ST:DISC's greatest failing...yes this is TOS related

[RAMA]

Who would have ever thought we'd get a 15 min prequel to "I, Mudd" that was both updated and more effective than the original episode! Without an overarching arc like season 1 Discovery to take the forefront, we had plenty of cool worldbuilding, another Federation ship, and a brief but fun look at the underbelly of the galaxy.

RAMA

 

[Pauln6]

Why, oh why didn't they go with a Sulu series after TUC or set in that time instead of ENT which was a silly idea? I know I've heard rumours of George Takei not being a strong enough lead or good enough actor but at least we as fans were okay with him! It seems like the Berman thing again to not pander to TOS and ignoring it even further whilst making a prequel to TNG like as what's been said on here before!
JB

Personally, I think World Enough and Time demonstrated that Takei could totally command the screen, although I would have said a mini series would have done.

Grace was definitely psst her acting peak but some brief appearances for her and other TOS characters could have been great.

 

[STEPhon IT]

DISCO was an unnecessary prequel. Let me be clear that I'm not saying DISCO is without merit. I like the series though I wish it hadn't made the unforced errors it did right out the starting gate, and a lot of that came from making the series a prequel. I agree with those who feel that DISCO's premise didn't necessitate for the series to be a prequel. If it had been set after Nemesis, I think it might have been better received overall, even from a number of it's detractors right now.

ENT honored the prequel concept better, especially in DISCO's first season. I get the strong attraction of nostalgia, but that's the issue with a lot of these reboots, sidequels, or what have you. Its like they want the glow of nostalgia but then don't want to fully embrace that nostalgia. And I get it, they want and need space to create and add their own touch to things and not feel burdened by trying to cross every 't' and dot every 'i' to make their series fit with TOS or whatever established franchise. Also, it's less risk averse to do a prequel and the Abrams-Lin films proved there was still some interest in the TOS era.

All that being said, from a creative standpoint, of having a Trek series truly for this era, I wish they had set DISCO after Nemesis. Almost nothing major in the series would've even needed to be changed. The main sticking point would be Burnham being Sarek's daughter and Spock's sister. Though depending on when you set the series, Michael could've still been in his adopted daughter, it would've just been the older Sarek. Or she could've been Tuvok's adopted daughter.

Making DISCO a prequel was the easy route. They decided to swaddled themselves in nostalgia, yet make so many changes that it failed to deliver enough on the promised nostalgia.

In some ways Picard is better at being a Trek for today, though for me the writing, story, and tonal changes are too jarring. So even there, I wish they had just made DISCO the series after Nemesis, and perhaps Jean-Luc could've been the special guest star in their season 2 instead of Pike and Spock. Heck, Burnham could've been Sisko and Kassidy's daughter, and that would've more naturally tied her to an established Star Trek hero without it feeling as shoehorned in. In many ways DISCO feels more like a successor to DS9 than a prequel to TOS anyway.

DISCO will always look better when it's identified as its own entity and not a prequel to TOS. The further DISCO separate itself from that great series the better it looks. Even in the canon obsession trend here on this forum nothing fits with TOS and it never will.

 

[fireproof78]

Who would have ever thought we'd get a 15 min prequel to "I, Mudd" that was both updated and more effective than the original episode! Without an overarching arc like season 1 Discovery to take the forefront, we had plenty of cool worldbuilding, another Federation ship, and a brief but fun look at the underbelly of the galaxy.

RAMA

That is the one aspect that I appreciate with TOS and DISCO. There are aspects of the world that I think needed to be fleshed out, rather than just assuming it all looks the same. I know that not everything lines up perfectly in terms of visuals, but there is a lot there than I enjoy seeing the interconnectedness.

 

[drt]

I'm watching Mudd's Women again...and man do i love those early eps. Serious frontier episodes. Lots of Sci-fi. All kinds of wonky details. Women growing up on automated planets only with their families. Miners who can buy entire planets.....things like that. The galaxy *feels* empty.

Agreed, the original series had much more of a "less populated galaxy where things were really far apart" feeling than we got with the later series. I always wondered if it's because of Star Wars and all of the fun weird aliens that those later series went to more of a "densly populated galaxy with stuff much closer together".

Westerns simply aren’t as popular now. Discovery doesn’t really reflect TOS, as use its assets to tell the type of stories that are popular now.

I think few people under the age of 55 have no idea how prevalent Westerns were in the 50s/60s. TOS's frontier stories would have seemed totally familiar to the viewing audience at the time. Today, not so much...

In the Trek universe, things looked and acted in a certain way. DS9 had one episode that went to the 1701 ship and didn't take anything out of proportion.

Although that was a jokey, nostalgia revisit to the old days (similar to "A Mirror Darkly"). I don't think a modern audience , probably difficult to base an entire series today around the 60s aesthetic.

Really with Enterprise (at least seasons 1-3) and Discovery seemed to be acting more as prequels to TNG/DS9/Voyager rather than TOS/TAS. I don’t know whether it’s because of the lower production quality in the 60’s, but I’ve found that they’ve tried to connect both series with the later series rather than TOS. Enterprise Season 4 tried to rectify that.

It's true for the Kelvin movies as well. I think it's less the production quality and more that the general audience is much more influenced by the "pop culture" recollection of TOS than its actuality.

There always seemed to be biased against TOS I think in the early 2000s in a way that I perceived similar to how Batman in the sixties was compared to the films of the recent times! Even the cowboy diplomacy lines in Unification came off more as a dig rather than a comparison of how we do things now in the twenty fourth century to Spock's old archaic times on the Enterprise!

Yeah, it used to bug me that during the TNG-era that TOS was treated as the cheesy, hokey stepchild of the Trekverse.

...all because the "creators" of DSC could not generate a solid character of their own without grafting it to a classic character (and the development built around him), as if that association was going to make MB palatable. Whoops.

I did like the idea in DIS that Sarek was constantly exploring means of better enhancing human/Vulcan relations, even if it meant experimenting on his own family.

I think another problem is the continuity, since, while it would be sequel to TOS, it would be a (true) prequel to The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager.

I think post-TUC is pretty ripe for exploration. It much more of a "lost era" than any other period of Trek history. In true Trek fashion, there are lots of parallels that could be explored with the way our world has progressed since the fall of the Soviet Union.

 

[Poltargyst]

Yeah, it used to bug me that during the TNG-era that TOS was treated as the cheesy, hokey stepchild of the Trekverse.

Ditto. I am thankful for Abrams putting the emphasis back on the TOS characters.