What bugs me the most about canon violations

Discussion in 'General Trek Discussion' started by Ensign Ogahd Ahmganadai, Oct 25, 2017.

  1. Timewalker

    Timewalker Cat-lovin', Star Trekkin' Time Lady Premium Member

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    There's flexibility and going too far so it's basically "Star Trek In Name Only."

    There is an excellent series of fanfic stories that explains the change between TOS and movie Klingons. I won't say any more other than that it's very plausibly reasoned out and so I've incorporated that into my personal "head-canon" instead of that silly virus thing on TV, or whatever it was.
     
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  2. uniderth

    uniderth Commodore Commodore

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    Since the look isn't nearly as important as the story telling. Then have really good stories AND make it look similar enough to '60s Trek for continuity purposes. Win-win.

    You could at least say what it is.
     
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  3. Timewalker

    Timewalker Cat-lovin', Star Trekkin' Time Lady Premium Member

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    I'm tiptoeing around the fact that we have one of the pro authors posting in this thread. We're not supposed to get into fanfic specifics in TrekLit (no story ideas, either), and I try not to get too specific when I know Greg Cox is posting in the thread (out of courtesy).

    Drop me a PM, though, and I'll have lots to say. ;)
     
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  4. Ensign Ogahd Ahmganadai

    Ensign Ogahd Ahmganadai Commander Red Shirt

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    Part of me can understand the knee-jerk recoiling from a series that departs so radically from the look we associate with the time period. I think it’s utteely ridiculous to let that affect your ability to enjoy it, but I can understand it. I can be a canonista myself, sometimes.

    What I profoundly disagree with is that this translates into “really bad fanfic” or bad writing of any stripe. I won’t pretend the series is perfect, but I maintain that it has had the strongest start of any Trek series since TOS.

    As for the idea of visuals being “canon”, I’m sorry, this isn’t a documentary. It’s not historical records. It’s fiction. I can accept that as a fictional universe it would probably look different in real life than it did as presented as a TV show in the 60’s. I have seen not one thing on it that violates the fundamentals of Trek or its history in any way.
     
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  5. fireproof78

    fireproof78 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I guess I don't understand this, but that's ok. To me, TMP was "Star Trek in name only" but I've since reconciled the fact that there are different interpretations of "Star Trek" that can follow the spirit while providing a new artistic direction and storytelling. Entertainment is not written in a vaccuum, and Star Trek is no exception.
    I can't like this enough. It puts it better than I could.
     
  6. Ensign Ogahd Ahmganadai

    Ensign Ogahd Ahmganadai Commander Red Shirt

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    Again I've been re-examining why I'm a Star Trek fan. And I think the answer can be summed up in two words: world building.

    I liked Star Trek as a kid, but I didn't become a devoted fan until I was midway through junior high and realized how expansive the extended universe was. The more new chapters were added to it, the more enthralled I was. This is why I get excited when new series/movies are announced; I love that we're getting new peeks at parts of this mythos we've never seen before. If they are well-done, I love them, and I can't fathom this stereotypical reaction from fans that a new series should automatically be approached with suspicion and hatred because it could "ruin the franchise" or something.

    This is probably why I am so down on Voyager but am okay with Enterprise; Voyager seemingly deliberately did as little as it could to expand the mythos. It was a series of "planet of the week", "anomaly of the week" stories that built up to absolutely nothing except the inevitable conclusion that of course Voyager got home. Enterprise, once it got its head out its ass, showed us how many of the things we now take for granted came to be. That contributes to the mythos, and what Discovery is doing now also does.

    As a follower of several shared universes that involve a lot of world-building, I expect retcons. I expect stuff to be changed or overwritten, not because of the go-to accusation that the writers are "lazy" and "don't want to do the research" but because some stuff just might not have worked very well, or no longer works well for a modern audience. That's why I don't get upset, like Uniderth does, that prequels don't mesh perfectly with "The Cage".
     
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  7. MacLeod

    MacLeod Admiral Admiral

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    They should just have left it with the DSN explation for the change. i.e "We do not discuss it with outsiders"
     
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  8. suarezguy

    suarezguy Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Some of the fans still believe that, that Roddenberry either no longer got his creation or tried to make something too different.

    And all of them remain fairly divisive rather than winning over an overwhelming bulk of the audience.
     
  9. Ensign Ogahd Ahmganadai

    Ensign Ogahd Ahmganadai Commander Red Shirt

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    While this was true, it has lessened somewhat with time. I made a whole other post about it, but I'll summarize it here:

    TNG started off being protested by fans who stated the very things Timewalker has said here about DSC; that it was a pathetic cash grab using the Star Trek name to dupe fans. Still, people watched it and by the time it was a few seasons in it had its own rapidly growing fandom. There were still naysayers, but they were few and far between. Today, in large part, it's considered almost as good, and as important, a part of the franchise as TOS.

    DS9 had an even more angry reception, considering that it broke so many Trek rules, and Roddenberry wasn't its creator. It still had its fans, though, the Niners, and while some hated the series, Niner love for it was hotter than the fire of a thousand suns. Today, while there are still some who don't like it, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone willing to declare it "isn't real Star Trek" or that it should be stricken from canon.

    VGR got nothing but complaints from all but a tiny subsection of the fandom while it was running. But it's been off the air for nearly two decades and in that time it's developed its own rabid fandom who, like Niners, call it the best series of them all. In 2000, if you told me there would ever be a time when VGR was appreciated by a large cross-section of fandom, I'd have laughed in your face, but here we are. Even at its worst, though, the complaints had to do with its quality, not whether or not it was "real Star Trek" or should count as canon. Few, if any, disputed it on those terms.

    ENT reignited the "not real Star Trek" and "doesn't count as canon" arguments. How dare it attempt to "re-write history", by which I mean, contradict a lot of fanon that had crept into our collective consciousness over the years (seriously, the "canon violations" committed by this series amount to a surprisingly small number compared to TNG, DS9 and VGR individually, but plenty of fans were convinced their head-canon was actual canon). Unfortunately, the writing, at least in the early seasons, was subpar, or at least not good enough to override the concerns about canon. The first two seasons hardly ever really made use of the prequel setting, and since it was basically telling more VGR stories, fans wrote it off. Unfortunately they did so just as it was getting really good, and the third season was pretty exciting, while the fourth finally had a head writer who knew what to do with a prequel. And then it was cancelled.

    In the case of ENT, I admit I kinda just went away from the fandom for a while because the vitriol was so hot and heavy, and I got sick of it, but coming back to it, I've found a surprising number of people willing to admit they were too hard on it, and even many who say they love it. Yes, the "it's not canon" complainers are still around, but it's only been off the air for just over a decade. In another decade's time, it will be just as appreciated on its own terms as VGR is now.

    I have a feeling it won't take as long for the DSC complaints to die down, because unlike ENT, the writing this first season is incredibly strong, and does stand up to being watched on its own terms.
     
  10. Xhiandra

    Xhiandra Captain Captain

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    My views on continuity violations:

    - Visual ones: don't care, so long as it looks good. DSC looks very much unlike TOS, but that's fine, since for the most part, the visuals are very nice. I even seem to be the only one to like the uniforms.
    The DSC Klingons, though? That's not a good change. They look like Remans with bonus shiny skin and huge noses. I personally preferred it when Klingons looked like Abbath.

    - Tech ones? Don't care, if it serves a purpose and is relatively minor. For instance, we saw a site-to-site transport in DSC at least once, and IIRC, that's not supposed to be possible in that era, only TNG and later.
    But that change serves the purpose of making the show more fluid than requiring people to walk to a transporter room everytime they want to get somewhere, so it's fine.
    The spore drive, though? That's huge. Either they find a way to explain why neither Starfleet nor the Klingon Empire ever considered using that tech again after DSC or I don't see how it's the same continuity. Such an explanation could exist, though.
    Maybe it has as of yet undiscovered side-effects so devastating even the Klingons recoil at the idea of using it post-DSC.

    Pet peeve of mine: that android/robot on the bridge of DSC. If "These Are the Voyages" is an insult to ENT, then that (for now completely narratively useless) character is an insult to TNG.
    Data was the first android in starfleet!

    - Cultural ones: don't care, so long as it's good.
    The DSC Klingons, though? That's not a good change. They went from a "proud warrior race" to basically nazis. Nuance? Nope, they're the baddies, through and through.

    - ... the pattern is clear by now: if you're going to change, improve. Otherwise, keep as-is.


    Overall, I just don't understand why DSC had to be a prequel. So they could use the name "Sarek"?
    Because that's the only thing they're using from the prequel premise: having a character called Sarek.
    Had they set DSC in the 26th or 27th century, they wouldn't have had most of the continuity moans.
    The DSC Klingons could simply be a new race, since they act, look and sound unlike previous Klingons.

    Of course, maybe there's a reason that'll eventually be revealed, but right now? No reason for it to be a prequel.
     
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  11. Ensign Ogahd Ahmganadai

    Ensign Ogahd Ahmganadai Commander Red Shirt

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    The only significant change in the Klingons' look (aside from the different armor) is that they're bald. The nose carapace is a bit larger, true, but there are a number of different rationalizations for that. I'm glad they finally look like threatening aliens and not retired metalheads.
    The reason spore drive isn't used anymore is incredibly, blatantly obvious. It requires a genetically modified human in order to work, and the modifications are affecting him in increasingly disturbing ways.

    She's not an android. She's an augmented alien.

    I cannot disagree more. These Klingons have an actual motivation (unite the Empire, defend against what they see as socialistic Imperialism hiding behind a cloak of peace, aka the Federation) rather than just "make war, growl a lot".

    I guess you missed the giant revelation concerning why Sarek was so disappointed and angry that Spock chose Starfleet. That was huge. Could not have been done without being a prequel, and explains a major character motivation in a way that makes him sympathetic.

    Had they set it in the 26th or 27th century, it would have been laughably low-tech, with the exception of the spore drive, which can't be used safely anyway. They still use physical consoles. By the 26th or 26th century they probably won't even use physical chairs.

    They act quite a lot like previous Klingons, look very similar to them (this is a miniscule change compared to the change from TOS to TMP, and that change was never meant to be explained). However, this time they have real motivation besides just wanting to make war on everybody.
     
  12. Timewalker

    Timewalker Cat-lovin', Star Trekkin' Time Lady Premium Member

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    I don't appreciate the term "knee-jerk". That implies that my reasons for not liking Discovery or Enterprise or nuTrek are shallow and not for any reason other than a quick glance and a "ewww!" reaction (okay, that is the reaction I had to the "Klingons" but from what some are saying here, I'm hardly the only one to have this reaction).

    Strongest in what way? Only the first episode was available to the general public. The rest of them cost extra $$ over and above what a person would pay for basic cable. I've seen complaints that the CBSAA thing didn't work very well (technical glitches).

    Strongest, story-wise? The visuals on the desert planet grabbed my attention, but that's likely because I thought, "Hey, those two actresses would look great in a Dune movie!" (I could actually imagine them as Bene Gesserit Reverend Mothers in a movie version of Heretics of Dune, for example). The Klingons? Sorry, but if I wanted to watch Doctor Who-style monsters, I'd watch Doctor Who. Michael and Sarek? Been there, done that with nuSpock and NimoySpock. It was a Phone-A-Friend moment, which was silly in nuTrek, but this version of Sarek came across as totally different from how his character was established in TOS, TAS, TNG, and the movies. They should have just gone with a new Vulcan character.

    I am aware that it's not a documentary, thank you. :rolleyes: You might point that out to everyone who complains about details regarding various ships or weapons' effects - those are things I barely notice, and I don't understand why there are long threads complaining about them. But then I'm not someone who notices details on any sort of vehicle (I don't drive, and never have). Ask me what kind of car I got a ride in, and unless it's one I'm very familiar with, I might answer, "I think it was blue."

    Of course life in the real 2260s isn't going to look like TOS. But this is a show that is set a mere TEN YEARS before TOS, so it should damn well look something like TOS/"Cage", and the characters should not be unrecognizable as people who could be from that time. Sure, you can always have one or two odd ones in a crew; all the series pretty much had their odd characters. But when the entire crew is odd, that's when it gets into the realm of "really bad fanfiction."

    I was in junior high as well, when I got hooked on Star Trek (age 12, in Grade 8). But that was 42 years ago (as of the end of this month; I date it by when I bought my first Blish adaptation on November 28, 1975). At that time, TOS was all I had. I was able to see TAS later, but still... that's all there was, and this was pre-VCR, so fans were dependent on reruns. I didn't live anywhere near the large cities where conventions happened, so I didn't have that sense of information overload and everything being readily available, until much later. And then it did get to be information overload, so I had to decide to ignore parts of it. That's why I stopped collecting a lot of the novels. Too much interconnectivity in the modern novels (I prefer not to need a flowchart so I read them in the right order and wonder WTF is going on if I've missed one), the price of books skyrocketed, and I barely have room for what I've got now. So I turned to fanfic; I've been collecting it in print form since the '80s and now I've got my favorite online sites where I can follow stories I like (most of the online fanfic I read is Voyager).

    I've written fanfic myself, exploring little nooks and crannies of TOS and Voyager. There is a great deal of Voyager fanfic that explores what happens to the crew post-Endgame, and some of it is very well-written.

    So I do get the worldbuilding thing. In my current NaNoWriMo project (and others) I'm novelizing a series of gamebooks, turning characters that were basically just sets of statistics into better characters, with personalities, backstories, motives for doing what they do, and have added some dimension to that gaming world (Fighting Fantasy). That's what Star Trek writers do, whether in novels or scripts. But I would never expect any FF fan to accept my writing if I suddenly turned the world of Titan, or well-known parts of it, into something unrecognizable, or made any of the well-known canon characters into something they're not, with inconsistent personality traits, motives, and even physical appearance.

    There is plenty of scope in Voyager for expanding the mythos, if you're into exploring some of the things they could have, but didn't. I do agree that they let some golden opportunities slip by (Year of Hell is the obvious one, and if they were going to do a C/7 romance they should have had it start much earlier).

    But consider TOS. Every criticism you just made of Voyager is what TOS did - planet of the week/anomaly of the week. TOS didn't even have an end goal in mind other than a "5-year-mission." And when you get right down to it, Janeway is a lot like Kirk, even though she would never admit it, with her ingrained 24th-century upper-ranked Starfleet snobbery. This is one of the reasons I enjoy Voyager, I think... there's more room to explore the characters, instead of everything being handed to the viewers.

    Retcons are something I expect in soap operas. Right now General Hospital is doing a couple of storylines that depend on some real whoppers of retcons (they had to figure out a way to bring an old actor back even though his character was recast years ago and the recast was explained by a car accident and extensive surgery that altered the character's face and voice). I accept that because it's part of what soap operas do.

    It's not what I expect with Star Trek, at least not the stuff presented on TV and in the movies. Doctor Who just waved it away with "timey-wimey stuff" and "The Doctor always lies" and that's one reason why I finally got so disgusted that I quit watching... after 30+ years.

    Star Trek seems to wave it away with "modern audiences don't like older stuff and we have to be edgy." In other words, change for the sake of change, and not because it makes sense in the context of the overall in-universe continuity.

    I just don't understand what is so wrong with making a 2260's ship look like a 2260's ship, even though it's over 50 years between shows. It smacks of "the audience is stupid and won't understand why a show made in 2017 looks like a show made in 1967." Does a traditional Shakespeare play have characters using cellphones instead of sending a messenger or herald? No. Does Henry V ride to war on a motorbike or in a tank instead of on a horse? No. Did his soldiers use machine guns instead of longbows and swords and pikes? No. Does the audience enjoy traditional Shakespeare? Yes. No "modern edge" is necessary.

    This whole thing puts me in mind of a conversation that happened in the general media forum here many years ago. Someone went on a rant about how terrible black and white movies and TV shows were, and the reason they were terrible was because they weren't in color and they were made a long time ago. I'm not suggesting that everything has to be black and white to be good (although some things should never be colorized since they look ridiculous; the old Richard Greene Robin Hood series is a prime example), but I am saying that there's nothing wrong with the older stuff.

    Possibly. Fans would be free to make up their own minds, and we'd have had 38 years of fan debates as to what happened. I just put it down to "change for the sake of change." As mentioned, there's a fanfic explanation that works for me, so I just ignore all the handwaving on TV.

    I watched "Encounter at Farpoint" with a group of about 20-30 people dressed in our Society for Creative Anachronism medieval costumes. We hadn't seen it earlier because it premiered on the day of one of our branch's annual tournament and feasts, and missing the feast was not an option. Fortunately one of the local members had both a VCR and a living room big enough to accommodate that many people, so after the feast we went over to her place to watch the show.

    The response was overwhelmingly positive. There's a huge crossover of SCA people and Star Trek (Bjo Trimble was part of the SCA when it first started in 1966; it predates Star Trek by a mere two months and is still going strong), and I didn't hear a single negative comment about the show that night. My local Star Trek group enjoyed watching videos at my place, and while there was discussion about some things (ie. "if they're boldly going where no one has gone before, why do they always meet someone who got there first?") and lots of speculation about how the holodeck works (was holodeck food real, could a holodeck character get pregnant, and so on), and a friend and I wrote a fanfic parody in which we played up some of the negative things we were starting to notice.

    So that's my experience of TNG, season 1. Overall it wasn't anywhere near as bad as a lot of people here claim it was. There were some things I didn't like (Picard and Riker being such pompous snobs), but I must be the only person on the planet who enjoyed "Haven" and I just don't get the ranting about "Code of Honor" (is that the one with the black guest characters?). Would it be less racist if everyone had been green, plaid, or identical-looking in some other way? And I've got a button I bought at a convention that says, "Wesley isn't so bad... at least he didn't try to write and direct a major motion picture" (a swipe at Shatner for the abomination that is Star Trek V).

    TNG was mostly okay until it became the "Worf's Klingon Soap Opera Show" and DS9 was mostly okay until Worf's Klingon Soap Opera infested that show as well. Thank goodness they never put Michael Dorn into Voyager.

    DS9 was okay until Worf showed up. He brought TNG baggage with him, and once he and Jadzia hooked up... sheesh. I already didn't like her (part of it was the actress and her attitude; she went on a rant in an interview, whining about how the writers did storylines for the minor characters like Rom and Leeta and they didn't write more for her) and after Worf turned up they became ten times more insufferable. I think about the only thing in their relationship I did like was his reaction when they first met: "Nice hat."

    I'm not a fan of either Tuvok or Kes, but other than that, I have no serious issues with Voyager (okay, Chakotay is more boring than watching paint dry, but some of the fanfic authors fixed that). And speaking of fanfic, guess which Star Trek series has the most stories posted on fanfiction.net? Voyager.

    So Robert April is the character Scott Bakula played? Funny, that's not the show I remember. If they'd done a show about Robert April and his wife, Sarah Poole, and the adventures they and their crew had, I'd have been perfectly happy, provided that there were no egregious retcons or making the ship and show look like a modern action movie.

    Robert April isn't "head canon". He's a character in the TAS episode "The Counter-Clock Incident" - the first Captain of the Enterprise. He's mentioned in The Making of Star Trek as one of the names of the captains Roddenberry was considering.

    Admittedly I didn't watch more than about a dozen episodes, if even that, before getting thoroughly bored. But I never got any sense at all that Enterprise was doing Voyager stories.

    I might give it another try. Maybe. Once I run out of other stuff to watch.

    How's that incredibly tedious Klingon speech and subtitles thing working out? That all by itself was enough to turn me off the show, even if the Klingons didn't look like they'd fit in better as Doctor Who monsters.

    So what was this "giant revelation" that supposedly makes sense of an 18-year-long ostracism (and apparently one that was rekindled after Spock started his own ambassadorial projects)?

    Why wouldn't they use chairs? Didn't the Relativity (the time ship in Voyager) have chairs? Are you suggesting that ships of the 26th or 27th century will have their artificial gravity turned off and everyone will float around in zero-g? That's not very smart; they wouldn't be able to beam down to any planets or anywhere else without a very strict exercise regimen. Or will the human anatomy be so changed that nobody sits? Since we've seen humans from later centuries, that's obviously not happening without a retcon of epic proportions.

    If I hadn't been told they were Klingons, I wouldn't have recognized them as Klingons. These ones look and sound like Doctor Who monsters who talk.....very.....slowly.
     
  13. ralfy

    ralfy Captain Captain

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    FWIW, part of both artistic and commercial success is avoiding some of the problems raised by this thread. By doing so, viewers are not distracted by them and thus enjoy watching well-made shows. That enjoyment generally translates to more earnings for the producers.
     
  14. Ensign Ogahd Ahmganadai

    Ensign Ogahd Ahmganadai Commander Red Shirt

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    Being perfectly honest, I'm getting to a point where I feel so different from so much of the fandom that I'm not sure this conversation is even productive. That being said I'll at least try to address some of the more glaring points of contention.

    A lot of the statements I make are about the fandom in general, or at least what I perceive coming from the fandom in general. Unless I name you personally I'm usually not referring to something you yourself said, nor am I ascribing the general feeling to you. However, where the fandom is concerned, it's undeniable that each new offering of the franchise has been met with suspicion or even outright hatred from the moment it was announced. You've offered up some anecdotal evidence from your own life and personal circle as if it speaks for the whole. It doesn't. There were entire news stories about fans' rejection of TNG, and check out Larry Nemecek's video where he reads directly from 1980's fanzines entire letters from fans about why a new Trek series is a terrible idea and isn't even real Star Trek. I don't know if the term "fanfic" was in widespread use at the time, but the term "really bad fanfic" and "not real Star Trek" are conveying the same idea, and that is precisely what these fans were denouncing the series as.

    In what way does availability have anything to do with quality? If you don't have HBO you can't watch Game of Thrones, yet it's a hugely popular, award-winning, critically praised series (and I am not interested in getting into whether or not it deserves its reputation). If you don't subscribe to Hulu, you can't watch The Handmaid's Tale, one of the best-reviewed series of the past year. For the better part of 20 years, the best TV series out there are those you could not watch unless you were a premium cable subscriber. I don't see how this is any different.

    Yes, strongest story-wise and character-development wise. It sounds like you haven't watched beyond the first episode, and if that's true, then you need to stop talking about it until you know what you're talking about. I've seen all the episodes thus far, and this is the first one that feels like it knows from the outset what it wants to do. It actually has a goal in mind besides "here's some characters and a ship/station, and they're exploring stuff. Come back next week where we'll do it all again, but with a different planet and race this time."

    Again, these Klingons have hardly been changed at all, and certainly in no meaningful way.

    Again, sounds like you haven't watched past the first episode, so you don't know.

    Again, that was a response to the general complaints, and in particular, Uniderth, who actually does think "real Star Trek" should play out like some kind of documentary. He really does think that everything, visuals included, in a Trek prequel should line up to what we see in "The Cage". He even gets upset that prequels use terms that weren't used (but aren't contradicted, either) in TOS, such as "warp core" or "nacelle". This isn't meant as an attack on him (though I thoroughly disagree with his outlook on the series as a whole) as I've said nothing about him he hasn't said about himself.

    Where it counts, it does. They even use those silly colored disks instead of modern storage. But they purposefully wanted it to be a "visual reboot", which does not mean the same thing as "new timeline" or "story reboot". Actually, the further it's gone, the more nods to the series there have been, which you would know if you would bloody watch the show instead of watching fifty minutes of it and making up your mind. The producers have stated that they are aware of how different it looks and that the transition to a more TOS-esque flavor will be a gradual thing that happens over the course of the series.

    Now, here I don't know what on Earth you're talking about. No one's "odd" on this show. There are some character quirks, sure, and Saru, being an alien, is, well, actually an alien, rather than just a human with a funny looking forehead or nose. There have been complaints from fans that they "don't act like Starfleet officers" because they're a bit more snarky with each other rather than becoming fast friends who are closer than family practically by the first episode, but that just makes them more real. And yes, there's open conflict in this show, just like there was on TOS.

    This is similar to me, but once I became a confirmed die-hard fan, it was all Star Trek to me. If I didn't watch it, I wanted to, and was sorry I missed it.

    Well, the novels aren't really canon, so as much as I enjoy them I can understand people wanting to skip them.

    See, I like this. Worldbuilding, again.

    The Discovery writers have not done this, either. I thoroughly reject that premise, and you have in no way backed up your statement with any kind of objectivity. Sarek is very much the same character, just played by a different actor. I fail to see any difference at all. I don't want to guess at your motivations, but it does seem, regardless of what you said, that you do tie visuals into interpretation. James Frain is playing Sarek just as Leonard would, but his voice and face look different, so you claim he's "nothing like Sarek". But, again, you have only watched the first episode (it would seem, at any rate).

    Two of my more major problems with Voyager. It's funny how you say "there is plenty of scope in Voyager for expanding the mythos" but only if you account for things they could have done but didn't do. THAT IS EXACTLY MY POINT. They not only could have done those things, but they should have. Instead, they just remade TNG with different characters.

    And that right there is the crux of the problem. It's been done. TOS had never done what it did when it did it. It was fresh, it was new, and it became a cultural touchstone. TNG refreshed it for a new generation of fans. DS9 went completely off the beaten path and greatly expanded the universe and the possibilities therein. VGR...just became a retread of TNG and TOS. All the potential for expansion was utterly wasted.

    Only if you're into VGR novels and/or fanfic. You went the fanfic route (I understand much of it contradicts the series, such as one story where Mezoti stays with Voyager and Seven becomes her adoptive mother) while plenty of others read the novels and really enjoyed them. But the series should not depend on the novels to make it interesting. VGR the TV series played it safe, avoided almost all risks and as a result was dull as dishwater.

    Nearly all ongoing shared universes have them. You're either going to have to learn to live with that or stop watching/reading any long-running shared universe.

    I reject the idea that DSC's writers are "just trying to be edgy". There's little that's truly "edgy" or "dark" about DSC, but people started saying that about it, so people decided it had to be true. The most "edgy" thing about it is a couple of uses of the f-word, which in 2017 is about edgy as short skirts were in the 60's.

    Because they frickin' look like they're made of cardboard and plastic. I always assumed that if I could have somehow stood on the "real" bridge of the Enterprise, it would look more like something real instead of the painted plywood I was watching. For what it's worth, Roddenberry would agree; he always took the stance of "if you can make it look better, do it" and didn't care at all about visual continuity. And you, despite claims to the contrary, clearly do consider visuals to be an important part of canon.

    Or "the audience expects a show made in 2017 to look like a show made in 2017". I don't see why that's so wrong. It's more wrong-headed, to me, to think that a show made in 2017 that's the lynchpin of a new viewing platform would look like something made in the 60's.

    First, even if your premise was correct, and it's not, apples and oranges. Shakespeare didn't write sci-fi. His stuff wasn't set centuries from now. However, your premise also has a problem as tons of Shakespeare adaptations, even on stage, have modernized the setting.

    Some stuff is meant to look retro on purpose. The Artist looked retro because it was about the silent movie era, so it was filmed as if it were a silent movie. Good Night and Good Luck was also trying to evoke the feel of a movie made in the timeframe it was set. This is not, and should not be, the goal of Star Trek. It's not about nostalgia, it's about the future.

    You seem to think your own experiences were universal. They weren't.

    Different strokes to the extreme. What you call "soap opera" I call "character-driven drama", which is always what I care about the most. If you give me compelling characters and strong character arcs, I can forgive a great number of other things. To me, TNG only got good once they started focusing on character development as opposed to trying to create compelling drama with yet another "here's a random planet and problem to solve". DS9's focus from the start was more heavily on character and story, which roped me in quicker, and I thought Worf fit in better on DS9 than he did on TNG.

    Actually, a lot of that was her trying to express frustration without saying what was really happening: she was treated abysmally by Rick Berman, who told her explicitly she was there for sex appeal and that she needed to have breast implants, et al, and at one point telling her she should be grateful to him because without him she'd be working at Target or something.

    Really, no issues with Neelix? The most bloody annoying character in Trek history? Yes, even over Wesley? At least they sometimes acknowledged it, with Tuvok blatantly losing patience with him (in a Vulcan way, of course). I loved to narrate Tuvok's inner thoughts whenever he had to interact with Neelix:

    Neelix: We're roomies!
    Tuvok: (Like fuck we are) There must be some mistake.
    Neelix: Chakotay said you were the only one not partnered up.
    Tuvok: (I have died and am now in Hell. It is the only logical explanation.)

    A canonista to beat all canonistas.

    First of all, TAS's canon status is questionable at best. Roddenberry himself said it wasn't and it was actually only much later than any of the writers started including elements of TAS stories (starting with "Unification") within "real" canon. Second, Robert April has now officially been canonized by Discovery, that show you hate that "isn't real canon". Third, you do know that the NCC-1701 was merely the first FEDERATION STARSHIP to be named Enterprise, right? That doesn't preclude any vessels being called that at all prior to that, and while it does require a bit of retcon, there is no real issue fitting Archer's Enterprise into canon.

    Third, no, you wouldn't have been okay with a show about Robert April because it wouldn't have looked like you expected.

    Why do you feel you can speak about stuff you admit you don’t watch? Enterprise, for the first two seasons, rarely gave us a single plot that couldn't have been a rejected TNG or VGR script re-worked for the new setting. While people talk about how it was a series about laying the groundwork for the Federation, it was never that until Manny Coto took over. In fact, Braga openly said he wasn't interested in the "Birth of the Federation" story. So why did he want to do a prequel?

    Watch the show and find out. I'm not doing your homework for you.

    Well, first, the Relativity was comically low-tech. And second, I was only kinda kidding. A series set in the 26th or 27th Century should have tech that seems like magic. Holographic communication? How about rooms where everything in it is a hologram, but a hologram that actually interfaces with real components? Doug Drexler talked about how the Enterprise-J would probably not even have a real warp core and would be powered by the body heat of the crew, or something. I can't find the exact quote. This is partly why I think the furthest into the future a possible 7th series should go is, say, mid-25th.

    First, it's the same language they've always spoken in, we're just not used to whole scenes where they speak in it. Second, with hair, they have hardly changed at all. Again, the change from TOS to TMP was a much bigger change, and we all accepted it.
     
    Last edited: Nov 9, 2017
    nightwind1 and Greg Cox like this.
  15. The Old Mixer

    The Old Mixer Mih ssim, mih ssim, nam, daed si Xim. Moderator

    Joined:
    Feb 4, 2002
    Location:
    The Old Mixer, Somewhere in Connecticut
    This is needlessly confrontational. Dial it back a bit going forward, please.

    Not crazy about this either. You can disagree with somebody's opinion without labeling it a rant.