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

[Jayson1]

Well DSC has proven you don't really need to keep the canonistas happy to have a hit show. Actually not really letting them dictate your show's visuals is probably why this show has more mainstream appeal.

I agree but it does make you wonder why they even pretend to be a prime universe show. They must think fans will either believe anything they say at face value or that the Kelvin Universe movies are really,really unpopular and they have to constantly remind people this show is not set in that universe or that people simply have no idea of other alternate timelines or that the reboot word is now a nasty word unless it is sort of connected to the old show or movie. Even the Kelvin Universe made sure to have Nimoy's Spock to create a connection while also comforting old school fans that everyone they grew up with didn't all of sudden cease to exist because of time travel.
It could also simply because Fuller wanted a more traditional look, mentioned the show was in the prime universe and you can't just come in and say he was wrong or we are doing away with his plans. I'm not even sure CBS as owned up to them firing him. I don't think they want the audience to know just how much interference was going on back then. That's for future "tell all" books.

Jason

 

[Jayson1]

ENT had the same arguments the second a ridged Klingon appeared in Broken Bow. Canon violation! we screamed in unison. We've already seen pre TNG Klingons, they don't look like that!

I think people were actually on a whole more cool with a visual update back then with the Klingons because you had a 80 year gap between TOS and TNG and I think a 50 year one between Enterprise and TOS. Plus you had the Worf joke in the Tribbles episode that was a good enough excuse to accept smooth headed Klingons being part of that episode and explained something that people thought about before but didn't much care since nobody ever thought we would ever get another show in that TOS time period. The other reason it's so hard to accept the new look on "Discovery" is the newer look had become iconic. It's almost like doing Vulcans and not giving tem pointy ears. Worf made sure that look would be the look people think of when they think about Klingons. . He changed everything ab about how we see them them and what we expect from them. Like Nimoy and the Vulcans he defined the race even though they had already been established and used before him.

Jason

 

[Ceridwen]

You're ignoring the two-and-a-half year gap between Star Trek and The Motion Picture in which the most radical visual update to literally everything in the universe happened.

 

[Jayson1]

That two year gap still had Shatner,Nimoy etc playing their old characters. The ship basically looks the same on the outside. They say the ship has gone through a refit is basically a brand new ship as Captain Decker points out to Kirk. Even the Klingon ships are basically the same ships from the show.

Jason

 

[Ceridwen]

The Klingon ships are "basically the same" in the same fashion the Enterprise in "Would You Take My Hand?" is, so I'm not sure why that's ok for that instance and not this one.

Is it just the cast aspect? If we get Sean Kenney to come back and play Pike will that make it ok?

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Perhaps she was trying to distract everyone from the visual canon of the lumber which Enterprise NCC-1701 is lorefully made of.

And in doing so, caused even more wood to become visible

 

[Butters]

The menagerie is on TV right now, with its death sentences, fat VDU screens, incurable paraplegia, paper print outs, time barriers and the like.

I get that more could be done to line up the aesthetics, and I do take issue with some artistic choices in DSC, but where do you draw the line?

Shouty Spock I can put down to Vulcan laryngitis, but 300 years of medical science and the best they can do is a light bulb? The world spins on and some things change.

Why not just enjoy what we’ve got for what it is, a new instalment of Star Trek.

 

[XCV330]

That two year gap still had Shatner,Nimoy etc playing their old characters. The ship basically looks the same on the outside. They say the ship has gone through a refit is basically a brand new ship as Captain Decker points out to Kirk. Even the Klingon ships are basically the same ships from the show.

Jason

other people have pointed out over the decade, if you really want to get nitpicky with details (and why bother, if you took the dimensions of the TOS and TMP enterprises together, there's almost nothing to be refit. Every part of that ship is new. What actually was brought over excelt maybe the dedication plaque? Yes it's a refit ship, in TMP, but whatever it previously was wouldn't have looked exactly like the TOS enterprise, either. Its another reason why its a losing game getting stuck on so-called "Visual canon"

 

[-Brett-]

It's pretty unambiguously another reboot. That would be fine if it was better written. CBS lying about it is also kind of a turn off.

 

[Mudd]

I guess they already got everyones money so they felt it wasn't needed.

Pretty much. Different business model than broadcast TV, where declining viewership from week to week translates quickly into real losses. Their only question here is whether folks will cancel in mid-series because of dissatisfaction, and I'd guess the likelihood of that, given a pre-sold and dedicated fandom, is low.

 

[cooleddie74]

DSC does have the lowest rewatch appeal of any of the existing Trek series with the exception of TAS. I might rewatch one or two episodes for specific scenes and sequences but unlike ENT or TNG I never have the urge to go back and binge several episodes at a time. In that respect the series is failing because it actually airs on a streaming platform designed for binge-watching and even I - a lifelong Trekkie - just don't feel the desire most of the time.

 

[jaime]

DSC does have the lowest rewatch appeal of any of the existing Trek series with the exception of TAS. I might rewatch one or two episodes for specific scenes and sequences but unlike ENT ot TNG I never have the urge to go back and binge several episodes at a time. In that respect the series is failing because it actually airs on a streaming platform designed for binge-watching and even I - a lifelong Trekkie - just don't feel the desire most of the time.

I call it the Buffy Season 7 effect. Too arc heavy, too grim for pretty much its entire run. I can rewatch the earlier seasons, but five is it’s natural end. DS9 suffers a little from this too, but is uplifting and therefore more likely to get a rewatch.

 

[Butters]

DSC does have the lowest rewatch appeal of any of the existing Trek series with the exception of TAS. I might rewatch one or two episodes for specific scenes and sequences but unlike ENT or TNG I never have the urge to go back and binge several episodes at a time. In that respect the series is failing because it actually airs on a streaming platform designed for binge-watching and even I - a lifelong Trekkie - just don't feel the desire most of the time.

I’ll agree cautiously with this. Rewatch potential is low, but, it’s also fresh in the memory. I might rewatch the entire run before series two though.

But as a streaming series, it doesn’t generate any extra revenue on rewatch. Netflix can consider me a cash cow for as long they’ve got Dr Who. Star Trek is bonus material.

Discovery isn’t deep enough to command a second viewing. It needs layer upon layer of mystery and intrigue. Or failing that, a proper fuck yeah factor. They need to maybe steel the enterprise from space dock a few times.

 

[The Wormhole]

The finale they obviously wanted to be a tight wrapped bow where it could have been a series finale had there been no renewal. However, since the renewal came so early on .... your right they didn't have to make it so tidey.

"The renewal came so early on"? The show was renewed in October 2017, that's after the show began airing and after the finale was filmed.

Though, I suspect another reason for the rush job wrapping up the Klingon war was because the current writing staff wanted Fuller's idea they were saddled with done and out of the way.

Well DSC has proven you don't really need to keep the canonistas happy to have a hit show. Actually not really letting them dictate your show's visuals is probably why this show has more mainstream appeal.

Regardless of how popular Disco is at the moment, it is not by any definition of the word "mainstream."

 

[cooleddie74]

The Klingon ships are "basically the same" in the same fashion the Enterprise in "Would You Take My Hand?" is, so I'm not sure why that's ok for that instance and not this one.

Is it just the cast aspect? If we get Sean Kenney to come back and play Pike will that make it ok?

I hate to burst your bubble, but those Klingon ships in the season finale weren't really "basically the same" as the Enterprise was compared to her TOS appearance. Now, one can say those are Klingon ships from the mid-23rd century and even like those new designs, but "basically the same" doesn't even come close.

 

[Lord Garth]

I know I'm a deviant freak -- I should have a T-shirt that says it -- but I'm on my third rewatch of DSC. I watch it in order as opposed to random like I would with an episodic series. When I rewatch something serialized, sometimes I pick out an episode I like to watch at random, but I'll usually start from the beginning and work my way through again. As I find time.

 

[Dijeirusan]

Regardless of how popular Disco is at the moment, it is not by any definition of the word "mainstream."

Bull-effing-shit. After Stranger Things and Riverdale, and memes for Simpsons, this is easily the most talked about show on my Facebook.

 

[lawman]

ENT had the same arguments the second a ridged Klingon appeared in Broken Bow. Canon violation! we screamed in unison. We've already seen pre TNG Klingons, they don't look like that!

I don't know about "screaming," but really, that was a reasonable concern to express. Not unlike DS9's "Blood Oath" (as another poster mentioned), it picked at the scab of the long-unanswered question about Klingon morphology. To ENT's credit, though, it eventually did provide an answer for that question.

 

[cooleddie74]

And the Augment virus still gets hate for being a stupid explanation when the alternatives were either much more ridiculous or annoying as theories or we wouldn't get an explanation at all.

 

[The Wormhole]

Bull-effing-shit. After Stranger Things and Riverdale, and memes for Simpsons, this is easily the most talked about show on my Facebook.

Well, that's quite a high bar.