What story elements would you remove or just forget exist from canon?
- Thread starter Citiprime
- Start date
The temporal cold war, definitely.
Are you talking about Solbor? The actor who played him was American.
The Temporal Cold War COULD have been amazing if they put thought into it. Unfortunately they decided to make it up as they go along, change the time travel rules as they went along and it ended up a mess.
They made it up as they went along because they didn’t actually want to do it. And I don’t blame them.
Well, when you're forced to include it tends to cause people to be disinterested working with.
Never mind the whole stupidity of time travel.
I've often disliked the UT as a plot device as well, because I honestly don't see such a system - even in constant development - replacing dedicated linguistics officers like Uhura and Hoshi. Not only in terms of the vast numbers of species, but as you mention the incredible variety of languages within a given group or species as well. Look at how many modern languages exist on Earth, to say nothing of those that have effectively become extinct.
Plus languages like English tend to evolve fairly regular as different decades go by and things like slang change constantly.Bruce Coville's My Teacher Is An Alien series had a somewhat more practical approach, with each crewmember on the New Jersey wearing a brain implant that served as a translator. They would speak in their normal language and then the implant would translate that into the listener's native language. So Peter, after receiving an implant, would hear these languages mentally as English, and the translators could also use body language as well. Hoo-Lan's species flapped their ears in the equivalent of a smile, and Broxholm's race could pull their noses out and let them "snap" back as a sigh.
Broxholm was also given an implant during his mission to Earth which allowed him to speak fluent English, and he initially had trouble describing Hoo-Lan to Peter because Hoo-Lan's species has at least 8 genders. Hoo-Lan looked physically male by human standards but Broxholm's implant described Hoo-Lan as "it" since technically male would not be linguistically appropriate. The series was written in the 80s so perhaps if it had been done today, Bruce would have said "they" instead.
Unquestionably, the Temporal Cold War for me. It's the one thing I would take out of the franchise.
The Burn.
Disco season 3 had some good individual episodes, but The Burn never made any sense and the reveal of the cause was the dumbest thing ever.
Disco season 3 had some good individual episodes, but The Burn never made any sense and the reveal of the cause was the dumbest thing ever.
It was a joke reference to South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut*, which has a surprisingly similar plot structure.
Fun fact: Solbor was only supposed to appear in like one or two scenes, but everybody liked James Otis' portrayal of him so much that they gave him more to do.
When I first saw Su'Kal I was like, that's Olivia Benson's therapist from SVU!
DSC had probably the most L&O actors of any Trek series...
In the Time Tunnel remake, nanobots injected into the bloodstream served as the translator. Kind of Babel Fishey.
When I first saw Su'Kal I was like, that's Olivia Benson's therapist from SVU!
DSC had probably the most L&O actors of any Trek series...
In the Time Tunnel remake, nanobots injected into the bloodstream served as the translator. Kind of Babel Fishey.
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Total agreement about the first two.
I was Ok with #3, though the kink factor got a bit high.
#4... was that even a romance? They banged fingers because Janeway told them to (because the Chuck Norris of Star Trek can even push around Q's), and then we never saw Suzie Q again.
#5... still on the fence about this one. Maybe if ENT had gone the expected 7 seasons...
I have to admit, even as a fan of DSC, The Burn was monumentally stupid….Most of S3 is cringeworthy.
I have marked this thread with a spoiler as people may wish to include events from recent (or future! 
) series or movies.
If you could ask Q to undo or change any event in Star Trek history, what would it be? How do you think that things would play out differently in proceeding canon as a result of your choice in temporal incursion and said manipulation of the timeline? What butterfly effects would ripple forward through time as a result of your choices and decisions, regardless of your intention? Any alteration of the timeline would surely be for selfish reasons because we do not agree with the direction that the writers have taken the franchise in, or would our choices be for the greater good, for a better overarching inverse story?
I would choose to undo the destruction of Romulus. I believe that this devastating event has had detrimental and so far irreversible effects within the on screen Star Trek Universe. I also do not think that this event has been explained satisfactorily enough either and was purely written in to canon on the whim of a writer wanting to make their mark on the franchise with a controversial and galaxy changing event in order to give an epic scope to their movie. This incident may not even have been a natural supernova. Does anybody know if the destruction of the Romulan sun was supposed to be an allegory or narrative for something as often is the case with Star Trek stories? As far as I can see it, destroying Romulus and Remus is almost an allegory for either destroying Rome (Catholic Church?) or the last of the Roman inspired power institutions on present day earth? I’m just trying to work out what the allegory is and relate it to current/past affairs, though I may be looking too much in to this.
There was also the knock on effect in the JJ verse of having Vulcan destroyed in the past as a result of Nero’s revenge, which does not sit with me very well either even though it is not prime timeline.
Romulus was destroyed in the Star Trek universe due to a catastrophic supernova event of unknown cause. This incident was depicted in the 2009 film ’Star Trek’ directed by JJ Abrams. The supernova caused a massive shockwave that destroyed the planets Romulus and Remus as well as many other nearby worlds, leading to the displacement of millions of Romulans. The destruction of Romulus set the stage for many events in the Star Trek universe, including the creation of the alternate timeline in that 2009 movie and the formation of a new Romulan refugee population in prime timeline Picard. In the prime timeline this galactic event led to the Star Trek universe that we know and love becoming just that little bit more dystopian and darker like it is in some form of civilisation collapse/decline, with it not quite in line with how the Trek universe was originally envisioned to be developing in the Berman era.
I believe that if Romulus had not been destroyed, then there would likely be a peace treaty between the Federation and Romulans in a similar vein as to how the Klingons and Federation made a treaty after the Khitomer incident, especially if Starfleet helped to prevent the destruction of the Romulan sun. There would likely have been a much earlier reunification between the Romulans and Vulcans as envisaged and championed by Ambassador Spock. The attack on Utopia Planetia shipyards and the resulting prejudices against synths would also be prevented.
) series or movies.If you could ask Q to undo or change any event in Star Trek history, what would it be? How do you think that things would play out differently in proceeding canon as a result of your choice in temporal incursion and said manipulation of the timeline? What butterfly effects would ripple forward through time as a result of your choices and decisions, regardless of your intention? Any alteration of the timeline would surely be for selfish reasons because we do not agree with the direction that the writers have taken the franchise in, or would our choices be for the greater good, for a better overarching inverse story?
I would choose to undo the destruction of Romulus. I believe that this devastating event has had detrimental and so far irreversible effects within the on screen Star Trek Universe. I also do not think that this event has been explained satisfactorily enough either and was purely written in to canon on the whim of a writer wanting to make their mark on the franchise with a controversial and galaxy changing event in order to give an epic scope to their movie. This incident may not even have been a natural supernova. Does anybody know if the destruction of the Romulan sun was supposed to be an allegory or narrative for something as often is the case with Star Trek stories? As far as I can see it, destroying Romulus and Remus is almost an allegory for either destroying Rome (Catholic Church?) or the last of the Roman inspired power institutions on present day earth? I’m just trying to work out what the allegory is and relate it to current/past affairs, though I may be looking too much in to this.
There was also the knock on effect in the JJ verse of having Vulcan destroyed in the past as a result of Nero’s revenge, which does not sit with me very well either even though it is not prime timeline.
Romulus was destroyed in the Star Trek universe due to a catastrophic supernova event of unknown cause. This incident was depicted in the 2009 film ’Star Trek’ directed by JJ Abrams. The supernova caused a massive shockwave that destroyed the planets Romulus and Remus as well as many other nearby worlds, leading to the displacement of millions of Romulans. The destruction of Romulus set the stage for many events in the Star Trek universe, including the creation of the alternate timeline in that 2009 movie and the formation of a new Romulan refugee population in prime timeline Picard. In the prime timeline this galactic event led to the Star Trek universe that we know and love becoming just that little bit more dystopian and darker like it is in some form of civilisation collapse/decline, with it not quite in line with how the Trek universe was originally envisioned to be developing in the Berman era.
I believe that if Romulus had not been destroyed, then there would likely be a peace treaty between the Federation and Romulans in a similar vein as to how the Klingons and Federation made a treaty after the Khitomer incident, especially if Starfleet helped to prevent the destruction of the Romulan sun. There would likely have been a much earlier reunification between the Romulans and Vulcans as envisaged and championed by Ambassador Spock. The attack on Utopia Planetia shipyards and the resulting prejudices against synths would also be prevented.
The Temporal Cold War.
It was ill-conceived, bogged down ENT, and went nowhere.
It was ill-conceived, bogged down ENT, and went nowhere.
Well in that case, I hope that I did not just start a TrekBBS version of one!
Shifting Discovery to the 32nd century and "The Burn."
- I'm not the biggest fan of the universe they find once they get there.
- In some ways, it boxes in the 24th-25th century shows in trying to build tension for galaxy threatening events that are threats to the Federation, since you have a show that says the Federation was great till dilithium ran out and blew up.
- The overall tone and feel of Discovery in the 32nd century setting is odd, and it feels like the oddball show between the current crop.