It isn't about the deleted scenes, it is about the feel of the material.
Well, that's rather vague. Why should it
need to have the same "feel" in order for you to consider it a prequel? (Don't get me wrong here, I'm not suggesting you aren't free to look at it
any way you like as an individual viewer; I'm just trying to better understand your point of view, since I clearly don't.)
My original point - which I admittedly didn’t make clearly enough, much to my chagrin - was that DSC isn’t a *direct* prequel to TOS insofar as they’ve not made a direct precursor to any specific TOS story. Unlike the SW prequels which were deliberately written to set up events in a story that would follow (“Star Wars”) and Gotham, which deliberately features characters like the penguin and scarecrow and the riddler etc. DSC isn’t the same kind of prequel as it’s operating in a larger universe.
I really don’t want to come across like I’m trying to prove some kind of fundamental point about the validity of DSC as a Star Trek show. I just noticed a difference when compared to some other prequels
I didn't mean to imply that you were. My previous responses weren't aimed at you.
As for your overall point, I haven't actually seen any of
Gotham, but my outsider's understanding is that it's
not intended to specifically set up or directly tie in with
any previous version of Batman continuity—except perhaps on a
metafictional level—
i.e. the writers probably take into account that the audience is likely to have at least a general shared awareness of various previous iterations, which I imagine hangs ever-present the background and influences the choices they make with respect to characterizations, etc.
But, in my perception, DSC clearly
is meant to tie in with TOS and the other shows and films, in more specific and direct ways than that (I would say more so than most of ENT, even). "Lethe" (DSC) ties directly into "Journey To Babel" (TOS), "Magic To Make The Sanest Man Go Mad" (DSC) ties directly into "I, Mudd" (TOS), and there are various threads throughout tied to "The Trouble With Tribbles" (TOS), "Mirror, Mirror" (TOS), "The Tholian Web" (TOS)—along with other later stories that built on them as well, like "In A Mirror, Darkly" (ENT) for example—and so on. Spock and Pike will be featured in Season Two, as well.
Some of these ties may be more or less overt/subtle/consequential/trivial than others, but they're definitely and palpably there, within the plots. Even many of what have
seemed at first blush like glaring discontinuities have ended up being resolved in such a way as to leave the stage meticulously set for what follows, as I have little doubt others will go on to be. That seems to me part and parcel of their fundamental
modus operandi with this show. It's deliberately designed and presented so as to
inform (and in some ways,
alter) our view of the original and its other descendants by adding previously-unknown (and often unexpected)
context to it, within the same overarching narrative continuity. It's a prequel to
all of them, but more so to TOS than any other. (Of course, it's
also meant to tell its
own story and have it's own distinct look and "feel" as well. It seeks a balance between the push and pull of those two aims, and thus far it's managed to strike an appealing one...
for me, anyway.)
-
MMoM
