Nerd Commentary

They aren't Historical Documents, Thermians...

So the statute of limitations for spoilers on Star Trek: Discovery is up or close to it, and I want to have a bit of a rant about the way I've seen some folks responding to the latest re-imagining of the original starship Enterprise.

I've seen some YouTube channels that like to do Star Trek commentary reacting to the appearance of the Enterprise, NCC-1701 at the end of the last episode of Discovery.  The amount of griping and complaining was enough to trigger this rant.  It isn't that people disliked the redesign per se, but rather it was mostly complaining about how it looks different  visually from the original 1960's version of the ship. 

These are TV shows and movies, Mathazar... not historical documents.  It's okay if the ship looks different.  If the original Enterprise, with its original appearance, had rolled up on Discovery, with the visual style of the ships so drastically different, it would have looked weird.  It would have been visually jarring, in fact.  Besides, the original ship looks cool and all, but it's dated.  Very dated.  It doesn't look like a ship somebody would have designed in 2017.

Yes, I know when we saw the original Enterprise in the Deep Space Nine episode "Trials and Tribble-ations" it maintained the original look and style... But of COURSE it did.  That whole episode was meant to be nostalgic and look like the classic show.  It's why they went back to the classic uniforms,  lighting, themes and equipment.  It was for fun.  Why would they change the look of the ship?

Yes, I know the Defiant that appeared in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "In a Mirror, Darkly" also looked like the classic version of the ship.  again, that episode was specifically going for the classic look as a way to contrast it with the look of that series.  It made sense.  Besides, the Enterprise from that series was deliberately designed to try and look like older tech that would eventually evolve into the tech we saw in the classic show.  It made perfect sense to keep the Defiant's classic look.

Star Trek is a bunch of movies and TV shows that are meant to provide a setting for sci-fi stories.  To expect them to all be perfectly matched and consistent is not only silly but doing that would actually detract from the shows and their stories.  I mean, seriously... Do we really need to be beholden to these elements so that we can watch the show and feel like everything is all nice and consistent in an in-universe way?  I dunno I feel like I'd rather see new ideas, new stories, new visual elements.  Give me something new.  If I want to look at the 1960's Enterprise I can do so anytime I want.  It's not going away, and no.  It doesn't bother me that the ship looks different in Discovery. 

I think the new Enterprise looks beautiful.  They did a great job.  Better than the Abramsverse ship, in my opinion. 

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