So about Star Trek: Discovery....continuity is plot based, not visual.....
Star Trek is coming back to TV after a years-too-long absence. Star Trek: Discovery, a prequel to Star Trek: The Original Series, is debuting in a few short months.
And here is the first trailer:
Honestly, it looks amazing. This will be the 6th Star Trek television series (the seventh if we include The Animated Series, but honestly I see The Animated Series as more or less an extension of the Original Series. I view it as year four of the five year mission), and Star Trek on television has never looked so visually stunning.
And here lies the problem: Many Trek fans are being entirely too nitpicky and saying that the new series will violate canon seeing as the sets are far more advanced than those seen on The Original Series. The argument goes that it is not believable that ten years before the 1966 series that the sets would be so advanced looking.
I disagree.
What these fans need to remember is this: Continuity is not visual, it's plot based. What does that mean? Easy. I'll explain. What we as an audience see on the screen is nothing but a visual interpretation. It's not necessarily what the characters on screen see.
For example, you're watching an episode of Bewitched and suddenly Dick Sargent enters the room as Darren. In the last episode you watched, Darren was played by Dick York. This is NOT the same Darren, right? Except Samantha doesn't seem to notice on the show. She doesn't stop Darren and say, "what happened to you? Why do you look different?"
Another example. Chris Pine does not look like William Shatner. That said, in Star Trek XI Chris Pine's young Kirk is stranded on an ice planet and he runs into Leonard Nimoy's old Spock. Spock looks at Pine and immediately recognized him as James Kirk. Why? Pine doesn't look like the Kirk that old Spock Prime knew.....except he does. Chris Pine and William Shatner are just the representations that we, the audience, see on screen. They don't actually represent what the on screen characters see. To Spock on-screen, Pine is a dead ringer for a young Shatner which is why he is immediately able to recognize his friend.
This is why when Tom Baker's The Doctor would go to an alien planet and encounter an alien with a fake looking rubber mask for a head, he was still viewed it as a threat. He didn't say, "Don't worry, it's wearing a fake rubber mask." To him that alien was real. What we saw was just an interpretation.
It's 2017. A TV show in our high definition digital era is never ever going to look like a series made on the cheap in 1966. It just ain't gonna happen. And if it did happen, it's be laughed off the air. The technology on Discovery might look far advanced to the technology on The Original Series. We, as an audience, just have to accept that that is not the case. In this fictional world it all fits and all makes sense. We're just seeing an interpretation of what the characters see. It's called imagination. We just need to use it.
The first episode of Star Trek: Discovery just can't get here fast enough for me.
And here is the first trailer:
Click to viewHonestly, it looks amazing. This will be the 6th Star Trek television series (the seventh if we include The Animated Series, but honestly I see The Animated Series as more or less an extension of the Original Series. I view it as year four of the five year mission), and Star Trek on television has never looked so visually stunning.
And here lies the problem: Many Trek fans are being entirely too nitpicky and saying that the new series will violate canon seeing as the sets are far more advanced than those seen on The Original Series. The argument goes that it is not believable that ten years before the 1966 series that the sets would be so advanced looking.
I disagree.
What these fans need to remember is this: Continuity is not visual, it's plot based. What does that mean? Easy. I'll explain. What we as an audience see on the screen is nothing but a visual interpretation. It's not necessarily what the characters on screen see.
For example, you're watching an episode of Bewitched and suddenly Dick Sargent enters the room as Darren. In the last episode you watched, Darren was played by Dick York. This is NOT the same Darren, right? Except Samantha doesn't seem to notice on the show. She doesn't stop Darren and say, "what happened to you? Why do you look different?"
Another example. Chris Pine does not look like William Shatner. That said, in Star Trek XI Chris Pine's young Kirk is stranded on an ice planet and he runs into Leonard Nimoy's old Spock. Spock looks at Pine and immediately recognized him as James Kirk. Why? Pine doesn't look like the Kirk that old Spock Prime knew.....except he does. Chris Pine and William Shatner are just the representations that we, the audience, see on screen. They don't actually represent what the on screen characters see. To Spock on-screen, Pine is a dead ringer for a young Shatner which is why he is immediately able to recognize his friend.
This is why when Tom Baker's The Doctor would go to an alien planet and encounter an alien with a fake looking rubber mask for a head, he was still viewed it as a threat. He didn't say, "Don't worry, it's wearing a fake rubber mask." To him that alien was real. What we saw was just an interpretation.
It's 2017. A TV show in our high definition digital era is never ever going to look like a series made on the cheap in 1966. It just ain't gonna happen. And if it did happen, it's be laughed off the air. The technology on Discovery might look far advanced to the technology on The Original Series. We, as an audience, just have to accept that that is not the case. In this fictional world it all fits and all makes sense. We're just seeing an interpretation of what the characters see. It's called imagination. We just need to use it.
The first episode of Star Trek: Discovery just can't get here fast enough for me.