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Spoilers Does "Light and Shadows" contradict "Journey to Babel"?

In a manner of speaking, that one was from 1988. The fact that it was trimmed out of "The Menagerie" probably should count for at least as much as it having been filmed in the first place.
your mileage may vary of course, but the only parts of The Cage that I consider to be canon are the parts that were used in The Menagerie. All of the rest are deleted scenes.
 
According to Journey to Babel, Spock and Sarek have been estranged for 18 years.
Journey to Babel says they haven't spoken in eighteen years. Sarek talking to Amanda and Michael while Spock quotes Alice in Wonderland and rambles coordinates to a planet in the background does not count as Spock and Sarek speaking to each other.
 
Journey to Babel says they haven't spoken in eighteen years.

So I know you are supporting Discovery not breaking cannon, but we just covered this. It says they haven't spoken as father and son in 18 years. Which means they have spoken since then. Definitely during his visit 4 years prior.
 
Discovery doesn't fit with TOS, period.

As much as I love TOS, it's dated and sexist. Try and imagine the same world the Disco crew live in being the same one where Kirk grabs and holds his yeoman on the bridge, or where the "world of Starship commanders doesn't admit women" or where women are being shipped off to be wives on the frontier. The feel of the universe isn't the same. The continuity isn't the same. The visuals are all-new. It's as much the world of TOS as Smallville is that of Superboy.

Agreed, re: yeomen.

Janice Lester, however, was clinically insane and I took the line that her insanity led her to believing any old muck as to why she never made Captaincy. However, other lines of dialogue unfortunately prove how sexist the episode (and series) was and could be (and demonstrated often enough).

But there are enough reasons that DSC needn't all have ___ist personnel while still having enough that fits in canonically.

Just accept it as a parallel universe installment or let TOS/TNG/etc be its own separate universe as well as Kelvin having its own and anything that's left for each series becomes adequate to like or dislike on its own merits.

I still prefer Orville, it captures the telling of the human condition far better and without being hit by an ACME sized sledgehammer wielded by Elmer Fudd at every turn as if the audience can't work it out for itself (the way we can for Orville, though if the show is aimed at the teenage/20s demographic and Millennials, they get enough graft involving work ethic and intellect (or lack thereof) to begin with...)
 
"It's just I can't get used to having a woman on the bridge."

"I'm scared, captain!"

"The imposter had some interesting qualities, eh, yeoman?" [to sexual assault victim Rand, on the bridge infront of everyone]

Referring to T'Pring as "the girl"

"Your world of Starship captains doesn't admit women!"
Marla McGivers wasn't a shining example of what they thought of women, either.
 
I still prefer Orville, it captures the telling of the human condition far better and without being hit by an ACME sized sledgehammer wielded by Elmer Fudd at every turn as if the audience can't work it out for itself (the way we can for Orville, though if the show is aimed at the teenage/20s demographic and Millennials, they get enough graft involving work ethic and intellect (or lack thereof) to begin with...)

We're watching different Orville's since i see the big hammer that goes Bok Bok in just about every episode, and its worse when the moral, say its OK to drug diplomats, and insult alien cultures at will as we get some regular mixed messages. Orville isn't being watched by the under 50 demographic hardly at all anyways. Its demographic, IMO, are those who were teens when watching TNG in the late 80s.
 
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Discovery doesn't fit with TOS, period.

As much as I love TOS, it's dated and sexist. Try and imagine the same world the Disco crew live in being the same one where Kirk grabs and holds his yeoman on the bridge, or where the "world of Starship commanders doesn't admit women" or where women are being shipped off to be wives on the frontier. The feel of the universe isn't the same. The continuity isn't the same. The visuals are all-new. It's as much the world of TOS as Smallville is that of Superboy.


TOS dated? Nah.

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Yikes. You guys took this in an....interesting direction.

1.) I obviously didn't remember JTB as well as I thought I did. Looks like there's plenty of room there after all.

2.) I ACTUALLY like Discovery, and I don't want it picking up every single 1960's tv tropes. They fixed whatever problems I had with the Klingons before so they're doing alright in my eyes.
 
Funny thing is that I was inspired to re-watch JTB because of this latest episode. That's the only reason I was able to reply to this thread, having just watched it. :D I love that I'm actually excited to re-watch TOS episodes and see how some things fit in or add new layers to what comes later in the timeline. I actually think this was the closest that we got to see James Frain and Mia Kirschner channeling Mark Lenard's and Jane Wyatt's counterparts.

Another interesting thing in JTB, which I know some people nitpicked about Sarek doing last season: Sarek smiles (to Amanda in private). It's subtle but it's there.
 
Marla McGivers wasn't a shining example of what they thought of women, either.
Nor one of TOS's most sexist episodes, Wolf in the Fold. As well as the basic premise of the episode being that the crew, on the advice of the ship's surgeon, have come to a dance show so that Scotty can get over his understandable hatred of women after an explosion was caused by a female crewmember and get back to properly objectifying them, you have Spock of all people saying "And I suspect preys on women because women are more easily and more deeply terrified, generating more sheer horror than the male of the species."
 
your mileage may vary of course, but the only parts of The Cage that I consider to be canon are the parts that were used in The Menagerie. All of the rest are deleted scenes.

I agree with this. It's why I discourage anyone from viewing "The Cage" as the first episode, not only because it was conformed into "The Menagerie" two parter but it was never part of the original airing, and when it was aired over 20 years later it was only done then to give the fans something during the writer's strike delaying TNG. Plus, had "The Cage" been accepted by NBC, it would have been cut down to 50 mins in order to make room for advertisements on air. I'm sure bits like "I'm not used to women on the bridge" would have not made it into the final cut.
 
According to Journey to Babel, Spock and Sarek have been estranged for 18 years.

DIS "Light and Shadows" shows them meeting up well within that window.

One might say you can "waive it away" because he doesn't directly address Spock, or talk to him.

I'd say it's a bit iffy though. What are your thoughts?

You can't compare "the Original Verse" with "the Prime Verse". Both are in different world and history.
 
I'm sure bits like "I'm not used to women on the bridge" would have not made it into the final cut.

It might have, for the same reason that Kirk's discomfort with a female yeoman made it onscreen in "The Corbomite Maneuver." I figure the purpose of such lines was for the benefit of '60s audience members who might have been uncomfortable seeing women on a military vessel -- it was a way of reducing their resistance to the novelty by giving them a character who shared their perspective, acknowledging it briefly and then moving on, as a way to ease them into getting used to the female presence along with the character. It doesn't have to be an ongoing thing, but as long as you give them the illusion that the lead character is someone they can identify with, it makes them more receptive at the start, even if you never raise the issue again.

Besides, scenes like that were a standard trope in '50s and '60s sci-fi movies. There generally had to be a lone female scientist or some such character involved with the space mission or research expedition or whatever, since it was obligatory to have a love interest for the hero, and there'd almost always be some initial protest to having a woman along, or at least an acknowledgment of how unusual it was for a beautiful woman to be a brilliant scientist, or something like that. So far from being a line that would've met with resistance from censors or editors, it probably would've been seen as pretty much obligatory. The 2-parter cut didn't need it because the issue had already been addressed by that point in the series.
 
That the scene would feel "out of place" in an episode made or aired today is just the mirror image of that: there might exist a perceived need to respond to audience expectations.

Then again, there might not. Said expectations would not have been particularly realistic in either case: just like finding a female player of a significant role in the 1960s might be going against the accepted stereotype yet in no way a reflection of the capabilities of women in specific, finding a man who is openly uncomfortable with women in the 2010s might be going against the accepted stereotype yet in no way a reflection of the attitudes of men in specific. The universe ought to have room for all sorts, especially for dramatic purposes. Why censor out a sexist pig from the hero cast of a 2010s show, at a time when we're supposed to be edgy and aware and quite capable of stomaching shades of black?

It's all a bunch of nonsense anyway: the reason Pike is "uncomfortable with women" in-universe isn't because he'd think little of them, or anything incorrect like that. It's because of the backstory of "The Cage", with Pike coping with the recent loss of a lad under his command; Yeoman Colt is merely getting the fallout from that, to no fault of her own. And there's further backstory implied there in how this then awkwardly bounces off Number One. We'd lose the "sexist pig" impression the first episode into the putative regular show. Although the "comically insecure guy" impression might be milked for further dramatic worth...

Timo Saloniemi
 
Discovery doesn't fit with TOS, period.

As much as I love TOS, it's dated and sexist. Try and imagine the same world the Disco crew live in being the same one where Kirk grabs and holds his yeoman on the bridge, or where the "world of Starship commanders doesn't admit women" or where women are being shipped off to be wives on the frontier. The feel of the universe isn't the same. The continuity isn't the same. The visuals are all-new. It's as much the world of TOS as Smallville is that of Superboy.

I've been saying all this since before the show started airing. Just too much has changed in fifty years for the two to fit together as the same universe.

At least for me.
 
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