Why do you feel free to simplify discussion into a comic without understanding that some changes are more difficult to accept than others or that some topics are no longer current, not necessarily resolved? Just because I wanted to see a clunkier ENT (“primitive atomic weapons”) doesn’t mean its compromise wasn’t more consistent than DSC’s reimagining. What’s the message here, there is always more so don’t bother and switch to “Awesome! … Awesome! …”? Are we fans or casual viewers?
When did canon become such a hot-button issue?
- Thread starter Amasov
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The message is: The more things change, the more they stay the same.
This is from Best of Trek #1 in 1979.
So it’s a message intended to disparage criticism, expecting fandom to have “evolved” into accepting whatever the property owners come up with, knowing they’ll change even more in the future? The ultimate goal is Landru?
I’ve given arguments for why reimagining is in opposition with IDIC. If year-to-season mapping suggests that current productions should be set in the Bermanverse year of 2396 (similar to how the MCU operates most easily in the present day), then work with that restriction — create something that isn’t dependent on whatever Nemesis or ST (2009) may have established 5000 light-years away, let alone TOS a hundred years earlier.
I’ve given arguments for why reimagining is in opposition with IDIC. If year-to-season mapping suggests that current productions should be set in the Bermanverse year of 2396 (similar to how the MCU operates most easily in the present day), then work with that restriction — create something that isn’t dependent on whatever Nemesis or ST (2009) may have established 5000 light-years away, let alone TOS a hundred years earlier.
That's basically how I feel in a nutshell. The original series through to Enterprise, from an overall universe perspective, all works pretty well together. I never sweated the smaller details. Does it work overall as a product? Enterprise was the biggest deal since it was the only prequel at the time. But overall, start to finish, I feel like it fits in the overall Star Trek universe.
Discovery is just out of 'phase' for me from the rest of the franchise. It wasn't just set design either. Things like intra-ship beaming, and yes the spore drive, are continuity killers for me. Scotty, who I think we can say is one of the best, if not best engineers in the fleet, has said intra ship beaming is incredibly dangerous, yet on Discovery (season 1 at least) they do it almost nonchalantly. If they can do it, you'd think Scotty would find a way to do it just as casually. That's just one thing that doesn't work for me. I'm a little wishy-washy on holographic communications--I have read in the past what we see as a 2-d viewscreen is actually supposedly a 3 dimensional display. And holographic 'rec rooms' were originally planned for the original series but they never got to portraying them (at least until "Practical Joker" on the animated series). Holographic communications as portrayed in season 1--it's not totally consistent but I can live with that--"The Enterprise War" novel also gives a bit more explanation about why we don't see it on the Enterprise--so in that case a little creative story telling provides a bit of a fix there.
But that's all continuity issues. Discovery is part of the 'canon'. And they tell us it is in fact the same universe as Enterprise and the original series. Season 1 gave us a fatal flaw to the spore drive (though I still have a hard time believing that as incredibly advanced as the spore drive is, Starfleet wouldn't spend as much time as necessary fixing the spore drive in a way that it doesn't harm the multiverse--it's an incredible technology that I can't believe they'd abandon---but we'll see). Perhaps as Discovery continues stories will come up that takes up some of those issues. I'm curious to see where season 2 goes once I get the Blu-Ray, esp. after reading "The Enterprise War"
But we all have differing opinions about what fits. This is all just my own personal opinion. I can't speak for other fans. Some agree, some don't. Discovery has done well enough that the current show runners can continue doing what they are doing. At the end of the day that's all that's important to the PTBs. Do enough people watch it? Apparently they do.
And that's how it should be. It doesn't make sense to demand that a futuristic show made for modern audiences should restrict itself to 1960s or 1980s assumptions about the future. The makers of the older shows were trying to convey an impression of technological advancement and futuristic wonders, but they could only imagine so far ahead and they could only achieve so much with their available budget and tech, so their version of that was limited. They would've been the first to encourage future Trek creators to go beyond their limited vision and come closer to the futuristic tech they were imperfectly trying to approximate. That's why Roddenberry didn't hesitate to make everything in TMP look way more advanced than it was in TOS even though only a few years had supposedly passed in-story.
If Marvel Comics gets to update its timeline so that Tony Stark was injured in Afghanistan instead of Vietnam and Reed Richards was no longer trying to beat the Soviets into space, then Star Trek should get to update its tech so that it continues to feel like the future instead of the past. This is just the nature of a long-running franchise that spans generations.
Yes, exactly. No experienced creator would ever be so naive as to imagine that a series even could be "neat and tidy from the beginning." That's not only impossible, it's foolish. Any creator will tell you that your first idea is usually your worst. What you start out with is just a rough sketch, and it takes trial and error to figure out what parts of it work and what parts don't. There's a saying among writers that the first draft is always terrible and it's revision and editing that make it good. J. Michael Straczynski is fond of the old bromide "No plan ever survives its first encounter with the enemy." Creators have to be willing to change their plans as they go, because you learn from experience and your ideas get better over time, not worse.
Look at TOS when it just started out. There was no Federation, no Prime Directive, no Klingons or Romulans, and Spock was "probably half-Martian." Most of what defined the show as we know it was discovered along the way. TNG and DS9 also shifted focus massively over time -- TNG got much more involved with galactic politics as well as deeper character development, and DS9 became more of a story about intrigue and war. Neither show would be as well-regarded if it had stuck strictly with its original intent and vision. The one show that did stick to its original plan was one of the weakest ones, Voyager. The producers never intended the quest for home to be the single overarching priority; they expected it to eventually give way to a focus on exploration. But that never happened, and the show was weaker for it.
They do. Of course they do. But no plan survives its encounter with reality. Baselines are starting points, not absolute limits.
That's because ENT was still from a lot of the same creators as previous versions, while this is more of a clean break. That had to happen eventually. It'll happen more times in the future. Sooner or later, as a longtime fan of anything, you have to face the reality that the new versions aren't being made just for you, they're being made for a new audience. Ideally they can balance appealing to old and new alike, but people will disagree on where that balance should be.
No, I really wasn't. You're just mistakenly assuming that I'm defining the fundamental terms of the conversation the same way you are.
The writers' bible is a tool for writers. It's not something you have to care about as a viewer, any more than the driver of a car has to care about the assembly instructions the factory workers use.
The only real guide to what the show is about is the showrunner and the writing staff. The bible is a handy first-blush reference for newcomers who need to get up to speed on the show so they can pitch story concepts, but it's the showrunner and the staff who take those initial concepts, refine them, and turn them into scripts that fit the showrunner's vision of the universe and characters.
Not every continuity change is a continuity error, though. Sometimes it's made on purpose rather than by accident. It's not an error that Marvel has retconned its past Vietnam War stories into the "Sin-Cong Conflict," it's a conscious choice.
Continuity is not the sole purpose of fiction; it's a tool that serves the purpose of telling a story. And sometimes changing continuity serves the needs of storytelling better than maintaining it, in which case the real error would be not making the change. I realized that when I was developing my upcoming novel Arachne's Crime as an expansion of my first published story (and earlier when I republished that story on my old website). I always wanted to maintain perfect continuity in my original fiction, to make sure every single line always remained completely consistent and unchanging. But I came to realize that the story had flaws I couldn't allow to stand as part of my overall universe, that I'd only be hurting myself if I clung absolutely to my continuity policy. So I chose to make an exception, to give myself the freedom to change as much of that story as I needed to and let the revised, expanded version in the novel replace it in the continuity. Every other published story in that universe is still valid in its original form, or at most its slightly revised and re-edited form in my story collection, but I made an exception where I needed to.
Exactly. It always looks more unified in retrospect. 10 or 20 years from now, fandom will have found ways to rationalize Kelvin and DSC and Picard and the rest into consistency with the previous stuff, just as fandom has always found ways to rationalize things that were seen by many as incompatible when they were new.
You see, though, that's what I liked about Enterprise. It managed to do both. I still looked futuristic from today (well from the early 2000's at least) yet still less advanced than the original series. They made it look futuristic but did little things like the ship could only go to warp 5--certainly way past our capabilities today, but still well shy of the original series where the ships maximum speed was rated at warp 8. Or the transporter--advanced from today but not as advanced as the original series. Set design as well. The engineering center was more cramped and utilitarian. The corridors smaller and more tubular. The bridge smaller with less stations.
Discovery I believe could have done the same thing I think. I just happen to think they went too far in the futuristic direction without considering how to make it contemporary to the original series.
True. And I freely admit these are just my own opinions--they only really matter to me at the end of the day. And one thing about us Trekkies is we probably can't agree the sky is blue some days so the showrunners trying to get some consensus from fans would be it's own Kobayashi Maru. And I really don't expect them to. I have my preferences, but I know that's not going anywhere.
And as much as I gripe, I still bought season 1 of Discovery and plan on buying season 2 as soon as it comes out. I haven't abandoned Star Trek to date. If someday some Star Trek show comes on that I just can't get behind for whatever reason, then so be it. I have tons of Star Trek to continue to enjoy. Though I hope that doesn't happen and so far nothing's been so egregious that I find it unwatchable or unenjoyable in other ways.
But imagine how a new viewer might feel about it, someone without any expectations or attachments based on past shows. A version of the future that doesn't have holograms and robots and such might look as quaint and unbelievable to them as, say, a version of the future that's mostly white men and has no gay people. Like I said, the old audience isn't the only one that matters.
Roddenberry himself saw ST more as an artistic interpretation of the future than a literal depiction, which was why he was fine with changing the Klingons and tech and so forth and asking fans to pretend the new version was what it had always looked like. In his view, the differences between different Trek productions were just differences in how present-day creators approximated Trek's future, rather than changes in the underlying world itself. He would've wanted us to see the older series and movies as rough drafts that got refined by later versions, because that's how writers and other creators think of the creative process. The problem is that fans often see it the other way around, becoming attached to the first version and seeing changes from it as mistakes or departures rather than improvements.
Personally, I'm not crazy about DSC's aesthetics or a lot of things about its storytelling. But it's the creators' prerogative to reinvent the Trek future the way they see fit. That's the interpretation of this particular group of artists. So I take refuge in the Roddenberry notion that all Trek shows are just individual artistic interpretations of the same underlying reality, and I try to look beyond the differences in interpretation and focus on what they still have in common. It helps that I've been doing that for 4 decades now. The latest changes may be more drastic than the previous ones in some ways, but I see that as just a matter of degree, not a difference in kind. So I adjust appropriately.
I like the idea of calling it out of phase. That really fits.
Doing a re-read of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories and included in the volumes I purchased was his essay on the Hyborian Age (The full text can be found at the Gutenberg Project here.)
What's interesting and relevant to this discussion is the reason he wrote the essay, provided in a parenthetical preamble:
And the most surprising thing about this re-read is that I find that that claim rings true. The character of Conan himself is not always credible in his abilities, but the world he inhabits is as rich and varied as any literary world one might encounter (And I say that as someone familiar with the literal settings of Middle-earth, Dune, Westeros, Asimov's Galactic Empire, etc. ). And this from a so-called pulp fiction writer.
So you can create entertaining stories that stand the test of time and adhere to an established history. You just have to choose to do so.
(aside; Warning, there is almost nothing "woke" about Howard's stories. They are definitely a product of the time in which they were written. But, if in the words of Aristotle, you can "entertain a thought without accepting it," the stories are worth the read. )
What's interesting and relevant to this discussion is the reason he wrote the essay, provided in a parenthetical preamble:
(Nothing in this article is to be considered as an attempt to advance any theory in opposition to accepted history. It is simply a fictional background for a series of fiction stories. When I began writing the Conan stories a few years ago, I prepared this 'history' of his age and the peoples of that age, in order to lend him and his sagas a greater aspect of realness. And I found that by adhering to the 'facts' and spirit of that history, in writing the stories, it was easier to visualize (and therefore to present) him as a real flesh-and-blood character rather than a ready-made product. In writing about him and his adventures in the various kingdoms of his Age, I have never violated the 'facts' or spirit of the 'history' here set down, but have followed the lines of that history as closely as the writer of actual historical fiction follows the lines of actual history. I have used this 'history' as a guide in all the stories in this series that I have written.)
So you can create entertaining stories that stand the test of time and adhere to an established history. You just have to choose to do so.
(aside; Warning, there is almost nothing "woke" about Howard's stories. They are definitely a product of the time in which they were written. But, if in the words of Aristotle, you can "entertain a thought without accepting it," the stories are worth the read. )
But my problem with Discovery is that it does change the underlying world itself. That is my biggest issue by far. Same with the movies. The movies were supposed to be a complete rewrite so anything they do is fine. And to replace the cast they picked the best ones I could have ever imagined. But the 2009 film was lacking in story and the underlying ideas found in previous incarnations of Star Trek were not there and haven't been there in the following movies or the first season of Discovery. Yes, Discovery has finally given us our first openly gay characters. Not really a big deal these days. It isn't pushing the envelope on anything. It isn't dealing with any hard issues like TOS tried to (issues a lot of people can't see any longer because they aren't issues today). Roddenberry wanted Star Trek to predict a better world. All the antagonists came from outside the Federation. Those core ideas he came up with and fought so hard for in TOS are absent in the new Treks. They go for action, glitz and effects rather than substance. NBC always wanted some good action, but Roddenberry always kept it secondary to his own goals. The new Treks move it to the front and freely omit those goals which are still valid and pertient, they just need a new outlet. Gene was the preachy SJW that some people today complain about. Real Star Trek (following his and NBC's partnership) follows that.
So with those base changes as well as character continuity and visual continuity, it forces me to exclude Discovery from any canon that includes the older series. They are too different on too many levels.
I think it's more of a case of drawing attention to a clear pattern of resistance and acceptance.
In each and every instance a case could be made for the merits of the criticism, but that doesn't explain how the same cycle of anger, disparagement, begrudging acknowledgement and eventual full acceptance (usually and tellingly upon the arrival of the next iteration). If those criticisms are to be considered as valid commentary then the question has to be asked why they inevitably fade in such a predictable pattern only to re emerge next time around.
That suggests strongly that no matter what arguments are raised on a case by case basis the overall picture is of the mentality of the complainants rather than the substance of the complaints.
Only in superficial ways, like the level of technological advancement or the design of aliens. Trek has always been inconsistent about those things. People complain about the inconsistently advanced tech in DSC, but the tech in the movies and TNG was inconsistently less advanced than TOS in some ways. "Spock's Brain" showed that ordinary Starfleet uniforms had thermal controls built in so that people could be comfortable in Arctic conditions without wearing anything extra, but TWOK had landing parties wear heavy parkas. A couple of TOS episodes showed a near-infallible lie detector chair that's nowhere to be seen in the movies or the TNG era. TAS showed personal (and phaser-resistant!) force fields being used instead of spacesuits, but there's no sign of them in the later eras.
What stays the same (mostly) are the fundamentals -- the Federation, Starfleet, the characters, the species that exist in the galaxy, their relationships and values and missions. Of course, even that was variable while TOS was making it up on the fly, but eventually it settled into the same rough form it's held ever since.
Oh, stop being so melodramatic. Nobody's "forcing" you to do a damn thing. You choose to draw an arbitrary line that excludes DSC.
Well, what's Richard Arnold doing these days?
But the nature of the world is at issue. It isn't that there isn't a Federation or a structural difference, there is an underlying philosophical difference. At its heart it is not the same Federation that Roddenberry created. Enterprise has the advantage of exploring how that Federation came into being, but in Discovery and the new films that Federation is long established and TOS is just a few years away. Things don't change that fast. It is just incompatible.
But many people are asking me to accept Discovery as happening in the same Star Trek universe and timeline as TOS and it doesn't fit. When I look at the many differences, I am forced to conclude that Discovery is a reboot. Many others have come to the same conclusion. By your continued attempts to counter my points you are forcing me to state my views and that forces me to examine why I can't. So don't accuse me of being melodramatic when you are asking me to just accept Discovery into canon and I tell you why I can't. I'm not drawing an arbitrary line. I know what made Star Trek so different and without that key ingredient any Movie or TV series is just a pale imitation of the original, even if it is visually stimulating and full of action. It is no better that fan fiction as far as I'm concerned.
That‘s oversimplifying the situation in a way that dangerously reduces criticism to overreaction, or lumps it together with extremes so that acceptable reaction by implication becomes “praise the show or remain silent, because history says you‘re doomed to be wrong”.
With the exception of TOS (and very arguably ENT — I prefer S3 to the fan-serving S4), all the series (including the film series) are commonly seen to have generally improved with time, yet partly because of TOS it isn’t unreasonable to expect a series to be good out of the gate. Criticism of early TNG is still valid, as is that of early DS9, VGR, ENT and DSC. It is also relative — if continuity is not an issue, the focus will be on other things, like specific design choices or bland and repetitive writing. I was there when the NX-01 was revealed, but why criticize the “Akiraprise” now, retreading years of that discussion, when time is better spent on a current show such as DSC? Also, we knew it would fit with TOS because of who was making the show, but it was unprecedented then to adapt a background design for a hero ship and the same exact criticism was repeated when Discovery was revealed in 2016. That hadn’t gone away, but then of course we also had the more substantial changes as opposed to ENT’s mere compromises.
Issues which are truly difficult to resolve remain so to this day; they just become less current and are put on the back-burner. We still don’t fully understand all that happened between TOS and TMP, but at least TMP was clearly later. We can discuss TMP now, or we can leave it be and argue as I did that updating one century and famous characters just isn’t in the spirit of Star Trek, which had no problem creating an entire era without Kirk, with shows and movies that weren’t even allowed to mix on a regular basis. Therefore, whether we sweep past inconsistencies under the carpet or keep talking about them forever, the better question is if the franchise shouldn’t try to avoid them in the future? Pick a year such as 2396 and say “that’s the future ‘now’ according to the Bermanverse — now what can showrunners do that can exist without the good-old?”
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And unlike some who seem to insist that I agree with them about Discovery, I can see how and why and am willing to let anyone who doesn't want Enterprise in canon to leave it out. I can even understand those who resist anything but the original cast. I'm not going to argue that they must include it if they don't want to. I think each series has its own unique canon and that TOS through Enterprise (excluding most of TAS) can exist in a single larger canon. Sure there are inconsistancies, but you can find those in a single film or episode of other franchises. Those story inconsistances are not as important as the worldbuilding underneath it. And for me a key part of that is the culture Roddenberry built for the Federation - somewhat of a utopia where the characters go out and face modern bias and expose how nonsensical it is. Not in every single episode in a big way, but on a fairly consistent basis. That is lacking in modern trek.
I'll admit I have some issues there as well. It 'feels' off, hence my out of phase line. Some of it is the obvious, production design, stories, that sort of thing. But something about it just feels off from all prior Star Trek. I can't always put my finger on it. Perhaps, as Christopher says, in time I'll come to accept it. He noted it happened for many of Enterprise's detractors. I didn't feel that way about Enterprise so I don't have much of a frame of reference.
Well, I probably wouldn't go that far. People are simply making arguments but it's ultimately up to you to decide whether to watch Discovery or not, whether you enjoy it or not, or simply decide to ignore it. I'll admit, I view Discovery as a bit of a reboot myself, though I've left open the possibility my opinion may change over time. It's difficult for me to see it as part of the existing Star Trek universe for the moment. The novels actually help a bit there because the Discovery novels can go a bit deeper and in some cases even explained some of the inconsistencies so that they don't seem quite so out of whack. That doesn't help the obvious visual production design, but it does help the underlying story elements. "The Enterprise War" for instance does explain a bit why we don't see holographic communications on the Enterprise. And it's other things with the novels as well. I haven't seen season 2 yet, so when I read "The Enterprise War" my only frame of reference for the Enteprise was "The Cage". And in reading the novel it wasn't that difficult to imagine Jeffrey Hunter, Majel Barrett and Leonard Nimoy in the respective roles. And the other Discovery novels actually felt like they fit the larger Star Trek universe pretty well. So it's possible over time I may come around.
But, no one says you have to like or accept Discovery. After all there are people that hated Voyager and didn't watch it. It didn't nullify the other shows. Ditto for Enterprise. It took me a while to come around on Voyager, though in that case it had more to do with the show itself, not the continuity. But eventually I did come around and enjoyed much of Voyager.
Neither was the Federation of DS9, which also portrayed a wartime situation. Governments change over time and in response to shifting realities.
I'm not asking you to do anything. I'm saying that it isn't about you. And it's not about me. Whether DSC is in the same continuity is not a single viewer's decision, it's the decision of the people making the show, and making the shows that come after it. Future Trek shows will count DSC as part of the same reality as everything else, no matter what any single individual fan may want. There were fans before you who felt the exact same way about the movies and TNG and VGR and ENT that you feel about DSC, and their opinions had no impact on the franchise or the future of fandom.
There are things about DSC I'd like to exclude from my personal continuity, sure. But there are things about every other previous Trek series and several of the movies that I'd like to exclude to. There have always been continuity holes and logic problems and bad storytelling that have driven me crazy and that I've wanted to exclude. But I know that I don't have that power over the franchise, that it will continue to acknowledge parts of itself that I don't like. I've learned to live with that. It's not my universe to define or control; I'm just a spectator. (Heck, that's a large part of why I became a writer -- so I could create my own universes that I could control.)
Honestly, I don't know if many of the individual detractors came around. Probably some did -- heck, I came to appreciate ENT a lot more myself when I rewatched it prior to writing novels about it than I did in its first run. But I'm sure there are still some fans who stubbornly refuse to accept it -- heck, there are still some fans who stubbornly refuse to accept anything after TAS or anything after TMP. I'm just saying that those purist opinions never win out in the long run, that fandom as a whole comes to accept it all, in large part because of new fans who come in after the fact and see it all as a single whole from the start. The franchise evolves, fandom evolves, and those who refuse to evolve with them get left behind.
Now, it's fine on an individual level if you lose interest in a show and choose to walk away. I've done that with a number of shows. What annoys me are the people who talk as if their individual perspective should be binding on everyone else, or that the franchise is doing something wrong by not catering exclusively to them.
Every new Trek incarnation has been a reboot on some level, a reinterpretation of the universe as filtered through its own creators' views and style. We just pretend retroactively that they fit together. Heck, Harve Bennett and Nicholas Meyer considered The Wrath of Khan a soft reboot, quietly disregarding ST:TMP -- and it freely rewrote some of the details of "Space Seed" to serve its story. And Roddenberry considered TNG a soft reboot, intending to keep only the parts of TOS continuity that he was happy with and overwrite the rest (as we saw right off the bat when the pilot established a "Post-Atomic Horror" in the 2070s rather than a Eugenics Wars in the 1990s, which by then was implausibly close to the present). It was only later on, when Roddenberry was gone and TOS fans like Ron Moore started writing for the franchise, that the TNG-era stuff was more directly tied into TOS continuity.
Fans have too binary a view of continuity -- that either it's completely consistent or it's a separate universe. That's not usually the way it works in fiction -- there are countless sequels and revivals and spinoffs that fall somewhere in between those extremes, keeping only the continuity they want and freely rewriting the rest. I've mentioned Marvel's sliding timeline as an ongoing example.
The archetypal example of a sci-fi reboot, the show that entrenched that word in fan discourse, was the 2004 Battlestar Galactica reimagining. But Galactica 1980 was itself a highly revisionist continuation of the original BSG, contradicting and changing aspects of the original series to suit itself. The original series was clearly set in Earth's future; there were interstellar human colonies that were implicitly connected to Earth, and the season finale showed the fleet picking up video of the Apollo 11 landing while on the edge of our galaxy, putting it probably centuries or more after 1969. But Galactica 1980 is supposed to be 20 years later but set in, obviously, 1980. It just doesn't fit, but it pretends it does. That kind of semi-reboot, both in continuity and changing the continuity at the same time, is very, very common in fiction -- or at least it used to be before the current generation of continuity-obsessed fans came along and put pressure on creators to keep things more consistent. Star Trek has done that sort of thing less than many other franchises.
The way I see it, Enterprise fits both the TOS and Discovery canon (except the Klingons). Both seem like they could be 100 years in the future of it. TOS was the Gene/NBC vision and Discovery is the CBS vision. For me, the Discovery universe stems from some change to the Star Trek universe prior to the design of the Constitution Class. It is some fundamental difference in the Federation. Maybe a mirror universe contamination (since that is what season 1 dealt with). So it is either a reboot or a parallel universe following some change we don't know about.
But to me that difference makes putting them in the same canon impossible. But then I am a pre-TNG Star Trek fan and TOS is my favorite series and it has always been a tie between the TOS and TMP Enterprises as to which was my favorite. That could color my views. I was a fan of TOS when those messages were still timely and relevant. I hold Star Trek to that standard and I feel that TNG met it and what I saw of DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise met it. the 2009 movie got close, but nothing since then has. It is not the casting which I think has been outstanding. The actors playing the returning TOS Era characters have been phenomenal. I think Discovery's Pike is better and I've only seen one episode of season 2. But there is something lacking in the stories. That fundamental philosophy that I expect to see in Star Trek - what makes it different from Star Wars, Babylon 5, Doctor Who, and the other franchises - is missing. It is out of phase with what I consider Star Trek. It is good science fiction and good drama, but it is lacking. And the visual reboot I consider unnecessary and extreme. To me the canon Enterprise is the one in the Smithsonian. The new design is a cool reboot design, but it isn't the canon Enterprise.
Books have an easier time because there is no set visual, only the occasional description. I automatically divide between the book canon and the movie/TV canon when they adapt a book. That is pretty much how Discovery is in my mind. It is an adaption of Star Trek. Good, but lacking. For me it isn't a choice between old and new, just the choice for including Discovery with the old or not. The way my mind works it is impossible for me to put them together. It is like the fantastic book, and the good movie they made from it. To me they will forever be separate.
But to me that difference makes putting them in the same canon impossible. But then I am a pre-TNG Star Trek fan and TOS is my favorite series and it has always been a tie between the TOS and TMP Enterprises as to which was my favorite. That could color my views. I was a fan of TOS when those messages were still timely and relevant. I hold Star Trek to that standard and I feel that TNG met it and what I saw of DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise met it. the 2009 movie got close, but nothing since then has. It is not the casting which I think has been outstanding. The actors playing the returning TOS Era characters have been phenomenal. I think Discovery's Pike is better and I've only seen one episode of season 2. But there is something lacking in the stories. That fundamental philosophy that I expect to see in Star Trek - what makes it different from Star Wars, Babylon 5, Doctor Who, and the other franchises - is missing. It is out of phase with what I consider Star Trek. It is good science fiction and good drama, but it is lacking. And the visual reboot I consider unnecessary and extreme. To me the canon Enterprise is the one in the Smithsonian. The new design is a cool reboot design, but it isn't the canon Enterprise.
Books have an easier time because there is no set visual, only the occasional description. I automatically divide between the book canon and the movie/TV canon when they adapt a book. That is pretty much how Discovery is in my mind. It is an adaption of Star Trek. Good, but lacking. For me it isn't a choice between old and new, just the choice for including Discovery with the old or not. The way my mind works it is impossible for me to put them together. It is like the fantastic book, and the good movie they made from it. To me they will forever be separate.
No, in order to bet in the same continuity, they have to make some effort to follow the established continuity. They have not.
Take a look at Rogue One. They had a continuity to keep and the stuck to it religiously. The researched the original 1977 Death Star model for the new CG model. They used the original 3 foot Star Destroyer model. It was unlit so they adapted the larger TESB Star Destroyer lights. Darth Vader's costume changes in each film (previous to this he was in 4 films with 4 distinct costumes) and they researched and replicated the ANH costume down to how it was put on (robe over armor where the other 3 have armor over robe). THAT is how you follow the continuity to add to canon. That is the standard I go by. By that standard Discovery is a reboot whether the producers want to call it that or not. Their dereliction in following established continuity means that Discovery does not fit. Did they have to build the sets and models 100% like the originals? No, Enterprise didn't follow TOS 100% when they had the Defiant show up in the Enterprise era mirror universe. It has a different deflector grid, aztec hull plating, and additional sets and details that TOS could never have managed. They updated the ship while keeping it looking much the same. So the previous productions of Star Trek really set the bar for what future productions had to meet for me to accept it unconditionally.
As a 40 year Star Trek fan (or 30 year fan when the 2009 film came out), there are things that I cannot accept about the new production and I think the producers and CBS in particular are at fault (CBS wanted things to look different so they could have fresh rights to new designs - they probably wanted to distance themselves from the much better written fan productions that actually followed the original continuity). Star Trek 4 times went back and revisted the TOS era in a later story and each time they nailed. it - Relics, Trials and Tribbleations, Flashback, and In A Mirror Darkly. The standard was set. CBS chose to ignore that. Ignoring that standard means they are creating their own canon and they know it (even if they don't call it that). Star Wars and Doctor Who have both done the same thing and I think Rogue One is the gold Standard for how you tell a new story in an established universe and add to canon rather than building your own. Discovery may basing what they do on the original canon, but they are changing it as they go to suit their current needs. The best way to do that is what they did in TNG... move into the future. Discovery is rewriting TOS canon and ignoring continuity in the same way that books get adapted to movies. Discovery is a good adaption, but it doesn't mesh with the original.
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