A Waterskiing Dog — Star Trek Discovery’s “Will You Take My Hand?”

@15/MaGnUs: “Tyler staying behind makes complete sense, but how will he operate as a human looking person outside the Orion compound?”

Though DSC didn’t show them, there have been human-looking Klingons in the Empire since “Divergence” a century earlier, and we know they’ll be dominant in the Klingon military (at least the portion of it that interacted with Kirk & crew) a decade later. Maybe one of L’Rell’s reforms will be to grant them greater exclusion in Klingon society.

@16/lerris: “The bit that bothers me after the fact is wondering how Discovery found a void inside the planet without realizing that the planet was in fact still volcanically active.”

Of course the planet was still volcanically active — a tectonically dead planet probably wouldn’t have a breathable atmosphere or a habitable surface — but that doesn’t mean every individual volcano on the entire planet is active or inactive at the same time.

“Did anyone else catch the parasitic invaders from TNG’s “Conspiracy” in a fry pan?”

I thought those were Ceti eels.

@23/MaGnUs: I don’t think a ridged Klingon would see much difference between someone who looks like Voq/Tyler and someone who looks like Kor or Kang, never mind Kras or Koloth.

@43/roxana: Canon has never been synonymous with continuity. It’s just a nickname for the original body of work as distinct from tie-ins or fanfiction. Many canons have rewritten themselves, like when Dallas retconned an entire season as a dream, or when various movie series like Highlander or Halloween have done sequels that disregarded earlier sequels. A fictional canon, by definition, is a work that grows over time and is thus subject to change. The only canons that don’t change are the ones that are no longer being added to.

And of course, Star Trek has been rewriting its own continuity for half a century, which is why we aren’t following the adventures of the UESPA starship Enterprise commanded by James R. Kirk.

@@@@@46/roxana: “@@@@@ CLB, I know, you have made the fluid nature of continuity and the fact there is no such thing as Canon very clear.”

Again, I have never said “there is no such thing as Canon.” Please stop twisting my words. I have simply said that “canon” is not the magic, binding seal of immutability that fans unrealistically expect it to be. It’s just a blanket nickname for the core body of work in a fictional series, with all its imperfections.

“That’s why I was surprised to see you appeal to the established chronology.”

Chronology is actual story content. It’s more important than more superficial details like set, prop, and makeup designs.

@@@@@47/krad: You said it. Heck, I’m pretty sure I predicted back during Enterprise that we’d be having those exact same arguments when the next new series came along, and I was right.

@@@@@49/Edgar: “I think it’s appropriate to ask why TPTB bothered to make changes to an item meant to be the exact same thing we saw before (rather than another part of a vast universe).”

I think these things go in cycles. The first attempt to revive something tends to reject imitation and establish its own identity apart or in contrast to its predecessor; then the next phase of the cycle brings in nostalgia and renewed appreciation for the original version, so you get more imitation; and then the next phase, at a greater remove in time, swings back toward modernization and independence from the old. For instance, the first Godzilla reboot in the ’80s was dark, gritty, and serious and disregarded all prior continuity except the 1954 original; then the later Millennium-Era movies in the early 2000s folded back in some elements of the original continuity; and now we have Godzilla movies that are complete reboots in which even the ’54 movie never happened. In the case of Star Trek, the original movies and early TNG went for modernization and reinvention and avoided nostalgia, but then the next wave of creators came onboard and started folding in more nostalgic elements again; and now we’re moving into the stage after that, where the new creators are seeking innovation again rather than simply copying what their predecessors did. Different generations of creators bring different sensibilities, often in direct reaction against their predecessors, so the pendulum swings back and forth.

What’s odd is that the past two Trek incarnations (Kelvin and DSC) have been torn between both impulses — they rely heavily on nostalgia while simultaneously trying to innovate. It could be that those two drives work against each other. Personally, I think Star Trek should be about innovation and looking forward. It is supposed to be about boldly going where no one has gone before, after all.

As for Doctor Who, if you’re citing it as an example of something that keeps the designs the same, I’d have to say you’re only partially right. It tends to be case-by-case whether it goes for nostalgia or innovation. There have been a lot of redesigns — the TARDIS interior, the Daleks to an extent, the Cybermen, the Silurians quite a bit — but we’ve gotten more nostalgia in the past few years, what with the 50th anniversary and Steven Moffat getting sentimental toward the end of his tenure, so we get things like the return of the Mondasian Cybermen and the First Doctor. And we get the First Doctor’s console room lovingly recreated even while the First Doctor himself is reinterpreted by a new actor for the second time, this time one who doesn’t even look or sound much like the original. So if anything, I think Doctor Who proves that there is no absolute rule to something like this, that it’s a matter of whether nostalgia or reinvention suits the needs of a specific story.

“it’s fair to ask what it means to be “in the same continuity” given that the things which should remain unchanged aren’t…you know, continuous.”

Stories are not about sets and props. They’re about people and events. Keith covered this in his review — a new performance of a play with different scenic design and costumes is not a different play. A character played by a new actor is not a different character. What matters is that the essence of the characters and their history and relationships and attitudes and societal context remain continuous, not whether their surface appearance does so. Nobody would say Robin Curtis’s Saavik is a different character from Kirstie Alley’s Saavik just because she has brown eyes and slantier eyebrows. But they might say she’s different because she’s less intense and volatile, more conventionally Vulcan. What defines continuity is what’s beneath the visible surface.

@59/Jedikalos: “I honestly don’t understand why they simply wouldn’t have the original Enterprise simply look like the original Enterprise.”

Like I said, maybe it’s because that’s already been done. That’s what the previous iteration of the franchise did in “Trials and Tribble-ations” and “In a Mirror, Darkly.” They did it well, but there’s not much point in starting the franchise up again if you’re not going to try new things.

After all, a franchise that has nothing to offer but nostalgia will eventually die out, because it won’t be drawing in new fans, just pandering to the aging fans of the original. Novelty is what makes a series worth continuing.

@64/MaGnUs: “I always took it as those Klingons in TOS as not looking like humans with cheesy make-up, I believe the intention was that there was a real difference in universe. But I get your point.”

No, Roddenberry’s intention was to replace the TOS version with something better. I’m pretty sure that he didn’t see TOS as a “live broadcast” from the future, but as a dramatization based on Kirk’s logs, much like the first show he worked on, Dragnet, was a dramatization of real police cases (including his own). In his TMP novelization, he presented himself in the introduction as a 23rd-century producer who’d made TOS as an “inaccurately larger-than-life” fictionalization of Kirk’s adventures, and promised that TMP was a more accurate dramatization because he had Admiral Kirk riding herd over him this time and making sure he got it right. Roddenberry was anything but a purist about Trek continuity, given how many official Trek works he insisted were apocryphal later in life. He was constantly revising his view of Trek continuity, cherrypicking the parts he wanted to keep and the parts he wanted to replace or gloss over. A lot of what we got in TOS wasn’t his ideal vision, it was the result of compromises due to lack of time and budget. The humanoid aliens were one of those compromises. TMP’s greater budget and resources let him do the more exotic kinds of alien he would’ve liked to do more often in TOS if he’d had the time and money for it.

And DS9: “Blood Oath” was pretty clearly implying that Kor, Kang, and Koloth had always had ridges. I think their makeup was a little more subtle than the usual Westmore Klingons, the hairlines a bit more forward, suggesting a compromise design, a la “This is what the TOS makeup was hinting at,” but that’s all. Sure, plenty of tie-ins and fan works had conjectured explanations for the different Klingon appearances (e.g. John M. Ford’s idea in The Final Reflection and the FASA games that they were genetic fusions with other races, created to interact with barbarians on their own terms), but there was never any canonical acknowledgment of the change until “Trials and Tribble-ations,” and that was only because they were forced to acknowledge it due to the reuse of TOS footage.

@73/roxana: People are complicated, self-contradictory entities. It’s not bad writing for a single character to have seemingly incompatible attitudes or to treat different people in their lives in inconsistent ways; it’s actually quite realistic. (That’s actually what I’m enjoying about the book I’m currently reading, Claudia Gray’s Star Wars: Bloodline, about Princess Leia in the years prior to The Force Awakens. There are some nicely complicated characters who have attitudes that are seemingly mutually contradictory but who find ways to rationalize them in their own minds, or who wrestle with which of two conflicting values they prioritize more.)

@75/Jana: It’s always been ambiguous whether T’Pau was actually part of Spock’s extended family or just someone whose presence at the wedding indicated the status of said family. The Pocket Books novel continuity goes with the former interpretation, but it’s not canonically established.

@81/MikeKelm: I’ve never understood the objections to a paywall. There have been Trek productions that people have had to pay to see ever since the first theatrical feature film came out in 1979. And pay television has been around for decades, just on cable instead of streaming. To this day, there are a ton of acclaimed shows I’ve never seen because I’ve never paid for HBO or Showtime or the like.

And yes, CBS is using Star Trek to attract an audience to their new service. There’s nothing remotely new about that. The Phase II revival that evolved into TMP was going to be the flagship show for a Paramount-owned fourth network, in the same way that Voyager was the flagship show for UPN decades later. TNG pioneered first-run syndicated drama. Even the animated series was an attempt to broaden the audience for Saturday morning cartoons by making one with more adult appeal. And part of the reason TOS got three seasons despite its weak ratings was because its visual spectacle helped NBC’s parent company RCA sell color televisions.

@94/MaGnUs: “Yeah, but the creative team knew they were going to have people whining, so they just did the show they wanted to do.”

Exactly. Any decision you make will upset or disappoint some people. The only way to upset no one is to delight no one, to do nothing with any real impact. So you just have to make the choices that feel right to you rather than pandering to some imagined audience checklist. And that doesn’t mean blindly copying the choices of your predecessors.

@96/Sunspear: We’re three years past “The Cage,” and the only thing we know about the Enterprise at this point in the timeline is that Pike and Spock were part of its crew. We know absolutely nothing canonical about Number One beyond her role in “The Cage.” All the various tie-in conjectures about her are unofficial and mutually contradictory.

@100/roxana: I’d say it’s overwhelmingly likely that the new captain will be a new character, just as Burnham, Lorca, Saru, Stamets, etc. are. The only returning characters we’ve seen on DSC have been guest roles. For a series regular, they’d want an original character that they had free rein with, rather than a known canon character whose fate is already decided.

@102/Loungeshep: The Early Voyages comics gave Number One the surname Robbins. Her first name was almost given once, as “Eure–” (interrupted), probably Eureka — which is no doubt why she preferred “Number One.”

@103/M: “It seems like every new Trek series post TNG has gotten a segment of the fans upset.”

Ohh, TNG itself got fans hugely upset. There was enormous backlash against the idea of doing Star Trek with anyone but the original cast — and several members of the original cast were quite vocally opposed to TNG as well. It took years to win the traditionalists over, even with Roddenberry himself theoretically in charge.

And before that, there was a fair number of fans who were upset at the changes in the movies.

@104 & 106/Phillip Thorne: Credits don’t always give the complete picture. Every active member of the writing staff contributes to every episode, regardless of who gets the script credit. And the showrunners (Berg & Harberts in this case) write the final draft of every script, as a rule.

As for experience with tight story arcs, I’d say a lot of the writers have it, since it’s pretty common these days. For instance, Alexander & Coleite came from Heroes, which was very tightly serialized. Really, I’d say the one with the least experience at season-arc writing is Menosky, since most of his work was from shows that predated heavy serialization — although The Dead Zone had a good mix of episodic and season-arc storytelling. And serialization isn’t everything, given that Menosky turned in the strongest single episode of DSC’s first season.

@108/Arthur: I think the recent Star Wars movies, especially The Last Jedi, have grown enormously beyond the previous films, in ways that go well beyond basics of plot. They’ve really deepened and broadened the world, gotten more sophisticated in their storytelling and their themes, etc. TLJ in particular did a great job of confronting the rather simplistic Hero’s Journey themes of the original films and growing beyond them to a more nuanced view of heroism, and it did more than any previous film to address just what the heroes are fighting for.

I think Discovery is trying to move the franchise forward in some of the same ways — notably in broadening the center of attention to encompass more diverse protagonists — but I don’t think it’s succeeded in deepening its exploration of the franchise’s themes in the same way, since they’ve already been explored fairly deeply. It was trying to challenge the Federation’s values under severe stress and then reaffirm them, but DS9 already had that covered. I’m not sure it really broke any new ground beyond bringing Trek in sync with what much of the rest of modern TV already does — more serialized plotting, more adult content, LGBT inclusion finally, etc.

@111/M: I think you’re judging the new Star Wars trilogy on too simplistic a level. It’s not about what plot they’re using, it’s about how they’re telling it. The plot is just a backdrop to the character story, and it’s in the character work that the new movies really shine.

Besides, the fact that the First Order wants to copy the Empire is exactly what defines it as a threat. It’s a group that can’t move forward, that clings to the oppression of the past and is determined to crush all efforts to build a more progressive future. That’s a very timely allegory right now. The whole thematic arc of the new trilogy is about the good guys who are moving forward and evolving and learning vs. the bad guys who refuse to do any of that and are doomed to keep rehashing the mistakes of the past. And I think TLJ pretty clearly put an end to the First Order’s unimaginative repetition of the past, through Kylo Ren’s actions. Heck, that whole movie was about confronting the old patterns and demolishing or rejecting them, both the characters themselves doing so quite literally and the overarching story doing so structurally and thematically. That’s exactly what makes it so impressive, and so controversial.

@118/phillip_thorne: “and she knows Trek as well or better than anyone.

If that’s so, then given the apparent contradictions (or at least, awkward fits) with established continuity (purely on the written end, not visual), then we (on the outside) can only conclude that either (a) she forgot something, (b) she doesn’t prioritize those particular details in the same way, or (c) she was overridden.”

Obviously (c), because she’s a staff writer, the lowest rank in the writing staff hierarchy. The other producers rely on her for her Trek expertise, which surpasses any of theirs, but their authority surpasses hers. It’s the same as when the Berman-era shows had paid science consultants on staff but frequently ignored their scientific advice for the sake of the story, or when Roddenberry did the same with the advice of the scientists and researchers he consulted on TOS.

Spock was clearly not a pacifist; he advocated for peaceful solutions where possible, but accepted the logical necessity to use deadly force on occasion. Presumably, this reflects Vulcan philosophy — and Federation philosophy, for that matter. Pacifism means refusing to fight under any circumstances. Favoring peace but still being willing to use force as a last resort is not the same thing. (If I did use the phrase “pacifist army” at any point, I was speaking either figuratively or erroneously.)

And really, would a pacifist society still maintain a tradition of mortal combat to resolve marriage challenges?

@130/Jana: Of course Sarek’s attitudes are different from the norm, because he’s adapted to the different situation of the Federation being at war. People adapt their behavior to different situations, and war changes things more radically than just about any other situation. That’s the whole point of the war arcs in DS9, ENT, and DSC — that war impels us to compromise our values and we have to struggle to decide what compromises go too far. We’re not supposed to be seeing Sarek’s or the Federation’s normal characterization. We’re seeing them struggling with an extreme exception to the norm.

And yes, Surak was a pacifist. Jesus was a pacifist too, but how many “Christian” nations have gone to war over the centuries? Most cultures fall short of the perfect ideals they aspire to.

@134/Jana: I’ve never understood that objection to “The Vulcan Hello.” Yes, Vulcans are peaceful, but they’re also intelligent enough to recognize that Klingons do not respect peacefulness, so if you want to establish good relations with the Klingons, you have to open with a show of strength. For some reason, a lot of people have mistaken Sarek’s “Fire first to establish your strength” with “Kill them all, mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!” He was talking about baring your fangs as a dominance gesture, not blowing the enemy out of the sky. And that is a perfectly logical thing to do when dealing with a species that employs such dominance gestures. You don’t practice first contact by expecting other cultures to conform to your norms. You do it by showing respect for their norms. How is respect for diversity not a Vulcan value?

Klingons respect strength. That’s a statement that’s been consistently made throughout the season, and was cited here as the reason L’Rell’s control of the bomb worked at getting the Klingons to listen to her. That was a Vulcan hello. First you prove to them that you have power, then they respect you enough to listen to what you have to say. That was the principle Sarek spelled out in the first episode, and it paid off here. The “Vulcan Hello” is not about the Vulcans; it’s about the Klingons, and the Vulcans’ insight into what’s required to negotiate with them. 

@146/Jana: Yes, firing first is a show of aggression, but as I just said, that is not about Vulcan values, it’s about Klingon values. Sarek didn’t say “Always fire first against every other species you ever encounter,” he said “If you want to get the Klingons to respect you, you have to show aggression.” Diplomacy is situational. What works for one species won’t work for another. Diplomacy with Klingons is a dominance game in a way diplomacy with another species would not be. Vulcans don’t want to be aggressive, but they learned through painful experience that if they want to avoid conflict with the Klingons, they have to interact with them on Klingon terms.

I mean, we’ve seen Picard follow the exact same principle. He’s always been portrayed as a man of peace, but when it came to dealing with the Klingons, he respected that theirs were the values of a warrior people and he had to go along with that if he wanted to deal with them diplomatically. He even tolerated Worf murdering Duras because it was acceptable under Klingon values. See also Dax in “Blood Oath,” choosing to set aside her normal peaceful ways out of respect for the culture of her Klingon friends.

And yes, the idea all along was that Burnham was right in principle, though she went about it the wrong way. As I just said, the theme of Klingons respecting strength has been a season-long arc, set up in the pilot and resolved in the finale. The “Vulcan hello” was the way to deal with the Klingons, and it was the cultural misunderstanding between Starfleet and the Klingons that prevented the initial situation from being resolved.

@148/Jana: I don’t see this as a change. Again, it is totally, totally wrong to see Sarek’s position as pro-war. The idea was that, in order to prevent war with the Klingons, in order to earn their respect so that they’re willing to negotiate with you, you have to understand their culture’s dominance psychology and open negotiations with a show of strength. Not to destroy the enemy ship, just to fire on it enough to show you mean business. It’s no different from two cats hissing and baring their teeth at each other before they end up settling down and grooming each other. A show of dominance does not equal deadly violence. In fact, the whole reason animals have those kinds of dominance and submission displays are as a way of avoiding more serious violence. If you demonstrate that you have the strength to fight, then you don’t actually need to fight, because the demonstration is enough.

The Vulcan Hello is about understanding an alien culture and finding the right way to interact with it in order to avoid unnecessary conflict. That is absolutely true to the values that Star Trek has had all along. Literally. Right at the start, in “The Corbomite Maneuver,” Kirk had to overpower Balok, have him at the Enterprise‘s mercy, and then show compassion in order to demonstrate Starfleet’s peaceful character. And how many times did Kirk have to get into a fistfight with an alien before they were willing to sit down and negotiate with him?

@150/Redd: I don’t think that’s really true. Like I said, aggressive life forms need dominance/submission rituals that they can use to establish strength without the need for costly violence. Klingons may make noises about being a warrior race, but in practical terms, they’d never survive as a culture if they always started a war at the least provocation. The cost to the economy, population, infrastructure, etc. would be crippling to their civilization if they went to war as often as they pretended to want to. So they’d need to have pragmatic limits on violence that would allow them to restrain themselves while still saving face — which is why they have things like personal honor duels, a way two leaders can fight it out without needing to sacrifice whole armies. So it follows that there would need to be situations where they’d just accept two ships giving each other bloody noses as sufficient combat to satisfy their nominal need for bluster and glory, and then just say “Ha-ha, well fought, worthy foe” and sit down to negotiate.

Klingons aren’t morons; they’re predators. And like all predators, they need behavioral and social mechanisms to regulate their aggression and resolve conflict without excessive cost. A civilization of predators would need such regulatory mechanisms even more so in order to function as an organized and productive society. That’s the reason “warrior cultures” tend to have such strong codes of honor and discipline.

@159/AWalt: I’ve always hated the interpretation that “Number One” was the character’s own designation, because — as we’ve seen clearly since in TNG and Discovery — it’s just a form of address for a ship’s first officer (originating in the British Royal Navy, IIRC). Will Riker, Michael Burnham, and Saru have all been called Number One by their captains. So saying that an officer would would’ve been addressed as Number One anyway is actually named “Number One” is way too cutesy and coincidental, or else displays ignorance of the actual intent behind the title.

Vulcan’s Glory was interesting, but rather odd, in that it portrayed the Enterprise as having quite a few Vulcans in its crew, when Spock was pretty clearly the only Vulcan onboard in Kirk’s time. Where did all the others go? It also showed the Vulcans as surprisingly emotional. Also, having Scotty be already onboard as a junior engineer felt contrived, and hard to reconcile with “The Menagerie,” in which Scotty showed no sign of having any history with Captain Pike. (If he had, he would’ve probably been more likely than Spock to go rogue on Pike’s behalf.)

@162/krad: “(Though it does at least provide some rationale for why Spock grinned like a loon when he saw the vibrating flowers on Talos IV.)”

Yeah, but “Spock became more cold and closed off after a tragic loss” seems a really revisionist explanation for the emotional reserve that was always portrayed as the normal behavior for Vulcans. (Plus, Young Sherlock Holmes already did that one.) I honestly found a lot of Vulcan’s Glory‘s revisionist portrayal of Vulcans quite incongruous coming from Fontana, who did so much to define Vulcans in the first place. It didn’t really feel like it was from the same writer.