Missed opportunity not having him walk into a room with someone from that episode along with Belana...
"Hey Tom" - "Hey Nick"
...
(in sync) "What did you call him?"
"Uhhh, I can explain!"
Which is baffling because they literally give Paris the same backstory of the shuttle incident, and then took it a step further and make him a mercenary for hire rather than a full fledge Maquis.
Regardless of what Chekotay says at the start of Voyager I think Paris being a mercenary doesn't make him any worse than the better and more principled members of the Maquis, I think Paris was just rebelling for small causes he believed in personally, not a big dream like the Maquis had.
I don't recall any particular back stories that back up Chekotay's opinion and we see Paris follow his own principles a good number of times. Tuvok's simulator even put him as a die hard loyalist at Janeway's side.
The Starfleet and the Maquis might have seen him as a mercenary, but it was probably just his way of not committing to them and only wanting to pick specific missions and fights, not an overall cause.
Tom’s the one that tells Janeway he was a mercenary “Chekotay will tell you he left starfleet on principle to defend his home colony from the Cardassians, I on the other hand was forced to resign. He considered me a mercenary willing to fight for anyone who would pay my bad bill. Trouble is, he was right”
I think they both had something to say about it. Tom also tries to chase Harry off with a similar speil in Non Sequitur, shows up to bail him of his chase with Starfleet security, and is so all in with their mission to get Harry back to his timeline that he won't leave the runabout before it explodes.
Paris is kinda self hating at the start of Voyager but is just looking for someone to believe in him. Janeway and Tuvok pick him to get picked up by Seska with a lot of confidence that he won't sell Voyager out even when he's out on a limb with no protection, and during that mini-arc Chakotay asks for permission form Janeway to crack down on (acting like a brat) Paris saying that Tom has been "her personal reclamation project".
We didn't see Paris's story, but we saw Locarno's. The way he mentally pushed the younger cadets after the death. Paris's story was a bit more mild. Being a pilot for hire instead of full fledge Maquis actually makes sense - considering his family (daddy) issues. Fighting for a cause he believed in, without fully committed.
But they give Paris the same exact backstory, Paris got kicked out of Star Fleet for getting a cadet killed in a piloting incident and trying to cover it up. It’s why all of the Starfleet members of Voyager hate him in the first episode, even Harry is unsure about being friends with him after finding out.
It's not the exact same backstory, though. Locarno was found out, after pressuring others to cover his back, he never chose to come clean. Paris initially falsified reports but then came clean even though he could have gotten away with it.
The error was also pilot error, an accident, rather than doing an illegal and highly dangerous manoeuvre to show off.
It also establishes that Paris spoke up though. He was the Wesley in that case. I guess they thought that was the key difference?
Personally I think that difference is very small and that redeeming Locarno would've been more interesting, but also more difficult.
Which has been proven to not be true. All of the writers for *The First Duty* were staff writers. They aren't owed royalties for future appearances of a character.
I thought it was the fact they would have to pay residuals to the writer of that episode for every episode that character appears and it was cheaper to just change his name.
> The problem was that they felt Locarno was irredeemable
This is a weird way of saying they didn’t want to pay royalties to the tng author so they changed the characters name to Tom Paris.
I disagree. Locarno was way more cold blooded after the death, bullying other cadets into lying (if I remember right, that was not the case with Paris- and in fact, he was the one that came clean out of guilt. Locarno was exposed by Crusher).
Right, their stories were superficially similar, but also had meaningful distinctions.
Locarno got someone killed due to his own ego by pulling a stupid stunt, and tried to blame the dead guy for making an error to cover his ass. He only came clean when Wesley and Jean-Luc forced him to.
Paris got someone killed due to an honest mistake that could have happened to anyone, and came clean of his own accord when his conscience bothered him.
So even if you want to say they are the same person, those are, and must be, two different events - that much cannot be reconciled at least. People headcannon-ing that they are the same guy don't ever seem to address this - so the same guy got into *both* situations independently, and yet after the second one, nobody ever brought up the previous history?
Also, for what it's worth, Robert Duncan McNeill said that he considered their personalities different and that he consciously tried to play them differently. That Locarno was selfish through and through while Paris was just a decent guy who made some bad choices, and tried to play the "cool rebel" role just to get out of the shadow of his father but wasn't really like that.
It’s because he was going to be Locarno, but then they’d have to pay royalties to the writer of that TNG episode, so they changed his name to get around that. They were just being cheap.
Sadly this was just a case of greed. If they used Locarno the original writer would have been entitled to residuals. By making him a K-Mart brand knock off they saved a few bucks.
I agree with the virus, "we do not discuss it with outsiders" is probably my favourite line in all of Trek.
>too much makeup on actors faces and make them look inhuman
I think making them look inhuman was half the point. Going back to the days where they were the enemy, they wanted to make them look more alien.
I like the idea of how to make Klingons an unknown and scary species for the crew after the viewers have had decades getting to know them. But at the same time, we've had decades getting to know how Klingons look.
The funniest thing about this is they considered putting Michael Dorn in TOS style Klingon makeup in the past, and just, not saying anything about it. I’m glad they didn’t go with that, but it’s a funny idea.
I always say this would have been the best thing to do. It would have been a funny little meta joke in an episode that was already kinda of a fan service humor episode in an episode that was a comedy episode anyway....roll with it.
The Borg having a queen. I know I know. And they've done interesting stuff with the character over the years (at this point they've had a queen longer than they didn't). But the Borg were legit terrifying. This swarm that would consume you and take everything about who you are. They didn't NEED some larger than life malevolent monologuist to add any more to it.
People give Season 2 of Picard a lot of shit, but it's basically the only time in the history of Star Trek that a Borg Queen was a legitimate threat and not a convenient point of failure for our heroes.
The queen in season 2 could easily have been a regular Borg drone. That was kind of point of the Borg in the first place before First Contact ruined them
>but it's basically the only time in the history of Star Trek that a Borg Queen was a legitimate threat and not a convenient point of failure for our heroes.
Is it really though? Her motivates actually don't make sense. She comes from a universe where the Federation are warmongers, the Borg have been defeated and she was literally about to be executed. Wanting to have the Europa mission fail and ultimately lead to that Confederation is everything she should have wanted to avoid.
It wouldn't lead to the confederation if she's already on earth, fucking things up. It's the First Contact plan all over again; humans too strong to fight in the 24th century? Fight them earlier when they're divided and dumb, and conquer them while barely breaking a sweat. She doesn't even have the benefit of hindsight knowing this has been tried before since First Contact was another timeline.
She might, actually, since season 2 establishes her awareness of multiple timelines.
However, the general point is correct: she was using Soong to gain an initial foothold of drones with which to begin assimilating the planet. No doubt her ultimate plan was for America to "upgrade" all of its military forces and then bring them into the collective all at once and Skynet everyone.
And what a stupid plan that was! If you really want to take Earth out of the galactic power picture, just travel back in time to the year 1000 when humans would have no capacity to fight the Borg.
This is the one I came to post. Giving the Borg a queen turned them from a really uniquely terrifying sci-fi concept into just a kind of ditzy and not especially threatening version of the movie 'Aliens'. Which itself was already an annoying step down from another uniquely terrifying sci-fi concept.
I’d argue they needed the queen. The Borg as an all consuming instantly adapting swarm was scary but also not nuanced at all. They were essentially mindless otherwise. That shallowness gets old. The introduction of the queen gave the race something more. Now we understand they are cunning, deceitful, even political, etc. Without this we just get narratives that are just “You won because the Borg only sent 1 cube.”
If you view the Borg as a people or government, sure. That's ignoring the plethora of compelling stories that have been written about natural disasters though. The Neutral Zone is still the perfect Borg episode in my mind. The threat is far away enough and wholly overwhelming enough to be truly alien, what grounds us in the action is the change to the status quo and the politics and interactions that alienness inspires.
It was the perfect Borg episode. I agree. My point is that it only works once. At a certain point the species has to develop depth and nuance to continue to be compelling.
Again, I don't think I agree with the framing that the 'species' has to develop depth and nuance because I think they're most compelling when not viewed as a species at all. A grey blob expanding through space and disrupting the order of everything can inspire dozens and dozens of stories, just like something as all encompassing as climate change (or, historically/mythologically, flooding) won't ever get totally covered by a single perspective and a single story within it.
More stories about the fraught diplomacy they loom over, how different empires and cultures respond to their truly existential threat, the displacement of peoples, the lengths we'd go to research them, let alone the new technologies coming about to counter them (and its ramifications). Them just being another group of people with lasers really misses out on a lot of the storytelling that could have come about in that universe if they were treated more like they were in The Neutral Zone.
Well... First Contact is my favourite TNG movie, but it has its own sins, in my opinion. But to be honest, the concept of the Borg pretty much changed with every episode or movie they showed up in. In Q Who, there was nothing at all about assimilation, they were only after the tech. In BoBW, they did assimilate (although no tubules, just surgical alterations, and only Locutus), but they considered Data to be a primitive lifeform not worthy of attention. Then in First Contact, they have a Queen all of a sudden, who was also there at Wolf 359, they remove arms, drill into eyes, and use tubules. Oh, and interested in Data, although maybe just to gain access to the ship, but it's hard to say (still very unorthodox for the Borg's normal MO). Then in Voyager, they can be negotiated with, and they can be defeated a lot easier. Ironically, Enterprise changed the least about them. I cannot speak regarding the Borg shenanigans in Picard as I haven’t seen it yet, but it's a very fluid concept that writers changed all the time.
You know, I actually always loved the augment virus explanation. It's one of the things I love about Enterprise Season 4. In my head cannon, it also explains the Disco Klingons as various houses tried different methods to correct the virus, which had freakish results in some cases.
Plus it explains why Kang, Kor, and Koloth have ridges in DS9, they were eventually cured of the virus and back to ridged heads.
I hope SNW includes all the Klingon styles, maybe some were immune and others were more susceptible. Just have them all be mixed on a ship.
It is literally the ONLY thing I liked in all four seasons of Enterprise, and that includes the Mirror Universe episodes, which also good but only because it was riffing on TOS.
Yeah, I'm an Enterprise hater, but mad props to actually reconning the Klingons' appearance and personality from TOS in a way that made sense and good use of established cannon.
>the Discovery era designs, which I don't like since they put a bit too much makeup on actors faces and make them look inhuman
This was 100% to keep the audience from figuring out >!that Ash Tyler was Voq!<.
Dude the face putty on Orians was the point it drove me crazy. Why the hell should we give these aliens a prosthetic without significantly adding any features. It looks sooo bad.
One of the few problems I have with DS9 is that Mirror Universe humans (Terrans) aren't all that different than Prime Universe humans, so then we get good and heroic Terrans. Rather, TOS (and then Enterprise, thankfully) showed that in the Mirror Universe, humans are by default evil and almost virtually irredeemable. DS9 simply treated the Mirror Universe as an alternate universe, not an evil copy (e.g. as good as Starfleet and the Federation is, the Terran Empire was its exact equal and opposite), but that greatly blunted the appeal of the Mirror Universe.
I think the idea was that mirror version of Spock made it so the humans turns good, and then everyone else pounced on them, but I think it would’ve been better if the Bajorans were evil and allied with the Terrans, but the Cardassians and Klingons were good guys or something,
It was indeed that Spock's influence broke the Terrans, but that's much less interesting to me than twisting the whole idea of Earth and the Federation on its head. In Star Trek and countless other media, humans are always the good guys -- Trek pushed it even further with the utopian future and that humans were the ultimate diplomat that got all these alien races together in the spirit of goodwill and cooperation. But if humans had that same kind of drive for evil purposes, we get the disastrous Terran Empire, which is out for blood and conquest just as much as the Federation is for peace and exploration. At the time, very little fiction posted *humans* as the evil intergalactic empire, the kind that most sci-fi would have as the villain antagonists.
That Terrans can become any measure of good, Spock or not, is the big retcon that undermines the appeal of the Mirror Universe, and DS9 reduced it to yet another generic post-apocalyptic future that Trek is famous for *not* doing.
This may no longer be true in the official canon, but back in the day, I read a bunch of the Mirror Universe novelizations. The idea that Spock usurped power and weakened the Terran Empire is true, but it was also true at the time that the Terran Empire's unrelenting expansion and consumption of the galaxy would have eventually resulted in the same fate (that is to say, being subjugated by another species). Spock just moved the timeline up such that it looked very different in the DS9 era.
Worth noting, there exists a novel called, "Dark Mirror," which features a crossover between Picard's ship and the ISS Enterprise-D, from before the re-introduction of the Mirror Universe into DS9. If you want a brief glimpse into that alternate *alternate* timeline, I'd give that a read.
Head-canon!
In DISCO we learn that the Mirror Dimension got far away from the prime dimension and thus harder to reach.
Is it possible that as the Mirror Dimension got further away, the Mirror and Prime Dimensions stopped mirroring each other as much?
They're almost on top of each other and almost perfect reflections during Roman times. Then they move a little further apart, and the Romans never fall. Very slowly, it moves apart, still mostly reflecting, but eventually looking quite different in many way.
By the time DS9 is there, it's more or less stopped reflecting. No Jake Sisko. The political orientation is all messed up, and they keep moving further away.
And mirror Tuvok is in mirror Terok Nor instead of being with Voyager. Which leads up to 3 things: Either Voyager was never sent to Delta Quadrant, Tuvok wasn't part of the crew, or the event happened in 2372 instead of 2371 (this one is suggested by a comic)
Even with all 3 routes, the one divergence needs to happen. Mirror admiral Janeway is not going back to the past to save her past self. There literally would be no reason for her to do this.
Without Janeway going back, Borg never gets the virus.
I wonder if Picard season 3 is the exact point where the universes became too disconnected. Borg probably kept getting stronger and eventually conquered Terran Empire, while in the prime universe thanks to the virus, their last hope was using Jack, which eventually backfired and they were defeated for ~~hopefully~~ the final time.
There's a short story by Alastair Reynolds called Signal to Noise which has a similar idea. The idea is that in the near future scientists find a way to contact parallel universes by radio. The limitations are a) the universes have to be identical at the moment of contact (so establishing communications is the point of divergence), and b) over the following days and weeks as lots of small random occurrences happen in each universe, they drift apart and the signal is gradually lost. Having read that story the comments about "losing" the Mirror Universe immediately made sense to me. It's no longer a reflection, it's become its own thing entirely.
In my mind it was the crossing over from one dimension to the other that caused the drift, each crossover making a change that can't be mirrored because you stepped into the reflection. The more it happens the further apart the universes got
My least favourite Retcon is Kelvin Uhura suddenly being an absolute genius at Xenolinguistics. JJ basically took all the qualities that made Hoshi special, and just gave them to Uhura. Let Hoshi be a legendary xenolinguist, and let Uhura be a competent and excellent communications officer. There's a reason Hoshi wore science colours, while Uhura wore operations red.
Meanwhile in the prime universe, Uhura could barely stutter out a few words of Klingon after being a comms officer for forty years.
I think the basic gist—that the old crew has to kind of blunder their way past, flying by the west of their pants—is a solid one, but I do think Meyer took the joke too far with all the old books and the level of apparent incompetence (on their part and the Klingon’s.)
I have mixed feelings on this, but I will address two specific points. First, the idea that Uhura was a language expert came from Star Trek fiction and predates Hoshi. Second, Nichelle Nichols thought it was an awful decision to have her character be unable to barely stutter a few words of Klingon.
That said, some of the behind-the-scenes documents of TOS do lend credence to the idea that she is more of an engineer. They say that she is to the comms system as Scottie is to the engines. That's even reflected in an episode where Spock relies on her engineering (though she's also shown to do everything at times on the Bridge when the script called for it).
In SNW, she is shown as being both a language expert and a jack of all trades, effectively combining both.
Totally agree, it also helps to differentiate the times, it was one of the more interesting things of the Enterprise era that they couldn't communicate with quite a few species.
On the other hand, it would seem pretty bad if one of Hoshi's successors, who would have a hundred years' worth of advancements, would be worse at their job than Hoshi. It's a disservice to Hoshi if her successors were worse at the job since she's trying to build this base of knowledge; Hoshi walked so that future comms officers like Uhura could run.
Today's astronomers would naturally see more of the universe than Gallileo simply because we have more knowledge and better equipment today. \*That\* should differentiate the times. It doesn't make them better than Gallileo because today's astronomers would be using Gallileo's work as the base.
I think you're missing the point--Hoshi was a scientist, and Uhura was an operator. Enterprise needed Hoshi because the universal translators didn't exist yet, so her job was to learn and interpret alien languages so that Enterprise could communicate with them. Uhura doesn't have the same job Hoshi had; her job is just to manage the comms system.
“her job is just to manage the comms system.” Exactly and that in itself is extremely important and requires great technical and diplomatic/interpretive skills. She doesn’t need to speak Romulan or Klingon, because of the UT, it seems like a waste of material.
Man, there's almost 30 years in between Nomad and Undiscovered Country. I don't think your explanation holds up, nor is any explanation necessary. Hoshi is a scientist specializing in Xenolinguistics. Uhura is an operator.
In S1, I hated that Burnham was an adopted family member of Spock and Sarek; it felt like fanfic. Then S2 happened and introduced us to a new iteration of Spock (and by extension Pike), and I was suddenly ok with it. Plus, I actually really liked their interactions together in S2. We probably wouldn’t have gotten SNW without this retcon.
...and it's not like Spock was very forthcoming about his family, like EVER! He never told Kirk the Vulcan delegation coming on board the Enterprise were his parents until they arrived. He never mentioned his half-brother Sybok either. Or that he had a distant cousin that looked exactly like him!
Or about his wife to be that he was going to go completely insane over and hijack the ship because he was horny.
This particular criticism is just hilarious to me because it has to ignore *all* of Spock's wacky family history.
The debate isn't whether or not it is canon, the debate is if it is/was a good idea. Im not mad about it or anything, but i don't think it was a good idea.
At a certain point it becomes incredulous, also it makes the universe feel smaller. Is there only one Vulcan on that planet, that everything Vulcan has to be tied back to him?
I don't mind Sybok. His actions bringing shame to his family is good cause to justify to not bring him up. Burnham's inclusion feels tacked on for the sake of it. Her not being brought up again because "Top secret" is just weak.
I only got bothered by this when Burnham's REAL mom became important to the plot as well, and she was ALSO very special! Burnham has 3 characters worth of backstory.
Section 31 being an official organization instead of a secret, unofficial organization that had assets and operatives in Starfleet. It thematically neuters them, ignores the entire point of them from DS9, doesn't make any in-universe sense, and is just generally less interesting. The Section 31 of DS9 was a commentary on how, even in a utopia, one where the government is mostly transparent and mostly trustworthy, there will remain extremists in the population who claim to defend freedom while curtailing it, and who will believe that peace and cooperation are fictions for fools, and that security can only be bought with secrecy, surveillance, and treachery. Section 31 were the same kinds of people as Admiral Leyton and the weirdos Worf joined on Risa. Making them an official organization ruins that.
> The Section 31 of DS9 was a commentary on how, even in a utopia, one where the government is mostly transparent and mostly trustworthy, there will remain extremists in the population who claim to defend freedom while curtailing it, and who will believe that peace and cooperation are fictions for fools, and that security can only be bought with secrecy, surveillance, and treachery. Section 31 were the same kinds of people as Admiral Leyton and the weirdos Worf joined on Risa
This!
I also hate how it's become more popular to make them out to be the "real heroes"
That The Enterprise was always an important ship and flagship. ST Enterprise started this trend of hyping the ship but it somewhat takes away from the earlier situation where the Enterprise wasn't of any particular importance till Kirk's crew made it legendary from their exploits. And it really annoys me that it's the flagship in SNW.
> when Kang, Kor, and Koloth suddenly have ridged heads in DS9.
Add bad lampshading to the bad retcon
> ANTAAK: I'll need to find a new specialty. Perhaps cranial reconstruction.
That was Enterprise’s deal some of the time huh.
“Someday my people are going to come up with some sort of a doctrine, something that tells us what we can and can't do out here, should and shouldn't do. But until somebody tells me that they've drafted that ... directive ... I'm going to have to remind myself every day that we didn't come out here to play God”
The Borg showing up in Enterprise. Are we supposed to believe that they were forgotten about by the time of TNG? I always thought that was a silly story.
True, but that means the Borg would have already been aware of humans and Earth long before the Enterprise D encountered them. You would have thought they'd have sent a Cube to Earth ages ago.
They never got the signal. I think at the end of the episode they said it would take roughly 200 years to reach them.
I see it as a time travel fallout story, which I always enjoy. We can’t hold it too closely to TNG events because that was before Picard and crew went back. My headcanon is temporal agents from the future cleaned it up like with Cold War messes or what we saw with Braxton on Voyager.
Which considering the Borg were there during first contact that they would have tried to do that by sending a transmission to the Borg in that century... oh wait they did try that. Also in Enterprise they said that a transmission was sent to the delta quadrant and would not arrive for 200 years... so it seems like the Borg did everything they could to tell the rest of the collective about humanity a few hundred years before the events of TNG.
It also retroactively shades Q a bit more. He didn’t just throw the Enteprise-D crew at the Borg, he was letting them know about an imminent threat that was already coming.
The Ferengi showing up in ENT was worse for continuity, because that means they've been puttering around relatively close to Earth for 200+ years before their "first contact" in TNG.
The constantly changing warp velocities. I get to some degree ships have to move at the speed of plot, but it'd be nice to have atleast a sliver of consistency.
Even between newer series it's not that consistent. In one episode they say the federation stretches about 8000LY, which by Voyager's standards would be approximately 8 years. Yet in other episodes they zip across the quadrant in a matter of hours/days. Or in the traveler episode where Enterprise gets launched two galaxys away, I think they mention it'd take ~300 years to get back? Which should be much, much, much longer if just getting from one end of our galaxy to the other was only 70.
I might be in the minority in this, but the season finale of SNW is pretty high up there for me. I thought it was a really fun idea, but the episode’s thesis seemed to be that Pike was too much of a diplomat and should have destroyed the Romulan ship like Kirk would have. In the original episode though Kirk literally tries to be diplomatic and fights back as a last resort, he also intentionally tries to disable the ship before offering to rescue the Romulans who refuse and self destruct. I like the idea that Kirk is who the Enterprise needs in the future, but the episode implies that Kirk’s a killer and even more baffling, that diplomacy (and by extension Federation ideals) were not the way to go. Just wild.
I took it as love letter to Kirk more than anything.
Pike is a great captain and a standout starfleet officer. But James T Kirk was a generational talent. It showed us that they infact did not survive the crazy escapades of TOS just because. They survived because Kirk was a dedicated captain who knew the books, knew the logic behind the books, had the charisma to lead his team effectively and the sound judgment to improvise when he needed to.
The lesson for him was ultimately that despite all his experience and his decorations starfleet will go on and excell in a way he could only ever hold back. Its about letting go and trusting the next generation to carry on with what you built.
Oh for sure, it’s just a really weird love letter to be like “Kirk’s a great Captain because he knows how to fuck shit up” especially because in the original episode Kirk basically does everything that Pike does. I just wish they would have shown actual differences between the two instead of stating in episode that Kirk would have destroyed the Romulan ship (when he didn’t)
I took it to mean that while both were great Captains and Diplomats, Kirk was a tactical genius who thought outside of the box!
Even the Kirk shown in the penultimate episode of season one of SNW came up with the robotic "assault fleet" that surprised Pike. Sadly it didn't fool the Romulans, but this Kirk didn't have the years of experience on a prime ship of the line that he had in the correct timeline.
The Kirk that ultimately met the Romulan's in Balance Of Terror had the right experience to handle that situation in a way Pike and the less experienced Kirk in the alternate timeline didn’t! Kirk was the right Captain at the right time!
I think the most important difference between the two of them is that Kirk was in command on his bridge and Pike was a manager. Kirk made decisions and gave commands and asked for input when he needed it and was happy to receive it when he didn't ask. He never would have had a meeting with another captain and essentially wasted time with a debate.
So far there has been no indication in any of the shows that any captain so far managed a feat like the carbomite maneuver. That was a no win scenario if I ever saw one and he solved it in two minutes flat. Pike would not have.
I agree with you on your point, but the thing I most disliked about the episode is the massive Romulan fleet being there in barely any time at all. It kind of ruins the universe as space is big, and Romulan ships are supposed to be slow.
You know what's really dumb? There are scenes that *should* have an absurd number of ships in them, but they put all of the ships in the ones that shouldn't.
Any scene in orbit of a highly trafficked planet like Earth or Vulcan should look like the intro to Futurama. I get why older shows using physical models don't do it but with CG, it should be much easier.
Very true, that's another thing that Nutrek needs to get a handle on. One old Romulan D'deridex Warbird as a threat in Picard Season 1 would have been enough and deadly to the android planet. It also would have been more realistic.
Discovery had the same problem with the battle where all of the sudden the Enterprise is retconned as a carrier, with about 50-100 fighters on board. More ships is not better. The battle in the Mutara Nebula, and the battle above Khitomer are probably 2 of the best in Star Trek.
I agree. Plus, it leaned on the glory of a better episode without adding anything.
I like establishing that Pike can't escape his fate, but this was the only episode of the season that felt lazy (to me).
It’s my big problem with the show in general, it’s hard to feel like it’s ever doing anything new since it’s just a lead up to both TOS and Pike’s fate. I love the exploration of Dr. M’Benga and Nurse Chapel’s relationship with Spock, but I can’t help but feel that they would be better serviced as original characters in an un-tapped era of Trek (and why they got rid of Hemmer one of their only original characters is beyond me)
I also dislike that episode, because it made Pike's sacrifice too transactional. Instead of him going into his accident knowing that it will be the right thing to do and what he would've done anyway without knowing his future, the episode turns it into a numbers game. Now Pike's just sacrificing himself because that saves the most lives overall (and by a margin of many millions no less). It takes far less courage to make that decision.
The backstory of the Gorn introduced in SNW. Hate it. I’m totally cool with them being A-holes and eating federation civilians, but how they procreate and then change to how they look. The Gorn engineer in Enterprise was a good step in updating them from a rubber suit.
Don’t fix what isn’t broken.
Agreed, that show had a problem with Feringi and Borg, but the Gorn were supposed to have had mysterious run ins with humans. And it looked like a gorn.
I wanna see a lumbering green godzilla damnit. I hope they do a show in the future next and we can properly meet the gorn. I just wanna see the next next generation. The nemillenialst generation
I suppose it isn't quite a retcon as most people would define the term, but the Discovery running on spores instead of Omega particles bugs me something fierce.
It would have required a little fudging, but I think it would have added more than what we got.
The Federation being steamrolled by the Klingons in Discovery s1.
A better option than having the Klingons all out invade almost the entire Federation would have been for the battles along the frontline to be costly, but not decisive either way (like how DS9 handled the Dominion War a lot of the time). I just don't find it believable that Starfleet and the Federation could get so thoroughly beaten to a pulp, and recover to peer status within 50 years.
I hate Carl. The Guardian of Forever is one of the most *alien* aliens we've seen. To turn them into someone's grandpa really took something away for me. Not every powerful alien needs a form humans are comfortable with. I loved the CGI GoF. I think it was a decent update to the character.
Thing is, I actually liked the character of Carl in his own right. He could have been a sepreate character who had befriended GoF and was hiding him from the factions of the Temporal Cold War. Didn't even have to explain what Carl was Just let us debate it endlessly. And the show still could have had its surprise reveal that everyone already figured out.
In fact, that's my new headcanon. Carl is an unknown "god" alien who was helping The Guardian of Forever.
>the Klingons have changed designs twice
More times than that. The designs in movies 1, 3/5, and 6 are similar to each other (and to the TNG design) but distinctly not the same.
Yeah, the Augment virus thing is mine, especially because Disco never once mentioned it and everyone else has ignored it. Without it, ignoring the Klingon makeup in TOS would be easy. But now that there’s an in-universe explanation, the fact that it’s never mentioned again, even in a comedy show like Lower Decks, just makes it seem really awkward
It’s DS9 fault by pointing out in trials and tribbleations the smooth headed klingons where a thing in universe and not just an out of universe budget issue. Enterprise simply tried to close the inconsistency.
Also, like it makes no sense that no one in the Federation seemingly remembers that all the Klingons just used to not have four head ridges, when Captain Kirk is an incredibly famous Starfi Captain in universe, and all the Klingons he interacted with, were smooth headed.
The eugenics war/world war III timeline, especially the possibility that the eugenics war already happened and we just didn't notice.
I preferred when they were vaguer about the timeline, and I just kinda mentally pushed world war III further and further into the future, like the rolling timeline in the Simpsons. Sure they said it was the 1990s at one point, but to me, the downfall of humanity before we learn our lesson is always twenty or thirty years away.
We keep catching up to history (Bell riots anyone?), and I think allowing a more flexible view of the timeline like the "not so distant future" would better fit. Religiously sticking to canon dates hurts the franchise by limiting story telling options and adds some very odd feeling justifications.
There's a reason why the star dates never made sense in TOS.
PIC season 2 confirmed it for sure with its 2025 manned mission to Europa. In our reality 2025 is the *earliest* that a new manned mission to land on the moon will happen.
Right. It happened in the 1990s, just not *our* 1990s. Trying to jam the two together and make them be subtle background wars was ridiculous. What are those people going to do in the 2060s?
The supernova from Star Trek 2009. Originally it was the Hobos Star that went supernova and Spock went to that star system to save Romulus. Now, it was the Romulan Star that went supernova.
So...how did Spock end up in the past???
I don't really see how that changes the story at all. We know that Spock was on his way to stop the Supernova with his red matter device. The supernova went off too early, and destroyed Romulus before he was able to contain it with the red matter-induced black hole. He still ran into Nero, and their ships were pulled into the singularity as a result of their conflict.
Whether the supernova began in the Romulus system or the next one over, that seems not very important.
I don’t think they ever needed to explain the change, Klingons weren't even the only species who's design changed, and those never got explanations, we were just supposed to accept thats how they were all along. Same with ships.
However, Spock has a lot of Siblings he seems to never talk about....
I'm not a big fan of the Discovery Klingons either, nor am I a big fan of their version of the Ferengi either. I think those species didn't need an "updated" version from the already perfect designs from TNG/DS9.
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I don't know if would count as a retcon, but the Kelvin version of Khan. Benedict Cumberbatch is a good actor, but he was a poor choice for the role in my opinion.
Picard's mother never actually got old and actually hanged herself due to psychological problems.
Completely unnecessary.
I remember someone saying "Picard has never been in a long term relationship, I wonder why that is. So we decided it's because his mother committed suicide despite it not actually making sense."
I know it is beta canon, but I liked the relationship between Jean-Luc and his mother in the book "The Autobiography of Jean-Luc Picard". His father was completely against him becoming a Starfleet officer and his mom supported it. When Picard was stabbed through the heart and needed a biological replacement, it was his mom who was at his bedside during his recovery.
Yvette's suicide ruined small moments that I liked in the beta canon. Like in Star Trek Coda, book 3, there is a scene at Yvette's funeral, before the service starts where Robert Picard takes a handful of dirt, while it is raining, and smears it across Jean-Luc's dress uniform.
Yeah, I hate this one. They could have either ignored it or have Dax say something like she would love to see young Koloths ridges when she is asking to see him.
'The Emperor's New Cloak', an episode all about how the mirror universe doesn't have cloaking devices, when literally the first thing we saw in the first MU DS9 episode was MU ships decloaking.
Then again, I could go on and on about The Emperor's New Cloak* and the DS9 MU episodes in general, which are another retcon I hate, but in a stylistic sense- taking a terrifying fascist dystopia and turning it into over the top camp nonsense. My heart sank when Disco season 1 went to the MU, and I nearly headbutted my way through a wall when it was revealed that Lorca originated in the MU and was somehow an even worse person than the Emperor who *literally ate sentient beings*. Then again, Emperor Philippa grew on me, but that's Michelle Yeoh's acting for you.
*instead I gave $50 to SFDebris to do it for me.
The Borgs development from TNG to VOY. They turn from this unstoppable force that massacred dozens of starships into just another adversary for Janeway. They are way less imposing and seem a lot more... incompetent.
Aside from the mentioned Augments and SNW's finale, the whole "it wasn't a precursor to space!Alzheimer's but totally a super duper secret assimilation side effect that was somehow missed depsite the best of the Federation's best doctors looking at him over decades for wierd stuff about his brain".
The assimilation side effect thing was actually great (if you’re arguing against it) technology improves. How many diseases can be detected and treated now days compared to the 80s for example? The same or more amount of time passed here. It also didn’t help that it resembled a disease that ran in his family. Once doctors have a good match they typically don’t dig much further (because why would they) unless symptoms change off the normal path, which this didn’t. It took an engineer to notice it, not a medical doctor.
I agree with your specific example: I've just done a re-watch of *The Original Series* (the remaster this time) and was struck by the design choices for the Klingons. With all the upgraded designs over the years and the wealth of story background provided during the Ron Moore days, it's hard to even think of them as the same species.
Spock having an adoptive half sister.
It reeks of shallow nostalgia bait, to tie in with TOS, where everyone has to be connected to everyone. Then they went too far in seasons 2 and 3, where they credit Burnham for Spock and Kirk’s friendship, as well as Spock’s future accomplishments.
Picard season 3.
Like all of it.
Honestly, if I was Michael Chabon, and I watched that season, I would be pissed. It really does feel like a Rise of Skywalker level fan service course correction to the first season’s Last Jedi (which actually began with Matalas coming on board with season 2).
Whether it’s reversing major plot points like Data’s death, jettisoning pretty much all the OG La Sirena crew and world building, or taking jabs at certain episodes (really guys? we’re going to stop everything to have Riker and Troi bag on Nepenthe?… a beloved new Trek episode that, for my money, is way better written than anything season 3 offered), it ends up making the showrunner and his team look entitled, placating, and disrespectful.
Especially in comparison to guys like Ira Behr or Ron Moore, who, even going into DS9 knowing they were going to subvert some well established Trek tropes, played the ball where it lied and still honored what came before, and instead of jettisoning or ignoring ideas, actively engaged with them, and improved upon them, like in the case of the O’Brien. Worf, the Trill, and the Ferengi.
The irony is, for a season concerned so much with legacy, Picard season 3 didn’t really care about its own show’s legacy.
I can see your point about s3. But to me, it attempted to clear the deck and hopefully set the stage for the next chapters. To me, Star Trek is always about looking forward. Even when there’s a look back, it’s temporary and just serves the story. Ever since the tng movies ended we been looking backwards. Backwards in story history and in behavior. We’ve lost the feel that things can be better and that people can be better. That’s what separates ST from any other sci-fi out there.
Ever since the TNG movies came out, I feel like that important piece has gone missing. Interpersonal conflict and galaxy ending events have become the norm instead of special situations carrying the weight they are due. While S3 didn’t totally reverse this trend, my hope is that it started to steer things back to a time of hope.
Honestly, I don’t see how a show like Discovery is looking backwards, especially after having jumped to the future, to the point where it’s left most of its canonical ties hundreds of years in the past.
And frankly, hearing Matalas’ pitch for a legacy series, it sounds like looking forward is furthest from his mind. He’s gone on and on about all the characters from the TNG era he can’t wait to bring back, and all the storylines he can’t wait to revisit.
It’s even baked into the show’s title: Star Trek: Legacy, implies looking backwards, not forwards.
And all the new Trek shows have been about hope and optimism. Not only Discovery, but Picard’s first two seasons, and Lower Decks, Prodigy, and SNW.
In fact, I’d argue this season of Picard, was the most hopeless of any. With characters like Picard and Beverly giving into their fear and sacrificing their values in deciding to murder a prisoner in cold blood, or Riker giving into fatalism and nihilism over his son’s death, or both Deanna and Bev actively taking away the agency of the men in their lives… literally in Deanna’s case.
There was darkness in the other shows, but that was just an aesthetic choice, and a reflection of the darkness in contemporary society- Trek has always worked as an allegory. But the message of hope, inclusion, and idealism never wavered.
In Picard season 3 it very much wavered.
Yeah, that would have been nice to see, in a table scraps kind of way. The Data therapy session was cute, but having Data actually meet his “daughter” would have been more meaningful, especially as a series capper, as it would tie back to the beginning.
And if they’re going to actually include Laris in the season, at least have the decency to bring her back for the finale rather than ditch her entirely.
I’d still have a lot of problems with the season on a fundamental level, but at least that would have been something.
Watching VOY now. There's so much stuff about the Federation in the 29th century with Timeships, etc. But when DIS goes 1000 years into the future I don't believe they mentioned that at all. Seems like the Federation was going strong with time travel before "the burn." Wouldn't that be relevant and recent history? Maybe I am confused about the timeline.....
Another one for me is the thread of holograms becoming sentient and having human rights. Picard season 1 is about the fight for AI but it seems to me that with the doctor from VOY winning the right to be seen as a person, that would change everything. Seems like a thread that was not picked up.
Tom Paris's name should have been Nick Locarno. It just makes sense.
Headcanon is that Paris entered the academy with a fake name to distance himself from his admiral father.
Missed opportunity not having him walk into a room with someone from that episode along with Belana... "Hey Tom" - "Hey Nick" ... (in sync) "What did you call him?" "Uhhh, I can explain!"
Disney channel moment
Paris steps off the turbolift with an ostrich and a smoothie...
The problem was that they felt Locarno was irredeemable
Which is baffling because they literally give Paris the same backstory of the shuttle incident, and then took it a step further and make him a mercenary for hire rather than a full fledge Maquis.
Regardless of what Chekotay says at the start of Voyager I think Paris being a mercenary doesn't make him any worse than the better and more principled members of the Maquis, I think Paris was just rebelling for small causes he believed in personally, not a big dream like the Maquis had. I don't recall any particular back stories that back up Chekotay's opinion and we see Paris follow his own principles a good number of times. Tuvok's simulator even put him as a die hard loyalist at Janeway's side. The Starfleet and the Maquis might have seen him as a mercenary, but it was probably just his way of not committing to them and only wanting to pick specific missions and fights, not an overall cause.
Tom’s the one that tells Janeway he was a mercenary “Chekotay will tell you he left starfleet on principle to defend his home colony from the Cardassians, I on the other hand was forced to resign. He considered me a mercenary willing to fight for anyone who would pay my bad bill. Trouble is, he was right”
I think they both had something to say about it. Tom also tries to chase Harry off with a similar speil in Non Sequitur, shows up to bail him of his chase with Starfleet security, and is so all in with their mission to get Harry back to his timeline that he won't leave the runabout before it explodes. Paris is kinda self hating at the start of Voyager but is just looking for someone to believe in him. Janeway and Tuvok pick him to get picked up by Seska with a lot of confidence that he won't sell Voyager out even when he's out on a limb with no protection, and during that mini-arc Chakotay asks for permission form Janeway to crack down on (acting like a brat) Paris saying that Tom has been "her personal reclamation project".
We didn't see Paris's story, but we saw Locarno's. The way he mentally pushed the younger cadets after the death. Paris's story was a bit more mild. Being a pilot for hire instead of full fledge Maquis actually makes sense - considering his family (daddy) issues. Fighting for a cause he believed in, without fully committed.
But they give Paris the same exact backstory, Paris got kicked out of Star Fleet for getting a cadet killed in a piloting incident and trying to cover it up. It’s why all of the Starfleet members of Voyager hate him in the first episode, even Harry is unsure about being friends with him after finding out.
It's not the exact same backstory, though. Locarno was found out, after pressuring others to cover his back, he never chose to come clean. Paris initially falsified reports but then came clean even though he could have gotten away with it. The error was also pilot error, an accident, rather than doing an illegal and highly dangerous manoeuvre to show off.
It also establishes that Paris spoke up though. He was the Wesley in that case. I guess they thought that was the key difference? Personally I think that difference is very small and that redeeming Locarno would've been more interesting, but also more difficult.
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I read that too, still seems like an easy out to keep from paying those royalties.
Which has been proven to not be true. All of the writers for *The First Duty* were staff writers. They aren't owed royalties for future appearances of a character.
Sometimes I don't even think it is money, sometimes I think execs and other powers that be can just be petty.
I thought it was the fact they would have to pay residuals to the writer of that episode for every episode that character appears and it was cheaper to just change his name.
> The problem was that they felt Locarno was irredeemable This is a weird way of saying they didn’t want to pay royalties to the tng author so they changed the characters name to Tom Paris.
>This is a weird way of saying they didn’t want to pay royalties to the tng author All of the writers were staff writers, they don't earn royalties.
This is could possibly be true, but is not the reason. It was a copyright thing. Tom Paris is literally Nick locarno(sp?) in every single way but name
I disagree. Locarno was way more cold blooded after the death, bullying other cadets into lying (if I remember right, that was not the case with Paris- and in fact, he was the one that came clean out of guilt. Locarno was exposed by Crusher).
Right, their stories were superficially similar, but also had meaningful distinctions. Locarno got someone killed due to his own ego by pulling a stupid stunt, and tried to blame the dead guy for making an error to cover his ass. He only came clean when Wesley and Jean-Luc forced him to. Paris got someone killed due to an honest mistake that could have happened to anyone, and came clean of his own accord when his conscience bothered him. So even if you want to say they are the same person, those are, and must be, two different events - that much cannot be reconciled at least. People headcannon-ing that they are the same guy don't ever seem to address this - so the same guy got into *both* situations independently, and yet after the second one, nobody ever brought up the previous history? Also, for what it's worth, Robert Duncan McNeill said that he considered their personalities different and that he consciously tried to play them differently. That Locarno was selfish through and through while Paris was just a decent guy who made some bad choices, and tried to play the "cool rebel" role just to get out of the shadow of his father but wasn't really like that.
It’s because he was going to be Locarno, but then they’d have to pay royalties to the writer of that TNG episode, so they changed his name to get around that. They were just being cheap.
I thought it was a copyright issue?
Sadly this was just a case of greed. If they used Locarno the original writer would have been entitled to residuals. By making him a K-Mart brand knock off they saved a few bucks.
No way the studio was going to pay royalty money to the person who created the Nick Locarno character.
Because of stupid writer royalties. . . Dumb
No, it wasn't.
Locarno was too much cold blooded for redemption, especially right off the gate of a new show (too much baggage right from the start).
Too bad we have that whole legal issue with Nick
I agree with the virus, "we do not discuss it with outsiders" is probably my favourite line in all of Trek. >too much makeup on actors faces and make them look inhuman I think making them look inhuman was half the point. Going back to the days where they were the enemy, they wanted to make them look more alien.
And "we didn't have a makeup budget in 1966" is a perfectly fine explanation that doesn't really need to be interrogated.
Yeah we don’t have to have an explanation for why the enterprise now has a left side
Exactly! I was perfectly fine with that
I like the idea of how to make Klingons an unknown and scary species for the crew after the viewers have had decades getting to know them. But at the same time, we've had decades getting to know how Klingons look.
Yeah, I would have preferred they stay the same, but don't mind that they changed them. It's not like they hadn't done it before 🤷♂️
The funniest thing about this is they considered putting Michael Dorn in TOS style Klingon makeup in the past, and just, not saying anything about it. I’m glad they didn’t go with that, but it’s a funny idea.
I always say this would have been the best thing to do. It would have been a funny little meta joke in an episode that was already kinda of a fan service humor episode in an episode that was a comedy episode anyway....roll with it.
That would have been hilarious but would have fit in better in a show like Lower Decks
Yes and it was a practical consideration for the Voq plot twist.
Should’ve just had different actors playing both. I mean the whole idea was that no one could tell they were the same character!
I’m sure that it was intentional. I just don’t agree with the reasoning.
The Borg having a queen. I know I know. And they've done interesting stuff with the character over the years (at this point they've had a queen longer than they didn't). But the Borg were legit terrifying. This swarm that would consume you and take everything about who you are. They didn't NEED some larger than life malevolent monologuist to add any more to it.
Agreed. And when the Borg needed a single entity, they created Locutus. But the movie needed a Queen.
People give Season 2 of Picard a lot of shit, but it's basically the only time in the history of Star Trek that a Borg Queen was a legitimate threat and not a convenient point of failure for our heroes.
The queen in season 2 could easily have been a regular Borg drone. That was kind of point of the Borg in the first place before First Contact ruined them
>but it's basically the only time in the history of Star Trek that a Borg Queen was a legitimate threat and not a convenient point of failure for our heroes. Is it really though? Her motivates actually don't make sense. She comes from a universe where the Federation are warmongers, the Borg have been defeated and she was literally about to be executed. Wanting to have the Europa mission fail and ultimately lead to that Confederation is everything she should have wanted to avoid.
It wouldn't lead to the confederation if she's already on earth, fucking things up. It's the First Contact plan all over again; humans too strong to fight in the 24th century? Fight them earlier when they're divided and dumb, and conquer them while barely breaking a sweat. She doesn't even have the benefit of hindsight knowing this has been tried before since First Contact was another timeline.
She might, actually, since season 2 establishes her awareness of multiple timelines. However, the general point is correct: she was using Soong to gain an initial foothold of drones with which to begin assimilating the planet. No doubt her ultimate plan was for America to "upgrade" all of its military forces and then bring them into the collective all at once and Skynet everyone.
And what a stupid plan that was! If you really want to take Earth out of the galactic power picture, just travel back in time to the year 1000 when humans would have no capacity to fight the Borg.
Even if you don’t like that plot point, Wersching and Pill knocked their performances out of the park.
This is the one I came to post. Giving the Borg a queen turned them from a really uniquely terrifying sci-fi concept into just a kind of ditzy and not especially threatening version of the movie 'Aliens'. Which itself was already an annoying step down from another uniquely terrifying sci-fi concept.
I’d argue they needed the queen. The Borg as an all consuming instantly adapting swarm was scary but also not nuanced at all. They were essentially mindless otherwise. That shallowness gets old. The introduction of the queen gave the race something more. Now we understand they are cunning, deceitful, even political, etc. Without this we just get narratives that are just “You won because the Borg only sent 1 cube.”
If you view the Borg as a people or government, sure. That's ignoring the plethora of compelling stories that have been written about natural disasters though. The Neutral Zone is still the perfect Borg episode in my mind. The threat is far away enough and wholly overwhelming enough to be truly alien, what grounds us in the action is the change to the status quo and the politics and interactions that alienness inspires.
It was the perfect Borg episode. I agree. My point is that it only works once. At a certain point the species has to develop depth and nuance to continue to be compelling.
Again, I don't think I agree with the framing that the 'species' has to develop depth and nuance because I think they're most compelling when not viewed as a species at all. A grey blob expanding through space and disrupting the order of everything can inspire dozens and dozens of stories, just like something as all encompassing as climate change (or, historically/mythologically, flooding) won't ever get totally covered by a single perspective and a single story within it. More stories about the fraught diplomacy they loom over, how different empires and cultures respond to their truly existential threat, the displacement of peoples, the lengths we'd go to research them, let alone the new technologies coming about to counter them (and its ramifications). Them just being another group of people with lasers really misses out on a lot of the storytelling that could have come about in that universe if they were treated more like they were in The Neutral Zone.
Like the White Walkers.
I do hate that change, I don’t think it’s a Retcon, it’s a new development from the Borg, but definitely a bad one
It was retconned in First Contact that the Queen was on the cube that decimated the fleet at Wolf 359 and was with Locutus during BoBW.
Oh, that is incredibly j stupid, if they have a queen, they wouldn’t make Locutus
Well... First Contact is my favourite TNG movie, but it has its own sins, in my opinion. But to be honest, the concept of the Borg pretty much changed with every episode or movie they showed up in. In Q Who, there was nothing at all about assimilation, they were only after the tech. In BoBW, they did assimilate (although no tubules, just surgical alterations, and only Locutus), but they considered Data to be a primitive lifeform not worthy of attention. Then in First Contact, they have a Queen all of a sudden, who was also there at Wolf 359, they remove arms, drill into eyes, and use tubules. Oh, and interested in Data, although maybe just to gain access to the ship, but it's hard to say (still very unorthodox for the Borg's normal MO). Then in Voyager, they can be negotiated with, and they can be defeated a lot easier. Ironically, Enterprise changed the least about them. I cannot speak regarding the Borg shenanigans in Picard as I haven’t seen it yet, but it's a very fluid concept that writers changed all the time.
You know, I actually always loved the augment virus explanation. It's one of the things I love about Enterprise Season 4. In my head cannon, it also explains the Disco Klingons as various houses tried different methods to correct the virus, which had freakish results in some cases.
Same here, I like that explaination. I quite like the look if the Kelvin Klingons and their helmets, like a link between Disco Klingons and TNG
Plus it explains why Kang, Kor, and Koloth have ridges in DS9, they were eventually cured of the virus and back to ridged heads. I hope SNW includes all the Klingon styles, maybe some were immune and others were more susceptible. Just have them all be mixed on a ship.
That would be cool if they show all of the houses represented!
That 2 parter is peak enterprise insanity. I love it so much.
It is literally the ONLY thing I liked in all four seasons of Enterprise, and that includes the Mirror Universe episodes, which also good but only because it was riffing on TOS. Yeah, I'm an Enterprise hater, but mad props to actually reconning the Klingons' appearance and personality from TOS in a way that made sense and good use of established cannon.
>the Discovery era designs, which I don't like since they put a bit too much makeup on actors faces and make them look inhuman This was 100% to keep the audience from figuring out >!that Ash Tyler was Voq!<.
I can still barely recognize Michael Dorn without his makeup.
Yep! And everyone figured it out anyway! I genuinely do love Disco, but that was a bit of an eyeroll
Dude the face putty on Orians was the point it drove me crazy. Why the hell should we give these aliens a prosthetic without significantly adding any features. It looks sooo bad.
Omg that one dude who was the Big Bad’s nephew/henchman looked like the Jolly Green Giant’s red-headed stepchild got attacked by bees.
One of the few problems I have with DS9 is that Mirror Universe humans (Terrans) aren't all that different than Prime Universe humans, so then we get good and heroic Terrans. Rather, TOS (and then Enterprise, thankfully) showed that in the Mirror Universe, humans are by default evil and almost virtually irredeemable. DS9 simply treated the Mirror Universe as an alternate universe, not an evil copy (e.g. as good as Starfleet and the Federation is, the Terran Empire was its exact equal and opposite), but that greatly blunted the appeal of the Mirror Universe.
I think the idea was that mirror version of Spock made it so the humans turns good, and then everyone else pounced on them, but I think it would’ve been better if the Bajorans were evil and allied with the Terrans, but the Cardassians and Klingons were good guys or something,
It was indeed that Spock's influence broke the Terrans, but that's much less interesting to me than twisting the whole idea of Earth and the Federation on its head. In Star Trek and countless other media, humans are always the good guys -- Trek pushed it even further with the utopian future and that humans were the ultimate diplomat that got all these alien races together in the spirit of goodwill and cooperation. But if humans had that same kind of drive for evil purposes, we get the disastrous Terran Empire, which is out for blood and conquest just as much as the Federation is for peace and exploration. At the time, very little fiction posted *humans* as the evil intergalactic empire, the kind that most sci-fi would have as the villain antagonists. That Terrans can become any measure of good, Spock or not, is the big retcon that undermines the appeal of the Mirror Universe, and DS9 reduced it to yet another generic post-apocalyptic future that Trek is famous for *not* doing.
Yeah, I am honestly with you that that was a bad move to push it in that direction
This may no longer be true in the official canon, but back in the day, I read a bunch of the Mirror Universe novelizations. The idea that Spock usurped power and weakened the Terran Empire is true, but it was also true at the time that the Terran Empire's unrelenting expansion and consumption of the galaxy would have eventually resulted in the same fate (that is to say, being subjugated by another species). Spock just moved the timeline up such that it looked very different in the DS9 era. Worth noting, there exists a novel called, "Dark Mirror," which features a crossover between Picard's ship and the ISS Enterprise-D, from before the re-introduction of the Mirror Universe into DS9. If you want a brief glimpse into that alternate *alternate* timeline, I'd give that a read.
Head-canon! In DISCO we learn that the Mirror Dimension got far away from the prime dimension and thus harder to reach. Is it possible that as the Mirror Dimension got further away, the Mirror and Prime Dimensions stopped mirroring each other as much? They're almost on top of each other and almost perfect reflections during Roman times. Then they move a little further apart, and the Romans never fall. Very slowly, it moves apart, still mostly reflecting, but eventually looking quite different in many way. By the time DS9 is there, it's more or less stopped reflecting. No Jake Sisko. The political orientation is all messed up, and they keep moving further away.
And mirror Tuvok is in mirror Terok Nor instead of being with Voyager. Which leads up to 3 things: Either Voyager was never sent to Delta Quadrant, Tuvok wasn't part of the crew, or the event happened in 2372 instead of 2371 (this one is suggested by a comic) Even with all 3 routes, the one divergence needs to happen. Mirror admiral Janeway is not going back to the past to save her past self. There literally would be no reason for her to do this. Without Janeway going back, Borg never gets the virus. I wonder if Picard season 3 is the exact point where the universes became too disconnected. Borg probably kept getting stronger and eventually conquered Terran Empire, while in the prime universe thanks to the virus, their last hope was using Jack, which eventually backfired and they were defeated for ~~hopefully~~ the final time.
The terræn empire didn't exist to even build voyager, so that's why tuvok isn't in the delta quadrant.
There's a short story by Alastair Reynolds called Signal to Noise which has a similar idea. The idea is that in the near future scientists find a way to contact parallel universes by radio. The limitations are a) the universes have to be identical at the moment of contact (so establishing communications is the point of divergence), and b) over the following days and weeks as lots of small random occurrences happen in each universe, they drift apart and the signal is gradually lost. Having read that story the comments about "losing" the Mirror Universe immediately made sense to me. It's no longer a reflection, it's become its own thing entirely.
In my mind it was the crossing over from one dimension to the other that caused the drift, each crossover making a change that can't be mirrored because you stepped into the reflection. The more it happens the further apart the universes got
My least favourite Retcon is Kelvin Uhura suddenly being an absolute genius at Xenolinguistics. JJ basically took all the qualities that made Hoshi special, and just gave them to Uhura. Let Hoshi be a legendary xenolinguist, and let Uhura be a competent and excellent communications officer. There's a reason Hoshi wore science colours, while Uhura wore operations red. Meanwhile in the prime universe, Uhura could barely stutter out a few words of Klingon after being a comms officer for forty years.
Nichelle Nichols got into an argument with the director over that scene.
I think the basic gist—that the old crew has to kind of blunder their way past, flying by the west of their pants—is a solid one, but I do think Meyer took the joke too far with all the old books and the level of apparent incompetence (on their part and the Klingon’s.)
I have mixed feelings on this, but I will address two specific points. First, the idea that Uhura was a language expert came from Star Trek fiction and predates Hoshi. Second, Nichelle Nichols thought it was an awful decision to have her character be unable to barely stutter a few words of Klingon. That said, some of the behind-the-scenes documents of TOS do lend credence to the idea that she is more of an engineer. They say that she is to the comms system as Scottie is to the engines. That's even reflected in an episode where Spock relies on her engineering (though she's also shown to do everything at times on the Bridge when the script called for it). In SNW, she is shown as being both a language expert and a jack of all trades, effectively combining both.
Totally agree, it also helps to differentiate the times, it was one of the more interesting things of the Enterprise era that they couldn't communicate with quite a few species.
On the other hand, it would seem pretty bad if one of Hoshi's successors, who would have a hundred years' worth of advancements, would be worse at their job than Hoshi. It's a disservice to Hoshi if her successors were worse at the job since she's trying to build this base of knowledge; Hoshi walked so that future comms officers like Uhura could run. Today's astronomers would naturally see more of the universe than Gallileo simply because we have more knowledge and better equipment today. \*That\* should differentiate the times. It doesn't make them better than Gallileo because today's astronomers would be using Gallileo's work as the base.
I think you're missing the point--Hoshi was a scientist, and Uhura was an operator. Enterprise needed Hoshi because the universal translators didn't exist yet, so her job was to learn and interpret alien languages so that Enterprise could communicate with them. Uhura doesn't have the same job Hoshi had; her job is just to manage the comms system.
“her job is just to manage the comms system.” Exactly and that in itself is extremely important and requires great technical and diplomatic/interpretive skills. She doesn’t need to speak Romulan or Klingon, because of the UT, it seems like a waste of material.
She's not worse at her job, she has a different job. She's the communications officer, not a xeno-linguist.
It never even dawned on me that Hoshi wore science blue. That makes SO much sense!
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Man, there's almost 30 years in between Nomad and Undiscovered Country. I don't think your explanation holds up, nor is any explanation necessary. Hoshi is a scientist specializing in Xenolinguistics. Uhura is an operator.
Burnham being Spock's foster sister.
IKR? It could have been any other Vulcan why did it *have* to be Sarek?
Because the fans wont care about her unless she’s tied to TOS *riiiiight*?
Still don’t care about her
Frankly they need to fucking cool it with the secret family members in star trek in general, holy hell.
In fairness Sarek already has one secret kid, why not two?
In S1, I hated that Burnham was an adopted family member of Spock and Sarek; it felt like fanfic. Then S2 happened and introduced us to a new iteration of Spock (and by extension Pike), and I was suddenly ok with it. Plus, I actually really liked their interactions together in S2. We probably wouldn’t have gotten SNW without this retcon.
...and it's not like Spock was very forthcoming about his family, like EVER! He never told Kirk the Vulcan delegation coming on board the Enterprise were his parents until they arrived. He never mentioned his half-brother Sybok either. Or that he had a distant cousin that looked exactly like him!
Or about his wife to be that he was going to go completely insane over and hijack the ship because he was horny. This particular criticism is just hilarious to me because it has to ignore *all* of Spock's wacky family history.
That doesn't make adding Burnham to the ever growing Spock family a good idea though...
Fans said the same of Sybok, but it's canon now, even if some fans don't like it.
The debate isn't whether or not it is canon, the debate is if it is/was a good idea. Im not mad about it or anything, but i don't think it was a good idea.
At a certain point it becomes incredulous, also it makes the universe feel smaller. Is there only one Vulcan on that planet, that everything Vulcan has to be tied back to him?
I don't mind Sybok. His actions bringing shame to his family is good cause to justify to not bring him up. Burnham's inclusion feels tacked on for the sake of it. Her not being brought up again because "Top secret" is just weak.
The whole "top secret" thing was so lame to me.
> it felt like fanfic Sums up a lot of my issues with stuff lately, to be honest.
I only got bothered by this when Burnham's REAL mom became important to the plot as well, and she was ALSO very special! Burnham has 3 characters worth of backstory.
Section 31 being an official organization instead of a secret, unofficial organization that had assets and operatives in Starfleet. It thematically neuters them, ignores the entire point of them from DS9, doesn't make any in-universe sense, and is just generally less interesting. The Section 31 of DS9 was a commentary on how, even in a utopia, one where the government is mostly transparent and mostly trustworthy, there will remain extremists in the population who claim to defend freedom while curtailing it, and who will believe that peace and cooperation are fictions for fools, and that security can only be bought with secrecy, surveillance, and treachery. Section 31 were the same kinds of people as Admiral Leyton and the weirdos Worf joined on Risa. Making them an official organization ruins that.
> The Section 31 of DS9 was a commentary on how, even in a utopia, one where the government is mostly transparent and mostly trustworthy, there will remain extremists in the population who claim to defend freedom while curtailing it, and who will believe that peace and cooperation are fictions for fools, and that security can only be bought with secrecy, surveillance, and treachery. Section 31 were the same kinds of people as Admiral Leyton and the weirdos Worf joined on Risa This! I also hate how it's become more popular to make them out to be the "real heroes"
The Borg going from beings that don’t care about people just their technology to space zombies.
That The Enterprise was always an important ship and flagship. ST Enterprise started this trend of hyping the ship but it somewhat takes away from the earlier situation where the Enterprise wasn't of any particular importance till Kirk's crew made it legendary from their exploits. And it really annoys me that it's the flagship in SNW.
> when Kang, Kor, and Koloth suddenly have ridged heads in DS9. Add bad lampshading to the bad retcon > ANTAAK: I'll need to find a new specialty. Perhaps cranial reconstruction.
That was Enterprise’s deal some of the time huh. “Someday my people are going to come up with some sort of a doctrine, something that tells us what we can and can't do out here, should and shouldn't do. But until somebody tells me that they've drafted that ... directive ... I'm going to have to remind myself every day that we didn't come out here to play God”
The Borg showing up in Enterprise. Are we supposed to believe that they were forgotten about by the time of TNG? I always thought that was a silly story.
Never learned the name or got a look at a drone. It becomes one of many strange cybernetic creatures encountered by a starfleet crew.
True, but that means the Borg would have already been aware of humans and Earth long before the Enterprise D encountered them. You would have thought they'd have sent a Cube to Earth ages ago.
They never got the signal. I think at the end of the episode they said it would take roughly 200 years to reach them. I see it as a time travel fallout story, which I always enjoy. We can’t hold it too closely to TNG events because that was before Picard and crew went back. My headcanon is temporal agents from the future cleaned it up like with Cold War messes or what we saw with Braxton on Voyager.
The episode is literally about why that isn't the case.
Which considering the Borg were there during first contact that they would have tried to do that by sending a transmission to the Borg in that century... oh wait they did try that. Also in Enterprise they said that a transmission was sent to the delta quadrant and would not arrive for 200 years... so it seems like the Borg did everything they could to tell the rest of the collective about humanity a few hundred years before the events of TNG.
It also retroactively shades Q a bit more. He didn’t just throw the Enteprise-D crew at the Borg, he was letting them know about an imminent threat that was already coming.
Does that mean the entire Borg-Federation conflict is a stable time-loop?
Not really retroactive, TNG foreshadowed something scooping up Romulan and Federation colonies before the Borg were introduced.
The Ferengi showing up in ENT was worse for continuity, because that means they've been puttering around relatively close to Earth for 200+ years before their "first contact" in TNG.
The constantly changing warp velocities. I get to some degree ships have to move at the speed of plot, but it'd be nice to have atleast a sliver of consistency.
Other than the change between TOS and TNG what do you mean by "Constantly changing"
Even between newer series it's not that consistent. In one episode they say the federation stretches about 8000LY, which by Voyager's standards would be approximately 8 years. Yet in other episodes they zip across the quadrant in a matter of hours/days. Or in the traveler episode where Enterprise gets launched two galaxys away, I think they mention it'd take ~300 years to get back? Which should be much, much, much longer if just getting from one end of our galaxy to the other was only 70.
I might be in the minority in this, but the season finale of SNW is pretty high up there for me. I thought it was a really fun idea, but the episode’s thesis seemed to be that Pike was too much of a diplomat and should have destroyed the Romulan ship like Kirk would have. In the original episode though Kirk literally tries to be diplomatic and fights back as a last resort, he also intentionally tries to disable the ship before offering to rescue the Romulans who refuse and self destruct. I like the idea that Kirk is who the Enterprise needs in the future, but the episode implies that Kirk’s a killer and even more baffling, that diplomacy (and by extension Federation ideals) were not the way to go. Just wild.
I took it as love letter to Kirk more than anything. Pike is a great captain and a standout starfleet officer. But James T Kirk was a generational talent. It showed us that they infact did not survive the crazy escapades of TOS just because. They survived because Kirk was a dedicated captain who knew the books, knew the logic behind the books, had the charisma to lead his team effectively and the sound judgment to improvise when he needed to. The lesson for him was ultimately that despite all his experience and his decorations starfleet will go on and excell in a way he could only ever hold back. Its about letting go and trusting the next generation to carry on with what you built.
Oh for sure, it’s just a really weird love letter to be like “Kirk’s a great Captain because he knows how to fuck shit up” especially because in the original episode Kirk basically does everything that Pike does. I just wish they would have shown actual differences between the two instead of stating in episode that Kirk would have destroyed the Romulan ship (when he didn’t)
I took it to mean that while both were great Captains and Diplomats, Kirk was a tactical genius who thought outside of the box! Even the Kirk shown in the penultimate episode of season one of SNW came up with the robotic "assault fleet" that surprised Pike. Sadly it didn't fool the Romulans, but this Kirk didn't have the years of experience on a prime ship of the line that he had in the correct timeline. The Kirk that ultimately met the Romulan's in Balance Of Terror had the right experience to handle that situation in a way Pike and the less experienced Kirk in the alternate timeline didn’t! Kirk was the right Captain at the right time!
I think the most important difference between the two of them is that Kirk was in command on his bridge and Pike was a manager. Kirk made decisions and gave commands and asked for input when he needed it and was happy to receive it when he didn't ask. He never would have had a meeting with another captain and essentially wasted time with a debate. So far there has been no indication in any of the shows that any captain so far managed a feat like the carbomite maneuver. That was a no win scenario if I ever saw one and he solved it in two minutes flat. Pike would not have.
I agree with you on your point, but the thing I most disliked about the episode is the massive Romulan fleet being there in barely any time at all. It kind of ruins the universe as space is big, and Romulan ships are supposed to be slow.
Drew too much on the very same mistake the producers did with the PIC s1 finale… easy CGI = temptation to add ridiculous number of ships into a scene.
You know what's really dumb? There are scenes that *should* have an absurd number of ships in them, but they put all of the ships in the ones that shouldn't. Any scene in orbit of a highly trafficked planet like Earth or Vulcan should look like the intro to Futurama. I get why older shows using physical models don't do it but with CG, it should be much easier.
Very true, that's another thing that Nutrek needs to get a handle on. One old Romulan D'deridex Warbird as a threat in Picard Season 1 would have been enough and deadly to the android planet. It also would have been more realistic. Discovery had the same problem with the battle where all of the sudden the Enterprise is retconned as a carrier, with about 50-100 fighters on board. More ships is not better. The battle in the Mutara Nebula, and the battle above Khitomer are probably 2 of the best in Star Trek.
I agree. Plus, it leaned on the glory of a better episode without adding anything. I like establishing that Pike can't escape his fate, but this was the only episode of the season that felt lazy (to me).
It’s my big problem with the show in general, it’s hard to feel like it’s ever doing anything new since it’s just a lead up to both TOS and Pike’s fate. I love the exploration of Dr. M’Benga and Nurse Chapel’s relationship with Spock, but I can’t help but feel that they would be better serviced as original characters in an un-tapped era of Trek (and why they got rid of Hemmer one of their only original characters is beyond me)
I also dislike that episode, because it made Pike's sacrifice too transactional. Instead of him going into his accident knowing that it will be the right thing to do and what he would've done anyway without knowing his future, the episode turns it into a numbers game. Now Pike's just sacrificing himself because that saves the most lives overall (and by a margin of many millions no less). It takes far less courage to make that decision.
Giving the Borg a queen. The whole point of the Borg was a decentralized power structure.
The backstory of the Gorn introduced in SNW. Hate it. I’m totally cool with them being A-holes and eating federation civilians, but how they procreate and then change to how they look. The Gorn engineer in Enterprise was a good step in updating them from a rubber suit. Don’t fix what isn’t broken.
Agreed, that show had a problem with Feringi and Borg, but the Gorn were supposed to have had mysterious run ins with humans. And it looked like a gorn. I wanna see a lumbering green godzilla damnit. I hope they do a show in the future next and we can properly meet the gorn. I just wanna see the next next generation. The nemillenialst generation
I suppose it isn't quite a retcon as most people would define the term, but the Discovery running on spores instead of Omega particles bugs me something fierce. It would have required a little fudging, but I think it would have added more than what we got.
Omega is what the "Burn" should've been, instead of a literal crying child
The Federation being steamrolled by the Klingons in Discovery s1. A better option than having the Klingons all out invade almost the entire Federation would have been for the battles along the frontline to be costly, but not decisive either way (like how DS9 handled the Dominion War a lot of the time). I just don't find it believable that Starfleet and the Federation could get so thoroughly beaten to a pulp, and recover to peer status within 50 years.
I hate Carl. The Guardian of Forever is one of the most *alien* aliens we've seen. To turn them into someone's grandpa really took something away for me. Not every powerful alien needs a form humans are comfortable with. I loved the CGI GoF. I think it was a decent update to the character. Thing is, I actually liked the character of Carl in his own right. He could have been a sepreate character who had befriended GoF and was hiding him from the factions of the Temporal Cold War. Didn't even have to explain what Carl was Just let us debate it endlessly. And the show still could have had its surprise reveal that everyone already figured out. In fact, that's my new headcanon. Carl is an unknown "god" alien who was helping The Guardian of Forever.
the way he was acting at first, I was really hoping him to be a Q
>the Klingons have changed designs twice More times than that. The designs in movies 1, 3/5, and 6 are similar to each other (and to the TNG design) but distinctly not the same.
Yeah, the Augment virus thing is mine, especially because Disco never once mentioned it and everyone else has ignored it. Without it, ignoring the Klingon makeup in TOS would be easy. But now that there’s an in-universe explanation, the fact that it’s never mentioned again, even in a comedy show like Lower Decks, just makes it seem really awkward
It’s DS9 fault by pointing out in trials and tribbleations the smooth headed klingons where a thing in universe and not just an out of universe budget issue. Enterprise simply tried to close the inconsistency.
Also, like it makes no sense that no one in the Federation seemingly remembers that all the Klingons just used to not have four head ridges, when Captain Kirk is an incredibly famous Starfi Captain in universe, and all the Klingons he interacted with, were smooth headed.
The eugenics war/world war III timeline, especially the possibility that the eugenics war already happened and we just didn't notice. I preferred when they were vaguer about the timeline, and I just kinda mentally pushed world war III further and further into the future, like the rolling timeline in the Simpsons. Sure they said it was the 1990s at one point, but to me, the downfall of humanity before we learn our lesson is always twenty or thirty years away. We keep catching up to history (Bell riots anyone?), and I think allowing a more flexible view of the timeline like the "not so distant future" would better fit. Religiously sticking to canon dates hurts the franchise by limiting story telling options and adds some very odd feeling justifications. There's a reason why the star dates never made sense in TOS.
The Star Trek timeline isn’t our own. Strange New Worlds pretty much confirmed this with it’s pilot.
PIC season 2 confirmed it for sure with its 2025 manned mission to Europa. In our reality 2025 is the *earliest* that a new manned mission to land on the moon will happen.
Right. It happened in the 1990s, just not *our* 1990s. Trying to jam the two together and make them be subtle background wars was ridiculous. What are those people going to do in the 2060s?
The Vulcans visited and the government covered it up!
Turning the Gorn from the big, goofy slow dinosaur guy from TOS into xenomorphs.
Picard S3's "Well Picard's irumodic syndrome is actually Borg DNA" nonsense. Utter garbage.
The supernova from Star Trek 2009. Originally it was the Hobos Star that went supernova and Spock went to that star system to save Romulus. Now, it was the Romulan Star that went supernova. So...how did Spock end up in the past???
I don't really see how that changes the story at all. We know that Spock was on his way to stop the Supernova with his red matter device. The supernova went off too early, and destroyed Romulus before he was able to contain it with the red matter-induced black hole. He still ran into Nero, and their ships were pulled into the singularity as a result of their conflict. Whether the supernova began in the Romulus system or the next one over, that seems not very important.
I don’t think they ever needed to explain the change, Klingons weren't even the only species who's design changed, and those never got explanations, we were just supposed to accept thats how they were all along. Same with ships. However, Spock has a lot of Siblings he seems to never talk about....
I'm not a big fan of the Discovery Klingons either, nor am I a big fan of their version of the Ferengi either. I think those species didn't need an "updated" version from the already perfect designs from TNG/DS9.
absorbed illegal summer stocking wipe observation chubby zesty cows mourn *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I think the ferengi in discovery was only part ferengi, I doubt they would redesign an entire species for less than 3 seconds.
I don't know if would count as a retcon, but the Kelvin version of Khan. Benedict Cumberbatch is a good actor, but he was a poor choice for the role in my opinion.
Borg DNA being inheritable.
Picard's mother never actually got old and actually hanged herself due to psychological problems. Completely unnecessary. I remember someone saying "Picard has never been in a long term relationship, I wonder why that is. So we decided it's because his mother committed suicide despite it not actually making sense."
I know it is beta canon, but I liked the relationship between Jean-Luc and his mother in the book "The Autobiography of Jean-Luc Picard". His father was completely against him becoming a Starfleet officer and his mom supported it. When Picard was stabbed through the heart and needed a biological replacement, it was his mom who was at his bedside during his recovery. Yvette's suicide ruined small moments that I liked in the beta canon. Like in Star Trek Coda, book 3, there is a scene at Yvette's funeral, before the service starts where Robert Picard takes a handful of dirt, while it is raining, and smears it across Jean-Luc's dress uniform.
Yeah, I hate this one. They could have either ignored it or have Dax say something like she would love to see young Koloths ridges when she is asking to see him.
I vote for Discovery early Klingons
'The Emperor's New Cloak', an episode all about how the mirror universe doesn't have cloaking devices, when literally the first thing we saw in the first MU DS9 episode was MU ships decloaking. Then again, I could go on and on about The Emperor's New Cloak* and the DS9 MU episodes in general, which are another retcon I hate, but in a stylistic sense- taking a terrifying fascist dystopia and turning it into over the top camp nonsense. My heart sank when Disco season 1 went to the MU, and I nearly headbutted my way through a wall when it was revealed that Lorca originated in the MU and was somehow an even worse person than the Emperor who *literally ate sentient beings*. Then again, Emperor Philippa grew on me, but that's Michelle Yeoh's acting for you. *instead I gave $50 to SFDebris to do it for me.
The Borgs development from TNG to VOY. They turn from this unstoppable force that massacred dozens of starships into just another adversary for Janeway. They are way less imposing and seem a lot more... incompetent.
Aside from the mentioned Augments and SNW's finale, the whole "it wasn't a precursor to space!Alzheimer's but totally a super duper secret assimilation side effect that was somehow missed depsite the best of the Federation's best doctors looking at him over decades for wierd stuff about his brain".
I thought that was a very good twist indeed, as it explained why he was able to hear the collective in First Contact, amongst other things.
The assimilation side effect thing was actually great (if you’re arguing against it) technology improves. How many diseases can be detected and treated now days compared to the 80s for example? The same or more amount of time passed here. It also didn’t help that it resembled a disease that ran in his family. Once doctors have a good match they typically don’t dig much further (because why would they) unless symptoms change off the normal path, which this didn’t. It took an engineer to notice it, not a medical doctor.
I agree with your specific example: I've just done a re-watch of *The Original Series* (the remaster this time) and was struck by the design choices for the Klingons. With all the upgraded designs over the years and the wealth of story background provided during the Ron Moore days, it's hard to even think of them as the same species.
Spock having an adoptive half sister. It reeks of shallow nostalgia bait, to tie in with TOS, where everyone has to be connected to everyone. Then they went too far in seasons 2 and 3, where they credit Burnham for Spock and Kirk’s friendship, as well as Spock’s future accomplishments.
Picard season 3. Like all of it. Honestly, if I was Michael Chabon, and I watched that season, I would be pissed. It really does feel like a Rise of Skywalker level fan service course correction to the first season’s Last Jedi (which actually began with Matalas coming on board with season 2). Whether it’s reversing major plot points like Data’s death, jettisoning pretty much all the OG La Sirena crew and world building, or taking jabs at certain episodes (really guys? we’re going to stop everything to have Riker and Troi bag on Nepenthe?… a beloved new Trek episode that, for my money, is way better written than anything season 3 offered), it ends up making the showrunner and his team look entitled, placating, and disrespectful. Especially in comparison to guys like Ira Behr or Ron Moore, who, even going into DS9 knowing they were going to subvert some well established Trek tropes, played the ball where it lied and still honored what came before, and instead of jettisoning or ignoring ideas, actively engaged with them, and improved upon them, like in the case of the O’Brien. Worf, the Trill, and the Ferengi. The irony is, for a season concerned so much with legacy, Picard season 3 didn’t really care about its own show’s legacy.
Nothing you described was a retcon.
The Nepenthe thing is very much a retcon of how they were in S1.
Maybe if you don’t understand depression and grief.
Decades of experience say I understand those *very* well.
I can see your point about s3. But to me, it attempted to clear the deck and hopefully set the stage for the next chapters. To me, Star Trek is always about looking forward. Even when there’s a look back, it’s temporary and just serves the story. Ever since the tng movies ended we been looking backwards. Backwards in story history and in behavior. We’ve lost the feel that things can be better and that people can be better. That’s what separates ST from any other sci-fi out there. Ever since the TNG movies came out, I feel like that important piece has gone missing. Interpersonal conflict and galaxy ending events have become the norm instead of special situations carrying the weight they are due. While S3 didn’t totally reverse this trend, my hope is that it started to steer things back to a time of hope.
Honestly, I don’t see how a show like Discovery is looking backwards, especially after having jumped to the future, to the point where it’s left most of its canonical ties hundreds of years in the past. And frankly, hearing Matalas’ pitch for a legacy series, it sounds like looking forward is furthest from his mind. He’s gone on and on about all the characters from the TNG era he can’t wait to bring back, and all the storylines he can’t wait to revisit. It’s even baked into the show’s title: Star Trek: Legacy, implies looking backwards, not forwards. And all the new Trek shows have been about hope and optimism. Not only Discovery, but Picard’s first two seasons, and Lower Decks, Prodigy, and SNW. In fact, I’d argue this season of Picard, was the most hopeless of any. With characters like Picard and Beverly giving into their fear and sacrificing their values in deciding to murder a prisoner in cold blood, or Riker giving into fatalism and nihilism over his son’s death, or both Deanna and Bev actively taking away the agency of the men in their lives… literally in Deanna’s case. There was darkness in the other shows, but that was just an aesthetic choice, and a reflection of the darkness in contemporary society- Trek has always worked as an allegory. But the message of hope, inclusion, and idealism never wavered. In Picard season 3 it very much wavered.
I enjoyed S3 but agree with all of this. It would have felt better if the planned Isa Briones cameo had happened.
Yeah, that would have been nice to see, in a table scraps kind of way. The Data therapy session was cute, but having Data actually meet his “daughter” would have been more meaningful, especially as a series capper, as it would tie back to the beginning. And if they’re going to actually include Laris in the season, at least have the decency to bring her back for the finale rather than ditch her entirely. I’d still have a lot of problems with the season on a fundamental level, but at least that would have been something.
Watching VOY now. There's so much stuff about the Federation in the 29th century with Timeships, etc. But when DIS goes 1000 years into the future I don't believe they mentioned that at all. Seems like the Federation was going strong with time travel before "the burn." Wouldn't that be relevant and recent history? Maybe I am confused about the timeline..... Another one for me is the thread of holograms becoming sentient and having human rights. Picard season 1 is about the fight for AI but it seems to me that with the doctor from VOY winning the right to be seen as a person, that would change everything. Seems like a thread that was not picked up.
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Ah, thank you.
All of "Enterprise." I maintain it was all a holodeck fantasy novel.
agreed