I Think I Miss Rick Berman - Modern Star Trek In Hindsight

What makes you think that the current writers of Star Trek don't particularly like the old stuff?

I think that if anything, the writers of Lower Decks, Picard, SNW and Starfleet Academy have often shown too much reverence for 80s and 90s Trek by putting in lots and lots of references to previous episodes and Easter eggs. Bringing back the aliens from Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, having a whole episode about Sisko being considered a religious figure come to mind.

You'll say that, but will be unable to provide any evidence whatsoever.

Youtube-man sounded smart when he said it.

Every handwave dismissal of established canon, of which you are all well the fuck aware. It reeks of "actually, it's OUR characters that are the most special-est EVAR, and any history you already knew is just a trivial side effect of OUR stories. WE know better than the obsolete writers who came before us."

It started with the STD retcons, and jumped off from there.

Can you give even one example of a dismissal of established canon that shows contempt for what has gone before and what makes you say that? Not an accidental slip up. Not an attempt to modernize. Not a homage, or a difference in vision. But actual "I think old Star Trek sucks and I'm going to show my disdain for it with what I'm doing."

Because the fact that there are female captains in the same timeframe as TOS contradicts TOS's Turnabout Intruder. But it doesn't seem like the writers of Discovery and SNW don't contradict that out of "contempt" for TOS. Rather, it's an acknowledgement of the reality that it would make no sense that Federation would bar women from serving as captains that the writers of 60s Trek just were not visionary enough to imagine, particularly since in contemporary democracies (I believe) women can serve in any and all roles.

Maybe the contempt is for the viewer.

Spock's adopted sister. Spore drive. Klingon jesus. Pike knowing his fate in advance. The guardian of forever being a dumpy middle aged man. Doctor Mbenga instead of doctor Piper. Just off the top of my head. The examples are too numerous for you to have missed, so rationalize away.

Pretty sure Chapel holds a Captain's rank by the later TOS movies.
Roddenberry backed down on that one in his own time.

None of these is really a "dismissal of established canon." Some of them, IMO, are dumb ideas. But for it to dismiss established canon, something has to be shown conclusively to be one way, and then TPTB have to ignore that or contradict that.

But to take them one at a time:

Spock's adopted sister: There is not an episode or movie in TOS that establishes that Spock didn't have an adopted sister. TOS establishes that Spock didn't frequently talk about his family. In Journey to Babel, Spock didn't tell Kirk that the Vulcan Ambassador he would be transporting was his father Sarek until literally Sarek and Amanda were on board. And I don't think that they established the existence of Sybok until his first appearance either. I think that it was a dumb idea to have Burnham be Spock's adopted sister on multiple grounds (it opened TPTB to all sorts of allegations that they wouldn't have had to face otherwise, the idea of making Burnham Vulcan-lite did both SMG and the character a disservice, to the extent that they wanted to tie Discovery to TOS it probably was unnecessary), but it's not a dismissal of established canon since canon didn't rule out the possibility of him having an adopted sister. Feel free to explain how it shows contempt for either TOS or Trek fans to have Spock have an adopted sister.

Spore drive: I will say that a working spore drive is a dumb idea to set in a TOS timeframe because it begs the question why no one has seemingly replicated it in the century since, and given the time jump and the Burn is extra stupid, as there is a viable means of instantaneous travel that the Federation had reason to know about and then got an actual live working model of, and they still didn't outfit every ship in the fleet with it as their number one priority. But anyway, nothing in TOS or elsewhere establishes that there was never a spore drive. As to the question of "why didn't others use it," Discovery somewhat hints at the reason why. But also, it's clear that there is all sorts of tech that is discovered in all the series that is never used again. Otherwise, we would have telekinetic crews who can also act at super-speed, after the events of Plato's Stepchildren and Wink of an Eye. Anyway, feel free to explain how it shows contempt for either TOS or Trek fans to have a spore drive be a possibility in the TOS time frame.

Klingon Jesus: I take it that you are referring to the religiosity in Discovery. Putting aside the general change in Klingons from swarthy manipulative people to honor-bound warriors, I have to concede that the Discovery Klingons are another change in what has come before. We never really got a glimpse of what internal Klingon politics were like in TOS to contradict the notion that at some point there was an evangelical movement among Klingons or an actual hot war that preceded the cold war we saw in TOS. But even conceding for discussion's sake that the Klingons we saw are different enough from what was in TOS or the TNG era, I don't see how it shows contempt for either era, any more than the change in Klingons between TOS and TNG involves the TNG powers that be having contempt for TOS (or for fans). Feel free to elaborate on why you think it might.

Pike knowing his fate in advance: Obviously, nothing in The Menagerie shows that Pike didn't know his fate in advance. All we got was him beeping yes or no, and no one asked him in the episode "Chris, did you know in advance that you were going to get caught in an accident that would leave you like this?" and he didn't beep twice. Personally, I think it's an interesting twist that they probably should do more of that he's doing all these things and he knows that he's fated to survive all these adventures until whenever from now. I wish they did more with that and made Pike more of the haunted and jaded character that he was originally portrayed as, rather than Space Dad and Chef extraordinaire. Why does having Pike know he's doomed to be disabled show contempt to TOS or to Trek fans?

The Guardian of Forever being a dumpy old man: Nothing in City on the Edge of Forever established that the Guardian couldn't take multiple forms. Indeed, it established that it was beyond their understanding. Why does having the Guardian of Forever able to manifest himself in humanoid form if it wants show contempt for TOS or for Trek fans?

Doctor Piper instead of M'Benga: Nothing in The Cage/The Menagerie prevents the possibility that Dr. M'Benga succeeded Dr. Piper, or even that he served concurrently with Dr. Piper before assuming the CMO role. Why does having Dr. M'Benga instead of Dr. Piper show contempt for TOS or for Trek fans?

Right but that leaves open the possibility that sometimes after Turnabout Intruder (perhaps even because of the events of Turnabout Intruder), Starfleet was like, "Huh, maybe this completely nonsensical and contradictory-to-our-fundamental-philosophy-of-equality bar on women captains should be lifted." Through Discovery and SNW, which take place before when Turnabout Intruder did, it's clear that we have women did serve as captains and Janice Lester was speaking of a metaphorical bar on women captains rather than an actual bar (or the whole episode is de-canonized).

Picard and crew super-breath blew into Cochrane's sails.
The only reason you're not pissed is Cochrane didn't have a show.

Well, JJ Abraham’s own words that I posted in the original post of this thread, the fact that he and Alex Kurtzman worked on several projects together including the 2009 reboot, and just the lack of any sort of thought provoking concepts being explored in modern Trek’s storytelling. This goes for the movies too.
I think SNW & Discovery tried to adhere to the 90’s era brand the most with varying degrees of success. I think Picard & SFA didn’t even try… although I admit I should give SFA another shot because I sort of tuned out after the first 3 episodes and played the rest of it like background noise.
Lower Decks was a different animal altogether. It was obvious that McMahon was a huge TNG fan and that along with how genuinely funny it was had me glued.

I despise Abrams. But really, his influence is only on the Kelvinverse films (and just the first 2 at that).
I think there's plenty of thought-provoking storytelling in modern Trek. But that all depends on how you define "thought provoking".
I love, for instance, the concept of Pike knowing his fate and wrestling with that knowledge.
I love the thorny questions Disco wrestled with in its first season.
To me, it doesn't seem any less thought provoking than, say, Voyager.

I think you have to hold movies to a different standard, as it seems like the ingredient mix for them needs more focus n pew-pew action and less on the classic philosophical questions that make Star Trekgreat/

I think modern Trek does as good a job at holding a mirror up to humanity and asking those questions. Even the often derided Starfleet Academy did a pretty good job n that score, albeit the questions it mainly focused on were personal in nature like How does one get over trauma? What does it take to belong, and what if the price of belonging is too much? How do you come to define yourself?

But there were the broader questions too, such as: what is the meaning of faith? How should one nation relate to another? To what extent should or can a nation live in isolation? Is it OK for a nation to abandon its principles when emergencies happen? Are nations that preach one thing but do something different inherently evil hypocrites? Against the backdrop of tragedy that forces a nation to compromise its principles, how does it find its way back? What does an appropriate justice system look like?

Not bad for "Star Trek: 90210."

Re: spore drive.
'member back in the 1950s when we tried nuclear powered planes and trains? turbine engine cars? Reasonably good ideas that for whatever reason turned out not to be practical or workable. Hell, it took us over a century to come up with electric cars that could compete with IC engines. I think I had more of an issue with them "classifying" Discovery's existence and disappearance than simply saying "It blowed up because experimental tech went boom and everybody died".

They did say it blowed up.
It was the people who knew better who were sworn to secrecy.

Witch is different from the half- brother terrorist he never told anyone about? Or the diplomat father he never told anyone about? Or the estranged fiancé be never told anyone about?
If you ask me, it absolutely fits with his character that he never told anyone about Burnham.

Phase cloak. Firing while cloaked. Warp 5 speed limit. Borg cube destroying torpedoes. The Jem'Hadar superbattleship. And on and on.

You mean Kahless? From TOS?

Changes nothing in TOS , beyond adding a heroic subtext to it

[Quote[The guardian of forever being a dumpy middle aged man.[/quote]
Godlike being can do magical stuff. And?

So, ten years before the first episode the Enterprise had an old white guy as a doctor, and it's somehow an insult to imply the OLD white guy might have retired in the intervening decade?
Or maybe you're just annoyed about a Black doctor "replacing" a white one.

Your examples are stupid and don't price your point in the slightest.
Unless the point is that you really resent Black people.

Harlan Ellison intended for the Guardian to be a being.

That list of grievances is full of things that I actually agree were kinda dumb ... but showing contempt for what came before? Come on. To reach that conclusion, you have to be absolutely desperate for an excuse to be offended.

Spock's adopted sister? Yes, I wish Discovery hadn't done this. Not because it's implausible to imagine Sarek adopting an orphaned human (it isn't), but because I don't like when they make Star Trek's fictional universe too small, and because I don't think the series needed to have Spock in it. In fact, I would have preferred that it not, and I found that entire arc to be pretty boring. But given that Spock's closest friends in the universe didn't know about Sybok's existence until he showed up on Nimbus III and started taking hostages, it's hardly inconsistent with what was stated before, and I don't see how you get to "contempt."

Spore drive? Kinda dumb. But it's not any more contemptuous than having Archer encounter the Borg 200 years before the Enterprise D's first contact with them, or showing the Ferengi hanging out in Earth's immediate neighborhood during Archer's time when they appeared to be brand-new to the Federation's awareness in early TNG, or DS9 retconning the crap out of the Trill.

Klingon Jesus? I don't know exactly what this is about, but Star Trek has always been pretty inconsistent absout Klingon religion, to the point where I assume there are just multiple Klingon faith traditions. Star Trek V says they have an Eden equivalent called Qui'Tu, and Shatner intended to portray a Klingon god. Worf says the Klingons decided their gods were annoying and killed them. Voyager puts a lot of stuff around Klingon mythology that's basically a rewrite of Hades and the River Styx.

Pike knowing his fate in advance? This makes him a tragic figure in a way that only enhances the character's nobility. It turns him from a hapless victim of circumstance to a self-sacrificing hero.

The Guardian of Forever taking on a human form? Well, the Guardian is one of those things they came up with in TOS that in retrospect was way too powerful, much like the whole "to travel in time, all you have to do is warp around the sun" thing. But it's hardly implausible to imagine a powerful entity like the Guardian being able to project a form for itself if it wanted to. (Or is the insecure little manbaby brigade just mad that he doesn't manifest as a chest-pounding, high-"T" warrior out of Pete Kegbreath's wet dreams?)

M'Benga instead of Piper? Why should SNW be required to have Piper just because he was in WNMHGB? Kirk started a brand-new five-year mission. Heck, TOS picks up in the middle of Kirk's five-year mission, never explicitly showing the beginning. It could be that McCoy was always Kirk's CMO, and Piper was just a temporary fill-in while Bones was on leave. And again, to take M'Benga being on the show as a sign of "contempt," you have to be truly desperate for an excuse to be offended.

Wait, Piper was the one in WNMHGB?
I thought he was the one from the Cage.
Well, regardless, it's a fucking stupid thing to be annoyed about.
Without M'Benga, we don't have "Under The Cloak Of War", which is one of the finest episodes of Star Trek ever.

I find it interesting that most of the supposed canon dismissals UA cited were baseless, and he didn't attempt to cite the ones that are hard(er) to argue. Where one could at least say: TOS said X, but SNW said not-X.

Not that I think any of the following show disrespect to either the original creators or to fans, but at least he would have gotten to point one:

A. TOS's Arena establishes what the Gorn were like -- a humanoid species who used cunning to ensnare the Enterprise and were apparently unknown to Starfleet (or at least to Kirk) at the time that Kirk encountered them. SNW establishes that the Gorn were a known terror, come in different forms than the one shown in TOS including Xenomorphy-variants, and that the Enterprise had an open conflict with the Gorn well in advance of Arena, with Uhura, Spock and Scotty all playing a role in it. Now one can rationalize the differences, and it may be that there's going to be some hocus-pocus to get memory of human-Gorn interactions wiped from people's memories by the Metrons. But there's an actual conflict that needs some level of reconciliation.

B. TOS's Amok Time has Nurse Chapel flirting with Spock by making him plomeek soup and Spock's fiancee T'Pring appearing and Uhura saying, "She's lovely, Mr. Spock. Who is she?" and Spock explaining that T'Pring is his "wife." SNW establishes that Chapel and Spock are past the point where she has to rely on making traditional Vulcan food, and T'Pring has come on board the Enterprise at least a couple times during the SNW era. (I don't remember if Uhura specifically encountered T'pring, but I believe so.)

C. TOS's What Are Little Girls Made Of talks about how Chapel was engaged to Roger Korby, who was then lost and out of communication for 5 years. On hearing what is supposed to be his voice -- a standard American accent -- Spock asks Chapel if she is sure that it's him, and Chapel says that of course she is because you never forget your lover's voice. In SNW, Korby has a Scottish accent, and Spock has heard Korby speak so he should be able to recognize it too.

Looking it up, Dr. Boyce was the doctor in The Cage. Dr. Piper was the doctor at WNMHGB. And yes, if the complaint was that it should be Dr. Boyce rather than Dr. M'Benga, it's nonsensical because Dr. Boyce could have decided to retire or move on in the time between The Cage and the start of SNW S1.

With Dr. Piper, it's a dumber complaint. At least one could reasonably say "I would expect that the Dr. who was serving at the time of the Cage to continue serving along Pike 5 (or however many years) later." It's not necessarily true, of course, but it's reasonable to think that a doctor might hold a post for that long. There is no real reason to believe that the doctor in WNMHGB was serving on Pike's Enterprise.

Regardless, it doesn't contradict canon, because nothing onscreen establishes who Pike's chief medical officer was during this time frame. They could have had it be Dr. Boyce, Dr. Piper, Dr. M'Benga, Uhura's favorite second cousin, Dr. Pepper, Dr. Who, or whoever they wanted to without a canon contradiction.

Nah, I think you have the right to feel as you do. When I watch Berman era trek, I get the wistful nostalgias, too, and I miss the pacing of the shows, but then we also had 20+ to 30+ episodes a season where now we're down to 10 and 12, which really sucks, IMO.

Now, I do love most of modern Star Trek, but then I long ago tossed aside the calipers I used to carry around when gauging each episode under the weight of previous canon. It may not be the Trekkian thing to do, but it has helped me cope with some Star Trek that's less... ideal... than I'd like.

Movies wise, I loved Star Trek (2009). The casting was terrific, everyone nailed their parts as far as I was concerned, the story was engaging, and the visuals were fantastic.

Star Trek: Into Darkness is a solid entry for me, not my favorite, but still good. I enjoyed Banderite Combover as the villain, but him being Khan does ding it a bit for me. They could have had a new villain and still had a great film.

Star Trek Beyond is my favorite of the three. For me that's when the casting, the story, the whole "Star Trek" feel of the movies really clicked. Unfortunately, it's also the last one with that cast.

Section 31: Ugh. Uuuuuuuuugggghhhhhhh.

As for the series:

Discovery was a mixed bag. I like that they were trying something new and different, and they wanted to expand Star Trek's whole notion of being very progressive and forward thinking, which is good, but the writing was honestly pretty weak across the board. Some episodes were terrific, and I'd watch them again and again. Others were dreadful. So, you know, kind of like classic trek.

Picard started out interestingly enough, but I lost interest in season 3 when it just became the Memberberries show and dropped all pretense of being anything else, which is a shame.

Lower Decks? Still my favorite modern Star Trek. Bright, funny, lots of references for fans, but also very inclusive, great stories, cracking dialogue. Love it.

Prodigy was essentially Star Trek Voyager Kids, which I'm not complaining about, it was a very good show with good characterization, an interesting storyline, and good dialogue. Also, Janeway makes it a win immediately.

Starfleet Academy is one I genuinely like from top to bottom as well. New characters, new era, very progressive and forward thinking. Feels very Star Trekky to me, but of course it got canceled.

Strange New Worlds is also one of my favorites except for season 3 where I feel like they just really stopped trying to make it fresh and new. They're wanting it to dovetail right into TOS, which would be fine if this were the latter half of the 5th season, but by season 3 we were already picking up original crew members from TOS, and it has become less the Captain Christopher Pike and his gallant crew show and more the "when will Kirk take over already?" show.

Couple of my biggest complaints are (1) the way Enterprise blew off the whole Romulan war, which could and should have been its epic event, (B) the constant redesigning of the Klingons and to a lesser extent other aliens like the Gorn and the Trill, (3) Lens Flare Trek with its "cadet to captain in ten seconds" thing with Kirk, and (D) almost any time travel story you care to mention.

Oh, and Dickynoo . . . it doesn't matter what Harlan intended for the Guardian. What matters is what showed up on the screen.

I figure Stamets wasn't the only person in the galaxy to come up with the idea for the spore drive over the years, but he ended up being the only one that managed to receive the funding and resources necessary to pursue the concept, and the only one that stumbled upon the tardigrade/pilot element of it. Every other time it remained a fringe crackpot theory.

I can suspend disbelief as to why no one apparently attempted to recreate the spore drive in the TOS/TNG timeframe. That would boil down to it being a niche technology that got hidden because of Discovery's future jump creating a situation where all info re: Discovery and its crew was deemed confidential.

I can even suspend disbelief that in the face of the Burn and pretty much all space travel being limited, people didn't dredge up the spore drive research and present that as an alternative.

What I can't and won't get over is the Federation knowing that there is a working spore drive in Discovery, knowing they have a whole bunch of experts in the practical aspects of how to create it, knowing that they have even more magic BS technology in that time frame so that replication of the spore drive would be basically no issue, knowing that replicating the spore drive for all its ships would give a major technological and cultural advantage to the Federation STILL don't bother to do it, and keep sending Discovery on missions that should clearly be a lower priority than replicate as many spore drives as possible. There is no way one can make it make sense.

It would be an ever bigger self-own than agreeing to a treaty that says "I guess we won't develop cloaking technology EVER (even though two of our rival powers already have it)." At least in that instance, the Federation traded their monumental dumb-assery for something (presumably).

We did see in the back half of Season 4 that the Federation had been quietly working on a portable version of the spore drive that could be installed in seemingly any ship almost instantly, but that the prototype still required a sentient operator like Stamets or Book to operate it. It was also mentioned before then that the Federation hadn't been able to locate any tardigrades or to reverse engineer the tardigrade DNA Stamets injected himself with, making it much harder to find compatible operators, especially after Kwejian was destroyed.

The Federation was absolutely doing the work behind the scenes, until they abandoned spore drives in favour of pathway drives, which were apparently better.

It makes sense to me, spore drives are pretty great but they also seem like a technology you really wouldn't want your enemies having, and the requirement to have someone from a specific species onboard to operate it adds an unnecessary complication.

I must have missed that, but it doesn't change that a) replicating the spore drive should be very simple when you have a working one, living experts on it, and magic technology and b) it should be an obvious first priority for Starfleet post-burn.

That Starfleet didn't LOUDLY dedicate all necessary resources to make multiple spore drives, preferably one per starship and maybe one per every type of ship from shuttles on up, a reality is something I can't fanwank.

Doing the genetic engineering Stametz did so he could operate the spore drive should be child's play with 32nd Century science. You shouldn't need to find Tardigrades. You have Stametz. And later, you have Book's DNA to work off of. Indeed, Starfleet should have done replicated their DNA independently because hypothetically if anything happens to Stametz and Book simultaneously, they don't have a way of operating Discovery's drive and would be hampered in mass-producing them.

Ah, but are the Khan laws still on the books?
I wager they're not only still in effect, they've been enhanced. With nanotech, they not only could make Khans, they could make Magnetos and Hulks.
Don't see any X-Men and Avengers running around.

And this really highlights the problem with jumping 800 years into the future. Any restriction you could think of, your audience is going to ask "And they couldn't figure that out in 800 years?"

Godlike being can do magical stuff. And?

So, ten years before the first episode the Enterprise had an old white guy as a doctor, and it's somehow an insult to imply the OLD white guy might have retired in the intervening decade?
Or maybe you're just annoyed about a Black doctor "replacing" a white one.

Your examples are stupid and don't price your point in the slightest.
Unless the point is that you really resent Black people.[/quote]

No, not Kahless from TOS. Go watch STD again and I might read the rest of your bitchy post.