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2018-10-25 Discovery and Trek Continuity In an interview with Digital Spy, Kurtzman, co-creator and showrunner of Star Trek: Discovery, was asked about keeping consistent with the novels and comics. Of course, any production staffer asked that in the 90s would've said they weren't part of the canon continuity, besides the little oops-broken handshake agreement not to use Shelby in DS9 while the Calhoun books used her . . . the exception proving the rule.
Kurtzman answered much differently, however, specifically placing them in the continuity that his universe as Trek show developer follows.
"Everybody is always trying to maintain continuity," Kurtzman told us. "But given the 50 plus years of Star Trek, it literally becomes impossible because people decide that they want to follow a character in a book series after the show has been cancelled, and so they'll invent stories." "And then 15 years later, a new show will come on that will take that character back and you can't be consistent with everything. Our goal is always to try, always, always to try and never to negate what has existed in the novels and graphic novels but it is a literal impossibility."
"And part of what has kept Trek going for so long is everyone's wonderful imagination to keep writing books and keep making graphic novels and keep making shows. And at a certain point, given the volume of things that are out there it's just impossible for everything to sync up perfectly. So we give it our best effort."
The big takeaway from that is that Kurtzman didn't mean what everyone thought he meant when he said they were working hard to avoid "violating canon" on the new CBS productions like Discovery.
Most assumed that he meant not going contrary to the prior live-action Trek, but that was assuming a definition for both "violating" and "canon". For the former, some have argued that canon isn't violated so long as no one in prior live-action Trek specifically stated that no such thing as spore drive existed in the 2250s, for example. I find such a requirement a rather unique point of view, as direct negation alone cannot possibly serve as a rational standard. For the latter, of course, the exact meaning of "canon" is rather important. Since he includes the books and comics, we now know his definition was never the same.
Such quotes don't come along often, but with further review we can confirm this reading. Ten years prior, Kurtzman said:
Alex Kurtzman: We did a lot of reading of the books. I think we consider the books canon to a large degree so it’s very important to us to stay consistent. But there is a bit of a hole and there’s actually different mythologies about {Kirk & Spock's} history so it’s a matter of staying consistent but also figuring out how you can play around a little bit anchored by the rules Source: https://trekmovie.com/2008/09/19/orci-kurtzman-trek-very-true-to-canon-even-books/
TrekMovie even identifies it as him treating the "Star Trek EU" as canon.
Thus, Kurtzman has revealed that the canon policy he's operating under is totally different than the one used during the Roddenberry- and Berman-era of Trek production, instead matching the JJ-verse's. Through the end of Enterprise and the Viacom split, Star Trek canon included only live-action Trek, with ultra-rare, explicit exception.
By adding in novels & comics generally, most never intended to be canon anyway, Kurtzman has fundamentally altered the Trek universe. This is more than the references we had before of them consulting "The Final Reflection" by John Ford for background material… that's little different in principle than using a WW2 submarine flick for inspiration. Making it canon, however, is a much different animal.
For example, if I take Battlestar Galactica and declare that Stargate SG-1 is suddenly canon in that universe, I just radically altered Battlestar Galactica at the stroke of a pen. But can I say I altered it, or is it that I have made a new universe different from what existed before?
Clearly, the answer can only logically be the latter, because such a fundamental shift in meaning and fact cannot work any more than one can have a visual-only reboot of an audio-visual medium (e.g. replacing TOS visuals with clips from Star Wars).
Still, many view Discovery as true Trek because it is, to borrow a phrase, the next closest continuer of the Trek shows of the past. It was marketed that way, after all. And naturally, one can argue that the rights-holder can modify their universe via a change in canon policy as they see fit. I agree.
Indeed, in the case of subtraction, this can have only a limited effect on the universe. If one were to decanonize DS9 or The Empire Strikes Back, for instance, we would lose information but there'd still be the same story thereafter. Similarly, a minor clarification in the margins, or even minor additions, don't break the universe. Major additions, however, do.
In the earlier 'BattleStargate' example, BSG's owners could claim that it was the same BSG universe as before, but this is a fundamental impossibility. Even had they been written so as not to contradict (in which case they'd have already been in the same universe), any new production of BSG that referenced SG-1 would be a break from what came before.
They can change the universe with a penstroke, in other words, but that doesn't negate the fictional reality and continuity that existed prior to the shift.
In effect, what we have here is Tuvix, the being created when a transporter accident merged the characters of the Vulcan Tuvok and the nutty alien Neelix. If the classic Trek canon is Tuvok and the books and comics continuities are Neelix, what Kurtzman has done with Discovery is not to give us more Tuvok, but to execute a transporter accident and give us Tuvix.
Why would I, to learn about Tuvok, waste my time on Tuvix? Tuvix can tell me things about Tuvok but only via a distorted lens, so I might as well stick with what Tuvok said. This is doubly true when Tuvix seems to sometimes "reimagine" assorted Tuvok things, add in new contrary info, and otherwise get Tuvok details wrong.
This is not to suggest Tuvix is bad, mind you, or that it is bad for you to like him. However, pretending he is Tuvok is pretty silly.
Some might argue the analogy and say the change is merely an addition of new information, as if giving Tuvok new memories, but that's not the case. The very identity of Trek is altered just as surely as Tuvok's DNA was . . . and his uniform, too.
While perhaps not as emotionally satisfying as having CBS explicitly say it is a reboot, the same effect is achieved over and above Fuller's previous "reimagine" comments or listing all the myriad differences in history, technology, culture, et cetera ad nauseum. STD's universe is not the same as the one first seen in Star Trek: The Original Series and last seen in Star Trek: Enterprise. It inhabits a new universe that includes other material, like the Star Wars EU before it.
Indeed, calling it a reboot might be unfair, as a reboot is usually something new. This is just something completely different.
But here's the thing: Have you actually watched Star Trek: Picard? Everything Kurtzman is quoted as saying here about sticking to the 'canonicity' of the novels is in diametric opposition to that show. There is literally nothing in STP that is consistent or in continuity with the novels, video games, comics, etc. that have been published since the end of ENT (the last on-screen thing that showed the prime universe.)
So I don't know if Kurtzman was just misquoted, led on by the interviewer (remember Anthony Pasquale?) or just flat-out lying, but nobody involved with the production of Star Trek television shows on CBS considers the books to be canon or adhered to.
-------------------- "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
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posted
What FawnDoo and Dukhat said. The quoted blogger is, frankly, talking utter bollocks, cherry-picking the bits of the interview he wants to justify his obvious anti-Kurtzmann stance. And trying to back it up with another interview from TWELVE YEARS AGO? And his Tuvix analogy is nothing short of risible.
posted
I agree, the novels/comics argument is silly.
Now, we can certainly argue about the whole “visual reboot” approach, in which the producers seem to feel that everything that we thought we saw didn’t actually look that way. (Exhibit A: Discoprise) I get why they’re doing it... once they decided to set their show in the TOS-era they had to either make it look like the 1960s cardboard sets, or redesign things. We can second-guess and debate and wish they’d done things differently, but we can also just enjoy the show if we want.
And besides, aside from just a couple of little details like the Discoprise, Picard doesn’t contradict anything we saw in TNG.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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quote:Originally posted by MinutiaeMan: Now, we can certainly argue about the whole “visual reboot” approach, in which the producers seem to feel that everything that we thought we saw didn’t actually look that way. (Exhibit A: Discoprise) I get why they’re doing it... once they decided to set their show in the TOS-era they had to either make it look like the 1960s cardboard sets, or redesign things. We can second-guess and debate and wish they’d done things differently, but we can also just enjoy the show if we want.
While I'm no fan of Kurtzman's approach to 'maintaining consistency with canon' by essentially throwing the ship 1,000 years into the future, classifying everything about the spore drive, and giving gag orders to Spock, Sarek, etc. about never speaking of Michael Burnham again (which IMHO was a complete cop-out and Kurtzman really should have just declared DSC as another alternate universe), I also don't think he's the Star Trek antichrist that people formerly complained that J.J. Abrams was.
As for the visual continuity, it's obvious that CBS has no intention of going back to the '60's visual style, or changing things over time so that by the 2360's, DSC will look exactly like TOS. And if it were any other show, I probably wouldn't care so much about the change. But as you say, they are essentially retconning TOS out of existence with a show that isn't going to be nearly as fondly remembered as the show it's trying to invalidate. And that kind of irks me.
-------------------- "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
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posted
The thing is, we don't know what DSC was meant to be. Bryan Fuller was the driving force in its original conception, and he left before an episode even aired. The official line for that continues to be because of his commitments to American Gods (which he then had to leave because of his commitments to Amazing Stories ffs) whereas the line continually trotted out by all the YouTubing Doomsayers is that Les Moonves canned him because Fuller wanted a more retro look than we got.
I've recently learned that initially there was a whole different uniform planned, using the primary colours, which was a bit of a hybrid of the classic TOS look and the TOS pilots uniforms. I wonder how closely they resembled the Discoprise uniforms?
So we don't know if the plan was always to go to the future - in which case, why take two seasons to do so? It does strike me as an interesting choice - if they'd started with a post-VOY set-up then sent them to the future, it might have been regarded as a cop-out (plus we know now that the post-VOY Federation isn't a nice place to begin with; sending a crew from a time when the UFP was new and bright to a time when it';s a distant tarnished memory opens up all sorts of possibilities.
Basically at this stage I'm not going to worry about it. It's a done deal, whayever the Fuller Discovery was going to be is mooot. Let's see whether taking the show into truly unknown territory becomes the making of it.
quote:Originally posted by MinutiaeMan: As for the visual continuity, it's obvious that CBS has no intention of going back to the '60's visual style, or changing things over time so that by the 2360's, DSC will look exactly like TOS. And if it were any other show, I probably wouldn't care so much about the change. But as you say, they are essentially retconning TOS out of existence with a show that isn't going to be nearly as fondly remembered as the show it's trying to invalidate. And that kind of irks me.
In my head, to borrow from the next franchise over, I just tag the difference in the visual style between TOS and shows set before it (Enterprise) and at roughly the same time (Discovery) as being the work of a perception filter. TOS has it's own style, and is fantastic, but it was never intended to work as part of a larger body of work and no-one back then gave the hugest amount of thought to consistency even from one episode to another. The technology in TOS is obviously just as advanced as that used in Discovery (more so, given it's ten years later) but the perception filter just means I don't see that version of the desktop :-)
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posted
I was under the impression that Fuller's original plan was for each season of Discovery to be set in a different time period, or was that only ever an unsubstantiated rumor?
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Shik
Starship database: completed; History of Starfleet: done; website: probably never
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posted
Yeah, I recall he'd wanted an anthology series, which would've been tits af.
-------------------- "The French have a saying: 'mise en place'—keep everything in its fucking place!"
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posted
Fargo has shown that, done right, an anthology show can work really well. And now that show's creator is our last best hope for any remotely-decent Trek movie.
I know that Fuller was enamoured of the anthology concept, but I don't think it was ever an approved part of the DSC pitch. I've always liked the idea, but didn't see how they could make it work in budgetary terms; after seeing how they've done three seasons and a dozen-odd minisodes of quite diverse nuTrek (especially using virtual sets), I think that they could have pulled it off quite easily!
quote:Originally posted by FawnDoo: But like I said, "trying to not negate" is not the same thing as "all this stuff is canon now".
He said both.
Indeed, in the process of the former he identified the once-non-canon as being part of the continuity of Trek. Such a phrasing is contrary to merely tipping the proverbial hat.
quote:Originally posted by Dukhat: There is literally nothing in STP that is consistent or in continuity with the novels, video games, comics, etc. that have been published since the end of ENT (the last on-screen thing that showed the prime universe.)
Many would argue the same applies to the previous shows.
quote: nobody involved with the production of Star Trek television shows on CBS considers the books to be canon or adhered to.
Kurtzman does, and has for years. Indeed, as I recall, the lady running Picard, herself a Trek author, was seated beside him in the more recent interview quotes. I'll double-check that.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
quote:Originally posted by Lee: What FawnDoo and Dukhat said. The quoted blogger is, frankly, talking utter bollocks, cherry-picking the bits of the interview he wants to justify his obvious anti-Kurtzmann stance. And trying to back it up with another interview from TWELVE YEARS AGO? And his Tuvix analogy is nothing short of risible.
Right?!? He's almost as bad as that Phasers.net jerk. :-P ;-)
I don't view it as cherry-picking. I simply went with what he said, and whipping out the older quote just shows the continuity of his opinion. That would be a common way of establishing the validity of a point about someone's beliefs, would it not?
(It worked well enough when I gave the quotes of Lucas the same treatment and proved dual canons for Star Wars when no one wanted to believe it and when their licensing people were trying to sell it as one big universe. Now, years later, they openly admit it.)
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000: Many would argue the same applies to the previous shows.
Yeah, but I'm not sure how that helps your point.
quote:Kurtzman does, and has for years. Indeed, as I recall, the lady running Picard, herself a Trek author, was seated beside him in the more recent interview quotes. I'll double-check that.
You're thinking of Kirsten Beyer. Whose own Voyager novels are now no longer in continuity with the show based on what we see of 7 of 9. And whether Kurtzman thinks what you think he thinks, or not, is pretty irrelevant when there hasn't been a single instance in either DSC or PIC where anything was consistent with a Star Trek novel. Heck, the one DSC novel that's been written isn't even in continuity with the show.
-------------------- "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
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quote:Originally posted by Dukhat: Yeah, but I'm not sure how that helps your point.
Perhaps I was unclear. The sentence meant that many would say STP is inconsistent with previous shows.
quote: Whose own Voyager novels are now no longer in continuity with the show based on what we see of 7 of 9. And whether Kurtzman thinks what you think he thinks, or not, is pretty irrelevant
Respectfully, that is backwards. If Beyer lifted quotes from her novels for STP yet Kurtzman said they weren't canon, the former wouldn't disprove the latter. Why, then, should the reverse be different?
quote:Heck, the one DSC novel that's been written isn't even in continuity with the show.
There are several STD novels, and they're considered as in-continuity.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
posted
I’m not even sure what you’re talking about now. There’s nothing about PIC that is consistent with the novelverse. Please give me some quotes from Beyer’s novels that have made it into the show.
-------------------- "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
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