(...)
I still feel these were the best rank insignia Trek ever produced though:
(...)
Eh. I never noticed the rank insignia on those uniforms either, and they are equally as pompous as the DSC ones.
TOS and TMP sleeve ranks are the most sensible solution, clearly visible and subtle. I'd maybe add neck pips as a complementary solutiona s you suggested, but really sleeve stripes would be the most sensible solution.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
Me too. I fail to understand why they made it so pointlessly elaborate and yet made the rank insignia practically invisible. Really, really stupid.
Yeah that bit about the rank being so tiny really gets me. It's like next to impossible to see unless you are in close up shots.
I lived on a ship for a few years and I learned that rank is worn in the attitude, not on the sleeve. Rank insignia makes sense on a large military base, but on a ship smaller than a carrier it's almost impossible to not become familiar with everyone in a very short time. Rank insignia is virtually meaningless in such close quarters where everyone knows everyone.
Now consider that in Trek, military culture is downplayed in favor of a more businesslike approach. When was the last time your supervisor needed a rank insignia?
The rank pips being small and almost unnoticeable unless you know where to look are perfect for crew on stations too large for everyone to get to know everyone by sight, where knowing some stranger's rank might be important. But on a starship with less than 1000 crew, everyone already knows everybody who can lawfully give them orders.
As much as I liked the TOS sleve rank, it was never very useful other than as decoration. Nametags would be far more practical and useful than more easily spotted rank insignia.
Well I guess it is about time to start spit balling ideas on what the plot of the pilot will wind up being.
My guess, based on the trailers, I'm betting that the Starfleet insignia is an sos for either a member of the the USS Europa's crew or possibly Harry Mudd. The Shenzou crew will learn the Europa stole sacred plants (space weed) from the Klingons. The Klingons arrive to take it back, things escalate and both Federation ships are destroyed, leaving our plucky heroine to join the USS Discovery to pick up the pieces.
At this point, I'm more interested in a documentary on "behind the scenes of Star Trek: Discovery" than the show itself. The rumors coming out from sources on the set range from "huh" to "what where they thinking".
If you are serious about giving Star Trek: Discovery a fair shake, I don't think it would be fair to judge the entire series based on the pilot episode. The premise is "a re imagining of Star Trek, designed to meet the expectations of modern audiences as well as being relevant to the issues facing our modern world". The first 3 or 4 episodes are going to be this design philosophy, after being put through the meat grinder of a dozen different creative influences.
I'll probably wait until the entire first season is released, then pay for a single month subscription and binge-watch it. Rinse and repeat for any additional seasons they produce.
If you are serious about giving Star Trek: Discovery a fair shake, I don't think it would be fair to judge the entire series based on the pilot episode. The premise is "a re imagining of Star Trek, designed to meet the expectations of modern audiences as well as being relevant to the issues facing our modern world". The first 3 or 4 episodes are going to be this design philosophy, after being put through the meat grinder of a dozen different creative influences.
I think the bit about the expectations and issues of the modern world is where I'm personally getting skeptical. There is currently a pretty big gap in the social values and priorities of Hollywood and the average person. Modern Hollywood tends to be a self-segregated echo chamber where only their own personal beliefs are welcome, and differing viewpoints are treated as practically monstrous in nature and intent. I've seen this reflected in a lot of the more recent wave of Star Trek novels, where the very concept of discussing both sides of an issue is regarded as a horrible vile concept.
Yes, darth, you've posted a pic of the interior of a jetliner cockpit. And I've posted a more modern pic, with fewer switches and stuff, along with a note that most of those physical switches are still there to make it easier to retrain existing aircraft pilots (they're expensive, and you can't just fire the ones you have and hire new ones just because the technology has changed). I've also posted a pic of a mockup of the controls for the Dragon space capsule - with a total lack of such hardwired switches.
I know, I know, you feel the need to desperately defend the aesthetic of a show that's almost as old as I am. I get that. That's why I left your echo chamber in the other thread to those of you who just can't seem to understand that Star Trek was never about an aesthetic, but rather about an optimistic view of the future of humanity - a view that says sure, we fought miserable, vicious wars in our past, but we're feeling much better now, and while we're prepared to defend ourselves if attacked, we'd much rather be friends with everyone, including the Klingons and Romulans. It's a universe in which exploration is carried out for the joy of finding the new, not merely to extend the conquests of an empire, and one in which today's enemies become tomorrow's allies. I know that with all that's going on in the world today, it's hard to envision a world like that, but the Trek history included the Bell Riots and World War Three, so I think there's still hope.
And that hope is embodied by a style of storytelling, not a style of decoration. Look, I've been watching this since I was a wee lad, and I still remember that musical sting accompanied by the announcer saying, "In living color!" as the peacock spread its feathers. It warmed my aged fanboy heart to see the old sets in the TNG episode "Relics", when Scotty went to the holodeck, and in the ENT two-parter "In a Mirror Darkly". But oddly, I don't feel "betrayed" or "lied to" when the ancient aesthetic is upgraded to take into account the technology available today. Just think of it like Roddenberry's original explanation for the changes in Klingons in STTMP: it's the way they looked all along, he just finally had the budget to show it. Same for the bridge of the Shenzhou, and presumably of the Discovery.
As for the uniforms, they changed between the events of "The Cage" and "Where No Man Has Gone Before", and again during the show's first season (and changed materials in the second season, because the velour kept shrinking). Then they changed again in the two in-universe years between the end of TOS and the first movie. And then between the first and second movies. Then they changed again at least twice sometime before TNG (when Jean-Luc graduated the Academy, and when Wesley's father recorded his message to his newborn son, they wore a uni that looked a lot like the TWoK outfit, only without the turtleneck, and then they went to the space footie jammies). The uniform changed twice during TNG as well, and again for DS9 and VOY. (VOY and ENT were the only two series without uniform changes, in part because they were nowhere near their command bases for most of the run.) Therefore, it seems likely to me that if this show lasts three or more seasons, they will later adopt something similar to the gold turtlenecks of "The Cage".
I caught something on an accidental viewing of a TOS episode the other night. You know that big blank space on either side of the helm and navigation console?
Both Sulu and Chekov use it like it's a control panel.
They both push and hold non-existent buttons and read data from the blank spaces.
Today a CGI artist would integrate touchscreen controls over those blank spaces, but it was beyond the ability of 1960 tech back then. But wrap your headcanon around this: controls only the operator can see!
This could be done with directional lights such that if you aren't sitting where the operator sits you can't see them. Old LCDs did this unintentionally, but had it been intentional I'm sure it could be done in a much better way. The benefit of this would be that flashing lights on your consold would be noticeable, but the guy beside you wouldn't be distracted.
It could be done with IR and UV contact lenses so that you would need to be wearing them to operate the controls.
Anyway, the point is, the TOS bridge may not be as unsophisticated as it might appear at first glance. And they were using touchscreens at least two decades before I ever heard of one.
I caught something on an accidental viewing of a TOS episode the other night. You know that big blank space on either side of the helm and navigation console?
Both Sulu and Chekov use it like it's a control panel.
They both push and hold non-existent buttons and read data from the blank spaces.
Today a CGI artist would integrate touchscreen controls over those blank spaces, but it was beyond the ability of 1960 tech back then. But wrap your headcanon around this: controls only the operator can see!
This could be done with directional lights such that if you aren't sitting where the operator sits you can't see them. Old LCDs did this unintentionally, but had it been intentional I'm sure it could be done in a much better way. The benefit of this would be that flashing lights on your consold would be noticeable, but the guy beside you wouldn't be distracted.
It could be done with IR and UV contact lenses so that you would need to be wearing them to operate the controls.
Anyway, the point is, the TOS bridge may not be as unsophisticated as it might appear at first glance. And they were using touchscreens at least two decades before I ever heard of one.
Hell, the black surface panels might have had a sorta holographic readout inbedded in there as well. I am gonna try to do some 3D renders doing just what with the surfaces and see how it looks.
It's not like rank is very important in Starfleet anyway. Unless you're Harry Kim you hang around long enough and you and up as admiral. Regardless of rank the senior staff are in charge (which is why O'Brian can be a NCO and department head and a station chief) and the whole crew's going to recognise them. They'll probably recognise the heads of their own teams by sight as well. It's not like rank's used for anything else in the shows so it doesn't really matter how visible it is.
@jonsills VGR used a two and one piece versions of the uniform and ENT had three changes. The purple tindged uniforms of series 1&2 were changed to a true blue for 3 and the final episode (gods I hate admitting it exists) gave it eppelets and name tags with a new arm patch. There was also another variant of the TWoK uniforms in Yesterday's Enterprise.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though. JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
You seem to miss the point I'm trying to make. Let me try to summarize.
1) My primary reason for insisting that DSC should use TOS appearance as closely as possible is not about a personal preference. Personally, my favorite era in Trek is the TMP era movies, but that's neither here nor there. It's not about what I like or want, it's about continuity and consistency.
The fact is, the producers directly stated this series takes place in the Prime Universe 2250s. We KNOW, as in we have direct screen depictions, of what standard Starfleet uniforms, equipment, spacecraft, and overall design language looked like in the 2250s. To claim it's the same time period but everything looks completely and entirely different in virtually every way is a blatant and obvious contradiction. You can try to excuse it anyway you want, but it's undeniably a violation of basic storytelling rules of continuity and consistency.
If this was an unspecified time period, or some form of altered or alternate universe, that would be fine. That would explain the differences adequately for basic story logic, and while one might disagree with the decision it would still satisfy the basic fundamental demands of continuity and consistency that ALL fiction is expected to adhere to. Prequels and period pieces, absent an in-story reason for any discrepancies, are ALWAYS expected to conform to the time period being depicted whether that time period is fictional or historical. This isn't fanaticism or stubborn resistance to change, it's basic storytelling logic 101.
The producers chose to set the series in the Prime Universe 2250s, at the same time The Cage took place, and yet completely disregard everything established about that time period in terms of visual and technical design. They created that contradiction, and you can't wish that contradiction away. It's glaringly obvious to anyone with functioning eyes. You can insult people all you want, but we're not wrong to point out the fact that this contradiction is a major breach of basic storytelling standards.
This is not a matter of opinion, it is fact. A does not match B, when we are being told they are the same. This is clearly not true. 2 plus 2 does not equal 5, there are four lights.
2) Arguments have been made that TOS / The Cage is hopelessly "outdated" and thus the producers are compelled to change everything in the ways they did else nothing make sense. This claim says TOS technology is "less advanced" than what we have now, and thus no longer stands as properly futuristic science fiction from a current day perspective.
My arguments have been in the service of demonstrating that what we see in TOS is viable as a consistent future vision and can be logically justified in-setting.
a) Aesthetics are subjective, what "looks" advanced and high tech is as much a matter of style and taste as clothing and hairstyle is. Design styles go in and out of fashion, "retro" styles make comebacks and fade away again, and appearance is not always a clear indicator of technical advancement or functional capability. For a Star Trek example, the touchscreen-centric functional paradigm had three very different aesthetic appearances between late TMP, TNG, and DS9. Looked totally different, worked pretty much exactly the same. You can't judge a technology by its casing.
b) the aesthetic used is in TOS originated in the 1960s, but it did not end there. Like every other fashion trend before and since, it became codified as a unique styleset. Stylesets, like individual elements of style, come and go out of fashion all the time, and past stylesets can and do make comebacks from time to time. I cited where the exact 60s styleset we're talking about made a comeback in the 2000s decade, and if it did so once it can do it again. Thus, it's not implausible to say that in the 2250s-70s that styleset was in favor in Starfleet.
c) Functionally, everything in TOS is way, Way, WAY overpowered compared to what we have today. Communicators, for example, are subspace radios that have an interplanetary range at faster than light signal speeds with no need for network infrastructure. Personal computers are, in most instances, fully contextual voice command interface devices and full automation of functions like climate control, lighting, and everything else one might need is standard with no need for physical input. Their primary computing architecture is a central mainframe / terminal configuration with advanced AI capabilities and no problem storing and processing virtually unlimited amounts of data. Imagine every database and server farm in the world, containing all our data from the entire internet and every library on the planet, in a single computer tower small enough to occupy a single building or be mounted on a ship. Then multiply that by at least a thousand, and you have the central library computer on the Enterprise 1701. Don't get me started, of course on things like fusion power as a backup to matter/antimatter reactors, extremely high energy batteries with amazingly long times between recharge for handheld devices, antigravity, artificial gravity, inertial dampeners, tractor and deflector beams, force fields, high powered handheld energy weapons, and on and on. To call TOS technology "less advanced than what we have now", as some have claimed, is ridiculous to the point it's utterly spocking laughable.
What discrepancies exist between modern standards and TOS are explainable by concerns of practicality and preferences. Single use buttons and controls are present where appropriate for convenience, not necessity. Physical media is, again, unnecessary but occasionally used where doing so is convenient or preferred by the individual user. Communicators don't have screens and apps to make them multi-use computing devices because the designers chose to make them simple and functional for a single use, and it's clear that tricorders have portable computer functionality making communicators redundant for that purpose. Control panels have physical buttons and other physical controls and always-on single-purpose monitor displays because that has been judged to be the most efficient configuration most conducive to productivity. They could make everything touchscreen and menu-driven just like they could do the same in the cockpit of a modern jet airliner, but they choose not to because they feel the configuration they use is more functional.
_____
Ok, that ended up rather long for a summary but it is a lot shorter than the entire multiple threads I'm summarizing arguments from. So I'll just hit the main points again.
1) Issues about Discovery's visual design aren't about personal preference or resistance to change, it's about the fact that the producers said one thing and have done something completely different. They've created a blatant and obvious contradiction in their own canon, unnecessarily, and it's a violation of basic storytelling rules of consistency and continuity that all fiction is expected to follow.
2) Complaints that TOS is hopelessly, irrevocably outdated and thus completely implausible as a futuristic setting are subjective at best and frequently based on flawed premises and inaccurate information. The fact is, with only minor tweaks and an improved budget and production values, the TOS vision could be recreated in a way that meets modern expectations of quality and makes logical sense as an advanced futuristic society.
In other words, they COULD do it, they just chose not to. And rather than explain the massive list of blatant discrepancies between what they're saying the setting is and what that setting has been established to be by prior canon work, they want us to pretend there is no contradiction.
Fans like me aren't demanding a slavish devotion to the past, we're demanding basic logical consistency in the setting. If you're going to portray an canonically established time period, do so as accurately as possible. If you choose not to, explain why it's different. Don't say one thing and do another and expect us not to notice or object.
Every fiction work is expected to adhere to such basic storytelling rules as maintaining coherent internal story logic, consistency, and continuity. It's not unreasonable to expect the same of this one.
That's about it. I said it once, I said it quite a few times.....but look at the recent Star Wars films in the past couple of years.
Rogue One, set before A New Hope, was made with modern effects, but KEPT that 70's DISCO look that the original trilogy had. Death Star looked the same, bad guys had ships looking the same, good guys had their ships looking the same. Imperials still had their uniforms and those pieces of candy looking rank pins. The Storm Troopers looked the same, Darth Vader still looked the same. And in Force Awakens, which is nearly 40 years later, story wise, it STILL looks DISCO. Tie fighters look pretty much the same, just they now got back seats put in. The Storm Troopers look pretty much the same, just fancier helmets. The Falcon still looks like a pile of space junk....even the targeting computer has the same Atari looking screen. Chewbacca looks the same, they did not change him. C-3PO looks the same, R2 looks the same; even the new lil Astro has key design elements retained. If Disney decided to make major changes.....say let's make the Wookies into lizards or let's shave them and give them a ton of tattoos.....or let's make Darth Vader look like, say, Marvel's Juggernaut or Ironman, or recast Luke with Vin Diesel or John Cena...you'd have fans wanting to skin you alive.
Why can't TOS be given the same respect "DISCO!" Star Wars gets?
And here is a 3D set I use for my art work, you'll be seeing this set in the Goddess comic coming up soon, working on it as we speak, and you'll see it's a modernized TOS main engineering. https://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/engineering-room-xt-for-poser-/111298/ . Remove a few things, like the 'pool table', either remove the visible warp core (or make it more TOS looking), remove the TNG looking wall bits by the stairs and the TNG LCARS, and you could have a real nice TOS/Cage engine room. It looks modernized, yet keeps the TOS look there.
It can be done, it just takes some hard work, some studying of what was on screen during TOS, some looks into fan films, and be willing to respect what was on screen and modernized, YET looks as close as possible to the original. I seen images of the Original TOS model photoshopped into various scenes from the TMP era films AND the JJ films. And it looked awesome.
A flaw in your argument, Darth, is that we don't know when "The Cage" takes place, save that it was some time (presumably at least a year or two) before "Where No Man Has Gone Before". There's a claim that it's ten years before - but that would be based on the idea that this is Spock's first year aboard the Enterprise, as he states in "The Menagerie" that he served with Capt. Pike for eleven years, and there's simply no support for this contention.
Smoke, you're trying to use an example from a totally different universe, with differing physics (especially for FTL!), in which technology makes no visible progress over the sixty-plus years between "The Phantom Menace" and "The Force Awakens" - and in fact seems to have gone backward in many regards. Not applicable, unless you're contending that Starfleet technology and society is as stagnant as that of the Republic/Empire/New Republic.
A flaw in your argument, Darth, is that we don't know when "The Cage" takes place, save that it was some time (presumably at least a year or two) before "Where No Man Has Gone Before". There's a claim that it's ten years before - but that would be based on the idea that this is Spock's first year aboard the Enterprise, as he states in "The Menagerie" that he served with Capt. Pike for eleven years, and there's simply no support for this contention.
Smoke, you're trying to use an example from a totally different universe, with differing physics (especially for FTL!), in which technology makes no visible progress over the sixty-plus years between "The Phantom Menace" and "The Force Awakens" - and in fact seems to have gone backward in many regards. Not applicable, unless you're contending that Starfleet technology and society is as stagnant as that of the Republic/Empire/New Republic.
they kept the disco look as how the fans liked it.
Using Memory Alpha as a primary source is not that different from using Wikipedia. Going to the show, there's no way of knowing how long ago it was - Spock ages at a Vulcan (or should that be Vulcanian?) rate, after all, and Pike's barely recognizable as human after his accident. There's certainly no sign that this is Spock's first mission under Pike, and it plainly isn't early in Pike's career, not with all that angsting about the stresses of being a starship commander.
Using Memory Alpha as a primary source is not that different from using Wikipedia. Going to the show, there's no way of knowing how long ago it was - Spock ages at a Vulcan (or should that be Vulcanian?) rate, after all, and Pike's barely recognizable as human after his accident. There's certainly no sign that this is Spock's first mission under Pike, and it plainly isn't early in Pike's career, not with all that angsting about the stresses of being a starship commander.
Being hit on the face with that radiation, being turned into a prototype Davros, and a different actor to boot, Pike would look different.
So again. Why should the Enterprise get all new fancy kit and not the Discovery? Maybe the Enterprise is still stuck using outdated phasers and communicators I Cage and WNMhGB and the Discovery is using up to date stuff. The DSC props look more TOS than they do pilot era.
And unless MA gives a citation to backup a statement then they're just making it up as usual. That's the same as any other online encycleopedia.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though. JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
I figure everyone will be living in a permanent state of augmented reality long before we have warp drive. Rank insignia on a uniform are going to be at best an archaic throwback or a last ditch redundancy for when the 790+ walnut sized mega-computers on the ship all mysteriously fail at the same time...
that's not new. they've been working on that over a year IIRC. Last I heard the plan was a full-blown continuity reboot where they take the first movie, and continue from there.
You're weasaling, here. You're throwing uncertainty on the precise year of The Cage claiming the Memory Alpha year of 2254 is inaccurate. Where is your source that contradicts this? Reading down that page, the list of references and information there is quite extensive. Online encyclopedias tend to be quite accurate, despite claims to the contrary. Unless you have a more definitive source to cite, there's no reason to believe the information there is incorrect.
Even if the precise year is inaccurate, though, that changes nothing. The era is the same, even if we didn't have a specific year for both they are very much in the same ballpark and far too close to remotely justify the absolute night and day differences between them. The consistency and continuity argument remains valid.
You are right.
You were right about 60 pages ago. We all get the point: established look, deviation, etc. Yes, this happened.
But it's time to move on. As right as your arguments are, they were not the ones the developers of Discovery chose to follow. It's a done deal, and none of us had a say in making the decision. Arguing what should have been can be fun, but there haven't been any new ideas presented to support the point, just rehashes of the exact same point we got on page one.
And we do get it. We always have. But your argument stems from a false premise which totally negates the entire point you and others have maintained since the beginning, and that false premise is the assumption that the franchise owners care even a little bit about TOS. They don't. They have gone out of their way more times than not to overrule anything TOS canon.
There are two instances of the franchise being true to a specific Trek period look? There are dozens where events of the period were re-imagined or simply crossed out. TOS is no longer canon, and so the look of The Cage is no longer canon.
It's that simple. Your entire argument is based on a look the developers of Discovery consciously rejected in favor of another aesthetic. Perhaps it shouldn't be that way, but there it is.
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My character Tsin'xing
Eh. I never noticed the rank insignia on those uniforms either, and they are equally as pompous as the DSC ones.
TOS and TMP sleeve ranks are the most sensible solution, clearly visible and subtle. I'd maybe add neck pips as a complementary solutiona s you suggested, but really sleeve stripes would be the most sensible solution.
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I lived on a ship for a few years and I learned that rank is worn in the attitude, not on the sleeve. Rank insignia makes sense on a large military base, but on a ship smaller than a carrier it's almost impossible to not become familiar with everyone in a very short time. Rank insignia is virtually meaningless in such close quarters where everyone knows everyone.
Now consider that in Trek, military culture is downplayed in favor of a more businesslike approach. When was the last time your supervisor needed a rank insignia?
The rank pips being small and almost unnoticeable unless you know where to look are perfect for crew on stations too large for everyone to get to know everyone by sight, where knowing some stranger's rank might be important. But on a starship with less than 1000 crew, everyone already knows everybody who can lawfully give them orders.
As much as I liked the TOS sleve rank, it was never very useful other than as decoration. Nametags would be far more practical and useful than more easily spotted rank insignia.
My guess, based on the trailers, I'm betting that the Starfleet insignia is an sos for either a member of the the USS Europa's crew or possibly Harry Mudd. The Shenzou crew will learn the Europa stole sacred plants (space weed) from the Klingons. The Klingons arrive to take it back, things escalate and both Federation ships are destroyed, leaving our plucky heroine to join the USS Discovery to pick up the pieces.
If you are serious about giving Star Trek: Discovery a fair shake, I don't think it would be fair to judge the entire series based on the pilot episode. The premise is "a re imagining of Star Trek, designed to meet the expectations of modern audiences as well as being relevant to the issues facing our modern world". The first 3 or 4 episodes are going to be this design philosophy, after being put through the meat grinder of a dozen different creative influences.
I'll probably wait until the entire first season is released, then pay for a single month subscription and binge-watch it. Rinse and repeat for any additional seasons they produce.
I think the bit about the expectations and issues of the modern world is where I'm personally getting skeptical. There is currently a pretty big gap in the social values and priorities of Hollywood and the average person. Modern Hollywood tends to be a self-segregated echo chamber where only their own personal beliefs are welcome, and differing viewpoints are treated as practically monstrous in nature and intent. I've seen this reflected in a lot of the more recent wave of Star Trek novels, where the very concept of discussing both sides of an issue is regarded as a horrible vile concept.
I know, I know, you feel the need to desperately defend the aesthetic of a show that's almost as old as I am. I get that. That's why I left your echo chamber in the other thread to those of you who just can't seem to understand that Star Trek was never about an aesthetic, but rather about an optimistic view of the future of humanity - a view that says sure, we fought miserable, vicious wars in our past, but we're feeling much better now, and while we're prepared to defend ourselves if attacked, we'd much rather be friends with everyone, including the Klingons and Romulans. It's a universe in which exploration is carried out for the joy of finding the new, not merely to extend the conquests of an empire, and one in which today's enemies become tomorrow's allies. I know that with all that's going on in the world today, it's hard to envision a world like that, but the Trek history included the Bell Riots and World War Three, so I think there's still hope.
And that hope is embodied by a style of storytelling, not a style of decoration. Look, I've been watching this since I was a wee lad, and I still remember that musical sting accompanied by the announcer saying, "In living color!" as the peacock spread its feathers. It warmed my aged fanboy heart to see the old sets in the TNG episode "Relics", when Scotty went to the holodeck, and in the ENT two-parter "In a Mirror Darkly". But oddly, I don't feel "betrayed" or "lied to" when the ancient aesthetic is upgraded to take into account the technology available today. Just think of it like Roddenberry's original explanation for the changes in Klingons in STTMP: it's the way they looked all along, he just finally had the budget to show it. Same for the bridge of the Shenzhou, and presumably of the Discovery.
As for the uniforms, they changed between the events of "The Cage" and "Where No Man Has Gone Before", and again during the show's first season (and changed materials in the second season, because the velour kept shrinking). Then they changed again in the two in-universe years between the end of TOS and the first movie. And then between the first and second movies. Then they changed again at least twice sometime before TNG (when Jean-Luc graduated the Academy, and when Wesley's father recorded his message to his newborn son, they wore a uni that looked a lot like the TWoK outfit, only without the turtleneck, and then they went to the space footie jammies). The uniform changed twice during TNG as well, and again for DS9 and VOY. (VOY and ENT were the only two series without uniform changes, in part because they were nowhere near their command bases for most of the run.) Therefore, it seems likely to me that if this show lasts three or more seasons, they will later adopt something similar to the gold turtlenecks of "The Cage".
Both Sulu and Chekov use it like it's a control panel.
They both push and hold non-existent buttons and read data from the blank spaces.
Today a CGI artist would integrate touchscreen controls over those blank spaces, but it was beyond the ability of 1960 tech back then. But wrap your headcanon around this: controls only the operator can see!
This could be done with directional lights such that if you aren't sitting where the operator sits you can't see them. Old LCDs did this unintentionally, but had it been intentional I'm sure it could be done in a much better way. The benefit of this would be that flashing lights on your consold would be noticeable, but the guy beside you wouldn't be distracted.
It could be done with IR and UV contact lenses so that you would need to be wearing them to operate the controls.
Anyway, the point is, the TOS bridge may not be as unsophisticated as it might appear at first glance. And they were using touchscreens at least two decades before I ever heard of one.
Hell, the black surface panels might have had a sorta holographic readout inbedded in there as well. I am gonna try to do some 3D renders doing just what with the surfaces and see how it looks.
@jonsills VGR used a two and one piece versions of the uniform and ENT had three changes. The purple tindged uniforms of series 1&2 were changed to a true blue for 3 and the final episode (gods I hate admitting it exists) gave it eppelets and name tags with a new arm patch. There was also another variant of the TWoK uniforms in Yesterday's Enterprise.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
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That's about it. I said it once, I said it quite a few times.....but look at the recent Star Wars films in the past couple of years.
Rogue One, set before A New Hope, was made with modern effects, but KEPT that 70's DISCO look that the original trilogy had. Death Star looked the same, bad guys had ships looking the same, good guys had their ships looking the same. Imperials still had their uniforms and those pieces of candy looking rank pins. The Storm Troopers looked the same, Darth Vader still looked the same. And in Force Awakens, which is nearly 40 years later, story wise, it STILL looks DISCO. Tie fighters look pretty much the same, just they now got back seats put in. The Storm Troopers look pretty much the same, just fancier helmets. The Falcon still looks like a pile of space junk....even the targeting computer has the same Atari looking screen. Chewbacca looks the same, they did not change him. C-3PO looks the same, R2 looks the same; even the new lil Astro has key design elements retained. If Disney decided to make major changes.....say let's make the Wookies into lizards or let's shave them and give them a ton of tattoos.....or let's make Darth Vader look like, say, Marvel's Juggernaut or Ironman, or recast Luke with Vin Diesel or John Cena...you'd have fans wanting to skin you alive.
Why can't TOS be given the same respect "DISCO!" Star Wars gets?
And here is a 3D set I use for my art work, you'll be seeing this set in the Goddess comic coming up soon, working on it as we speak, and you'll see it's a modernized TOS main engineering. https://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/engineering-room-xt-for-poser-/111298/ . Remove a few things, like the 'pool table', either remove the visible warp core (or make it more TOS looking), remove the TNG looking wall bits by the stairs and the TNG LCARS, and you could have a real nice TOS/Cage engine room. It looks modernized, yet keeps the TOS look there.
It can be done, it just takes some hard work, some studying of what was on screen during TOS, some looks into fan films, and be willing to respect what was on screen and modernized, YET looks as close as possible to the original. I seen images of the Original TOS model photoshopped into various scenes from the TMP era films AND the JJ films. And it looked awesome.
Smoke, you're trying to use an example from a totally different universe, with differing physics (especially for FTL!), in which technology makes no visible progress over the sixty-plus years between "The Phantom Menace" and "The Force Awakens" - and in fact seems to have gone backward in many regards. Not applicable, unless you're contending that Starfleet technology and society is as stagnant as that of the Republic/Empire/New Republic.
they kept the disco look as how the fans liked it.
Being hit on the face with that radiation, being turned into a prototype Davros, and a different actor to boot, Pike would look different.
And unless MA gives a citation to backup a statement then they're just making it up as usual. That's the same as any other online encycleopedia.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
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My character Tsin'xing
You are right.
You were right about 60 pages ago. We all get the point: established look, deviation, etc. Yes, this happened.
But it's time to move on. As right as your arguments are, they were not the ones the developers of Discovery chose to follow. It's a done deal, and none of us had a say in making the decision. Arguing what should have been can be fun, but there haven't been any new ideas presented to support the point, just rehashes of the exact same point we got on page one.
And we do get it. We always have. But your argument stems from a false premise which totally negates the entire point you and others have maintained since the beginning, and that false premise is the assumption that the franchise owners care even a little bit about TOS. They don't. They have gone out of their way more times than not to overrule anything TOS canon.
There are two instances of the franchise being true to a specific Trek period look? There are dozens where events of the period were re-imagined or simply crossed out. TOS is no longer canon, and so the look of The Cage is no longer canon.
It's that simple. Your entire argument is based on a look the developers of Discovery consciously rejected in favor of another aesthetic. Perhaps it shouldn't be that way, but there it is.