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This needs to be pinned to the top of every page.
Yes, it does. During the time when STD was streamed, I only saw the first few episodes at meetings of a local Star Trek fan group. Otherwise I knew very little about it.
Yes, it does. During the time when STD was streamed, I only saw the first few episodes at meetings of a local Star Trek fan group. Otherwise I knew very little about it.
Without being too spoilery, they actually did a sequel to "The Cage" during Season Two of Discovery, featuring the return of Vina and the Talosians.
This resulted in a great moment where a "Previously on STAR TREK" recap of "The Cage" ended with a close-up of Jeff Hunter seguing into a close-up of Anson Mount many years later.
Meh. Everything that's weird in a pilot is explained by the word "pilot." They're a proof-of-concept pony show meant to sell a series idea to a network. Back then, many didn't even get aired as a normal episode (and in a perfect world, if Trek hadn't been continually under time and budget pressure, they may not have aired this one, or may have held it back longer and diced it into a "flashback" wrapper a la The Menagerie). In any case, WNMHGB is teeming with differences that we shouldn't feel a need to explain, especially in light of the fact that they aired it out of sequence.
You new here?
He'll learn.You new here?
Only if the bill passes.
Honestly, neither Colt, Tyler or Boyce were "memorable" and even Number One was "meh" but they were the characters we got in the pilot. The only version of Pike's Enterprise presented to us until Discovery/SNW. Tyler got the same amount of screen time as Spock (and side from his appearance was no more memorable).
Honestly, I agree there was plenty of time for all of these people to rotate off the ship without anyone ever mentioning them. But when they announced this series, I was really looking forward to exploring that crew. Not characters I already knew from TOS. And M'Benga was a WTF left field addition I still don't think was necessary. I just would have made up an original doctor altogether.
James Blish simply said McCoy was on "special study leave" and was filling in in the adaptation in Star Trek 8. But that was mostly because he adapted that story so far down the line. Had WNMHGB actually aired first, there'd never be a reason to address it. He was just the doctor there first. And if you simply accept the production order as the official chronicle - or even star date order - that still holds. But SNW won't bother wasting time and money casting a character the general audience won't even know existed, so it doesn't matter. I'm reasonably sure Sulu will go directly to helm and not Astro Sciences when they drop him in.
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Unless they pull a Sam Kirk and give Hikaru a brother.
By all accounts, Piper was nothing more than a placeholder character that Roddenberry was always intending to replace with someone more permanent for the series proper. That’s partly why Piper’s role in WNMHGB is so minimized compared to Boyce in “The Cage” and Bones in “The Corbomite Maneuver”. I sort of regard Piper as the doctor that was available for those events he was in, sort of like how the character of Dr. Selar stepped in as the doctor for TNG’s “The Schizoid Man”, just to allow Diana Mauldar some time off.
So if SNW happens to bypass Piper altogether, it’s not a big deal to me. Gary Mitchell has more reason to appear at the end of SNW than Piper.
So if SNW happens to bypass Piper altogether, it’s not a big deal to me. Gary Mitchell has more reason to appear at the end of SNW than Piper.
It absolutely makes the most sense.
It completely does. I watched every minute of Discovery, and apart from the first season (which was not very good and at times downright disturbing in its gleeful grimdarkness), I enjoyed it.
After S2, Discovery had effectively nothing to do with TOS, so that was fine—but in S2 of Discovery and all of SNW thus far, I've enjoyed myself simply by concluding that this is an alternate reality that cannot be and does not need to be reconciled with TOS. No one these days seems to claim that JJTrek was anything but that, so I think it's quite okay to do the same with KurtzmanTrek.
The show itself does that so it's ok. Plus ENTERPRISE too. It all works together and we can all just relax.
Plus this scene, in that Discovery episode, on Talos IV, with Spock performing a mind meld with the human in the Red Angel time traveling machine that I have spoiler tagged.
Note Spock's reflection in the helmet visor of the Red Angel
He flies the ship?(I realize Number One probably flies the ship based on her seat, but I'm still baffled that SNW called attention to how under-written one of their main characters was that blatantly. Even counting the extenuating circumstances behind-the-scenes requiring Ortegas to have a more limited role than intended, it's like the joke from Doctor Who where the Master called the Doctor's companions "Exposition" and "Comic Relief," but played straight. Even as little as phrasing it as "I love to fly" would've been an improvement.)
My conspiracy theory is that Mann and Colt's names were switched at some point during production by someone who didn't realize Colt was an existing character (or as a quick fix if they hadn't secured the rights to the Colt character from "The Cage" somehow). Naming an alien "Mann" seems like the kind of dumb joke that would fit in with Discovery season 2's sensibility.
How could they not have the rights to the Colt character? She's a Star Trek character, and they're producing a Star Trek series.
I don’t know, IP is weird as hell. I just threw that in as a possible explanation when I remembered an interview where they mentioned it was difficult getting reuse clearances from the actors/their estates for the clips of “The Cage” used earlier in the season. Some kind of legal issue makes as much sense as anything for why “Yeoman Colt” was the spikey alien and not the red-haired woman sitting on the other side of the bridge.
Maybe someone screwed up.
This sounds like the same problem my old employer faced some years ago when making the Star Trek CCG. Initially the game was licensed for just TNG, and the process of getting card images approved was (relatively) straightforward. Sometimes we picked from a Paramount-provided gallery, but increasingly we went to the episodes and pulled our own. The latter of course required individual image approvals from the licensing department, and that usually went pretty smoothly. (Fun fact, during that time our licensing liaison was Guy Vardaman, who also appeared on screen as Brent Spiner's photo double and in various roles such as recurring crewman Darien Wallace.)
After some initial success, we started adding other series to our license. I was overjoyed when we got TOS, but it came with some new legal hurdles, the worst of which was actor approval. Later series had used actor contracts that made it easier for Paramount (I think they could approve many things themselves, but had to consult actors in certain scenarios). But TOS was a whole different ball of wax, because the contracts back in the '60s naturally didn't anticipate all this future fandom and merchandising. Actors/estates had more control over their images, and in some cases getting responses back was difficult and slow. I remember a few times we had difficulty convincing Paramount to let us create cards for certain lower-profile characters when they had lost track of the performers/estates (it's possible we were the first licensee in years to want to publish a close-up shot of Romulan Guard #3 or whatever).
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From what I recall, and correct me if necessary:
• A series can reuse a character name for free if that character was created by a producer. In that case, the show owns it.
• They can reuse a character name for free if the new episode is written by the same writer, which is how "I, Mudd" avoided special royalties. This must mean Kurtzman-Trek paid a Stephen Kandel a royalty for Rainn Wilson to play Mudd.
Thus:
• If Yeoman Colt was created by Gene Roddenberry, and GR is not a producer or writer of Kurtzman-Trek, then K-T would have to pay a royalty for using that exact character. The way they blow money on bridge sets alone, I can't believe this would be a problem, and the Harry Mudd precedent suggests that Colt would have come back if they wanted her.
On the other hand, if they figure it like, GR was a producer of TOS, and the franchise owns TOS, then Kurtzman-Trek has free reign over characters GR created. I'll bet that's how they do it.
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Exactly. Maybe there’s some issue with casting someone who looks too much like Laurel Goodman without an likeness approval, or even a potential issue they wanted to avoid.This sounds like the same problem my old employer faced some years ago when making the Star Trek CCG. Initially the game was licensed for just TNG, and the process of getting card images approved was (relatively) straightforward. Sometimes we picked from a Paramount-provided gallery, but increasingly we went to the episodes and pulled our own. The latter of course required individual image approvals from the licensing department, and that usually went pretty smoothly. (Fun fact, during that time our licensing liaison was Guy Vardaman, who also appeared on screen as Brent Spiner's photo double and in various roles such as recurring crewman Darien Wallace.)
After some initial success, we started adding other series to our license. I was overjoyed when we got TOS, but it came with some new legal hurdles, the worst of which was actor approval. Later series had used actor contracts that made it easier for Paramount (I think they could approve many things themselves, but had to consult actors in certain scenarios). But TOS was a whole different ball of wax, because the contracts back in the '60s naturally didn't anticipate all this future fandom and merchandising. Actors/estates had more control over their images, and in some cases getting responses back was difficult and slow. I remember a few times we had difficulty convincing Paramount to let us create cards for certain lower-profile characters when they had lost track of the performers/estates (it's possible we were the first licensee in years to want to publish a close-up shot of Romulan Guard #3 or whatever).
I believe this is the reason we see so many repetitive, uncanny-valley depictions of TOS characters in modern merch. There seems to be a standard set of illustrated main-character shots that are very lifelike and look almost right, but are a bit off. Especially Kirk. I'm guessing Paramount may have been able to contend that these are artistic interpretations that do not require approval -- and thus they have a ready-to-go gallery of "royalty-free" or at least approval-free pics they can encourage the less picky business partners to use. If a licensee is happy with the same crew pictures as the other licensees are using on their card decks and standees and notebooks and stickers and heat-changing mugs, then they can already use them without further ado. I could be wrong, but for me it would explain the proliferation of these relatively modern images.
Could be related to the Back to the Future II thing where there ended up being a legal case about recasting Crispin Glover and using makeup to make Jeffrey Weissman look more like him. They would’ve taken care of that for Pike, Number One, and Spock (the latter two wouldn’t have been a problem, likely, because one’s a Roddenberry and the other had already been recast more than once), but they might not have realized they had to until it was too late and the simplest thing was swapping Colt’s name with another character who absolutely did not look like Laurel Goodman.
Not to get too deep into “25% different” conspiracy theories, but that could also be part of the reason they’ve been avoiding using “Cage” characters, and why several TOS characters/names are drastically changed (M’Benga is older, Kyle is a different ethnicity, Mitchell is a different ethnicity and gender). Chapel would get a pass because of the Roddenberry connection, Rod would be willing and able to sign off, and Kirk and the other main-seven TOS characters who have appeared on SNW would’ve had their approvals secured with ST09, if not earlier.
For your last point, though, I’ve heard many visual artists from painters to sculptors all agree that there’s something weirdly undefinable about Shatner’s face, especially when he was in his thirties and younger, and that he’s a very challenging likeness to capture. I don’t think they’re just restricted to showing pseudo-Kirks because of a license difficulty. If that was the case, uncanny-valley Shatner would still be too close for comfort. With other cases that definitely haven’t had likeness rights, like Harry Mudd, they’ve either avoided showing his face entirely or, once the option existed, depicted him as an explicitly different and very specific actor.
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