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The Intersection of Canon and the Prime Timeline

So, which of these applies to you?!

  • Discovery is canon and it takes place in the prime timeline

    Votes: 35 45.5%
  • Discovery is canon and takes place in the Kelvin timeline

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Discovery is canon and takes place in another universe that we have never seen before

    Votes: 23 29.9%
  • Discovery is canon and takes place in another unvierse that we have seen before (if so, which?)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Discovery is non-canon and therefore doesn't take place in any universe in the Star Trek multiverse

    Votes: 5 6.5%
  • I don't care about canon

    Votes: 14 18.2%

  • Total voters
    77

Jinn

Mistress of the Chaotic Energies
Rear Admiral
So, since we don't have a dedicated canon thread (and the canon debates start hijacking other threads) and I was curious about the issue presented in the poll above I decided to create a canon thread.
 
'I don't care.'
Fair enough, I should have included that option. This is why I don't create threads! I take it adding poll options is something mods can do? Could one of you add "Don't care" to the poll? Pretty please? :)
 
Fair enough, I should have included that option. This is why I don't create threads! I take it adding poll options is something mods can do? Could one of you add "Don't care" to the poll? Pretty please? :)
Turns out I rally have no clue about creating threads, I was able to add such an option myself. Sorry for the inconvenience, I'm not good at this.
 
Thing is. I consider Discovery to be part of the ongoing continuity in which TOS exists, but I also don’t care.

Who am I kidding? It’s canon dammit. I like timelines and chronologies, and I want this to fit the one in my Star Trek encyclopaedia. So far, it does.
 
Thing is. I consider Discovery to be part of the ongoing continuity in which TOS exists, but I also don’t care.

Who am I kidding? It’s canon dammit. I like timelines and chronologies, and I want this to fit the one in my Star Trek encyclopaedia. So far, it does.
This is pretty much my stance on it too. Timelines are serious fun :)
 
It's a hugely schizophrenic production. The powers that be are saying it's set in the Prime Universe, but they're asking for and okaying things that deliberately contradict that - like all Klingons being bald because their ridges are sensory palates. The Mirror Universe Terrans all have a sensitivity to light, except Mirror Kirk's bridge was fullbright. They reference "In a Mirror, Darkly" but "Affliction"/"Divergence" never happened.

I suspect the insistence that Disco is prime comes from market research and disdain for their audience. They probably learned that 10% of their viewers would cancel if the show wasn't Prime (a poll I conducted here ages ago had similar results), but also think they're complete idiots that'll swallow anything with "prime universe" slapped on it.

And I say all that as a fan of the show, but one who watches it as it clearly has been created - a loose prequel/reboot along the lines of Smallville or Gotham, where you know roughly where everyone'll end up but the how and why will change.

It's canon, it's officially Prime Universe, but really it's a reboot with "prime universe" slapped on it to appease a few die-hards.
 
Discovery can't help but be canon; it is officially produced content, which makes it canon by definition.

As for where it exists in the continuity, the show-runners have stated on numerous occasions that the series is "prime timeline". However, the visuals are clearly inconsistent with previously depicted tech, makeup, ship design etc and there is no way that they are going to magically meld into what we saw in TOS 50 years ago. The re-imagined Enterprise sailing into shot pretty much seals this.

So, we have events and characters that mirror Prime, but slightly different in as much as they fly aboard larger and technologically differently ships, where different clothes and even differ in appearance whether merely facially (like Sarek) or species-wide (like the Klingons or Andorians).

To borrow a phrase from Larry Nemecek, I'd say we were looking at Prime-adjacent.
 
This is pretty much my stance on it too. Timelines are serious fun :)

They totally are.

I also love the conjectural stuff, filling in the blanks from bits of dialogue or computer displays. I love the contradicting facts and their speculative in-universe explanations, like James R Kirk.

I don’t like blatant disregard for continuity, but there’s no need to hampered by it.
 
Honestly? I think we’re definitely in the prime universe

That is, the same one that gave us TOS, TNG, DS9, etc.

But... I don’t think we’re in the same timeline - in that it’s been altered somehow - maybe the temporal Cold War or whatever - and the producers’ line about reconciling with canon will be a timeline reset.

Like “yesterday’s Enterprise” - same universe but altered history.

So my vote above is technically correct insofar as I think this is a new timeline we’ve not seen before.

Hey - what if it is the yesterday’s Enterprise timeline just a hundred years earlier?

Tasha is alive you guys. Tasha. Is. Alive.
 
It's a hugely schizophrenic production. The powers that be are saying it's set in the Prime Universe, but they're asking for and okaying things that deliberately contradict that - like all Klingons being bald because their ridges are sensory palates. The Mirror Universe Terrans all have a sensitivity to light, except Mirror Kirk's bridge was fullbright. They reference "In a Mirror, Darkly" but "Affliction"/"Divergence" never happened.

I suspect the insistence that Disco is prime comes from market research and disdain for their audience. They probably learned that 10% of their viewers would cancel if the show wasn't Prime (a poll I conducted here ages ago had similar results), but also think they're complete idiots that'll swallow anything with "prime universe" slapped on it.

And I say all that as a fan of the show, but one who watches it as it clearly has been created - a loose prequel/reboot along the lines of Smallville or Gotham, where you know roughly where everyone'll end up but the how and why will change.

It's canon, it's officially Prime Universe, but really it's a reboot with "prime universe" slapped on it to appease a few die-hards.
Otherwise, this ^

Completely agree with this assessment of DSC :)
 
I can live with the cosmetic changes, much as I disapprove of them.

In my head, I can see the starship chart, and the entry for 1701 has a TOS depiction, a DSC depiction, and the refit.

For Klingons, I have what they look like in TOS, TNG, DSC, and a footnote for In to Darkness. Plus the many variations along the way.

The Enterprise-D. There are two filming models, and it’s obvious which one they’re using in each shot, and ten forward doesn’t line up. But it’s still only the one Enterprise - D.
 
Well, technically, TOS is also in the Yesterday's Enterprise timeline, as is ENT, since the point of divergence was somewhere in the 2340s (?).
I... wait...

*does sums*

My theory makes no sense haha! You’re completely right!

Unless the point of divergence of the YE timeline had its origins in the temporal cold war events in “Enterprise” meaning that if TOS happened, the Enterprise C would have been sacrificed at narendra III. But... because of the TCW the Enterprise C disappeared at narendra III and the war with the Klingons raged on from the 2340s because L’Rell was useless and easily overthrown meaning that more warlike Klingons led the empire (despite Burnham insisting that the Klingons had “made their way out of darkness into the light” - or words to that effect - I forget exactly what Michael soliloquised in the s1 finale) and they wanted to reconquer the federation since they came so very (ridiculously, hilariously) close in s1 of DSC.

But it’s ok cos Tasha is alive and Troi is nowhere to be found...
 
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