Little bit of a difference. Numbers and counts have an undeniable ultimate truth unrelated to who says it. one can prove it.
Cannon is about copyright and ownership. Donald Trump doesn't own math. But CBS does own Star Trek.
Poll Do you consider Discovery to truly be in the Prime Timeline at this point?
- Thread starter Annorax849
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Little bit of a difference. Numbers and counts have an undeniable ultimate truth unrelated to who says it. one can prove it.
Cannon is about copyright and ownership. Donald Trump doesn't own math. But CBS does own Star Trek.
One is disproved by reality..this is science fiction and facts can be wiped out and replaced at will..
If CBS wanted to have the last episode of the last star trek series reveal that all of Star Trek..all the series, all the movies, all the books..was a drunken dream by Zefram Cochrane on the eve of the Phoenix warp flight..guess what..*they could*!
Ex Astris Scientia proves this every dayOf course they could. But the one thing they cannot do is force every fan to accept it. Anyone can stubbornly ignore whatever they want.
I'm not disputing canon, I'm just saying the DSC version of TOS and the TOS version of TOS aren't really the same. That, I would say, is indisputable.
They can't do that! Because we already know it's all Benny Russell's hallucination
It's perfectly reasonable (in-universe) for things like ship designs and uniforms to change over a period of years... and TMP took considerable pains to explain some of those changes. It happens IRL. But the look of a species is not something one expects to change over any short period of time... so when it happens in a story, you expect some sort of suitable explanation to be forthcoming.
IOW, you were generalizing from a small personal sample for the purpose of amplifying your own opinion, and you can't actually make any reliable statement about how Trek fandom overall reacted to the post-TMP Klingons.
Again, it's peculiar how casually you assume "many" think like you. If you were talking about an episode like "Thresholds" or "A Night in Sickbay" or "Spock's Brain," or even STV:TFF, I could see where you were coming from. But I have literally never heard anyone else speak of ENT's Klingon/Augment story with the kind of disdain you have for it.
I don't remember Kirk's decisions in TMP going "disastrously wrong," but whatever. Obviously, personal motivations can change over time just as easily as uniforms (as I posted to cultcross above), and indeed the implications of these changes are central to the story. The look of an entire species, again, is a fundamentally different kind of thing.
As for DSC... a prequel obviously deals with different constraints. Yes, things like chip designs and uniforms and tech can still change over a few years... but when we already know what the "later" versions look like, we expect the "earlier" versions to look like something that can plausibly lead to them. When information is unknown in later continuity (say, about cloaking devices), we expect it to be unknown in earlier continuity as well. A prequel that comes across as if it were a sequel creates a lot of cognitive dissonance. Not necessarily enough to place it "outside of canon" (which, again, is more of an official term of art — if it's onscreen it qualifies), but certainly enough to make it difficult to reconcile with known continuity.
Good point. I think it's definitely the latter. Certainly it is for me, at least.
I love live theatre, but it's a whole different kind of experience. There's a tacit understanding that what's on stage — the costumes, the sets, even the makeup — are meant as a symbolic expression of the story's reality, not a literal one. Filmed entertainment is different. The intent of its creators, and the expectations of its audiences, are typically aimed at mimesis (or as close as it's possible to get.) Were it otherwise, producers could save millions of dollars they regularly waste on location filming, special effects, and the like!...
(There are subcategories of film where this isn't necessarily so — musicals, for instance, which I also love — but they're exceptions, not the rule.)
I went into exactly that upthread in a comment to cultcross, actually. I was kind of disappointed no one took up the topic. To quote myself...
Retcon of course stands for "retroactive continuity," which seems simple enough... but IMHO there are two ways of doing it. Let's call them "easy" and "hard." The easy ones simply supply new information that casts past events in an interesting new light. (Dr. Strange was behind the scenes during the Fantastic Four's first confrontation with Rama-Tut in ancient Egypt? Cool!) The hard ones (for both writers and audience) require you to treat things you thought you knew as Wrong. (Spider-Man actually got his powers not through radioactivity, but because a spider-god made him its totem? Ummm... right... sure...)
In Trek terms, it's the difference between saying DS9 characters were roaming the halls of Station K-7 while Kirk was contending with tribbles (easy!)... and saying that Klingons "always" looked radically different than the way we saw them countless times with our own eyes (a whole lot harder to swallow).
In Trek terms, it's the difference between saying DS9 characters were roaming the halls of Station K-7 while Kirk was contending with tribbles (easy!)... and saying that Klingons "always" looked radically different than the way we saw them countless times with our own eyes (a whole lot harder to swallow).
And since we're talking about it...
You seem to be deliberately lowballing the number here, but other posters have already responded with numerous examples.
Umm... the Klingon War was very much a retcon, as were all the other things you mention, by precisely the commonly understood definition I was just talking about. That is to say, they were retroactive continuity implants that cast past events in a new light. To use your words, "new information that was previously not known" about already chronicled events. That's what a retcon is. Something doesn't have to involve a contradiction to be a retcon; if and when it does, that only makes it harder to deal with, because it produces cognitive dissonance.
That's actually perfectly reasonable. A brand-new show soliciting scripts from diverse writers with nothing but a sketchy writers' bible to go on is bound to stumble over more contradictions in the early going (thankfully, most of them trivial) than a series that's just the latest installment in an established franchise with a deep, broad, and extremely well-documented continuity. In the former case, it's fair to assume that contradictions are inadvertent; in the latter case, it's fair to assume that they're intentional.
You've got to be kidding. Unless you're watching through a telescope with a gauze filter on the end, the differences are pretty clear.
There's a difference between diegetic sound and non-diegetic sound. Everything you mention is in the latter category. The former would include things like computer sounds, bridge sounds, weapons sounds, etc. It would be nice if the show would match up with known TOS-era canon for such things... and in fact DSC has made some efforts in that direction, although it's made some mistakes along the way. Fortunately, variations in things we hear are usually a lot more subtle and hard to notice than in things we see.
As for the non-diegetic music, it's great too — I admit hearing the original Trek theme come up at the end of the DSC finale gave me goosebumps! — but it's optional, and a little goes a long way.
The question in the OP is not whether the show is canonical. Everyone agrees that it is, by the strict definition of the term (i.e., it's an on-screen production by the copyright holder). The question is whether the show fits within the continuity of Trek's prime timeline.
The whole reason it's generating such debate is that the producers of DSC are, obviously, not necessarily "holding themselves" to what's been previously established, in TOS and elsewhere. As written, the show would seem like a good fit (mostly... although certain bits like the widespread use of cloaking devices and intraship beaming step outside the lines there). As depicted on screen, however, it looks like a very different reality. For instance, the difference between a Klingon D7 warship as written and as shown is pretty dramatic. That's why we have so many people spouting off about the neologism "visual reboot" and insisting that's not the same as a continuity reboot.
If you insist it's all just about canon, you're missing the whole point.
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There's really nothing more to "retcon" than what Dr. Tupper stated in his original thesis: That is [Paraphrasing] fictional history essentially works backwards to allow room for creative license.
Anything beyond that is fan-issued amendment used to adhere to his/her bias.
so, you're not seeing an Enterprise-shaped Enterprise in both pictures? You can't be serious.
This press release just came from the White House:
"There were good people on both sides in the Klingon War. Very good people. You know it, and we know it, and so does the rest of the galaxy."
"There were good people on both sides in the Klingon War. Very good people. You know it, and we know it, and so does the rest of the galaxy."
You've never had a chat with me about it then.
Also, I can't believe people were expecting a completely standard 60s-style Connie to turn up for the Enterprise's little cameo, and I can't believe they're complaining over a relatively light visual spruce-up. It's tatefully done, it's clearly recognisable as the Enterprise, I fail to see the issue here.
I had to do some Googling to figure out who "Dr. Tupper" is... turns out he's a theologian who was writing about history. He did technically use the phrase "retroactive continuity," but the context was completely different.
Where popular fiction is concerned, the word "retcon" was first coined and defined by comic-book writer Roy Thomas in a letter column in All-Star Squadron in 1983, to describe what he was doing in that series... telling new stories of Golden Age comics characters, retroactively implanted among the continuity of their original published adventures.
It's "Enterprise-shaped," sure. That's a far cry from saying it looks the same. The devil's in the details.
...of which there are far more on the DSC Enterprise, having been designed for a show filmed in 4K.
Sorry, it looks the same, it's not just the shape. I should have been clearer. Those little details? Go unnoticed by 95% of the audience
Well canonical history.
The thing of it is, fictional canon and theological canon are identical in terms of practical use, despite peoples' instance to the contrary.
So you're saying if they'd used an ENT-style render of a classic TOS-style Constitution-class ship, 95% of the audience wouldn't have noticed it at all? (And most of the rest of us, who care about such things, would have loved it for the nostalgia kick?) Then why did they bother to change it at all? I thought the whole problem was that "modern audiences" would allegedly revolt if they saw an original-style Enterprise on screen!...
Speaking of...
no they wouldn't have, but they would have noticed that 15 year old SFX were used that do not fit in a show created in 2017
Great catch!
Humor was attempted. Humor attempt failed. I don't always know how to talk to TOS Fundamentalists. Just check out my quote. It's from Nimoy. He was slightly involved with TOS, may its reruns run forever so mote it be.
Why do TOSamendalists even bother watching Trek prequels? Isn't it like sticking your hand in a boiling pot? You know it's going to feel bad right? You know there's no benefit to be gained. You're not pulling Uhura out of there in a red micromini with a hand full of jellybean buttons and a set of Jefferies blueprints.
Yes, yes it did.
I don't know exactly why you're calling me (or anyone else) any kind of "fundamentalist," though, except for purposes of being dismissive. TOS is my favorite Trek series: stipulated. That's hardly uncommon in the fandom. But beyond that, all that's really under discussion here is what kind of expectations it's reasonable to have of a prequel... there's no reason Trek should be different in that respect from any other genre franchise.
Prequels, perhaps even more than sequels, are obviously intended to bank on the affection audiences have for the original material, and the myriad ways in which they succeed (or fail) at this are certainly fair game for discussion. Just think back to how widely (and deservedly) excoriated Lucas's Star Wars prequels were!...
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