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

[Lance]

Honestly, I feel like the time would be ripe for a continuity reboot at this stage. 10 years ago the Abrams movie had a bet each way because I suspect they were still risk adverse about unbinding from continuity completely, hence Nimoy Spock, but then it became a bit of a burden in the sequels... even Beyond chains itself to that continuity with the subplot about Ambassador Spock's death, those three movies were at least in part intended to be chained to continuity even if they weren't strictly bound by it... but 10 years later, I really feel the need to kiss the ring of the past is kind of irrelevant. For as many things as DSC changes, the fact that it mires itself as a prequel means that it too feels like it's wasting the potential of a full reboot.

Probably because it is a agree to disagree place.

I disagree with that.

I agree that you disagree

 

[fireproof78]

For as many things as DSC changes, the fact that it mires itself as a prequel means that it too feels like it's wasting the potential of a full reboot.

On this point, I completely agree (and not to disagree ).

One thing I often hear bandied about is the idea that a complete reboot is a disservice to the history of Trek. For me, personally, I think a complete reboot is necessary to honor the original vision that GR had of exploring a future based upon contemporary knowledge of technology with an optimistic lens.

To me, here's what a complete reboot would do to the franchise. First, it would look forward instead of constantly looking over the shoulder to what had been done before. Many people complain about Star Trek being stuck in the past, either due to prequels or leaning on old characters.

Secondly, it could take humanity's current understanding and technological development. There are a lot of technological advancements being made in many different areas that could really be incorporated and explored. I mean, I like what DSC has done with exploring the mycelial network idea as well as time crystals, both ideas being explored by contemporary scientists. But, it often times gets ignored because it undoes something in another Trek series, and we get fun canon debates like this thread

Third, it could alter history so that humanity doesn't need two major conflicts that decimate the Earth. I know many think that will be what it takes but the touchstone of Star Trek is optimism. Let's try that.

Finally, we can have more alien looking aliens, instead of the forehead of the week for aliens.

 

[Lance]

One thing I often hear bandied about is the idea that a complete reboot is a disservice to the history of Trek. For me, personally, I think a complete reboot is necessary to honor the original vision that GR had of exploring a future based upon contemporary knowledge of technology with an optimistic lens.

To me, here's what a complete reboot would do to the franchise. First, it would look forward instead of constantly looking over the shoulder to what had been done before. Many people complain about Star Trek being stuck in the past, either due to prequels or leaning on old characters.

Yeah, it's like everyone involved is so busy trying not to step on the toes of what went before that even accounting for lense flares and new Klingons, there's a genuine feeling that they're just so afraid to look forward instead of backwards. I don't even think a post-TNG era show can do it. Going back to brass tacks and asking the question, what is Star Trek? And then rebuilding from there. Forget continuity. You can never satisfy everyone anyway.

 

[fireproof78]

Yeah, it's like everyone involved is so busy trying not to step on the toes of what went before that even accounting for lense flares and new Klingons, there's a genuine feeling that they're just so afraid to look forward instead of backwards. I don't even think a post-TNG era show can do it. Going back to brass tacks and asking the question, what is Star Trek? And then rebuilding from there. Forget continuity. You can never satisfy everyone anyway.

Here's my thing, and this now my inner continuity nerd coming out that if you reboot it you can plan it out from the beginning.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

Yeah, it's like everyone involved is so busy trying not to step on the toes of what went before that even accounting for lense flares and new Klingons, there's a genuine feeling that they're just so afraid to look forward instead of backwards. I don't even think a post-TNG era show can do it. Going back to brass tacks and asking the question, what is Star Trek? And then rebuilding from there. Forget continuity. You can never satisfy everyone anyway.

I agree with David Gerrold in that Star Trek is the classic voiceover. It really doesn’t matter who is saying it (or not), if the ship is the Enterprise or even if the exploration is literal or metaphorical. I don’t care if the continuity is rebooted so long as that isn’t used as an excuse to revisit existing stories (albeit with greater flexibility). The lack of reboots has so far worked in ST’s favor: don’t like elements of the 1960s or the 1980s? No problem, pick a future time period.

 

[fireproof78]

I think just kicking the can down the road misses the point of Star Trek's vision of the future.

 

[Lance]

Food for thought, but on his commentary track for, I think either Generations or First Contact, Ron Moore suggests that as big a fan of Trek as he is, the weight of it's history and continuity is a mill stone around the neck of writers, and while successive project leaders continue to keep trying to make it 'fit' some predetermined continuity, it's just a pain in the ass ultimately. Yes he was coming off the back of Battlestar Galactica, but there's a certain something to his assertion that the only way to truly move forward from here is to jettison the notion of continuity completely and go full reboot, just as BSG did. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, no-one has had the balls to do that yet. Not Abrams with his kinda-sorta-carrying-on-from-Prime, not Kurtzman with his show that is still running into a wall of being set 10 years before earlier shows. I don't know if it's pressure from above, but honestly, it's getting tiring at this point, and is contributing to bringing the franchise down. A clearing of the decks is what is needed. No ties, no continuity, no backdoor-clause to make it a part of the canon. Just a blank page and a good story with an open mind to all the possibilities of Star Trek. Give it a chance to be unchained, give it a chance to find a new audience, give Star Trek a chance to actually be relevant again. Because, really, for all the things that Kelvin and DSC brought to the table, Star Trek is less relevant than it's ever been. And that truly should not be. It deserves better than this.

 

[fireproof78]

Give it a chance to be unchained, give it a chance to find a new audience, give Star Trek a chance to actually be relevant again.

I agree on this point, but it is incumbent upon the production team to work within the culture to make it relevant. If Star Trek becomes irrelevant then it deserves to fail. It doesn't deserve a second, third, fifth chance just because it is Star Trek.

 

[The Wormhole]

Food for thought, but on his commentary track for, I think either Generations or First Contact, Ron Moore suggests that as big a fan of Trek as he is, the weight of it's history and continuity is a mill stone around the neck of writers, and while successive project leaders continue to keep trying to make it 'fit' some predetermined continuity, it's just a pain in the ass ultimately. Yes he was coming off the back of Battlestar Galactica, but there's a certain something to his assertion that the only way to truly move forward from here is to jettison the notion of continuity completely and go full reboot, just as BSG did. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, no-one has had the balls to do that yet. Not Abrams with his kinda-sorta-carrying-on-from-Prime, not Kurtzman with his show that is still running into a wall of being set 10 years before earlier shows. I don't know if it's pressure from above, but honestly, it's getting tiring at this point, and is contributing to bringing the franchise down. A clearing of the decks is what is needed. No ties, no continuity, no backdoor-clause to make it a part of the canon. Just a blank page and a good story with an open mind to all the possibilities of Star Trek. Give it a chance to be unchained, give it a chance to find a new audience, give Star Trek a chance to actually be relevant again. Because, really, for all the things that Kelvin and DSC brought to the table, Star Trek is less relevant than it's ever been. And that truly should not be. It deserves better than this.

Agreed 100%
At this point, "Prime Universe" has become some sort of security blanket the franchise can't do without. The one attempt at doing a reboot still clung the Prime Universe by being an alternate timeline that branched off from the Prime Universe mostly so they could get Leonard Nimoy to come back. And then the promotional material for Disco went out of its way to make it known it was Prime Universe. Hell, considering Disco supposedly has a studio mandate to make things "25% different" one would think making it a reboot would simplify that task considerably.

 

[Infern0]

I don't consider Discovery to be within the mainstream timelines, simply too many differences to reconcile, I don't think the producers themselves cared that much about it respecting the established, so it is what it is.

I'll reserve judgment on picard but from the glimpses we have seen it seems to be trying more to stick within continuity.

Some people say "Oh you are a sad nerd for caring" but I disagree, I like continuity because I become invested in the world of these characters and it's one of the reasons I hate when comics reboot or change writers and artists and change everything.

 

[Infern0]

Agreed 100%
At this point, "Prime Universe" has become some sort of security blanket the franchise can't do without. The one attempt at doing a reboot still clung the Prime Universe by being an alternate timeline that branched off from the Prime Universe mostly so they could get Leonard Nimoy to come back. And then the promotional material for Disco went out of its way to make it known it was Prime Universe. Hell, considering Disco supposedly has a studio mandate to make things "25% different" one would think making it a reboot would simplify that task considerably.

I think when Discovery was launching they had a "this ain't your daddies star trek" kind of mentality but we're trying to keep one foot in the "trekkies" audience and one in the "casuals" which is why we got sort of a hodge podge of styles.

I think they should have just done a reboot (as that's clearly what they wanted) because it doesn't make sense to go in the direction they did and claim main timeline.

 

[Prax]

The original idea was an anthology show, each season set in a different era. One for Discovery, one in the movie era, one in pre-TNG era, and so on. I still think it's a good idea, and an interesting way to take Star Trek forward in different direction.

I don't consider Discovery to be within the mainstream timelines, simply too many differences to reconcile, I don't think the producers themselves cared that much about it respecting the established, so it is what it is.

I'll reserve judgment on picard but from the glimpses we have seen it seems to be trying more to stick within continuity.

That's kinda how I see it, too, like Star Trek was this ongoing thing for a long time, and the new series is this other thing. When I watch discovery, I'm not seeing it as part of the rest of the shows, but a separate version of Star Trek. Maybe that will change a few years from now.

 

[Lord Garth]

A few items:

I don't think just rebooting the timeline to Star Trek is enough to make it "relevant" or more "relevant". If you're just starting the story over: all fine and good, but so do Batman, Spider-Man, and James Bond. It's not making it more relevant. It's just resetting the story. More relevant in my mind is having LGBTQ Representation (which DSC has been and will be increasing). Relevant is showing that the women are just as important as the men. Those are things DSC is doing. That matters more to me in terms of relevance than just "Here's a reboot. Day One of Kirk's Five-Year Mission of the Enterprise". If you want to reboot, fine, but I think it has to be more than just that.

I don't think DSC was meant to be "Not Your Father's Star Trek". That was the Kelvin Films' line. DSC was trying to be "Star Trek for 21st Century Prestige TV". Similar, in that they wanted to change things up, but not exactly the same. One is the "kid". The other is the "father", except he's changed a little, like everyone does over time, and like what happens to franchises under different regimes and in different decades. The Kelvin Films were aiming younger than Discovery is. DSC might have followed the visual cue of the Kelvin Films with some differences but TNG had also followed the visual cue of the first four TOS Films 30 years earlier. The fifth and sixth movies, in turn, then borrowed from TNG's aesthetic. Star Treks made around the same time will look similar.

Picard seems like it will be visually closer to TNG, DS9, VOY, and the TNG Movies because what Picard is following up on all grew out of the same design aesthetic. Discovery wasn't so lucky. It had TOS, the TOS Movies, and the Kelvin Movies. Three versions of the 23rd Century that are very different from each other. Disco had to pick and choose. Whereas Picard is only following up from one version of the 24th Century. And John Eaves is working on it. The same guy who worked on the last TNG material is working on Picard, so of course he'll follow up his own design work more literally instead of taking liberties with it.

 

[Lance]

Picard seems like it will be visually closer to TNG, DS9, VOY, and the TNG Movies because what Picard is following up on all grew out of the same design aesthetic. Discovery wasn't so lucky. It had TOS, the TOS Movies, and the Kelvin Movies. Three versions of the 23rd Century that are very different from each other. Disco had to pick and choose. Whereas Picard is only following up from one version of the 24th Century. And John Eaves is working on it. The same guy who worked on the last TNG material is working on Picard, so of course he'll follow up his own design work more literally instead of taking liberties with it.

And also DSC has through-lines visually from Star Trek: Enterprise as well. Most particularly the uniform is reminiscent of ENT's blue jumpsuits. Or that was my take on it, anyway.

 

[F. King Daniel]

And also DSC has through-lines visually from Star Trek: Enterprise as well. Most particularly the uniform is reminiscent of ENT's blue jumpsuits. Or that was my take on it, anyway.

My first thought on seeing the unis was that they were the earthside costumes from ST'09 in blue and spammed in shiny bling.

 

[Tuskin38]

And also DSC has through-lines visually from Star Trek: Enterprise as well. Most particularly the uniform is reminiscent of ENT's blue jumpsuits. Or that was my take on it, anyway.

IIRC the costume designer said that was the intent

 

[Boris Skrbic]

Discovery wasn't so lucky. It had TOS, the TOS Movies, and the Kelvin Movies. Three versions of the 23rd Century that are very different from each other. Disco had to pick and choose.

But the precedent was never to pick and choose or to develop a grand unified theory of Starfleet (re)design, merely to slot in as best you can — in DSC’s case, because the years are 2256 through ‘58, between the first and second pilots as portrayed in TOS-R. Maybe tweak that a little to arrive at something closer to TOS, but not too distant from what we’d seen on DS9 and ENT.

DSC does make sense as an evolution of the preceding portrayal of that era — that of the Kelvin in 2233 or even the Kelvin Timeline if we reason that Nero couldn’t have changed that much. On the other hand, because of the TFF cast photo from STB, you have to wonder if even 2233 Prime wasn’t in fact radically different from what we saw in the prologue of ST (2009).

(I know some commenters prefer to look at ST as a stage play or a radio show, but the break with precedent was in trying to cash in on Star Trek as Kirk… Spock… McCoy…, not attempt to smooth out the changes by setting newer installments ahead of older ones; even ENT compromised between 2001 and the 2260s because Jefferies’ fans were involved in production design.)

 

[Lord Garth]

(I know some commenters prefer to look at ST as a stage play or a radio show, but the break with precedent was in trying to cash in on Star Trek as Kirk… Spock… McCoy…, not attempt to smooth out the changes by setting newer installments ahead of older ones; even ENT compromised between 2001 and the 2260s because Jefferies’ fans were involved in production design.)

Some people do prefer to look at Star Trek as a stage play, but I'm not one of them. I agree that this is a visual medium. That's also the reason why I think sticking with the TOS look as was wouldn't have worked. I gave my reviews of Part I and Part II of "Into the Mirror Darkly" elsewhere on the board a while ago. Even though I had some issues with "Into the Mirror Darkly", the look of the USS Defiant wasn't one of them. Yes, there is a but. Like the "Trials and Tribble-ations", "Into the Mirror Darkly" was intentionally nostalgic. "Into the Mirror Darkly" was a campy episode. And the whole point of "Trials and Tribble-ations" was meant to be lightweight and nudge-nudge wink-wink.

DSC's tone, especially in the first season, wasn't light or campy. With episodes as serious as those, can you picture "The Vulcan Hello" and "Battle at the Binary Stars" with flashing, blinking lights and with uniforms from "The Cage"? Can you picture all the visuals used elsewhere in the episode, in something with a budget of $8 million + per episode, then we cut back to the bridge and it would look like something in the style of "The Cage"? That, visually, just doesn't work. Especially if those episodes are meant to be taken as seriously as they were intended to be.

Could DSC have made things look closer to TOS? Sure. The look of the Disco-Enterprise is proof (I'm not spoiling anything for those who haven't seen it because I won't go into specifics). But they were never going to go one-to-one.

The jump in the look from TOS to TMP was vast. I always thought so. Nothing changes that completely in two-and-a-half years. Nothing. And I'm not talking about the Enterprise, which they explained away as a refit. I'm talking about the overall look of everything else too. So the best you can do is think the TOS look overlapped with the TMP look for a while. If that needs to be reconciled. The mentality Gene Roddenberry and Robert Wise seemed to take was that the way things looked in TMP was the way things should've looked and would've also looked in TOS if they had better resources. That's not more "correct" than what we actually saw on-screen, but it's the thought-process that went into the overall production design. Aside from being influenced by 2001: A Space Odyssey and wanting to compete with Star Wars. If Harve Bennett's Starfleet Academy movie were made, I don't think that would've looked much like the 2250s in the "The Cage" either.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

Thing is that we can still rewatch serious episodes like “Balance of Terror” without being distracted by limitations of that period. If you’re treating the story and the acting very seriously, the scenery kinda falls into the background, or you just handwave it knowing that the Star Trek universe developed differently from ours (faster in some areas than in others).

I do know that DSC S1 would’ve worked better as a story if the year was 2456, the villains were the Qlang, and if Burnham had been adopted by Selek and T’Rell and raised on a Vulcan colony in deep space (or better yet, by a family from a brand-new Federation member). But they really, really needed that Vulcan salute poster (“Star Trek without LLAP? Gimme a break!”)

 

[ozzfloyd]

You "know" that eh?