so the producers and writers said that discovery will lead into TOS (60's aesthetics and all)...
- Thread starter crashchaos
- Start date
But why can't we stick with it? I don't follow. The Prime Universe isn't 1960s Trek. It's not set design, SFX or make-up. It's the timeline of events, the characters, the ships, etc.... I can easily imagine that DISC is occurring 10 years prior to Where No Man Has Gone Before, and somewhere out there is the Enterprise with Pike, Number One, and a half-Vulcan first officer shouting about women.
There is no conflict for me. Any visual discrepancy I can imagine away. Maybe it's because I had practice early on in the 1980s when I read TOS novels that were supposed to take place during the 5 year mission, and visualized them as post-TMP. I even redrew the artwork of the Trek choose-your-own-adventure so that they were wearing TWOK tunics and were on the refit.
Last edited:
I would love to see those drawing
For what it's worth I don't think the solution to dovetail with canon will be an alternate universe or anything along those lines. Not only have they talked at some length about it being a true prequel, they commissioned a first novel which featured the canon Enterprise with Pike and Spock interacting with the Shenzhou. I don't see them doing a permanent universe switcheroo myself. This is the prime timeline, that we've seen so far.
An audience fake out would be interesting. Discovery jumps out from the Mirror Universe or whatever and runs into a familiar looking starship. The crew look at it in awe and they cut in for the credits with only the name "USS Enterprise NCC-1701" on the hull shown to us the audience. The previews give nothing away at all, only a lot of speculation happens for the next week or months depending on which episode it is.
The next episode finally airs, and we find out that they have returned home to their own universe, and they were just in awe because seeing a Constitution-class starship is still rare and having it be the starship of the highly decorated Captain Christopher Pike, just adds to the state of awe they crew shows...before Lorca snaps them out of it by giving an order of some sort.
The next episode finally airs, and we find out that they have returned home to their own universe, and they were just in awe because seeing a Constitution-class starship is still rare and having it be the starship of the highly decorated Captain Christopher Pike, just adds to the state of awe they crew shows...before Lorca snaps them out of it by giving an order of some sort.
The interview/quote I remember reading said that by the time Discovery bumped into TOS, all the canonical bits would be back in place. I personally view this as yet another piece of bullshit flung out by the producers to try to coddle irate canonistas (like myself). Discovery is not going to last ten seasons. I very, very thoroughly doubt that it will cover an arc ten years long in show. Therefore, said promise is another smoke and mirrors lie about his show being set in the "Prime Timeline" instead of being the brutally obvious reboot that it is. They're just in a "say anything" to smother dissent, dampen opposition mindset. At this point I think even I would rather they just came clean and said "@#$% it! It's its own thing." and be done with it.
Too little too late. Why not do it from the beginning?
Don’t be silly. In 200 years everyone will be wearing Zapp Brannigan uniforms... but in blue! Because that’s much more futuristic and believable for modern audiences!
You shouldn't take it so personally.
But that's half the fun of it all.
They're not a post colonial failed state, they're a TV show. They don't care about 'dissent'. They're just doing what they're doing, and we can watch or not.
Personally I have no problem with visual redesigns (as long as they look good).
The refit of the Enterprise in TMP was really one such redesign, as was the Klingon make up, the better looking D7's, the new transporter effects, new torpedo effects, new phaser effects, new warp effects (which seem to change in every series), armoured security. Sure a lot of these were given in story reasons, but some weren't and the real reason was obviously because a cheap TV show made in the 60's didn't look good for modern audiences.
I'll admit I wasn't always this relaxed about the subject. I used to get irritated at them not making their minds up on what colour the phasers were or what they could do (like stun people on the surface).
The refit of the Enterprise in TMP was really one such redesign, as was the Klingon make up, the better looking D7's, the new transporter effects, new torpedo effects, new phaser effects, new warp effects (which seem to change in every series), armoured security. Sure a lot of these were given in story reasons, but some weren't and the real reason was obviously because a cheap TV show made in the 60's didn't look good for modern audiences.
I'll admit I wasn't always this relaxed about the subject. I used to get irritated at them not making their minds up on what colour the phasers were or what they could do (like stun people on the surface).
TOS was never a cheap show to produce.
It's not so much that you can't do Prime so much as you can't do it at the same time as one of the older shows. I think a show that is the definitve look of it's time period can work and I think you can even get by with 10 year post Nemisis gap but it really is hard to to do it in a past setting with how advanced modern tech has come. You either have to find a time that hasn't been really all that represented such as 30 years before TOS or 30 years after or you do the retro-futuristic look like in that cool pic of the Enterprise with modern visuals and lighting in this thread or you create a in-universe reason for the difference in look. I mean you can use the same canon of course but to me their is difference between canon and a shared universe. To me all the Batman films share the same canon but the Marvel movies share the same universe. that is until they reboot it and start over which in case they will still proably use the old canon for the most part but it won't be connected the current cinemantic universe. I'm not sure if one can prove what a shared universe is at times but it is more about how one feels. To me all the previous Trek's feel connected. The Kelvin Universe and Discovery feel like their own things. At least at this point. I think I would need more crossovers and more tech and visual cues to maybe see them as part of the old Trek universe which I think can be done but also don't think it has to be done because they can exist on their own if they want.
Jason
Indeed. Very common misconception that TOS was cheap. It was constrained by the technology available and the fact that it was still a TV budget decades before HBO redefined that concept, but that budget wasn't small for the time - that's one reason why it was going to be cancelled after s2.
The other thing people forget when they criticize how "cheap" and "simple" it looks to them today is that it was made to be viewed only on relatively tiny TV screens with often-less-than-ideal reception. Giving everything tons of detail that would never be seen or noticed would have just been considered a waste, on any budget! They also wanted to balance the color palette to take full advantage of that novelty, yet also had to take into account that a lot of people still only had B&W sets. Everything was a compromise based on the conditions of the time...just as it is now.
Last edited:
Also bear in mind that TV shows in general did not have the kind of budget that TNG had, let alone DSC or anything else on today. The average of $190k for TOS comes out to about $650k in 1990; so it may not have been cheap for 1960's TV but it certainly was compared to any of its successors.
You mean besides the maroon floor, the blue panels, the dark gray accents, and the black trim?
Similar threads
