3. And now, we have an Alternate Trek of Discovery, followed by Picard
Again, incorrect. Both Discovery and Picard are Prime Timeline and 100% canon. The 'alternate timeline' thing is just something people say because they don't like Discovery and can't accept it. Regardless, it's prime and 100% canon.
Let it be said, we can agree to disagree on the notion on what is considered 'canon' percieved by many different people.
What is and what isn't canon is defined by CBS. Yes, you're free to ignore it if you wish, obviously that's your right, but neither you nor I get to decide what is and isn't canon. That's designated by those that hold the rights to the IP.
3. And now, we have an Alternate Trek of Discovery, followed by Picard
Again, incorrect. Both Discovery and Picard are Prime Timeline and 100% canon. The 'alternate timeline' thing is just something people say because they don't like Discovery and can't accept it. Regardless, it's prime and 100% canon.
Let it be said, we can agree to disagree on the notion on what is considered 'canon' percieved by many different people.
I'm all sorts of down for that. What's say we judge STO as an isolated entity and just look at where it could go and what it could do with the myriad influences that the name Star Trek brings with it since the other debate will just never end.
3. And now, we have an Alternate Trek of Discovery, followed by Picard
Again, incorrect. Both Discovery and Picard are Prime Timeline and 100% canon. The 'alternate timeline' thing is just something people say because they don't like Discovery and can't accept it. Regardless, it's prime and 100% canon.
Let it be said, we can agree to disagree on the notion on what is considered 'canon' percieved by many different people.
CBS decides what is and is not canon, no one else. You're free to have your own headcanon if you want (I have my own for Star Wars), but you also have to accept that that will never actually be the true canon story. If you want to say "oh my headcanon is that Picard is an alternate universe" then no one will argue with you, but if you try to say that Picard is literally an alternate universe then you're going to get corrected by people because that is just simply incorrect. CBS said it's Prime, so it's Prime, plain and simple.
If the future is female it shows how little Kurtzman thinks of women, not only did he utterly lie about his promise to not just have another white male captain...the women in charage are absolutely incompetent...Cornwell was a idiot, willing to commit genocide and openly worked with section 31, and she took the easy way out after all of her failures. Clancy was so blinded by anger and rage instead of listening to one of Starfleet's biggest legends she swore a lot and offered no help which could have caused the death of all organic life. Soji after a short amount of time was willing to commit genocide then quickly swayed again, nothing like a old stereotype that women can't make up there minds to show how much he thinks of women!
Except all of this is either wrong, or a misrepresentation.
...
3. Soji was willing to summon the ancient synths because she had learned about how the Romulans faked the synth attack on Mars to try to get them all destroyed, believed Narek had killed one of the synths on the colony, and believed that the Federation was going to do nothing to help them. From her point of view, everyone in the galaxy was either out to kill her kind, or do nothing to stop it. She turned off the beacon once the Federation did show up, and now she had reason to believe organic life was willing to live peacefully alongside hers. She made a decision based off of the evidence she had at the time, and then changed it when evidence came about that showed something else was true. that isn't being unable to make up her mind.
Honestly, the fact you are willing to diminish, and misrepresent, the actual actions of these characters speaks more about you then it does Kurtzman.
Yes, Picard and crew and Riker's family were totally unhelpful and unwilling to jump through hoops for this crazy thing, typical organics. Totally reasonable to wipe them out too.
No, Soji had every reason not to wipe out all organic life in the universe because the ONLY REASON she got to the point she did, and didn't get killed by the ZV, was because of those scumbag organics HELPING her, putting their own lives on the line for someone they don't know, and is apparently totally ungrateful for everything they did for her. She doesn't even grasp this when Picard tells her he's going to die alone against 200+ ships to protect them, only finally breaking the thingy as he's dying once the Roms warped away (which was utterly stupid, the universe is on the line and they don't even fight for it.)
I'm not going to agree that her flipflops was because of any characteristic, but there is no question her entire experience up till then was totally disregarded for no apparent reason. It was awful writing that made zero sense for any of the characters.
Look, CBS can say all it wants, the fact is, as some were pointing out, that there were different stories regarding Data that were licensed by CBS and allowed to carry the name Star trek. Decisions that they then basically nullified by ignoring those parts of the ST universe.
Let's stop blaming fellow fans for considering those stories 'canon'. And maybe stop treating those comics etc. (and their relevance as indicated by CBS granting the right to publish them as ST) as things that only happened in those fans' heads. Instead, blame CBS for not thinking through anything, grabbing license fees one day and then retconning stuff because they either regret their own dumb decisions or because they couldn't be bothered to be a bit more proactive in managing the IP for years.
CBS allowed those things to be called Star Trek. Those legally relevant actions happened in the real world, they used their exclusive, real-world rights and allowed comics, books and so on to use that protected name. It's pretty silly to pretend that some fans are detached from reality for considering licensed works as relevant for the ST universe - when that's exactly what happened in the real world.
The debate is pointless, and the whole concept of 'canon' is nothing but religious nonsense, as someone has aptly classified it here before. It only serves to deflect blame towards other fans - instead of holding to account the morons whose job it is to manage something - and who utterly failed at it, as shown by the many contradictions.
(Note: I couldn't care less about comics and so on and from what I've seen of them, their contents can be dumb. But it's ridiculous to talk about stuff like 'head-canon' as if they're just the product of some mentally ill or detached from reality fan's mind. They're Star Trek, and CBS wanted it to be Star Trek.)
Data, the android from Star Trek, died and he's trapped inside that... whatever it was where Picard met him in the latest series.
Data, that same android from Star Trek, also never really died as he moved inside B-4's body and became captain of the Enterprise-E.
Don't like it? Too bad, that's what happened. Y'all have CBS to blame for it - not your fellow fans - if you don't like these contradictions.
Or, feel free to pretend that one of these is just someone's 'head-canon', if it makes you feel better when you're told that your CBS-induced fantasy is more real than someone else's.
Where was it said that Data becomes the Captain of the Enterprise-E not in Nemesis and that was last prime timeline content prior to DSC. Books, games, comics and so on have been truly canon, they've at best been a case of "this is most likely the case but we can change our mind if we want to".
As far as canon is concerned prior to Picard Data survival in B-4 was a "maybe" and it wasn't CBS who insisted Data be killed off it was Brent Spiner who agreed to return only if Data's sacrifice in Nemesis wasn't undone. There is no contradiction there PIcard chose to resolve the "maybe" as a "not" to respect the wishes of the actor, the comics chose to resolve it as a "yes" but got overruled.
You don't have to like DSC or PIC but when pretend that you get to choose what is and isn't Star Trek for others you cross a line.
Where was it said that Data becomes the Captain of the Enterprise-E not in Nemesis and that was last prime timeline content prior to DSC. Books, games, comics and so on have been truly canon, they've at best been a case of "this is most likely the case but we can change our mind if we want to".
As far as canon is concerned prior to Picard Data survival in B-4 was a "maybe" and it wasn't CBS who insisted Data be killed off it was Brent Spiner who agreed to return only if Data's sacrifice in Nemesis wasn't undone. There is no contradiction there PIcard chose to resolve the "maybe" as a "not" to respect the wishes of the actor, the comics chose to resolve it as a "yes" but got overruled.
You don't have to like DSC or PIC but when pretend that you get to choose what is and isn't Star Trek for others you cross a line.
Believe me, I see that last part on Twitter quite often. There's a group of people there that have some terms for groups of people depending on who likes what kind of Trek.
- The main group are the people who call themselves Trekkies that they like everything that was produced up until 2005, and seem to dislike anything made from 2009 and forward because it lacks the same kind of magic that previous star trek series/movies apparently have. They seem to look down on other people for liking the newer stuff.
- NuTrek fans are what the so called Trekkies call people who are fans of both. They seem to never want to actually accept this group as part of the fandom because to them Kurtzman Trek is not true Trek and in many cases, they feel it should be considered an alternate universe because of their ideas of what is or is not canon.
- Drekkies are a term that are used by the high and mighty Trekkies to denote people who like Kurtzman Trek and are willing to resort to name calling and such when they encounter any of the former who dislikes Kurtzman Trek. (The term apparently comes from Dreck (a german word for trash, rubbish), which is how all of these so called Trekkies seem to see Kurtzman Star Trek as.
Where was it said that Data becomes the Captain of the Enterprise-E not in Nemesis and that was last prime timeline content prior to DSC. Books, games, comics and so on have been truly canon, they've at best been a case of "this is most likely the case but we can change our mind if we want to".
As far as canon is concerned prior to Picard Data survival in B-4 was a "maybe" and it wasn't CBS who insisted Data be killed off it was Brent Spiner who agreed to return only if Data's sacrifice in Nemesis wasn't undone. There is no contradiction there PIcard chose to resolve the "maybe" as a "not" to respect the wishes of the actor, the comics chose to resolve it as a "yes" but got overruled.
You don't have to like DSC or PIC but when pretend that you get to choose what is and isn't Star Trek for others you cross a line.
Believe me, I see that last part on Twitter quite often. There's a group of people there that have some terms for groups of people depending on who likes what kind of Trek.
- The main group are the people who call themselves Trekkies that they like everything that was produced up until 2005, and seem to dislike anything made from 2009 and forward because it lacks the same kind of magic that previous star trek series/movies apparently have. They seem to look down on other people for liking the newer stuff.
- NuTrek fans are what the so called Trekkies call people who are fans of both. They seem to never want to actually accept this group as part of the fandom because to them Kurtzman Trek is not true Trek and in many cases, they feel it should be considered an alternate universe because of their ideas of what is or is not canon.
- Drekkies are a term that are used by the high and mighty Trekkies to denote people who like Kurtzman Trek and are willing to resort to name calling and such when they encounter any of the former who dislikes Kurtzman Trek. (The term apparently comes from Dreck (a german word for trash, rubbish), which is how all of these so called Trekkies seem to see Kurtzman Star Trek as.
This is very one-sided.
You left out all the derogatory stuff 'NU-trek' fans (to borrow those definitions) say about the other groups.
Fact is, you can find people with strong opinions in all parts of the fanbase.
It's unfair to pretend that they exist within just one of those groups. And I feel that is part of the problem: people being inconsiderate. In that sense, it's the same problem one can see when some people misrepresent and simplify the problems and (often well-founded and clearly explained) criticism some fans have regarding the newer stuff, as I pointed out in a previous comment in this thread.
BTW:
'Drekkies' (never heard of that before to be honest) seems more like a Dutch term to me because in Dutch it's actually 'drek' and not 'dreck' as Germans and English speaking people would call it.
You don't have to like DSC or PIC but when pretend that you get to choose what is and isn't Star Trek for others you cross a line.
People in general need to care less about what others think when it comes to 'canon'.
As I've shown (but unfortunately you seem to have chosen to ignore my entire argument), it's a pointless concept with no real-world meaning. It only serves to deflect blame from CBS, who are grossly incompetent or were not interested in managing the franchise for years. Who, as a result, utterly failed at keeping some semblance of consistency and clarity.
That's the only reason 'canon' is even a thing.
Pretending, choosing and so on what other fans should consider part of such a pointless concept is pretty pointless in itself. It is indeed crossing a line - because most fans who care about 'canon' and try bringing it up into discussions - as if it has some real world meaning (which it doesn't, unless you're actually working on a new show yourself) - seem unable to recognise this boundary between reality and fantasy.
You don't have to like DSC or PIC but when pretend that you get to choose what is and isn't Star Trek for others you cross a line.
People in general need to care less about what others think when it comes to 'canon'.
As I've shown (but unfortunately you seem to have chosen to ignore my entire argument), it's a pointless concept with no real-world meaning. It only serves to deflect blame from CBS, who are grossly incompetent or were not interested in managing the franchise for years. Who, as a result, utterly failed at keeping some semblance of consistency and clarity.
That's the only reason 'canon' is even a thing.
Pretending, choosing and so on what other fans should consider part of such a pointless concept is pretty pointless in itself. It is indeed crossing a line - because most fans who care about 'canon' and try bringing it up into discussions - as if it has some real world meaning (which it doesn't, unless you're actually working on a new show yourself) - seem unable to recognise this boundary between reality and fantasy.
I am sorry, but the real problem is that you simply don't know what 'canon' is. You are making it out to be some Trek Specific concept and it's not. It exists in all franchises and it's not defined by fans on either side. It does have a real world meaning rather you accept it or not. It's the story line that is acknowledged by those that own the intellectual rights to said franchise. It's a simple concept, it's real, it's concrete, it's not up for debate.
Now, people are free to ignore anything they don't personally agree with, no one can take that away. If for example, I don't like Deep Space Nine (I actually do) I can just feel free to ignore it, but it doesn't change that fact that in official lore that series and everything in it happened. Stories in that franchise will be told with the assumption that those events occurred as told, it's part of the story, I am just ignoring it.
People that don't like the new Trek shows are free to ignore them, but to everyone else, they are part of the main 'prime' Trek story line.. period. It's not a debate, it's not a discussion.. it's a fact and it's done.
You don't have to like DSC or PIC but when pretend that you get to choose what is and isn't Star Trek for others you cross a line.
People in general need to care less about what others think when it comes to 'canon'.
As I've shown (but unfortunately you seem to have chosen to ignore my entire argument), it's a pointless concept with no real-world meaning. It only serves to deflect blame from CBS, who are grossly incompetent or were not interested in managing the franchise for years. Who, as a result, utterly failed at keeping some semblance of consistency and clarity.
That's the only reason 'canon' is even a thing.
Pretending, choosing and so on what other fans should consider part of such a pointless concept is pretty pointless in itself. It is indeed crossing a line - because most fans who care about 'canon' and try bringing it up into discussions - as if it has some real world meaning (which it doesn't, unless you're actually working on a new show yourself) - seem unable to recognise this boundary between reality and fantasy.
I am sorry, but the real problem is that you simply don't know what 'canon' is. You are making it out to be some Trek Specific concept and it's not. It exists in all franchises and it's not defined by fans on either side. It does have a real world meaning rather you accept it or not. It's the story line that is acknowledged by those that own the intellectual rights to said franchise. It's a simple concept, it's real, it's concrete, it's not up for debate.
Now, people are free to ignore anything they don't personally agree with, no one can take that away. If for example, I don't like Deep Space Nine (I actually do) I can just feel free to ignore it, but it doesn't change that fact that in official lore that series and everything in it happened. Stories in that franchise will be told with the assumption that those events occurred as told, it's part of the story, I am just ignoring it.
People that don't like the new Trek shows are free to ignore them, but to everyone else, they are part of the main 'prime' Trek story line.. period. It's not a debate, it's not a discussion.. it's a fact and it's done.
I do know what canon is. That's why I said that it has no real life relevance unless you're working on a new show.
Cause indeed, if CBS says 'this or that can or cannot be done in your new series', you'll have to accept that. But that has nothing to do with 'canon', that's them holding the intellectual rights, the rights you need before you can name your new series a Star Trek series.
For fans between themselves, it is pointless and without any relevance to say 'no, Data did not become captain of the Enterprise E because tHaT's NoT CaNoN!' Yet this is often used as an argument when in fact, it doesn't say anything. Licences and intellectual rights matter, 'canon' does not.
And, as I pointed out, the very fact that those holding the intellectual rights allow the name ST to be put on all sorts of contradictory stuff, shows that 'canon' has nothing to do with intellectual rights. Because the holder of those rights will just make something 'canon' regardless of what else has been allowed previously under those same intellectual rights.
Even that simple fact alone shows that there is hardly anything linking this empty construct of 'canon' (whether filled in by CBS or others, that's not important) and reality.
To get back to the topic: Star Trek Picard and Discovery are Star Trek. Just like TOS, TNG, TAS, VOY, DS9, ENT, various fan made movies and tons of books and comics are Star Trek. They've been granted the right to be called Star Trek by those owning those intellectual rights. That's what matters, because CBS has the right to make them Star Trek.
'Canon', on the other hand, does not matter to this debate at all.
The way I see it, Trek is Trek with that said Discovery isn't bad it can still be saved, despite ripping off it's first season from a vaguely unknown game, all it really needs to fix it, is to kill off Burnham's character, fix the Klingons, have Saru as the main character since he's the captain now and Linus be his new number one, Burnham's actor could play the part of an Orion pirate.
Licences and intellectual rights matter, 'canon' does not.
Except the exact opposite is true, and has been for everything, even beyond Star Trek.
I have to agree on both, even Doctor Who and Star Wars had canon before Chibnall and Disney broke the canon of their respective fandoms, Chibnall even said that that he didn't care about canon, if Star Trek is to survive we need to get rid of this Progressive Plague that affecting our pop culture, nerds are a dying breed now.
The way I see it, Trek is Trek with that said Discovery isn't bad it can still be saved, despite ripping off it's first season from a vaguely unknown game, all it really needs to fix it, is to kill off Burnham's character, fix the Klingons, have Saru as the main character since he's the captain now and Linus be his new number one, Burnham's actor could play the part of an Orion pirate.
Star Trek: Discovery did not rip off its first season from a game called Tardigrades. Similarity does not equal rip off necessarily. Those creatures are real and are mentioned in Cosmos.
People confuse IP and canon too much nowadays. The term, applied to fiction instead of religious texts was popularized (it actually existed before that though it was extremely obscure) in Sherlockian fandom as a way of indicating works done directly by Doyle as opposed to derivative works. In most of the original cases that I have heard about it was the fans who used the term, not the IP holder, until at least the late 1960s or early seventies were it started moving into general usage.
And in Star Trek's case what the studio announced as canon was not "what they allowed" as in IP, it was in essence a declaration that they did not consider any third party works as binding no matter what kind of license they may have. And they mainly did that because some of their earlier licenses to what they (at the time of issuance) considered a dead TV show were rather generous and could cause confusion and irritation for viewers who may be familiar with things like Franz Joseph's technical manual or (especially) various novels and expecting the events or other details to hold weight in the movies (which were the only official new Trek stories coming out at that time).
In the original Trek usage of the term it was not a way of telling the fans that they should ignore older parts of the IP holder's own official continuity like a judge instructing a jury to ignore parts of testimony, the way some Moonves and Kurtzman Trek fans seem to think it does. The term "canon" has shifted to give the IP holder a lot more weight in shaping the particular canon but it still is a balance even though the balance point has changed, and "fanon" has been coined to cover the original fan-controlled definition of canon, but they are still just shades of the same meaning.
The way I see it, Trek is Trek with that said Discovery isn't bad it can still be saved, despite ripping off it's first season from a vaguely unknown game, all it really needs to fix it, is to kill off Burnham's character, fix the Klingons, have Saru as the main character since he's the captain now and Linus be his new number one, Burnham's actor could play the part of an Orion pirate.
That doesn't even come close to what most of the objections to DSC I have heard are, and would do little or nothing to address those objections. The poor, obvious plotting and shallow writing are probably the foremost of them for instance, and that could only change with behind the scenes change, not an on-camera one.
Ironically, the "kill off Burnham" idea means that the writers and actress did something right since the character was never supposed to be likeable, just understandable after a while. Many still don't understand her, but the unlikeable part certainly comes though for many.
According to one of the lead writers a big part of the focus was on "screwed up characters that do not go over well on network TV", and Burnham was supposed to be a sort of complicated messed up Jessica Jones type character who annoys fans at least as much she is liked. The sad part is that the writing is too shallow to really do much to explore that aspect with her or anyone else on the show enough.
And, unlike every other Trek the show was not about the bridge crew, it was the same sort of idea as Lower Decks but instead of a comedy it was designed as a drama focused on the main purpose of the ship, the science department and the DASH project. The idea itself is sound, especially when you take into account that it was just one arc of an anthology originally.
Also, they probably did not "rip off" the game, the source both used was in the news enough that parallel development is not surprising and happens in writing books, movies, and even real-world inventions like radio and a number of other things.
Something in STO that I found amusing when I first played the Dyson sphere scenarios was that one of the ships heading to the conference (the class nicknamed "the sitting dog" is probably about 80% similar (though mine had more of a TOS style) to one I designed back in the 1970s (I think I still have the drawing around here somewhere). I know for a fact that whoever did the game model did not rip off that drawing since I never published it anywhere, and it was a hoot seeing something so similar done in 3D. Sometimes things just resemble other things that have no connection, despite the well-known Hollywood tradition of lemming-like imitation.
The way I see it, Trek is Trek with that said Discovery isn't bad it can still be saved, despite ripping off it's first season from a vaguely unknown game, all it really needs to fix it, is to kill off Burnham's character, fix the Klingons, have Saru as the main character since he's the captain now and Linus be his new number one, Burnham's actor could play the part of an Orion pirate.
Star Trek: Discovery did not rip off its first season from a game called Tardigrades. Similarity does not equal rip off necessarily. Those creatures are real and are mentioned in Cosmos.
I didn't say they made up Tardigrades, I knew they were real creatures way before discovery came out, they hold the secret of genesplicing immortally into humans, just like the Turritopsis dohrnii.
I find it comical that Star Trek was somehow built on decent lore, and Star Trek Online continued that from the last movie.. It all seemed logical, the game also seemed very logical.. With how things had evolved and so forth.
And now Star Trek Online is bending and twisting, removing and changing content to fit the new canon being re-written by Picard and Discovery.. It's absolutely ravaging and it violates the lore that's already established.
If you try and play Star Trek Online right now, start from scratch. There's a ton of gaps and holes, you and I don't think about them because we know about them.
We remember a ton of the old missions, but so much content is gone from the game. And the rest of the storyline has not been changed to fit that.
Some examples are that the war between the Federation and the Klingon's are one of the worst the Federation has faced, it's way worse than the Dominion War.. It's so bad it's putting someone who's an Ensign in the command seat..
But there's almost no missions regarding the Klingon War.. You immediately fight Undine, then you get thrown into a TFO with Klingon players to fight the Romulans'.. Then you go to Romulan space, then to Cardassian.. Then everything gets confusing with time travel and what other kind of nonsense..
The Breen and Deferi references also make zero sense since those missions are removed from the storyline, such as with B'Vat and his time travel stuff..
Star Trek Online was already pretty much lacking gameplay wise, by removing the storyline aspect as well.. Or at least, destroying it quite a bit.. It could seriously harm new players, but then again.. New players will just be horning in over Discovery and Picard content so.. They won't give a damn about the old content.
Might as well just nuke most of the game and re-brand it as Star Trek Discovery Online or something.
Something that would not at all surprise me, since that's where the money is. There's no real need to make anything unique and so forth anymore, with already established lore.. For example Iconian War, Dominion, Hurq etc..
You can just pump out more and more Discovery and Picard based content, and I am betting that's everything CBS wants done as well.. To promote the shows more.
Some examples are that the war between the Federation and the Klingon's are one of the worst the Federation has faced, it's way worse than the Dominion War.. It's so bad it's putting someone who's an Ensign in the command seat.
This was never the case though. We got put in command of a ship because our actions during the tutorial showed how skilled we were. The Federation/Klingon War was never that bad, since the Klingons were never trying to destroy the Federation. They were just trying to drag the Federation into the hunt for the Undine. This is why there was never a big arc about the Federation-Klingon War. Even when the game came out the so called "Klingon War" arc was just about stopping B'vat, who had gone rogue from the Empire himself.
When the game came out the Fed/KDF war was throughout the entire game. The fleet actions, the PVP, the patrols, the inability to do any cross faction teaming, and the locked sector blocks. There was almost nothing else for KDF to do but fight the war against the Feds who also wanted to fight it. Once you maxed out your level, you had nothing to do but fight in the war or do exploration clusters, which indeed had Feds fighting KDF sometimes. You got tokens to get your mk X purples from PVP or exploration.
That Feds had PVE missions exploring a small aspect of the war, as well as other things, doesn't change that the war was running the whole game long, and it was the end game. It was entirely possible to level a character to 45 doing nothing but the war content, primarily PVP (and remember this is before mission replay.)
And when the KDF start getting missions what is the first arc they get? The one involving the mission to Mars. Then they got the raiding missions later which was yes, more war.
The war was a very big thing through the first few years of the game, but Cryptic wanted to have a lot of content about more than just Klingons which is why it wasn't just about the war.
At this point it seems like they are just throwing anything they see in another sci fi series and slap a star trek label on it. Anything that already exists though gets retconned. They says time travel is impossible we made it a crime and no one breaks laws so no crime and no time travel. Then some how in the future peoples eyes starting to breaks again and they forgot how to fix them so everyone is sporting glasses to see with and stuff. Also you can destroy all holographic technology by blinking really fast. Imagine if the maquis had this knowledge and blinked the doctor away.
When we get promoted, we've just dealt with the Klingons and one Borg attack.
None of those other things are relevant at that point.
All of those things were relevant, because all of those things had been going on for years beforehand, and had been draining the Federation's resources, which is why they needed more captains.
Do you.... think things only start the moment the hero gets there or something?
First, the Borg attack hadn't been going on for years.
Nothing indicates that the Romulans and Cardassians were a serious drain on the Federation's resources.
The Undine were not a drain on the Federation's resources either as they never attacked. They used the Klingons for that, that's why there is a war.
Moreover, and to get back to the point: Some people are pointing out that the background story of this game is filled with holes and that it's making less sense than it used to do.
You've basically just confirmed that this is indeed an issue since you're talking about lots of stuff that isn't shown anywhere in the game - let alone at the point where it should have been shown if it were really that relevant at that point in time.
I've always considered myself a Trekkie, starting back during the run of TOS on NBC (my folks were Trekkies, and introduced me to it as a toddler). I didn't care for the animation of TOS, and found the writing questionable (although that quality was explained for me by David Gerrold, who noted the rather extreme network interference in what they saw as a "children's cartoon"). I like pretty much all of the canon; I even enjoy the Kelvin Timeline, with the exception of the rather poor science in Into Dorkness (cold fusion is a thing, and it's not that thing; if you fall from the orbit of Luna toward Earth, barring outside acceleration, you're looking at days, not minutes; and the "magic blood" snapped my Suspenders of Disbelief to the point that I stopped asking why neither Earth nor Qo'noS has orbital defenses). I had... opinions about VOY, and my headcanon to this day denies the existence of "Threshold", but I know the difference between my headcanon and the official canon, which is defined as "everything committed to film (or its digital equivalent) by Desilu Studios, NBC, CBS, and Paramount".
Jon's Post, supplemental: When discussing the retcons in STO, it should also be kept in mind that Trek canon includes the Temporal Wars referenced in both ENT and DSC. History can change, in relatively small ways - thanks to the intervention of the Temporal Accords, for instance, Jim Kirk will always have been captain of the Enterprise during the TOS era, but the fate of Cmdr. Kyle is indeterminate after stardate 8141.6 (when he was among the crew of the Reliant rescued from Ceti Alpha V).
And I was going to make a "canon" joke referencing the Council of Trent, but good heavens, if you want to see canon-specificity arguments, just take a look at that history. There are three Biblical canons attributed to Martin Luther alone!
Actually they don't put ensigns in command of starships, players start out as lieutenant junior grade back in the academy for command/department head school going out on their last deployment before graduation (as a full lieutenant) when the tribble hits the fan. That is why not everyone knows what the Kobayashi Maru test actually entails, only the people returning for that advanced school get it.
Originally it was a Borg incursion that caused all the ruckus and had Command hitting the panic button and calling up enough of the warm-mothballed reserve that they were short on captains so the player character is left in command. By the time the dust settled and Starfleet realized it was some sort of recon in force to test the Federation response or whatever, taking the PC out of command would be the equivalent of a black mark in their record, and since they performed well they are confirmed instead.
Captain Kirk is a good example of the normal progression (though faster than most):
He went through the basic program as a bit of a "troublemaker" (actually Finny was making things difficult for him), graduated that program as an ensign.
Then he served on USS Republic for a while, made lieutenant jg which is the top rank without going back to the Academy for the advanced program.
So when he went up for promotion again he was rotated back to the Academy where part of his command training was instructing basic program cadets. It ended with the Kobayashi Maru scenario and he graduated as a full lieutenant in 2255.
This time he served on USS Farragut with a good track record of decisions on first contact and whatnot, then in 2257 showed uncommon bravery under fire (though he still blamed himself for not being fast enough with the phasers).
Sometime after that he was given command of something (Roddenberry usually called it a destroyer when asked at conventions) with Gary Mitchell as his first officer.
In 2265 he made the unprecedented leap from that to command of the Enterprise, the youngest "heavy cruiser" captain on record at the time, and took his first officer with him though since the ship came with Spock already there as first officer Mitchell was installed as second instead.
The movies seem to have confused matters a bit (which is typical for the movies, especially since Roddenberry was nothing but a figurehead by that time and could not correct them). In The Wrath of Khan Saavik is a LTJG but that is because she had not officially graduated the command school yet (as indicated by the red collar) and received her promotion to full lieutenant (that would have happened after the ship returned from its short graduation deployment), just like most of the basic program cadets (like Scotty's nephew) are still cadets and not ensigns.
The problem is that while she did nothing that would hold her back, when seen in The Voyage Home, which is the next time you can see her rank (in Search for Spock she had the cold-weather jacket on the whole time and its design made the wide collar of the jacket cover the rank tabs on the shoulder so they were never seen) she still has the LTJG rank tabs instead of the full lieutenant ones she should have had from graduating command/department head school at the Academy.
Comments
What is and what isn't canon is defined by CBS. Yes, you're free to ignore it if you wish, obviously that's your right, but neither you nor I get to decide what is and isn't canon. That's designated by those that hold the rights to the IP.
I'm all sorts of down for that. What's say we judge STO as an isolated entity and just look at where it could go and what it could do with the myriad influences that the name Star Trek brings with it since the other debate will just never end.
CBS decides what is and is not canon, no one else. You're free to have your own headcanon if you want (I have my own for Star Wars), but you also have to accept that that will never actually be the true canon story. If you want to say "oh my headcanon is that Picard is an alternate universe" then no one will argue with you, but if you try to say that Picard is literally an alternate universe then you're going to get corrected by people because that is just simply incorrect. CBS said it's Prime, so it's Prime, plain and simple.
Yes, Picard and crew and Riker's family were totally unhelpful and unwilling to jump through hoops for this crazy thing, typical organics. Totally reasonable to wipe them out too.
No, Soji had every reason not to wipe out all organic life in the universe because the ONLY REASON she got to the point she did, and didn't get killed by the ZV, was because of those scumbag organics HELPING her, putting their own lives on the line for someone they don't know, and is apparently totally ungrateful for everything they did for her. She doesn't even grasp this when Picard tells her he's going to die alone against 200+ ships to protect them, only finally breaking the thingy as he's dying once the Roms warped away (which was utterly stupid, the universe is on the line and they don't even fight for it.)
I'm not going to agree that her flipflops was because of any characteristic, but there is no question her entire experience up till then was totally disregarded for no apparent reason. It was awful writing that made zero sense for any of the characters.
Look, CBS can say all it wants, the fact is, as some were pointing out, that there were different stories regarding Data that were licensed by CBS and allowed to carry the name Star trek. Decisions that they then basically nullified by ignoring those parts of the ST universe.
Let's stop blaming fellow fans for considering those stories 'canon'. And maybe stop treating those comics etc. (and their relevance as indicated by CBS granting the right to publish them as ST) as things that only happened in those fans' heads. Instead, blame CBS for not thinking through anything, grabbing license fees one day and then retconning stuff because they either regret their own dumb decisions or because they couldn't be bothered to be a bit more proactive in managing the IP for years.
CBS allowed those things to be called Star Trek. Those legally relevant actions happened in the real world, they used their exclusive, real-world rights and allowed comics, books and so on to use that protected name. It's pretty silly to pretend that some fans are detached from reality for considering licensed works as relevant for the ST universe - when that's exactly what happened in the real world.
The debate is pointless, and the whole concept of 'canon' is nothing but religious nonsense, as someone has aptly classified it here before. It only serves to deflect blame towards other fans - instead of holding to account the morons whose job it is to manage something - and who utterly failed at it, as shown by the many contradictions.
(Note: I couldn't care less about comics and so on and from what I've seen of them, their contents can be dumb. But it's ridiculous to talk about stuff like 'head-canon' as if they're just the product of some mentally ill or detached from reality fan's mind. They're Star Trek, and CBS wanted it to be Star Trek.)
Data, the android from Star Trek, died and he's trapped inside that... whatever it was where Picard met him in the latest series.
Data, that same android from Star Trek, also never really died as he moved inside B-4's body and became captain of the Enterprise-E.
Don't like it? Too bad, that's what happened. Y'all have CBS to blame for it - not your fellow fans - if you don't like these contradictions.
Or, feel free to pretend that one of these is just someone's 'head-canon', if it makes you feel better when you're told that your CBS-induced fantasy is more real than someone else's.
As far as canon is concerned prior to Picard Data survival in B-4 was a "maybe" and it wasn't CBS who insisted Data be killed off it was Brent Spiner who agreed to return only if Data's sacrifice in Nemesis wasn't undone. There is no contradiction there PIcard chose to resolve the "maybe" as a "not" to respect the wishes of the actor, the comics chose to resolve it as a "yes" but got overruled.
You don't have to like DSC or PIC but when pretend that you get to choose what is and isn't Star Trek for others you cross a line.
Believe me, I see that last part on Twitter quite often. There's a group of people there that have some terms for groups of people depending on who likes what kind of Trek.
- The main group are the people who call themselves Trekkies that they like everything that was produced up until 2005, and seem to dislike anything made from 2009 and forward because it lacks the same kind of magic that previous star trek series/movies apparently have. They seem to look down on other people for liking the newer stuff.
- NuTrek fans are what the so called Trekkies call people who are fans of both. They seem to never want to actually accept this group as part of the fandom because to them Kurtzman Trek is not true Trek and in many cases, they feel it should be considered an alternate universe because of their ideas of what is or is not canon.
- Drekkies are a term that are used by the high and mighty Trekkies to denote people who like Kurtzman Trek and are willing to resort to name calling and such when they encounter any of the former who dislikes Kurtzman Trek. (The term apparently comes from Dreck (a german word for trash, rubbish), which is how all of these so called Trekkies seem to see Kurtzman Star Trek as.
This is very one-sided.
You left out all the derogatory stuff 'NU-trek' fans (to borrow those definitions) say about the other groups.
Fact is, you can find people with strong opinions in all parts of the fanbase.
It's unfair to pretend that they exist within just one of those groups. And I feel that is part of the problem: people being inconsiderate. In that sense, it's the same problem one can see when some people misrepresent and simplify the problems and (often well-founded and clearly explained) criticism some fans have regarding the newer stuff, as I pointed out in a previous comment in this thread.
BTW:
'Drekkies' (never heard of that before to be honest) seems more like a Dutch term to me because in Dutch it's actually 'drek' and not 'dreck' as Germans and English speaking people would call it.
People in general need to care less about what others think when it comes to 'canon'.
As I've shown (but unfortunately you seem to have chosen to ignore my entire argument), it's a pointless concept with no real-world meaning. It only serves to deflect blame from CBS, who are grossly incompetent or were not interested in managing the franchise for years. Who, as a result, utterly failed at keeping some semblance of consistency and clarity.
That's the only reason 'canon' is even a thing.
Pretending, choosing and so on what other fans should consider part of such a pointless concept is pretty pointless in itself. It is indeed crossing a line - because most fans who care about 'canon' and try bringing it up into discussions - as if it has some real world meaning (which it doesn't, unless you're actually working on a new show yourself) - seem unable to recognise this boundary between reality and fantasy.
I am sorry, but the real problem is that you simply don't know what 'canon' is. You are making it out to be some Trek Specific concept and it's not. It exists in all franchises and it's not defined by fans on either side. It does have a real world meaning rather you accept it or not. It's the story line that is acknowledged by those that own the intellectual rights to said franchise. It's a simple concept, it's real, it's concrete, it's not up for debate.
Now, people are free to ignore anything they don't personally agree with, no one can take that away. If for example, I don't like Deep Space Nine (I actually do) I can just feel free to ignore it, but it doesn't change that fact that in official lore that series and everything in it happened. Stories in that franchise will be told with the assumption that those events occurred as told, it's part of the story, I am just ignoring it.
People that don't like the new Trek shows are free to ignore them, but to everyone else, they are part of the main 'prime' Trek story line.. period. It's not a debate, it's not a discussion.. it's a fact and it's done.
I do know what canon is. That's why I said that it has no real life relevance unless you're working on a new show.
Cause indeed, if CBS says 'this or that can or cannot be done in your new series', you'll have to accept that. But that has nothing to do with 'canon', that's them holding the intellectual rights, the rights you need before you can name your new series a Star Trek series.
For fans between themselves, it is pointless and without any relevance to say 'no, Data did not become captain of the Enterprise E because tHaT's NoT CaNoN!' Yet this is often used as an argument when in fact, it doesn't say anything. Licences and intellectual rights matter, 'canon' does not.
And, as I pointed out, the very fact that those holding the intellectual rights allow the name ST to be put on all sorts of contradictory stuff, shows that 'canon' has nothing to do with intellectual rights. Because the holder of those rights will just make something 'canon' regardless of what else has been allowed previously under those same intellectual rights.
Even that simple fact alone shows that there is hardly anything linking this empty construct of 'canon' (whether filled in by CBS or others, that's not important) and reality.
To get back to the topic: Star Trek Picard and Discovery are Star Trek. Just like TOS, TNG, TAS, VOY, DS9, ENT, various fan made movies and tons of books and comics are Star Trek. They've been granted the right to be called Star Trek by those owning those intellectual rights. That's what matters, because CBS has the right to make them Star Trek.
'Canon', on the other hand, does not matter to this debate at all.
I have to agree on both, even Doctor Who and Star Wars had canon before Chibnall and Disney broke the canon of their respective fandoms, Chibnall even said that that he didn't care about canon, if Star Trek is to survive we need to get rid of this Progressive Plague that affecting our pop culture, nerds are a dying breed now.
Star Trek: Discovery did not rip off its first season from a game called Tardigrades. Similarity does not equal rip off necessarily. Those creatures are real and are mentioned in Cosmos.
And in Star Trek's case what the studio announced as canon was not "what they allowed" as in IP, it was in essence a declaration that they did not consider any third party works as binding no matter what kind of license they may have. And they mainly did that because some of their earlier licenses to what they (at the time of issuance) considered a dead TV show were rather generous and could cause confusion and irritation for viewers who may be familiar with things like Franz Joseph's technical manual or (especially) various novels and expecting the events or other details to hold weight in the movies (which were the only official new Trek stories coming out at that time).
In the original Trek usage of the term it was not a way of telling the fans that they should ignore older parts of the IP holder's own official continuity like a judge instructing a jury to ignore parts of testimony, the way some Moonves and Kurtzman Trek fans seem to think it does. The term "canon" has shifted to give the IP holder a lot more weight in shaping the particular canon but it still is a balance even though the balance point has changed, and "fanon" has been coined to cover the original fan-controlled definition of canon, but they are still just shades of the same meaning.
That doesn't even come close to what most of the objections to DSC I have heard are, and would do little or nothing to address those objections. The poor, obvious plotting and shallow writing are probably the foremost of them for instance, and that could only change with behind the scenes change, not an on-camera one.
Ironically, the "kill off Burnham" idea means that the writers and actress did something right since the character was never supposed to be likeable, just understandable after a while. Many still don't understand her, but the unlikeable part certainly comes though for many.
According to one of the lead writers a big part of the focus was on "screwed up characters that do not go over well on network TV", and Burnham was supposed to be a sort of complicated messed up Jessica Jones type character who annoys fans at least as much she is liked. The sad part is that the writing is too shallow to really do much to explore that aspect with her or anyone else on the show enough.
And, unlike every other Trek the show was not about the bridge crew, it was the same sort of idea as Lower Decks but instead of a comedy it was designed as a drama focused on the main purpose of the ship, the science department and the DASH project. The idea itself is sound, especially when you take into account that it was just one arc of an anthology originally.
Also, they probably did not "rip off" the game, the source both used was in the news enough that parallel development is not surprising and happens in writing books, movies, and even real-world inventions like radio and a number of other things.
Something in STO that I found amusing when I first played the Dyson sphere scenarios was that one of the ships heading to the conference (the class nicknamed "the sitting dog" is probably about 80% similar (though mine had more of a TOS style) to one I designed back in the 1970s (I think I still have the drawing around here somewhere). I know for a fact that whoever did the game model did not rip off that drawing since I never published it anywhere, and it was a hoot seeing something so similar done in 3D. Sometimes things just resemble other things that have no connection, despite the well-known Hollywood tradition of lemming-like imitation.
I didn't say they made up Tardigrades, I knew they were real creatures way before discovery came out, they hold the secret of genesplicing immortally into humans, just like the Turritopsis dohrnii.
And now Star Trek Online is bending and twisting, removing and changing content to fit the new canon being re-written by Picard and Discovery.. It's absolutely ravaging and it violates the lore that's already established.
If you try and play Star Trek Online right now, start from scratch. There's a ton of gaps and holes, you and I don't think about them because we know about them.
We remember a ton of the old missions, but so much content is gone from the game. And the rest of the storyline has not been changed to fit that.
Some examples are that the war between the Federation and the Klingon's are one of the worst the Federation has faced, it's way worse than the Dominion War.. It's so bad it's putting someone who's an Ensign in the command seat..
But there's almost no missions regarding the Klingon War.. You immediately fight Undine, then you get thrown into a TFO with Klingon players to fight the Romulans'.. Then you go to Romulan space, then to Cardassian.. Then everything gets confusing with time travel and what other kind of nonsense..
The Breen and Deferi references also make zero sense since those missions are removed from the storyline, such as with B'Vat and his time travel stuff..
Star Trek Online was already pretty much lacking gameplay wise, by removing the storyline aspect as well.. Or at least, destroying it quite a bit.. It could seriously harm new players, but then again.. New players will just be horning in over Discovery and Picard content so.. They won't give a damn about the old content.
Might as well just nuke most of the game and re-brand it as Star Trek Discovery Online or something.
Something that would not at all surprise me, since that's where the money is. There's no real need to make anything unique and so forth anymore, with already established lore.. For example Iconian War, Dominion, Hurq etc..
You can just pump out more and more Discovery and Picard based content, and I am betting that's everything CBS wants done as well.. To promote the shows more.
When the game came out the Fed/KDF war was throughout the entire game. The fleet actions, the PVP, the patrols, the inability to do any cross faction teaming, and the locked sector blocks. There was almost nothing else for KDF to do but fight the war against the Feds who also wanted to fight it. Once you maxed out your level, you had nothing to do but fight in the war or do exploration clusters, which indeed had Feds fighting KDF sometimes. You got tokens to get your mk X purples from PVP or exploration.
That Feds had PVE missions exploring a small aspect of the war, as well as other things, doesn't change that the war was running the whole game long, and it was the end game. It was entirely possible to level a character to 45 doing nothing but the war content, primarily PVP (and remember this is before mission replay.)
And when the KDF start getting missions what is the first arc they get? The one involving the mission to Mars. Then they got the raiding missions later which was yes, more war.
The war was a very big thing through the first few years of the game, but Cryptic wanted to have a lot of content about more than just Klingons which is why it wasn't just about the war.
Huh?
When we get promoted, we've just dealt with the Klingons and one Borg attack.
None of those other things are relevant at that point.
First, the Borg attack hadn't been going on for years.
Nothing indicates that the Romulans and Cardassians were a serious drain on the Federation's resources.
The Undine were not a drain on the Federation's resources either as they never attacked. They used the Klingons for that, that's why there is a war.
Moreover, and to get back to the point: Some people are pointing out that the background story of this game is filled with holes and that it's making less sense than it used to do.
You've basically just confirmed that this is indeed an issue since you're talking about lots of stuff that isn't shown anywhere in the game - let alone at the point where it should have been shown if it were really that relevant at that point in time.
I've always considered myself a Trekkie, starting back during the run of TOS on NBC (my folks were Trekkies, and introduced me to it as a toddler). I didn't care for the animation of TOS, and found the writing questionable (although that quality was explained for me by David Gerrold, who noted the rather extreme network interference in what they saw as a "children's cartoon"). I like pretty much all of the canon; I even enjoy the Kelvin Timeline, with the exception of the rather poor science in Into Dorkness (cold fusion is a thing, and it's not that thing; if you fall from the orbit of Luna toward Earth, barring outside acceleration, you're looking at days, not minutes; and the "magic blood" snapped my Suspenders of Disbelief to the point that I stopped asking why neither Earth nor Qo'noS has orbital defenses). I had... opinions about VOY, and my headcanon to this day denies the existence of "Threshold", but I know the difference between my headcanon and the official canon, which is defined as "everything committed to film (or its digital equivalent) by Desilu Studios, NBC, CBS, and Paramount".
Jon's Post, supplemental: When discussing the retcons in STO, it should also be kept in mind that Trek canon includes the Temporal Wars referenced in both ENT and DSC. History can change, in relatively small ways - thanks to the intervention of the Temporal Accords, for instance, Jim Kirk will always have been captain of the Enterprise during the TOS era, but the fate of Cmdr. Kyle is indeterminate after stardate 8141.6 (when he was among the crew of the Reliant rescued from Ceti Alpha V).
And I was going to make a "canon" joke referencing the Council of Trent, but good heavens, if you want to see canon-specificity arguments, just take a look at that history. There are three Biblical canons attributed to Martin Luther alone!
Originally it was a Borg incursion that caused all the ruckus and had Command hitting the panic button and calling up enough of the warm-mothballed reserve that they were short on captains so the player character is left in command. By the time the dust settled and Starfleet realized it was some sort of recon in force to test the Federation response or whatever, taking the PC out of command would be the equivalent of a black mark in their record, and since they performed well they are confirmed instead.
Captain Kirk is a good example of the normal progression (though faster than most):
The movies seem to have confused matters a bit (which is typical for the movies, especially since Roddenberry was nothing but a figurehead by that time and could not correct them). In The Wrath of Khan Saavik is a LTJG but that is because she had not officially graduated the command school yet (as indicated by the red collar) and received her promotion to full lieutenant (that would have happened after the ship returned from its short graduation deployment), just like most of the basic program cadets (like Scotty's nephew) are still cadets and not ensigns.
The problem is that while she did nothing that would hold her back, when seen in The Voyage Home, which is the next time you can see her rank (in Search for Spock she had the cold-weather jacket on the whole time and its design made the wide collar of the jacket cover the rank tabs on the shoulder so they were never seen) she still has the LTJG rank tabs instead of the full lieutenant ones she should have had from graduating command/department head school at the Academy.