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

[fireproof78]

No I did not back off, I agreed that not you alone held your view. The majority seem to not share your view, nor does the show itself. Lines out of context might. Your view is so uncommon, I had never honestly heard it before.

Same here. Honestly, the young Starfleet Captain Scott in "Conspiracy" actually struck me as a bit of a nod to Kirk but that she was unusual as well in her achievement.

I would say that the majority of fans don't interpret Janice's line as implying a Starfleet ban on female captains.

Respectfully, how do you know the majority view of the fans? You asked @Mirror Mirror the same question, so turnabout is fair play in this instance, no pun intended.

I may not agree with @Mirror Mirror about the TOS Enterprise design asthetic, but that doesn't mean he's wrong about everything. Let's not make it too personal here.

 

[lawman]

Your view is so uncommon, I had never honestly heard it before.

Well, after all, you're self-admittedly (even proudly) not a fan of TOS in the first place. I don't suppose you spend a lot of time in threads discussing the details of TOS episodes. That's probably a good reason not to jump to any hasty assumptions about what other fans think about them, though. What I posted is, honestly, not remotely an uncommon take on it.

 

[Mirror Mirror]

Well, after all, you're self-admittedly (even proudly) not a fan of TOS in the first place. I don't suppose you spend a lot of time in threads discussing the details of TOS episodes. That's probably a good reason not to jump to any hasty assumptions about what other fans think about them, though. What I posted is, honestly, not remotely an uncommon take on it.

This has been brought up often since DSC was first talked about. As soon as a female was cast, there has been endless threads all over about the "glass ceiling". The Fact TOS is my lest fav trek does not mean I have not watched it or this topic has not been talked about over and over.

 

[Mirror Mirror]

Same here. Honestly, the young Starfleet Captain Scott in "Conspiracy" actually struck me as a bit of a nod to Kirk but that she was unusual as well in her achievement.

I mean the anti-feminist groups are happy to point this out to you( At length and for DAYS). I have heard about this subject since I have been talking trek online. I have honestly never seen anyone who thought it was meant to be anything but what the common view is.

 

[lawman]

Respectfully, how do you know the majority view of the fans? You asked @Mirror Mirror the same question, so turnabout is fair play in this instance, no pun intended.

I don't, necessarily. You snipped the part where I wrote, "Based on the admittedly anecdotal evidence of threads around these forums over the years..." That is to say, in light of the (unavoidably limited) data we have at hand about fan opinion, my provisional assessment of it would draw the opposite conclusion from his.

 

[fireproof78]

I don't, necessarily. You snipped the part where I wrote, "Based on the admittedly anecdotal evidence of threads around these forums over the years..." That is to say, in light of the (unavoidably limited) data we have at hand about fan opinion, my provisional assessment of it would draw the opposite conclusion from his.

And, based upon my experience at the official Trek boards (when they were still up), the TOS Concordance (by a fan) the Star Trek Encyclopedia (also by a fan), several Star Trek RPGs I have participated in online, I can say that is the first time I've seen that argument.

This isn't to gang up on you, though I'm sure you feel that way @lawman I'll just state that in anecdotal evidence, experience has taught me to be a bit skeptical. For every experience like yours, there is one like mine, so on and so forth.

A better analysis would be to ask fans from the 60s, and read fanzines.

 

[Lord Garth]

Most of the threads and most of my posts from when I first posted here (1999-2010) have been purged and pruned from the board. But, circa 2003, in the TOS Forum, I used to argue back-and-forth with one of the forum regulars of the time about "Turnabout Intruder".

I argued for the retcon that Kirk's personal world of Starship Captains didn't admit women. I argued for this while knowing it was a retcon, using the same arguments I use today, "It doesn't deserve to be canon! I can't believe Number One hit the glass ceiling!" He maintained the writer's intent in 1969 was women couldn't be Captains, that's the way it was in TOS and Kirk acknowledged it wasn't fair.

Occasionally, we'd have other posters chime in saying they read it as meaning Kirk's personal world too, but I personally understood what the intent was likely to have been in the '60s. I thought it was hypocritical because of what we saw from "The Cage". But, unfortunately, society then (and now) is one great big hypocrisy in general.

 

[PureCrimson]

All I can really add to this discussion is: it's a true shame Trek has gotten to the point now where newer entries have to be debated as canon at all. :/

This is not the Trek I remember loving.

But to answer the question, no. The fact this had to be set '10 years prior to Kirk' wasn't an artistic reason, it was for fanservice. And it doesn't fit at all for me. Like, literally, at all.

 

[fireproof78]

Most of the threads and most of my posts from when I first posted here (1999-2010) have been purged and pruned from the board. But, circa 2003, in the TOS Forum, I used to argue back-and-forth with one of the forum regulars of the time about "Turnabout Intruder".

I argued for the retcon that Kirk's personal world of Starship Captains didn't admit women. I argued for this while knowing it was a retcon, using the same arguments I use today, "It doesn't deserve to be canon! I can't believe Number One hit the glass ceiling!" He maintained the writer's intent in 1969 was women couldn't be Captains, that's the way it was in TOS and Kirk acknowledged it wasn't fair.

Occasionally, we'd have other posters chime in saying read it as meaning Kirk's personal world too, but I personally understood what the intent was likely to have been in the '60s. I thought it was hypocritical because of what we saw from "The Cage". But, unfortunately, society then (and now) is one great big hypocrisy in general.

Humanity is hypocritical, in general

Not saying the interpretation wouldn't be nice, but I think that writer's intent needs to be taken in to account, as well as how the audience of the time would have heard it, rather than assuming it must fit the way I read it.

This is made doubly painful by Kirk's remark regarding Yeoman Smith in the second pilot.

 

[Jesse1066]

As am I, but it also opens the table up for a retcon for numerous reasons. So, what do we retcon away? Just the things that are uncomfortable? Do we take Gene's approach and say "It was always meant to be this way but because of budget it wasn't."? Do we take Nicholas Meyer's view of "craft a great story and not worry as much about canon?"

Do we hand wave away because it was "...the 60s, 70s, 80s, or 90s?"

What is the perspective on the retcons and where do we draw the line?

I don't know where the line should be drawn. Any given day, I might draw a different line. In this particular instance I feel that there's an easy way out, but in other areas I might take a harder line. I wouldn't go so far as to say that humanity has to have seen the Romulans face to face prior to TOS for example, and I'll use any explanation I can come up with for how it's possible that the Romulans kept their heritage secret for so long. My headcanon is a version of TOS that best fits with the other series and with itself.

 

[cooleddie74]

If they ignore it, the retcon is itself, retconned. As it should be. Not only was it not needed, it messed with a vast history of trek over a damned joke.

Not really. Enough fans asked for it that a remarkably well-thought-out answer based on genetic manipulation and a pathogen that infected millions if not billions was eventually devised for a prequel series set more than 100 years before the time of Kirk and Spock. It wasn't a cheap handwave nor a convenient ignoring of opinion and hoping the nerds would eventually shut up about it (we never do, if you haven't noticed, on either side of the issue).

Writers concocted a two-part story that not only explained the differences in appearance between TOS Klingons and their forebears and descendants by giving us what amounted to a modern update of the old FASA explanation. Genetic engineering and a change in physical appearances, but whereas in those old guides the Klingons did so willingly to infiltrate Federation space by having their soldiers look more human ENT explained that it was a pure accident caused by Klingon scientists trying to create super warriors with enhanced physical strength. It backfired and took lives before the Empire learned how to cure the deadly virus and left generations of Klingons with more humanlike appearances and smooth foreheads.

Done. Explained. Those who'd long sought an answer got a fairly sensible one and those who didn't care didn't have their childhoods ruined or Trek itself forever soiled. Everyone wins and one more nerd obsession is officially settled in canon even if some fans don't like it. At the end of the day, it's better than a jokey (if very entertaining) comment spoken by a Klingon from a later series. We can argue that it made Bashir and O'Brien look like idiots for not recognizing what Klingons looked like in the 2260s, but at least it's an explanation that most fans can accept even if they think it sounds stupid.

Frankly, I'll take Julian Bashir sounding like he never read a chapter of his Starfleet history texts at the Academy and coming off as forgetful or ignorant over millions of Trekkies still asking Paramount and CBS to explain why Klingons didn't have ridges in the late '60s.

 

[Mirror Mirror]

Not really.

We will disagree, I found it the stupidest, lest thought out fan wank in all of trek. It made everyone post TOS look stupid as all hell and ruined a funny joke.

 

[cooleddie74]

Nah. It just explained it.

When somebody explains the reason why the chicken crossed the road it doesn't negate my chuckle over the original joke and its delivery. It just enhances it and makes me more deeply appreciate the humor. Now we know why Worf and other Klingons were so embarrassed. Would you want to tell your crewmates that Klingons spent the better part of a century with human DNA in their bloodstreams? Filthy Earther scum.

 

[Mirror Mirror]

Nah. It just explained it.

When somebody explains the reason why the chicken crossed the road it doesn't negate my chuckle over the original joke and its delivery. It just enhances it and makes me more deeply appreciate the humor. Now we know why Worf and other Klingons were so embarrassed. Would you want to tell your crewmates that Klingons spent the better part of a century with human DNA in their bloodstreams? Filthy Earther scum.

Once more, we will disagree, it was a stupid retcon that made zero sense( even for trek) over a joke, which does not even exist now.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

I didn't think it was necessary, not because it made characters look stupid or anything, I just thought it was a waste of time appeasing obsesssed fans who could never reconcile with the fact that it was just an upgrade in make up for fictional aliens in a fictional universe. But then again I never understood the desire to try to make Trek seem like a believable universe you could live in because nothing about it ever was, not even absurd the explanation. In some ways I'm glad that was the only episode featuring "augment Klingons" (because to me that's not what TOS Klingons are, they're simply Klingons, no more or less than what we see in later installments).

The fact that there are fans that try to pretend that line in "Turnabout Intruder" was about something else rather than what it explicitly was (that females cannot become captains in Starfleet) just highlights that inability to accept that Trek isn't all that perfect. I love TOS, but for all the nice stuff showing progressive viewpoints in humanity, it also had a very ugly streak of misogyny baked in, which was not surprising given that it was a product of the 1960s. "Turnabout Intruder" was not the only example. "Wolf in the Fold" is probably the worst in that regard.

So it's a great thing that all that ugliness in TOS was essentially retconned in later installments.

 

[F. King Daniel]

The show does fit somewhere in Star Trek though, and that is the Kelvin timeline, the tone, how the characters all act like cliquey high school students, Klingon redesign, the ship sizes etc. Stick it in Kelvin and it perfectly fits.
(Thats what happens when you get Kurtzman, Orci and Goldsman as producers)

Nope. Into Darkness established the Kelvin Klingons as an unknown who'd conquered two planets Starfleet knew of and fired on Federation ships half a dozen times in 2259. Disco Klingons destroyed a third of Starfleet and conquered Starbase One in a huge war which took place in 2256/7.

If I had a penny for every time I've said that in this forum, I'd have at least 5p by now.

 

[cooleddie74]

DSC has a lot of flaws but fitting into the Kelvin Timeline isn't one of them. For one, the Klingons in the deleted scenes of 2009 and Into Darkness were largely like their TOS Movie- and TNG-era counterparts in the Prime Timeline. They had hair, used more recognizable weapons and save for their flared nostrils and ears that look almost exactly like those of the DSC Klingons bore only a superficial resemblance. The Klingon battle cruisers seen in the Kobayashi Maru simulation are basically D7s or K't'ingas with slight aesthetic upgrades to reflect a different timeline and a new film produced in the 21st century.

In practically every respect the Klingons in STID - a movie I find just as flawed in its own way as DSC - are superior to what we've been getting in the new series. DSC Klingons would not fit well into the Kelvin Timeline of that same decade and I'm glad they weren't the ones we saw fighting Kirk and Khan in the film.

 

[jaime]

I didn't think it was necessary, not because it made characters look stupid or anything, I just thought it was a waste of time appeasing obsesssed fans who could never reconcile with the fact that it was just an upgrade in make up for fictional aliens in a fictional universe. But then again I never understood the desire to try to make Trek seem like a believable universe you could live in because nothing about it ever was, not even absurd the explanation. In some ways I'm glad that was the only episode featuring "augment Klingons" (because to me that's not what TOS Klingons are, they're simply Klingons, no more or less than what we see in later installments).

The fact that there are fans that try to pretend that line in "Turnabout Intruder" was about something else rather than what it explicitly was (that females cannot become captains in Starfleet) just highlights that inability to accept that Trek isn't all that perfect. I love TOS, but for all the nice stuff showing progressive viewpoints in humanity, it also had a very ugly streak of misogyny baked in, which was not surprising given that it was a product of the 1960s. "Turnabout Intruder" was not the only example. "Wolf in the Fold" is probably the worst in that regard.

So it's a great thing that all that ugliness in TOS was essentially retconned in later installments.

From my perspective, it’s not about wanting TOS to be perfect, just that by the point my generation (and location) we’re watching it, it never remotely occurred to us women couldn’t be in charge of something (they had managed countries by this point.) so I only ever got it as another incidence of Kirk being married to the Enterprise Metaphor. Was it intended differently? Probably. Kid me wouldn’t have thought about it, and maybe they got lucky with just enough ambiguity.

 

[lawman]

And, based upon my experience at the official Trek boards (when they were still up), the TOS Concordance (by a fan) the Star Trek Encyclopedia (also by a fan), several Star Trek RPGs I have participated in online, I can say that is the first time I've seen that argument.

If you say so, but I'm honestly surprised. I don't have my copies of the Concordance or the Encyclopedia handy, although I don't personally recall either of them taking Lester's comment as a statement about Starfleet (I'd be especially surprised if the Concordance did so, since I recall Bjo Trimble being a fan of this particular episode)... but FWIW, according to Memory Alpha, "An interpretation offered by the Star Trek Chronology (2nd ed., p. 78) suggests Lester's comment referred to Kirk's inability to maintain a relationship, due to his responsibilities as a starship captain." Besides, with or without outside sources, it's not as if it's a counter-intuitive interpretation.

 

[fireproof78]

If you say so, but I'm honestly surprised. I don't have my copies of the Concordance or the Encyclopedia handy, although I don't personally recall either of them taking Lester's comment as a statement about Starfleet (I'd be especially surprised if the Concordance did so, since I recall Bjo Trimble being a fan of this particular episode)... but FWIW, according to Memory Alpha, "An interpretation offered by the Star Trek Chronology (2nd ed., p. 78) suggests Lester's comment referred to Kirk's inability to maintain a relationship, due to his responsibilities as a starship captain." Besides, with or without outside sources, it's not as if it's a counter-intuitive interpretation.

No, it isn't counter-intuitive, but it isn't common in my experience and reading. Certainly not enough for me to consider it the "majority" view.