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Spoilers Visual continuity - Does Discovery strictly need to show past designs... at all?

It's exactly how it's presented to the fans. "Canon" is a construct made by fans for their own benefit. It doesn't not, nor has it ever, have any bearing on how TPTB choose to tell their stories.
Nonsense. Star Trek canon is very explicitly not an intersubjective fan-made construct — it's dictated by the IP owners, limited to what has been depicted on screen. That's been reiterated on these boards countless times. That fact is the very reason alternative terms like "fanon" and "head canon" exist.

And I challenge you to prove otherwise. Give one example - besides the three I listed - where a prior [episode] series or film has any direct influence on a subsequent [episode] series or film. And really think about it.

Let's take The Motion Picture, for example and pretend it was just a movie called Star Trek and the series had never existed. Is there anything about the film that would be different. Anything at all? Nope. Wise, Harvey, and Sowards could have told the exact same story and made the exact same film. There is nothing in the film that is dependent on the events (or the audience having prior knowledge) of the series. Everything is the audience needs to know is shown in the film.
I think you understand the words "canon" and "reboot" very differently from how other people do. Canon is the record of what is officially known about a fictional property. A reboot is a new version of a familiar property that is explicitly not constrained by previously depicted events involving that property.

In prose fiction, the whole concept of "canon" pretty much traces back to Arthur Conan Doyle's stories of Sherlock Holmes. His 56 short stories and four novels are what we know, officially and authoritatively, about the lives of Holmes and Watson. Very few of those stories are "dependent" on earlier ones or have "direct influence" on later ones — there are occasional references, but those are usually cursory — yet they are universally understood to be about the same characters in the same reality. Later tales by other authors, even if they do explicitly harken back to events from the originals, are homages or pastiches, not canon.

In comics, Crisis on Infinite Earths was clearly a reboot of DC's shared universe. On the other hand, merely canceling, say, Justice League, and then restarting it later with a new #1 and a new creative team, is not a reboot, insofar as it acknowledges the previously published adventures of the Justice League.

What does this tell us that we can apply to Star Trek? It tells us that continuity in a shared universe — i.e., the absence of a reboot — doesn't require a continued story (although it can certainly accommodate one). It doesn't necessarily even require a shared creative vision, although it often benefits from one. What it's about is a shared setting.

ST:TMP absolutely could not and would not have been the same movie without the original series preceding it. A great deal more time would have had to be spent on establishing the fictional world — the concepts of the UFP, Starfleet, warp drive, etc. — rather than having it understood from previous exposure. Most of the backstory and character dynamics were also previously established — the notions of Kirk looking back nostalgically on his five-year mission and wanting to retake the center seat, for instance, or of Spock giving up on pure logic and deciding to acknowledge his human side and his friendships, or of the Enterprise undergoing an elaborate refit, would have made no sense (or at least had no emotional resonance) had they not been preceded by the TV series. Had the movie been an actual reboot, it would have been told very differently, introducing the characters and concepts as fresh and new.

And guess what? The same holds true for WOK. People commonly treat it as a squeal to "Space Seed." But it isn't. The two stories are completely independent. Just like with TMP, all the relevant bits from the episode are given to the audience in that small exchange between Khan and Chekov.
Yes, of course it's a sequel. That's so obvious I can't fathom that it even needs defending. The fact that it provides cursory background exposition is just a matter of basic storytelling competence, and doesn't in any way, shape, or form mean the story in the film isn't directly related to the story that originally introduced Khan, taking place in the same universe, involving the same characters, and literally motivated by events in that episode.

The same holds true with the series. There was nothing presented in TNG's seven years that was dependent on any event of TOS. There were a few references - like Naked Now - but, again, all the relevant information is given in the episode and could just as easily be there had Naked Time never been.
The very foundation of TNG as a series was as a successor to the original series, not a replacement for it. Yes, it made some hamfisted attempts (especially in the early seasons) to establish itself as narratively independent of TOS, but it was clearly part of the same fictional reality. Picard and Data served in the same Starfleet as Kirk and Spock. Previous characters literally appeared on-screen in TNG — Sarek in "Sarek," Spock in "Unification," Scotty in "Relics" — and brought with them everything we as viewers knew about their personal histories.

The only thing DS9 took from TNG was the baton passing in "Emissary."...
And, umm, the whole political context of Bajor as a previously occupied Cardassian holding, as established in TNG. Not to mention the character of Worf, who spent four entire seasons on the latter show.

And the same is true of every later series and every movie. They are obviously, self-evidently intended to depict events taking place in the same fictional universe as previous events in previous series and movies. The only actual reboot Trek has had — in the sense of telling new stories about familiar characters unconstrained by previous canon — was in the Abrams films... they made that pretty clear by destroying Vulcan... and even then, they maintained a (tenuous) narrative thread to the previous continuity.

I freely admit that most of the episodes and movies in any given series do not explicitly link to, follow from, or depend upon specific events from other episodes. And... so what? You might as well claim that any random third-season episode of TNG is a "reboot" of the first season, since the stories aren't actually intertwined and, hey, the uniforms look different!

Continuity is a nice security blanket. And it's great when it all fits together. But the mistake is ever thinking a show or film - unless it is absolutely a direct sequel - should be beholden to it at all times.
No shared universe ever fits together perfectly, of course. (Even Conan Doyle's didn't, and he had the advantage of being a single author.) Humans (including storytellers) are imperfect, and so are their creations. But when the obvious intent is to engage in a process of cumulative worldbuilding and tell stories set in the resulting shared universe, the standard should be to expect it to fit together as well as reasonably possible — regardless of whether any particular story is a "direct sequel" or not — and claiming the shared universe never actually existed(!) is a completely specious excuse for falling short of that standard.
 
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In prose fiction, the whole concept of "canon" pretty much traces back to Arthur Conan Doyle's stories of Sherlock Holmes.
the concept of canon in prose fiction stems back centuries ago to that fantasy book some have still an unhealthy affection for. you know? the bible and all that stuff
 
It's quite simple. Klingons can look like they do in TOS, TNG and Discovery and all be canon, just as the gospels can give four different accounts of the same events.

It's canon that Klingons look like L'Rell. It's also canon that they look like both a blacked-up John Colicos and a prosthetic-laden John Colicos. It's also canon that Tora Ziyal looks like Tracy Middendorf, Melanie Smith and Cyia Batten.

Star Trek looks different in the sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties and... er twenteens?

All canon!
 
Allowed need to to see TOS and TNG and up Klingons, or dialogue to explain this subspecies.
Ships are much harder to explain.
 
the concept of canon in prose fiction stems back centuries ago to that fantasy book some have still an unhealthy affection for. you know? the bible and all that stuff
Well, yeah. But some people (including pretty much all of those who really care about Biblical canon) get touchy about referring to it as fiction, so I didn't want to risk sending the discussion off on a tangent. Props for being bolder than me. ;)
 
It's quite simple. Klingons can look like they do in TOS, TNG and Discovery and all be canon, just as the gospels can give four different accounts of the same events.

... Star Trek looks different in the sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties and... er twenteens?

All canon!
Yep. All canon. Explaining and reconciling it, now, that's continuity. (And a great deal of intellectual fun.) Saying it's just a reboot every time is a cheap end-run around all the fun.

(You should see the extensive write-ups I've done about the Conan Doyle canon. And the DC Universe. And and and...)
 
Yep. All canon. Explaining and reconciling it, now, that's continuity. (And a great deal of intellectual fun.) Saying it's just a reboot every time is a cheap end-run around all the fun.

(You should see the extensive write-ups I've done about the Conan Doyle canon. And the DC Universe. And and and...)
Totally agree, but sometimes you just have to suspend disbelief, unless you want to come up with a convoluted explanation for Gul Dukat's daughter having three different faces the first three times we see her.
 
Totally agree, but sometimes you just have to suspend disbelief, unless you want to come up with a convoluted explanation for Gul Dukat's daughter having three different faces the first three times we see her.
Secretly a Founder with attention deficit. Mystery solved. :whistle:
 
Totally agree, but sometimes you just have to suspend disbelief, unless you want to come up with a convoluted explanation for Gul Dukat's daughter having three different faces the first three times we see her.
Actually, actor changes have never really bothered me. For whatever reason, I find it easy to accept them and move on. (Well, okay, Robin Curtis for Kirstie Alley was a bit of a stumbling block, but IMHO part of the reason there is that they changed the makeup too, and even her acting style, and she just seemed blatantly different.) With Dukat's daughter, honestly I never even noticed the change.
 
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