USS Enterprise (eventually) on Discovery?
- Thread starter EJD1984
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The notion of things "curving back" does complicate the discussion a bit.
(It's one aspect of temporal mechanics Christopher L. Bennett has postulated in his DTI books to explain some otherwise thorny Trek stories. Just one demonstration of how Trek novelists often put far more thought and attention into things than the screenwriters, BTW... for my money, Brannon Braga couldn't construct a logically cohesive time-travel story if his life depended on it. But I digress...)
Long story short, though, there do seem to be a lot of Trek time-travel stories with no long-term effects, or effects that cancel themselves out, or that don't really make a difference. I don't think FC would fit into that category, though. It seems almost inevitable that history post-2063 would be altered significantly from its original no-intervention version, even if it settles down into an apparently similar version of things by 310 years later. To me the appropriate analogy here would be "Yesterday's Enterprise"... where it seemed like the timeline had been corrected seamlessly by restoring past events, but in fact it brought about the existence of Sela, which wound up having some serious long-term effects that nobody could have anticipated or detected at the time of the story itself.
Umm, sure you can. Because, as has been discussed at length around here and as this post succinctly restates...
...production values are not the same thing as designs. Nobody has ever suggested doing a contemporary show with 1960s production values — lighting; cinematography; fabrication of sets, props, and costumes; special effects technologies; stunt techniques. But updating those does not require, imply, or even necessarily suggest changing the underlying designs those production values are used to realize. The original Enterprise is a brilliant, timeless, and deservedly popular design, and looks as good today as it ever did.
I see the point of the term, but I think you might be misusing it. Remember, the main defining characteristic of the "prime timeline" is that it's the one from which ST09 diverged. That is not necessarily (and arguably necessarily not) the same as the original Star Trek timeline.
Because there's a long and well-established history that the screen isn't a window, and if you're not doing a reboot then making changes to continuity for no good reason is a Bad Thing.
Well, honestly, in TOS all starships were identical. Every single (Starfleet) starship we saw on screen matched the design of the Enterprise, belonging to what was later established as the Constitution Class.
It was only in the movies, and later in TNG, that we began to see Starfleet using a variety of ship styles, and that the term "starship" became something more generic rather than designating a class unto itself. Even then, it wasn't until the DS9 years that we started to see ship styles really proliferate.
DSC, however, takes that proliferation up by an order of magnitude, and does it retroactively. Suddenly the Enterprise is surrounded (and preceded) by a fleet full of ships that look little or nothing like it, and it becomes much harder to discern what exactly sets the Connies apart as something special.
Heh! Interesting that according to DSC people have given up on actual reflective surfaces for something as simple as a mirror – instead they use holograms, resorting to high technology even for trivial purposes. Yet for something as critically important as conveying tactical information to the command crew, they still use transparent surfaces rather than a far more technologically powerful viewscreen.
(The bit in "Vulcan Hello" where they actually doubled down on this by using the ancient telescope struck me as particularly contrived and laughable... what, the interference was interfering with everything but ordinary visual frequencies, yet somehow the ship's sensors couldn't pick those up even though mere eyeballs could?...)
That's not actually an argument, it's just an example of circular reasoning, assuming your conclusions as if they're premises. It's all been discussed at length before, but to summarize: the TOS production values at the time were anything but cheap, although they do look primitive compared to today's TV production technology. However, the production values are not the same thing as the designs, most of which are innovative, creative, carefully considered, visually striking, and memorable (most of which can't be said for DSC), and still look distinctive and "futuristic" today. Specifically, I have more than once itemized at length all the "detailing" Jefferies included on the original Enterprise, both to visualize the ship's functionality and to give it a sense of scale, so I'll spare you the full list here... but suffice it to say it is not remotely "under detailed," much less simplistic, except perhaps to the eyes of people addicted to Star Wars who think a spaceship needs everything but the kitchen sink glued to its outside surface for no apparent reason. (I'll say this for J.J. Abrams... even though he's avowedly more of a SW fan than a Trek fan and his Trek films showed it, and even though Ryan Church's Enterprise design for those films was IMHO weirdly proportioned and ugly, it did at least maintain the Trek tradition of having a smooth, elegant surface unmarred by extraneous greebles.)
Moreover: literally everything about Star Trek is grounded in "1960's sci-fi expectations" (that's why it has an optimistic future full of human space travel, for heaven's sake!), so if you reject that you're pretty much rejecting a core defining characteristic of Trek, thematically, regardless of any or all visual elements.
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WINNER!!!
You're trying to pull something out of nothing.
It's not a bad thing. And I fail to see why it needs to be a reboot. But, I don't see this conversation going any where.
Go around and poll non-Star Trek fans born on and after 1990 and see how many agree with you.
Woo! I qualify for the writing staff at last.
It's only an issue in TWOK because you've made up that issue.
Star Trek has hundreds of continuity issues, mate. This won't break it. Literally no one cares except detail-obsessed fans.
Why would you want to take it to extremes? It sounds like you're deliberately trying to make issues out of nothing in order to have something to complain about.
Since TOS is the only style that sticks out from the rest, sounds like they made the right call.
Come on. Everything about the original Enterprise screams "1960s".
Groppler Zorn said:
Because the ship looks like it was made in the 1960s and doesn't hold up to our modern standards of ship design fifty years later. Doesn't change the fact that the original was revolutionary. Things just changed since then.
Which is why ENT IS in the different timeline compared to Prime
Only under a particular set of temporal physics. The problem with Trek is that those physics change depending on the time travel story. If it were more consistent, for all you know it could be a single timeline and changes are permanent, so the Kelvin timeline would've replaced the original.
What are you even talking about? You keep saying that but it makes zero sense.
"It's almost as if I found a way to confirm my preconceived biases!"
It might work on two completely different technological principles, is the point.
Yet pretty much every show and movie has followed that template. Things that make you go hmmm...
Not the Kelvin Films.
And those TV shows were doing it for nostalgia points.
Pardon?
Literally the ones who have kept the franchise afloat for fifty years. Oh, I forgot, those tech manual's, encyclopedia's and chronology's never sold.
The Kelvin Enterprise didn't look like the TOS Enterprise anymore then the DSC one does.Umm...
In fact, the DSC one is a lot more faithful to the TOS design.
I just... I just don't know anymore. Do you know what a 'template' is?
Are you telling me that people won't buy it because it doesn't line up perfectly with a tech manual? If people considered DSC consistently good, this would be a minor discussion point, not a source of contention.
No, I'm pointing out that those detailed obsessed fans are what kept the franchise afloat. It is foolish to dismiss them, especially when Discovery seems like it is pointed directly at them with all the fan service.
they're a minority.
Only one hero ship of the TOS spinoffs wasn't a saucer with two nacelles. The exception wasn't even present in the first two seasons of its show.
Granted, they tried to mix it up with the TOS hero ship-derivatives. One forwent the engineering hull, and one's saucer looked more like a shovel. The lineage was always unmistakable though.
Edit - I was speaking of the pre-DSC spinoffs, but the DISCO herself fits the trend.
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I'm not talking about the general design of the ship.
I own several manuals, and encyclopedias, fact files and blueprints. Let me be clear-if the story is good I will not worry about it. I don't watch DSC for fan service. I watch it because I like space ships, interesting characters, and aliens.
I don't think it is as dismissive of those fans as it is acknowledging that these detail issues have been present for a long time. This is hardly the straw that broke the camel's back.
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