Very long post on a variety of TREK topics.
Should TREK go to a floating timeline?
I wonder if the solution to STAR TREK's continuity for 1992 - 2053 now being at odds with 1992 - 2022: change TREK continuity from fixed dates to a floating timeline.
In Marvel Comics, all of the 1960s adventures up to today exist in a floating timeline of 15 years in the past with topical references updated. Peter Parker is always in his mid to late 20s and has been Spider-Man for 10 - 15 years; Steve Rogers has always come out of suspended hibernation 10 - 15 years previous.
STAR TREK might benefit from switching to a floating timeline of one to two centuries in the future. If it needs to be justified in-story, a SHORT TREKS 10 minute film could have the Department of Temporal Investigations recreate the Big Bang to restart the universe. Indicate that due to this being version 2.0 of the same universe, the timeline may have some minor shifts that will fold into the timeline gradually.
At this point, STAR TREK could become vague about years.
In this restarted timeline, stories set during ENTERPRISE say Earth: Final Conflict (hahahahahah) happened "a century and a half" ago and the first warp flight happened "a century" ago. TOS will say that it happened "over two centuries ago." TNG and onward stories say that it happened "over three centuries ago."
STAR TREK can go back to being as vague about the year as THE ORIGINAL SERIES. If asked in interviews, the writers can say that TOS is set 300 years from "today," TNG is 400 years from "today" and continually keep TREK in a floating future timeline.
Or STAR TREK could avoid time travel to time periods where real-life history contradicts STAR TREK history.
Earth: Final Conflict
Just speaking for myself as a STAR TREK fan: I actually find it a little unfortunate for VOYAGER and PICARD to take their cast to 1996 and 2024 and not show the Eugenics War and World War III. I find it totally misses the point of STAR TREK. Roddenberry is a problematic creator, but to ignore the 1992 - 2053 conflict is to dismiss Roddenberry's most redeeming quality.
The Doom of Star Trek
Roddenberry had a glowing vision of the distant future, optimistic to the point of being unrealistic and therefore sickeningly sentimental. But Roddenberry had a very bleak outlook on the immediate future. Roddenberry believed that everyone watching STAR TREK was doomed.
Roddenberry envisioned that planet Earth would suffer six decades of war that would start with genetically augmented soldiers and culminate in a nuclear holocaust that would leave our entire world in the ruin of the post-atomic horrors. You die. I die. We all die, some quickly in a flash of nuclear bombings or slowly from radiation poisoning.
Humanity's survivors are scant. Crumbled governments resorting to martial law and brutality just to protect scant resources.
First Flight
In the midst of this savagery and bleakness and hopelessness, a lonely and bitter scientist nearing the end of a painful and lonely life tries to achieve one final dream, one empty gesture of defiance against defeat and suffering. He tries to fly faster than light.
He flies his ship. He doesn't believe he will succeed; he thinks his ship will likely fail before even reaching light speed. But with his future only containing starvation and illness, he has nothing left but his dream even if it is doomed to death and failure.
First Contact
But he doesn't die and he doesn't fail; he enters warp speed. Zefram Cochrane is the first human being to travel faster than light. He lands safely. His achievement catches the eye of a Vulcan science vessel crew. Earth has achieved warp speed; humans now qualify for First Contact. The Vulcans land to meet Zefram Cochrane and reveal themselves to humanity. They introduce themselves to us.
The Vulcans tell us that we humans are no longer alone in the universe.
We tell the Vulcans that we are in a terrible situation. We have destroyed our civilization. We have destroyed ourselves. Those of us who survive face ecological collapse. Global devastation from radiation. The dissolution of government. Famine. Disease. The Vulcans have come after our darkest hour. They have arrived to see humanity's twilight.
The Vulcans tell us that we're wrong.
A Gift of Knowledge
The Vulcans tell us that they have experienced everything we have -- and worse -- on their own planet. They tell us that they had to teach themselves to control their worst instincts and darkest emotions. They formed a new belief system based on self-control and logic. The Vulcans say that their logic demands that they offer the human race information and knowledge to save Earth. Knowledge that will be offered at a rationed, gradual pace.
Failure
The Vulcans offer the knowledge to let humanity build the tools to clean the atmosphere and restore the water, flora and fauna of the planet. But five years after First Contact, Earth's fractured governments reject and ignore the Vulcans, instead forming fascist dictatorships battling over remaining resources, executing anyone accused of any crime, engaged in rampant, violent purges of nuclear war survivors.
The Vulcans retreat but do not withdraw, watching and waiting. Reaching out to key figures with the hope that when this aftermath passes, the Vulcans can try again. If nothing else, the sociological situation on Earth will provide useful data for the Vulcans' own civilization.
Eventually, the post atomic horror governments collapse and the Vulcans resume their full efforts. With Vulcan knowledge and human work, humans repair Earth's irradiated soil, regrow crops and replant forests. They teach humanity to treat and repair bodies ravaged by radiation sickness. They offer humanity a new system of economy that dispenses with money.
The Vulcans refuse to directly provide aid. They provide information. They make suggestions. But they say humans have to do the work to clean the air, grow the food, restore the water. The Vulcans will teach, but they won't act.
United Earth
Two decades after First Contact, humanity has found a second chapter with the Vulcans' suggestions and ideas. Earth has replaced its disparate and fallen nations with a united planetary government and together, humans have finally conquered war, famine, poverty and disease.
As humans move past scarcity and avarice and look to the stars, they begin actively resent the Vulcans' withdrawn, withholding attitude. They resent being judged for the damage they have repaired. For the past that they have overcome.
They fume at spending a century building a Warp 5 engine when Vulcans could hand one over.
The Vulcans never expect humanity to reach the stars. The Vulcans are dismayed when humans achieve sufficient warp capability to explore the universe.
Mentally Transmitted Diseases
Humans and Vulcans find themselves repeatedly at odds in their parallel interstellar explorations; the humans are bold and interested while the Vulcans are restrictive within their protocols and procedures and disdainful of human space travellers.
Captain Jonathan Archer of the Enterprise NX-01 discovers that the Vulcans' isolationist attitude is due to a secret they are trying to hide from other races: Vulcan civilization is experiencing an epidemic of Pa'nar Syndrome, a disease caused by mind melding, a telepathic form of intimate thought sharing through psi-power enhanced physical contact.
Mainstream Vulcan society considers mind melding abhorrent and obscene. A tawdry abomination of deviant behaviour.
Epidemic
Archer protests that intimacy shouldn't be taboo. But then it's shown: mind melds cause degenerative neural disease that is further transmissible upon future mind melds. There is no treatment or cure. Vulcans have withdrawn from the concept of intimacy and sharing except in terms of cold, objective information. This is why the Vulcans were so distant and passive-aggressive in their dealings with humans.
The NX-01's Vulcan science officer, T'Pol, is infected by this mentally transmitted disease after to succumbing to temptation for intimacy over cold, objective logic. She also becomes addicted to an emotion-stimulating drug, unable to cope with the Vulcan way suppressing emotions to the point of denial.
Vulcan: Final Conflict
Captain Archer investigates further. A year later, he discovers: mind melding is not inherently harmful. Pa'Nar Syndrome is caused by poorly trained mind melds performed without psi-safety precautions. The art of safe mind melding and the philosophy behind mind melds have all been lost in Vulcan history. Archer tries to find out why.
Archer comes into contact with a telepathic recording of Surak, the founder of Vulcan logical philosophy. This echo of Surak's consciousness reads Archer's memories of Vulcans and notes that Vulcan logic has taken a turn from Surak's original intent.
IDIC
Vulcan history has prioritized Surak's logic but misplaced the true heart of his teachings: the value of infinite diversity in infinite combinations. With IDIC, Vulcan logic is a guiding principle to Vulcan emotion rather than a force to remove emotion. The concept of mind melds were created to share emotions with control and safety, to express openness to all philosophies, to make Vulcan logic merely one starting point to enlightenment.
Archer returns this telepathic echo of Surak to the Vulcans, starting a reformation of Vulcan culture, restoring the gift of the mind meld and helping Vulcans rebuild their culture, and repaying humanity's debt to the Vulcans. Vulcans and humans reach a new stage of their partnership that leads to the United Federation of Planets.
Greatness
All these improvised, revisionist, separate accounts of Earth's pre-TOS history told across TOS's "Metamorphosis," TNG's "Encounter at Farpoint," the FIRST CONTACT movie and Enterprise's fourth season -- I feel that together, they form the greatest story ever told. A story of failure, downfall, disaster followed by redemption and restoration. I think this is the core of STAR TREK.
Roddenberry wrote the first half up to Zefram Cochrane's warp flight. The genius screenwriter Gene L. Coon wrote Cochrane's story in the TOS episode "Metamorphosis". Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga delved further into Cochrane with the FIRST CONTACT movie. And Season 4 ENTERPRISE writers Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens wrote the Vulcan reformation storyline. And these stories exist within the Roddenberry framework.
Meaning
Roddenberry's framework is incredibly meaningful because it's hard to look at 2022 and imagine our dire circumstances leading to a future that's anything like THE NEXT GENERATION. Except Roddenberry's vision of our present was actually a whole lot worse than our actual present.
There's something very hopeful in declaring that humanity effectively melted down between 1992 - 2053 but somehow found its way to a United Earth, to First Contact, to the Earth-Vulcan partnership, to Starfleet, to the Vulcan reformation, to the Federation, to the stars.
A lot of reviewers lambast STAR TREK for being overly optimistic and dismiss Roddenberry's vision of humanity as a foolish fairy tale in which humans make all the right choices because of humanity's inherent goodness. It's true that Roddenberry wrote many scripts that present this opinion.
But in Roddenberry's vision of human history from 1992 to 2063: humans make all the wrong choices. They choose war, famine, starvation, hoarding, greed and disease, they nearly destroy themselves -- but then a miracle gives them a second chance and this time, they learn from their mistakes.
On the aesthetic differences between THE ORIGINAL SERIES, DISCOVERY and STRANGE NEW WORLDS
DISCOVERY and STRANGE NEW WORLDS are what some fans call a "visual recast" in which the original characters, set designers, propmakers and effects artists are now roles performed by new people.
The way the creators are approaching it: the 1966 cardboard and wood of THE ORIGINAL SERIES was the 23rd century for low-res black and white TVs (with colour gradually entering the market). The 3D printed plastics and metals we've been seeing in DISCOVERY are the 23rd century for 4K TVs.
This was definitely not the intention when DISCOVERY first started. Originally, DISCOVERY was an anthology series that would only have one season in the 23rd century that would use modern materials for 60s style costumes and sets. Bryan Fuller's intention was for DISCOVERY to look like a variant on the 60s costumes. After Fuller was fired, CBS had the costume designer go with an updated version of the ENTERPRISE costumes instead.
When the NCC-1701 Enterprise showed up in the Season 1 finale of DISCOVERY, the ship designers said they created a version of the Enterprise that could conceivably become the 60s version after a few refits. However, the show didn't really commit to this and left it ambiguous as to whether DISCOVERY's 23rd century would shift into the 60s designs or replace them.
Season 2 decided to go with what Memory Alpha (the TREK Wikia) has called a "retcon design" and declare that the 23rd century looks like DISCOVERY with visual discrepancies being a matter of artistic interpretation. The Season 2 episode "If Memory Serves" used clips of the 60s-shot episode, "The Cage" and used the standard definition effects of the practical Enterprise prop instead of the remastered computer generated version from the blu-ray release. "If Memory Serves" flashes from Jeffrey Hunter as Pike to Anson Mount as Pike.
The episode also shows a clip of Spock examining singing flowers (cardboard on string) on the planet Talos IV. Michael Burnham later visits Talos IV and examines computer generated flowers with a deeper shade of purple-blue. The flowers make a similar (but more richly designed) sound effect; the statement is that the cardboard is the standard definition version and the CG flowers are the high definition 4K version.
As rationalizations go, I've seen worse.
(The worst rationalization I've ever heard for dated filmmaking was George Lucas 'explaining' why Obi-Wan and Anakin engage in all sorts of stunt-driven acrobatics in the prequels but just stand and point with their lightsabers in EPISODE IV. Lucas said they were using a different form of Jedi martial arts in E4. He was better off not talking about it.)
