Ways that SNW actually improved TOS

Being set before TOS does not automatically make SNW a prequel.

It doesn’t have to set up everything.

I love TOS, but SNW is better in so, so many ways.

Especially if is set in a alternate universe. Then it's a Prereboot. Not fully a prequel but not fully a reboot either. But something else.
 
And is "setting up" the exclusive function of a prequel? I think that's way too reductive. The function is to explore the past of the characters or setting. Laying the foundations for what happened later is part of that, but I don't accept that it's all of it. Sometimes it can just be an opportunity to explore something more fully than it was in the original, like how Enterprise fleshed out the Andorians or SNW has developed Uhura. That's not "setup," it's just telling stories that were overlooked before.

I agree. I was responding to others in the thread who have said it’s the job of SNW to set up TOS.

I mean, clearly. I said it doesn’t have to set up things.
 
No, but including Spock, Uhura, M'Benga, and Chapel as regulars and Kirk and Scotty as guest stars kinda does.

Not really. These people already have vital, interesting lives at this point in their stories -moreso than in TOS in several cases.

There are only one or two instances where the SNW story relies upon TOS for anything like vital context, such as why anyone should give a damn about the "Sybok" reveal. A story like Pike's destiny is actually a somewhat different and more gripping one without the foreknowledge that he won't reaaly experience the end of his life in the beepy chair.
 
I mean, clearly. I said it doesn’t have to set up things.

But you equated "not setting things up" with "not being a prequel." My point is that the term "prequel" is not defined so narrowly. SNW is a prequel, but that does not mean its only purpose is to set up TOS.
 
Being set before TOS does not automatically make SNW a prequel.

It doesn’t have to set up everything.

I love TOS, but SNW is better in so, so many ways.

In some ways it's very much like TOS. It has followed the sane blueprint with modern touches such as having some running light story arc threads. I do like the show very much. Only think I would have changed is I would like to have seen the enterprise looking more like Kirk's. But I suspect they'll do another exterior refit as well as an interior one to make it look closer to the TOS ship but still with modern day flourishes. It is the future and they can change things pretty quickly.
 
But you equated "not setting things up" with "not being a prequel." My point is that the term "prequel" is not defined so narrowly. SNW is a prequel, but that does not mean its only purpose is to set up TOS.

I think we are going around the houses and saying the same thing as each other.

Maybe I worded it badly, but I’m in agreement with you.
 
Only think I would have changed is I would like to have seen the enterprise looking more like Kirk's.

It already does, in broad strokes. Roddenberry always saw ST as only the best approximation of the future that present-day production methods could achieve, which is why he didn't hesitate to redesign everything in TMP. In his foreword to the TMP novelization, he pretended to be a 23rd-century TV producer and apologized for TOS's inaccuracies in dramatizing Kirk's adventures, saying that TMP was a more accurate and authentic recreation. So if he were still around and involved in making SNW, he would've been the first to redesign all the sets and tech and claim that was how it had really looked all along.

After all, if we can accept Jeffrey Hunter and Anson Mount as the same character, how hard can it be to accept the TOS sets/FX and the SNW ones as the same ship?

If anything, I think SNW goes too far in duplicating details of TOS, putting very 1960s intercoms and rocker switches and "jellybean" buttons as decorations on the otherwise modern touchscreen consoles. I find those overly literal recreations incongruous and nonfunctional. I prefer it when they recreate the broad-strokes aesthetics with more modern detail.
 
SNW is not just a prequel to some other show, it's created a space of its own. And it's not about some timed hand-off to a hypothetical future show about Kirk which may never exist.

Paramount disagrees with you. SNW is excplitelly, by the creators, a prequel to TOS and occurs in the exact same space. It would make so much more sense to be in a space of its own, but that's what the creators wanted.
 
I’m not sure you fully understand the post you have quoted.

Again.

SNW is not just a prequel to some other show
That's objectively exactly what it is.

it's created a space of its own.
Yes, by the very definition of being a different story, it is. It is not TOS, it is a prequel to TOS. "a space of it's own", as a prequel to TOS.

And it's not about some timed hand-off to a hypothetical future show about Kirk which may never exist.

Correct. It's a hand-off to a well-known and documented "future" show about Kirk which does exist.
 
SNW is not just a prequel to some other show
That's objectively exactly what it is.

Well, I'd agree that, while it is a prequel, it's not just a prequel, because few things are "just" what a single label describes. Reducing things to labels is not the key to understanding them. It's the first crude step in the process of understanding, not the end goal.
 
It already does, in broad strokes. Roddenberry always saw ST as only the best approximation of the future that present-day production methods could achieve, which is why he didn't hesitate to redesign everything in TMP. In his foreword to the TMP novelization, he pretended to be a 23rd-century TV producer and apologized for TOS's inaccuracies in dramatizing Kirk's adventures, saying that TMP was a more accurate and authentic recreation. So if he were still around and involved in making SNW, he would've been the first to redesign all the sets and tech and claim that was how it had really looked all along.

After all, if we can accept Jeffrey Hunter and Anson Mount as the same character, how hard can it be to accept the TOS sets/FX and the SNW ones as the same ship?

If anything, I think SNW goes too far in duplicating details of TOS, putting very 1960s intercoms and rocker switches and "jellybean" buttons as decorations on the otherwise modern touchscreen consoles. I find those overly literal recreations incongruous and nonfunctional. I prefer it when they recreate the broad-strokes aesthetics with more modern detail.

You have a point. The ship is a character in its own right. I'll pretend that the ship is just an actor that went down to the studio to audition to play the part of the TOS Enterprise. Lol


I do like the jellybean buttons. They look nice. Plus I like jellybean beans.
 
After all, if we can accept Jeffrey Hunter and Anson Mount as the same character, how hard can it be to accept the TOS sets/FX and the SNW ones as the same ship?
Exactly. It aren't that hard to accept set changes if recasting characters is acceptable. Hell, by the logic of recasting expressed here TSFS is separate continuity from TWOK.

Ships and sets are not characters and I agree that if GR was still alive he would not do the slavish 1:1 recreation.
 
Exactly. It aren't that hard to accept set changes if recasting characters is acceptable. Hell, by the logic of recasting expressed here TSFS is separate continuity from TWOK.

Ships and sets are not characters and I agree that if GR was still alive he would not do the slavish 1:1 recreation.

But there's only so much I'm willing to let pass. Discovery went way too far where everything right down to the uniforms were changed completely. The spore drive itself was way too advanced. Somehow we are to believe that 1000 years later the spore drive is better than anything the Federation has. I can wave off some things being different but come on. It's stretching credibility of story telling and what people are willing to believe.
 
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But there's only so much I'm willing to let pass. Discovery went way too far where everything right down to the uniforms weee changed completely. The spore drive itself was way too advanced. Somehow we are to believe that 1000 years later the spore drive os better than anything the Federation has. I can wave off some things being different but come on. It's stretching credibility of story telling and what people are willing to believe.
Everyone's line is different.

Studying history has made me far more aware of how easy knowledge can be lost.
 
Everyone's line is different.

Studying history has made me far more aware of how easy knowledge can be lost.

I find it hard to believe that a thousand years later starfleet was still reliant on dilithium crystals. I mean even the TNG era they were experimenting with things like soliton waves. It's hard for me to believe that they couldn't either come up with a replacement for dilthium, replicate dilithium or come up with a completely new technology. It's just bad writing. It seemed more like fan fiction at times.
 
I find it hard to believe that a thousand years later starfleet was still reliant on dilithium crystals. I mean even the TNG era they wete experimenting with things like soliton waves. It's hard for me to believe that they couldn't either come up with a replacement for dilthium, replicate dilithium or come up with a completely new technology. It's just bad writing. It seemed more like fan fiction at times.
Hard disagree. Starfleet is a very slow to change organization, especially if something proves dangerous in the first experiment. I'm sure thete are alternatives but none as safe or reliable as dilithiun has proven to be.

Fan fiction is way worse than Discovery.
 
Exactly. It aren't that hard to accept set changes if recasting characters is acceptable. Hell, by the logic of recasting expressed here TSFS is separate continuity from TWOK.

I think you should get this argument going in its own thread. It could be glorious! :klingon:
 
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