Dispatch Ajax! Podcast
A Geek Culture Podcast - Two life-long Geeks explain, critique and poke fun at the major pillars of Geek Culture for your listening pleasure.
Dispatch Ajax! Podcast
NüTrek: Supplemental
I have things to say about NüTrek and Star Trek in general, obviously. So, in this special supplemental episode I address some of the things we didn't get to in our previous installments.
Gentlemen, let's broaden our minds. Are they in the proper approach pattern for today? Negative All weapons Now. Charge the lightning field. Charge the lightning field. Co-captain's Log Supplemental.
Speaker 1:Due to my predilections, and Jake admirably reining me in, we didn't address lingering issues pertaining to Discovery and its status within Star Trek canon. Trust me, this wasn't an oversight as much as it was editing, but I always wanted to talk about it. I mean, sure, if you want to say that certain elements of how Discovery have to be updated or just Star Trek in general have to be updated to keep up with modern sensibilities and technologies, that's fine. We tend to forget that the Enterprise computer used to print out data on paper in the early days of the original series they had data tapes. Or that the pad, the personal access display device which we know now today as tablets of TNG on, could only hold like one PDF at a time. Those need updated. Sure, I get that. All those things are just things we have to live with if we want to update the show or the franchise. Hell, that's what they did in the motion picture when they gave Kleon's cranial ridges in the first. All those things are just things we have to live with if we want to update the show or the franchise. Hell, that's what they did in the motion picture when they gave Cleon's cranial ridges in the first place. But when you fundamentally change things that can't be shaken off or that change plots of whole episodes or movies in the future, you've gone off the rails of modernizing Holographic communications, for instance. We addressed that a little bit. Those would have fundamentally changed a lot of storytelling later in Trek If you could do all of that even before the original series. Are you going to tell me they can't get Moriarty off the holodeck or need a new invention for the EMH to leave Voyager sickbay? The whole holodeck thing seems a little less impressive really.
Speaker 1:Continuity obviously is vital to Trek fans. It's who we are. It's intrinsically tied into Trek storytelling. There are good reasons for that. Some of the lingering canon issues boil down to some really basic ones, including and I hate to use aesthetic as a reason, but take the Delta logo, just follow me.
Speaker 1:In the original series each starship had its own badge. The Delta was just the Enterprise's. It was later adopted by Starfleet due to the Enterprise's many heroic acts. In Abrams' Star Trek, the USS Kelvin is shown to use the same insignia. Now that's the first big problem. If you want to say that the Kelvin had it before the Enterprise and the Prime Universe and that in the Kelvin timeline Starfleet adopts it in honor of that ship's destruction, okay, sure, whatever it's left unsaid, we can kind of live with that, I guess.
Speaker 1:But what is the excuse in discovery, and more than that, if Nero went back in time like the Enterprise C went forward and created a new universe, then what happened at that point in time in the Prime Universe? The incident had to happen in both or there would have been no split. If it came back in one and not the other, then the Kelvin timeline would have already existed. And some of that you can just hand wave. Sure, we always grant that caveat. On the other hand, in the animated series episode called Practical Joker, some of the Enterprise's crew gets trapped inside the holographic rec room. It wasn't as fancy or as advanced as the TNG holodeck, but that technology does exist in Trek lore almost 15 years before TNG.
Speaker 1:And yes, no matter what you want to say, the animated series is in canon. That's where we get Kirk's middle name and a bunch of stuff about Spock and some of the alien species. They don't want to think so. Sometimes they do, but it is in canon. The real problem, as I said before, is that of the ship's insignia. The Delta logo we associate with Star Trek was, until the motion picture, exclusively that of the Enterprise. And before you try and throw out the argument that it's just one of those things we can just overlook because it was only in the original series, take pause. The writers and producers have gone out of their way to mention that even the most disputed canonical series, enterprise, is part of their source, to mention that even the most disputed canonical series Enterprise is part of their source material. It's in canon. It is supposedly working with established history, but that's where they kind of tripped up. No pun intended for fans of Enterprise.
Speaker 1:See, in the original series episode the Tholian Web, the USS Defiant not that defiant is mysteriously phasing in and out of our reality. When the Enterprise away team goes on board, they discover the crew dead, scattered about the ship. After some high drama, the ship disappears completely into some rift and is never said exactly where it went, until the fourth season Enterprise episode, arc In a Mirror Darkly, which takes place in the Mirror Mirror universe. Oh man, we talked about that a lot before. In that episode, the Terran empirical ship Enterprise discovers the Defiant adrift fresh from the Prime Universe. Again, the away team discovers the crew dead immediately in the exact same positions as in the Tholian Web. It's the same scene right down to the insignias on their uniforms. Yes, enterprise solved a TOS mystery and uncharacteristically cemented details of original series canon in one fell swoop.
Speaker 1:The only way to explain this discrepancy would be to say that all of Starfleet suddenly went away from the Delta logo, except for the Enterprise. They changed the insignia of existing starships for a brief period, then went back to the Delta in subsequent years. If they say that, would it really seem like a satisfying organic retcon or a desperate tacked-on excuse? I know what I would say. Unfortunately, or well, perhaps to their credit, those in charge of the franchise addressed this in the real world. The official Paramount run StarTrekcom even crafted an article to explain this so-called discrepancy. They claimed that Starfleet never went away from the Delta, but cited actual plot holes, unexplained gaps and yada, yada, yada that we talked about in earlier episodes to make the argument that other insignia were only used for specific circumstances, like being stationed on a starbase, for example. I don't really buy it, but this time they did actually put in the work. That having been said, add that to the Starfleet Academy spinoff and it's clear that they are adamant about Discovery being in canon.
Speaker 1:And in my opinion and this is a new take, something I put together recently I think the strategy is a reset. I think that what they want to do is start at the beginning of the Federation and Starfleet, without being a prequel, without having to do the things that they did in Enterprise and Discovery. I think they're trying to do a hard and soft reboot in a different time. Whether that's a good idea or not, only time will tell. But I will say this After re-watching Star Trek Picard, just give me that wandering Ronan Worf show and then I might be happy, because Worf is and this is a conversation, I think, for a later day taken all metrics, the best Star Trek character.
Speaker 1:Fight me if you want to. I can back this up. I will listen to the debates, I have no issue with that, but I think Worf may be the best Star Trek character of all, and that's coming from a man named after James Tiberius Kirk. Don't forget, ladies and gentlemen, to pay your tabs. Pay your bartenders, pay your KJs, your waitstaff, your podcasters, clean up after yourselves to some sort of reasonable degree, and don't forget to support your local comic shops and retailers. And from Dispatch Ajax, jake and I would both like to say Godspeed, fur Wizards, please go away.