this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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Come on'n get your jamaharon on! There are no real rules—just don't break the weather control network.
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I think to say that Disco has nothing that contradicts established canon is overselling it a bit. But, I will say that all Trek has violated established canon at one point or another, up to and including TOS itself, which was created by people who had no idea at the time that anyone would even remember it some 57 years later, let alone be obsessed with all this minutiae.
If we ignore visual continuity -- which, as a life long comic book reader, I am more than happy to do -- Disco still has some few contradictions here and there, but I will say that it actually toes the line without crossing over it too frequently fairly well, allowing it to have some interesting and new approaches to Trek.
The big one -- relatively speaking, of course -- in my mind is the site to site transporting.
In “Day of the Dove”, Kirk asks Spock, ”Intra-ship beaming, is it possible?” and Spock rattled off a litany of reasons why it was considered too dangerous in all but the most necessary circumstances.
However, we see in Disco, starting with “Context is for Kings”, that they can just order the computer to transport them from one room of the ship to another without hesitation.
It’s a minor quibble all things considered. And clearly something most of the Disco detractors aren’t even aware of.
Lorca's not the only one who uses it in Disco, though. It actually happens relatively frequently in the first two season. Obviously for seasons three and four things have changed and it's no longer an issue.
Hell, in SNW while Kirk is on the Enterprise in "Subspace Rhapsody" he prepares some samples collected outside the ship to be beamed to engineering and thinks nothing of that instance of intra-ship beaming. I guess he forgot that whole event where people broke out into song by the time he was mid-way through his own five year mission.
You're right, it doesn't violate the canon.
It just cheapens it.
This is just petty.
So you think going from "This didn't exist yet" to "This existed, it just wasn't used," doesn't in any way cheapen the older stories?
Not for the most part.
I would probably be more annoyed by the Klingon cloaking devices in season one if not for the fact that ship had already sailed when ENT established that the Romulans already had that technology a hundred years before “Balance of Terror”, and oh, so did the Suliban and the XyrIllians whom the crew of the Nx-01 also encountered.
Not to mention there’s a throw away line in one episode of season one about how the sensors are picking up massive power readings but can’t actually pinpoint the ships, and in “Balance of Terror” Spock notes that the Romulans must have figured out a way to bend light around their ship without the tremendous power draw. I have to assume someone on the writing team was trying to square that circle.
But yeah, the idea of a technology existing but not being widely used doesn’t bump me at all. This is like getting mad that when you go into watch the latest Marvel movie and they’re not using Smell-O-Vision. The technology exists! Hell, I can’t remember the last movie I saw in theatre that was 3d. Obviously they still exist, but it’s not a technology that’s really taken off once the gimmick lost its lustre. Or think about how many people, especially young people, prefer to text over talking on the phone.
So yeah, I don’t think anything is cheapened by the idea that a technology exists by is not widely used, and I do think it’s silly that anyone would make that argument.