In the 26th century...

[Mr Awe]

The dictionary is irrelevant to all of this.

Bzzzt. Nope! Words have meanings that matter.

Whether TNG was a sequel or a reboot is a question of the producers' intent.

Yes, and clearly the producers meant for TNG to be a sequel. TNG occurs in the same timeline as TOS but at a later point. Here's are just a few of the ways you can determine their intent:

• TNG stories refer to events of TOS
• TOS characters appear but they're older. For example, Doctor McCoy, Spock, Scotty, Sarek, and Kirk all appear and are playing their TOS characters.
• Picard's ready room display of Enterprise ships includes the TOS Enterprise.

It's really quite simple. I'm surprised it's so hard for you to grasp. TNG is a sequel series to TOS.

Mr Awe

 

[Kor]

It also rebooted the TV franchise.

Kor

 

[T'Girl]

Picard's ready room display of Enterprise ships includes the TOS Enterprise.

Conference room.

And yes, it was a direct sequel.

 

[David.Blue]

Honestly, I have my doubts about how a large faction of Star Trek fans would react to anything but a "soft" reboot. The brutal fact has been these stories have never allowed genuine change to take place in the universe. TNG has essentially identical tech to TOS, with everything dialed up a very little bit. By the 26th century, the newest Enterprise should include sentient holograms and androids in the crew as a matter of course. It should have a cloaking device because by then everyone has a cloaking device. Those would be minor changes, really, in the scale of things. Look at our own world and what it has become since 1915. Yet even when truly society-altering things have occurred in Star Trek before now, those things have pretty much evaporated by the following week. Remember when we found out warp drive was actually damaging the fabric of space itself? Never mentioned again until one sentence of technobabble hand-waving regarding Voyager's gel pacs and we don't have to think about this at all. At least DS9 dealt with the notion the Federation might contain some genuine dissidents--although of course such dissidents were always wrong and proven so. Every single time.

So I'm unhappily skeptical about how any Star Trek will treat the passage of time, other than cosmetically.

 

[Mudd]

Honestly, I have my doubts about how a large faction of Star Trek fans would react to anything but a "soft" reboot. The brutal fact has been these stories have never allowed genuine change to take place in the universe. TNG has essentially identical tech to TOS, with everything dialed up a very little bit. By the 26th century, the newest Enterprise should include sentient holograms and androids in the crew as a matter of course. It should have a cloaking device because by then everyone has a cloaking device. Those would be minor changes, really, in the scale of things. Look at our own world and what it has become since 1915. Yet even when truly society-altering things have occurred in Star Trek before now, those things have pretty much evaporated by the following week. Remember when we found out warp drive was actually damaging the fabric of space itself? Never mentioned again until one sentence of technobabble hand-waving regarding Voyager's gel pacs and we don't have to think about this at all. At least DS9 dealt with the notion the Federation might contain some genuine dissidents--although of course such dissidents were always wrong and proven so. Every single time.

So I'm unhappily skeptical about how any Star Trek will treat the passage of time, other than cosmetically.

A lot of good points there.

What I want to see is a contemporary approach to character - dialogue, attitude, motivation - visual design and television storytelling techniques. If they accomplish that they can pretty much leave the in-universe history and technology where it's always been throughout TOS, TNG, Enterprise and the nuTrek movies.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Yeah, great points, David.Blue.

 

[CorporalClegg]

Let's check the dictionary on this one:

According to Merriam-Webster:

2

a: subsequent development

b: the next installment (as of a speech or story); especially: a literary, cinematic, or televised work continuing the course of a story begun in a preceding one.

a book, movie, etc., that continues a story begun in another book, movie, etc.

TNG is a sequel to TOS according to the dictionary.

Call it what you will, I just think it's a bit funny to try to adapt a computer term to apply to this when all it does is confuse the issue. We've already got perfectly good terms to describe.

Mr Awe

Nope.

I'll see your definitions and raise you an OED:

A published, broadcast, or recorded work that continues the story or develops the theme of an earlier one.

TNG does neither of those things. TNG presented its own themes and ideas, most of which were completely different (if not contradictory) to those of TOS.

More importantly, however, it did not (in any way) continue the story of TOS. It was its own story. Aside from the occasional fleeting reference, it was totally independent. TOS could be completely erased from existence with little or no effect on TNG.

It's no more a sequel to TOS than DSN or VOY.

It did, however, restart the television franchise.

 

[T'Girl]

... it did not (in any way) continue the story of TOS. It was its own story

Captain Kirk,
Space, the final frontier.
These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise
Its 5-year mission: to explore strange new worlds
To seek out new life and new civilizations
To boldly go where no man has gone before

Captain Picard,
Space, the final frontier.
These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise
It's continuing mission, to explore strange new worlds
To seek out new life and new civilizations
To boldly go where no one has gone before

 

[CorporalClegg]

And?

 

[T'Girl]

More of the same, but with different actors.

Which I feel is fine, I love the idea of a starship (from the same organization) traveling the stars, getting in fights, meeting aliens, and generally looking around.

A continuation of TOS.