The Intersection of Canon and the Prime Timeline

[Spaceship Jo]

You might not like the visualization, but you can't get more TOS than the Enterprise.
And for those who want to nitpick it cause it didn't look like it fell off the Desilu lot, to quote Lorca, "I still don't give a damn"

The presentation here conveys a lot more than the specific dimensions or details of the ship. TOS doesn't look grim and intense or even striking in a majestic twilight kind of way. DSC does its own thing. Using TOS elements to do something different doesn't make it anything like TOS (nor does it make it good or bad).
If I put up a still from Batman Begins and say, "You might not like the visualization, but you can't get more Batman '66 than the Batsuit" it wouldn't be a nitpick to say the premise of the shows are different in terms of aims and execution, even if the batsuits have fundamental commonalities.

 

[BillJ]

I'm talking about the owner being the arbiter.

No one is the arbiter of fiction. It is placed in the public space then each person that reads/watches/listens gets whatever they get out of it.

The only people beholden to take the "Prime Universe" statements seriously are the people working for CBS. No one else is.

 

[Kemaiku]

IMO, yes. It would be pretty dumb, but yeah, they can do that.

They could, but they've cemented them firmly as Kelvin, even coming up with the term with Beyond's release.

With the added thing about the time ripples that changed the "prime" universe so they could reimagine it.

 

[BillJ]

IMO, yes. It would be pretty dumb, but yeah, they can do that.

Are you required to take it seriously? Or would you still see it as its own thing?

 

[Jinn]

Are you required to take it seriously? Or would you still see it as its own thing?

If they would say that I'd accept that as the Kelvin movies (which we should probably find a different nickname for then ) Are in the same timeline as the other movies and shows. My head-canon would be totally different, but once Christopher writes that novel that explains how it all actually fits together...

 

[Jinn]

They could, but they've cemented them firmly as Kelvin, even coming up with the term with Beyond's release.

Yep, it's pretty unlikely that they'll ever try to move those movies to prime.

 

[Spaceship Jo]

That new Enterprise is as close as anything we could have gotten given studio attitudes etc, and a lot more akin to the 60's version than the Kelvin version.

And now that she's back in the Prime universe looking like that, people are angrier than in 2009.

Just...I...fuck it. I don't know.

I like both, but I would argue that while the dimensions of the DSCoprise are closer to the TOS 1701 (and TMP), the bright, optimistic futurism of the Kelvinprise is much closer to the conceptual tone of TOS (and TMP).

 

[Kemaiku]

I like both designs. The Kelvin ships are beautiful and sleek, certainly a bold new look for the Enterprise. The Disco one may look more worn but it's more familiar.

 

[cultcross]

I like both designs. The Kelvin ships are beautiful and sleek, certainly a bold new look for the Enterprise. The Disco one may look more worn but it's more familiar.

Agreed. I like the Kelvinverse design aesthetic generally, the ships are really nice looking and the whole visual scale and style really helps sell the "amazing spaceships travel the stars" element of wonder that Trek hasn't really gone in for since the 57 minute beauty shot of the refit Enterprise in TMP. The Disco enterprise is more of a deliberate updating of the original design and I like it for that reason.

 

[Spaceship Jo]

Agreed. I like the Kelvinverse design aesthetic generally, the ships are really nice looking and the whole visual scale and style really helps sell the "amazing spaceships travel the stars" element of wonder that Trek hasn't really gone in for since the 57 minute beauty shot of the refit Enterprise in TMP. The Disco enterprise is more of a deliberate updating of the original design and I like it for that reason.

I get a bit of the "amazing spaceships travel the stars" wonder element from the final Enterprise / Excelsior shot from TUC, but I agree with you completely.

 

[Dukhat]

Oh, c'mon. Who owns the IP is a question of fact. It can be resolved beyond dispute. How one fictional construct fits into another fictional construct, on the other hand, isn't and can't be a question of fact; it's a matter of interpretation. There is no ultimate "truth" to be determined. No author (never mind owner!) gets to dictate how anyone interprets a work. "Death of the author" and all that, y'know?...

Exactly. Does anyone think that that crappy 1996 Romeo & Juliet movie with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes is the definitive way that Romeo & Juliet will be interpreted from now on? No. It was just a forgettable movie to advance Leo's career. But in the context of the movie itself, it was just an interpretation of one of Shakespeare's plays (and a pretty lousy one, but that's just my opinion.) Just like how DSC is an interpretation of Star Trek. But no one is going to think that R&J'96 is going to have anything in common with how the play was conducted in Shakespeare's time, even though it's technically the same story. So I don't feel the need to believe that a show produced in 2018 needs to have anything in common with a show produced in 1966, despite the line that someone is toting solely for financial purposes. Do you really think the suits at CBS give a shit about the 'Prime Universe?' No. And when someone else has the Star Trek IP ten years from now and suddenly proclaim DSC to be in its own universe, will those same CBS suits care? No.

 

[pst]

The Disco enterprise is more of a deliberate updating of the original design and I like it for that reason.

so unlike the kelvin timeline's redesigned ships, where the creators were essentially free to do whatever they wanted, the discovery enterprise to me feels stuck halfway between discovery and TOS. and it exacerbates the problems i have accepting discovery as part of the greater prime universe.

the creators of discovery established a design language, in many ways contradictory to what had come before, but firmly told us it took place in the prime universe. then, when it was time for the enterprise to show up, walked away from that design language and gave us this timid half-step between the two interpretations.

 

[Graham]

Where, when?

For example the way every single thing in the show looks, which is utterly wrong for the time and place it's meant to be set in.

The show has been as consistent lore wise as the other series.

No.

None of the other series were 100% consistent with each other either.

Of course not. But there is a wide, wide gulf between "not perfect" and "doesn't give the slightest hint of a crap about continuity whilst bragging about sticking to continuity." If Discovery was making errors or even just bending things here and there, then fine. But what they are doing is an act of deliberate vandalism towards the franchise they claim to be a part of. I can't stop them from doing it, but neither can anybody else stop me from calling it what it so obviously is.

 

[Tuskin38]

But what they are doing is an act of deliberate vandalism towards the franchise

No it isn't. It's updating it for the modern times.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

The Intersection of Canon and the Prime Timeline

That's a rough neighborhood.

 

[Jinn]

I'm keeping that, y'know

 

[dahj]

That's a rough neighborhood.

It's probably also a movie with Richard Widmark and Jane Greer.

 

[Graham]

No it isn't. It's updating it for the modern times.

And since it is "updated" then it is by definition different, and so it is objectively true to say that it does not fit canon.

 

[WarpFactorZ]

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.

Actually, there was a thread a couple months ago that had an almost identical poll. There are also many threads about canon and Discovery's place in it.

Anyway, I said now what I said then: Discovery is canon and in the Prime timeline, because that's how the showrunners want it.

 

[Mudd]

No it isn't. It's updating it for the modern times.

Oh, but wouldn't it be nice if they had a clue how to do that well?