Yes, that's why i brought it up. Unless you'd made that point I wouldn't have considered that viewpoint. The idea that any fictional element makes something not our world is saddening to me, and robs then of some of their magic. I certainly don't feel that way about stories.
Interesting. As I've said before, I'm not out to throw a wet blanket on anyone else's enjoyment of whatever they like; I'm merely trying to express my own perspective. But, not to go all meta, but the notion that this would be saddening itself strikes me as sad. It literally wouldn't have occurred to me that anyone wouldn't have considered this viewpoint, because it's just one of those things I accept as a given. That's how I
do suspension of disbelief. "There are multiple realities. The one I'm reading about [or watching] is not the one I'm living in."
(Except for Sherlock Holmes, of course. He was real. Watson said so!
)
...On the other hand, Star Trek has always struck me as imagining from "our future" with humanity growing, developing and becoming more than it is right now. I was always under the impression that was the intent of the show...
Yes, thematically that's important, I totally agree. My point with the analogy to Asimov, Heinlein, and other "old" SF, though, was simply that it doesn't lose any of its thematic power by being a vision of
A future, rather than a vision of
THE future.
...It seems the producers of Discovery are aware that there is an expectation among fans of TOS that we already know all there is to know about the 23rd century and about the backgrounds of Spock, Kirk, Pike, Sarek and Amanda.
See, this strikes me as puzzling. There is a fundamental difference between saying "don't contradict things we already know," and saying "don't tell us anything new that we
don't know, because we know everything." Perhaps a few fans here and there have copped the latter attitude, but I can't see why the producers would imagine it's a widespread thing. By far the more widespread concerns I've seen and heard have been in the former category.
So their "promise" to make the timelines line up [means] the Enterprise will not be retrofitted with a spore drive, Burnham will not become its first officer, Amanda will not be killed by the red matter implosion of Vulcan, etc.
But this is not what people are concerned about. It's not what they're complaining about. It's missing the point. (Frankly, if that's what the producers actually think we think, it's an insult to the intelligence of fans.)
It's just that what the producers think is important differs somewhat from what a lot of other people think is important. The producers are talking about STORY integrity, while the most vocal of fans seem to be obsessed with technical details that are otherwise irrelevant to the story and have nothing to do with the characters at all.
That's kind of a bait-and-switch. That's going ahead and changing things we really
do know, and then patting us on the head and making an excuse for it by saying the stuff we knew wasn't "important." (I happen to think, for instance, that the availability and safety of point-to-point intra-ship beaming would have
significant relevance to a lot of Trek stories.)
I mean, when I got to college I learned how much of real life history is also "a rolling series of retcons", then I really eased up on fiction. :P
History, though (at least responsible, professional history), is only ever an attempt to summarize what we think we know about past events, based on evidence. Like a scientific theory or the verdict of a trial, it doesn't purport to be The Truth, merely our best provisional estimate of it.
Fiction is another story (no pun intended); one of the central conceits of fiction (setting aside occasional devices like the "unreliable narrator") is that it shows us
what actually happened. There's a reason the default viewpoint for fictional narrative is called the "authorial omnipotent." When it's film or television and we literally see events with our own eyes, that just drives the point home. Changing
that after that fact isn't just revising a theory, it's revising a reality. That's a hard pill to swallow.
ETA: whoops, I meant to write "omniscient," not omnipotent! Mea culpa.
