USS Discovery in TOS?

I won't comment much about DSC here, though I am a fan of it. But I don't think Discovery was referred to in "The Squire of Gothos". I think "notify the discovery on subspace" means "notify the discovery of the phenomena on subspace". It just wasn't spelled out in such a way because it wouldn't have had to have been.

We don't know what actually happens to the USS Discovery. For all we know, it might not even be around in TOS. This is the theory I'm heavily leaning towards because I'm convinced something will ultimately happen to the ship. There might possibly be another ship with the same name in TOS but I still think hoping Kirk was referring to any USS Discovery is a case of looking for what's not there.

 

That makes it fact.

 

Until someone else with the key to the franchise comes along and says otherwise. Cough, cough *SW-EU* cough, cough.

 

Obviously.

 

What's also obvious is that 'facts' are meaningless in a fictional tv show. I'll even use the OP's example. In 'Squire of Gothos,' it's a fact that the line "Notify the discovery on subspace radio' did not refer to the U.S.S. Discovery from DSC, because the episode was filmed 50 years before DSC existed. But if the producers of DSC all of a sudden say that the line did in fact refer to the ship, even though that was clearly not the original intent, then their retcon is now the 'fact.' Ergo, 'facts' are meaningless.

 

Then why watch any long running franchise.

 

"Facts" are just tools for the writers to use or ignore.

 

For the entertainment value.

Exactly.

 

Whats the point of having any continuity, just make every episode standalone with a reset button.

 

So...TOS?

 

There was character development.

Yes I saw your winky face.

 

It's up to the viewers! After all that's who they are supposed to be making the show for isn't it? No viewers, no show!
JB

 

I don't really care if any of the Trek spinoffs are supposed to be in continuity with TOS or not.

I may enjoy them to varying degrees (or not), but to me, they are just different "versions" of Star Trek, whereas TOS is its own self-contained, standalone thing as true Star Trek. So none of the spinoffs affect the way I view and understand TOS itself and the events depicted therein.

Kor

 

^I wish that had been the way it was approached right from the start. Roddenberry wanted to reboot TOS with TMP but apparently felt it needed to connect in order to be widely accepted. Had every series and film just said up front, “this is a new version of Star Trek”, and not “this is how it fits into this crazy, mixed up mythology”, then the people making it might have felt they had more freedom, and fan expectations might have been tempered.

 

TMP could at the time have been seen as a soft reboot in the vein of "it was always supposed to look this way"
TNG was in many ways a fresh start, and the graphic of the refit standing in for the TOS-E in The Naked Now was a clear indication (to me at at the time) that TNG was taking a very loose approach to earlier canon.
That all changed with Relics of course, and from then on in we were locked into a united, "exactly as seen" continuity

 

The TMP novelization kind of tried to retcon away the events of TOS as they were actually depicted in the series.

Kor

 

My new rule is that if you are making a prequel, and you screw up the continuity with the original work you are prequelling, then you are by definition writing an alternate universe.

 

100%. It had always been my reading too, except that Relics went and canonized the TOS look 'in universe', then Trials & Tribblations ratified and confirmed it, as well as the notion that the Klingon ridges were an actual thing... and we all know where that silliness led.

I do fall into the camp, however, that BermanTrek having done the silly thing and established the TOS look as historical within the continuity, the producers of Discovery had at least a slight obligation to stay within it, or else to make their version a reboot rather than contemporary to TOS.

 

As to the OP, its ridiculous, but just the kind of thing that fans are likely to retcon regardless (like grappling onto a reference to a planet Archer IV on TNG despite there being at least another bazillion times ENT could be referenced historically in TNG, but never was. )

 

Well, the materials released so far on STDSC Season 2 make it look like they are shifting the visuals to a more TOS-like look.

Kor