Would you accept a flexible Star Trek timeline?

[fireproof78]

That’s just a production error with an obvious fix (don’t do it in a tech manual). However, neither TOS nor DSC are errors and they cannot occupy the same physical reality, so a tie-in must be clear on its parent show.

Thus far, the tie ins seem to be doing a fair job, as noted by @Ricky Spanish. I have yet to pick something up and go "Boy, I just don't know where this story fits in the grand scheme..."

Here's the thing. If we want to push it, we can absolutely come up with ideas that encompass uniform changes. Operational authority, different commands or admiral's discretion. As noted in other tie-in material, the Enterprise is supposed to be a very modular ship, capable of being reconfigured for different missions. Perhaps it was beefed up because it was being prepped for the Klingon War, then changed back for a different mission profile. One thread I was discussing these changes in noted that the TMP full refit (this is almost an entirely new Enterprise) only took two years. If that's all it takes, then minor changes like Bridge module swap, engine swap and the like would probably take less time.

If you're willing to work at it then you can make it work. But, since it isn't real you can only bend it so much. No, this isn't a "get a life" or a "It's just a TV show" quip. It's noting that some things will not be acceptable to all fans. That's why flexibility is so important.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

See, but that flexibility means you’re probably “squinting” in order to make your rationalization work, whereas I’m looking at this down to the level of schematics, the way the Bermanverse did when it reverently recreated Jefferies’ set design or used Gary Kerr’s extremely precise blueprints of the eleven-foot model to create others. DSC changes to the Enterprise, on the other hand, weren’t developed with engineering continuity in mind: the ship was reimagined and scaled up, and it’s not a Transformer (cartoon version) to go there and back and there between styles and scales.

We just have to accept it as OrigiVision vs DiscoVision on basically the same story, and within those one can create immersive experiences (real or virtual) which can be expressed in specific, measurable designs. You’re not going to say, “Sorry, we can’t very well create an Enterprise bridge experience because we just don’t know what it looks like” – instead, we’ll just accept that there are two incompatible visualizations when we get down to that level, in order to keep Star Trek technically continuous.

 

[BillJ]

See, but that flexibility means you’re probably “squinting” in order to make your rationalization work...

If that makes the story work for a person, more power to them.

 

[Mytran]

I remember a scene from a Discworld novel where all the old magic was breaking through. In their version of Egypt (which had all the various conflicting myths that ours does) if your looked at the sun from one POV it appeared as the face of Horus (with one of his eyes as the sun and the other as the moon) whereas from the other POV it was clear that the sun was being rolled across the sky by a giant dung-beetle: Both were contradictory and both were correct at the same time

 

[The Wormhole]

If that makes the story work for a person, more power to them.

Hell, if I try to make all Star Trek fit together, than all I end up doing is squinting while watching it. It makes people wonder if I should be wearing glasses.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

I declare the thread-ending finale to be that we wouldn’t accept a flexible Star Trek timeline (because timeline spaghetti are not what the franchise is about), only degrees of flexibility in its interpretation.

 

[Nerys Myk]

The "timeline" has always been "make it up as we go along". That it even works in the slightest is probably nothing short of a miracle.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

It’s not a miracle when you consider that even TOS had a scientific/technical/continuity/general research consultant in Kellam de Forest. The franchise has been built on the premise of making sense (with errors), not on freely ignoring precedent, so it’s no wonder that even the originally undefined century eventually became the mid- to late 23rd.

 

[BillJ]

The franchise has been built on the premise of making sense (with errors)...

I'm one of the biggest TOS homers on the planet, and the end of "Tomorrow is Yesterday" makes no sense.

 

[Nerys Myk]

It’s not a miracle when you consider that even TOS had a scientific/technical/continuity/general research consultant in Kellam de Forest. The franchise has been built on the premise of making sense (with errors), not on freely ignoring precedent, so it’s no wonder that even the originally undefined century eventually became the mid- to late 23rd.

The thing about advisors, is they can be ignored in favor of meeting the budget, getting it in the can and coolness. Listening to KdF more often probably would cut the errors in half.