Spoilers There will never be Ferengi in DISCO

Unusually I reverse the polarity.

 

Okay, but TOS broke that standard on at least two occasions.

1) In early TOS, the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 is identified as a "United Earth Starship," and the space service operating the ship is referred to as the United Earth Space Probe Agency. In later episodes and in the TOS films, the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 is identified as a United Federation of Planets starship, and the space service operating the ship is referred to as the Federation Starfleet.

This is not a minor continuity error. The question of just who is sending out these starships into outer space, of who these characters work for, is fundamental to the series. In particular, the question of whether the Enterprise is a United Earth starship or a Federation starship has consequences for the character of Mister Spock; if it's a Federation starship, then a man from Vulcan serving aboard the Enterprise alongside people from Earth is no more remarkable than a man from California serving aboard a U.S. Navy vessel alongside people from Texas. But if the Enterprise is a United Earth ship rather than a Federation starship, then Mister Spock is by definition a foreign national, and his situation is more akin to that of, say, someone from (for example) Japan or Brazil serving aboard a U.S. Navy ship.

No explanation has ever been offered for the change from United Earth/UESPA to the UFP/Starfleet. The writers of TOS, to use your words, "totally ignored previous continuity to create something new just because they wanted to."

2) The change of the Klingons from the TOS makeup to the TMP makeup, and then the change from the TMP makeup to the TSFS makeup. The TMP makeup was a radical redesign of the entire Klingon design aesthetic; they went from a racist Fu Manchu-esque anti-Asian stereotype, to an original design featuring a single, narrow ridge running down their foreheads from the backs of their spines. The TSFS redesign was less dramatic, but it was also a notable change -- instead of a single, narrow ridge running down the forehead from the back of the spine, instead the foreheads themselves would be bumpy.

Absolutely no explanations for these changes were ever offered by the creators of TMP or TSFS. Nor by the creators of TVH, TFF, TUC, TNG, DS9, GEN, VOY, FC, INS, or NEM. In fact, twenty-six years would pass between the release of TMP and ENT's "Affliction/Divergence." To put it another way: an entire generation of people were born and grew up into adulthood before ST finally contrived an explanation for their retcon. I'm one of them. I was born six years after TMP was released, and I was a fully-grown adult before "Affliction/Divergence" aired.

The creators of TMP and TSFS both, as you put it, "totally ignored previous continuity to create something new just because they wanted to."

1) That's not a very good comparison. ENT went off the air in 2005. DIS premiered in 2017. Twelve years had passed between the shows. Twelve years and two presidents! It's not like ST was in the middle of continuous production and they just changed things between episodes. As another posted noted before, almost all of the production assets that Paramount had put into continuous use between 1979 and 2005 were gone, and it was an entirely new production crew.

2) DIS did, in fact, change the Klingon makeup design again between S1 and S2 (L'Rell's makeup is notably different), and the Discovery and ship's uniforms were changed as a result of plot developments in S3, and the uniforms are changing again for S4.

*shrugs* I mean, "The Cage" has so many discontinuities between what it establishes in its worldbuilding and what later episodes established, that I just decided I'm okay with ignoring the look of the ship and pretending it looks like it did in DIS S2, just like I'm okay with ignoring:

• Jose Tyler's claim that the "time barrier" had been broken
• The Enterprise being referred to as an "Earth ship"
• Spock smiling and yelling and generally being emotional
• Pike's claim that the presence of women aboard the bridge is unusual
• The incredible sexism of everyone agreeing that it's better for Vina to live among the Talosians in the illusion that she's beautiful rather than come back to Human society because she's no longer sexy

"The Cage" has a lot of things that don't make sense, so I figure I might as well just mentally substitute the DIS S2 Enterprise in the exterior shots too.

Of course, that's only when I'm playing the mental game of trying to reconcile "The Cage" with later continuity. Obviously the actual text of the episode contains no such explanations; "The Cage" is just later contradicted, with no explanation.

Then you don't know what you're talking about.

No, they set it there because Bryan Fuller wanted DIS to be a season anthology show a la American Horror Story where the setting and characters would change with each season, and S1 would cover the previous conflict between the Klingons and the Federation alluded to in "Errand of Mercy" and "The Trouble with Tribbles." Then Fuller was fired because he wasn't good at time management (he was trying to showrun American Gods at the same time), and the entire series was reconceptualized as following the setting and characters of what would have originally only been the S1 cast/setting.

The fact that Fuller and the Axanar guys both had the idea of showing us the previous UFP/Klingon conflict alluded to in TOS is incredibly, incredibly predictable and boring. People have used that basic idea as a springboard for decades.

I have. It was amusing in a "I'm watching someone imitate a Ken Burns documentary" way, but it wasn't an actual story.

And actual characters. And an actual story with a beginning, middle, and end.

Hold on there. Saying the studio is making the show in order to earn a profit is an entirely different claim than saying that a specific creative decision was only made for the purpose of earning a profit.

1) Every single studio and production company that has ever produced a Star Trek series or film was doing so to earn a profit. This is because the United States is (regrettably) a capitalist country, and Star Trek has never been produced by a non-profit organization. Desilu, NBC, Paramount, the stations TNG and DS9 were syndicated to, UPN, CBS? They were all in this for profit.

2) You have yet to explain why studio executives would believe that changing the Klingon makeup design would earn them a larger profit than using the Westmore-era design.

The Axanar folk ruined it for themselves when they started openly trying to make money off of a giant corporation's intellectual property. If you want to earn money off someone else's intellectual property, you gotta keep that shit on the downlow. Alec Peters shot himself in the foot.

No, it is not. It is set in the same universe as the rest of the ST shows, and we know this because its creators say so.

You cannot "know" something that is factually false.

Which, between that and people still whining that the creators of DIS are "insulting the fans" by not slavishly re-creating the original design aesthetic, just proves that the guys making this stuff can never win with certain elements of fandom: Any creative decision they make, in either direction, will be pounced upon and denounced by someone.

I love covers that totally change things. Especially when the song has become a totally different genre. Ever see Postmodern Jukebox? They're great. They take modern songs and transpose them into genres that were popular in the mid-20th Century.

I mean, Pike's medical condition in "The Menagerie" already doesn't make much sense from the perspective of modern medical technology. We have to assume that gamma radiation did a whammy on him way worse than even what happened to Ariam.

Who's to say that the monks who grew Kahless II were the same monks who had the time crystals? It's an entire planet; there could be more than one monastery.

Well, the Doylist answer is that the audience knows Pike's eventual fate, and not addressing that creates an unresolved tension in the audience's minds.

The Watsonian answer is that by taking the time crystal, Pike committed himself to a series of choices whose long-term consequences would eventually lead to him becoming horribly disfigured and disabled, like a line of dominoes. It cemented that Pike was a guy who had grown beyond his impulse in "The Cage" to abandon his responsibilities; Pike had committed himself to being the kind of person who will try to make a difference, always.

I don't see sloppy writing. I see DIS S2 taking this character who in "The Cage" had wanted to run away from his responsibilities and was even tempted to engage in sentient trafficking, and showing him moving into a position of altruism and compassion, even at the cost of his own future. I see a character arc.

I mean, it's no worse than the idea that magic crystals will let you go faster than light.

My only problem with the idea behind the spore drive is that it undermines the premise of VOY, since it begs the question of why Starfleet didn't use the spore drive to rescue Voyager. DIS S2 did provide an explanation, but I found it contrived... almost as contrived as ENT's explanation for why the Klingon foreheads changed.

*shrugs* The turbolift caverns don't really become a problem until DIS S3 -- and by the 32nd Century, we know from ENT's "Future Tense" that the Federation has figured out how to put hammerspace into its ships.

Also, Star Trek has a long tradition of its interiors and exteriors not quite matching up. The 1707 Enterprise bridge rather famously has to be facing something like 20 degrees port in order for the rear turboshaft to fit the model. The Enterprise-D's models didn't quite match, and Ten-Forward doesn't fit in the 6-foot model. The interior of the Delta Flyer doesn't really fit into the exterior, and the Delta Flyer itself shouldn't really fit into Voyager's shuttle bay. The Enterprise-D should have been way larger when it docked with Deep Space 9 if those windows on the DS9 Ops level are supposed to match what we see in the interior sets. And God help you try to figure out how long the Defiant is.

Like when TNG gave the Romulans bumpy foreheads for no reason? Or when DS9 totally changed the design and the concept for the Trill? Or when FC changed the Borg with no explanation, and VOY depicted pre-TNG Borg using the FC design? Or when ENT changed the Nausicans?

I mean, live-action Klingons haven't appeared in PIC yet, so this part isn't a very good analogy.

Well, no, because Humans are real. It's Klingons who are make-believe.

Sort-of but not really. PIC featured the first use of smooth-headed Romulans since 1991's Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and it established that bumpy-headers come from the north of Romulus and smooth-headers the south. But that's still not an explanation for why bumpy headers are present -- Vulcans and Romulans only separated into distinct gene pools about 1500 years prior, and that's not enough time to speciate or for major anatomical differences to emerge. The Afro-Eurasian and Indigenous American Human gene pools had been separated for tens of thousands of years when the Columbian exchange began, but it's not like either side had such major anatomical differences.

Anyway, even that half-explanation took 32 years and five presidents for the ST canon to come up with.

I mean, if that's how you feel in terms of your subjective reaction, that's fair. But that's also just a subjective reaction: An extensive retcon didn't bother you in this instance because you don't attach importance to the original version.

That's fine, but it's a very subjective experience. There are inherently going to be people who attach no more importance to the Westmore-era Klingon design than you do to the "Host" version of the Trill.

I really, really don't think that needs a Watsonian explanation. Like, the differences between dog breeds are bigger than the differences between this new Ferengi dude and the ones we met in TNG/DS9/VOY/ENT. The DIS variations are extremely minor and are entirely within the realm of plausible phenotype variation between members of the same species.

Exactly!

I like that interpretation!

It's probably a combination of the new artists having their own sense of aesthetics, and the need for makeup designs that will withstand UHD and 4k screen resolutions that the old designs just can't hold up to.

Art does matter. As eschaton pointed out, for instance, there is a compelling artistic reason to redesign the Klingons for DIS S1 -- the need to make them scary again after they had become too familiar and lovable in the Berman era.

And just having different aesthetics is also a totally valid artistic motivation. Especially when the changes are relatively minor, like having slightly differently-shaped ears on Ferengi.

I think it's interesting, @brandnewfan , that you construct your entire argument on the basis of an a priori assumption that for something to "matter," it has to not change.

Well, I think a really good way to think about it is this: If you had to explain your feelings about the topic to somebody whose approval you wanted but who is not emotionally invested in the topic (maybe it's your grandparents; maybe it's a college professor you admire; maybe it's an attractive person you want to go on a date with -- whoever!), would you feel mildly embarrassed in explaining why you feel angry to them? That's the standard I try to use when I gauge my own reactions to works of art. If trying to explain why I'm angry about a creative choice in a TV show makes me feel a little embarrassed, then I usually try to step back and assume that I might be over-reacting.

I really like that idea!

I mean, I'm always puzzled when I see Niners attacking DIS, because DIS strikes me as being a direct descendant of DS9 in terms of its creative impulses.

 

It puzzled me for quite a while too because it's not something that's immediately obvious why. It's something that has to be contextualized and then once you see it, you'll realize, "Why didn't I notice that before?" There actually is a bigger picture.

It would take too long to get into now, so I'll do it later.

 

There are some similarities and some differences between DS9 and DIS, but on the whole PIC reminds me more of DS9.

The similarities: Darker tone, serialized structure, and (in the first season anyway) a war-focused arc.

There are three big differences however, differences which IMHO help explain why some people like DS9 but don't like DIS:

First, Deep Space Nine was primarily character-focused writing. Probably half of the total runtime of the series is set aside for "what happens if we put character X in scenario Y?" There are of course big arc episodes as well - along with "message" episodes - but these play second/third fiddle across most of the series. In contrast, most of Discovery is plot-focused writing. There are exceptions (Saru's two episodes in Season 2, Forget Me Not in Season 3) but most of the time the writers seem to come up with a scenario first, and then figure out what the characters will do, instead of trying to come up with a scenario which actively tests the limits of the characters.

Second, Deep Space Nine was an ensemble show, while Discovery is a heavily lead-focused show. This is an important distinction, because it meant DS9 had huge versatility, eventually having entire episodes led by effective guest characters. If you pared down DS9 to 10-15 episodes a season, and had all of them focus on Sisko (his status as the Emissary, relationship with Jake, etc.) it may have been a good show still, but many fantastic episodes would never have been made.

Related to the second point, DS9 veered widely in terms of tone from episode to episode. Even in the darkest portions of the Dominion War, there was time for screwball lighthearted plots about playing baseball games or robbing from a holo-casino. In contrast, Discovery is kinda samey from episode to episode.

To be honest, the latter two may just be a side effect of the short season structure - and I can see the argument that one should just expect that stuff to come from other Trek series, since there are so many now in production. But the first is a bit less excusable in my opinion. Hell, I'd argue that Lower Decks has done a better job putting together coherent character arcs for its supporting characters than Discovery has, despite having episodes half as long.

 

The arcs are less engaging for me. The style of LD is great but the characters are a different level of engagement.

 

Has anyone mentioned DS9's "first set of ears" mention yet? Could be that DSC's are what an older Ferengi looks like.

Although of course IRL it's just an update to look less rubbery.

 

Ah, I suppose Grand Nagus Zek (DS9) was a spring chicken after all.

 

Looking at some images if GNZ - the wrinkliness seen on the Ferengi captain is there but without the jagged bits.

Wouldn't be out of the realms of possibility that those bit are simple battle scarring or something. Let's be honest, closest Zek ever came to death was if he pissed off Moogie.

 

I mean, all they have to do is add the brow ridge back in. They'll fix it in season five, like how they fixed the Klingons (mostly) in season two.