Who said anything about saving the universe? 
Sometimes you just wanna build a gaudy hotel and casino and drill for oil.
Sometimes you just wanna build a gaudy hotel and casino and drill for oil.
Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2x03 - "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow"
- Thread starter Commander Richard
- Start date
Was Picard 3 easier for you to swallow then?
But you know as someone who's also been watching Star Trek since it first aired way back in the before times, I knew even as a child that some inconsistencies were easier to ignore if I really really liked the story being told. And, so far, with SNW, I like the stories well enough to ignore those things that strain credibility - like how did they afford that hotel room, etc?
Right? If people don't like inconsistency then they must really hate TOS, the worst offender when it comes to consistency.
A lot of points here, but here's my take. I think that canon/continuity should be respected, but not slavishly worshiped. The whole rational for moving the timeline forward on Trek universe events that occur in our present is the fannish conceit that the Trek timeline is an outgrowth of our present, that one that you and I are living in right now. Fine for a while, but it doesn't hold up.
Why didn't they have La'an and AlterKirk go back to the sixties when OG Khan would have been a boy? They could have done that and left out the whole sliding timeline business. They chose not to do that. If nothing else, Picard Season two taught us that a fictional future comes with its own fictional past and we shouldn't have a problem with that.
It's not like the Terminator where "Judgement Day is inevitable", it's more like the Doomsday Clock comic where every twenty years or so Superman arrives on a different Earth.
Why didn't they have La'an and AlterKirk go back to the sixties when OG Khan would have been a boy? They could have done that and left out the whole sliding timeline business. They chose not to do that. If nothing else, Picard Season two taught us that a fictional future comes with its own fictional past and we shouldn't have a problem with that.
It's not like the Terminator where "Judgement Day is inevitable", it's more like the Doomsday Clock comic where every twenty years or so Superman arrives on a different Earth.
So I surprised myself having loved the first 2, this one didn't quite land for me. My general thoughts/critiques in no particular order:
- Temporal Agent sends La'an and Kirk back in time. Hey, it wouldn't be Star Trek without Time Travel.
- Playing chess nets them enough money to sleep in a fancy hotel instead of Sleep-Eazy Motel. Most unrealistic part of the episode.
- The whole excursion to modern day Toronto - ok, tried and true Star Trek, nice that it's not LA for a change, just didn't land for me. Although if it was New York, Kirk and La'an would have been dead before the day was out.
- Kirk being shot at point blank. I don't mind him getting killed but makes it harder to watch with my kids.
- No reference to Gary 7? The Temporal Cold War? I don't expect them to drag ENT into SNW but a few callbacks would be nice easter eggs and help tie continuity a little better.
It's still a fun episode but not one I'm keen to rewatch. 8/10
- Temporal Agent sends La'an and Kirk back in time. Hey, it wouldn't be Star Trek without Time Travel.
- Playing chess nets them enough money to sleep in a fancy hotel instead of Sleep-Eazy Motel. Most unrealistic part of the episode.
- The whole excursion to modern day Toronto - ok, tried and true Star Trek, nice that it's not LA for a change, just didn't land for me. Although if it was New York, Kirk and La'an would have been dead before the day was out.
- Kirk being shot at point blank. I don't mind him getting killed but makes it harder to watch with my kids.
- No reference to Gary 7? The Temporal Cold War? I don't expect them to drag ENT into SNW but a few callbacks would be nice easter eggs and help tie continuity a little better.
It's still a fun episode but not one I'm keen to rewatch. 8/10
My thinking up to last night:
The "Second American Civil War" started with McCarthy, Nixon, the Việt Nam War, Civil Rights, etc., and kept bubbling along as an undercurrent to everything - including the Eugenics Wars - up to 2053. I didn't see a problem with that version of history.
The "Second American Civil War" started with McCarthy, Nixon, the Việt Nam War, Civil Rights, etc., and kept bubbling along as an undercurrent to everything - including the Eugenics Wars - up to 2053. I didn't see a problem with that version of history.
the money I can accept, checkin in without ID, crossing the border twice without ID? not so much
Making a period episode (with associated costumes and sets) would have been a lot more expensive. Perhaps the budget or shooting schedule just couldn't accommodate that.
Money is actual magic. It can do ANYTHING.
Totally agree. Doctor Who, which is just as much a cultural signifier to British audiences as a science-fiction series that explored the human condition as Star Trek is to American audiences, isn't undermined because the Daleks never invaded London in the 1960s.
This is why I find the "updating for modern audiences" excuse really stupid. People that like and love Star Trek will accept all of the weirdness and cardboard sets that came before because it's a part of Star Trek, the same way Who fans accept the Doctors with question marks on their clothes who wore celery as a fashion accessory and stopped multiple alien invasions of Earth that never happened.
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I still think that this is the timline following the events of First Contact ... everything from there on is an alternate timeline. Enterprise, the Temporal Cold War, Discovery, Strange New Worlds ... it all changed with the interference of the Borg and the Enterprise-E during First Contact!
The celery was to detect harmful gasses the Doctor was allergic to.
About continuity I have always been a "broad strokes"-guy:
For continuity I go with my gut feelings:
Picard's mother hanging herself is for me a major contradiction in his character that doesn't work. Even though technically they bended canon enough that it could be theoretically possible. I just don't believe it. It doesn't work with the character work from before and is a major continuity error for me.
Whereas Khan traveling to space in the near future of 1992, while also being born mid 21st century, is IMO nothing but a short amusement. Entertainment being overtaken by reality. And I have no problem believing both at the same time, despite it clearly contradicting itself. Because in both cases they clearly meant "the near future", and the event stayed true to itself. That's believable enough for me.
- Present day
- "Dark time"/all the bad future predictions happening (WWIII, DNA augments, authoritarians, genocide, maybe in the future AI rebellion)
- First contact & "getting better"
- Perfect Star Trek Utopian future
For continuity I go with my gut feelings:
Picard's mother hanging herself is for me a major contradiction in his character that doesn't work. Even though technically they bended canon enough that it could be theoretically possible. I just don't believe it. It doesn't work with the character work from before and is a major continuity error for me.
Whereas Khan traveling to space in the near future of 1992, while also being born mid 21st century, is IMO nothing but a short amusement. Entertainment being overtaken by reality. And I have no problem believing both at the same time, despite it clearly contradicting itself. Because in both cases they clearly meant "the near future", and the event stayed true to itself. That's believable enough for me.
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Star Trek has always updated for modern audiences. This is no different.
The only difference is the rigid attempts to box Trek in.
The only difference is the rigid attempts to box Trek in.
Isn’t everyone’s? That’s just science.
You just saved me whole lot of typing. TY.
At this risk of sounding extremely flippant it's because change. Not just change as a bad thing, but because it undoes measures of suppositions that many people and fans have taken for granted, or as a part of a timeline that perhaps has been memorized, or other facts that are expected to frame in the box marked "Star Trek." It's a difficult place to adapt to when "that's the way it's always been" is the watch word of Star Trek.
There is a tendency to underestimate how locked in thinking and fan assumption can become. I'm sure it's older than this, but one of my first real encounters with this was with ST 09. Despite being declared "an alternate timeline" in the film itself, there was still wholesale rejection of it because the technology was wrong, the Enterprise was wrong, and Pike's age was way wrong.
TL: DR change is hard.
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