USS Enterprise (eventually) on Discovery?

It is. Ironically, his thinking is generally... black and white regarding pretty much everything. Regarding B&W films, he says that the production values, acting styles, and whatnot are generally too dated for him. His loss.

 

Ex Astris Scientia argues that DSC is Prime Trek's first visual reboot:

http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies/visual-continuity.htm

Long article that explains the old "orthodox" view taken by the Encyclopedia era. I.E. visual canon has been largely preserved up until now, as an "affair of the heart" by the TNG era showrunners. They smoothed over visual redesigns, established that TOS looked the way it did on TV in DS9, and even the refit in TMP was made integral to the plot of TMP.

Although it is reportedly Prime Universe, Discovery comes with still more and still more significant visual alterations. The Klingons and their ships were radically changed for change's sake, not because anything was wrong with the existing designs. For the first time in the franchise, this serious visual continuity error is not even eligible for a retcon, the way it was done with the previous Klingon mutation. The clear intention and the only endorsed solution is that the Klingons always looked like in the latest series. Discovery is the first visual reboot of the franchise, the first Star Trek series to invalidate and thereby depreciate the looks of its predecessors - whereas the producers pretend that everything is perfectly fine with canon and the old series receive the due respect.
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In this case I partially agree (I think the showrunners intent was to ignore visual canon), but there are still ways to fit the Klingons into visual canon for example, which he denies. I would still like to fit DSC's ENT into visual canon, but it requires either that this is an intermediate refit, or that The Cage happened later than thought, say a year from DSC.

 

I'm not sure he needs to argue that, it's painfully obvious.

 

The Ex Astris Scientia guy is correct, but I can never get behind how indignant and dogmatic he is about this stuff.

I'm always onboard with Trek revisionism, if I enjoy the result. It happens that I think STD is not good in most respects.

 

"Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one but they think each others stink"

That would leave out my favorite things in life. The Three Stooges (I actually hate the colorized stuff), The Marx Brothers and a lot of early 60's sitcoms. Tons of movies too.

But Bernd really likes arguing.

 

You would be incorrect. The marketshare for a particular product or class of product doesn't have to be dominant, it just has to be large enough to justify the cost of production. Even if, say, the majority of people who read books do not really care for military science fiction (and they don't), the demand for such books is still high enough for people like David Weber to be able to make a living.

As another example: the number of people who actually own or ride motorcycles is far, FAR lower than the number of people who prefer standard four-wheeled passenger cars. And yet, motorcycles of various types are still sold across the world.

A product doesn't have to satisfy the dominant demand for the entire population. It just has to satisfy the demands of its intended consumer. A product geared strictly towards the majority of people might not actually meet the demands of a highly interested minority. And sometimes, that product is of such high quality that the minority actually consume that product at a far greater rate than the majority ever would. Star Trek was such a product during syndication; "Black Panther", with $1.3 billion in revenue, is such a product today.

You're noting the existence of nostalgia products and concluding that this proves that nostalgia products are "incredibly popular?" First, that's not evidence, that's INFERENCE. And second, you very strongly insisted that even polls conducted right here on TrekBBS aren't valid evidence of FAN preferences because reasons. But the EXISTENCE of nostalgia products somehow is?

You're forgetting that it's been almost 10 years since those aesthetic changes were introduced in ST09, and it isn't just the look of TOS that has become outdated, to be sure. CBS is betting that a larger chunk of its potential audience have seen the Kelvinverse films than have seen Voyager or Enterprise, because those films had much MUCH greater market penetration than anything else with the Star Trek label over the past 20 years. That is, in fact, a pretty safe bet, especially given the times involved and the fact that a lot of the people who went to see ST09 and STID were too young to have been fans of those older shows when they aired.

Assuming you're still willing to take anecdotal evidence: I can name off the top of my head about 60 students who have seen Star Trek Beyond or Star Trek Into Darkness but have never seen Voyager or Enterprise. Most were teenagers when we last had those conversations, and some of them are in their 20s now.

 

Some people argue that Trek has had previous ones, which is what he is arguing against.

 

Which has put me off of his site for a while. He does decent analysis, but his opinions are steeped in arrogance at times that is off putting.

 

I remember the meltdown he had when the new film came out in 2009.

He wasn't a happy bunny at all.

P.S I still have fond memories of all the diagrams.

 

That was pretty much when I left. I get that Star Trek 2009 isn't for everyone, but the level of incredulity and anger was over the top. Same with the official Star Trek boards.

 

Quite so. In fact, that's a nice corollary for my basic point. Star Trek has always had something of a niche appeal. There's no reason anyone should try to force it to be something with mass appeal, or even to assume that it can be. Most TV shows don't try to be all things to all people. If DSC weren't one of the most expensive shows on the air, being treated as a "tentpole" by CBS, there would be no need for all the speculation about what mass audiences do or don't like.

(Although, I reiterate, the statements made about those tastes are still nothing but speculation. I maintain that members of the general public have more catholic tastes than they're being given credit for, and moreover that many of the arguments about what they would or wouldn't accept in Trek rely on contradictory internal logic — i.e., in a nutshell, that they're accepting of pretty much any damn thing except fealty to the source material.)

Yes, an inference from actual evidence of observed preferences in the broader entertainment market. (It's more evidence than was offered to support the contrary proposition, which was stated vaguely but appears to be that people who reject Old!Stuff! exist in numbers large enough to be a valid proxy for public tastes.) And no, a poll here on TrekBBS is not a scientifically conducted survey of fans.

That may be true. What of it? A TV show obviously can't and shouldn't try to emulate a summer blockbuster. CBS could have attempted to emphasize that connection by setting the show in the Kelvin universe (at the end of the day it does own the rights, after all), and it chose to do the exact opposite. And indeed (bridge windows aside), the aesthetic of DSC is very different from those films. Besides, isn't the whole point of the argument that audiences allegedly prefer New!Stuff!? Why would they be any less likely to enjoy something new and different as opposed to something that evokes the Abrams movies?

(Do Greg Berlanti and company, producers of the DC Comics-based shows on the CW, try to ape the look and feel of the Zack Snyder's big-budget DCEU movies? Thank the gods, no...)

You must have quite a memory for names. But if the timeframe is as you say, then (A) the movies were a lot more recent then, and (B) you're assuming for some reason that none of those people have watched any other version of Trek in the intervening years, despite its notable popularity on streaming platforms.

 

Well, sure. I love the EAS site for the thoroughness with which it documents things, but anger and dourness are emotionally draining. One can be irritated by how wretchedly awful the Abrams movies were, and still express that in a way that maintains a sense of wit and humor! My personal favorite is the guy who carefully, cleverly deconstructed the 2009 film one minute of screen time at a time.

 

You had me until this point. Just why was that needed?

Review is a bit too literal for my tastes.

I've struggled for years to understand the absolute anger expressed at Abrams. Reviews like that do not help.

 

I admit, that was a sarcastic jibe. Not strictly necessary, and sorry it rubbed you the wrong way. In my defense, CrazyEddie has been deliberately goading me in a number of different posts since I stepped aside from the last debate we were having a few days ago, and I suppose it got under my skin.

As to AbramsTrek, I agree that there's a lot of anger directed at it out there, although I don't see it so much in that particular blog. I honestly think that one takes the piss out of the movie in a clever, scathingly sarcastic way. I don't harbor anger against the films myself; I merely think they're awful, awful movies (not just bad Trek, but bad movies overall)—due almost entirely to the writing; most other things about them are okay—and I think it's a shame that anyone's impression of what Star Trek is or can be would be shaped by those films.

 

Except that's exactly when it WAS during the movie era and when TNG originally aired. They went out of their way to give it as much mass appeal as possible for fans of science fiction in general. Wrath of Khan broadened this by making it an action/adventure film rather than strictly brooding science fiction.

Star Trek has never EVER specifically and exclusively catered to its dedicated fanbase. Even it's nostalgia episodes were meant to be at least accessible to the general audiences.

You CANNOT be serious!

TNG didn' didn't just EMULATE the movies they literally recycled all of their props, sets, costumes. They even reused the theme song! Years later, the TNG movies introduced new uniforms, and the spinoffs IMMEDIATELY adopted those uniforms for their regular production! The change in the appearance and nature of the Borg, plus the existence of the Borg Queen, were carried over into Voyager, and after Nemesis, the Remans showed up in an episode of Enterprise...

But, yeah, TV shows can't emulate summer blockbusters, right?

No, because CBS doesn't have the rights to the Kelvin universe (yet) and wouldn't be able to do so without cooperating directly with Paramount Studios and/or Bad Robot. Given the option, however, I'm pretty sure they would have preferred to do exactly this.

Hardly. In fact its use of transparent displays, the design touches of its starships and most of its visual effects make it closer to any of the Kelvinverse films than it is to anything else in Trek canon. Hell, even their uniforms draw some pretty clear allusions to Star Trek Beyond.

Yes. The Kelvinverse films ARE the new stuff (Beyond hit theaters just a year before Discovery did). Given a choice between emulating a major motion picture that just came out and emulating a TV show that went off the air 50 years ago... it's not really even a question, is it?

Indeed I do. Didn't used to be that way, I've had a shit ton of practice at it.

It's not an assumption at all. When ST09 came out, NONE of those kids had ever seen Voyager or Enterprise and didn't bother with them. There were a good dozen or so for whom that movie was the first Star Trek thing they had ever seen. For a few of them, the same was true of their parents.

What's more: some of the twenty-somethings and teenagers seeing STB for the first time are comparing it to shit like Clone Wars and Rogue One. in the same way that Star Wars and Space Odyssey set the trends to which Star Trek was forced to adapt itself (resulting in the changes we saw in TMP and Wrath of Khan) it's happening all over again now and new Trek is forced to adapt itself to stay visually relevant in that context. Science fiction, as a genre, is just too competitive to support a product that is based purely on nostalgia, which is probably why the Lost in Space reboot isn't recycling the old 1960s aestheic either.

 

It was fantastic entertainment at the time, I kept out of it mostly except for the odd attempt to help some see reason, I didn't involve myself in arguing the toss as the thread went over 1000 pages and had to be restarted more than once.

There were diagrams flying all over the place, the mental gymnastics some were doing to try and make the ship the same size as ToS was hilarious.

Just goes to show how truly dangerous denial can be.

It went on for over two years, no doubt the moderators still have nightmares about it.

 

It is pretty clear no concensus will be achieved.
If producers come out and say it is a visual reboot, that would be slightly more acceptable then telling me the 1701and Klingon ships looked like that in TOS!

 

More concerned that its not going to be a productive debate and tensions are going to rise. I'll admit to being a bit of a peacemaker at times.

Why is that a shame? Honestly, why? My wife watched 09 film, enjoyed it, and started watching DS9. She probably wouldn't have without that film. Do the films some how damage the brand? Honestly, if I talk to Star Trek fans, they largely find them forgettable, and prefer their own series. No harm, no foul, IDIC and all that.

Secondarily, while I think there are diminishing returns on the films, I think the 09 film is among the best, and I just struggle with the "bad movie" statement. The writing is pretty standard, but the acting elevates it above and beyond what I would expect with trying to step in to the shoes of very iconic characters.

I don't think anyone is being told that Klingons and the Enterprise looked like that. At least, that's not my impression.

I saw similar when Star Trek.com had official boards. Less moderation there (that I saw) so it got nasty quick.

 

When people talk about negative gatekeeping that goes with Trek and a lot of other franchises, the way he expresses his opinions is a good example of it I feel and what one should NOT do.