Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!) (Page 10 of 12)

Star Trek was fairly progressive for the 60's.  Uhura was noteworthy just for being a bridge officer at a time when black women on TV were all maids or criminals.  She took the helm and worked at science station when needed.  The show was years ahead of anything else on TV just by treating her as a professional.

Roddenberry did want a female first officer, as seen in The Cage, but the network wouldn't allow it.

is Jerry O'Connell noticably good and funny in lower decks?

His wife Rebecca is decent in the limited SNW I've seen although I guess doesn't offer anything extraordinary.  What do you guys think about her in that series?

I am astonished and impressed by Rebecca Romijn's excellence in STRANGE NEW WORLDS. I wouldn't have expected much from her given that she made a living as a supermodel who was painted blue for the X-MEN movies; I didn't realize she was actually a good actress. I had a similar experience with Serinda Swan, a swimsuit model type who put in a ghastly performance as Zatanna on SMALLVILLE but turned out to be incredible on the TV show CORONER. In both cases, I now suspect that when their acting was bad in other productions, it's because they were receiving poor direction from directors who weren't interested in how they performed, only how they posed.

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Jerry O'Connell's good on LOWER DECKS, but he's not delivering the jokes as much as reacting to them. His voice isn't recognizable to me as Jerry.

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Gene Roddenberry was not prevented from giving more screentime to female characters in STAR TREK. Judging from the oral history of THE FIFTY YEAR MISSION and the Roddenberry biography THE IMPOSSIBLE HAS HAPPENED, the failures were mostly Roddenberry, and while he may have attributed any and all issues to vaguely defined "executives", this is self-serving revisionist history. Note that Roddenberry never distinguished between studio and network executives and used the term "executives" interchangeably.

Desilu Productions was primarily concerned with getting STAR TREK made for less than what NBC was paying them to make it; NBC was primarily concerned with selling ad time for the commercials during STAR TREK. Desliu and NBC took issue with the Number One character because the actress, Majel Barrett, put in a stiff performance and was clearly hired only because she was having an extramarital affair with Gene Roddenberry. Neither Desilu nor NBC wanted the scandal of that when producing or selling the show, and they demanded that Barrett be fired.

Later, when Roddenberry cast Barrett again as Christine Chapel, Desilu and NBC said that Chapel was to remain a small role or they would fire her again; this is why Chapel got nothing to do. Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) and Janice Rand (Grace Lee Whitney) were both cast with actresses chosen for Roddenberry's romantic interest in them; Nichols had been Roddenberry's former lover and Roddenberry propositioned Grace Lee Whitney (who declined but still had a good friendship with Roddenberry). Roddenberry gave Uhura nothing to do and laid Whitney off to focus more on Dr. McCoy. Every woman on STAR TREK was largely defined by romantic interest towards a man that was unrequited or indulged to their own destruction -- or they simply weren't defined at all.

Some may claim this was network mandate, but this is patently untrue because on STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION, Roddenberry repeated the same pattern completely on his own.

In the first season of TNG, Beverly Crusher, Deanna Troi and Tasha Yar were given very little to do and defined primarily by their attractions to Picard, Riker or Data. Denise Crosby (Tasha) had a meeting with Roddenberry where he flat out told her that the show was going to focus on the men, Picard, Data, Riker. "This is the formula for Star Trek and it works. It is not going to change," Roddenberry told her, and being a syndicated show, Roddenberry was not bowing to mandates from the studio or network. This was all Roddenberry because Roddenberry simply had no interest in writing women as people. They existed to love and serve men.

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What happened here? My soul will not rest until I know what caused this turnaround of opinion. But I'm glad Grizzlor is enjoying LOWER DECKS.

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I've been thinking about "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" and how it alters STAR TREK from fixed dates to a vaguer floating timeline where the Eugenics Wars now happen at an unspecified point in the 'near' future, and explains that this is the effect of Romulan temporal agents attempting to prevent the rise of the Federation and Department of Temporal Investigations agents engaging in counterinterference operations. Unintentionally or not, this actually explains some of the stranger points of discontinuity in THE ORIGINAL SERIES.

THE ORIGINAL SERIES couldn't seem to figure out what century it was set in: "Tomorrow is Yesterday" sets the show in the 22nd century, but "The Squire of Gothos" indicates that it's the 28th century. It couldn't figure out whose Kirk's employers were: Kirk is alternatively working for the Space Central, the Star Service, Spacefleet, Space Service, Space Command, the United Earth Space Probe Agency -- it only solidifies into Starfleet with "Court Martial" (1.14).

In "The Corbomite Maneuver" (1.02), Kirk refers to being from a United Earth and in "The Conscience of the King" (1.13), McCoy says that the Vulcans were "conquered" (presumably by humans), but "Arena" (1.18) has Kirk describing a "Federation" that's only defined in "A Taste of Armageddon" (1.23) as a United Federation of Planets, dismissing earlier portrayals of Kirk representing an Earth-only government and then "Errand of Mercy" (1.27) establishes that Vulcans are part of the Federation as partners rather than a conquered people.

What is going on here, aside from Roddenberry letting other writers replace Roddenberry's Earth-centric intentions with Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets?

"Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" seem to suggest -- unintentionally or not -- that each TOS episode was a fragment of a timeline in flux. Notably, the episodes where Kirk worked for "Spacefleet" and "United Earth" were representing an instance of the timeline where the Romulans succeeded in erasing the Federation.

As the Department of Temporal Investigations rolled back the changes, we began to see continuity begin to solidify more with Starfleet and the Federation, but not entirely and not until the movies. We were seeing history in flux during TOS: a history where Earth's repressive attitudes to women and people of colour and gender identities were unfortunately carried into space, where Earth conquered the Vulcans instead of working with them -- and the original episodes of TOS were a temporal mirage that bears a painterly, sketchy resemblance to the original reality which was likely closer to STRANGE NEW WORLDS than THE ORIGINAL SERIES.

I'm sure it's not what they intended, but it works.

I had the same thought and Prodigy ended up really surprising me.  I don't even think it was all that kid-friendly at times.  I would say it was about as kid-friendly as the Clone Wars or Rebels?  Which is to say that there are some kid-friendly episodes but it still can get pretty dark.  And there are episodes that are as pure Trek as Strange New Worlds.  In fact, a recent episode of SNW essentially ripped off an episode of Prodigy (albeit a bit more twisted).

Now that's it's cancelled, I'm not going to say you definitely need to watch it.  But it shouldn't be written off any more than Lower Decks should've been written off.  Prodigy belongs.

Clone Wars/Rebels were sagas though.  I'm sure Prodigy is fine, I just don't have interest. 

SNW followed the crossover with a hard hitting episode about Klingon War veterans and such.

To me, the constant variations in tone and genre make sense to me. Space is a big place with lots of room for many disparate life experiences.

I will say, there is one thing in STRANGE NEW WORLDS that just is not working for me. I don't like Paul Wesley's Kirk. That said, Kirk is a really difficult character to bring into the present day. But Wesley's Kirk seems to fall into a lot of traps.

In terms of casting, Wesley is an excellent choice for Kirk. Wesley's real name is Paweł Tomasz Wasilewski, which he changed to Paul Wasilewski for acting and then changed again to Paul Wesley to fit more easily on a resume.

I've only seen Wesley in two other roles: he played the self-servingly manipulative Lucas Luthor in one SMALLVILLE episode and he played the recklessly self-destructive Tommy on EVERWOOD, both roles where his characters' temperaments were a similar but less heroic variant on Chris Pine's screen presence as Kirk in the 2009 movie.

Actors like Paul Wesley with a roguish mischief and a certain edgy incaution are the model for James T. Kirk, a character whom William Shatner personified as a hypercharismatic leader. Shatner's Kirk is defined by certain iconic identifiers. Shatner's Kirk is hammy yet with a magnetic warmth. Shatner's Kirk is hyperfocused on achieving his goals and is also extremely good at telling people what to do in a way that's amiable rather than controlling.

STRANGE NEW WORLDS has a great actor, but the writing presents Wesley's Kirk with none of that. Wesley's Kirk is written to be apologetic: instead of flat out telling Captain Pike that he thinks Pike's command decisions were timid instead of bold, Kirk self-effacingly says he would probably have done things differently with embarrassment and discomfort. Wesley's Kirk is awkwardly unsure in telling people what to do or what he would do when Kirk was not only confident in declaring his wishes, but knew how to make people feel comfortable with his criticisms.

Wesley's Kirk is also written to be unassertive and unfocused. When on a time travel mission to the 2020s with La'an Noonien Singh, Kirk's attention drifts from the mission of identifying the source of temporal alteration. Instead, Kirk gets distracted by hot dogs, water, sunlight and planetary atmosphere. Kirk is also subdued in his self-deprecation as he tells La'an he urgently craves another hot dog. Shatner's Kirk, while keen to enjoy at least a little of everything that life had to offer, was a man with a mission. Wesley's Kirk is meandering.

The moment where Wesley's Kirk comes off as utterly unKirk-like is in "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow". Wesley's Kirk is aware that La'an is attracted to him and the feeling is mutual. But the script has Wesley's Kirk demure and hesitate, letting La'an make the first move. Shatner's Kirk was not someone who paused before telling a woman that he liked her; Shatner's Kirk would tell women who intrigued him that he was interested in them with directness and without a hint of embarrassment, he also made it clear that if they were to reject him, he'd still be interested in what they had to offer socially.

Shatner's Kirk excelled at telling people what he wanted out of them professionally and personally and telling them what he wanted without uncertainty or hesitation; Shatner's Kirk also excelled at conveying why giving him what he asked would be mutually beneficial to everyone involved. Wesley's Kirk is completely lacking in this natural and good-natured presence of authority.

I'm not sure how much of this is deliberate. Wesley has said that he deliberately didn't want his Kirk to feel like Shatner's Kirk because his Kirk is much younger and much less experienced. But it's not actually up to him. The scripts have made this younger Kirk unassertive and apologetic and hesitant and Wesley has played what's been written for him.

Chris Pine's Kirk was not William Shatner's Kirk either. But Pine conveyed a certain internal mayhem, a reckless streak, a persevering determination and a willingness to endure beating after beating and to do it with a smirk if it would get him a little closer to completing his mission. Pine had an immunity to embarrassment and a tolerance for punishment that came off as a primitive version of Captain Kirk's confidence.

Paul Wesley's Kirk doesn't come off as a young person who could someday become the Captain Kirk of THE ORIGINAL SERIES. His low key demeanor makes him seem more like a younger version of Jonathan Archer with Scott Bakula's humble warmth. Wesley's Kirk doesn't have even a hint of Captain Kirk's friendly competitiveness.

There is some canonical precedent for this. In the first-produced TOS episode with Kirk, "Where No Man Has Gone Before", Kirk is described in lieutenant days as "a stack of books with legs", implying that he was a more cerebral person before his starship captaincies made him more of an extrovert. This line seems to have been a holdover from when the plan was still to have a series with the more bookish Captain Pike of "The Cage", but STRANGE NEW WORLDS may be taking it as written in the same way it has accepted the smiling, shouting Spock of "The Cage" as a less disciplined version of Leonard Nimoy's Spock.

However, if the intention is for the younger Kirk to seem shockingly different from Shatner's Kirk, then it's odd that STRANGE NEW WORLDS was so determined to put Kirk in a modernized version of the iconic gold tunic of THE ORIGINAL SERIES and to visually convey that this is the same Kirk of TOS.

One neat alternative might have been to have the younger Kirk wear the Starfleet blue of the science division or the Starfleet red for operations and engineering -- and emphasize his bookish, intellectual side and his lack of command aptitude; to further emphasize that even in the Romulan-altered timeline, he was only captain of the Enterprise due to lack of personnel options. And then, in bits and pieces, we'd see flashes of Shatner's Kirk, indicating that the journey from being "a stack of books with legs" to a worthy starship captain is a journey with many twists and turns.

I'm not sure why Kirk is being written this way. It could be, of course, that bringing Shatner's Kirk to modern TV is a challenge. Shatner played Kirk in a STAR TREK show that was 60s pop art, produced and performed as televised stage theatre with Shatner's performance being accordingly broad and flamboyant for the elevated and abstract world of 60s sci-fi TV. This performance and this character could not exist in the more subdued, conversational world of STRANGE NEW WORLDS without some retrofitting; the Chris Pine character is just as exaggerated as Shatner but it's played for laughs and with Pine being at odds with the more controlled performances around him.

Wesley's Kirk is written to fit into a more subdued TV show, but in dialing down Kirk's theatricality, the show seems to have lost what made Kirk iconic and special despite having cast a good actor for the role.

The Farragut incident is summarized in the Season 2 TOS episode "Obsession" where Kirk recounts how, as a lieutenant  aboard that ship, there was an attack from a space vampire cloud creature of sorts which killed numerous crewmen including the captain, an incident that left Kirk traumatized and obsessed with hunting the creature down once it resurfaced during Kirk's captaincy of the Enterprise.

"Obsession" was Trek doing MOBY DICK and... it's a savage, brutal, violent episode that is also infamous for its bizarre continuity: five Enterprise crewmen are killed including an ensign played by actor Jerry Ayres and the recurring character of Lieutenant Leslie -- except Jerry Ayres' ensign had previously appeared in Season 1's "Arena" in which he also died there, and Lieutenant Leslie is shown alive and well after "Obsession" in "The Immunity Syndrome". It's one of the strangest points of non-continuity ever in a show that was inconsistent to begin with.

I assume this is all reflecting the Romulan-Federation temporal war.

I don't disagree with Slider_Quinn21's remarks about Kirk in the time travel episode, but I'd note that Kirk's demeanor was more "smug chess club president" than "charming rogue". Also, if Kirk had really been opposed to La'an, he would have simply left her and found somewhere to get frozen in suspended animation until the 23rd century (which is something I thought might occur to the LOWER DECKS team in the 23rd century).

That said, according to Paul Wesley, the massive distance between his Kirk and Shatner's Kirk is deliberate, that he's going by "Where No Man is Gone Before"'s dialogue about Kirk in his youth.

That's fine. It doesn't work for me, and I am not sure if it will work out. But I respect that Wesley has thought about it, the writers have thought about it, and they aren't just thoughtlessly missing the mark on what makes Captain Kirk iconic and powerful; they're trying to arrive at that destination from a far distance. I am not sure they can make it.

To me, they did something similar with Spock in DISCOVERY, but they did a good job of having enough of Nimoy's diplomatic severity in the writing and Ethan Peck's performance that it was recognizably Spock at a different chapter in his life than TOS. They presented Spock as messy and bearded and on edge and insane, but at the end of DISCOVERY's second season, Spock walked onto the bridge of the Enterprise in the Starfleet blue with his hair trimmed and his beard gone, once again the recognizable Spock. Maybe they should have given Lieutenant Kirk a non-Kirk outfit, maybe a variant on that green wraparound that Kirk sometimes wore.

The canon is all over the place, but the feeling is that the Farragut incident already has happened, at this point.  The cloud entity did not damage ships.  Given that young Kirk survived, and the Farragut needing a large scale crew replacement, it would make sense that his time on that ship allowed him to be promoted very quickly, given the loss of many senior personnel.  It might still be a Lt. but as Sam whined, he is the X.O. of that ship.

I haven't read the Shatnerverse novels, but I love the way they resurrected Kirk.  I would love to see him resurrected in some way and get a proper sendoff.

Hopefully another show is greenlighted.  I know SNW and Lower Decks will continue and they're working on a Section 31 film, but that's the only Trek that's coming once Discovery ends, right?

That makes sense, though, right?  Isn't Riker essentially Kirk 2.0?

I usually don't like musicals either.  I think the Flash did a decent job with it.  And I actually love the Always Sunny musical episode.

I'll see how this one is.

Does sliders have an equivalent?

https://youtu.be/Oz1c1xdoUFc

I love the response and agree with you

However if you click the YouTube video in my post you'll see I was referring to something else

ha!

what about "We're from Canada"?

It was absolutely necessary for the storyline with Spock and Christine.

The musical episode features the Spock/Christine breakup and it happens in a shockingly humiliating and horrific manner for Spock, making a public spectacle of how she is leaving him and leaving Enterprise and didn't even tell him that she was departing until nearly everyone else knew -- except it's not totally Christine's fault.

Christine applied for a fellowship and got in, but held off on telling Spock, wanting to break up with him privately and personally, only to be unexpectedly feted in the crew lounge by friends who were present when she first received the news. She isn't happy about the celebration because there's currently a crisis and she hasn't had a chance to speak with Spock.

Spock sees her and asks why she didn't tell him that she is ending her time on Enterprise and their relationship as well. Christine asks to speak privately, but Spock, needing to trigger a song for more data to resolve the musical security crisis, elects to ask Christine to explain herself in the lounge with a large number of crew present to witness it.

Christine proceeds to belt out a lengthy song with dance accompaniment about how the fellowship is freedom and ambition, and the song indicates that Spock doesn't even factor into Christine's considerations except an afterthought comment about how she wouldn't hesitate to ditch him for a great job. It's not that she contemplated what it would mean to leave him, she flat-out didn't spare him a moment of thought.

Spock been humiliated in front of his shipmates, treated as a joke and an irrelevance in the most insulting fashion possible. He has sacrificed his own dignity and self-esteem to save everyone else's. I've followed Spock's career across TV, movies, novels and comics and I think this is one of the most heroic things Spock ever did. Yes, he died saving the crew in WRATH OF KHAN, but in "Subspace Rhapsody", he has to watch Christine crush every hope he ever had for their romantic relationship in public in a mortifyingly embarrassing display for all to see, and continue face his crewmates after that.

Christine is dismissive and hurtful towards Spock. It's only understandable because the music is making Christine say private things in public, and also because in "Those Old Scientists", where she found out from Boimler that the future Spock will close off his human side, confirming that Christine and Spock's romance has no future.

It's understandable that after that, Christine realized she couldn't let her not-to-last relationship with Spock be a factor in her career decisions. At the same time, due to Christine's withdrawal and silence, and due to Spock refusing to go somewhere private to discuss it (for scientific reasons), Spock is humiliated in full view of the crew happily celebrating how Christine is dumping Spock.

It is a grotesque scene. And without the musical situation where Christine is genuinely not able to moderate and control her emotional expressions and Spock is deliberately triggering them to restore everyone else's privacy, Christine would be a complete monster to behave this way. The musical plot device was essential for making sure there was some outside force to justify otherwise unforgivable behaviour.

It's also quite a moment that really demonstrates why Spock is such an icon and a beloved figure of STAR TREK. He will give up his own dignity to save ours. Spock truly is our friend.

I don't know what you're talking about. My comments were about the Spock/Chapel breakup in "Subspace Rhapsody". Spock and Chapel have some significant scenes in "Hegemony", but they are still broken up in the episode.

Furthermore, the fellowship for which Chapel is leaving is with Dr. Roger Korby; THE ORIGINAL SERIES establishes that Chapel was engaged to Dr. Korby, so STRANGE NEW WORLDS intends to send Chapel to work with Dr. Korby.

But even if they weren't, what was said and sung in "Subspace Rhapsody" is what happened in "Subspace Rhapsody" and Chapel's reasons for the breakup in "Subspace Rhapsody" remain the reasons that she gave in "Subspace Rhapsody".

Given that my comments about "Subspace Rhapsody" are about the events of "Subspace Rhapsody", I don't see what "Hegemony" could do to render it moot; "Hegemony" could have opened with Chapel waking up and describing the events of "Subspace Rhapsody" as a nightmare and my review of the scenes in "Subspace Rhapsody" would still stand as the review of the scenes in "Subspace Rhapsody".

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In other news: PRODIGY got an update on its production:
https://screenrant.com/star-trek-prodig … on-update/

There continues to be no news on THE ORVILLE.

I liked the finale.  Very tense.

I will need our Trek historian ireactions to help me understand if we're screwing up continuity too much with this much interaction with the Gorn.  My limited understanding was that Starfleet hadn't really seen the Gorn until Kirk and that the Federation hadn't really interacted with them a ton.

I also struggle to see how this species became technologically advanced, but maybe I'm just not being creative enough.

To quote Bill Shatner, Get a Life, it's....it's just a TV show!"

I've been battling with people on the trekbbs boards on this, you cannot really expect this writing staff to be connecting everything they do with the minutia of TOS canon.

My supposition at this point would be that most of the onscreen Gorn in STRANGE NEW WORLDS are young, infant, feral Gorn with whom the universal translator has no ability to interpret, at least for now. The humanoid Gorn of "Arena" was an adult Gorn, and the universal translator still seemed to struggle until the Metrons stepped in.

Also, we don't know that these feral Gorn or the savage adult Gorn of "Arena" are a representative consensus of all Gorn. Twitter isn't a representative consensus of the human race, after all, nor is Sliders.tv a full representation of all science fiction and fantasy fans.

Case in point:

I think that it's fair for a fan to observe that fiction in an ongoing franchise written by numerous creators over decades isn't going to have seamless continuity. At the same time, I think it's a fun game to try to stitch the gaps of continuity back together.

I think the "Get a life" remark might be better applied to those who engage in "battling" about continuity on TrekBBS. I personally like to think that Sliders.tv isn't that sort of community.

In THE ORIGINAL SERIES episode "Arena", the Enterprise crew definitely doesn't recognize the Gorn; the Metrons tell the crew the name of the Gorn. Kirk says in his log, "This is Captain James Kirk of the Starship Enterprise. Who ever finds this, please get it to Starfleet Command. I'm engaged in personal combat with a creature apparently called a Gorn." This doesn't track with STRANGE NEW WORLDS set around a decade before "Arena" where the Gorn are known to the Federation, albeit with few survivors to tell about them. STRANGE NEW WORLDS is not maintaining continuity with "Arena".

However, I'd like to think that here on Sliders.tv, when we discuss continuity breaks like this one and how they might be bridged, we aren't really quibbling about who said and did what in what frame of what episode. We are really discussing storytelling: how stories told by many hands over many decades will have variability in themes and details and interpretations of the mythology, how well those interpretations fit together or don't, and how these interpretations reflect different eras of TV.

"Arena" was written by Gene L. Coon in the 60s and on that 60s production model, the Gorn was an alien made for one episode with a rubber suit made for use in one episode. Writer Gene L. Coon gave zero thought to how the Gorn might recur or what their backstory might be in prequels or what their society or culture or origins could be. They were an enemy for Kirk to pursue, to be imperiled by, to defeat, and to spare. The elaborate rubber suit meant it took multiple performers just to play one Gorn, so the Gorn would not be effective as a recurring foe and this was definitely a one-off. The casting and costuming needed for Gorn are why they didn't return until ENTEPRRISE. "Arena" is so determined to contain the story to a single episode that they introduce godlike beings, the Metrons, to force the story to a conclusion.

The Gorn being different in continuity and approach in STRANGE NEW WORLDS speaks to how modern TV wants to create a mythology and a past, present and future for the Gorn in order to use them across many episodes and make them an identifiable part of this particular show's mythos and iconography.

One possibility for why Kirk in "Arena" didn't recognize the Gorn: the Gorn in STRANGE NEW WORLDS are seen obscured by suits or not fully grown or in a non-humanoid form, feral and wild rather than the fully-grown, humanoid Gorn in "Arena". Federation society didn't have a coherent, consistent portrayal of the Gorn and the Gorn, while public knowledge, weren't widely known or recognized and popular memory simply categorized them as "unknown alien" with the other unknown aliens.

A similar tactic was used in ENTERPRISE: when the Ferengi and the Borg showed up two centuries before Starfleet officially first encountered them, but their races were never identified during ENTERPRISE, and these pre-First Contact contacts weren't recorded. However, this is going to take a lot of having Kirk conveniently being absent whenever the Gorn were an issue, and I'm not sure STRANGE NEW WORLDS can sustain that when Starfleet admirals are bracing for war with the Gorn and the name is known.

The blanket possibility is that the Romulan-Federation temporal incursions, in pushing the Eugenics Wars to later in time, also altered the Federation to advance at a faster rate into space to leave behind Earth's past conflicts. The Federation in this new timeline met the Gorn earlier, so the events of "Arena" will occur with Kirk recognizing the Gorn, knowing of them as the voraciously predatory monsters of STRANGE NEW WORLDS and pursuing them vengefully only to show mercy when realizing that humans have (accidentally) been breaching Gorn territory in ways that (to the Gorn) seem like invasion. The time travel of "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" actually explains pretty much every interseries discrepancy of the STAR TREK franchise.

Again, this isn't something that anyone ever needs to be "battling" over. TrekBBS can be hilarious. Sometimes, TrekBBS will be screaming blue murder over a starship Enterprise that predates the NX-01 and have a heart attack over Christine Chapel being written as a capable career woman who can enjoy casual sex. Sometimes, TrekBBS will insist that Section 31 is totally an official part of Starfleet and insist that no one on DEEP SPACE NINE ever had any specific dialogue that specifically said that S31 was outside the Starfleet chain of command.

The reality is that fans have always had to stitch together discontinuities, often within individual shows themselves. Of all the shows, THE ORIGINAL SERIES has the most discontinuities within itself and with its sequels and prequels.

THE ORIGINAL SERIES can't keep track of what century it's supposed to be. It's set in the 22nd or 28th century. Kirk's employer goes from being United Earth Space Probe Agency to Spacefleet to Space Central to Space Command to Starfleet. Kirk's government goes from being United Earth to the Federation to the United Federation of Planets. Spock's people go from being the conquered Vulcanians to the Vulcans who founded the United Federation of Planets with humans. The Enterprise alternatively has spheres or vents on its back nacelles depending on what stock footage they were using that week.

Part of the fun of STAR TREK, I think, is coming up with increasingly insane explanations for all of this as we eventually get to the altered Klingons and uncharacteristic unreliability of the transporter in THE MOTION PICTURE to World War III being shifted forward in THE NEXT GENERATION. Or Data having emotions and using contractions in TNG Season 1 only to become more machinelike in Season 2.

Then there's "Turnabout Intruder" declaring women can't be starship captains when ENTERPRISE shows the NX-02 captained by Erica Hernandez. Or VOYAGER and PICARD visiting the 90s and 2020s with no sign of the Eugenics Wars or World War III, the Borg Cooperative of PICARD's second season dismissed as the Borg Collective returned. Or DEEP SPACE NINE declaring that Sisko's father is dead only for Joseph Sisko to be alive and well and running a successful restaurant in San Francisco.

This stuff happens. I think "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" is going to be a good continuity patch for decades, explaining why the Federation and Starfleet didn't seem to exist until the middle of TOS Season 1.

But there comes a point when it's more worthwhile to discuss the variations in storytelling and when it comes to continuity. What stands out to me: Gene L. Coon created the Gorn as an inhuman monster: its reptillian appearance makes it impossible to anthropomorphize the design with human expressions. It's designed to look predatory and bloodthirsty. But Kirk chooses not to put the Gorn down as a monster, but instead spare him as a person and try to make peace with the species.

Compare that to the first Kirk episodes of STAR TREK, "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and "The Man Trap" where Gene Roddenberry's STAR TREK is about being threatened by monsters whom Kirk and company exterminate with explosives and phaser fire. Roddenberry got distracted by merchandising STAR TREK and Coon took over as showrunner and in "Arena", he completed the transition and changed STAR TREK from being about soldiers in space to peacekeepers in space with "Arena" declaring that the Gorn, whatever its crimes, however frightful it might be, was still a person. So far, STRANGE NEW WORLDS has presented the Gorn as monsters, but the story isn't over yet.

Hopefully, STRANGE NEW WORLDS won't pull a Season 2 DISCOVERY and put everything under a classified non-listing to never be discussed. I think you can only get away with that once and Slider_Quinn21 would argue that you can't get away with it at all.

Anyway. In 2013, there was a STAR TREK videogame to tie into INTO DARKNESS. I've never played it and it's by all accounts an abomination akin to "Spock's Brain", but the commercial advertising it with William Shatner and the Gorn was a delight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hnBp7x2QAE

Don't get me wrong - I don't remember enough about TOS to really care whether or not they break continuity.  I get that continuity, especially in that era, is fragile.  And I really don't care enough about any of it to really get bothered.

What makes me a little crazy is that *they seem to care*.  By choosing to do a prequel, the writers/producers/creators care about the continuity.  Otherwise, why do a prequel at all?  For a mainstream movie like Star Trek 09, maybe you do a full reboot with a new cast because you want to reach the right audience.  And you pick the characters that have the most cultural footprint - some random person in Wisconsin or South Carolina is going to know Captain Kirk before they know Captain Janeway or Captain Sisko.  So you pick the most famous characters and hope to get the biggest audience.

But as we've discussed before, there's no reason to do Discovery in the pre-TOS era except for the fact that they wanted to borrow some of the credibility that comes with Spock and that specific era.  But they didn't even really want to do that (maybe Brian Fuller did) because they had new uniforms, new sets, new Klingons.  They were distancing themselves from that era, and they eventually just abandoned that idea anyway.

Strange New Worlds made a similar decision.  I don't know if the Enterprise crew was put on Discovery as a backdoor pilot to a new show, but you gotta think that was part of the decision.  But instead of taking a great cast and making a new show in a new era, they decided to do another prequel.  And this one lent itself to being a prequel with the same uniforms and some of the same storylines.  So they have to care about the continuity because why else wouldn't they just do something new.  They like this era, they like the uniforms and they like the characters.

And when you do a prequel, you're choosing to live dangerously.  When Picard decided to do a follow-up, they can do whatever they want.  They could make Picard a father or bring back the Enterprise D or have Q fight the Borg Queen.  It's all new so it doesn't matter.  If they'd decided to say that Picard was a father for the entirety of TNG and just never mentioned it...that's an issue.

Because, to me, the point of the a prequel is to flesh out the stories that have already been told.  You learn about Anakin and Obi-Wan's friendship and it colors the way they talk about each other in A New Hope.  It isn't perfect and maybe the story sucks but that's the whole point of the prequels - to flesh out the story.

If you're just telling new stories in an existing timeline, it's like going back in time.  If you're not super careful, you're going to change something.  It's just too dangerous.

If I ran Trek, I'd make the executive decision that no prequels.  If you go back in time, it looks like the 60s in the TOS era and the 80s/90s in the TNG era.  That's just how it looked.  If you want things to look better, tell a story set in the future.  The model was perfect when TNG jumped forward a century.  Things look better because technology got better.  End of story.

Strange New Worlds is way better than Discovery, and I'm willing to forgive any continuity errors.  I just don't like the idea of retreading if there's no narrative reason to do that.  Strange New Worlds in the 26th century is still a great show.

I think the anthology show would've been great and a nice reintroduction to Trek.  For me, setting Discovery during the TOS era just makes things so difficult.  I think if Discovery had been set in the 25th century with the spore drive as a brand-new technology, with Burnham as the sister of another (new) famous Vulcan, and the zealot aliens being something else instead of the Klingons, I think the show could have been a tier greater than it was.  And yet, the show kept writing itself into corners that it didn't know how to get out of until it had to jump centuries into the future and force everyone left behind to swear the first two seasons to secrecy.

It's just a mess and it's a mess that wasn't necessary.  Nothing about Discovery season 1 requires it to be set in the TOS era, and if they weren't going to do an anthology series, setting it in a new era is the logical decision.

It doesn't matter, though.  Discovery was set during the TOS era, and it was all sworn to secrecy.  The muddled canon becomes more muddled, but it's fine.  I still watch Discovery (and look forward to its final season) and I still love Strange New Worlds.  Its fun to complain, but that's the heart of it.

Interesting.  It's been a while since I've watched much TNG, but I've always thought that Riker's arc was that he was a highly ambitious and high-rising officer who really wanted to be the captain of a ship but who eventually enjoyed being on the Enterprise enough that he maybe got too comfortable and was essentially passed over and forgotten by Starfleet Command.  But it sounds like I'm pretty wrong about that.

As you know, I like to try and re-write certain pre-prestige-TV shows in my head.  I think a modern TNG would've had Riker show up as arrogant and defiant, thinking he's better than Picard and that he should be commanding the Enterprise.  Maybe a season one of constantly trying to communicate with his admiral buddies about open commands.  Maybe even to the point where Picard has to tell him to focus on his current job and not be focused on the others.  Maybe by the time we get to Best of Both Worlds, Riker and Picard are openly hostile towards each other.  And when he finally gets to command the Enterprise and Picard/Locutus wrecks him, it humbles Riker.  He asks a de-Borged Picard to mentor him and things get better.  Then maybe Riker finally gets offered a command and turns it down (like he did on the real show).  And by season 5 or 6, I think Riker should be thrust into command of his own ship and we'd see him grow that way.  Maybe that means Riker leaves the show, gets spun off into his own show, or the show focuses on two ships.

But thank you for your excellent analysis!

Thanks, ireactions! Much appreciated. I'm sure I will get around to watching it eventually.

As much as I enjoyed the Buffy musical I'm not exactly in the mood for that one now either.

Funny how death and loss works, I guess. Things are improving. Slowly but surely. And in phases. Annoying.

I'm going to ask you not to share any more links to misinformation in this forum.

That YouTube channel is for a notoriously unreliable fraud with the asinine moniker of "Doomcock". This phony, in recent false news, gave a completely untrue summary of INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY where he claimed Harrison Ford's Indy would be erased from history and replaced by Phoebe Waller-Bridge's character. This person couldn't be trust to give a weather report, never mind STAR TREK news.

Furthermore, any news of franchise directions right now is obviously false because of that minor event you might know of called the writers' strike. Regardless, if you're trusting in a news source named "Doomcock", you need a different news source and to reconsider whether or not you have a firm grasp on reality.

I have no idea what you are thinking posting this link here. I don't know if it's related to that vague post of vagueness you put in the political thread. But this is not a place for fake news and fraudulent reports and misinformation.

The absurd "Doomcock" made a splash claiming he'd learned from test screenings that DIAL OF DESTINY would erase Harrison Ford and replace him with Phoebe Waller-Bridge who would take over the franchise. Since that was very much not the story of DIAL OF DESTINY, it's time to put a pin in "Doomcock" and treat his 'news' as precisely what it is: inflammatory lies made up to get short-term attention for web traffic and ads and crowdfunding. And we should not be linking to misinformation or referring to it as a "report".

Again: he calls himself "Doomcock". He presents himself to the world as "Doomcock".

I am relieved by your response.

I think comment on misinformation is valuable and prefer that we leave the post and link.

Alex Kurtzman is certainly leaving STAR TREK at some point. You could say that about anyone working on any series: they will be leaving at some point. We don't need to use a voice-deepening vocoder and put on a metal mask and call ourselves "Doomcock" for that.

We are living in a world that has a greater density of information and therefore misinformation than ever before. Misinformation is only going to get worse with artificial intelligence text generation. I know that STAR TREK non news is not a big deal, but if I were in the misinformation game, I'd probably start with niche science fiction for training and work my way up. I don't think any of us can stop it, but we should be hypersuspicious of news where the supposed journalist hides behind a mask to talk about a TV rocketships and laser guns.

The rumour was that Alex Kurtzman is leaving STAR TREK because CBS/Paramount are rebooting the franchise and upsetting Kurtzman, which this YouTuber presented as fact. This is nonsense: Paramount is in no position to discuss rebooting STAR TREK or have anyone write or perform in a reboot because all writers and performers are on strike.

I mean, I suppose it will be true eventually. Every franchise Kurtzman has ever worked on has continued after he left it, so yes, Kurtzman will someday leave. Every franchise gets at least soft-rebooted at some point, so yes, STAR TREK will someday be rebooted. I could say that Slider_Quinn21 is going to go to bed at some point in the next 24 - 48 hours, but stating the obvious and inevitable doesn't mean I have secret sources who have infiltrated Paramount or Slider_Quinn21's life.

The ridiculous "Doomcock" presented these inane ramblings in his usual fashion: against a greenscreened backdrop of what looks like a supervillain's headquarters, ranting with a voice-filter to deepen his tone, all while wearing a ridiculous costume with a metal mask that is obviously based on the Marvel Comics character Dr. Doom whom this person obviously reveres.

That's something I should point out, actually: Victor von Doom, Dr. Doom, is clearly "Doomcock"'s role model. And Dr. Doom is a narcissistic, bitter mind in a mutilated and wilted body. Doom's entire life is an endless quest for adulation and attention. Dr. Doom is a jealous, miserable soul: Reed Richards warned Doom that his experiments were unstable, Doom ignored Reed and Doom's experiment blew up in his face and scarred him. Doom's response was to declare that Richards must have tricked him, sabotaged him, been threatened by him. Then Doom devoted his life to inane supervillainy, propelled by sheer force of jealousy. Victor von Doom is the pettiest, vainest, smallest person in the Marvel Universe depending on a stupid outfit to look bigger than he is.

Victor von Doom is "Doomcock"'s role model and I think that says a lot.

My solution to the issue of DISCOVERY's 33rd century setting being a problem:

I think all it takes is one line from one Department of Temporal Investigations agent saying that Mirror Georgiou returned from a "potential future timeline" and that is done and dusted.

Also, given STRANGE NEW WORLDS' "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" explaining pretty much every discrepancy in THE ORIGINAL SERIES and between TNG/DS9/VOY/ENT/DSC, and SNW's loose attitude to TOS continuity, I don't think they're that fussed about it.

I don't know what STAR TREK is going to look like aside from a SECTION 31 movie and another season of STRANGE NEW WORLDS and one last season of DISCOVERY. I don't think Paramount-CBS knows either and won't so long as writers and actors are all on strike.

My understanding is that their slate and budget was pretty full with STRANGE NEW WORLDS, DISCOVERY and LOWER DECKS, and given the streaming model having hit upper limits of subscriber growth, they were looking to let aging shows clear off their slate and just not replace them for awhile. And then the writers strike and actors strike happened, so the lack of plans remains a lack of plans.