[aceman67]

Thought experiment time:

Say TNG came out today, in today's entertainment space after the backlash of SW Episode IX, the internet is a thing, and Encounter at Farpoint is aired.

How well do you think TNG would have faired in that situation? Judging by the reviews of the time lambasting TNG, and fans being sceptical of the show 'not being Trek', not too well I would gather.

I would go further and say that exactly what's happening to Discovery would happen now.

I understand that people are upset because it's not like TOS, its different, its this, it's that. But I have ask: Why does that matter in the long run?

Who cares if the special effects and set dressings are different? Who cares if the Enterprise is some-odd-meters bigger than TOS? It's been 50 years since TOS aired, Technology and filmmaking have evolved way past what it was in the 60s.

The TOS Enterprise's design is a classic, but its also a product of its time and also a result of limited technology and budget from the 60s and it had its own flaws and mistakes. I like the Discoprise. It looks better and makes more sense given all that's been added to the Star Trek universe since TOS.

I would gather that fans would have been even more pissed if they replicated the Enterprise from TOS perfectly on screen, crying out that it should never be on screen with Discovery.

I get that debating Minutiae like that is a time honoured tradition in geek culture, but it was always done in jest to have fun, and rarely was it ever taken so personally, or so hatefully.

[Sul-Matuul]

TNG suffered the exact same thing that DSC is dealing with now, the only difference was that there was no internet to speak of to allow people with a serious axe to grind to rouse up a riot against it.
Back then you could write letters to magazines and maybe chat about it with friends at the local comic book store. There was some extremely basic internet access but the vast majority of people didn't have access like we do now.

So i think if you swapped any Trek series over with DSC you'd get some backlash.

TNG - looks totally different, no Kirk etc., isn't TOS etc.
DS9 - on a space station.....that's not very Trek.
VOY - a single lost starship? What about Klingons, Romulans etc.
ENT - a prequel....we don't need to go back in time.
ST 09 - a reboot? In a different timeline.....boooo!! (Although it did bring Trek back into the public view.
DSC - it looks different, another prequel.....etc, etc.

This is nothing new, it's just the technology is around to allow people to make a much bigger noise when displeased, and it's easy to get stuck in an echo chamber too.

[aceman67]

This was meant to be its own post

Being a Trekkie used to mean something.

We were the fandom of acceptance and tolerance.

We were the fandom that saved the show we loved with a letter campaign.

We got a Space Shuttle named Enterprise.

Now we're tearing the thing we love the most apart and it sickens me.

I'm honestly ashamed to be a Trekkie at this point.

[Brianwgcom]

Totally aggree Aceman97, enjoy what you want to enjoy. I know we're in the age of the internet but you don't need to point out to people who enjoy something like Discovery why they are wrong in their enjoyment.

[JByb04]

Well It's been 24 hours.

No official news regarding STD or The Picard teams being sent home. I suppose that means ♥♥♥♥tor von Doomcock's "source" was wrong.

I'm sure his followers will be greatly disappointed.

I thought tonight's episode was very good for what it's worth.

[aceman67]

Well It's been 24 hours.

No official news regarding STD or The Picard teams being sent home. I suppose that means ♥♥♥♥tor von Doomcock's "source" was wrong.

I'm sure his followers will be greatly disappointed.

I thought tonight's episode was very good for what it's worth.

Stopped watching videos like that, almost 90% of them are just bandwagon hoppers looking for a quick buck by posting controversial topics.

[Brianwgcom]

Stopped watching videos like that, almost 90% of them are just bandwagon hoppers looking for a quick buck by posting controversial topics.

They need their add revenue....

[aceman67]

They need their add revenue....

They won't get any from me. If they want my viewership, be honest and ethical. (I ad-block anyways, Ads are just easy access for Viruses and Hackers)

[Three of Seven]

There's way too much hate for hate's sake going on in the fandom. Too many nay-sayers, too many sensationalists. Too many people taking their hate for the series and redirecting it towards people who like the series. Too many band-wagon hoppers.

I'm not saying that is what's going on here, but in almost every discussion I've had about Discovery elsewhere on the internet, this is a rampant issue. For every youtube video that talks about Discovery in a positive light, there's 5 to 10 more that are calling for it to be drawn and quartered

I have literally been called "A piece of ♥♥♥♥" because I said I liked Discovery which is a "Piece of ♥♥♥♥ show". WTF!?

Despite the civility that this thread has (which is extremely rare to come across), it's sensationalist videos in the OP feeding the hate-train that is seriously tearing the fandom apart.

I do like to think that we offer a civil community here, there are a few other websites that do as well when it comes to these divided opinions. The Star Trek Reddit page though often has a lot of positive comments about Discovery on episode disscusion threads, while shouting down people who have negative views, both sides are guilty of shouting others down. The funniest thing I've heard is being called a misogynist, and racist for not liking Burnham, which is insane, it's just throwing words at someone because they don't agree, which is wrong.

I don't venture too far out looking for things, so my scope of what is said is limited. People are free to express their views, and everyone is free to agree, or disagree with them, shouldn't need to get nasty.

[Oxygenthief]

Thought experiment time:

Say TNG came out today, in today's entertainment space after the backlash of SW Episode IX, the internet is a thing, and Encounter at Farpoint is aired.

How well do you think TNG would have faired in that situation?

Oh that first episode of TNG was, from a film making perspective, amateurish. When Picard is touring enginerring the cameraman bumps his leg on the main console in the shot and the whole camera shakes, lol. Boom mics galore, poor sound, etc... I laugh every time I watch it.

Hell yeah it would be destroyed by the haters on YouTube and Reddit. But that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. Criticism for something that "should" be criticized is good for the rest of us. I get that your point was to suggest that haters are going to hate indiscriminately regardless of merit. I don't think this is the case in many instances. The focus areas on most of the complaints for Discovery are consistent across medium/platform. "Fans" expect certain things and when something doesn't live up to their expectations they are most often vocal about it.

A great example of this is the Diablo fiasco with Blizzard. When they released their mobile Diablo variant every fan, in unison, trashed the Diablo development team and Blizzard because they were expecting Diablo 4 in PC/Console format. This is the end result of not listening to your fan base and going off on a tangent. Are there going to be new diablo fans created by the mobile app, sure! But the vast majority of fans won't touch it out of principle.

You could apply the same logic to Discovery fans. There are legitimate reasons for the hate and frustration. Someone using ad homenim attacks because they are angry is bad form but everyone is a tough guy on the Internet so it comes with the territory.

[LogicalLeopard]

By the license everything has to be 25% different that includes everything so it can't be canon.

What does that even mean? It's canon beause it's officially produced, and the producers said it's canon. I mean, I dont know what 25% different means, because most Star Treks look different from each other, and they bring new things into the canon. But that doesn't stop it from being canon.

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So you would assume that once they have put it on Youtube it would have been a hit, but the opposite was the case.

You said it was like a million views, right? That's a lot of people. I think one of the football games last weekend did pretty well, and it got about 2.8 million views. But most of the people who are watching Discovery already have CBS subscriptions, or are pirating the show, so you're going to have a lot of falloff right there. Then, there are many people who might not even know. I didn't know it was on Youtube until maybe episode 4 was out.

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The paywall was one of the things back in UPN days that also did not do well for Enterprise. It wasn't until much later when it was on normal TV did I start meeting other people outside my friends that liked it.

Saying that my boss in work at the time never had being into any other Star Trek saw Enterprise and loved it, said it was the most realistic Si Fi he'd seen in years.

What do you mean, paywall for UPN? Like, you needed to have cable to watch it? That's kind of an unintentional paywall, if that's what you're talking about. I want to say that UPN was an over the air network, but it wasn't over the air everywhere, because it was a new network. So maybe some people needed cable to see it, if they didn't have a local UPN station. <br>
But it's the same kind of principle. TNG and DS9 were syndicated. Voyager I think was the first one that was launched under a specific network - UPN. But that would be about the same for Enterprise, then. I seem to remember UPN having a different name, too, I dont know....

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Well It's been 24 hours.

No official news regarding STD or The Picard teams being sent home. I suppose that means ♥♥♥♥tor von Doomcock's "source" was wrong.

I'm sure his followers will be greatly disappointed.

I thought tonight's episode was very good for what it's worth.

*LOL* I accidentally downvoted this post when I meant to upvote it! I couldn't agree more! I dont know how to reverse my downvote though!

[Rellimie]

What does that even mean? It's canon beause it's officially produced, and the producers said it's canon. I mean, I dont know what 25% different means, because most Star Treks look different from each other, and they bring new things into the canon. But that doesn't stop it from being canon.

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You said it was like a million views, right? That's a lot of people. I think one of the football games last weekend did pretty well, and it got about 2.8 million views. But most of the people who are watching Discovery already have CBS subscriptions, or are pirating the show, so you're going to have a lot of falloff right there. Then, there are many people who might not even know. I didn't know it was on Youtube until maybe episode 4 was out.

I think people have different understandings of the term "canon." To some canon only means what fits within the established lore but in really it's anything that is either seen on screen or made official by the owner of the IP, in this case CBS.

The 25% visual difference thing, from my understanding, actually has to do with the profit they can make from merchandising and licensing.

As far as the YouTube posting goes, I have been a CBS AA subscriber since day one, and have not missed an episode. I never watched it on YouTube.

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Voyager and Enterprise were "paywalls" for me as well. While UPN was an over the air network that was available in so few places that it might as well have been a cable network.

We didn't have cable until my Parents wanted to watch Star Trek Voyager. As soon as Enterprise ended so did the Cable. Paywalls have existed for TV shows for years yet Star Trek is the only one who gets knocked. People celebrated when The Expanse went from one paywall (SyFy) to another (Amazon Prime). I don't remember Battlestar Galactica (SyFy), Star Gate (Showtime, SyFy), Walker Dead (AMC), or the Marvel Shows (Netflix) taking flak for being behind Paywalls.

In fact, the new Star Wars series on Disney X or whatever it's called hasn't been talked about a lot either.

Star Trek though, god forbid they don't pretend it's still 1990.

[LogicalLeopard]

The difference, in my humble opinion, is that TNG-VOY built upon existing canon (TOS) in a progression. Things weaved into the existing framework.

ENT (and obviously debatable DSC) are supposed to be "catching up" to the TOS foundation. They can build upon untouched topics, sure, but when they step onto something already there, then it's got to "fit". No kidding, it simply must.

SoOoOoOoO … when CBS says, "See this character is Spock's sister" … c'mon. That's not really building anything, it's trampling on the foundation and forcing it to be something it never was before and for no reasonable explanation. Michael didn't have to be Spock's sister at all. It was an irrelevant point in Season 1 and is a tenuous link only for dramatic effect in Season 2.

You know?

EDIT - look, I get it: if CBS says so, then too bad suckah. Yet, I'd wager, if CBS does not cater to majority fan's expectations, then the franchise is in trouble. Like it or not.

But come onnnn, Scarlett! Michael Burnham by being Spock's foster sister, neither violates canon, nor tramples it. Actually, it does build upon it - with the best example of that being their elaboration on the rift between Sarek and Spock.

It never really made all that much sense why Sarek would refuse to talk to Spock just because he chose Starfleet Academy over the Vulcan Science Academy. Why? Because he didn't follow tradition? I mean, we're talking about Sarek. He married a human woman, that cant be traditional. But the illumination that Sarek basically tossed Michael's future to the side because he preferred to have Spock join the Vulcan Expeditionary Force, only to have Spock scorn the VSA and the VEF presents an understandable reason why there was a rift.

I believe that this season might give us an explanation of how the Smiley Shouty Spock of The Cage gave way to the Stoic Spock of the rest of TOS. It is also filling in another interesting gap in the story. Why would Spock sacrifice his own life to send Pike to Talos. I mean, that's illogical to a great degree. But seeing how Pike says, "Starfleet is a promise, I give my life for you, you give your life for me," and how Pike is going out of his way and bending rules and risking his career to make sure no harm comes to Spock, we can totally see why Spock would return the favor and risk his life and career to get Pike back to Talos to live out a happy life.

[Sul-Matuul]

Yeah that's pretty much what i think too.
The Cage stands out of place in Trek because it was so weirdly different from anything else. Spock is hardly the Vulcan he is later on, we have a totally different captain and the feel of Starfleet in that episode feels a very different animal to what we're used to.

By having a character who is a bridge between Spock and the new show we are able to too why such differences might exist and it also give a change to tie the older shows more tightly to later canon stories. Because lets face it, TOS whilst really good, played pretty recklessly with canon and often had stuff that makes zero sense when compared to the rest of the Trek shows/films.

[LogicalLeopard]

I think people have different understandings of the term "canon." To some canon only means what fits within the established lore but in really it's anything that is either seen on screen or made official by the owner of the IP, in this case CBS.

The 25% visual difference thing, from my understanding, actually has to do with the profit they can make from merchandising and licensing.

As far as the YouTube posting goes, I have been a CBS AA subscriber since day one, and have not missed an episode. I never watched it on YouTube.

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Voyager and Enterprise were "paywalls" for me as well. While UPN was an over the air network that was available in so few places that it might as well have been a cable network.

We didn't have cable until my Parents wanted to watch Star Trek Voyager. As soon as Enterprise ended so did the Cable. Paywalls have existed for TV shows for years yet Star Trek is the only one who gets knocked. People celebrated when The Expanse went from one paywall (SyFy) to another (Amazon Prime). I don't remember Battlestar Galactica (SyFy), Star Gate (Showtime, SyFy), Walker Dead (AMC), or the Marvel Shows (Netflix) taking flak for being behind Paywalls.

In fact, the new Star Wars series on Disney X or whatever it's called hasn't been talked about a lot either.

Star Trek though, god forbid they don't pretend it's still 1990.

Here are some interesting things on canon, from the Star Trek canon entry on Wikipedia

As a rule, all Star Trek television series that aired are considered part of the canon.[2] However, this policy does not make clear which version of the series is the canonical one. For example, the remastered TOS episodes released in 2006 present several visual differences from the episodes originally aired.[3]

To further complicate matters, it has been noted that Gene Roddenberry was something of a revisionist when it came to canonicity. People who worked with Roddenberry remember that he used to handle canonicity not on a series-by-series basis nor an episode-by-episode basis, but point by point. If he changed his mind on something, or if a fact in one episode contradicted what he considered to be a more important fact in another episode, he had no problem declaring that specific point not canonical.
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"I would hope there are bright young people, growing up all the time, who will bring to [Star Trek] levels and areas that were beyond me, and I don't feel jealous about that at all. [...] It'll go on, without any of us, and get better and better and better, because that's the... that really is the human condition. It's to improve and improve." - Gene Roddenberry, The Star Trek Saga: From One Generation to the Next, 1988.

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"There's a good chance that when I'm gone, others will come along and do so well that people will say, 'Oh, that Roddenberry. He was never this good.' But I will be pleased with that statement." - Gene Roddenberry, Los Angeles Times TV Times, article "Star Trek's New Frontier", 1993.



And very good points on Paywalls. Actually, as I remember now....I think at that time, I did have cable. Our nearest UPN station was in a city an hour away, and you could TECHNICALLY get a signal on a clear day, but you know how that goes.....it all depends.

I think people tend to complain about obscure paywalls that they aren't likely to have. Many people have had cable, and Netflix, and some people (like me) have Amazon Prime because of Prime membership. But as far as Trek, I dont like it being behind a more obscure paywall - CBS has virtually nothing else that you want to watch it for, if you dont normally watch CBS - but I respect the hustle. CBS is not trying to rebuild Trek, they are trying to build an online subscription service. And they are using their best property - Star Trek, to do it. It's a good business decision, because people are going to want to see new Trek, and now that they are expanding, people are going to be drawn into the Picard series. Some may be drawn into the Jordan Peele Twilight Zone series, either because of Twlight Zone, or Jordan Peele, or both. They're building something, and they dont mind that some fans are upset, as long as they have enough fans subscribing. That's not morally wrong, that's just business. It's been a business from the beginning. Roddenberry didn't make the show for free.