New Star Trek series - 2017

Soldato
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Bale's Batman isn't in the same timeline/universe/whatever as the Adam West series. You want to go back and update the look of something, that's what a reboot is for. But don't make wholesale changes to the established look of something and then try and claim that you're still in the same timeline.

Look at the Discovery, the crew uniforms, the bridge design, etc. How are you going to marry that up with TOS-era Enterprise? How could you do a Trek series in 2017 and make everything styled/dressed like 60's Trek just so when the crews meet, they match the established old look? You can't do it. Discovery had to be brought up to date (even though it takes place before canon TOS), and if Enterprise was to appear in it, then the ship and crew has to be updated too. It's a telling of a story we've never seen from that time in the Trek universe, it doesn't have to look identical, it just has to tell a good story. In fact, the story being told fifty years later has to be visually updated, or it wouldn't be accepted and people wouldn't watch it.
 

JRS

JRS

Soldato
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Look at the Discovery, the crew uniforms, the bridge design, etc. How are you going to marry that up with TOS-era Enterprise? How could you do a Trek series in 2017 and make everything styled/dressed like 60's Trek just so when the crews meet, they match the established old look? You can't do it.

You're right, you probably couldn't. So you'd do a reboot, separate from the ENT-TOS-TNG-DS9-VOY timeline rather than try and ham-fistedly cram your story into it!

Discovery had to be brought up to date (even though it takes place before canon TOS), and if Enterprise was to appear in it, then the ship and crew has to be updated too. It's a telling of a story we've never seen from that time in the Trek universe, it doesn't have to look identical, it just has to tell a good story. In fact, the story being told fifty years later has to be visually updated, or it wouldn't be accepted and people wouldn't watch it.

Pray tell, what has been good about the story and storytelling in this first season of Discovery? Plot twists that exist for their own sake rather than advancing anything, plot holes large enough to be seen from orbit, little-or-no characterisation for about 75% of the people shown on-screen so far, the few interesting characters either killed off (prime universe Georgiou) or radically mucked around with (dark and interesting Lorca becomes moustache-twirling Generic Evil Guy™ from the mirror universe), reset button pushed at the end of the season, main character a full-blown Mary Sue...
 
Soldato
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You're right, you probably couldn't. So you'd do a reboot, separate from the ENT-TOS-TNG-DS9-VOY timeline rather than try and ham-fistedly cram your story into it!

So you're saying we can't do any Trek stories from when there were already existing shows/movies set in those periods, unless we make the new ones look exactly like the old ones? So you don't want any Trek stories from any of the times we've already had series.

Pray tell, what has been good about the story and storytelling in this first season of Discovery? Plot twists that exist for their own sake rather than advancing anything, plot holes large enough to be seen from orbit, little-or-no characterisation for about 75% of the people shown on-screen so far, the few interesting characters either killed off (prime universe Georgiou) or radically mucked around with (dark and interesting Lorca becomes moustache-twirling Generic Evil Guy™ from the mirror universe), reset button pushed at the end of the season, main character a full-blown Mary Sue...

Well that's a different point from whether the colour/shape of the Bussard collectors on the Enterprise 1701 are too different to be acceptable at the end of series one of Discovery, because apparently you'll only accept something identical to the 60's made TOS visuals. I think you're in the minority there.

I don't disagree with you about your other points, but the visuals and design on Discovery are one of the things that actually looks pretty good (new Klingons excepted, because the actors can't really act in all those prosthetics). If the one thing you're focussed on is that the updated Enterprise doesn't look enough like the old one for you... there's a lot more on Discovery that's in need of fixing first.
 

JRS

JRS

Soldato
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Well that's a different point from whether the colour/shape of the Bussard collectors on the Enterprise 1701 are too different to be acceptable at the end of series one of Discovery, because apparently you'll only accept something identical to the 60's made TOS visuals. I think you're in the minority there.

*sigh*

If it was just "the colour/shape of the Bussard collectors" I'd get past it. But it isn't, is it? They basically changed everything beyond the barebones layout of saucer-engineering hull-two nacelles. There's a reason why the original Enterprise didn't have huge amounts of surface detailing on it - because Matt Jefferies (who designed it) figured that all the equipment would be serviceable from inside the ship rather than having to go outside in a space suit to work on it. It also reflected light better when shooting the model for exterior views of the ship. They don't have that second issue today of course with CGI replacing proper physical models, which I always think is slightly unfortunate. Though it does mean you can show bits getting shot off/through your ship without destroying a very expensive studio model (see Enterprise's "Azati Prime", and the state it leaves the NX-01 in, for example).

I don't disagree with you about your other points, but the visuals and design on Discovery are one of the things that actually looks pretty good (new Klingons excepted, because the actors can't really act in all those prosthetics). If the one thing you're focussed on is that the updated Enterprise doesn't look enough like the old one for you... there's a lot more on Discovery that's in need of fixing first.

I would have thought it was obvious from my previous posts on here that I'm very much in the camp of there being a lot in Discovery to fix! And I agree that there's a lot I'd fix before the updated look of the Enterprise.
 
Caporegime
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There's a reason why the original Enterprise didn't have huge amounts of surface detailing on it - because Matt Jefferies (who designed it) figured that all the equipment would be serviceable from inside the ship rather than having to go outside in a space suit to work on it.

Also, it was a TV series budget, its not as if they could get amazingly elaborate on it, even if the design called for it odds are it would have been scaled back. Plus even if it had been super detailed it would have been lost due to the quality of tv at the time.
 
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Soldato
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I do feel that Discovery should have been set after Voyager, perhaps explaining the spore tech as some offshoot of the Borg / Species 8472 stuff they brought back with them.

Perhaps could have been the Klingon Empire deciding to go on the offensive post Dominion War or something to that effect.
 
Soldato
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TNG used models and they managed just fine. The new 1701 is great.

TNG is 31 years old now (1987). It was closer to the original series in 1966 (21 years) than it is to Discovery.

Changing the look of the enterprise along with the feel of the Star Trek universe for the modern audience and new fans is absolutely the right way to go.

The original design of the enterprise was conceived in an era where technology was usually built from bakelite and wood.

I can appreciate some fans aren't happy, it happens with every series (not just ST) that crosses with the historic material, but the original series are still available to rewatch, collectibles and models are still widely available and conventions still offer appreciations for the classic cannon.
 
Soldato
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There's an interesting documentary on Youtube somewhere that talks about how TNG nearly went CGI, but then decided that the tech wasn't quite there, (rendering times were too long) and went with models. This involved building large models, then using industrial robots to do sequential passes with the cameras. You'd have a shadow pass, a lighting pass, a detail pass, etc. There were about half a dozen passes that were done (the robots were the only way to make them exactly identical shots) and then all the passes were composited together. Quite expensive, and meant you saw a lot of limited shots that might have a different background, but were otherwise repeated over and over.

In contrast something like Babylon 5 looks a bit dated here and there (some of the alaising is a bit shocking), but the early CGI meant they could do a lot of different things as and when they needed them, so the shots are very varied. It made the name of Newtek's Lightwave, which subsequently was used for (among a lot of other thing) Star Trek Voyager.
 
Man of Honour
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All of this debate...literally ALL of it, could have been solved if they had simply set the new Star Trek AFTER Voyager, instead of yet again going back to the start. I would be 100 times more interested to know how the storyline and universe continues rather than the early days again.

The aesthetics really dont bother me, but it is an argument which could have been avoided with ease.
 
Soldato
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All of this debate...literally ALL of it, could have been solved if they had simply set the new Star Trek AFTER Voyager, instead of yet again going back to the start. I would be 100 times more interested to know how the storyline and universe continues rather than the early days again.

The aesthetics really dont bother me, but it is an argument which could have been avoided with ease.

Totally agree. The fans want to see how the story continues, not another prequel/reboot/alternate. The problem is that the success of the JJ reboot movies means that they want to cash in on that period rather than risk going into the future and not make money. It's the usual story of wanting to be the first people to do something second.

There's been several serious pitches for Trek series set after Voyager, all of them came to nothing because the studio was too scared to go for it.
 
Man of Honour
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Totally agree. The fans want to see how the story continues, not another prequel/reboot/alternate. The problem is that the success of the JJ reboot movies means that they want to cash in on that period rather than risk going into the future and not make money. It's the usual story of wanting to be the first people to do something second.

There's been several serious pitches for Trek series set after Voyager, all of them came to nothing because the studio was too scared to go for it.

It always reminds me of the memberberries from South Park..the lure of nostalgia.

Member The Enterprise...yeah, I member
Member Captain Pike and Captain Kirk....yeah I member

:D
 
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