I thought "Trials and Tribble-ations" had the best possible answer, and they should have just left it at that.
It had. The Augment Arc might have its own interesting aspects, but it's better to not provide in-universe explanations for out-of-universe reasoned visual changes. Just pretend it was always that way, We don't generally try to explain how Sherlock Holmes or Hamlet looks different in different movies or stage production when they are played by a different actors.
My take is - What see on TV is a recreation within the limits of our possibilities and within our own creative desires to best represent a universe that we can't really visit and see ourselves, nor fully recreate in how it "really" is supposed to be. Be it because it's fictional or a parallel universe that only manifests itself in the dreams of some creative people.
Changing the looks of Klingons to be a bit more than Humans with slight makeup was to make the idea they are aliens show better, and only possible due to new budget. The exact looks, of course, where chosen because the artists thought this would be. Later changes were refinements. Maybe Discovery's changes were because some creative needed to put his own stamp on it, maybe it was because it was believed the old Klingon look had become too familiar and humanized to represent a species that was extremely alien to the people of the time frame the story took place, and they wanted to evoke the same feeling in the audience again.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
The whole dumb decision to take an off-handed comment by Worf in an episode that was just a light hearted love letter to TOS and turn it into the whole convoluted "Augment" nonsense on ENT actually compounds the headaches in Discovery.
The whole point was the virus running amok and turning Klingons into smooth heads and it took them until the TOS movie era to finally "cure" it.
And yet here we are, 100 years later, less than a decade before TOS...and there's not a single TOS Klingon in sight.
None of which changes the fact that, tiresome retroactive justifications aside, the Klingon look was changed in TMP because of a bigger budget and better makeup and prosthetics and the look remained mostly consistent across multiple tv series and movies for decades after.
Whereas Discovery altered the Klingons to the point of unrecognizability because...they wanted to remind the fans that they hate them I guess.
> @patrickngo said: > luminaire#0745 wrote: » > > The whole dumb decision to take an off-handed comment by Worf in an episode that was just a light hearted love letter to TOS and turn it into the whole convoluted "Augment" nonsense on ENT actually compounds the headaches in Discovery. > > The whole point was the virus running amok and turning Klingons into smooth heads and it took them until the TOS movie era to finally "cure" it. > > And yet here we are, 100 years later, less than a decade before TOS...and there's not a single TOS Klingon in sight. > > None of which changes the fact that, tiresome retroactive justifications aside, the Klingon look was changed in TMP because of a bigger budget and better makeup and prosthetics and the look remained mostly consistent across multiple tv series and movies for decades after. > > Whereas Discovery altered the Klingons to the point of unrecognizability because...they wanted to remind the fans that they hate them I guess. > > > > > Nope. It was a deliberate artistic choice by people who didn't like the TNG / enterprise era at all and wanted to make something that they DO like. They also needed to make sure their 'trump stand ins' were as inhuman and impossible to relate to as possible, because that's how they see the people they were using Klingons as a stand-in for. > > also, Glenn Hettrick wanted to do HR Geiger artwork, and Fuller was willing to pay him to make his latex fetish dreams.
Well the fans hath spoken, and next season the klingons will look a lot more of what we are used to.
Hell the lead costume designer WANTED to make the Klingons looks more like TNG but he got overruled by Kurtzman. Well now Kurtzman is backing down.
Well that's what Trekyards had to say about it. Take it as ya will.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
also, Glenn Hettrick wanted to do HR Geiger artwork, and Fuller was willing to pay him to make his latex fetish dreams.
Gotta admit, that's a new one. I usually respect your opinion and views on these things, Pat (even if I almost completely disagree with you), but this one feels like you're just taking a vindictive shot at the Producers because you don't like their work, rather than making a reasoned complaint based on evidence.
On another note, just noticed your sig: for what it's worth, I've long hated people using the 'real'/'true' fan rubbish. Trekkies will like the shows they like: I for example am 'meh' about DSC (and TOS, tbh), completely disregard TAS, think of Voyager as a decent show that became so dependant on sensationalism as to become almost generic, and ENT as the hidden gem of the franchise.
And as if that wasn't enough to get me consigned to eternal damnation in the view of many fans, I like Generations, The Final Frontier, and Insurrection.
*Raises Shields*
So yeah, ignore the haters. If you're a fan of Star Trek, you can call yourself a Trekkie. 'True' doesn't enter into it.
You can only call yourself a Trekkie if you go to Star Trek conventions in drag. Otherwise, you're a Trekker or Trek Fan.
We worked hard to make those labels stick in the 1970s and I will not have you young whippersnappers with your 'energy drinks' and your 'vegan diets' coming along and messing up our pigeonholing stereotypes with your, "I am what I think I want to be," rubbish!
Canon for me is not the costumes. It's the attitude. When I was a young man Trek was an optimistic view of tomorrow, an ideal to strive toward. We weren't so foolish as to believe in Saint Roddenberry, and we never really thought we'd see easy global communication that could be held in our palms. What we saw was that somehow, some way we could muddle through the darkness and come out the other side better than we went in.
This is what Berman/Bragga Trek stole from us, and what Discovery could have given back to us with a little less, "Fans only want dark and gritty," thinking.
My real question is, what are the audience numbers for Discovery versus The Orville? That might put my thesis to bed. Or maybe prove it.
Discovery would have worked well as a prequel to TOS if they had done it in an additive, inclusive way instead of a contempt-filled only-the-handheld-props-were-any-good reboot they way they did.
That contempt even blinded them to the fact that the first season TOS uniforms are currently the closest thing to modern fashion of any of the Trek shows since the sixties. All it would take would be some minor changes to cut and using real full-knap velvet in richer shades (instead of the cheap lifeless velour TOS used) to be trendy and break out of the stale androgynous clown suit rut Trek has been wallowing in since TMP.
Of course, being stale '80s style fashion casualties is not in itself a problem (beyond missed opportunity) had they used the DSC uniforms along side updated soft velvet TOS uniforms in at least SOME other divisions to establish some continuity. In fact, different uniforms in different divisions would imply Starfleet was not the monolithic organization that it was by TNG yet and set up the right feel for the kind of internal strife Discovery was trying (clumsily) to portray. If it is in enough flux it would even make good humor points like the one in an episode of the fan made Star Trek Continues series where an admiral on main screen in TMP uniform signs off and someone on the bridge says "what the hell was he wearing?" and everyone breaks up.
The same thing is true of the ship designs and sets. There is nothing particularly wrong with thin skinned science vessels with windows all over and bad lighting, but they did not handle it very well and they made a big mistake in implying that ALL Starfleet ships were built the same way. For instance they go to all the trouble to introduce two radically different transporter styles and then just drop the idea of variety of tech altogether.
It would not have offended the core fans to find out that the windowless (just look at the internal sets: no windows) heavily armored TOS era Constitution with its advanced (if somewhat psychedelic) sourceless lighting and ergonomic sit-down bridge with mostly solid-state touch-jewel controls was an unusual design for instance.
Even the incredibly rotten gunnery and weak-sauce sensors could have been made to fit if they took the trouble to add ECM-style warfare dialog instead of just using faux Star Wars "WWII aircraft" combat jammed onto the original naval surface ship-to-ship style in space dialog Trek traditionally uses.
The Klingons are the worst departure, but even that could have been smoothed over by using the 'Klingons as Empire' instead of 'Klingons as race' concept that Hetrick has been talking about a lot lately. We have only seen six out of twenty four types of Klingons, and including a few of the familiar ones from the past in that 24 would have fit right in. In fact, it could have been the augment virus debacle in ENT that threw the TNG style Klingons into disfavor and triggered the infighting that kept them occupied for so long they only engaged in "brush wars" with the Federation and others instead of a full onslaught. In the same vein, their poor showing in the war against the tricky and clever humans could have pried the 'rubber suit monster' Klingons out of the drivers seat for nearly a decade as their augment-derived (relatively) tricky house took over grappling with the Feds). In fact, the tag-team effect between highly alien Klingons and the TOS era ones could have led sloppy intelligence to conclude that the ones seen in ENT were extinct (with all survivors transformed into the TOS type) by the augment virus and neglected to remind K7 security that the type that looked like Worf existed in the past.
Likewise, Spock having a sister is not really an issue considering the way he avoided talking about family in TOS and the movies, especially if she was as much under a cloud as Sybok. The only real continuity problem is that she is a "heroes journey" style character who would not have blended into the background and who would have realistically have been mentioned in the other shows. It would have been more realistic to have had her less in the foreground of events and involved more in the shadows instead. In fact, the whole show would have worked much better as a Section 31 intelligence warfare style of show than the flashy romp trying to be grim style they used. Unfortunately, after a good start in the third episode they let the plot go rambling into "the only ship of heroes" mode Paramount turned Trek into ad nauseum.
The first season was set up in an unsteady, tentative "bold moves and back doors" plotting style where you can sense that behind the changes-for-changes-sake veneer they left escape hatches to back out if the fans hated them too much, and it detracts from the overall story. The show took an unusually long time to actually start as CBS painted by the market numbers and at each major decision point "leaked" photos or plot points to gauge viewer reaction to decide which parts to use the escape hatches on and the result was a sub-par uneven metaplot propped up with pretty visual effects. With more thought and less contempt they could have used practically everything they did and actually make it fit as a natural prequel.
Canon for me is not the costumes. It's the attitude. When I was a young man Trek was an optimistic view of tomorrow, an ideal to strive toward. We weren't so foolish as to believe in Saint Roddenberry, and we never really thought we'd see easy global communication that could be held in our palms. What we saw was that somehow, some way we could muddle through the darkness and come out the other side better than we went in.
This is what Berman/Bragga Trek stole from us, and what Discovery could have given back to us with a little less, "Fans only want dark and gritty," thinking.
> @brian334 said: > You can only call yourself a Trekkie if you go to Star Trek conventions in drag. Otherwise, you're a Trekker or Trek Fan. > > We worked hard to make those labels stick in the 1970s and I will not have you young whippersnappers with your 'energy drinks' and your 'vegan diets' coming along and messing up our pigeonholing stereotypes with your, "I am what I think I want to be," rubbish! > > Canon for me is not the costumes. It's the attitude. When I was a young man Trek was an optimistic view of tomorrow, an ideal to strive toward. We weren't so foolish as to believe in Saint Roddenberry, and we never really thought we'd see easy global communication that could be held in our palms. What we saw was that somehow, some way we could muddle through the darkness and come out the other side better than we went in. > > This is what Berman/Bragga Trek stole from us, and what Discovery could have given back to us with a little less, "Fans only want dark and gritty," thinking. > > My real question is, what are the audience numbers for Discovery versus The Orville? That might put my thesis to bed. Or maybe prove it.
Orville. All day every day.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
I actually agree with the OP, but not for ANY of the reasons he mentioned. The OP thinks Discovery should have been set only 20 years later than it actually is. However, IMHO, Disco could have been post TNG and still been ALMOST the exact same show. As var as visuals, the uniforms, the ships, the weapons, etc all could have easily been passed off as TNG+ technology, since it actually DOES look more advanced than the tech used in TNG.
With only a few tweaks even the main story would have worked post TNG. It's entirely believable that some faction of the Klingons wouldn't want peace with the Federation and could kick start a war again at some point in the future. It's also entirely believable that Starfleet would constantly be experimenting with new tech and that the spore drive could have been something they fooled around with post TNG. And if they were dead set on changing how Klingons looked, they could have even said some houses were experimenting with genetic engineering. All that plus the crossing into the Mirror Universe could have still worked post TNG.
So yeah, I think they picked the wrong time by far. They could have made almost the exact same show post TNG without boxing themselves in with the canon of TOS, or having the whole "it looks too advanced" issue for a show set in that time period.
I actually agree with the OP, but not for ANY of the reasons he mentioned. The OP thinks Discovery should have been set only 20 years later than it actually is. However, IMHO, Disco could have been post TNG and still been ALMOST the exact same show. As var as visuals, the uniforms, the ships, the weapons, etc all could have easily been passed off as TNG+ technology, since it actually DOES look more advanced than the tech used in TNG.
With only a few tweaks even the main story would have worked post TNG. It's entirely believable that some faction of the Klingons wouldn't want peace with the Federation and could kick start a war again at some point in the future. It's also entirely believable that Starfleet would constantly be experimenting with new tech and that the spore drive could have been something they fooled around with post TNG. And if they were dead set on changing how Klingons looked, they could have even said some houses were experimenting with genetic engineering. All that plus the crossing into the Mirror Universe could have still worked post TNG.
So yeah, I think they picked the wrong time by far. They could have made almost the exact same show post TNG without boxing themselves in with the canon of TOS, or having the whole "it looks too advanced" issue for a show set in that time period.
They could have exactly the same story by setting it after TNG, get rid of all the name drops, and naming the Klingons as some new alien race. It should never be this easy to turn a prequel into a sequel.
Comments
My take is - What see on TV is a recreation within the limits of our possibilities and within our own creative desires to best represent a universe that we can't really visit and see ourselves, nor fully recreate in how it "really" is supposed to be. Be it because it's fictional or a parallel universe that only manifests itself in the dreams of some creative people.
Changing the looks of Klingons to be a bit more than Humans with slight makeup was to make the idea they are aliens show better, and only possible due to new budget. The exact looks, of course, where chosen because the artists thought this would be. Later changes were refinements. Maybe Discovery's changes were because some creative needed to put his own stamp on it, maybe it was because it was believed the old Klingon look had become too familiar and humanized to represent a species that was extremely alien to the people of the time frame the story took place, and they wanted to evoke the same feeling in the audience again.
Trials of Blood and Fire
Moving On Parts 1-3 - Part 4
In Cold Blood
The whole point was the virus running amok and turning Klingons into smooth heads and it took them until the TOS movie era to finally "cure" it.
And yet here we are, 100 years later, less than a decade before TOS...and there's not a single TOS Klingon in sight.
None of which changes the fact that, tiresome retroactive justifications aside, the Klingon look was changed in TMP because of a bigger budget and better makeup and prosthetics and the look remained mostly consistent across multiple tv series and movies for decades after.
Whereas Discovery altered the Klingons to the point of unrecognizability because...they wanted to remind the fans that they hate them I guess.
> luminaire#0745 wrote: »
>
> The whole dumb decision to take an off-handed comment by Worf in an episode that was just a light hearted love letter to TOS and turn it into the whole convoluted "Augment" nonsense on ENT actually compounds the headaches in Discovery.
>
> The whole point was the virus running amok and turning Klingons into smooth heads and it took them until the TOS movie era to finally "cure" it.
>
> And yet here we are, 100 years later, less than a decade before TOS...and there's not a single TOS Klingon in sight.
>
> None of which changes the fact that, tiresome retroactive justifications aside, the Klingon look was changed in TMP because of a bigger budget and better makeup and prosthetics and the look remained mostly consistent across multiple tv series and movies for decades after.
>
> Whereas Discovery altered the Klingons to the point of unrecognizability because...they wanted to remind the fans that they hate them I guess.
>
>
>
>
> Nope. It was a deliberate artistic choice by people who didn't like the TNG / enterprise era at all and wanted to make something that they DO like. They also needed to make sure their 'trump stand ins' were as inhuman and impossible to relate to as possible, because that's how they see the people they were using Klingons as a stand-in for.
>
> also, Glenn Hettrick wanted to do HR Geiger artwork, and Fuller was willing to pay him to make his latex fetish dreams.
Well the fans hath spoken, and next season the klingons will look a lot more of what we are used to.
Hell the lead costume designer WANTED to make the Klingons looks more like TNG but he got overruled by Kurtzman. Well now Kurtzman is backing down.
Well that's what Trekyards had to say about it. Take it as ya will.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
Gotta admit, that's a new one. I usually respect your opinion and views on these things, Pat (even if I almost completely disagree with you), but this one feels like you're just taking a vindictive shot at the Producers because you don't like their work, rather than making a reasoned complaint based on evidence.
On another note, just noticed your sig: for what it's worth, I've long hated people using the 'real'/'true' fan rubbish. Trekkies will like the shows they like: I for example am 'meh' about DSC (and TOS, tbh), completely disregard TAS, think of Voyager as a decent show that became so dependant on sensationalism as to become almost generic, and ENT as the hidden gem of the franchise.
And as if that wasn't enough to get me consigned to eternal damnation in the view of many fans, I like Generations, The Final Frontier, and Insurrection.
*Raises Shields*
So yeah, ignore the haters. If you're a fan of Star Trek, you can call yourself a Trekkie. 'True' doesn't enter into it.
/Off-Topic
Trials of Blood and Fire
Moving On Parts 1-3 - Part 4
In Cold Blood
My character Tsin'xing
We worked hard to make those labels stick in the 1970s and I will not have you young whippersnappers with your 'energy drinks' and your 'vegan diets' coming along and messing up our pigeonholing stereotypes with your, "I am what I think I want to be," rubbish!
Canon for me is not the costumes. It's the attitude. When I was a young man Trek was an optimistic view of tomorrow, an ideal to strive toward. We weren't so foolish as to believe in Saint Roddenberry, and we never really thought we'd see easy global communication that could be held in our palms. What we saw was that somehow, some way we could muddle through the darkness and come out the other side better than we went in.
This is what Berman/Bragga Trek stole from us, and what Discovery could have given back to us with a little less, "Fans only want dark and gritty," thinking.
My real question is, what are the audience numbers for Discovery versus The Orville? That might put my thesis to bed. Or maybe prove it.
That contempt even blinded them to the fact that the first season TOS uniforms are currently the closest thing to modern fashion of any of the Trek shows since the sixties. All it would take would be some minor changes to cut and using real full-knap velvet in richer shades (instead of the cheap lifeless velour TOS used) to be trendy and break out of the stale androgynous clown suit rut Trek has been wallowing in since TMP.
Of course, being stale '80s style fashion casualties is not in itself a problem (beyond missed opportunity) had they used the DSC uniforms along side updated soft velvet TOS uniforms in at least SOME other divisions to establish some continuity. In fact, different uniforms in different divisions would imply Starfleet was not the monolithic organization that it was by TNG yet and set up the right feel for the kind of internal strife Discovery was trying (clumsily) to portray. If it is in enough flux it would even make good humor points like the one in an episode of the fan made Star Trek Continues series where an admiral on main screen in TMP uniform signs off and someone on the bridge says "what the hell was he wearing?" and everyone breaks up.
The same thing is true of the ship designs and sets. There is nothing particularly wrong with thin skinned science vessels with windows all over and bad lighting, but they did not handle it very well and they made a big mistake in implying that ALL Starfleet ships were built the same way. For instance they go to all the trouble to introduce two radically different transporter styles and then just drop the idea of variety of tech altogether.
It would not have offended the core fans to find out that the windowless (just look at the internal sets: no windows) heavily armored TOS era Constitution with its advanced (if somewhat psychedelic) sourceless lighting and ergonomic sit-down bridge with mostly solid-state touch-jewel controls was an unusual design for instance.
Even the incredibly rotten gunnery and weak-sauce sensors could have been made to fit if they took the trouble to add ECM-style warfare dialog instead of just using faux Star Wars "WWII aircraft" combat jammed onto the original naval surface ship-to-ship style in space dialog Trek traditionally uses.
The Klingons are the worst departure, but even that could have been smoothed over by using the 'Klingons as Empire' instead of 'Klingons as race' concept that Hetrick has been talking about a lot lately. We have only seen six out of twenty four types of Klingons, and including a few of the familiar ones from the past in that 24 would have fit right in. In fact, it could have been the augment virus debacle in ENT that threw the TNG style Klingons into disfavor and triggered the infighting that kept them occupied for so long they only engaged in "brush wars" with the Federation and others instead of a full onslaught. In the same vein, their poor showing in the war against the tricky and clever humans could have pried the 'rubber suit monster' Klingons out of the drivers seat for nearly a decade as their augment-derived (relatively) tricky house took over grappling with the Feds). In fact, the tag-team effect between highly alien Klingons and the TOS era ones could have led sloppy intelligence to conclude that the ones seen in ENT were extinct (with all survivors transformed into the TOS type) by the augment virus and neglected to remind K7 security that the type that looked like Worf existed in the past.
Likewise, Spock having a sister is not really an issue considering the way he avoided talking about family in TOS and the movies, especially if she was as much under a cloud as Sybok. The only real continuity problem is that she is a "heroes journey" style character who would not have blended into the background and who would have realistically have been mentioned in the other shows. It would have been more realistic to have had her less in the foreground of events and involved more in the shadows instead. In fact, the whole show would have worked much better as a Section 31 intelligence warfare style of show than the flashy romp trying to be grim style they used. Unfortunately, after a good start in the third episode they let the plot go rambling into "the only ship of heroes" mode Paramount turned Trek into ad nauseum.
The first season was set up in an unsteady, tentative "bold moves and back doors" plotting style where you can sense that behind the changes-for-changes-sake veneer they left escape hatches to back out if the fans hated them too much, and it detracts from the overall story. The show took an unusually long time to actually start as CBS painted by the market numbers and at each major decision point "leaked" photos or plot points to gauge viewer reaction to decide which parts to use the escape hatches on and the result was a sub-par uneven metaplot propped up with pretty visual effects. With more thought and less contempt they could have used practically everything they did and actually make it fit as a natural prequel.
QFT.
> You can only call yourself a Trekkie if you go to Star Trek conventions in drag. Otherwise, you're a Trekker or Trek Fan.
>
> We worked hard to make those labels stick in the 1970s and I will not have you young whippersnappers with your 'energy drinks' and your 'vegan diets' coming along and messing up our pigeonholing stereotypes with your, "I am what I think I want to be," rubbish!
>
> Canon for me is not the costumes. It's the attitude. When I was a young man Trek was an optimistic view of tomorrow, an ideal to strive toward. We weren't so foolish as to believe in Saint Roddenberry, and we never really thought we'd see easy global communication that could be held in our palms. What we saw was that somehow, some way we could muddle through the darkness and come out the other side better than we went in.
>
> This is what Berman/Bragga Trek stole from us, and what Discovery could have given back to us with a little less, "Fans only want dark and gritty," thinking.
>
> My real question is, what are the audience numbers for Discovery versus The Orville? That might put my thesis to bed. Or maybe prove it.
Orville. All day every day.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
With only a few tweaks even the main story would have worked post TNG. It's entirely believable that some faction of the Klingons wouldn't want peace with the Federation and could kick start a war again at some point in the future. It's also entirely believable that Starfleet would constantly be experimenting with new tech and that the spore drive could have been something they fooled around with post TNG. And if they were dead set on changing how Klingons looked, they could have even said some houses were experimenting with genetic engineering. All that plus the crossing into the Mirror Universe could have still worked post TNG.
So yeah, I think they picked the wrong time by far. They could have made almost the exact same show post TNG without boxing themselves in with the canon of TOS, or having the whole "it looks too advanced" issue for a show set in that time period.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
They could have exactly the same story by setting it after TNG, get rid of all the name drops, and naming the Klingons as some new alien race. It should never be this easy to turn a prequel into a sequel.