posted
Also, this is more of a side note given that it was a background thing, but they also modified Spacedock. Quoting myself from elsewhere where someone was arguing it was identical:
quote: The Discovery station structure as seen does not match the 80's Spacedock model. The variations are more than, say, the Bulldog Enterprise-D versus the svelte ILM model, and moreover are sufficient in nature and extent to force one to dismiss any suggestion that it's due to construction in progress.
First, let's find a good model and compare it to the 80's Spacedock model to confirm a good fit for further checks. Why must we do this? Because the Discovery station is shown at an unusual angle, meaning we can't simply overlay existing pics and call it a day.
So, let's take a model I found and compare it to the iconic approach scene from ST3, with the model lit oppositely to show divergence better:
That's pretty dang good. The large upper mushroom structure has a few points of departure . . . the rim is too thick on the model and the flat-top a bit too narrow, but otherwise we're doing well unless you want to count off for window alignment.
Now we'll take the best version of the Discovery station image and adjust it for best visibility:
Now we can take the station model and maneuver it as necessary to match.
Note some of the areas of difference.
One thing worth noticing is that the main mushroom rim is much thicker on the Discovery station. Additionally, the second mushroom is way smaller, yet appears to be receiving hull covering (marked in purple). I dunno what the extra (blue) bit is. Also, most notably, the flat-top now extends out onto the 'hillside', curving downward on its way to the rim (marked in red). The following visual aid may help explain my meaning:
This is not evidence of incomplete construction. This is a different structure altogether . . . you cannot get from A to B without utterly altering the structure, or building atop it and thereby exacerbating the other issues. By "other issues", I refer to the fact that there's the little matter of the secondary mushroom, here receiving an outer skin despite being tiny, and other central shaft differences. If you expand the main mushroom (at the cost of hundreds of ships' worth of material, mind you), you alter the proportions of the assorted parts.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
quote:Originally posted by Shik: That is the biggest pile of justificationary bullshit I have ever seen. Have you found a PR job in the current White House administration? Because your reaching is as complex & constructed as their output.
That's right, Shik...I'm the one who wrote the op-ed! Don't tell anyone, though...
In all seriousness (and/or good fun), no need for such an odious and insulting comparison. We are talking about fiction here, not fact. It's all constructed bullshit. However, the claim that DSC is any more of a "reboot" (visual or otherwise) than TMP or TNG or ENT or the framing elements of ST'09 in turn were is indeed...FAKE NEWS!
It should hardly need to be said that Star Trek continuity, such as it be, is not actually a self-consistent objective reality, and never has been, however much we might all like to pretend otherwise. (Or perhaps not so much anymore, it seems? In any case, it's only ever been pretense, whether theirs or ours, that has made it all fit together.) It's always been but a coalescence of disparate (and sometimes conflicting) ideas contributed by various individuals over the years, infinitely malleable to the whims of whoever is telling the story at a given moment...and from the start they have always freely changed things as they went along, offering or forgoing in-story "justification" as they so desired. There is no "hard break" with the past (or future) here, only the addition of hereto unseen elements that re-contextualize what has been previously portrayed as part of a larger and more complex picture. To deny this is to deny the entire artistic premise of the show, and just as ridiculous as denying the validity of any that has come before.
quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000: True enough, but fixating there rather ignores the point that FASA, along with fans and canon designs, generally tried to stick to an overall look consistent with the times. The designers even said as much. We would not expect a curvy Intrepid Class hull beside the Excelsior in Star Trek III, for instance, any more than we would expect a TOS-styled saucer as the front end of the Galaxy.
The irony here is, that's more or less exactly what many FASA designs were. And also that you're apparently content to take those designers at their word...but not Eaves or anyone else behind DSC.
quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000: Are there outliers? Probably...
...and the TOS Connie, a design that was envisioned to date back "about forty years" at the time The Making Of Star Trek was compiled—and still could for all we know, even if the Enterprise herself wasn't launched until 2245, which was never established onscreen (and would contradict Morrow's line that she was only "twenty years old" in STIII, which in turn contradicted "The Menagerie")—can quite easily be seen as one of them. It's the only Starfleet ship design we ever saw in TOS itself, after all.
TAS threw in the Bonaventure, which itself prefigures the Connie by a century (under the interpretation that she was the first Starfleet vessel to have a working warp drive installed) and the NX-01 by decades (however old we want to say SF is, since that was never established onscreen either, only that it dated back at least fifteen years in ENT), plus a couple of freighters that share nothing in common with the Connie designwise except for similar nacelles, and which might well also predate it, especially considering the re-use of one of them as the Antares and Woden—neither originally intended to be SF ships at all, BTW—in the "remastered" versions. (Oh, did we forget they already went back and retroactively replaced ship designs in TOS once before? Or, for that matter, that the Bonaventure was re-imagined as an entirely different one by Okuda when TAS wasn't considered canon, under the interpretation she was Cochrane's ship, and then after being seen onscreen a couple of times as set dressing in DS9 was re-imagined yet again as the Phoenix in FC?)
Thinking of the TOS Enterprise as the quintessential SF vessel of her day because she was the first one we became intimately acquainted with is as faulty as thinking of Spock as the quintessential Vulcan, or Worf as the quintessential Klingon, or Kirk as the quintessential starship captain. Especially considering it's stated straight up in "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" (TOS) that "there are only twelve like it in the fleet" and in "Bread And Circuses" (TOS) that she is "a very special vessel"!
quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000: ...especially among the background ships that were hardly meant for close scrutiny.
But if we're playing that card, then we can certainly also scratch the FJ ships from blink-and-you'll-miss-them displays in the deep background of TWOK and TSFS...so much for any further onscreen evidence of there ever having been a contemporary fleet of SF designs sharing TOS Connie aesthetics in the first place!
Now, explain why a configuration from a rejected and unaired pilot, depicted in the series proper only as literally and explicitly, not speculatively, a Talosian illusion—of attested veracity, and yet with the testimony to this effect coming nested inside another Talosian illusion that calls the entire proceeding into question—and moreover through footage that was also re-used to represent the current configuration in episodes both before and after, should "count" any more than...anything else?
The objective truth of the matter is that none of TOS was ever "meant for close scrutiny" in visual terms. (Nor in terms of continuity and canon, either, although they did generally make an effort at being somewhat self-consistent, even if this wasn't always entirely successful.) Nobody was intended to see that show in HD on a huge flatscreen and be able to make out all the details...or rather, the according lack thereof. It was meant to convey the impression of a futuristic setting to the audience of the time, not to be a literal representation of one down to the precise arrangement of every last deck plate. Taking it literally is something later shows did a little of, once in a while—in spite of Roddenberry's suggestion that perhaps it should all be viewed as a dramatization of the "actual" events, and his equivocation as to whether certain segments of it should be counted as canonical at all—purely for the purposes of affectionate schlock in the name of nostalgia and fangasms and all that good stuff. (And don't get me wrong, I enjoyed that as much as the next monkey, more often than not, but it's hardly a fair expectation to hold an ongoing seres to.)
Yet the truly persnickety will note even those didn't always line up with the original document in every detail. "Trials and Tribble-ations" (DS9) follows along with a prior retcon in stating the command uniforms were gold, when they were actually green, and Jein's models weren't 100% accurate re-creations in every detail; "In A Mirror, Darkly" (ENT) imparted a number of slight physical refinements to the Defiant, both inside and out, and her uniforms received a different insignia instead of the delta, despite such practice having been deprecated behind the scenes of TOS as an error not to be repeated. (Not that I'm implying any of these are worthy of complaint, mind.)
quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000: However, the concept of chronological design ethos is at least as sound as chronological registries, if not moreso.
Perhaps not the best comparison for you to make here, considering registry anomalies have abounded in canon from the beginning as well, without this ever being remotely "universe-breaking" or whatever other hyperbole.
There are still plenty of chronological progressions to be interpreted, just like always. Round nacelles still tend to predate bladelike ones, for instance. And we can readily see a progression from Bonaventure to Connie in parallel to that of the Warp Delta to Franklin, with the NX then being a synthesis of elements from each with what was developed from its own precursor prototypes that so clearly follow on from the Phoenix, and itself an ancestor of both the Walker and the Akira, if we care to. (Also, a progression from Daedalus to Olympic, with the design of the Medusan ship in TOS-R being an outgrowth of that lineage in between, and maybe even throw the Oberth in here too?) Plus any number of others, complete with many through-lines and offshoots. I'm not seeing why the DSC ships pose a threat to any of this, honestly.
quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000: I'm not suggesting they need to conform to our *speculations*. I am suggesting they should've conformed to existing *canon*.
Practically every second word out of the mouth of the makers of this show has been about their devotion to canon; it's among their prime concerns (no pun intended), to an even greater extent than any production team before them! The first season staff were even given to "fanatically" fact-checking individual details of Memory Alpha articles (shout out to Dan and Harry!) by re-watching entire episodes, just to make sure they weren't contradicting the actual text, before they would "haggle" and "horsetrade" around the writer's table as to how much wiggle room could be negotiated to "serve both canon and the story."
It's simply that their interpretations of existing canon, and what conforming to it looks like, are not the same as yours. And the thwarting of expectations is undoubtedly quite deliberate on their part. They know full well that the more they stoke impassioned debates among us fanboys over "continuity errors" and other minutiae, the more the show stays a hot topic of conversation in fandom. Our nerdrage is a renewable fuel to them!
quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000: There is no logic, however, to the Disco fleet, or the Discoprise.
There is a logic, just not the logic you or I would have elected to follow, had it been up to us. For more on Eaves' ideas about it, see my reply to Dukkie below.
quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000: You reference the Sarajevo and Andorian Kumari as prime-canon evidence of a diverse design lineage, yet the point is about Starfleet designs. I could certainly accept more alien ships brought into Starfleet or periods of alien influence (say, a Vulcan/Andorian/Terran fusion in early Starfleet ships), but that's not what we are shown.
The Sarajevo was a Starfleet ship, at least according to both the script of "Daedalus" (ENT) and Eaves' sketches of it. I threw in the Kumari because something about it always seemed generally suggestive to me of exactly such a fusion of Andorian tech into future SF vessels down the road...and in retrospect, we could well interpret the Shran from DSC and later the Defiant from DS9 as following on from this, if we like. Again, the possibilities are endless.
quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000: Rubbish. That makes as much sense as having Star Trek IV's new Enterprise be the TOS version from stem to stern, inside and out. Nobody would've taken that seriously...
Firstly, nobody (except perhaps a mere handful of us) would take a show that looks like TOS seriously today, either...
Secondly, the pilot Enterprises were never the same as the TOS version from stem to stern, inside and out. And in fact, the DSC iteration incorporates several features that correspond to ones added between "The Cage" and "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and then removed for the series proper—including the dark strips around the saucer running lights, vents on the back of the nacelles, and even what might be retroactively interpreted as a bridge viewscreen window!
And thirdly, since you bring up the Ent-A, her interiors changed with every film she was in, even going from TNG-style touchscreens and carpeting (yet also revealing innards highly reminiscent of TOS) in TFF back to physical knobs and buttons and such in TUC (but now with a more TOS-like paintjob to the exterior).
quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000: Debatable, but even if we stipulate to that you're asking for a refit back to TOS from TMP circa Star Trek II. It's patently absurd.
I'm not asking for anything, merely taking what's been given and making the most of it, as ever. I certainly don't find decrying it all as "bullshit"—even if it is—a constructive approach.
Heaps upon heaps of things in Trek of all eras are patently absurd. But that's not really problematic, because whatever Benny Russell thinks, it's not real.
quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000: On the contrary, it is the only way to maintain logical consistency, provided one recognizes that you cannot half-ass a reboot.
Discovery, like the JJ films, only make sense as a completely separate universe unto itself. Once you recognize that, understanding it becomes much simpler and far less convoluted. There's no need to twist yourself in knots...
"Soft" reboots absolutely are a thing, and so are in-story retcons, and so too is the capacity for one to turn into another at the hands of the next writer to come along (hello Klingon foreheads). You are of course free to view it however you like, but the people making the show have been following at every step the premise that it's in-continuity with TOS and all the other shows and films, including the Prime elements that frame the Kelvin Timeline (hence bridge windows).
(BTW, "Prime" is a term that itself was only coined with ST'09 in the first place, so if you didn't accept that Spock Prime and the Kelvin were from the same universe as TOS/TNG/DS9/VGR/ENT and their related films to begin with, then any discussion of "Prime canon" here is moot anyway. Talk about twisting oneself into knots!)
I'm simply recognizing that the conceit behind the fiction, by and large, is that it's all one overarching universe being represented through ever-advancing artistic depiction, with which they've always considered themselves free to take liberties when comes to niggling details. "Relics"/"Trials"/"Darkly" didn't re-create those little slices of TOS because they were somehow bound to in order to remain canonically valid or whatever. They did it just for fun, because they wanted to...which is as perfectly good a reason not to do it, too.
quote:Originally posted by Dukhat: I've heard this before, and I think it's a load of horseshit. Why would Fuller care what shape nacelles are? How does that impact the story he was trying to tell?
Considering that most, if not all, of these ship designs look exactly like typical John Eaves, I'm guessing the Fuller thing is just some made-up bs.
Beyond a longstanding desire to keep the Enterprise and her sisters "special" and instantly identifiable as distinct from other ships (which would be why Reliant was ultimately designed as she was, after having been scripted and storyboarded as identical to the Enterprise, and why DS9 was restricted from using the Sovereign for the Dominion War), I presume Fuller wanted the show to have its own distinct style rather than ape that of a 1960s television series. It was he who dictated the Klingons and their ships should look strikingly different, as well. The fallacy here is in thinking this in and of itself equates to taking the show out of continuity with TOS. By all indications, that's not been the approach taken by anyone involved, at any point.
Here is an excerpt from an article on designing the Shenzhou that comes with the Eaglemoss model:
Having cut his teeth on Deep Space Nine and various STAR TREK movies, Eaves was no stranger to tight deadlines or the usual request for every new STAR TREK ship to be completely different to anything that had been seen before. But this time co-creator and original showrunner Bryan Fuller upped the stakes by stipulating that each ship should not only look much flatter than Matt Jefferies' Enterprise in TOS, but also avoid featuring round nacelles. In essence, they needed to look as unusual as possible.
"Coming up with a shape that worked for both ships* and for Bryan was one thing," says Eaves. "But at the same time, we also had to find a way to explain why these ships in the same fleet as Enterprise would look completely different from it. It was a process that took many months and involved hundreds of sketches until we were finally got on the right track."
[...]
"I talked it over with Todd Cherniawsky, the production designer, and we eventually came up with the theory to explain why these new ships didn't have round nacelles and looked a bit out of place," recalls Eaves. "We came up with this idea that it was like the old Edwards Air Force Base in the '40s. All these companies were creating these new X-planes and, even though the purpose was the same, they all looked drastically different. So we created this whole scenario that this was like an experimental stage. Up to that point the Vulcans had been influential on matters of ship design, but now the humans had decided that they had enough of that influence and they wanted to go on their own. So this is just a 20 or 25-year detachment from that association to [where humans have] come up with their own style of ships."
In keeping with their theory, Cherniawsky and Eaves decided that all of the fleet ships would be named after test pilots, X-plane pilots, and astronauts of various eras.
[...]
Once a general shape had been chosen, Eaves concentrated on making the ship fit the series timeframe and also reference the future.
"You'll see some [elements of the] NX-01 from the past and you'll see some [elements of the] Reliant from what's to come," explains Eaves. "I felt it was important to try to tie these timeframes together in detailed form to put the ships into context..."
*refers to Discovery and Shenzhou
Now, it goes without saying that none of his interpretations, even of his own designs, is canon until/unless it makes it into the show itself, and in the absence of such we are free to interpret them differently, if we so choose. Personally, I would tend toward finding it more sensible to go the opposite way, and think of these ships as representing G2K's infusion of alien influences into SF designs, especially since round nacelles were clearly a human thing, by virtue of being already present on the Phoenix, before the Vulcans ever made contact. But that's me. (I do have to wonder why he didn't think of that, considering he designed the Phoenix, too.)
Why would you expect them not to look like John Eaves designs? After all, that's what they are. And he was presumably picked to do the job because they actually like his work.
quote:Originally posted by Dukhat: First I've head of this, but it sounds like more after-the-fact bs to me.
Again, more like before-the-fact BS:
"The task started with the guideline that the Enterprise for Discovery had to be 25% different...so we took Jefferies original concepts and with great care tried to be as faithful as possible. We had the advantage of a ten-year gap in Trek history to retro the ship a bit with elements that could be removed and replaced somewhere in the time frame of Discovery and the Original series...we split the [nacelle] struts so in time the cooling vent side could be removed to make it more like the Original TOS strut..."
Of course, he also mentioned that his initial version had straighter pylons to begin with, and that these were changed to swept back ones later in the process. But I don't see how his being overruled on that one detail somehow invalidates his entire overall reasoning up to that point. Besides, the NX and Intrepid from ENT had angled ones earlier, too, as did some of Jefferies' initial sketches of the TOS Enterprise that Eaves consulted. (And Jefferies envisioned such outboard components as "quick change units" all along, anyway. This also applied to the nacelles themselves, which as we know from onscreen references in "The Apple" and "The Savage Curtain" [TOS] could be jettisoned and discarded if required in an emergency situation.)
quote:Originally posted by Dukhat: Putting aside the exterior of the ship for a moment, I'm pretty sure that what we will see on the inside of the Discoprise will look far more advanced than what we see in TOS. Are you suggesting that the inside of the ship will go from looking like 2019 sets to 1966 sets?
The sets? Of course not. I'm suggesting that the "real" ship the DSC sets are representing through 2019 production values will be transformed into the one the TOS sets represented through 1966 ones.
Are the various locations on the Ent-D that were represented by redressed TMP sets "really" just slight modifications of corresponding ones on the movie ship? I don't think so. (And aren't you the guy who used to say that we should simply imagine all those re-uses of STII-III models in TNG, and of various alien ones throughout, "really" represented more different and diverse designs, and expressed disappointment at the remastered release not replacing all that stock footage with such? I guess I'm not the only one here who has reconsidered views of yore! Not that there's anything wrong with that. But perhaps your signature could use an update, too? )
"Looking more advanced" is subjective. And it remains to be seen just how much of the Enterprise we will actually see in DSC. Recall again how various sections of the Ent-A looked like TNG while others looked like TOS at the very same time, and others still like a fusion of both. And note that Richard Taylor incorporated art deco design cues into the TMP refit, a style that in real world terms actually predates the WWII and Jet/Space Age influences of Jefferies, and moreover one distinguished in its day as "modern" largely by its very conglomeration of clashing features from disparate styles of the past. In-universe, we could well imagine the movie-era aesthetic as much the same, an impression reinforced by elements of the NX, Kelvin, and DSC ships all prefiguring it.
At any rate, it really needn't become an issue dealt with directly by DSC at all, because unless they employ some time jumps, it's highly unlikely they'll ever reach a point where they actually overlap with TOS. ("The Cage" excepted, and once again, there are multiple ways of skirting that one.)
quote:Originally posted by Dukhat: Christ, now you're starting to sound like Timo.
However it was intended, I will take that as a very great compliment! I have indeed studied well the master (and our moderator here still, I see, in name if not in act) these past years, and come to appreciate and value more than ever the utility and elegance of his approach, whereby "one can choose to argue that any bit of onscreen evidence is in fact proof of the exact opposite," even if I don't always agree with all of his interpretations (and even he may not either). I fully expect such appreciation would be echoed by the makers of DSC, too.
In times like these, we would all do well to observe Saloniemi's Razor:
"Occam has little place in fiction (in addition to bein[g] fundamentally faulty anyway). When there is nothing explicit, we cannot call the implicit 'true,' regardless of what things like common sense might suggest."
Or, to borrow yet another of his apt retorts, and in doing so put my response to G2K's "patently absurd" comment above another way...
quote:Originally posted by Timo: 1) Decide that something seen in Star Trek cannot be true. 2) Decide that this is because a known key ingredient of Star Trek is absent in this particular case. 3) Insist that it must be absent because it wasn't mentioned by the characters at least twice. Or then for no reason. 4) Get offended.
Timo Saloniemi
quote:Originally posted by Dukhat: I've heard this before as well, and I call bs also. It's one thing to call this show a 'visual reboot." It's another thing entirely to say that what we see in this visual reboot will eventually segue into what we see in TOS. It's either a visual reboot of the TOS era, or it isn't. You can't have it both ways.
I've never used that term myself, and to my knowledge neither has anyone involved with DSC. As far as I can tell, it's only being used by fans—as either a defense or an indictment, depending on the fan. But as for having it both ways, I see absolutely no reason why they (and we) can't. It's an update of the elements they want it to be an update of, and also a precursor to the elements they want it to be a precursor to. They needn't be mutually exclusive, even if it's always going to be left somewhat open to interpretation as to which elements are which, by design. Just like with ENT and ST'09. (And just like the other shows selectively followed up on what they wanted to, whilst also ignoring or changing whatever they wanted, too.) That's the way the game is played...and it's still as fine a game as ever.
quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000:
...but then add in the TMP refit, and we have an alternating pattern instead of a one-off anomaly! (Again, if one insists upon taking it all literally. I note that pic uses the "remastered" versions...is that "Prime canon" in your eyes, then? I ask because, as mentioned earlier, other remastered episodes also contradict some elements of the original by replacing them with updated versions, too! But alternatively, if redressing a set and adding a few new greebles to a miniature can elsewhere in canon represent a significantly greater in-universe difference, then why not in the case of the pilot Enterprise[s]?)
quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000: Also, this is more of a side note given that it was a background thing, but they also modified Spacedock...this is not evidence of incomplete construction. This is a different structure altogether . . . you cannot get from A to B without utterly altering the structure, or building atop it and thereby exacerbating the other issues. By "other issues", I refer to the fact that there's the little matter of the secondary mushroom, here receiving an outer skin despite being tiny, and other central shaft differences. If you expand the main mushroom (at the cost of hundreds of ships' worth of material, mind you), you alter the proportions of the assorted parts.
That's...fun, I guess. As much fun as an analysis of how Greg Jein's re-creation of the Enterprise gets certain details like the curvature of the saucer underside or the number and arrangement of windows "wrong," or a rehash of how the TMP refit can't "realistically" be derived from the TOS version, anyway. But while we're at it, let's hear why in a post-scarcity world (certain exotic substances excepted) where energy can be instantaneously converted into matter, and vice versa, "the cost of hundreds of ships' worth of material" would be an obstacle to...anything at all?
-MMoM
[ September 10, 2018, 12:10 AM: Message edited by: The Mighty Monkey of Mim ]
Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
No offense, MMoM, but none of your Timo-esque bullshit (or CBS's or Eaves's bullshit, for that matter) is going to sway my opinions about the show. Nice try though, and welcome back to the forum
-------------------- "A film made in 2008 isn't going to look like a TV series from 1966 if it wants to make any money. As long as the characters act the same way, and the spirit of the story remains the same then it's "real" Star Trek. Everything else is window dressing." -StCoop
Registered: Jun 2000
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posted
I honestly did not have the time to read that entire post, but this part...
"However, the claim that DSC is any more of a 'reboot' (visual or otherwise) than TMP or TNG or ENT or the framing elements of ST'09 in turn were is indeed...FAKE NEWS!"
...is clearly not true. TMP was set at least two and a half years after TOS, with a major reworking of the ship's design being an explicit part of what happened in the meantime (I'll give you a pass on the Klingons—that was a reboot, even if it was much later given an explanation). TNG was set a century after TOS, and ENT a century before. Of course they look very different. The difference is that DSC is set in a time we've already seen (or, at least, we've seen times that very closely bracket it that look the same as each other), and it just doesn't fit at all.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
I can't properly reply to the whole long thing right this second, but thanks for the long Eaves EagleMoss quotes. It shows that even the production staff have to tie themselves in knots just to figure out how to get their job done with hands tied by the rules of the reboot, and it does soften my harsh appraisal of his work somewhat.
As for the rest, to summarize, your arguments are:
1. It's all fake and inconsistent anyway, though they tried to make an effort, so "canon" is meaningless. 2. TAS is canon. 3. The TOS Constitution was the weird one-off in canon. 4. Stop trying to apply logic to canon.
I am going to have a great time writing the reply.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
posted
Apparently he feels the need to pop in once a year with some ridiculously long posts to remind us all how much of a smartass he is.
-------------------- "A film made in 2008 isn't going to look like a TV series from 1966 if it wants to make any money. As long as the characters act the same way, and the spirit of the story remains the same then it's "real" Star Trek. Everything else is window dressing." -StCoop
Registered: Jun 2000
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quote:Originally posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim: We are talking about fiction here, not fact. It's all constructed bullshit. However, the claim that DSC is any more of a "reboot" (visual or otherwise) than TMP or TNG or ENT or the framing elements of ST'09 in turn were is indeed...FAKE NEWS!
To echo TSN, just because one branded show has differences from another branded show doesn't make at a reboot.
Case in point, DS9 wasn't a reboot. It was a spinoff. They went to the trouble to have Picard and the Enterprise appear and be consistent with their TNG history to clearly establish that it was set in the same time period, just a different place.
Similarly, TNG was a spinoff of TOS. They went to the trouble of having Dr. McCoy appear as a very old man reminiscing about ships named Enterprise to clearly establish it was set at a later date.
Enterprise, too, was a spinoff. As a prequel their options were a bit more limited, but they brought in Cromwell to reprise his role as Zephram Cochrane in a taped message to establish the connection and date.
TMP was not a spinoff. It was a continuation. They spent hundreds of thousands on the plot device of the drydock model, and many minutes of screen time, to explain the new Enterprise as a refit of the old one, and with it the new look generally. They focused on that and let the new Klingon look slip, but even that was taken care of later.
The JJ-verse tried to pull the spinoff maneuver into a different universe for themselves to play in but failed, as they were so ignorant of Trek that even their attempt to use Nimoy as the hook was so contradictory to the original character and his setting as to make the manuver unsuccessful.
Discovery hasn't even bothered to try showing us something familiar to latch on to, and instead they go out of their way to modify and de-familiarize everything we know. Even the Enterprise herself, a fictional vessel so iconic it's in the National Air & Space Museum's Milestones of Flight Hall despite having neither flown nor orbited in real life, has been modified in design to the tune of at least 25% difference per production staff (for reasons in dispute) and reportedly upscaled some 40%.
So, let's cut the crap in which we try to pretend that Discovery does *not* reflect an unprecedented set of changes to the Star Trek universe. The attempt to market it as prime while knowingly making it as different as they do is nothing more than an effort at anal implantation of sunshine, which is why efforts to defend that claim invariably look as silly as yours.
Part II to follow another day.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
posted
Correction: Discovery does show us something familiar. In the opening credits they show a TOS phaser and TOS communicator. The former is shattered and replaced by or transformed into a Disco phaser, with the communicator being obliterated completely into particles.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
quote:Originally posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim: It should hardly need to be said that Star Trek continuity, such as it be, is not actually a self-consistent objective reality, and never has been, however much we might all like to pretend otherwise.
Objective? No. However, the whole point is to build a self-consistent fictional reality. Every story worth being called one does, or merely assumes ours. Even a sitcom, which plays fast and loose with continuity in pursuit of the comedy, will maintain certain details of characters and setting, along with at least a cursory relationship to objective reality. The purple-haired lady has cats at home, not lions. Ed sells shoes and hates the neighbor lady, not hunt for live dinosaurs. Norm doesn't rocket out of the bar via jetpack.
There's a term for when even sitcoms jump the shark. It's from Happy Days, in which Fonzie actually jumps a shark, which was so destructive to any concept of even the sitcom's fictional reality that it became the defining term for breaking them.
Your argument is seemingly that we shouldn't view shark-jumping as a pejorative.
Sorry, kemosabe: no-can-do. We all know Star Trek is a pot with many hands, but the beauty of it was that it held together so well, and a point of pride for many fans and even some production staffers was that it did so far better than most any other similar entertainment property. Abandonment of that distinction is the problem, not recognition of its abandonment.
quote:
quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000: True enough, but fixating there rather ignores the point that FASA, along with fans and canon designs, generally tried to stick to an overall look consistent with the times. The designers even said as much. We would not expect a curvy Intrepid Class hull beside the Excelsior in Star Trek III, for instance, any more than we would expect a TOS-styled saucer as the front end of the Galaxy.
The irony here is, that's more or less exactly what many FASA designs were.
No, FASA designs were not intergenerational monstrosities. They were *intragenerational* monstrosities. They tried to maintain an era-appropriate look, even if that look was era-apprpriately hideous (e.g. Chandley, IIRC).
Why do you persist in trying to evade the point about era-appropriate looks in favor of bashing FASA designs, even to the point of doing so in a shark-jumpingly absurd way?
quote: And also that you're apparently content to take those designers at their word...but not Eaves or anyone else behind DSC.
What are you even trying to talk about, here?
quote: ... and the TOS Connie {…} can quite easily be seen as {an outlier}.
So STD fans are willing to write off the Jefferies Enterprise design as an anachronistic one-off outlier design so as to believe that their reboot show (with its non-TOS-looking ships) isn't one.
Stuff like that is why all the STD fans claiming folks who don't like Discovery aren't true Star Trek fans always amuses and amazes me.
But seriously, if you have to write off everything you've seen before, yours is not the argument for consistency. Hell, you spend paragraphs attacking consistency. Why even seek to explain away the Constitution Class as an outlier if there is, to you, nothing to lay out from?
quote: TAS threw in the Bonaventure
TAS isn't canon. It wasn't treated as such during the TNG-ENT production run, so it is silly to try to backport it because the guy who ran StarTrek.com wanted to pretend he was the lord of Trek after Berman left.
quote: Thinking of the TOS Enterprise as the quintessential SF vessel of her day because she was the first one we became intimately acquainted with is as faulty as thinking of Spock as the quintessential Vulcan, or Worf as the quintessential Klingon, or Kirk as the quintessential starship captain.
We are explicitly told they aren't. Spock is half-Vulcan, Worf was raised by humans, and Kirk is shot to the Admiralty.
The Enterprise design has no such uniqueness noted, and indeed the rest of Trek suggests it is a standard.
quote: Especially considering it's stated straight up in "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" (TOS) that "there are only twelve like it in the fleet" and in "Bread And Circuses" (TOS) that she is "a very special vessel"!
Twelve ships of a class doesn't mean the rest are wholly different technologically and aesthetically. That's a crazy claim.
Also, Merrick was distinguishing between spaceships and starships.
posted
Let's step back and review for a moment, Mim.
Earlier, I said "From FASA to Masao's Starfleet Museum and from the Constellation and Soyuz classes to the Nebula and Intrepid (old or new), there has been a consistent effort to make ship designs fit known designs of an era."
You responded that FASA ships are ugly, as if that is relevant. Still trying to treat you fairly, I noted that fixating on FASA ignores the point I was making, and reasonably noted that the possible presence of outliers doesn't change the general rule.
That, I would note, is the approach that most reasonable people take, rather than trying to suggest that outliers render the whole enterprise moot. Another alternative is to do what you did and *literally declare the TOS Enterprise moot*. And when the notion of hypothetical outliers was mentioned, you took that as an opportunity to try to excitedly argue that the FJ ship designs seen on-screen should be ejected from consideration, because reasons.
This is not rational behavior.
Speaking of irrational, your absurd viewpoint even requires you to not only claim TAS is canon when it isn't (because you think Bonaventure vs. NX Class creates enough confusion for you to slip through), but also to make challenge against "The Cage" being canon when it is (because you think having the Enterprise look the same in 2254 and 2266 hurts your case, which is true).
"The Cage" is canon. I've already had a debate with an STD sufferer about it, because he wanted to pull the same malarkey.
So, as a public service, here is the perennial reminder that "non-canon" is not equal to "things you don't like."
quote: Now, explain why a configuration from a rejected and unaired pilot, depicted in the series proper only as literally and explicitly, not speculatively, a Talosian illusion—of attested veracity, and yet with the testimony to this effect coming nested inside another Talosian illusion that calls the entire proceeding into question—and moreover through footage that was also re-used to represent the current configuration in episodes both before and after, should "count" any more than...anything else?
1. "The Cage" was broadcast on television via the TNG package in 1988 to help offset the issues related to the writer's strike. Naturally, rather than show a different, two-decade-older program with color and black-&-white bits cold, they had an introduction wrapper which also featured ST5 and TNG2 previews at the end.
1A. The Cage is released with the rest of TOS on home media.
2. Your claim that Kirk would not have known that his ship had been, structurally and aesthetically, totally different around eight years before he took command is absurd.
quote: they did generally make an effort at being somewhat self-consistent, even if this wasn't always entirely successful.
I'd have thought you'd say that is irrelevant.
Oh wait, you do.
quote: Yet the truly persnickety will note even those didn't always line up with the original document in every detail. "Trials and Tribble-ations" (DS9) follows along with a prior retcon in stating the command uniforms were gold, when they were actually green, and Jein's models weren't 100% accurate re-creations in every detail; "In A Mirror, Darkly" (ENT) imparted a number of slight physical refinements to the Defiant, both inside and out, and her uniforms received a different insignia instead of the delta, despite such practice having been deprecated behind the scenes of TOS as an error not to be repeated. (Not that I'm implying any of these are worthy of complaint, mind.)
1. Yes, you are making them into a complaint, as you are trying to use them as evidence against the very concept of Trek's fictional reality.
2. Kirk's standard uniform is gold. Federation ships are gray. A whiff of other color that scarcely shows on-screen, or even not at all… be it "avocado" or "duck egg"… doesn't change that.
Or do you argue that some of the kitbashes made for UV matte filming had highlighter-color windows and other gaudy-colored features?
3. The minor differences between ships (I am surprised you didn't reference the four-footer Enterprise-D) are split hairs compared to trying to fit the Discovery fleet into the TOS Federation.
quote: Perhaps not the best comparison for you to make here, considering registry anomalies have abounded in canon from the beginning as well,
Oh, no, I am happy to make the comparison. Starship registries flow chronologically. So do ship designs.
quote: I'm not seeing why the DSC ships pose a threat to any of this, honestly.
Because you don't want to. You want to pretend the Eaves copy-paste stylings, previously mostly limited to the 2370s, can just flit back and forth with no concept of or thought to the engineering principles that might be involved. You reference the Sarajevo, for instance, not recognizing that the very reason it is so memorable is because it was contentious as a design.
Disco ships are akin to having modern plastic bumper covers and headlight assemblies atop a unibody frame show up on the 1957 Thunderbird. Not only would they not have built it that way, but they couldn't have.
Having a chronological design ethos helps imbue a sense of reality to the fiction because the audience sees it in cars, as just one example. Sure, we may not be privy to every background detail of engineering and Subspace physics that goes into Starship design, but the design ethos changing over time helps give us the idea that such things exist. On the other hand, just slapping different era details on willy-nilly breaks that realism.
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quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000: I'm not suggesting they need to conform to our *speculations*. I am suggesting they should've conformed to existing *canon*.
Practically every second word out of the mouth of the makers of this show has been about their devotion to canon; it's among their prime concerns (no pun intended), to an even greater extent than any production team before them!
I certainly agree that they have paid more lip service to the term "canon" then other production teams. However, they have also contradicted more of it, complained more about it (e.g. Enterprise), and also used the term "reboot" more.
Certainly in an age of weaponized canon policies . . . that is to say, a time when transmedia entertainment company marketing folks realize that "canon" is a concept that sells, rather than just being some esoteric nerd thing . . . it behooves us to pay a bit more attention to the *results* than to just rest upon the *claim* like we could in the old days.
quote: It's simply that their interpretations of existing canon, and what conforming to it looks like, are not the same as yours.
Nope. They totally conform to it, for certain tiny values of the word "conform".
You cannot "interpret" 1+1 to be 3.
quote: And the thwarting of expectations is undoubtedly quite deliberate on their part.
Bob Iger called. He said to cut that shit out, Kathleen.
quote:
quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000: There is no logic, however, to the Disco fleet, or the Discoprise.
There is a logic, just not the logic you or I would have elected to follow, had it been up to us.
No, there is no logic. There *was*, briefly, a potential for some. Remember the first trailer Discovery? Ever see the early Shenzhou? They both had mostly-smooth, mostly-rounded hulls and three Bussards on rectangular nacelles. That could've totally served as a gateway between the Constitutions as seen in TOS and the TMP ships, even if the Disco fleet at large had a lot of crappy designs.
Instead, they chose to go with Eavesian-sharp designs with widely varying nacelles and whatever ugliness they could muster, except for the smooth-but-ridiculous-looking main ship.
quote: Firstly, nobody (except perhaps a mere handful of us) would take a show that looks like TOS seriously today, either...
Wrong.
quote: {"The Cage" Enterprise has} what might be retroactively interpreted as a bridge viewscreen window!
No it doesn't. Don't start that crap. I've already had that debate and the other guy lost.
More later.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
posted
Oh, and it wasn't the "Cage" Enterprise anyway, it was an early shot of the second pilot version. The series production version doesn't have that external not-a-window, and in any case the series was very clear that the viewscreen was never a window, even if the bridge module had a light on it. Remember, our first glimpse of the viewscreen on Kirk's Enterprise (by production order) shows it in screensaver mode.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
posted
I stand corrected; that's not the *really* bad one from my old Star Trek II Combat Simulator. I'll have to go look and see which is the hideously bad one.
Of course, bear in mind I like the Timeship Lynx, so it isn't like I have any taste. ;-l
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