SNW truly respects TOS continuity!
- Thread starter C.E. Evans
- Start date
SNW episode one clearly establishes that in dialogue that Chapel is at that time a civilian and that she's doing biomedical research.
"Nurse Chapel is on civilian exchange from the Stanford Morehouse Epigenetic Project." - Dr. M'Benga
It's in dialogue, it's onscreen, and it's "canon."
As for Chapel's SNW uniform, it appears to be unique. When an apparently junior medtech is assisting her in Episode Four, "Memento Mori," the younger woman is wearing a standard medical uniform like Dr M'Benga's.
While aboard the Enterprise in "Tomorrow is Yeasterday," Captain Christopher was issued a standard Starfleet uniform with lieutenant braid on the sleeve, appropriate equivalent rank of an USAF captain.
In "Space Seed," Khan is issued a standard Starfleet uniform with no rank designators.
In the United States, the U.S. Public Health Service is a uniformed service with a commissioned corps of officers under the control of the Department of Health and Human Service. It's uniforms and rank structure are based upon the Navy and Coast Guard, except that there are no enlisted ranks. They are also generally regarded not to be military.
I believe many changes starting with DSC were made because they can.
That's just untrue.
DS9 Trill differ from TNG Trill in appearance because Terry Farrell looked hotter with spots rather than head ridges, not because of inattention or a genuine error.
Women can captain starships in the Enterprise/TOS era because the original cannon was knuckle-dragging bullshit.
WWIII was introduced, contrary to canon, because it fitted a story. The Borg Queen was retconned in because that worked better for a movie.
You can complain about the scale of canon violations being greater, but to pretend that there were never any such choices in the past is typical of the bad-faith criticism of modern Trek.
So like most other changes.
No, that's not it at all.
SNW owes almost nothing to the earlier streaming shows with respect to the way they're telling their stories and relating their continuity to TOS. It's pretty much limited to referencing some events in STD.
Which is fine. This is a new, contemporary version of Star Trek. It shouldn't be like the thirty-and-fifty-year old versions.
And it's not errors in canon - it's inconsistencies.
I think it is. Discovery and Strange New Worlds may have a different take on telling stories, but they inhabit the same world. They are linked. Strange New Worlds is a spinnoff of the season 2 characters and Enterprise that appeared in Discovery. Burnham is referenced. How they tell stories has nothing to do with whether or not they are following previous Star Trek canon or not.
The changes forced on the production by Discovery stand.
And as I said before, where TOS had internal inconsistencies (due to the age it was made, and the hectic production schedule, the lack of a standard and the lack of dedicated staff of continuity) and there are the occasional inconsistencies in TNG through Enterprise. But they tried. That is my point. They tried. On occasion a production decision went a different direction (TMP Klingons, TNG Romulans, Ent B, Ent C, Trill) but these were small things. When they wanted to show the 1701, they showed either the original Jefferies design, or the TMP refit. When they made Relics, they quickly and cheaply assembled a set that would fit the look (it was highly inaccurate, though they used some TOS footage to show the original bridge. When the did Trials and Tribbleations, they recreated sets, costumes, and models as close to the originals as they could. For In a Mirror Darkly, they again built sets, costumes, props, and CG models as close to the original as possible. They referenced TOS from time to time. The brought back a number of characters played by the same actors. We had two instances of a connection to the movie era and they put attention into those in terms of sets, costumes, and models. Gary Kerr's work to document the TOS Enterprise in the Smithsonian was directly used for Trials and Tribbleations and In A Mirror Darkly as well as the HD remastered version. They put effort into making it as accurate to the past version of Trek as they could. The Okuda standardized the timeline.
Jump to the Discovery production and it was clear during the first episode that they had not even tried. No attempt was made to link to the established look. Not attempt was made to fit it in the established timeline like the Remastered version did (it used the correct ship version for both pilots and the series). John Eaves put some effort in to create a new Enterprise design that was close to the original, and then the modelers changed it. Change seems to have been the goal of the production. Mudd was a violent criminal instead of a mostly harmless con man. Lorca (him being from a mirror universe can excuse some of this) had things in his office a decade before Kirk was supposedly the first to encounter these things (like the Gorn). They stuck things in as easter eggs just because when they don't fit. The retroed the arrowhead logo where it was not in TOS (it was not the starfleet-wide emblem until TWOK). And the Klingons... yikes. Bad mouth prosthetics, no hair, and this isn't a change from TOS, this is a change from the movies, TNG, DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise. Those series spent a lot of time fleshing out the Klingons into a rich species and Discovery threw it all out the windows (except the language). The elevated every ship to the lofty Starship level and then had a mutiny where the mutineer was convicted. Spock's adopted sister no less, making it a lie when he tells Kirk there has never been a mutiny on a starship. Each one follows the same pattern. A lack of looking up anything (and these days it is so easy online). No research, no attempt at following what came before.
So previous series at least tried (and made mistakes) and Discovery wasn't even trying. Strange New Worlds is trying, but they are guided by what they did in Discovery as much as TOS. So it is better in terms of following the old canon, but in reality the changes are so drastic between the visuals and the story that Discovery and Strange New Worlds are in a reboot world. And I don't know why that word sparks such outrage. When you look up a reboot of any other franchise, the difference in looks and story is exactly what we get with Discovery and Strange New Worlds. BSG comes to mind as does Lost In Space. So why can't it be a reboot? Why doesn't everyone call it a reboot? Well, because CBS says it isn't. Why? Who can say. It is like CBS is scared to admit what they have done when the evidence clearly indicates what they have done.
As a reboot, Strange New Worlds is probably the best Star Trek this generation has ever seen. At its heart, it is the original as Roddenberry envisioned it. That it occasionally strays from TOS canon is irrelevant because it is a reboot of The Cage and a spin-off of Discovery.
And I blame part of it on CBS redoing TOS in broadcast order instead of the production order that Paramount was doing it in. Production order is the only correct way to watch it and not have some of the developmental changes look ridiculous.
M'Benga says she's a civilian in Episode 1.
All they changed was the angle of the pylons and made the deflector look more TOS by giving it only one antennae, Eaves version had 2 like every other Fed ship in Season 1.
She's definitely not Starfleet no matter what the Science insignia on her medical uniform says.
And that was an excellent decision, it's not the 1960s anymore.
They also kept the culture.
That's right. Chapel has been directly stated to be a civilian.
IOW, the designers changed it to be less like other STD ships. And they've discarded just about every design cue used on that series in putting together their sets, costumes, etc. The vestiges that are left of the other streaming shows in this one are a couple of important narrative elements - Burnham's existence, the events in "Such Sweet Sorrow," Pike's vision - none of which are in conflict with TOS.
They have made the Enterprise sensibly larger, which one could argue is a vestige of the other show; OTOH, it's what they did in the Abrams movies as well.
I'm glad all the Federation warp nacelles we've seen so far have been round and shaped like ships from TOS and ENT.
Which is also an abandonment of STD design language.
Absolutely. And I couldn't be happier.
Because it isn't. It looks different sure, but it's still the same universe, just updated to a modern asthetic.
They even used footage from TOS in Season 2.
That is a reboot.
Whatever helps you sleep at night.
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