Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - Pike series and novel continuity

Sorely tempted to post the Admiral Marcus "Well...SHIT" animated .GIF yet again.

 

Alternatively, CBS has an exclusive lined up with an outlet to reveal these names, hence the creation of marketing materials to support them, only the official reveal hasn't happened yet so they're putting the genie back in the bottle as best they can, and when someone (Colbert?) gets the exclusive, everyone just pretends the last two days didn't happen.

I've dealt firsthand with this exact scenario in the comics industry many times over the last fifteen years.

 

^ This was the immediate thought that crossed my own mind when I read Paramount's walkback, too. They're basically "John Harrison"-ing this, quite possibly.

 

since the retraction specifically said there would be a first-name reveal at a later date that hardly seems likely

 

Which is a change.

Uhura is nowhere near as iconic as Mister Spock. (At least, not yet. Maybe SNW's depiction will elevate her character in public consciousness.)

 

It's a change in how much of his name we know. It is not a change to his name. As I said, we've known since 1967 that he had another name, so that has not changed.

What difference does that make? And what's wrong with change? The only creative work that doesn't change is one that isn't being created anymore. You can't have it both ways.

I mean, good grief, the term "mind meld" was only used twice in TOS and never in TAS, and "mind touch" and "mind probe" were both used three times. Yet The Making of Star Trek favored "meld," and it was the most influential book on Trek fandom in the early years, so it led to that term becoming standardized in the novels, the movies, and everything afterward. That was a change from how Spock was portrayed in TOS, a permanent one, and yet now everyone is so used to it that they've forgotten it was a change.

Then there's the change Spock underwent in TMP, reconciling with his emotional side and no longer denying it. That was not only a permanent change for the rest of Nimoy's tenure in the role, but it was the only change in the TOS movies that didn't get reset to the previous status quo in the sequels, until the series ended. Heck, they could've used Spock's death and resurrection to reset it, but instead they had him recapitulate his acceptance of emotion in TVH -- "Tell mother I feel fine." So that was a massive change in Spock's characterization, and a permanent one. It didn't make him any less "iconic" or somehow break him as a character.

 

From a Watsonian perspective, sure. From a Doylist perspective, it is most definitely a change to his name.

I just don't think this is something the canon should change. That doesn't mean I think it's gonna be a bad show or that I won't enjoy its portrayal of Spock. Doesn't mean I don't think it looks awesome otherwise -- I am really looking forward to SNW.

But I do think that the character of Mister Spock is so iconic that certain basic things about him -- such as his name -- should not be changed. To me revealing Spock's full Vulcan name would be as bad of a decision as revealing the Doctor's original Time Lord name from Doctor Who. The mystery is part of what makes them iconic, and revealing too much about the character undermines that air of mystery.

 

If so, it's an additive change. Nothing is being altered or replaced, only supplemented. It's no greater a change than "BEM" establishing that the "T." stood for "Tiberius," or "Sins of the Father" adding "son of Mogh" to Worf's name. The only difference between those "changes" and this one is that you're used to them.

If they do actually use the name in-story, I doubt it'll be much more than just a name on a viewscreen graphic, maybe with someone saying "I can't pronounce that" to justify why he's just called "Spock" from then on. It'll be a passing bit of trivia, not something that comes up regularly.

If anything, I hope we do hear Spock say it out loud at least once, since I've always been curious about exactly how "S'chn T'gai" would have to be pronounced in order to be nearly impossible for an English speaker like Leila Kalomi or Amanda Grayson to reproduce it except "after a fashion" and after long practice. As spelled, it doesn't seem that hard. I tend to assume the apostrophes represent some kind of weird sibilants or clicks. And maybe the "g" is an interpretation of some really difficult guttural.

There was a time when the name of the Doctor's planet was a mystery, and before that a time when the name of his species was a mystery. Before that, it wasn't clear if he was human or alien. At the start, it wasn't even clear if he was good or evil. A lot of the "iconic" mysteries about the Doctor are already long gone, and you can lament their loss, but change is what a long-running creation needs to stay viable. If new entries don't add anything new, what is even the point? Why bother telling new stories about Spock if they just rehash what we knew about him already?

 

On another note...according to the descriptions featured on the Chicago-displays, it looks like this series will be set in 2259. So just a year or so after we last saw Pike and his crew on Disco:

 

And they're continuing the retroactive seeding of "away team" as a 23rd-century term... (It was used sometimes in ENT too.)

 

^ Makes a lot more sense than using "landing party" to describe a group which hasn't actually landed anywhere.

 

I don't actually disagree with you about that -- it's just that there are certain elements that I think need to stay mysterious even as new elements are established or revealed. Characters like Spock or the Doctor work, I think, in part because of the intrigue caused by realizing that you just don't quite fully understand these people. I think the trick is to find new things to reveal, while preserving an element of mystery about them. And, to me, one element that I think should stay mysterious is Spock's full name.

This is subjective -- I'm not saying there's no way to do this well or that I hate the show or that I think its fundamental approach to Spock as a character is wrong. I just really don't like this particular creative decision; I much prefer Mister Spock to only be known as Mister Spock.

? I'm pretty sure a team of officers who go aboard a space station or ship are called a boarding party rather than a landing party?

 

Hmm, I should probably go back and check, I only remember "boarding party" being used by the Klingons in ST III. It does seem to have a more sinister ring to it than "landing party"...

 

Don't Paramount have a copyright or something on "Away Team"? I'm sure it had a symbol after it on the old Playmates action figures. And there was that videogame in the early 00's.

 

I resist using words like "need" or "should" as absolutes in discussing fiction. Imposing limits on storytellers is toxic. Creators should have the freedom to try whatever they feel is right, even if it seems wrong to other people. Some of the most effective stories are the ones that shatter conventional wisdom and do what everyone assumed couldn't or shouldn't be done. Maybe this particular thing isn't one of those, but the general principle still applies.

It's always easy to think of excuses not to try something. The kneejerk reaction to any new idea is always resistance. That doesn't make it the right reaction. Creators are the people who push past that initial resistance and think, "Hey, maybe this could be done if I do it like this..."

And as I said, I expect he still will be as a matter of course. I doubt we'll see the name used more than once.

Heck, MacGyver's first name was a secret until halfway through the final season of the original series. Then they made a big deal out of the reveal that it was Angus, but after that, he was still mostly just called MacGyver or Mac. People didn't suddenly start calling him Angus routinely; on the contrary, the creators deliberately gave him a somewhat embarrassing first name to explain why he didn't use it. (Which was my thinking behind coining the first names for Gariff Lucsly and Marion Dulmur.)


Honestly, I'm not sure the whole "unpronounceable other name" thing is worth preserving. After all, we've heard a lot of spoken Vulcan by now, and there's no indication that the language includes phonemes that are particularly difficult for an English speaker to pronounce. I suppose maybe Spock's family name could be from some uncommon language, but if so, why are their given names so short and simple? Unless it's like Chinese-Americans giving their kids Western first names that Americans can easily pronounce, like Katy Chen Ruiwen in Shang-Chi or Nashira Wing Wai-hing in my Hub series. But there's nothing to indicate that Spock's family is of a different ethnicity than the dominant Vulcan culture.

Indeed, the trope of an "unpronounceable" foreign name is really rather ethnocentric. A name that a native English speaker would wrestle with might be easy for a Mandarin or Japanese or Xhosa speaker to pronounce, and vice versa. And the idea that a native English speaker -- especially a linguist like Amanda -- couldn't learn foreign pronunciation is narrow-minded and steeped in xenophobic assumptions that foreign cultures are "inscrutably" exotic and forever beyond comprehension. So I'd be perfectly happy to bury that conceit in the past along with TOS's other dated attitudes and assumptions.

A character like the Doctor choosing not to use their birth name is fine, but "You couldn't pronounce it" is just a bad trope. Unless the species's language is genuinely inhuman in its phonetics, like insectoid clicks or birdlike musical tones. But that's not plausible for a humanoid alien.

They should be, but they never were in TOS. The point, though, is that "away team" wasn't used in TOS either, having been coined by TNG. So many consider its use in the 23rd century anachronistic, although ENT already established it was used in the 22nd, so that ship has sailed.

 

I'm not imposing a limit. I'm saying what my creative instinct tells me. It's not "should" in the sense of, "I'm telling you what to do;" it's "should" in the sense of, "My sense of aesthetics tells me this is a bad choice." Obviously they're the creators and they have a right to make whatever creative choices they want. I just happen to strongly disagree with this particular creative choice.

I don't disagree with you. But establishing Spock's full name does seem like a bad creative choice to me.

I mean, I'm not saying there should be some scene where another character asks Spock's full name and he says they couldn't pronounce it; I'm just saying that in my judgment, it would be better to not address the idea in the first place. They certainly never addressed the idea of difficult-to-pronounce full names with Tuvok, T'Pol, or even with Spock and Sarek in Seasons One and Two of Discovery.

Yeah, I know. I was just responding to @Mr. Laser Beam not seeming to realize that in TOS, what in later series came to be called "away teams" were called "boarding parties" when they went aboard another vessel rather than "landing parties."

 

Prefer landing party, but unlikely to have it solely used.

 

Yeah we've known this for over a month from the uniforms on display on the Star Trek Cruise.
https://trekmovie.com/2022/02/28/ge...r-trek-strange-new-worlds-starfleet-uniforms/

 

And that's what makes creativity interesting -- that different people disagree. Any creative work will contain decisions we approve of and ones we wish had been done differently. The only way to get something that does everything the way you want is to create and publish it yourself. (And not always even then, because sometimes you can't get something to work the way you imagined you could before you got there.)

To me, saying "It's always been done this way in the past" is the best possible argument in favor of trying something different now, not against it.

You'd think so, but I searched the transcript site, and it turns out that the only time "boarding party" was used in TOS was "Space Seed" -- but in that episode, Kirk consistently referred to his own party that went to the Botany Bay as a landing party. First he ordered a "landing party" assembled; then he called "Landing party to Enterprise" and Uhura replied "Go ahead, boarding party;" then Kirk later made a couple of mentions of a second "boarding party" that had gone over offscreen; and finally he chastised Marla for her behavior on his "landing party."

http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/24.htm

Also, in "The Doomsday Machine," Spock used "landing party" once to refer to the group beamed over to the Constellation, although it was otherwise called a damage control party.

So those should have been called boarding parties, but the writers were used to using "landing party" and errors slipped through. I guess the advantage of "away team" is that it works regardless of destination.