I am angry and frustrated and disappointed. At the general lack-of-getting-it that pervades too much (but not all) of the entertainment industry currently. Not so much lack of creativity as lack of understanding of established properties these companies find themselves owning the rights to. Hasbro has never understood the deeper mythos the TV shows and -- to far greater extent -- the comics gave their toys, so they're perfectly happy with what Michael Bay is doing with the Transformers. And CBS is straying further and further from the various things Trek has been about...
I can grudgingly allow for the presence of JJ-Trek, and even enjoy them on a fairly superficial level. But I still feel Trek shoudl never be something you can only enjoy as fluff you have to turn your brain off for. I will argue til the Earth crumbles around me that Enterprise fits far, far better as a prologue to JJ-Trek than anywhere in the Prime timeline, unless there were a bit of tweaking to be the voyages of NCC-1701 as originally launched in the 2240s under Captain April. Discovery looks like it would do nicely immediately prior to the first JJ-Trek film. Vulcan is still there and the
Enterprise is still being built in Iowa
facepalm), and Kirk hasn't met Pike yet.
But the frustration and anger and disappointment comes from
all. the
missed. oppor
tunities. From all the books and comics and RPG fluff I've read over the years, in the '70s and '80s, around and sometimes a bit before TOS and the first several films... Well, there's a lot of lore there that not only works, not only fits, but is a wonderful mine for material that is being utterly ignored. Ten, twenty years before TOS? Deteriorating relations with the fairly-recently encountered Klingons decline into a four-year hot war in the early 2250s that saw the Andorians getting far more involved in Stafleet, and ending with the Battle of Axanar. Because Humans were so quick to respond to provocation or danger with violence, Vulcans still refused to participate. In the aftermath of the Four Years War, some visionaries in Starfleet, like Robert April, advocated reassessing their purpose, and the
Constitution class was rededicated to pushing the boundaries of knowledge, rather than being primarily a battleship with which to hold the Klingons at bay. April came up with the five-year missions, and this resulted in the
Enterprise's crew ballooning from 204 to 430, with more scientists and mission specialists and redundant personnel.
That also gets around the "primitive" tech. It was a point of discussion on the old rec.arts.startrek.tech newsgroup back in the '90s and we felt it made sense that the ships that go out beyond all that is known, away from fleet support, will have deliberately uncomplicated controls and systemry, so that stuff is simple and easy to fix. Civilian ships and second- and third-rank Starfleet ships (couriers, supply ships, etc.) would likely have more familiar touchscreens and more automation. And I wholeheartedly agree "In A Mirror Darkly" demonstrated those sets can be built to look good and current, with an eye to materials and particular shades of wall paint, lighting, and room decor.
I'll disagree about the holo-stuff. There was a holographic environment room in the animated series that was what was built on to be TNG's holodeck. The early version just had wall projections -- no tangible holo-objects one could interact with. Likewise, the main viewscreen on TOS is supposed to be flat 3D, just as on the
Enterprise-D in TNG. We never saw the viewer from an oblique angle in TOS because of the filming logistics to ensure continuity. Simpler to shoot straight on. Watch TNG and notice each time we see Picard step closer to the main viewer to talk to someone on the screen, and notice the angle that person is shown at. Each of those few-second inserts had to be filmed at that specific angle, and when doing the shot list, the director had to know in advance that it was going to require that and annotate appropriately.
So, all told, the more we see, Discovery just feels like badly-researched, badly-designed Trek fanfic to me.
--Jonah