Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

[Morrus]

Ugh. And now he’s deleted his account, and I feel responsible.

 

[Umbran]

Ugh. And now he’s deleted his account, and I feel responsible.

Dude, you told folks to not dogpile him. There is no way in which you are responsible.

 

[Dire Bare]

I've considered the All Access stuff as a soft reboot from the very beginning. That was obvious to me watching the pilot for Discovery. My problem is that the references to previous Trek keep distracting me: Klingons don't look and don't act like Klingons, Romulans look like elves and act like samurais. I would have enjoyed Picard way more if they'd used another, new species. Which means that I would have enjoyed it at least a little.
Then there's the character-driven narrative, that in my eyes makes it distinctly non-Star Trek but just about the same as everything else you see on television these days.
I would bet this new series will have a season long arc to find out some big, dark mystical secret, a couple of perfunctory self contained episodes, and that they will introduce young Kirk near the end. That would break canon (that I don't care about) but will give them the opportunity for the story of a young upstart fulfilling his destiny (just the thought makes me yawn). Anyway, I don't think I'll be watching but hey, if you like it like good for you

Love it or not, that's cool, but try to look at some of the changes with a more open mind.

The Klingons from Discovery Season 1 definitely have a new aesthetic and were definitely one of the controversial elements of the show. But, um, it certainly isn't the first time the Klingons got a redesign, and its relatively mild compared to the first one! I would agree that the Klingon's looked different (physicality, costumes, ships), but I feel that they very much acted like Klingons. And in Discovery Season 2, the Klingons all decided to grow their hair back out, and looked pretty darn close to Next Gen Klingons at that point. After some time, the biggest differences were hairstyles (or the lack thereof), clothing styles, and ship designs.

In Picard, we were not really seeing a redesign of the Romulans, but rather corners of Romulan culture we had never seen before. Most of the Romulan fun prior to Picard was Warbirds staffed by angry Romulans with serious shoulder pads, now we are getting a look at Romulan civilian/refugee life, a religious monastery/assassin order, and a secret police within the secret police. The changes were additive, rather than transforming.

And ultimately, that's how I view most, if not all, of the changes in new-Trek so far. They aren't reimaginings or reboots, but expansions on existing lore. Which I love! Of course, reboot or expansion is independent of whether you personally care for the changes or not.

I find it's easier to enjoy new shows based on old franchises if you relax about things being changed, rebooted, expanded, or lacking a tight adherence to the minutiae of continuity. As long as the new show is fun, pushes the franchise in new directions, and respects what came before . . . . which I think new-Trek very much does . . . . I'm happy!

 

[billd91]

Every time someone does a prequel, they're engaging in some element of redefining and it can conflict with our previously held concept of the material. Discovery is no different. What distracted me most is they picked the most twiddled with target - Spock. He's an iconic character, so apparently nobody can resist messing with him. It's a bit like the Thieves World anthology - Lythande was such an interesting character with an important secret that none of the other authors could resist treading on them and that secret. It's my understanding it got so bad that the author removed her character from being further used in the anthology project.

 

[Dire Bare]

Every time someone does a prequel, they're engaging in some element of redefining and it can conflict with our previously held concept of the material. Discovery is no different. What distracted me most is they picked the most twiddled with target - Spock. He's an iconic character, so apparently nobody can resist messing with him. It's a bit like the Thieves World anthology - Lythande was such an interesting character with an important secret that none of the other authors could resist treading on them and that secret. It's my understanding it got so bad that the author removed her character from being further used in the anthology project.

Spock is a fan-favorite, so, yeah. He got pulled into the Next Gen series, the Kelvin-verse movies (a two-fer!), and now Discovery . . . . I've loved every incarnation! Same reason why we keep seeing the Klingons as major antagonists with various degrees of redesign. Strange they haven't updated the look of the Pakleds and made them a major element of a new series . . . .

 

[billd91]

Yeah, well sometimes it's a bit too much. I hope they avoid too much delving into his background in Strange New Worlds since we've had a lot of that so far and give us a chance to explore another character like Number One, Pike, or introduce someone like Gary Mitchell.

 

[Ryujin]

Love it or not, that's cool, but try to look at some of the changes with a more open mind.

The Klingons from Discovery Season 1 definitely have a new aesthetic and were definitely one of the controversial elements of the show. But, um, it certainly isn't the first time the Klingons got a redesign, and its relatively mild compared to the first one! I would agree that the Klingon's looked different (physicality, costumes, ships), but I feel that they very much acted like Klingons. And in Discovery Season 2, the Klingons all decided to grow their hair back out, and looked pretty darn close to Next Gen Klingons at that point. After some time, the biggest differences were hairstyles (or the lack thereof), clothing styles, and ship designs.

In Picard, we were not really seeing a redesign of the Romulans, but rather corners of Romulan culture we had never seen before. Most of the Romulan fun prior to Picard was Warbirds staffed by angry Romulans with serious shoulder pads, now we are getting a look at Romulan civilian/refugee life, a religious monastery/assassin order, and a secret police within the secret police. The changes were additive, rather than transforming.

And ultimately, that's how I view most, if not all, of the changes in new-Trek so far. They aren't reimaginings or reboots, but expansions on existing lore. Which I love! Of course, reboot or expansion is independent of whether you personally care for the changes or not.

I find it's easier to enjoy new shows based on old franchises if you relax about things being changed, rebooted, expanded, or lacking a tight adherence to the minutiae of continuity. As long as the new show is fun, pushes the franchise in new directions, and respects what came before . . . . which I think new-Trek very much does . . . . I'm happy!

Funny thing about the Klingon redesign is that the FASA backgrounders did an excellent job of explaining them, that got tossed out in subsequent stuff. They made Klingons be big on genetic engineering. Dealing with humans and more generally humanoid races on one frontier? You make Klingon-Human hybrids to deal with them. Romulans on another front? Well then you've got Klingon-Romulan hybrids on that side. And the guys with the turtles on their heads? They're pure-blooded Imperial Klingon stock.

 

[Morrus]

Love it or not, that's cool, but try to look at some of the changes with a more open mind.

The Klingons from Discovery Season 1 definitely have a new aesthetic and were definitely one of the controversial elements of the show. But, um, it certainly isn't the first time the Klingons got a redesign, and its relatively mild compared to the first one!

Indeed. It's the 4th Klingon design.

TOS
TPM/TNG
Abrahms
Disco

 

[Dire Bare]

Funny thing about the Klingon redesign is that the FASA backgrounders did an excellent job of explaining them, that got tossed out in subsequent stuff. They made Klingons be big on genetic engineering. Dealing with humans and more generally humanoid races on one frontier? You make Klingon-Human hybrids to deal with them. Romulans on another front? Well then you've got Klingon-Romulan hybrids on that side. And the guys with the turtles on their heads? They're pure-blooded Imperial Klingon stock.

That's a pretty cool idea. I'm sure the Trek "expanded universe" is full of abandoned-but-neat ideas!

I don't know the details and too lazy to seek it out, but I'm fairly sure there is a canon or semi-canon explanation that explains the changes as some sort of genetic virus that swept through Klingon worlds during TOS era changing Klingons to look more human.

Really, it's all too much work! I like how they treated it in the DS9 episode when our heroes go back in time to Kirk's Enterprise and encounter all sorts of anachronisms, including Klingons who look very different from Worf! His response? "We don't talk about it."

Lately I've been a bit fascinated by the Trek "expanded universe" of novels and comics. Since none of these are ever considered canon, they often match up with canon when they are first published, but then become out-of-date as TV and movie Trek continues to expand. Newer novels/comics then ignore the elements of older books/comics, only themselves becoming out-of-sync with canon over time. So, if you went and read the thousands of Trek novels and comics that have been published over the decades they would not only be wildly inconsistent with canon, but even with each other! Nothing wrong with that, just interesting!

 

[MrZeddaPiras]

Love it or not, that's cool, but try to look at some of the changes with a more open mind.

The Klingons from Discovery Season 1 definitely have a new aesthetic and were definitely one of the controversial elements of the show. But, um, it certainly isn't the first time the Klingons got a redesign, and its relatively mild compared to the first one! I would agree that the Klingon's looked different (physicality, costumes, ships), but I feel that they very much acted like Klingons. And in Discovery Season 2, the Klingons all decided to grow their hair back out, and looked pretty darn close to Next Gen Klingons at that point. After some time, the biggest differences were hairstyles (or the lack thereof), clothing styles, and ship designs.

In Picard, we were not really seeing a redesign of the Romulans, but rather corners of Romulan culture we had never seen before. Most of the Romulan fun prior to Picard was Warbirds staffed by angry Romulans with serious shoulder pads, now we are getting a look at Romulan civilian/refugee life, a religious monastery/assassin order, and a secret police within the secret police. The changes were additive, rather than transforming.

Eh, not really. The aesthetic changes don't bother me, though I don't love them either. But '90 Trek depicted the Klingons as a violent but functional society. These are fanatics and savages. So much so that that the human (and humane) solution to defeat them is to

Spoiler

give a weapon of mass destruction to one of them so she can become a dictator and get them off the Federation's back.

Same goes for the Romulans. They are supposed to be a large galactic civilization, but that element was downplayed because the "rescue armada" narrative would not have made sense otherwise. Regarding the samurai nuns, I'm sorry but they make just as much sense as they would in real life. There was melee combat in Star Trek, but never with the assumption that someone good enough with a sword could forfeit modern ranged weapons. Not even Klingons did that. That's a huge tonal shift. And again, that just makes new Trek just more of the same-action-fantasy sci-fi we see these days.