I really don't know what is wrong with some people slating it just for being a 'prequel' (aka just a completely new story that happens to be set in the past). For that matter people slating any new Star Trek after 10 years of the worst drought of good scspace opera in modern TV history? Do you realise that this might only be the beginning of a wider foray into television, that might eventually expand forwards into the future eras? That this is just one possibility/one era being explored? Are you, supposed fans, seriously going to be so self-entitled, that you trash something before you know anything about it's actual themes or basically anything of consequence about the show? I have tried to remain calm and not specifically engage with this kind of comment, these past few weeks, but the levels of judgementalism and ignorance here have become ridiculous - this isn't Rick Berman and company returning for their 4th series - you don't even know the provenance or talent of Bryan Fuller's completely new team yet.
"We wanted something new." - It IS NEW
You havent even SEEN it yet.
Is it even actually a direct prequel? - because a prequel (in book parlance, outside the modern Hollywood definition) generally means it's related to a previous novel directly - i.e. The School Adventures of Sherlock Holmes being a direct prequel to Sherlock Holmes, or some shit - this is probably a completely new and unseen story, which just happens to set in the past - not the young chonicles of teenage Kirk.
That's like saying a story like "The Imitation Game" set during WW2 is a 'prequel' to all literature set after 1945.
It's a new story people.
Then there have been some really weird comments regarding continuity - and how it is supposedly limiting. Really really flat out weird, based on complete misunderstandings of either drama, or of Star Trek canon. I suppose a story set during WW2 is limiting, is it, because you can't have Cold War jets and moon landings yet?
Someone for example suggesting that we can't have Cardassians in a prequel to TOS - as an example of how to show is supposedly in a straight jacket of continuity (despite nobody actually knowing when Cardassian first contact was, with "centuries ago" actually being completely possible, even likely - it's a million times less problematic than the pointless appearance of the Ferengi in ENT). I don't know how people can say "you can't tell a good story if you are limited in your ability to contradict TOS technology" - how does the non-existence existence of replicators, for example, limit drama in anything but a really inconsequential and superficial way?
It's like arguing that Alien the movie, is somehow limited by having a setting in which there are no FTL drives, no teleportation, no replicators. All that setting Discovery prior to TOS does is limit very very superficial things, like holodecks - it does not limit the broadness of thematic vision or expanse of the dramaic canvas at all. The era is still full of what we would regard as technological wonders.
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ENT didn't fail because it was in a prequel-shaped straight jacket - it failed because the writers never understood how to use the era - made some really obvious and avoidable continuity errors that anyone could have pointed out in furtherance of crap episodes - whilst paradoxically not even using 1% of the actual possibilities of the era, which bore NO canonicity constraints whatsoever (even actually making the excuse that they were constrained by the era they had chosen)! Put it down to the showrunners not even watching TOS. Also it didn't actually suck - but it could have been the Babylon 5 of Star Trek, and wasn't even close.
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