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USS Enterprise (eventually) on Discovery?

Me, too, but I’ve seen it transcribed both ways. Either way, it’s an excellent word: it’s so violent.
 
Either way, it’s an excellent word: it’s so violent.

"Bonk" really is.

When I was caregiver for my elderly father, and dealing with his dementia, there was a point where he hit me in the head with what was basically a billy club. The sound of that wood impacting my skull....that word was a perfect description. Hollywood and cartoons and all of that....it's no exaggeration. That was exactly what it sounded like. (Fortunately for me, I got it away from him before he had the opportunity to hit me with it again.)
 
I really don't think so, then writers wanted a reason why Lorca would be confused as to why the Cooper was here.
But if that were their only purpose, they could have used virtually anything there: "Isn't she supposed to be on supply run?"; "Isn't she conducting reconnaissance in the Mutara Sector?" Yet "undergoing a refit" is specifically a reference to TMP, which features the most famous refit in all of Trek. No mere coincidence, that.

And remember, Lorca wasn't actually confused at all there. He knew exactly what was going on the whole time, and was faking his befuddlement entirely, for effect. Do you think we weren't meant to go back and watch this all again to pick out the details we hadn't caught the first time around? It's known as the "the box-set mentality"; part of the re-watch value is in scenes like this taking on different meanings and subtexts once one knows where it's all going. And the meta-fictional aspect is part of that as well.

Just as with the Klingon ships, they knew full well that we obsessives would get riled over any updates or other departures they made, and so just as with the "D-7" reference in "Choose Your Pain" (DSC), they slipped in a little "gotcha" for all of us who would dare presume that we know Trek minutiae better than they do. Haven't all we TOS anoraks read The Making Of Star Trek? No???

Similarly, look at their strategic placement of the Gorn and Horta in Lorca's collection; a few of us who noticed and recognized these easter eggs just had to make a point of calling them out as continuity errors, as if the makers of the show somehow cared enough about Trek history to include them in the first place, but not enough about it to use them "correctly"...because here again, we know better than they do, right? They're just pissing down our legs telling us this show is Prime, taking us all for suckers with their facile fan service and feigned concern for the details of canon, right? It's all just a big nothing-burger, right? Right???

Wrong. Lorca turned out to be from the Mirror Universe, where they already know all about the Gorn (and undoubtedly the Horta too...Tholians probably use them to tunnel out their asteroid bases or something). Those anachronisms were deliberate clues that something was afoot (and not merely a simple reboot, either)! Gotcha again, nitpickers!

Reminds me of this...

QUINT: Game fish, eh? Marlin? Stingray? Bit through this piano wire? Don't you tell me my business again. You get back on the bridge.
HOOPER: Quint, that doesn't prove a damn thing!
QUINT: Well it proves one thing, Mr. Hooper. It proves that you wealthy college boys don't have the education enough to admit when you're wrong.

...of course, as must be duly noted, it's ultimately Hooper who survives and Quint who is consumed by his quarry. That's always a danger. And I can certainly understand the argument that their use of the Mirror Universe altogether was itself fan service. Perhaps it was. But my point is, within the context of telling the story they set out to, they took care in what they were setting up and revealing at every step toward that end. Alas, too bad Frakes spoiled it early on. Too bad we caught on to the "Javid Iqbal" thing as well, being too smart for our own good...or did they realize all along that we surely would? In any case, observe also tidbits such as: "You fight like a Klingon..." in "Lethe" (DSC) and "You're a very tall man..." in "Magic To Make The Sanest Man Go Mad" (DSC).

The first season abounds with such sly teases and dog-whistles woven in. And personally, I hope that isn't lost going forward, like so many pearls cast before swine. (Please note that I mean the preceding purely in the proverbial sense, and not as an insult to anyone, here or elsewhere. Note also that neither by the Jaws quote do I mean to imply that I am some jaded "anti-elitist" or anti-educationalist or whatever...even if I am a little jealous of those better at math than I!)

Well, some of us think there was. How do we reconcile those two viewpoints?
The way they are, for one, even if the benefit of it seems lost on some here. Go ahead and give us the update, but with the understanding (spoken or unspoken) that the original remains intact, and awaiting us in its future...one we may never reach on DSC itself, but have nevertheless already seen, and can revisit any time we like by re-watching TOS.

Something can't be blue and not blue at the same time.
Tell that to all of us who saw that dress as white and gold! It's all a question of what light one is looking at something in, and of what one expects to see based on the innate qualities and prior experiences one brings to the table. Even where there may be an objective reality, our responses to it are inevitably determined by our perceptions and interpretations of it more than by any "fact" of its "true" nature. (And infinitely more so in fiction, where there quite literally isn't any objective reality to begin with!)

Star Trek is like the bible, I suppose. You can quote one line to support any theory! ;)
Yep. And as our highly-esteemed (by me, anyway) @Timo once quite succinctly put it: "Obviously, one can choose to argue that any bit of onscreen evidence is in fact proof of the exact opposite..."

So when the Enterprise returned in 2269...
[nit] 2270 [/picked]
...they removed the nacelles, bridge module and computer core... then they discovered that the pylons couldn't handle the new stress loads... so they changed those. Then Starfleet decided they wanted their new ships to be shiny and white, so they changed the outer hull. Then some asshat admiral wanted more weaponry on the engineering hull so we got the torpedo launchers there, which opened a large hole in the saucer section that resulted in more changes. Then the impulse engines didn't fit with the new warp core they had to install for the nacelles, and a year later they had ripped every single nut and bolt from the original ship and replaced it.

You know, the HMS Victory in Portsmouth basically has zero parts from the original. Even the keel's been changed. 'Course, it's over 200 years old.
“Refit” is all relative. Here in California they have a rule that you can’t demolish your old house and build a new one in its place without paying some huge penalties. So what everyone is doing is knocking down 3 walls of the old house, building the new house around the remaining wall, then when the rest of the house is built, they knock down the last wall and build new one from scratch. So at no point was the old house knocked down completely at one time, so it’s technically a “refit” while practically it is a new house (nothing from original remains). So yeah, it’s all relative and has roots in real life.
And that's basically what happened to the real-life U.S.S. Constitution as well!

Picard chose to be bald. :D
Whenever this so-called "discrepancy" comes up, I always remember a coach at my high school, who displayed in his office a photograph of himself as a young man with his head cleanly shaven, and often joked about how that look had been a great deal of trouble to maintain at the time, yet had become increasingly easier as he'd gone naturally bald later in life! HOW UNBELIEVABLE!!! WHAT NONSENSE IS THIS????

That reminds me of something that happened to my grandfather back in the 1930s. A guy wanted him to cut a large amount of cords of wood for him and agreed to pay when he came for the last of it. He hauled away all but that very last cord of wood. Left that sitting and never paid for anything. In the most technical terms, he didn't lie. But....
What a truly awful way to take advantage of someone...:(

...but it does remind me of all Spock's long litany of sundry not-lies! If he never mentioned his telepathy or his sexuality or his fiancée/wife or his father's name or his half-brother...THEN HOW THE HELL CAN HE HAVE A HUMAN SISTER WHO WAS A MUTINEER, DAMMIT????? DAMN THEM ALL TO HELLLLLLL!!!!!:scream: :vulcan::rommie:

-MMoM:D
 
One thing is clear: Mirror Lorca kept his eyes and ears open, did his homework, and had a pretty damn good awareness of what was going on around him in his 'terra incognita'. Puts the match to Spock's speech about civilized versus uncivilized and the mistaken notion that the MU is a direct mirror and not simply an alternate with mirroring characteristics.
 
Tell that to all of us who saw that dress as white and gold! It's all a question of what light one is looking at something in, and of what one expects to see based on the innate qualities and prior experiences one brings to the table. Even where there may be an objective reality, our responses to it are inevitably determined by our perceptions and interpretationsof it more than by any "fact" of its "true" nature. (And infinitely more so in fiction, where there quite literally isn't any objective reality to begin with!)

Sorry but I can't get on board with that. There is such a thing as objective reality and there's a way to determine it. Fiction may not be reality, but it has its own "reality", even if it sometimes is contradictory.
 
...but it does remind me of all Spock's long litany of sundry not-lies! If he never mentioned his telepathy or his sexuality or his fiancée/wife or his father's name or his half-brother...THEN HOW THE HELL CAN HE HAVE A HUMAN SISTER WHO WAS A MUTINEER, DAMMIT????? DAMN THEM ALL TO HELLLLLLL!!!!!
But Spock was always so honest and forthright with information. Kirk was never surprised to learn things about his friend... ;)
 
Similarly, look at their strategic placement of the Gorn and Horta in Lorca's collection; a few of us who noticed and recognized these easter eggs just had to make a point of calling them out as continuity errors, as if the makers of the show somehow cared enough about Trek history to include them in the first place, but not enough about it to use them "correctly"...because here again, we know better than they do, right? They're just pissing down our legs telling us this show is Prime, taking us all for suckers with their facile fan service and feigned concern for the details of canon, right? It's all just a big nothing-burger, right? Right???

Wrong. Lorca turned out to be from the Mirror Universe, where they already know all about the Gorn (and undoubtedly the Horta too...Tholians probably use them to tunnel out their asteroid bases or something). Those anachronisms were deliberate clues that something was afoot (and not merely a simple reboot, either)! Gotcha again, nitpickers!
Damn I never considered that about Lorca - that was a reference to Enterprise where they *knew* about the Gorn because we saw one! I may have to watch DSC again with less of a furrowed brow in light of this...

And that's basically what happened to the real-life U.S.S. Constitution as well!
This is why I have no issues with the Enterprise being refit multiple times so that it looks like the cage, take my hand, wnmhgb, all the way up to TMP.

As for the actual explanation, it’s a matter of degree for me. The Klingon makeup change was drastic so its explanation was warranted in my book. The saucer rim on the 1701D? So small a change that it didn’t even need pointing out. The romulan makeup? Many TOS romulans had helmets so probably had thick brows. Not important enough a change for me. Same with the TNG uniform change - starfleet changes its uniforms all the time so that’s a minor thing. To my mind the Enterprise is as drastic a change as the Klingon makeup - which has already been explicitly commented on in-universe. And, I agree that the mention of the Cooper was a reference to TMP, so a similar line about the Enterprise would be cool with me.

The most important change that we’ve not mentioned at all here is Gul Macet’s facial hair.

Why do no other Cardassians have facial hair? They can’t have beards and not have beards at the same time that’s a retcon too far dagnabbit!
 
Why do no other Cardassians have facial hair? They can’t have beards and not have beards at the same time that’s a retcon too far dagnabbit!
Post war had different fashion choices as order by Central Command.
Same with the TNG uniform change - starfleet changes its uniforms all the time so that’s a minor thing.
Do the Discovery uniforms get the same grace? Asking for a friend.
 
Post war had different fashion choices as order by Central Command.

Do the Discovery uniforms get the same grace? Asking for a friend.
Cardassian fashion would be ordered by central command I suppose :lol:

And yes the DSC uniforms do get the same grace, yes. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like them and wish they were closer to the TOS unis, but compare the monster maroon to the TNG spandex - they’re distinctly different uniforms and starfleet loves to change em, bless em!
 
Cardassian fashion would be ordered by central command I suppose :lol:

And yes the DSC uniforms do get the same grace, yes. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like them and wish they were closer to the TOS unis, but compare the monster maroon to the TNG spandex - they’re distinctly different uniforms and starfleet loves to change em, bless em!
I bet the Quartermaster Corps hates every time there is a new Chief of Starfleet Operations.
 
Speaking of the Enterprise and whether or not they should flag up the changes btw, what if they’d not mentioned it in TMP?

What if they’d just gone to the lil shuttle, flown over to the Enterprise and not said anything about the refit at all? Take out the wormhole scene and just have Decker be Spock’s replacement. I wonder what the reaction would have been if they’d done that.
 
Even then, I think that would have been easier to rationalize, because it follows the series rather than occurring in the middle of a period we’ve already seen.

Sort of like how we aren’t told in IV where the A came from — fans just filled it in.
 
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