Spoilers The legacy of Star Trek: Picard?
- Thread starter Eddie Roth
- Start date
Star Trek is no stranger to comedy. TOS was probably the best it. With episodes like The Trouble With Tribbles, A Piece of the Action and I. Mudd. Also with lines like “That should be just right”, “Cement overshoes” and “I’m from Iowa, I only work in outer space.”. So I’m unsure what the problem is. Though Number One appears to agree with your assessment of Pirate Pike.
Chapel was a one dimensional piece of wallpaper in TOS. SNW has made her into an actual character. I fail to see what the problem with that is, other than a bizarre need to stick to the worst aspects of TOS.
We know next to nothing about Spock and T’Pring’s relationship. She was a done in one and gone character in TOS.
Chapel/Spock/T’Pring is one of the best things about SNW. Not gonna give it up because of some perceived conflict with a word or line in “Amok Time”.
Continuity is fluid and malleable. It’s not etched in stone.
“A foolish continuity is the hobgoblin of little minds.”- Roy Thomas
Again, in Trek characters can't change.
Given Terry Matala's limited time & goals, what he prioritized as interesting was the happy ending.
He got that, we got that, many fans are happy.
"And they lived happily ever after."
*throws confetti*
*throws confetti*
Most were out, then they made four more seasons? Huh?
This makes me queasy. I DO NOT want "adherence to continuity." Continuity is a prison for storytelling. The only continuity that matters to me is the continuity within a particular story, whether that be an episode, a season, or a series.
You seem to be wearing some rosy glasses. TOS isn't some timeless, perfect vision that all future Trek should hew towards. I'm not interested in forcing all Trek to adhere to the flawed notions of the 1960s. TOS had plenty of "current day" injected into it. TOS was sexist AF, and I don't want SNW or DIS to shove women into the background just because "continuity!!"
Each Trek show is made for the audience living today. It need to be relevant to today's audience. I don't want a brand new Trek that is relevant to the 1960s. That's regressive.
The end game of regurgitating the past is that they'll eventually run out of "the past," and they'll have to start cannibalizing what has already been cannibalized. I'd much rather they just move forward than constantly gazing into the past, a la PIC S3.
Personal preferences here, but as a living, breathing LGBT person, I've gotten much more satisfaction from Discovery's representation than any of the milquetoast attempts in the Burman era. I like allegory. But sometimes the strongest political statement is just showing up, showing your face to the world. I'm sick of Star Trek hiding LGBT people behind shitty metaphors.
I guess what bothers me is this kneejerk "You can't just have this show up and think that is enough!" vs "Why are you making a big deal out of this?"
Its like when the Saratogas captain in TVH was a black woman..they didn't make a big deal of it..she was just there and it seemed normal and natural..
Because it was
Its like when the Saratogas captain in TVH was a black woman..they didn't make a big deal of it..she was just there and it seemed normal and natural..
Because it was
This is probably the biggest divide that I see in this discussion, and I've run in to it before. The idea that Trek is a "period piece" and should be treated as a historical event, and thus should abide by these rules with a strictness that someone would approach historical recreation efforts. And that's limiting because we see that Trek is very much of it's time, with TOS a 60's interpretation of the future, TNG the 80s, etc. So we create this weird limits that basically says that Trek has to exist in its own weird parallel dimension that is both informed by our real humanity, but also that it cannot change unless those changes occur within the universe itself.
I'm probably not explaining this well, but it's just become my experience over the last 10 years or so that Trek continuity is to be taken quite literally in any future works. Never mind the whole "tone" conversation which cannot be replicated due to a wide variety of factors.
It feels like a very untenable, regurgitated, place for the franchise.
I just want to be entertained. And maybe challenged to be better just a smidge. I care about continuity enough to say that it is Star Trek. There are Star Trek concepts. Let them be present. But unless its at the very core of what Star Trek is, I don't care if what they say in Series 8, Season 2, Episode 4 doesn't match what is said in Series 2, Season 4, Episode 19. When I was in my adolescence and there were only about 150 Star Trek adventures, I could keep all of that in my head. Now I'm in my early 40s and there are almost 1000 episodes. Not only is there a ton more material to keep straight, not only am I older, not only am I exhausted all the time, but I also have a wife, two kids and a dog, three direct reports and $50million in healthcare acquisitions to keep straight. Not to mention rules, regulations and other things. So, no, this concept of everything fitting perfectly matters none to me. Just entertain me. I'm not suggesting that you can't find joy in the continuity. But let's be real that we all have different stories. That doesn't make us less of Star Trek fans. It just makes our fandoms different.
Continuity is for the young anyway. Back when I was a teenager and in my early twenties, yeah, I was right there insisting literally recreating everything exactly as was in the 1960s and probably would have insisted that Disco and SNW should have had everyone wearing Cage/WNMHGB uniforms with gooseneck viewers on every bridge console. But now in my late thirties, I just don't care about that sort of thing anymore. It literally does not matter.
If anything, I'm reminded of the attitudes shared by many who have worked on Doctor Who. Former and current showrunner Russell T Davies said in his book The Writer's Tale that if it comes down to a choice between preserving continuity or serving the story, serving the story should win every time. And then there was Terrance Dicks, who worked on the show in the 1970s and said in interviews "continuity is only whatever I can remember." And indeed, his time on Doctor Who led to the UNIT Dating Controversy, one of that franchise's more infamous continuity errors, in that during this period, time travel had been removed from the show with the Doctor stranded on Earth in a vaguely defined "near future" which they never could be consistent about what year it was, with the fact it was supposed to be the future eventually forgotten and episodes were written as though it were the same modern era the show was set in. Continuity is the beginning of entertainment, but it should never be its end.
That being said, I wouldn't mind if SNW brought back gooseneck viewers.
If anything, I'm reminded of the attitudes shared by many who have worked on Doctor Who. Former and current showrunner Russell T Davies said in his book The Writer's Tale that if it comes down to a choice between preserving continuity or serving the story, serving the story should win every time. And then there was Terrance Dicks, who worked on the show in the 1970s and said in interviews "continuity is only whatever I can remember." And indeed, his time on Doctor Who led to the UNIT Dating Controversy, one of that franchise's more infamous continuity errors, in that during this period, time travel had been removed from the show with the Doctor stranded on Earth in a vaguely defined "near future" which they never could be consistent about what year it was, with the fact it was supposed to be the future eventually forgotten and episodes were written as though it were the same modern era the show was set in. Continuity is the beginning of entertainment, but it should never be its end.
That being said, I wouldn't mind if SNW brought back gooseneck viewers.
LOVE the gooseneck viewers. And if they showed up, I might squee. But if not, not the end of the world.
In terms of "rejuvenating interest in the franchise". Early DISCOVERY received a lot of coverage on YouTube and various media websites that recap episodes. Many legacy fans also gave it a chance. Coverage of DISCOVERY plummeted by the time it returned for the Mirror arc of season 1. The franchise didn't receive this much popular attention again until PICARD season 3, although season 1 and the launch of SNW did make some blips.
Then you might want an anthology series, a new IP, or a reboot. Star Trek has almost 60 years of history. Many fans are invested in this history and don't want it thrown out just because a new creative doesn't want to turn that into a storytelling asset, and instead sees it as a liability to be supplanted. This is one major reason why many fans were especially threatened by the Abramsverse back in the day. Whereas PICARD season 3 turned the franchise history into a major asset for its story. And it respected TOS by including the USS New Jersey.
&
This is one reason why TNG was set almost 100 years after TOS, and why ENT way likewise set almost 100 years before it, to give it a wide berth. And why JJ Abrams did a reboot to cover the TOS era in the late 2000s. The novel line did a TOS era series called Vanguard set on a starbase. It managed to both respect TOS continuity while also having many prominent female characters. It need not be Star Trek: Mad Men, but as the period is already broadly established, that does necessitate a period piece. Most of these problems could have been avoided by moving forward chronologically.
So yes, I do see it as a reboot (presentist reinterpretation, no matter the fictional time period) vs continuation (period piece which changes in universe) debate. Which then becomes a multiverse one, because if you are throwing out TOS, TOS still had to happen... somewhere. And that somewhere is linked to ENT, TNG, and DS9.
So to bring this back fully on topic, this is why I especially appreciated PICARD season 3, want a Legacy series, and don't exactly look fondly at SNW.
Can I ask what was missing though as Picard transitioned from the 24th to the 25th century? One we had huge and significant quadrant altering events. To my mind that sets up the perfect stage for consequences to be explored. This could never be the case of Picard and crew being in the TNG era the same because too many things have happened, from the Borg (ugh) to the Romulan assassination and coup, to the Dominion War. Even ignoring the attack at Utopia Planita, you still have huge events that altered the landscape.
To me, Picard represents that shift in the history. It's tone changes because the tone in the era changes. I find that as fitting as any for the period in exploring consequences.
SNW I will leave aside for a moment because to my mind that's just dramatic interpretation of Pike's logs vs. Kirk's logs. I don't take TOS as strictly literal history. To me, that takes the purpose of Star Trek and mangles it in to a period piece that it wasn't intended to be.
I can't speak for others, but my issues were with the haphazard backstory of what happened between 2379 and 2399, not how it followed up with DS9 and NEM.
TNG up through ENT did very much treat TOS as a period piece whenever it was referred back to, or ships/technology from that era were revisited.
But that doesn't disrespect continuity at all. That's just haphazard storytelling.
OK, but that doesn't mean it must continue, since even Roddenberry didn't. Or, if it soothes the poor continuity nerves then SNW is a dramatic recreation of Pike's logs. That's OK too.
Again, this is my workaround. I'm not a person who wants Trek as a period piece. I'm not worried about the inner connectivity, save for in broad strokes. If the Enterprise looks slightly different, if uniforms are not the exact same material, or if props look different that's not as important as the events and characters which I care far more about and expect to see differences in.
And I should add that for me the biggest point is the characters and the stories. If I'm worried about how this connects in history then the characters have lost me. The best example I go to is in MASH. Early on, Hawkeye had a sister and a mom. Later on, in the episode "Sons and Bowlers" he delivers a heartfelt speech about being frustrated with his dad not telling him he's having an operation while Hawkeye is stationed in Korea and how he did the same thing when his mom was dying. Now, if I wasn't invested in the emotions of the moment I would be quite annoyed that earlier his mom was alive and now she's not.
It's that type of storytelling I want, not minutia for minutia's sake. Again, this is a balancing act.
Mileage will vary.
I'm excited for SFA and that's all well and good for the people who got into Trek through Discovery. That does nothing to address the fact that, judging by social media and other places, a lot of people got drawn into Trek through Picard S1/S2 and the Raffi and Seven story and them together. Trek already lost those viewers for the most part because they were told them supporting the show the whole time was less important than appeasing old disgruntled fans. Some will argue that it paid off. That's fine. I feel like it's a shame that a whole group of people lost in interest and trust in the franchise just to attempt to bring back older viewers.
What haphazard backstory?
Even Ex Astris Scientia argues PICARD has largely respected prior continuity, so my problem with season 1 really isn't in that domain.
Indeed
The Romulan supernova evacuation, the Mars attack/synth ban, what happened with Seven/Icheb, Picard's life post resignation...
Surprising.
I think my biggest goal, and certainly far more so the older I get, is how can I be flexible with the story. If it's little details (and that fills a bit list, like James R. Kirk, Vulcan never being conquered, UESPA/Federation, etc) and the broader character beats fit then I'm more flexible with continuity. To me I want to be engaged with the material such that I use my imagination not that I sit back and point out errors. I've been there, I've done that, and I was a miserable fan. I'm not interested in strict literal history or allowing continuity errors diminish my enjoyment.
Haphazard? In what way?
Did they? We saw the 23rd Century what? Two times? "Trials and Tribble-ations" and "Flashback"? Both were "Very Special Anniversary" episodes. The other references were somewhat dismissive of TOS. even mocking.
Don't get me started on Enterprise. That show was maligned from the start with the same arguments being launched at DISCO, SNW and even PIC, Doesn't respect continuity. Looks too advanced. Isn't a proper sequel. Ship is all wrong. It should look like something out of the 50s.
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