Spoilers Strange New Worlds General Discussion Thread

[DigificWriter]

So, just to clear up this logic trainwreck, you only care about DSC, the show that brought back Spock, Pike, Number One, the Enterprise, Sarek, Amanda, Vina, Mudd, gave Spock an adopted sister instead of creating an unrelated character so they could have an excuse to revisit him and Sarek, spent an entire season incorporating Pike's crew and ship into the narrative, went to the Mirror Universe for the umpteenth time, had another conflict with the Klingons for the umpteenth time, brought back Section 31, etc., but THE VERY SHOW DSC SPENT A SEASON SETTING UP TO TAKE PLACE IN THIS ERA is dipping too far into the "nostalgia card" well for you to deal with by reintroducing a few recognizable contemporary characters who actually served on the Enterprise before (in TOS) so sort of make sense if you fudge the details a bit?

I like DSC too, but it's got tons of playing the "nostalgia card", so citing that an excuse for dropping this show, when by its very premise and full season of development on Disco you should have already known it was going to play upon nostalgia and bringing back recognizable TOS characters, doesn't make a ounce of sense.

The point should be whether they do something new and interesting and more fully developed with those characters versus their original depictions in TOS, and that should be the litmus test of whether it was wrong or not to use the "nostalgia card" that shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone. I think Uhura, Chapel, and M'Benga have a lot of room to grow and do something fresh and exciting with the characters, and I look forward to it. You shouldn't be so kneejerk close-minded about it.

DSC's nods to the past make sense narratively and logistically, and the series is so significantly different from previous Star Trek in its format and presentation that said nods are offset.

With Strange New Worlds, I see no logic or reasoning behind the inclusion of Uhura, Chapel, and M'Benga other than nostalgically pandering to people who are only fans of the original Star Trek, and I don't care enough about '60s Trek to want to support that kind of philosophy.

 

[Dukhat]

With Strange New Worlds, I see no logic or reasoning behind the inclusion of Uhura, Chapel, and M'Benga other than nostalgically pandering to people who are only fans of the original Star Trek, and I don't care enough about '60s Trek to want to support that kind of philosophy.

You mean other than the fact that all three of these characters served on the Enterprise in TOS, and weren’t some surprise person that we previously had zero knowledge about, like Spock’s adopted human sister?

Did you see the Abrams films? All the TOS characters were in them, and that worked out just fine. I fail to understand your logic behind being offended by taking characters from a ‘60’s TV show and using them in a 2022 TV show. Do you think they’re going to act like they did in TOS?

If I had my choice, I wouldn’t use these characters in a new show; I’d use new characters in a new setting. But SNW is what we’re getting, and as long as it has the spirit of TOS (which I don’t think DSC has), then it will be just fine.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

DSC's nods to the past make sense narratively and logistically, and the series is so significantly different from previous Star Trek in its format and presentation that said nods are offset.

With Strange New Worlds, I see no logic or reasoning behind the inclusion of Uhura, Chapel, and M'Benga other than nostalgically pandering to people who are only fans of the original Star Trek, and I don't care enough about '60s Trek to want to support that kind of philosophy.

The only reason DSC includes Spock, Sarek and Amanda is for 'nostalgically pandering to people who are fans of the original Star Trek'. There is no reason whatsoever they couldn't have told the exact same story with a different Vulcan family. The exact same thing applies to Pike and the Enterprise in season 2. As well as, also, to Section 31 in season 2, which could just as easily (and in fact *more* logically) have just been Starfleet Intelligence. And for all the potential that there was to organically tie the Mirror Universe episodes into the Klingon War story arc, the show completely failed to do so, preferring instead to just romp around the mirror universe for a few episodes. Just like all the previous MU episodes, all of which have always been about nostalgia for the concept itself.

There are way more logical reasons to consider using Uhura, Chapel and M'Benga on a show that is already set on the ship we know they served on then there was to consider using any of those other things.

And you really have no significant evidence yet whether any of these nostalgic decisions will actually be offset by more new things or not.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Then Voyager traveled back in time to 1996, literally the climax of the Eugenics Wars, and no mention was made of them.

There was the aforementioned DY-100 rocket with boosters in Rain Robinson's office, so they didn't totally ignore the existence of things related to the Eugenics Wars, they just chose not to have it be a part of the episode because it would have been confusing for new viewers and out of sync with our reality.

But the episode does kind of play into it in a way, as Chronowerx's future-derived technology advancements since the late 60s / early 70s likely contributed in part to the DY-100 being built (I know Greg Cox covered this ground before in his Eugenics Wars novels, but I'm just talking about within the show itself), and possibly to the genetic enhancements that gave rise to the Augments. And, while not unusual even during peacetime (especially not in 1996, or now), the militia dudes in Arizona were pretty fired up about the Feds coming to get them and ready to go to war, so you could say that one of the Eugenics Supermen were riling up militia groups in America to fight for their supremacist cause. I wish I could attribute the police aggressiveness towards the homeless and mentally ill to being extra paranoid because they were on a war footing, but that's pretty standard.

Besides all that though, if you visited parts of Los Angeles or Santa Monica during the height of World War II it could look fairly normal depending on when and where you are. There might be a Battle of Los Angeles one night or burning ships hit by Japanese subs off the coast another day, and more banners, people in uniform, recruitment drives, camouflaged buildings and blackout screens, anti-aircraft guns along the coast, even more military ships in harbor and a massive increase in cargo handling, fewer Japanese-Americans sadly, but more women in working roles, blacks, and Latinos. But other times it could look like it would any other day because for the most part the war was off in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific, just like the Eugenics Wars would likely have been.



Griffith Park and Griffith Observatory would have certainly looked different though, as the park was used as an early internment camp and processing center for Japanese, Italian, and German-American falsely accused of being fifth columnists because they had the unfortunate luck to have lived near military installations when the war broke out. And the Observatory's Planetarium was being used to train pilots and navigators in how to navigate by the stars in the sky. Heck, maybe Rain's advanced scanning equipment and DY-100 model could mean she was also a support technician for the military project, so the observatory was being used in a similar way again.

But I digress (too late), depending on when you see it, it's entirely possible for parts of Los Angeles and Santa Monica to look perfectly normal even during the height of a world war that's happening on another continent(s).

 

[DigificWriter]

Tying Burnham to Spock is a decision in the same vein as including McCoy in Encounter at Farpoint, Picard and the Enterprise-D in Emissary, and Quark and the DS9 station in Caretaker.

With SNW, you've already got that kind of link pre-baked into things with Pike, Spock, and Una; you don't need to add more legacy characters solely because they have a history of association with the original Enterprise.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

Tying Burnham to Spock is a decision in the same vein as including McCoy in Encounter at Farpoint, Picard and the Enterprise-D in Emissary, and Quark and the DS9 station in Caretaker.

With SNW, you've already got that kind of link pre-baked into things with Pike, Spock, and Una; you don't need to add more legacy characters solely because they have a history of association with the original Enterprise.

By that logic, there was still no need whatsoever for season 2 to introduce Spock, Pike, Una, the Enterprise, and Section 31. Hell, for the matter, season 1 could still have just used an entirely different Vulcan family and simply have Sarek appear once as a friend/acquaintance of the family or an old mentor, which would be way more in line with the other cameos you're talking about here. Also no need for the mirror universe. Or the Orion Syndicate. All of these things could easily have been replaced with new stuff, just as much as Uhura, Chapel and M'Benga could have been other new characters. And you still have no evidence to prove that SNW won't also be introducing plenty of other new characters and ideas over the course of its run.

 

[cooleddie74]

Yeah, the introduction of the Enterprise and the three most important of her "The Cage(TOS)" Era characters into DSC was about as organic and unforced as an enema. It all ended up being good because Anson Mount's Pike is excellent, Ethan Peck's Spock is a great tribute to Leonard Nimoy and Rebecca Romijn's Number One/Una is a fantastic fleshing-out of Majel Barrett's original character, but let's not kid ourselves. The Enterprise and those characters were brought in because the fans were having some very unpleasant reactions to DSC Season 1 and it was seen as something of a course correction.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

DSC's nods to the past make sense narratively and logistically, and the series is so significantly different from previous Star Trek in its format and presentation that said nods are offset.

That's a very nice arbitrary set of standards that you just pulled out of the hind end of space (to borrow from Mr. Adventure) to justify your glaring double-standard regarding DSC's vs. SNW's use of the so-called "nostalgia card".

Keep moving those goalposts.

Strange New World's has a direct correlation between these three character serving on the Enterprise before, so it makes sense to borrow from that well. They may have to fudge the details a little bit with past inferences or facts about the character's biographies, but literally every show, including DSC has done that, and you already knew they were doing that with the changes to Pike, Number One, the Enterprise, and the technology, so why the sudden shock? What matters is if they do something new and interesting with the characters and changes.

With Strange New Worlds, I see no logic or reasoning behind the inclusion of Uhura, Chapel, and M'Benga other than nostalgically pandering to people who are only fans of the original Star Trek, and I don't care enough about '60s Trek to want to support that kind of philosophy.

Perhaps there's a chance to give some positive and familiar black and women role models more development on the screen for a new generation, without some of the sexist baggage of the 60s?

 

[KirkusOveractus]

Tying Burnham to Spock is a decision in the same vein as including McCoy in Encounter at Farpoint, Picard and the Enterprise-D in Emissary, and Quark and the DS9 station in Caretaker.

With SNW, you've already got that kind of link pre-baked into things with Pike, Spock, and Una; you don't need to add more legacy characters solely because they have a history of association with the original Enterprise.

There are differences between cameo appearances and forcing characters into a story that really didn't need to be there and could have been interchanged with new characters.

That being said, I'm glad that Pike, Spock, Number One and the Enterprise showed up, because it's giving us a series I'm truly excited to see! But Burnham being an adopted sister of Spock really had no purpose other than to grab Trek fans with a dose of nostalgia and try to get them to watch.

 

[Yistaan]

The Enterprise immediately before TOS must've had their chief medical officer post be a revolving door like TNG's chief engineer post in season 1. Boyce, M'Benga, Piper, McCoy.

McCoy: He's dead, Jim.

Kirk: I like this guy. Direct, succinct, straight to the point. No melodrama or boring medical details. You've got the CMO job!

Boyce, M'Benga, Piper: Hey!!

McCoy:

 

[cooleddie74]

"M'Benga's got some cool skills, plus the crew like him. Let's keep him as assistant medical officer."

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Tying Burnham to Spock is a decision in the same vein as including McCoy in Encounter at Farpoint, Picard and the Enterprise-D in Emissary, and Quark and the DS9 station in Caretaker.

I didn't realize Dr. McCoy was secretly Dr. Pulaski's grandfather from a brief relationship with Dr. Ann Mulhall or Dr. Miranda Jones, and that he returned to TNG throughout Season Two to have awkward confrontations and then reconciliation with his granddaughter. Oh wait, that didn't happen and they're nothing alike, because one is just a cameo, and the other is a defining part of a wholly new character's identity that they constantly referenced and even brought her brother back on the show for a season to deal with.

With SNW, you've already got that kind of link pre-baked into things with Pike, Spock, and Una; you don't need to add more legacy characters solely because they have a history of association with the original Enterprise.

Need's got nothing to do with it. You don't need to use Pike and the Enterprise, either. But it's fun, and it gives you a chance to flesh out the character more and do something new and interesting with them. Just as they can do with M'Benga, Chapel, and Uhura.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Tying Burnham to Spock is a decision in the same vein as including McCoy in Encounter at Farpoint, Picard and the Enterprise-D in Emissary, and Quark and the DS9 station in Caretaker.

With SNW, you've already got that kind of link pre-baked into things with Pike, Spock, and Una; you don't need to add more legacy characters solely because they have a history of association with the original Enterprise.

Sarek wasn't an one off hand off character like McCoy, Picard and Quark. He was a reoccurring character, who along with Amanda figured greatly in the plot. Similarly, Harry Mudd figured greatly in two episodes. So how are those not "pandering"?

 

[fireproof78]

But Burnham being an adopted sister of Spock really had no purpose other than to grab Trek fans with a dose of nostalgia and try to get them to watch.

Failed at that for me since Burnham's interactions with Sarek and Spock and Amanda are probably among my favorites out of Discovery. Not for nostalgia but seeing these characters in a new light.

 

[BillJ]

Tying Burnham to Spock is a decision in the same vein as including McCoy in Encounter at Farpoint, Picard and the Enterprise-D in Emissary, and Quark and the DS9 station in Caretaker.

With SNW, you've already got that kind of link pre-baked into things with Pike, Spock, and Una; you don't need to add more legacy characters solely because they have a history of association with the original Enterprise.

Whatever you’re smoking, I want some of it!!!

 

[DigificWriter]

Fine. If mentioning cameos was a poor example to use in clarifying why I see a difference between DSC's nods to the past and what SNW is doing, how about my bringing up the inclusion of Miles and Keiko O'Brien, or, outside of Star Trek, the inclusion of Cordelia and Wesley in ANGEL?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Tying Burnham to Spock is a decision in the same vein as including McCoy in Encounter at Farpoint

Fuck, no. McCoy wasn't even name-dropped in TNG after "Farpoint."

 

[fireproof78]

Which makes it even more pointless. Burnham was at least interesting.

I love McCoy as a character but his idle wistful commentary about the ship were just strange.

 

[Iamnotspock]

Fuck, no. McCoy wasn't even name-dropped in TNG after "Farpoint."

Hell, he wasn't even name-dropped in "Farpoint."

 

[SJGardner]

Which makes it even more pointless. Burnham was at least interesting.

I love McCoy as a character but his idle wistful commentary about the ship were just strange.

His comments about how the Enterprise is a beautiful lady and she'll always bring you home etc. have always made me wonder if the cameo was originally written for Scotty and they had to improvise because Doohan was unavailable.