Frustrations with Trek lit...
- Thread starter Overgeeked
- Start date
Issue 33 "The Choice"
And I correct my previous post. The Starfleet uniform of the previous universe was a red shirt, blue pants.
This conversation is about finding a way to reconcile Interphase and "In a Mirror, Darkly." It's not about a single episode, it's about reconciling disparate parts into the illusion of a consistent whole.
First off, no, the Justman memo made it clear that the use of different patches in "The Doomsday Machine" and "The Omega Glory" was considered a costuming mistake by Roddenberry, and advised that ships of the Enterprise's class should use the same insignia going forward. It was the intent in "The Tholian Web" to use the arrowhead insignia.
And second, "intent," by definition, is the beginning of a process, not the end. What people intend and what they end up with are frequently different. And what one person intends has to be balanced with what other people intend.
Every episode is an alternate way of seeing the show. Every writer and director and producer has brought their own distinct interpretation to the universe. We just choose to pretend it fits together, and we all make choices of our own in figuring out how we reconcile the contradictions.
Again, you're completely missing the point of the exercise. It's not about trying to discern some "original truth" about the episode, it's about using our imaginations to come up with a plausible way to reconcile Interphase and IaMD. I don't care whether either patch was "right." That's an arbitrary value judgment that has no relevance here. This is about solving a problem: How can the Defiant be both saved and not saved? A popular fan theory ever since IaMD aired is that there were two different Defiants -- either the single ship was split in time by the interphase, or a "Parallels"-like situation happened and the interphase connected to more than one, nearly identical Defiant to begin with. The real-world detail that the two depictions of the Defiant used two different insignia patches is a bit of trivia that, in my opinion, matches up nicely with the latter hypothesis.
And I think it's an elegant solution. "Parallels" established, canonically, that virtually the same events happen to numerous parallel Starfleet crews with only superficial differences in detail. The Voyager novel Echoes independently presents this same idea, featuring parallel Voyager crews from near-identical universes differing mainly in uniform design. So both canon and the novels have a precedent for the same events happening to near-identical crews with only slight cosmetic differences. If the two Defiants in Interphase and IaMD are from two such near-identical parallel realities -- if they both experienced virtually the exact events of "The Tholian Web" with the only noticeable difference being what insignia the Defiant crew wore -- then that is a hypothesis that not only explains the discrepancy, but also fits in with prior Trek-universe precedent and doesn't require inventing any new ad hoc assumptions. It makes it one instance of a larger pattern we've seen elsewhere, and I like that because it helps make the Trek universe as a whole feel more consistent.
The question is meaningless, because those are two entirely separate levels of analysis. Obviously, in real life, ENT retconned the design. But I'm talking about a hypothesis that works within the fiction to explain the discrepancy. Like with the Klingons' changing appearance. The real-world explanation is that Roddenberry and Fred Phillips took advantage of a movie budget to design a more elaborate makeup for the Klingons. The in-universe explanation is that they were changed by genetic engineering. It makes no sense to pit the real explanation and the in-story explanation against each other. They're not in competition.
Last edited:
Oh, sorry I lost track of that.
I see. I guess I feel the final result holds more weight than the original intent, if that makes any sense (and ignoring the novel).
Hmmm.
Once again, I'd forgot we were taking about the book and was only thinking of the two TV shows.
Sure, in the context of the TV show with the novels, it's not a bad suggestion. (I actually remember that VOY novel. Didn't like it that much.)
Okay.
^For some reason, you're giving Khan 2.0 attribution for most of the quotes from my post.
I didn't think much of it on my first read (in particular, I thought it was a wasted opportunity to have so few differences in the alternate crews beyond superficial things like wardrobe), but I liked it much better the second time around, somehow.
I didn't think much of it on my first read (in particular, I thought it was a wasted opportunity to have so few differences in the alternate crews beyond superficial things like wardrobe), but I liked it much better the second time around, somehow.
Whoops! I cut and past those things and I must've forgotten to make sure I was using the correct ones.
It was an interesting idea, but I think it would've been more fun to play as an RPG scenario than read as a novel.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow.
Similar threads
