Poll Do you consider Discovery to truly be in the Prime Timeline at this point?
- Thread starter Annorax849
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Hopefully the lighting would be better than what we see on DSC. Like the series or not, it is not a particularly attractive nor inviting world.
Yeah, we can call them many things but "cheap" isn't accurate in context of the time nor fair.
True, they are only too cheap looking for today's television.,
They look like TV production sets, just like every other show.
They do look like TV production sets... for the 1960s, to be viewed on small fuzzy TV sets. I'm sure it looked pretty spiffy back in the day, but those days are over.
They still look spiffy to me and many others. Far more creative than anything that Discovery has given us. Tons of money doesn't equate to creative quality.
Why give GR credit there? All he really did was sign off on design choices made by Matt Jefferies, with some minor input along the way.
DSC doesn't have a Matt Jefferies. That's one of its big problems. Put the resources you're talking about in the hands of someone with talent and dedication comparable to Jefferies, or even to Andy Probert or Rick Sternbach, and we'd have a much better looking show.
If that really is what the producers think (and I stress again that this is just your supposition), then they have a very skewed perspective, because as I've said, one of those things poses no actual questions, another is a done deal, and the third they're just kicking down the road.
No, they really wouldn't. I already explained why.
That's a pretty esoteric exercise in hairsplitting. According to whom? You accuse WebLurker of making up his own rules, and then you turn around and do exactly that yourself.
It had state-of-the-art effects at the time, and a very large budget compared to other television productions. People seem to keep forgetting this. It did indeed look amazing. When "Where No Man" was screened to attendees at the 1966 WorldCon, before the show premiered, people were blown away and astonished that it was a TV show, because they thought it looked like a motion picture.
What perplexes me is why people say it "hasn't aged well." The show still looks gorgeous today. Anyone who thinks otherwise is so acclimated to contemporary production techniques and CGI FX that they lack the ability to look beyond them. I swear, it's like some people out there never watch anything filmed before they were born.
Well, sure. It would be a completely different show, obviously, and not just in looks. It would be as different as Babylon 5 was in the '90s or The Expanse today. But it's kind of pointless to speculate about. Like any show that actually exists, Star Trek is defined by its history.
But DSC doesn't look and feel very much like what has gone before... that's the point people keep making. Nor does it feel like something new and groundbreaking and innovative, as in the paragraph above. It feels like a mishmash. Among other things it looks derivative of Mass Effect, as people keep pointing out, and that's just... sad.
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That's the problem, it's only a small group.
This isn't ROGUE ONE where you can get away with replicating the set of a 1970s film. That worked because those set designs were meant to be seen projected on large screens. A long running television show replicating TOS in the manner of "In a Mirror, Darkly" wouldn't work.
Maybe if DISCOVERY had still been just an anthology season as Fuller originally intended CBS may have felt more comfortable with replicating the old 60s sets as they'd view it as just a one-off rather than a potentially long-running show.
I'm not sure how projecting them on a larger screen somehow mitigates the age of the designs?
Luc Besson's Star Trek.
It's still a problem "in universe." That's not going to go away unless addressed.
I'm citing the rules they set up.
That's not how Star Trek has done it before. Nor Star Wars. or the Lord of the Rings/Hobbit movies. (Also see above; even a reimagining on purpose still creates a continuity error.)
How does it prove nothing if it's a consistent rule? (Also, I don't recall any characters poking fun at the older designs in those episodes; e.g. Dax loving the TOS tricorder, mirror Trip marveling at how advanced the TOS ships were in comparison to the ENT ones, etc.).
I was also scratching my head on that one.
Those set designs (and ships and costumes) look like a kludgy hodgepodge, on any size screen. They did in 1977, and they still do today. The only reason the current SW films are using them is because some people have a sentimental attachment to them.
(And that's fine, BTW. Appealing to the nostalgia of Star Wars fans is a perfectly sensible and legitimate thing to do. Other people who are not particularly SW fans, like me, will either like the films or not on their own merits, but they're not going to base that decision on the fact that the visuals have "1970s" written all over them. That's simply the visual aesthetic of SW; it's part of the franchise's identity; it comes with the territory. The pity here is that Trek producers aren't willing to take a comparable approach.)
My point is that TOS was designed to be viewed on small fuzzy TV sets at the time it came out. This is why TOS was designed and lit the way it was. Today with TV sets three times larger and with higher definition there's a greater expectation for more intricate sets and lighting. I would have loved to see DISCOVERY be closer to the aesthetics of TOS than it currently is, but I know had they gone that direction there would have still been changes to make it more suitable for modern audiences.
It's not a problem for me, and I don't need it to be addressed because I know the answer.
And guess what, the rules have changed.
STAR WARS and LORD OF THE RINGS are works of cinema with far more intricate set designs. TOS wasn't.
Again, rules change. DISCOVERY did that. I've moved on with that.
HOSHI: What are you wearing?
(Archer is in a green top with gold braid.)
ARCHER: I found it in the Captain's wardrobe.
HOSHI: These people had some strange ideas about uniforms.
Trip marveling at how advanced the ship is isn't the same as marveling at the aesthetics.
I doubt the Star Wars films are using the old designs "only" because "some people" have a sentimental attachment to them.
They can't take a comparable approach because the 1960s TOS sets that were designed for television are not comparable with the 1970s STAR WARS sets designed for cinematic viewing. It's really that simple.
It was Rodenberry who insisted on the Enterprise having windows, over the explicit objections of Jeffries. It was also Rodenberry who sided with the model makers in the various arguments they had when Jeffries kept insisting on them not adding additional surface details to the ship. Rodenberry wanted more detail, and at times changed his mind on what those details should be. They were, however, pressed for time and trying to stay within a budget so there were only so many things they could change with the resources they had. As it happens, just getting the nacelle caps to light up turned out to be a pretty major modification.
Imagine what the arguments would have been like if they had access to 3D animation software!
Well, it has a John Eaves, which isn't too different.
More importantly, it doesn't have an Andrew Probert. And THAT is a serious deficiency IMO.
To be honest, NONE of the things you mentioned pose any actual questions. The only one that might is the cloaking device, but it's a question Discovery inherited from Enterprise.
According to every TV and film producer who decided to change the visuals between prequels/sequels? Meaning, basically, all of them.
Also according to J. Michael Strazynski and George Lucas who retroactively changed the visuals effects of their own shows/movies because the technology evolved from the original production.
Also according to everyone involved in TOS-R.
Also according to everyone involved in the Director's Cut of "Star Trek: The Motion Picture."
There's no rule saying that visuals are NOT part of continuity. There's just a near-universal tendency of producers to treat them as if they're not.
That's literally what "hasn't aged well" means. It isn't all that impressive when compared to contemporary productions.
Compare "2001: A Space Odyssey" for an example of a 1960s science fiction production that HAS aged relatively well.
That's because Mass Effect is highly derivative of Star Trek. That a high-budget TV series would manage to resemble something that goes out of its way to imitate it shouldn't be all that surprising.
It this were true, I would not watch Discovery.
So, shouldn't Discovery be allowed to be defined current production values as well as its own history? I mean, there seems to be this attitude that Star Trek has never changed before or that all changes were regarded as positive.
We can agree on this much, at least. Except for that final word... I get tired of the way people blame the show's look on (entirely hypothetical and speculative) audience expectations. I'd say the producers could (and would) have modified the original designs to be more suitable for modern production and broadcast technologies. That would've been just fine.
(Hell, the current Star Wars movies do that much, while still retaining the basic look of the originals.)
What DSC actually did design-wise changed things up way more than that, however... and not in ways that offer any obvious improvement.
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