How can these episodes (from TNG, DS9, and ENT) be canon any longer?

If the computer is so smart, it should know who Scotty is and be able to intuit his meaning.

You know, it did fart out a weird space baby around that time

 

So… you feel like you’ve made an informed contribution with this tired old parody? Not to mention that you and everyone who liked your post also managed to insult the TMP designers who put that detail onscreen for someone to look at in multiple viewings and research, inspired no doubt by space age interest and possibly even Kubrick’s insistence on background detail few would notice in 2001. Who went on to publish that worldbuilding in the licensed TMP blueprints and David Kimble’s cutaway? Behind the scenes, Rick Sternbach and Lee Cole even developed the Enterprise Flight Manual, an extremely detailed and unprecedented guide to the new bridge controls.

What’s next, you’ll insult everyone who went through extant photographs and blurry TOS screencaps to reconstruct every last detail of the eleven-foot Enterprise (1967 version) for the Smithsonian? Font spacing? Antenna diameter? Who’ll notice, take a guess and put it out there?

As much as people here would like to reduce Trek to script- and novel writing, it won’t happen. It’s an audio-visual franchise where concepts have designs and measurements, and now they have two sets thereof in one era. If a DSC tie-in were to refer to its Enterprise as being 289 meters long or say that Pike is wearing beige instead of yellow, it would be wrong, just as it would be wrong not to use that number and color in a TOS context. There are two physical manifestations here, not a vague unified one, and we respect the work of various designers by showing acknowledgement (if not awareness) of the details they created for one or the other show, whether they accompany an Eaglemoss model release (which have been great for fleshing out DSC) or a tech manual.

 

No more than Tenacity & Likers ridiculing fans like me who aren’t exclusively interested in the story.

 

It's not necessarily that writing trumps art direction. It's more about pushing back against the fundamentalist notion than any discrepancy means that a perfectly good STAR TREK movie or episode or TV series isn't "canon" or "Prime" or in the right timeline, as well as the resistance in some quarters to just accepting real-world explanations for any such discrepancies because apparently we're supposed to maintain the illusion of "reality" at all costs.

And it's not just about the techie stuff. For what's worth, I'm also inclined to roll my eyes at the idea that we need to reject some new show or episode just because it contradicts one line from "Turnabout Intruder" or "Return of the Archons" or whatever.

"Canon" is not set in stone, whether we're talking the color of the guardrails or whether there were female captains in Starfleet in Kirk's time.

 

We’re supposed to maintain an illusion of “reality” to the extent that people with interest in the space program or industrial design put it out there. ST was never supposed to be abstract theater, but rather a researched extrapolation with dramatic caveats under various production budgets and circumstances. As noted before, of course DSC is canon and Prime, especially because the latter is just a Timeline: however, we have to know what we’re tying into to determine the detailed shape of the fictional reality. There is a difference between the observable color of the guardrails at a particular date and vague notions about female captains in Starfleet, whatever the intent was when that episode was written; it’s not like someone quoted a Starfleet directive, research into discrimination or even anecdotal evidence that would clarify the dialogue. Likewise, even today’s voice assistants should be able to take “no bloody A” as a hint when choosing between the film-era and TOS bridges.

 

But a lot of this visual stuff is primarily intended for the theatrical effect. Take the black/white and white/black people in "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield." Is that a "realistic" or "scientific" alien design, extrapolated from our current knowledge of biology and evolution. Of course not. It works as metaphor, symbolism, satire.

Ultimately, Star Trek is theater to a large degree, just like The Twilight Zone before it. It's about using sci-fi imagery like rocket ships and time travel and aliens to illustrate aspects of the human condition and provoke an emotional response from the audience.

Think Rod Serling, Ray Bradbury, H.G. Wells, etc.

 

The black/white, white/black designs need not be “realistic” or “scientific”, but that was the intended look people would see and comment upon, probably regardless of production budget. It would have been chosen for effect but it’s also real as part of that fiction, not like the relationship between live action and a cartoon adaptation.

 

No. Major, huge and enormous discrepancies yes.

When the Enterprise was radically changed for TMP, the change was explained in dialog. I can't recall TPTB insisting that it was the same design as seen in TOS and that the audience should "just pretend."

 

Kind of depends on how you define "huge" and "major," I guess. As I wrote before, is the captain's chair in the same place on the bridge? Do the ships have saucers and nacelles? Is there a transporter room, consisting of an elevated platform with designated manhole covers, operated by a freestanding console a few paces away? Do people dissolve into a shimmering column of energy as they beam down to the planet?

Seems like they're sticking to the basics to me. It's not as though the transporter room is now a glowing portal resembling the Time Tunnel or anything "radical" like that.

 

Yrs, but I do seem to recall a statement from Roddenberry along those lines explaining the new look of the Klingons in TMP.

 

Meanwhile, I used the term "paces" with regards to the distance between the transporter controls and the platform because never in the history of Trek has it mattered exactly how many feet or meters that distance is. Just that it's a few steps away for the actors.

 

Spoiler Alert!!!

Spoiler

Our real future is not going to be like Star Trek.

The show was never, ever meant to be a real extrapolation of our future, as you imply. It was always meant as a vehicle to tell stories. That is, and will always be, the most important thing.

Honestly, if I read a Trek novel that cited a specific length for the Enterprise, I wouldn't bat an eye, because 1) I have no idea what the number is "supposed" to be, and 2) The technical details like that don't really matter.

TPTB did that in literally the same movie with the Klingons, when Roddenberry told fans to just pretend that the Klingons had always looked like that. And that was the official explanation for literally 25 years, until Enterprise did the episode "Affliction." (Personally, I think they should've just left well enough alone. "We don't discuss it with outsiders" was all the explanation I needed.)

And remember, the refit explanation wasn't written in to explain the changes in the sets, but to explain the sets possibly still being unfinished when they started shooting "In Thy Image."

^^ This. When it comes to the technical details, keep this as your mantra:

 

Ahh, but eventually ENT did dish up a explaination, not the best, but a official explanation.

Did paramount ever endorse what Roddenberry said?

 

Twenty-five years after the fact. Star Trek got along fine without one for a quarter of a century.

 

It worked fine for me.

I dunno. Think it pretty much just sat there until ENT came along. There were some lame-ass fandom explanations along the way, though. Like that TOS Klingons were genetic "fusions" made to better deal the humans (and they also had romulan "fusions" as well, apparently.

 

Maybe the arguments shouldn't be over whether there was a change, but whether that change is an improvement, or serves a good purpose, or adds quality, etc.