Hell, a good marriage can do that to you.
Poll Do you consider Discovery to truly be in the Prime Timeline at this point?
- Thread starter Annorax849
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Hell, a good marriage can do that to you.
By Trekkies. The general public, those who haven't watched Wrath of Khan two dozen and one times, liked the film enough for it to be the most financially-successful Trek movie of all.
We reach, brother.
I disagree. I think they missed an opportunity by having Carol Marcus not using "Janet Wallace" as an alias. They were damn close, but they just missed out on the reference... that would have been a pretty cool retcon to explain why we supposedly never heard of Carol Marcus before Wrath of Khan.
No, it isn't, pretty much by definition.
A narrative is a story with a discrete beginning and ending. An "episode" is said to be discrete phase within that narrative that is itself a smaller narrative within the larger one. The extent to which discrete episodes tie together into a broader overall narrative varies dramatically from one story to another; stories where they have almost nothing to do with each other are described as "episodic" and are somewhat loosely related to the beginning and the end. "The Odyssey" is the classic example of this: most of the bullshit Odysseus has to put up with is broken up into discrete events that are related to but not directly affected by each other and are almost standalone stories in their own right. But Odysseus' quest to get back to his wife is not actually closely related to the story of Atalanta trying to outrun her boyfriend, even if the two involve some of the same characters.
Well, no, the conceit of a shared fictional universe is that they have the same BACKGROUND. This is, again, a feature we see a lot in comics, anime and Manga. The Marvel universe has multiple characters and story arcs that can run independently of each other and are often so loosely related that their cross encounters wind up raising serious continuity issues (example: why nobody who isn't peripherally related to the X-men or X-Factor series seems to remember that time Apocalypse almost destroyed New York). For that matter, the entire premise of "X-Men" becomes relatively hard to swallow in a universe where "The Avengers" are even allowed to exist. Given the mutant registration/oppression subplots that are a staple of the X-men franchise, the obvious question is why the hell Charles Xavier never partnered up with Tony Stark to start recruiting his top students into the ranks of the Avengers. I mean, "professional superhero" is pretty much the only line of work Xavier's students could plausibly get without going the black market route (like X-factor, which has exactly the same problem) and the Avengers are the main ones who would hire them.
In this case, and in most others, the shared universe doesn't provide narrative consistency across multiple platforms, and isn't really meant to. It's intended to create a contextual/historical sandbox for those stories to operate without having to do the leg work of building an entire fictional world from scratch at the opening of each one. This is why the more recent marvel universes opened into the "Marvel Comics Universe" instead of being standalone films like literally every superhero movie made up to that point. It's why Universal TRIED to do the same thing with its monster movies only to fail miserably with that bullshit "The Mummy" remake. And it's why the original expanded universe from Star Wars was rendered non-canon, because it had established far too much narrative progression for characters that Disney planned to use in future productions and they wanted to clear the board for them to make different creative decisions.
In the context of the story, sure. In the context of other stories, not so much.
Here's an interesting question: how angry are Star Wars fans over the fact that the Ghost looks remarkably different in "Rebels" than it does in "Rogue One?"
I'd say it's remarkably similar given that Rebels is a cartoon and Rogue One is live action. That's hardly a surprise since the animation team actually handed over their model to ILM for reference. The design is mostly identical, just far more detailed. Even the proportions are barely changed (unlike the Star Destroyers and TIE Fighters in Rebels).
That depends. Are stories A and B told as part of the same series or told separately in separate productions?
I mainly ask this question out of recognition of the fact that Lena Heady and Emilia Clarke look absolutely NOTHING LIKE Linda Hamilton but we're expected to believe that all three of them are the same character in three different installments of "Terminator." For that matter, having Nick Stahl playing John Connor is a rather interesting choice considering he doesn't look anything like Edward Furlong OR Christian Bale. For THAT matter, the fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger appears visibly older between T2 and T3 is incredibly peculiar, but like the other rather dubious casting choices in those films, it's not something we're supposed to notice.
Because these are related but separate stories, they only need to be consistent within their own narrative. So it doesn't really matter if "Genesys" Sarah Connor doesn't look like "Judgement Day" Sarah Connor. What matters is that she continues to look enough like Genesys Sarah Connor enough that her hair color doesn't suddenly change between scenes and the audience goes "What the fuck?" (see the example of Tora Ziyal. I asked around, turns out I'm not alone in not actually realizing she was supposed to be the same character. My uncle, who is usually pretty sharp about these things, told me an hour ago "I thought those were all Gul Dukat's daughters? Didn't he say he had seven of them?")
If episode one and episode 2 in a series are connected, we expect their visuals to also be connected.
And this is the point: Discovery isn't CONNECTED to any other series in the Star Trek franchise.
At least, not yet.
I almost mentioned the Star Destroyer in Rebels, because it looks ridiculous (and "Rebels Yoda" is a fucking abomination) but really, the Ghost is the only ship in that series where the difference can't be plausibly explained. Because there are many star destroyers, and a force projection of Yoda can look distorted or warped... but the Ghost slightly changing proportions and adding a shit ton of hull detail only to loose all of that detail a few years later is not really something you can explain in universe and it's clearly just a production change.I'd say it's remarkably similar given that Rebels is a cartoon and Rogue One is live action. That's hardly a surprise since the animation team actually handed over their model to ILM for reference. The design is mostly identical, just far more detailed. Even the proportions are barely changed (unlike the Star Destroyers and TIE Fighters in Rebels).
Don't be. I've seen it once or twice a year since it was released. I've easily watched TMP a couple hundred times. Great entertainment does that.
No explanation necessary. Everything is stylized because it's a cartoon.
It's stylized because it's FICTION. An artist works to make something recognizeable so that his audience can easily know what it's supposed to be, but that doesn't mean your fictional spaccraft is going to be drawn/modeled/built the same way by every artist who creates it.
Even Star Trek isn't THAT visually consistent. Note the 4-foot Enterprise model and the boxy shuttlecraft set piece from season 1 that looks nothing at all like the model. And don't get me started on the disassembled Lore parts...
Point is, the visuals aren't supposed to be taken 100% literally. They're just props, it's just a show. Just because you can see that Khan is clearly fighting stunt double doesn't mean you have to imagine some sort of programmable personal forcefield device that activates for brief moments that distorts Kirk' appearance and makes him look slightly different between leaps or some other convoluted bullshit.
Not even disagreeing with you, really, just saying (tldr) that the visuals should not be taken literally. They're just filigree for the narrative.
I don't completely disagree with you either, but I prefer when previously established things are kept pretty close to their established designs rather than changing for no particular (in universe) reason.
Fine, you don't like that term? Call it a metanarrative. Or a shared universe. Or an exercise in intertextuality. Take your pick. It really doesn't matter... you know perfectly well what I was talking about, so you're just arguing semantics here.
Yes, Obviously. In other words, to whatever degree any two stories in the shared universe may or may not be explicitly linked, they share a setting.
That's the real bone of contention here, whatever term you choose to describe that shared setting. I'm saying that given that shared setting, it makes sense to expect depictions of that setting (in whatever medium is relevant... prose, audio, visual, whatever) to remain consistent with one another, insofar as reasonably possible. You're arguing, for whatever quixotic reason, that some things need to stay consistent but others just don't matter. The logic behind your stance is elusive.
Why not? On what basis do you draw this seemingly arbitrary distinction? After all, when the medium is film or TV, how the setting looks is a big part of what defines it.
I honestly haven't got a clue, since I'm not Star Wars fan and I don't get into discussions about it. I do recall that this analogy has come up once before in the last few weeks; I don't recall who raised it. FWIW, though, judging by Jesse1066's post, I'd say calling the two depictions "remarkably different" is a wild overstatement; they look pretty much exactly the same to me, given the difference in medium (live action vs. cartoon). (For the same reason, I have no problem in accepting TAS as part of Trek canon, despite its occasional visual oddities.)
What does this have to do with it? If the two productions are in the same medium and meant to share the same setting, they should be as consistent as it's feasible to be.
No, it's not "not something we're supposed to notice." It's just an unavoidable constraint of the medium — you can't make actors younger. (Although CGI these days is getting damn close... but it's not quite there yet. IMHO the cameo of Leia at the end of Rogue One suffered a bit too much of an "uncanny valley" effect. But I digress.) When the characters walk onstage in Act I of Macbeth, it's not that you don't notice they're not actually standing on a blasted heath in Scotland... it's just that you accept the conventions of the medium.
There is no medium I'm aware of, however, where arbitrary inconsistencies in the depiction of the setting are considered ordinary and acceptable.
By what stretch of the imagination is it "not connected"? It's used shared characters and concepts and alien races and settings and ships, not just by casual reference but as explicit and significant parts of the stories. What kind of radically minimalist approach to narrative "connections" are you trying to assert here?
You're making an all-or-nothing argument here that ignores matters of degree and significant differences in context. Just because audiences can and do disregard discrepancies that are artifacts of the medium (like stunt doubles) or arise from differences between media (like stylized animation) or that are so trivial as to escape all but the most dedicated notice (like the Ent-D model differences) does not mean that any and all discrepancies, even those that could have been avoided but were made deliberately, can and should be handwaved away as irrelevant "filigree." That way lies a slippery slope to arbitrary changes in the setting by creative whim, and to narrative incoherence.
(Indeed, the Terminator franchise you mentioned upthread is an example of just that, for reasons that go far beyond any change of actors. The writers of each film (and the series) had their own conceits that were incompatible with what went before, and frankly some of them had no clue how to write a logically consistent time-travel story in the first place, and the result was a morass that is all but impossible to stitch together into any kind of coherent continuity. Although I've seen people try...)
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Everything other than Star Trek.
Going back to your Macbeth example, not every Shakespeare production takes place within the set and setting of Elizabethan England. Particularly nowadays, productions take huge liberties with sets and time periods. These are actually some of the better productions (Branagh's Hamlet or the Ian McKellen Richard III, off the top of my head).
Yes, quite so. But the constraints and expectations of the medium are different; every production of a stageplay is, in a sense, an adaptation of the original work. A remake, as it were, in Hollywood terms. They're not put forward as sharing a setting in the first place, so nobody expects them to. (Unless, say, you deliberately stage a set of linked productions of related plays... say, Shakespeare's "Henriad" tetralogy... in which case audiences might reasonably expect a degree of consistency in how they look from one production to the next.)
Okay:
"blowing up Vulcan": I don't like it, but it is internally consistent with the franchise if we invoke the parallel universe trope that the movies are ostensibly built on.
"completely different stardate system": I agree that doesn't make sense (esp. since the "stardates" are just very badly hidden Gregorian calendar dates), but I don't think it's the worst problem the Kelvin timeline has.
"having a completely different launch date for the Enterprise": Once again, I think can be justified by the parallel universe and altered history trope: similar things happened (Starfleet built a starship Enterprise 1701), but with differences in the exacts (the date, the design of the ship, etc.). I don't like the Kelvin Enterprise as well as the TOS one, but these changes make sense in context, IMHO.
"having Kirk evolve a completely different personality": I agree to an extent. However, his life was changed from the very beginning in the Kelvin timeline (a key point in his characterization is his father dying the day he was born, while it's pointed out that the original Kirk's father inspired him and lived to see his son assume command of the Enterprise), so I guess the differences make sense, even if I think that they push him away from the original character and having him repeat the exact same character arc in the first two movies was bad writing. However, I will content that by the time of Beyond, Chris Pine's Kirk had more or less become the same character that William Shatner played, so they did get there, just by a different route.
"having the Enterprise be the very first starship in history to ever launch on a five year mission": I agree that that doesn't seem to mesh with what's come before, but I don't actually think it's been said onscreen how many five year missions there were in history. Personally, I feel that it's a mistake, but not worth fighting over, any more that the Enterprise being said to be only twenty years old in Star Trek III.
I think that the Kelvin movies have their share of problems (the implications of the transwarp beaming, Chekov age being wrong, Khan's magic blood, the plot holes of Into Darkness, the odd design changes), etc. but not very difference is a mistake. (And that's one point of debate about DSC: which changes are mistakes and which are not?)
I really think that Lorca should've had something else, like a Tribble or an updated version of the space spaniel.
Except that the Star Trek TV shows and movies were made as a shared universe from day one and have always been consistent on that irregardless of the occasional discrepancy. Even the Abrams movies -- which, as pointed out before, are written and made as hard reboots -- are ostensibly connected to the other shows via the parallel universe trope.
Star Trek is marketed as a shared universe because that's exactly what it is. This is not up for debate, anymore than arguing that the MCU TV shows are not in continuity with the MCU movies.
That may be what they now want it to be (because Marvel makes a lot of money), but I doubt that was always the plan. Beyond a bit of connection here and there, it is wildly all over the place.
In the TMP novelization, Roddenberry writes that TOS was a fictional recreation of events for entertainment. Not exactly the building blocks of a shared universe.
The marketing term "Shared Universe" is a relatively new concept, as is the expectation that every single thing within an arbitrary marketing structure match each other perfectly in narrative and aesthetics.
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