin timeline was created? I mean, when Eric Bana came back in time, it's not like suddenly the whole universe changed its aesthetic, like some wave didn't ripple out and change the USS Kelvin's bridge or Vulcan's science school, right? I'm really totally not understanding at all why you'd talk about how things appear to determine which timeline it's in, because if Eric Bana never changed things and created a new parallel timeline, Kirk's father would've still worn his same uniform and worked on his same ship, and Spock would've still gone to a school that looked just the same, right?

My thinking is what separates prime from non-prime is if Eric Bana (I'm sorry, I forget his Romulan name!) changes history, if he destroys the USS Kelvin and if he blows up Vulcan, right? So if you don't see any evidence these things have happened or are happening, you can only really go by what you're told, and if the show's producers and writers tell you something like "No, this is the timeline Eric Bana didn't alter", I don't see how you can say they're wrong?

Am I even making sense?

 

[Jinn]

*caugh* Nero *caugh*

 

[Yistaan]

Oh, but aren't those photographs of things built way before the Kelvin timeline was created? I mean, when Eric Bana came back in time, it's not like suddenly the whole universe changed its aesthetic, like some wave didn't ripple out and change the USS Kelvin's bridge or Vulcan's science school, right? I'm really totally not understanding at all why you'd talk about how things appear to determine which timeline it's in, because if Eric Bana never changed things and created a new parallel timeline, Kirk's father would've still worn his same uniform and worked on his same ship, and Spock would've still gone to a school that looked just the same, right?

My thinking is what separates prime from non-prime is if Eric Bana (I'm sorry, I forget his Romulan name!) changes history, if he destroys the USS Kelvin and if he blows up Vulcan, right? So if you don't see any evidence these things have happened or are happening, you can only really go by what you're told, and if the show's producers and writers tell you something like "No, this is the timeline Eric Bana didn't alter", I don't see how you can say they're wrong?

Am I even making sense?

Totally agree, Discovery is similar to the Kelvin and the Vulcan school is similar to the Vulcan school in the Kelvin timeline because the Kelvin is from the prime timeline and Vulcan schools would be the same in both timelines because Nero didn't change that.

It would be more strange if Burnham's Vulcan school was different from Kelvinverse Spock's Vulcan school--this would mean Nero somehow changed Vulcan educational buildings! Since there was never a Vulcan school scene in the prime timeline before, it's logical that they would go with the Kelvinverse school design.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Oh, but aren't those photographs of things built way before the Kelvin timeline was created?

I'm speaking from a real-life perspective. In-universe, TOS Earth and Kelvin Earth look entirely different, planet Vulcan looks totally different and so on. It's impossible to make sense of if you look too closely.

 

[Yistaan]

I'm speaking from a real-life perspective. In-universe, TOS Earth and Kelvin Earth look entirely different, planet Vulcan looks totally different and so on. It's impossible to make sense of if you look too closely.

From a real life perspective, we're told that the moon looks very different in Star Trek First Contact due to the massive lunar colonies visible from Earth. Multiple shots of the moon in various other Star Trek works show it looking exactly the same as 20th century Earth, no lunar colonies visible at all.

RIKER: Look at that!
COCHRANE: What, you don't have a moon in the twenty-fourth century?
RIKER: Sure we do. It looks a lot different. There are fifty million people living on the moon in my time. You can see Tycho City, New Berlin, even Lake Armstrong on a day like this.

Like the Kelvin/TOS Earth, these are just things we're going to have to let slide, I think. Otherwise various episodes are in alternate universes too.

See the supposed moon in 2371: http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/File:Moon.jpg