Pop culture is mythology. You decide what’s canon.
Aside: Y’all think the Egyptians ever had arguments over which version of Horus was canon?
I try to console myself with the fact that Lower Decks is canon, too.
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Getting strong Sealab 2021 but live action vibes here.
No. Not false. Just because someone else has a failure in basic video comprehension does not mean that Discovery is not canon. They just completely failed to understand what was happening in that episode.
Edit: Made even dumber by that link saying that Discovery/Section 31 aren’t canon but SNW is. Well, you see, SNW kinda came from Discovery. You don’t get to have one without the other. The pilot of SNW even aggressively states that they’re in the same universe.
But nope. Hateful lil bitch fans gotta hate.
Hola, someone didn’t pay attention to the show
Is that the guy who was in rent?
Yep. He plays a much larger role in DISC
It isn’t the mushroom drive that made Discovery bad, it’s that Starfleet apparently no longer has any kind of standards.
TOS and TNG had all kinds of “woke” politics for their era, but they portrayed them as happening on a military vessel. People were calm, competent and followed the chain of command. The only time that broke down is when they were under the influence of some kind of alien disease or tech.
Discovery’s crew was full of whiny, fragile people that were barely able to do their jobs for all the time they spent obsessing about their personal problems. Tilly is the prime example of this. The “Tilly” equivalent in TNG was Reginald Barclay. Shy, stressed, lacking self confidence, etc. Barclay’s character arc makes sense for Star Trek. He is able to save the day, but he’s certainly not promoted because it’s clear that the senior officers on the show are calm, competent and project confidence. He’s basically there to show that not all Star Trek characters are the confident, competent, brave people who make up the bridge crew. And, by doing that they emphasize how elite the bridge crew is. Meanwhile, on Discovery, Tilly is promoted and keeps gaining responsibility despite never addressing these gaping character flaws. The “Tilly” message seems to be something like “it doesn’t matter if you’re weird, awkward and unable to communicate competently, as long as you love and accept yourself, you too deserve to be on the bridge making life or death decisions”.
Discovery also fails because that lack of competence is everywhere in the crew. The original shows had the crew acting as… well a crew. They’d tackle problems together. In TOS Kirk would lead the charge, but he’d never do anything on his own. Spock was stronger and smarter than anybody else, but he followed the lead of his commander. McCoy handled the medical stuff. Scotty handled engineering. In Discovery, Burnham is apparently the only competent person on the crew, and the only one not to be fazed when something bad happens, so rather than the crew working together to solve issues, it’s superhero Burnham while the crew faints dramatically. The only real exceptions to that are Saru (whose personality doesn’t really make sense given what they explain about his species), and Commander Reno, who is a breath of fresh air because she’s basically the only one who isn’t constantly freaking out – although the sarcasm and fatalism of her character is almost too much.
What makes it all worse is that the backdrop is that the universe is doomed and only Discovery can save it. Sure, the other Treks have had major threats to the universe, but they were being slow-rolled over a long season, or sometimes multiple seasons. They had room to breathe and do episodes that didn’t advance the plot. That gave them a time to do episodes focused on fleshing out the personality of a member of the crew, to do silly things, etc. Discovery has the whiniest, least professional crew that has ever crewed a starship (and I’m including Boimler and friends), who are whining while dealing with the most urgent apocalyptic scenarios. It’s a soap opera while the end of the world is playing out.
Regarding Stamets, I love that discovery has a gay main character. I hate that the entirety of his personality is being gay and neurotic. He’s not a character so much as a walking talking stereotype. Discovery leapfrogged the “woke” that has always been part of star trek and went hard with lazy pandering.
This. All of this. Thank you.
I feel like one of the main issues with Discovery is also that it’s much more serialised, and more compact, to its detriment.
There wasn’t an ambiguous downtime between adventures, or for things to happen off-screen, everything happened one after the other. We didn’t have space to develop and explore the characters, basically everything was plot, which made the emotional parts feel unearned.
The characters were rarely more than the bare minimum to enable said plot.
It hugely needed downtime it didn’t really get, and could have benefited from stretching out either the seasons or the episodes out to have them be more fleshed out and normal, instead of dealing with crisis after crisis after crisis. In all of three seasons, we had about a single segment of episode where they had any memorable recreation at all.
There was never an equivalent of the “The Doctor is a good singer, Worf hates children, Spock likes chess” moments for the Discovery characters to expand into between the big plot points. They don’t really have long-term flaws, or room to grow for the most part.
Discovery also fails because that lack of competence is everywhere in the crew.
I’d actually disagree with you on discovery showing a lack of competence. If anything, besides the attitude, it felt more like the characters were too competent. They didn’t have varied, specific flaws and weaknesses that made them seem more human, instead being universally omnicompetent.
Even TNG, otherwise a shining bastion of competency, worked best when the characters had individual flaws and weaknesses that they collectively mitigated by relying on each other, rather than everyone being perfect and good at everything.
Discovery lacks that kind of deferring to better expertise, and often comes across as Burnham does everything. Except when she’s coming up with a plan that will fix everything, there was barely any consultation, or back and forth. There wasn’t really ever a “I can think of something that could help, but have no idea how to execute it, anyone know how we might pull it off?”, or “That’s not a bad thought, but if we do it this other way, it might be better”.
basically everything was plot, which made the emotional parts feel unearned.
Unearned, and also shoehorned in. They were in the middle of a series of crises, and instead of just putting the personal stuff to the side until the crisis/crises were over they had to deal with personal soap-opera stuff in the middle of that. And, that meant that you couldn’t have personal character development that was low-stakes. For it to interrupt the crisis it had to be high stakes. That just heightened the soap-operaness because every emotional moment was high stakes.
Discovery lacks that kind of deferring to better expertise, and often comes across as Burnham does everything.
That’s basically what I mean about the incompetence. She had to do everything herself rather than consult with the rest of the crew, often breaking the rules because she didn’t have time to follow them because everything was so urgent. On every other Star Trek, the chief engineer would be consulted when it came to engineering things, the science officer when it came to science things, and so-on. But, because Burnham didn’t consult her experts, it makes it seem like they’re not competent enough to keep up with her.
So, these other crew members are involved when there’s a high-stakes soap opera scene where they bare their souls. But, they’re bypassed when Burnham has to take quick actions or the whole multiverse dies. Which makes it seem like this isn’t a crew of a captain, a science officer and a chief engineer working together to solve things. It’s a soap opera involving Tilly, Stamets, and Jett while Burnham saves the multiverse.
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I regret that I have but one upvote to give to this comment.
The only addition I have is the glorification/growth of Section 31. They were introduced as the baddies because they are the antithesis of what the Federation is. As a foil they’re at least a gateway to interesting variations on “do the ends justify the means” and "“are short term solutions acceptable while sacrificing long term ones”. Which the Federation classically would answer with a resounding “No”.
But sci-fi Black Ops is “cool” and The Expanse was popular so lets get on that bandwagon apparently. (I love The Expanse, but different things should be different.)
I had to stop watching when an alien got really sad that one time and that caused all the dilithium crystals in the galaxy to blow up. It was just… Dumb.
At the same time, it was a very TOS plot and resolution, and Discovery is based on that.
Charlie X was a child who would have blown up the entire Federation, because he was upset that people told him “no”.
Lazarus nearly detonated the entire universe, and for at least one moment, caused it to cease to exist.
Which doesn’t gel with the post-TNG Trek, which is more scientifically grounded, but “child got given godlike powers and nearly wiped out the galaxy because they were upset” fits in perfectly with TOS. It’s just missing a reset button to put everything to rights.
Still canon tho
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Not to worry, I’m sure future writers will ignore the inconvenient parts as hard as Janeway’s lizard babies.
Threshold is a dream that Tom Paris has. It’s the only way that episode makes any sense. This is headcanon, but I’m sticking with it.
I’m aware the events are referenced in Lower Decks. Tom Paris recorded the dream in his personal log which was later published as a memoir, and the dream story was taken out of context and misunderstood.
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Yeah so is TAS. Being canon doesn’t mean it’s good or even good for the universe of canon itself.
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Remember when TOS had magic wand worms?
Remember when Spock tried to kill Kirk because he was sexually frustrated?
Remember when the USS Enterprise got pregnant?
Remember when Trip Tucker got pregnant?
This might hurt your bones a bit:
MOOPSY IS CANON TOO
People who whine about the silliness of some of the concepts in Discovery (spore drive, space-tardigrades) have never seen TOS.
While I do generally enjoy discovery, I do think It’s still pretty flawed. Not because of the spore stuff, but because of the way that they have to deal with so many “danger to the entire galaxy/universe/multiverse” type events back to back. Like, doing a few is fine, I generally enjoyed the xindi arc in Enterprise for example, but having so many starts to feel very forced after awhile.
I especially find that bit with the spore energy extractor in the mirror universe that could kill all life in the multiverse if not stopped jarring, because, if you have a potentially limitlessness number of alternative timelines, and the massive expanse of space, to develop that tech in, the odds that nobody else ever built one of these drops to essentially zero, except that the existence of the plot at all implies nobody else ever has.
I especially find that bit with the spore energy extractor in the mirror universe that could kill all life in the multiverse if not stopped jarring, because, if you have a potentially limitlessness number of alternative timelines, and the massive expanse of space, to develop that tech in, the odds that nobody else ever built one of these drops to essentially zero, except that the existence of the plot at all implies nobody else ever has.
Agreed. It’d have been perfectly fine to scale it down to have the extractor messing up the nearby mycelial network/subspace enough that the spore hub drive would become inoperable, and they’d lose the only method they had to get home.
If anything, that might be more compelling, since you could easily squeeze in a character conflict with some people wanting to leave, damn the consequences, or make preparations for a long term stay in the mirror universe if they got stuck.
In some way, its probably similar to Lazarus’ machine. He managed to build something capable of obliterating two universes. It didn’t seem that difficult, or that much more advanced than the Enterprise, you’d think someone else would have built something similar, and accidentally destroyed the universe in so doing.
Not because of the spore stuff, but because of the way that they have to deal with so many “danger to the entire galaxy/universe/multiverse” type events back to back. Like, doing a few is fine, I generally enjoyed the xindi arc in Enterprise for example, but having so many starts to feel very forced after awhile.
I totally agree. When the stakes are over the top it makes the universe feel small. When everything depends on one crew at all times it feels hard to believe there is a larger world they exist in in which to immerse my imagination. Discovery has fantastic characters, acting, directing, costumes, sets - I would love to see all these great features thrive without leaning on artificial plot tension. The main goal of any show is to make you care about what happens. Ideally you care because you feel a personal connection to the characters. But making the stakes huge, and including frequent ticking-clock scenarios is easier. The thing is I do care about these characters! The artifice is unnecessary!
But it got better the longer the show went on! I appreciate how every season the stakes got smaller, and more believable, and the pacing got less frantic especially in the last two seasons.
spoilers: de-escalating stakes each season
- season 1: The entire Klingon war, and btw the existence of every possible universe is threatened.
- season 2: All life is about to be wiped out, but only in one universe.
- season 3: Is the Federation over? It’s not clear if the dilithium crisis extends to other galaxies, but the stakes seem to be scoped to geopolitics in one quadrant.
- season 4: Several planets are in danger. Still bigger stakes than I’d prefer, but there is much improvement over season 1.
It would be very funny if they had kept the trend and de-escalation, and Season 7 is just that lunch is threatened because one of the duotronic circuits in the food synthesiser computer banks broke, and people haven’t used duotronics in centuries.
That’s how I felt reading the Batman new 52 run. It was just constant city-wide crises with escalating stakes. Just foil a bank robbery or something now and then ffs.
Not because of the spore stuff, but because of the way that they have to deal with so many “danger to the entire galaxy/universe/multiverse” type events back to back
I find this complaint to be fairly flawed. It’s like saying that it’s exhausting to have to deal with a space station on DS9 all the time. That’s just… the show. Discovery, the ship, was built to be a fast reaction vessel to respond to immediate and imminent threats. Why is it such a surprise that they do exactly that? It’s like complaining that a special forces team is constantly dealing with dangerous missions. It’s their job.
Every show has their own tone and flavor. Discovery’s is the major threats. That’s really all there is to it on that front. It’s not wishwashy or bad writing. It’s just the literal gimmick of the show.
Not liking it is fine but that specific complaint never really struck true for me.
odds that nobody else ever built one of these drops to essentially zero, except that the existence of the plot at all implies nobody else ever has.
It doesn’t drop to essentially zero. Not all timelines are identical. Each has their own differences. Just because a Charon-type mycelial core was made elsewhere doesn’t mean that those people didn’t notice that issue or curtail it in their own universe. Question, do you have the same complaint about the finale of Lower Decks then? That’s not dissimilar.
Edit: Downvote an opinion you disagree with while refusing to engage. Go replicate a spine, would you?
I’m not really sure what you’re saying in the first part here. Not liking a show’s gimmick is a completely acceptable reason to not like the show. You agreed that it was acceptable to dislike the gimmick but you don’t like people citing the gimmick as the reason they didn’t like the show?
I’m not really sure what you’re saying in the first part here. Not liking a show’s gimmick is a completely acceptable reason to not like the show.
I’m probably being autistic again and not wording this as well as I can hear it in my head.
You agreed that it was acceptable to dislike the gimmick
Correct
but you don’t like people citing the gimmick as the reason they didn’t like the show?
It’s more that I don’t like it when people slam the gimmick as being nonsensical in the lore. If people don’t like the constant world ending events, thats totally fine. But I dislike it when the complaint comes rooted from not understanding something that is inevitably going to happen in that world.
Like to try and elaborate on the special forces analogy, it’s more like this.
If you don’t like special forces shows, totally understandable. But if you’re saying that the special forces show is unreasonable because that stuff is never needed or would never happen? That’s where my problem lies. It doesn’t come from disliking the gimmick but questioning the gimmick.
Like you can not like Section 31 all you want but some sort of shady ass intelligence agency was going to happen eventually inside of the Federation, one way or another. Same thing with the idea of a Trek show that does focus on the major events while other series get to focus on either minor events or major events of a different variety, like diplomatic incidents or what have you.
I wonder… What world you say if they gave Discovery the Battletech TAS treatment?
To explain, the tabletop wargame Battletech got an animated series in the early 90s. The series, while well-versed in the game’s setting and lore, played fast and loose with both and had, well, early 90s cartoon writing.
As a result, it wasn’t received well. However, it is canonical – as an in-universe propaganda show aimed at children, complete with inaccuracies and bad writing. The show’s antagonist even ended up suing over his portrayal.
Now I imagine that Discovery is referenced in a future Trek show but the dialogue mentions that there’s a horrifically inaccurate in-universe holoseries about the ship and most people have entirely wrong ideas about it. We deliberately never learn whether Discovery-the-show is the accurate version or not.
I think that might work as a nod towards both the fans and the haters of the show but if like to hear what you’d think.
I think that might work as a nod towards both the fans and the haters of the show but if like to hear what you’d think.
I think that the haters have no say in this. If we started listening to the haters of everything, we’d never get anything done. Moreover, Trek is about diversity. About inclusion. Hope. Standing together. Fighting misinformation. Not giving in to negative feelings. Not letting those negative feelings rule or define you. Not caving to the negative feelings of others but being strong and steadfast. There’s no reason why Star Trek would, or should, ever kowtow to haters. They simply do not matter when it comes to creativity and especially when it comes to Star Trek. They hated TNG. They hated DS9. They hated Voyager. They’re gonna keep hating everything comes out that isn’t exactly how they want it. Fuck them. They have no worth. They spend their time taking things apart in the least constructive way possible while just screaming. Zero conversational value and zero value when it comes to trying to build something. They only tear it down. Nothing is ever going to be for everyone but Star Trek is about spreading enough diversity around that everyone gets to enjoy something. I refuse to allow those people to sully the basics and fundamentals of the Federation because they don’t like a television show.
But.
That being said.
It still doesn’t work lore-wise because the Discovery was marked as destroyed in a classified format. Starfleet would shut down any in-universe show about something classified. While the Spore Drive never survived, knowledge that it was a classified ship did, as well as a couple of the things it did, such as its jaunt to the mirror universe.
Eh, good point about the secrecy. You’d have to really twist the lore into a pretzel in order to accommodate that and that ain’t worth it for what’s essentially a throwaway gag.
As for bowing to haters, I definitely wouldn’t do that. I’d acknowledge that there is some controversy with a tongue-in-cheek reference but I wouldn’t take a side. That’s the fans’ job – and let’s be honest here, everyone who debates the canonicity of DSC is a Star Trek fan, just maybe not one of that particular show. People who hate Trek in general will not engage in debates about relative worth; to them, all of the shows suck.
You made me realize that Discovery was probably the worst ship Saru could have possibly been assigned to.
Because of his senses? They’d be far more useful in sensing ambushes and deception than be a liability.
It’s been a while since I saw season 1, but wasn’t his early behavior characterized by a desire to avoid stress? Discovery definitely benefited from his skills and senses though.
I’ve not seen much of lower decks tbh. I’ve tried watching it a couple times, trying different episodes in case its just a case of it taking a few to get in stride, but I’ve just not liked it the same as other trek shows, the characters just seem annoying and everything happens too fast.
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The Klingons in TNG didn’t match either. And it still felt like a starship. The set design isn’t too different from SNW as well.
The problem I had with Disco was their throwing out all previous Trek.
That just straight up did not happen. If they threw it all out then there would be zero overlap. There’s an enormous amount and, despite complaints that have been made on other sites by other people, it is lore accurate and doesn’t retcon any major events or technology. With the exception of adding a sister to Spock. Technically a retcon but explained why he never talks about her.
Costumes
A good example. It’s a bridging line between the TOS uniforms and the ENT uniforms. You’re starting to see more of the stylized look, more touches to detail but still holding onto that jumpsuit. It fills the gap in uniform design between Enterprise and TOS, it doesn’t throw it out.
Set design
I mean, we’ve seen a number of ships in Starfleet that don’t look identical. The set design also seemed pretty spaceshippy to me. Especially when you consider that it’s an experimental ship designed for this one purpose. Very clean and pristine and showing that one purpose design.
Klingons didn’t match TOS, TAS, TNG, DS9, Voyager or Enterprise
Even if you exclude DSC, Klingons don’t always match. Then there’s the Virus introduced in Enterprise that showed why they got kinda fucky in looks. We’ve seen them start shifting back to the Klingons we know. While they were definitely a departure from what we normally see, it wasn’t enormously so. The skincolor was shifted, but the bone ridges and teeth were still pretty pronounced. They looked like a different type of Klingon for sure, but they still looked Klingon. Just more alien.
Spore drive wouldn’t have been rediscovered by anyone anywhere at the time of TNG?
Season 2 laid out explicitly that it is to be buried, forgotten and deleted. Demonstrated in the 3rd Season when even Starfleets own records show the Discovery as having been destroyed with no mention of the spore drive.
The Spore Drive was developed in secret by two men. One of whom died and the other was flung far into space. The only two ships with the drive were destroyed or lost. The only navigator lost and the tardigrades being unable to found as mentioned by Starfleet when specifically trying to find them. Then there was the existential threat of its existence with the Sphere Data. The ship, and the drive along with it, had to be deleted to make sure that the Discovery going into the future was protected from anyone finding out about that Sphere Data.
Literally no one was left in the development of the drive and the data on the drive was forgotten about, buried and forsaken to be spoke of by anyone by making it confidential at the highest levels. There was no way to rediscover the drive. You’d have to reinvent it and Starfleet only took a gamble on it in the first place because the Klingon war with Starfleet in its infancy made them absurdly desperate.
I mean, we’ve seen a number of ships in Starfleet that don’t look identical. The set design also seemed pretty spaceshippy to me. Especially when you consider that it’s an experimental ship designed for this one purpose. Very clean and pristine and showing that one purpose design.
Discovery’s set design resonated reasonably well with the look of the TOS films, which made sense for a cutting-edge ship. And that was also well underscored by the way the Shenzou looked more Enterprise inspired, right down to using the NX-01 style lateral transporters versus Discovery’s vertically aligned ones.
That’s to say, Discovery used Trek design elements from different eras intelligently, to communicate the different roles and histories of these ships. Very much the opposite of throwing it all away.
Exactly. They were super smart on blending the different eras of Trek.
Don’t mind me. I’m just thinking about the time Voyager had to battle a plague of giant viruses.
or TAS
They berate an exam table ffs
TAS? Never happened.
I thought we all agreed that canon doesn’t start until the Wrath of Khan.
Shouldn’t that last one say USS Voyager NCC-74656?
I have such a soft spot for VGR but my god it was an abomination. Tuvix anyone?
Everything except that one line about elon musk.
But in generall the concept of canon is completly overated. Like these are stories that are up to interpretation they not real. You can do what ever you want with that.
Its kind of interesting to see how some of those anti woke types loose their shit over this. (not just)
Anyways I can recommend jessie gender after dark’s video on this subject relatong to trek
Wasn’t that line said by someone from the mirror universe?
Where Musk wouldn’t be a total fascist?
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Yes but then Tilly is said to have gone to Elon Musk High School
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Two lines. They had two elon musk lines and by far the worst part of the show
🙄
But in generall the concept of canon is completly overated.
You know, I wanted to disagree… But some of my favorite stories (especially Pathologic) make questions of canon a central story element. Sure, there’s still a canon you could arrive at, but the canon of your experience with these stories is what makes them endlessly interesting and mystifying to me.
And that’s not even to mention worlds like Dark Souls, Elden Ring etc. which deliberately allow for so much head canon that discussions are still going many years after release. None of this would work with strict canon.
Don’t care. Still ignoring it exists.
the real chad
Always bring a cannon to a canon fight
Last I read, it was erased from canon not too long ago.
The same phenomenon that turned the TNG era Klingon into a Discovery era Klingon also turned the Cerritos from a California class to a Galaxy class. So I guess TNG is also no longer canon.
It was not erased from Canon and I’m starting to lean towards banning that site on this community for outright misinformation.
It’s stunning how there are people who hate Discovery so much they will full on fucking lie about what is happening. It certainly wasn’t a misunderstanding because that episode makes it abundantly clear that Discovery was not erased from canon. There was a single fucking scene of the quantum rift changing a Klingon ship into a Discovery era one. That is the entirety of the proof that “Discovery was erased from canon.” Problem is that it doesn’t work because the quantum rift changes you into something from another era or multiverse. The only thing that scene did was temporally shift the klingons. Same way the klingons were temporally shifted and turned into a sailing barge. Both are part of Klingon history.
Just because some haterboy has a failure in comprehension skills does not mean that it was erased from Canon.
