Akiva Goldsman Talks State Of The Federation In ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Season 3

The wait for the third season of Star Trek: Discovery continues, with a possible little tidbit coming today to pique fans’ interest.

Goldsman talks “post-Federation” future

Last week we reported on comments made to Collider by Star Trek: Picard executive producer Akiva Goldsman about the second season of that show. Now Collider has released its full hour-long interview with Goldsman which covers a wide range of topics inside and out of Star Trek. Goldsman was an executive producer on Star Trek: Discovery through the end of the second season and spoke to Collider about the origins of the idea to jump the show into the far future for season three

We all helped build that idea, all the way back to season one. Aaron Harberts and Gretchen Berg, the original showrunners from season one, that idea dates all the way back to that. I think it is a spectacular idea, which is to go post the timeline we know.

After the second season of Discovery Goldsman pivoted to work on Star Trek: Picard and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, but he still is in the know, noting “I am not on Discovery now, I just know things.” He gave Collider an assessment of the direction for Discovery season three, including the state of the United Federation of Planets:

Alex Kurtzman has really been deeply involved in the building out of what season three looks like and what that post-Federation future is. I have seen some of it because we all work together in the same – or we did – place with lots of Star Trek pictures on the wall and editing bays and things. It seems awesome. It’s not a final frontier but it is a new one.

Just looking at the sparse collection of stars on the Federation flag seen in the NYCC season three trailer gives you a big clue that the Federation isn’t what it used to be. And in that same trailer, the new character of Book (David Ajala) refers to Starfleet as a “ghost.” Executive producer Alex Kurtzman hinted to TrekMovie during NYCC about big changes, saying, “We’re taking expectations and alliances and enemies and all of those things and putting them in a blender and mixing it all up and seeing what’s going to happen.” In January Kurtzman contrasted how the Federation is portrayed in the late 24th century of Star Trek: Picard and the third season of Discovery, now set in the 32nd century: “They are on the same timeline, but the Federation has changed much more radically in Discovery than it has on Picard.”

In describing where the crew of the Discovery find themselves in the far future, Goldsman uses the term “post-Federation.” Goldsman’s new comment hints the Federation may be more than down and out, and potentially entirely defunct by the time Michael Burnham and the USS Discovery show up in the 32nd century.

David Ajala as Book and Sonequa Martin-Green as Burnham in Star Trek: Discovery season 3

Jonathan Frakes, who has directed multiple third season episodes, has talked about this new setting for the show, saying that “finding a future that’s futuristic but is practical to shoot has been fascinating.” He has also said the there will be a “big tonal shift” for main character Michael Burnham.

For now, we will have to keep waiting for season three. In March it was promised to be coming soon. Post-production work on the third season has continued remotely during the pandemic, and just recently, composer Jeff Russo confirmed he and his team have started recording the music remotely. ViacomCBS is planning on a major enhancement to CBS All Access this summer, including the addition of more content and a new user interface. Discovery has been a flagship series for the streaming service, so launching the third season around the same time or soon after the upgrade could be good timing.

Sonequa Martin-Green’s Michael Burnham in the season three “coming soon” teaser


Keep up with all the Star Trek: Discovery news at TrekMovie.com.

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I have a feeling that they’re not going to remain in the 32nd century more than one season and that at some point they’ll travel back in time to prevent this timeline. This would remove any restrictions on projects set earlier in the timeline in terms of conforming to what Discovery has established and keep the show fresh by allowing it to explore another new period in season 4.

Possibly, throws in an element of the anthology series idea which was on the cards before they created this show.

Killing 2 birds with 1 stone, saving money by using th e same ship and crew but exploring different time periods.

Exactly Lucas, the way Discovery mixes it up year on year makes me think that’s exactly what they’re doing.

I like that idea Lukas!

So, either they’ll be continually harassed by the Temporal Integrity Commission, or they STARTED it in the first place…

Intriguing idea. And with CBS and Viacom back together, hopefully there won’t be any licensing woes using late 23rd/24th century aesthetics.

There are no licensing woes. Never have been.

Yeah, there were never any issues with them using prior Trek designs. I mean, DSC directly used TOS episode footage in Season 2, and Picard used several images from TNG and DS9, as well as using the Enterprise D, the old uniforms, etc.

Now, I don’t know if there were any issues because i’m no lawyer, but maybe they wouldn’t have been permitted to use elements from the Abrams films.

Still, they’re partners: if they’d wanted to, I can’t see why Paramount would even have had an issue with it. They weren’t competing with each other (unlike Marvel movies, where Sony refused to let Kevin Feige use elements from the Spider-Man movies in 2008’s Incredible Hulk).

I don’t know. Considering this season takes place at least 700 years after PIC, and 500 years after any ‘concrete’ future we’ve been shown (the Enterprise-J in “Azati Prime”), I don’t know if that’s really necessary. If the downfall of the Federation happens within a few decades of what we see in the 32nd century, it’s not like it would constrain much in the “present” of the 25th century.

@T’Pol’s Beard The Enterprise J is not part of a ‘Concrete Future’. As I recall it was a version of the timeline shown to Archer in which the Sphere Builders hadn’t been defeated. It was overwritten at the end of season 3 when the good guys prevailed. The reason I suspect that they’ll travel back in time and repair the timeline is threefold .

1. It doesn’t hamper the other shows by restricting what they can do or eliminating any perceived threat because we know the Federation doesn’t fall until such and such a year.

2. It insulates them against potential fan backlash. There’s no doubt that if the Federation is seen to have failed this will upset sections of the fanbase. A move like this would free them up from some of the perceived restrictions of Roddenberry’s perfect world whilst mitigating the backlash because fans would know it’s going to be put back together again in the end.

3. reinventing itself every year is totally Discovery’s MO.

I could be wrong of course but these are the assumptions that my speculation is based upon.

“The Enterprise J is not part of a ‘Concrete Future’.”

If not, than my point is even more valid.

“because we know the Federation doesn’t fall until such and such a year.”

Even if that assumption were true (and it’s not), is the fear of the fall of the Federation integral to creating tension? I can’t count on one hand the number of stories where the Federation itself was in any danger, and even in those episodes, its survival was never really in doubt. As has been discussed ad nauseum, knowing a character’s fate– let alone the entire Federation’s– is not the end of good storytelling. We all know how Pike ends up. How Spock ends up. Yet we’re all still excited about SNW. We all know the Federation survives to PIC, yet we are all still watching Enterprise, DSC, and now SNW. It’s not that big a deal.

“It insulates them against potential fan backlash.”

I don’t think it does at all– fans have proven they will lash out at anything and everything. But even if it did, do you think to this point the producers seem all that concerned with fan backlash to the point of trying to avoid it? They will listen to criticism, sure, but at this point they’ve pretty much been doing EVERYTHING fans said they didn’t want them to do prior to DSC. They made a prequel, they revisited the Enterprise and classic characters, they re-imagined and retconned classic ships, races, and tech, and they glossed over tons of continuity issues.

I’m not criticizing DSC, by any means– I really like the show. I just don’t think that the producers are pre-planning an exit from this time frame out of fear of fan backlash. If anything, I’d wager they have an open-ended finale planned that will allow them to go back to the 23rd century if fans don’t like it, or stay in the 23rd century if response is very positive. Maybe they ARE planning to go back, but I doubt it’s for fear of backlash. If they though the audience was going to hate it beforehand, they wouldn’t be doing it (and please no snarky responses to that last statement)…

Because the one thing producers HAVE shown is a willingness to adapt to what fans respond to (1701 crew) and what they don’t (bald Klingons, D7, etc).

Also, with SNW and S31 planned, they may want to keep DSC in the future so that each show has a distinctive time period.

I’m just saying it’s not a foregone conclusion. At this point, I think it’s 50/50 whether the show remains in the future or returns to the “present.”

Your points are valid TB. At the moment we’ve seen a few pieces of the jigsaw so they could go in any direction. Generally speaking any detailed theories before an episode has even aired are always likely to be wrong so I’m not claiming they will definitely do this. I just feel that whatever happens if there is to be a season 4 they will completely reinvent the show’s premise again because that’s what Discovery does. For the record I don’t think they’ll move the series back to the 23rd Century (other than to get Yeoh back), they went to far too much trouble to effectively erase Burnham from history for that to be likely. If my theory proves to be correct it will be a new period/setting for the crew. Regarding the fans I think they do care but they’re trying to walk a tightrope between satisfying long term viewers and appealing to a more modern audience.

It would be tough to just move them into another time period, within continuity, unless the new premise specifically involved them erasing their presence when they left, which as I said elsewhere, could be kind of fun…

I suspect you’re correct, and will guess that they then journey another thousand years into the future when the former Federation has become the evil “V’Draysh”, and they abandon DIscovery to join the fight/revolution. (This would then match what we saw in the Short Trek “Calypso.”)

@Palizia yeah that’s the elephant in the room. My own long-standing theory is that they will have to send the ship back in time and hide it possibly to allow the ships emerging intelligence time to mature\evolve plus make the ship more competitive against technologies/threats 1000 years more advanced. This would address ‘Calypso’ and provide a means of getting Georgiou back assuming that’s still the plan. It would seem a bit convenient that it takes a millennium to mature the AI but bear in in mind that the ship inherited the memories of an extremely long lived life-form so this new entity could arguably be considered it’s child and 1000 years for such a being could potentially just be puberty.

Yeah all true but as we talked about this in the past, it doesn’t necessarily mean they have to travel back to the past, but simply abandon Discovery in the 32nd century and meet up with it in the 42nd. But yeah IF the plan is to get Georgiou back in the 23rd century (but I still have my doubts about that) then it would make sense.

I just don’t really like this idea of constant time travel and I LOVE time travel stories! But season 2 was basically about going to the future to save the past. So now season 3 is about going back to the past to save the future?

It feels a bit redundant. ;)

But whatever they do I do hope Zora is created and shows up in season 4. I have to admit, I’m very excited about Discovery because they now have so many possibilities where they can take the show both literally and figuratively. It’s nice its not going to just end up as a boring prequel like I felt season one was becoming but now something much bigger and interesting.

Agreed one way or the other I hope to see the Calypso plot threads addressed this season and I don’t really care whether they send the ship back or go forward in time to achieve this. The main thing as you say is that they’ve opened up lots of possibilities. As you know I enjoy speculating on the bread crumbs they give us in between seasons but unfortunately with the world facing much bigger problems than what happens next in Trek new crumbs have not been forthcoming! So basically I’m still sticking with more or less the same theory I put out there at the end of season 2 at the moment but that could be out the window before the pre credits teaser for the first episode ends. I just hope we’re getting new Trek soon, I don’t care if it’s DSC that comes first or Lower Decks it will just be great to be able to start discussing new episodes again.

Yeah I’m in the same mindset. If the plan is to send the ship back to the 23rd century, that’s fine as long as they don’t return there permanently of course other than to drop off Georgiou. I just feel it would be redoing what they did in season 2, just reverse. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be a great story either. Clearly it’s setting up something very big and ambitious so I’m very excited to see how they will handle it.

And as you said I just want more Star Trek. I don’t care which show comes first, I just hope we don’t have to wait until after the summer but its very possible now.

At the very least, give us another trailer for either show soon!

Agreed. The ship has sailed on the 23rd Century as far as them returning to that time period permanently. The sets are built for that time period and all the characters are intrinsically linked to it so if they wanted to show flashbacks or Sarek’s Katra or whatever that would be fine. They could even have a plot thread running concurrently with the 32nd century that might feature the likes of Tyler, L’Rell, their son and the Borath monks and I’d be okay with that too. I don’t even mind if they do an episode where they do have to travel back to the 23rd century. That could be interesting in that they’d still have to keep a low profile and avoid interacting with anybody beyond the mission parameters but it would have added emotional weight given that all of these characters belong in the 23rd Century and they’d love nothing better than to remain there whilst knowing that they can’t. I just don’t want to see a permanent return to that period as it would completely undermine the reasons that they had to leave in the first place.

The constant time travel is ridiculous. I don’t love prequels, but that was what Discovery was supposed to be about; I resent being asked to put an emotional investment in characters like Sarek and Mudd and then to be told “just joking.” And I really, really, don’t want to see a dystopian, declining Federation. We’ll see what they come up with, of course.

We’ll probably see Sarek and Mudd again in SNW though. I hope we also get L’rell and Tyler on that show too. I didn’t care for the period Discovery was in but yeah I did end up liking most of the characters just the same. So most will probably be back on SNW.

And yes if the Section 31 show is still happening and it does take place in the 23rd century then they can all show up there too.

Hell don’t be shocked if some showed up in Picard lol. This is Star Trek, literally anything is possible. ;)

Both Mudd and Sarek of course would be continuity problems. But I enjoy the characters and actors enough to be able to connive.(At least I hope I am)

But they would really only be continuity issues to Spock, right? At least to Sarek. I’m guessing they made it clear in TOS Mudd met Spock for the first time there (haven’t seen those episodes in ages) and thats fine. But it doesn’t mean they can’t be on the show at all. I mean we literally saw Sarek multiple times in season 2 with Spock on that show. They made it work then, I don’t see why they couldn’t make it work again, especially since he would be wide open to other characters.

They’ve been very careful to not have Sarek and Spock in the same room, since they hadn’t talked in years and won’t again until Journey to Babel. So if Dad does show up, it’d have to be handled gently.

To be honest, they really ought to leave Sarek and Mudd alone at this point. Sarek and Spock are not on good terms. Best they avoid each other. And that means no ship visits or anyone else dealing with Sarek. And it stretches credibility that Mudd would just show up yet again. Particularly since we know he harasses Kirk’s Enterprise twice.

That said, it feels like almost a given that these writers will use them.

“And yes if the Section 31 show is still happening and it does take place in the 23rd century then they can all show up there too.”

Tiger2, my suspicion is that the Discovery crew bringing back foreknowledge of the eventual collapse of the Federation will be shown as a major reason for Section 31 subsequently going to extreme lengths “in the Federation’s best interests”. S31 believe they’re justified because they’re trying to change this timeline’s future and prevent the nightmare scenario from happening.

If the Discovery brings back any 32nd century tech, that would of course give S31 a handy strategic advantage too (and it could be used to partly explain the kind of advanced capabilities we saw S31 demonstrate in DS9).

Wow great ideas Jai. I never thought about that, but you’re right something that happens in the 32nd century could be a forewarning to the Federation in the 23rd century that forces S31 to exist and basically go underground. And yes she could bring back tech from the future which would benefit them (maybe that could explain Discovery too and they actually just been using tech from the future all this time but wasn’t told ;D).

I don’t think they are going to go this way but it would be a great way to go in if they did. That said I don’t know if it would make people be anymore interested in having a S31 show and I suspect not.

As Tiger said we will probably see Sarek, Amanda etc in SNW and S31. They’ve also shown numerous flashbacks to Michael’s time on Vulcan In the first 2 seasons of Discovery so I imagine that will still be the case meaning we might even see more of Spock on the show. Also Sarek left a permanent echo of his Katra with Michael after their mind meld so this would be another way we might see the character reappear. Plus there’s the possibility that season 3’s story will run concurrently in both time periods. There’s certainly enough characters left in the 23rd century to make this a possibility.

God, I hope S31 isn’t happening.

@YnrohKeeg

S31 is a show i’ve been asking for since their first appearance in DS9. When word of a 4th series started as DS9 was wrapping, I thought a Section 31 series would have been a perfect followup.

Honestly if you asked me two years ago would I be happy with a Section 31 show, I would’ve said yes because I would have assumed we’re talking about DS9’s version of S31. It’s the Discovery version of them that has put me off to the idea completely.

There are definitely fans who thinks just the basic idea of them goes completely against Star Trek and Roddenberry’s values and that’s a fair point. But I don’t have a problem with it at all and really like them…on DS9 and even Enterprise (they were actually more low key on that show). But based on what we seen of them in DIS I understand the people like me who do like them may still have a problem with this version. And then it makes it even harder to get behind when you know it’s Space Hitler leading the show which I think is really the biggest issue for many people. The organization is one thing, you now have a former dictator who ate her slaves as part of it???

That’s why so many have a problem with this concept and I can’t blame them. Stuff like Picard and Strange New Worlds are applauded because they literally star characters who represent Star Trek in every positive way the franchise is built on. And then you have PU Georgiou bragging about how she blew up the Talosians home planet in her universe and its not a secret why she rubs some people the wrong way. I mean you think Janeway belongs in jail, how does that not apply to someone like MU Georgiou over and over again? And she did those things because she simply could and not out of desperation.

Being an unlikable antagonist on a show is one thing, being the star of it is another matter. I think TPTB is really getting that now and why SNW got an announcement before this show did which was in development a full year before this was.

They could go anywhere in the timeline. How far in the future can they go is the question. The 32nd century is pretty far enough.

I forget most of the cover story that (someone) told Starfleet about why the Discovery was no longer around. Maybe they said it blew up or something. I would like the 32d-century people, once they’ve figured out what antiquated ship has arrived, to say something like, “Discovery? You vanished/blew up like 930 years ago.” Just to say what was the conventional thinking about the lost ship Discovery over the years, what “place” it had in Earth’s history. (That it BLEW UP or VANISHED, I know, but I’d still like to hear them say it.)

OT: Why can’t I post comments on the Robert Beltran article?

If the Federation has fallen in the 32nd century it is possible that also its historical records have been lost. It’s unlikely that someone would remember Discovery – that’s not a knock against Discovery, it’s just how many ships has the Federation had over the centuries? Thousands, tens of thousands? It would be really convenient if somebody just happens to remember this one ship from almost 1000 years ago. They could look it up if records are still around.

Or if they encounter any history buffs they might not believe them when they say they came from the 23rd century. They would say, no way. This ship looks straight out of the 25th.

Wasn’t all mention of Discovery and her crew stripped from the records?

I would like the 32d-century people, once they’ve figured out what antiquated ship has arrived, to say something like, “Discovery? You vanished/blew up like 930 years ago.”

MH370 was not the first commercial jet airliner to disappear without a trace. Name the one I’m thinking of (no fair Googling it!). It disappeared about 40 years ago.

If you can’t do that — and it was pretty famous at the time — how is it remotely realistic that people will remember a ship that disappeared 1000 years ago, much less remember it? Other than for its archaeological significance, would people in the modern UK care about the Tudor-era Mary Rose?

True but my issue is that if an ancient ship showed up claiming to be from the mid 23rd century but all the technology screamed early 25th (which they WOULD notice just like people notice the difference between a musket and a machine gun rather than a specific ship disappearance which I agree would likely not be remembered) really should lead to complete mistrust or confusion at the very least.

Discovery and the version of Enterprise seen on Discovery is what the 23rd century looks like now. People in this 32nd century won’t expect 1960’s aesthetics for something that’s supposed to be from the 23rd century. No confusion there.

I’m a TNG man through and through, and even I don’t expect them to recreate the 90s sets perfectly if they continue to revisit them in PIC or anywhere else. I fully expect them to make some updates for the modern audience. And I am 100% ok with that.

I really don’t know why this argument still gets made. I haven’t read any posts here suggesting they should have completely reproduced the sets from The Cage. And now I have to say this for what feels like the 30th time at least. They did not need to reproduce the sets. They needed to evoke the feel of the aesthetic. They should not have given them tech that didn’t show up 100 years later much less 10.

So yes… Future people should be very wary of the Discovery crew because of the technical inconsistency. But then, not one person questioned the return of Culber when pretty much every single person on that ship should have. So they have already established that characters will not question the amazingly obvious.

The producers of Discovery decided to redesign 23rd century visuals. This is something the audience is aware of. It is not something any characters inside the fictional Trek universe are aware of.
Redesigns have happened all the time in Trek. Almost every alien species that appeared more than once has been redesigned at least once. Sets were redesigned between seasons or between movies on a regular basis. This is never acknowledged on the shows unless they want to make it a story point.
So unless they want to make a story out of it nobody in the 32nd century is going to think: Wow, Discovery doesn’t look like it comes from the 23rd century. Just like nobody is going to ask themselves why Pike, Spock and Number One suddenly look like completely different people.

Apples and oranges, my friend. There is a difference between a small tweak in a forehead ridge and radically changing EVERYTHING. Even Enterprise was able to make their show look future modern but FEEL like it could evolve into what we saw on TOS. It CAN be done. When you change actors you cast someone who will at least be able to evoke the character people know. Even if they don’t look exactly right, there are other elements (like diction or mannerisms or even some physical similarities) that tell everyone, Yep… That’s (insert character name here). You don’t cast an Indian female to play Spock on Discovery (although given the aesthetic changes they did make they may as well have). You cast someone who evokes Nimoy in some way. You make a change as drastic as Discovery did what you have done is create a reboot. Period. And there is NOTHING wrong with a reboot. Just go ahead and say so. Then those drastic changes are perfectly acceptable.

It’s definitely a visual reboot. However, no character INSIDE the fictional Trek universe is going to go: “Hey, this is a reboot!” Similarly, there is no reason for any character in the 32nd century to go: “Hey, this ship claims to be from the 23rd century but it looks like it’s from the 25th century!”
It’s pointless to continue this discussion if you can’t distinguish between these two things.

Actually, you were the one making the mistakes. I never mentioned or inferred that a CHARACTER would say “reboot”. I said a new casting is normally recognized by the audience in someway. That is what was meant when I said “everyone”. I thought it was obvious.

However, the other thing does is indeed a thing. Let’s make this easy and use current decades instead of centuries and see if the point can be made. For the sake of argument, someone appears in a Sopwith Dragon and when you talk to the guy he said he came here right out of WWII. (ignoring the time travel aspect of course) It seems reasonable to doubt their story due to the inconsistencies.

And finally, a “visual” reboot is the same as a reboot. That simply not the same thing as just updating for a modern audience.

Can you remember any ships from the year 1100?

A naval historian would.

What’s wrong with the 52nd century? Or the first one? If you turn the show into time travelpalozza, then just go anywhere. Don’t like Edith Keeler dying? Fix it. Horny Spock like Pon Farr? Just keep taking the ship back a week until there are dozens of little Spocks in the oven. Space Nazi’s? Why not let the Third Reich have it’s thousand years. Imagine the possibilities….

They have to get Yoh’s character back to the 23rd century for the Section 31 series which starts production soon, so I think this will happen.

That is the real evidence, though I don’t think it necessitates erasing the events we see.

I think this is a good practical point. It’s possible that Georgiou will individually get sent back, but that in itself could arguably open a can of worms, temporally speaking. (Of course, it’s also possible that the Section 31 show doesn’t come to fruition — I thought I read a report that production for it is on hold, seemingly with focus now shifting to “Strange New Worlds.”)

I also think it’s a bit unwise to have not one but two shows moving the timeline forward, as it were, but at vastly different times. For me, part of the excitement of “Star Trek: Picard” is seeing what happens next in the TNG era, after 20 years of reboots, prequels, etc. And to immediately throw some of that novelty out the window by having another show (and indeed an ex-prequel!) suddenly jump into the far future kinda bums me out. (Especially if it’s saying, everything eventually falls apart. Which is obviously true, from a historical standpoint, but what’s the point of Jean-Luc Picard and company saving the galaxy if we know that whatever they do, the galaxy will still wind up in ruins?)

Best would be to eventually send the Discovery back in time, and let Picard (and perhaps some more sequelish shows or specials — Voyager / DS9 reunions, perhaps? Picard spinoffs?) open up the 25th century with the future being what they write it to be. Heck, maybe drop Discovery in the early 25th century — you could get lots of fun cameos that way, and let the Section 31 series be set there too.

“ Especially if it’s saying, everything eventually falls apart. Which is obviously true, from a historical standpoint, but what’s the point of Jean-Luc Picard and company saving the galaxy if we know that whatever they do, the galaxy will still wind up in ruins?)”

Exactly. It would be basically saying that everything we’ve seen in Star Trek ultimately ended in failure but having a “Yesterday’s Enterprise” style season allows them to essentially have their cake and eat it. We Would get to explore a scenario in which the Federation has fallen (which is not unique in Trek) in far more depth than the previous shows could allow and the eventual victory and restoration of the timeline would be in the finest traditions of Trek.

“ Especially if it’s saying, everything eventually falls apart. Which is obviously true, from a historical standpoint, but what’s the point of Jean-Luc Picard and company saving the galaxy if we know that whatever they do, the galaxy will still wind up in ruins?)”

I hear you but you’re assuming its just the passage of time where things became stagnant and fell apart where that may not be the case at all. It’s the line Burnham says in the trailer of the ‘first domino’ or something where she implies that it could’ve been a specific event or catalyst that caused it. Maybe something even sinister. And this is Discovery, so it’s probably 97% that lol. Something they can undo in a way but yes that may imply time travel of some kind.

Discovery could end up somewhere else after this season. I would like them to stay there so they can build up that period like how TNG started to build up the 24th century. But if they do leave, that’s fine, but I HOPE it’s not back to the 23rd century. It’s just not needed and it would literally undo everything they did to ‘resolve’ canon by pretending Burnham and everyone else is dead. But I wouldn’t mind being a little closer to Picard’s timeline like the 25th or 26th century. But I think letting SNW carve out that part of the 23rd century is a much better (and popular) way to go.

If Section 31 does happen, it would be fine if it was still set in the 23rd century since it’s going to be a very different show but honestly I wouldn’t care if that was cancelled altogether now. I doubt most would.

Maybe they have time travel in the thirty-second century. We know they’ve had it since at least the twenty-ninth century.

They’ve had time travel in the 23rd century. It wasn’t something that they did on a daily basis but they certainly did it – and not just accidentally.

Slingshot!

I am seriously doubting that. If that was their intention they had every opportunity to do just that in season 2. And quite frankly, that would have been the best idea to free them up. To be honest, if all those other Trek productions get going before STD’s 4th season starts production, I would be very surprised if they get a 5th.

@ML31 I’m not suggesting that they’ll fix the timeline to line it up with TOS, they’ve already done that. My main point is that I’m speculating on is that if there is to be a season 4 it will be in completely different setting. The time travel theory is just my best guess at this time as to how they’re going to achieve that goal but it could be literally be anything when they have the mycellial network in the mix. A parallel universe, a different galaxy or whatever. I’m just saying that it’s Discovery’s MO to dramatically mix things up year on year so maybe people shouldn’t get too cosy in the 32nd century because we probably won’t be staying there for that long.

But the thing is, the changes they made each season has been a direct result to production issues. Not because they thought it would be good to change things up from year to year. And I really don’t think they have fixed their 23rd century time line thing at all. In fact, the main thing they mistakenly thought needed fixing really didn’t need it at all. And personally, I just don’s see moving the show to the future really frees them of anything. Their biggest problem has not been what era they are in or what character is related to who. The problem was bad plotting and writing. Moving the show in time doesn’t fix that. Entirely new writers might…

Perhaps I should clarify ML31. When I say they’ve fixed the discrepancies between DSC and TOS I’m talking about from the writers perspective. I personally thought it was ham-fist and completely OTT to go to such lengths over holo-communication and Burnham not being mentioned in TOS but from the production point of view those grey areas have now been addressed. I also agree that setting the show further in the future doesn’t free them from canon but it would give them a bit more leeway if they were to overwrite the timeline at the end of the season.

It only gives them leeway to do what they want in the sense there are no future set shows to get in the way. But if the production felt those things you mentioned were mistakes then I feel like they were pretty obvious ones that should have been caught before any sets were even built. And, production wise, at least from my perspective, they are still a 23rd century crew in a 25th century ship thrown in the future. Their biggest production problem is STILL a problem. Moving the show’s time frame doesn’t solve it. But, if the season is a good thoughtful story those production issues will be less important. At least to this fan.

“the changes they made each season has been a direct result to production issues”

The changes were a direct result of fan backlash. Adding hair to Klingons, introducing the classic D7, making Pike a more fun lead character. Abandoning the mycelial network/tardigrade plotline.

Thrusting the show into the future was EITHER direct response to criticism of the prequel concept, a way of responding to fan backlash of the perceived continuity errors the show’s premise created, or at best, a way of setting it apart from the upcoming SNW (that they clearly knew was on the horizon).

I don’t recall any production issues that necessitated a change of premise. Getting new showrunners happens to shows all the time, sometimes mid-season– they don’t always radically revamp shows this way because of it. Most of the time they just say “here, take over and keep it rolling.”

Sometimes a show will add a new character, or retool slightly, a completely change of the entire premise happens VERY rarely, and i’m scratching my head wondering what kind of production issue you think caused it.

You’re right about one thing: nothing about the premise really needed fixing. But if you were paying attention, a LOT of fans felt DSC broke continuity in an egregious way, and wanted it fixed. This may not fix it to your satisfaction, but it’s clearly an attempt to try.

I agree with all of this and I was certainly one of the fans who thought Discovery broke canon in multiple ways.

But I never thought they needed to ‘solve’ the issue by jumping into the future. But I’m super happy they did it but not over any canon issues. I just think that should’ve been the premise from the beginning and a show about the far future.

But yes I DOUBT we would be here now if the backlash wasn’t so big over Spock having a sister, spore drive and all the other crazy advance technology that show had, etc. Again, the irony with Discovery (minus the Spock sibling part) if the show was literally placed where Picard is placed now it would’ve fit in SO MUCH BETTER! But yeah those Klingons still would’ve been hated lol.

But I think this was definitely the right direction to go in. I was hard on Discovery first season (and its my least favorite first season out of all the shows) but I have ALWAYS given them credit for realizing the problems the show had, listening to fan input and doing a major retool in season 2. And season 3 looks like its going to get more major lol. I’m still not personally sure if they needed to go THAT far into the future but yes most likely it was done because they wanted the fallen Federation story line and canon wise we know the Federation is thriving up until Daniel’s timeline into the 31st century.

And now things can flow better. TOS fans will now get a TRUE prequel for fans with Strange New Worlds, Picard can continue building on a post-Voyager era and Discovery can do whatever it wants being so far out and setting up a new century we know nothing about. This is all very very exciting for a lot of fans and it sort of gives everyone a little of what they want even if they don’t want it all (but I do ;)).

But yeah, it’s still a matter if it will be good or not and that’s mostly the REAL issue based on both Discovery and Picard so far with a lot of subpar writing a lot of fans think both shows has (but at least has been improving every season IMO at least if still not great).

OK then… You say fan backlash and I say that backlash would not have been a problem had the production just saw the obvious writing on the wall before sets started to get built. In that sense, I feel safe calling it a production issue. When they were shooting season 2 I seriously doubt they knew how much fans would latch on to Mount’s Pike. The decision to start SNW was very likely made at some point DURING the shows streaming run. Certainly not before when all the talk then by producers was about the Section 31 show and Picard. Season 2 was already mapped out and in the can before they figured SNW was even a possibility. SNW I sincerely believe was a direct result of how well fans took to Pike. And it sees like, don’t know if true yet, that SNW has taken the path to series that used to belong to Section 31.

Casting Anson Mount and Rebecca Romijn as Pike and Number One seems like a calculated casting, especially given what little Romijn does in Discovery. Romijn may not be a huge star, but for such a small part, but well-recognized figure in Trek Lore, seems an odd choice in casting if she was only intended to appear in season 2(especially, for as little as she was there). Anson Mount seems like he’s been relatively sought after as a lead in a series for awhile now. So, I’m not sure how much we should attach strong fan reaction to Mount’s Pike to CBS considering creating SNW DURING season 2, as opposed to something that was under strong consideration when they cast Mount and Romijn in the first place.

Doubt it. “Fixing the timeline” seems to only be in the provenance of these message boards, it isn’t anything that any showrunner or creative team has ever given any discussion to on the record. The gigantic can of worms you have if all you need is some sci-fi gimmick to travel in time, is that if everyone can do it, why isn’t every time line being “fixed”, whatever the hell that even means.

It’s just speculation Phil nobody’s said they’re definitely going to this but if you’ve ever seen TOS, some of the movies, TNG, DS9, Voyager, or Enterprise you’d probably realise that “fixing the timeline” isn’t “only the provenance of these message board” but a staple ingredient of the series for over 50 years. Star Trek didn’t start in 2009.

Looking at the Discovery S3 trailer from last fall, Burnham will be spending some time hopping timelines like her mother, trying to find that one domino that set everything in the wrong direction — or at least separated her from Discovery.

My take is that at the start of the season, she’s not just in a different place or time, but even an alternate timeline.

Exactly TG47. Discovery is built on it’s twists and turns so you can guarantee there’s going be more in play than just Star Trek Andromeda.

It seems rather arrogant to intentionally mistake someone’s meaning so as to take the liberty of assuming he has not seen any of those other Treks. Besides, if “fixing the timeline” is a “staple ingredient” of traditional Trek, isn’t it well, WELL past time to stop repeating it? Or does everybody just want Safe Trek?

No more arrogant than dismissing a 50+ year Star Trek trope that is ingrained into the mythology of this fictional universe as the ‘provenance of these message boards’. At the end of the day my initial post is just conjecture based on what we’ve seen in the trailer and how this show has operated in it’s first two seasons. Kurtzman describes it as like a ‘bullet’ compared to Picard’s more ‘nuanced’ approach and it’s clearly embraced cliches and the shocking plot twist philosophy from day one so to expect otherwise in season 3 would be a little naive.

It’s interesting that you acknowledge it as a “trope.” To me, that choice of words suggests its been long overused (it has) and should be avoided at all costs by any self-respecting writer seriously wanting to improve ST. If fans want more of the same they should literally go back to the DVDs (Orci wasn’t wrong in pointing out they’d still be there). I don’t have a problem with your conjecture, in fact dismayingly I share it. However Phil’s meaning is perfectly clear in the context of his whole sentence. No current showrunner or creative team would be giving discussion to Trek of the past, accept maybe in passing.

It is a trope Sam, but that doesn’t have to be a negative. A show with over 50 years history is inevitably going to have some repetition in terms of concepts and plot points, the challenge to writers is how to approach these tropes in new and innovative ways. In relation to Bob Orci I liked a lot of his ideas and that he was so determined for the time travel to be consistent with modern thinking but only up to a point. I’d agree with it wholeheartedly if it was just a straight up remake of Star Trek but if you want to have your film be part of the existing canon then you have to accept the baggage that comes with it. At the end of the day I’d love to see Star Trek try something new but it should still Star Trek at it’s core. I think a problem that a lot of the older fans have with the new movies/shows is not necessarily that they’re throwing out all the old Trek traditions, it’s that they’re trying to replace them with the sensibilities of other successful franchises and that’s not exactly being original either.

Now personally speaking I’m generally receptive to new Trek. It’s far from perfect, they’ve clearly made mistakes but I guess I’m of the mindset that having new Trek (at least so far) is better than having no Trek. So like I say my original comment was really only posted to elicit speculative discussion on where the show might be leading us next season and beyond. Not so much what I hope they do (although I’ll admit I am a sucker for ‘Yesterday’s Enterprise’ type stories) but what I think they might do and why. I’d deliberately omitted any criticism of the shows because I was trying to be inclusive and not troll anybody. Now if I came across as arrogant in my reply to Phil then fair enough I’ll hold my hands up and admit that I rose to the bait but if you look at both of his comments preceding my reply then it’s still fair to say that I was actually baited.

Thats my hope from the beginning !! And i hope they travel to Picard-Time and DSC-Crew and Picard and his new Crew will share one goal but on two fronts.

There are a few clues that may suggest that they travel back in time to prevent said timeline from occurring in the trailer. One is Burnham stating that she’s been trying to find the “domino that tipped over,” which is likely the event that was the catalyst to what they find in the future. Another is the appearance of Trill – including their symbiont caves. Trill symbionts live for quite some time and perhaps it’s possible the answer lay with them.

Good observations Rusty I hadn’t really considered the relevance of the Trill in the story but that’s a credible theory.

That’s been my impression since they announced this whole Lost Federation premise. They would do some bogus timy-whimy reset in the end and tie the season up in a bow. It’s what ST fans are conditioned to expect, it’s what they’re conditioned to want. It’s also a terrible idea. It’s one of ST’s longest running cliches. There is no originality left in it. The audience is WAY ahead of you, miles ahead.

I have to partly agree with this. I never understood this obsession with fixing the timeline? I understand a lot the times you have to fix it because there is no Star Trek per se in most of these crazy alteration stories stories like from City on the Edge of Forever to First Content. Stuff like that is just a given.

But then you take something like the first Kelvin movie which happened IN ANOTHER UNIVERSE and year after year you have fans still yelling they have to ‘fix’ the timeline. Why?????????????? So things just changed, it’s fiction, just let it be different for the sake of being different. One former poster went on and on and on about it and why he hated those movies. He kept bringing it up its not ‘real’ Star Trek until apparently both Vulcan and Romulus was safe and sound. And why so many don’t consider those movies canon because they simply felt too different from what we know that came before. In this case that was the POINT!!!

Sometimes, and I’m not pretending I’m not like this at times, but people get so anal about so many things in this show. That’s why writers ARE afraid to take risks at times, because if it violates canon in any way fans revolt. They throw in a lot of creative ideas all the time, but if it doesn’t end the status quo then fans want to revolt. That was the biggest issue with DS9. Yeah its beloved now, but back then people did have tons of problems because it tried to go another way (although it always fixed the timeline lol).

I’m not in love with the Kelvin movies but that was the idea I TRULY loved, just see events play out differently than what we know and because they bent over backwards and said it happened in another universe it really shouldn’t bother people so much of it was changed.

And yet it did.

I know some fans at the time griped, very specifically, that the ship didn’t get swallowed into that black hole at the end and become TOS-ified after reemerging into the Prime continuity through a white hole or something crazy. Which to me makes no physical sense at all. And yet to some people (admittedly just a few in evidence) conditioned by years of watching ST, it did.

Now that you mention it… It really does boggle my mind that some whined so hard about the re-imagined Trek ’09. As you say they bent over backwards to say the original universe is still intact and there but this is just another timeline simultaneously existing along with the prime one. So why get so strung up about it? Maybe I feel that way because I enjoyed those films. Sure, there were some things that I was not a huge fan of that I wish they did differently. But in the end they were a new take on our beloved crew. And I was fine with that. Me, if it had just been a straight reboot (which it essentially was AFAIC) I still would have been fine with it as it didn’t mean all the other Trek was whisked away. Another feature or show could have easily picked it up. It’s really not a big deal. Some people really have a tough time with any kind of change.

“Finding the domino that started it all”(paraphrased) is in the trailer, it’s not an obsessive need to fix the timeline as much as it is just connecting the dots. Whether or not they return to the 23rd century on a permanent basis isn’t something I’m concerned with, it’s the phrasing of trying to find out what went wrong. Starfleet officers tend to not sit on their hands when they see a problem(especially Burnham), and the Federation being all but a memory would likely be considered a big problem. It’s more a question of who on the ship would look at what this probable future looks like and think, “I think I can fix this” over “Well, orders are orders, guess we’ll just accept how things are now.”

The producers are already on record saying they are never coming back. It was a one way trip.

The same producers who said we would never see Spock on Discovery?

Seriously. Producers and showrunners lie all the time.

So the Federation has fallen on hard times in the 32nd century… fascinating!

Starfleet is a “ghost”, what happened to the Federation now. Have they lost their way?

All empires end. The Federation won’t be any different.

I think they should put “based on Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda” in the credits.

Is Andromeda related to Star Trek? Never herd of that before?

It’s a show created by Roddenberry and developed by Robert Hewett (sp?) Wolfe a writer on DS9. It’s streaming on PlutoTV and Amazon Prime.

Majel Barrett, after being widowed, seemed for some time to be finding old Gene Roddenberry stuff (notebooks maybe), dusting them off, and selling the rights to televise it as long as the studio agreed to put “Gene Roddenberry’s . . .” above the title. There were at least two of these, right? I was wondering if “Gene Roddenberry’s Post-it notes” would eventually turn up.

Hey, I don’t begrudge any income Ms. Barrett was able to get from selling her late husband’s “intellectual property,” more power to her. And I liked her. My favorite line of hers was “Warp core breach, a lot sooner than you think!”

Yeah, Earth: Final Conflict was another of these. Much like Star Trek prophesied the flip phone, E:FC nailed the smartphone phenomenon ON THE HEAD with the “global”. Back in the 90’s, the concept of a pocket communications device with a touchscreen and a camera (and possibly some sensor stuff? I don’t remember) was incredibly sci-fi, and now everyone has ’em.

I believe EARTH: FINAL CONFLICT is also streaming on Amazon Prime.

It was a show they came up with after the death of Roddenberry. They said it was based on one of his concepts. I don”t know if that was true or pure marketing. It had the same premise: A captain of a Federation like organisation who was in cold sleep and wakes up hunderds of years later to find the universe in chaos. I newer watched more than the pilot. Didn’t like it. I’m sure Discovery will be much better.

Andromeda was a lot more developed than a back of the envelop piece.

My understanding is that the Andromeda concept and pilot had been kicking around for some time. It was more or less a mash between Star Trek and Roddenberry’s take on the 50s/60s/70s post-Armageddon wave of sci-fi.

Roddenberry tried to launch more than one post-Armageddon stories during the 1970s, all of which involved a male character being in some kind of stasis or sleep and waking up centuries later to a fallen post-nuclear Earth. The main character, Dylan Hunt, is a man out of time trying to uphold the values of the lost government.

Genesis Two and Planet Earth were two pilots that were made and then broadcast as made-for-TV movies.

Andromeda use the same name (Dylan Hunt) for the hero, but instead of a single man who sleeps through Armageddon it’s an admiral in his self-aware ship thrown forward in a time anomaly who finds that his Systems Commonwealth (Federation analogue) has been betrayed and defeated by a key member species. Hunt and Andromeda’s mission is to restore the fallen System Commonwealth and its ideals.

Soo, you already know what’s going to happen in DSC S3?

Joking, but now I won’t be surprised if this is the season’s plot.

ANDROMEDA was awful. The folks complaining about acting on Discovery should watch one episode of ANDROMEDA to learn what bad acting really looks like.

Our household has found Andromeda unwatchable. And we’ve given it a sincere try.

That said, if anyone wants to know what Roddenberry’s original Bat-people concept for the Ferengi would have looked like on-screen, Andromeda is there for you.

I have seen some of GR’s other stuff and never liked them. So when Andromeda came out I skipped it completely.

Every time I say to myself ‘maybe I will try that Andromeda show’ I read these boards about it and it always convinces me to stay faaaaar away lol.

It’s the same issue with TAS although I know that show has its supporters at least.

It definitely has that “90s Sci-Fi Show Made In Canada” campiness about it (like Mutant X).

I think the high-concept idea was fine but the ensemble casting was way off and there wasn’t very much chemistry to be found.

Kevin Sorbo was passable but dull, constantly brooding / sulking Tyr Anasazi was like a dollar-store Klingon Zuko (“My HONOR!!!”), Laura Bertram was basically doing Space Willow-from-Buffy and Gordon Woolvett felt like a parallel universe distillation of Andrew Wells and Jonathan Levinson from Buffy as well… Lisa Ryder’s character never felt like she was playing as written, a tough, competent ship captain / space smuggler with a dark family past, a female Han Solo, basically — Ryder made Beka seem a lot more easily flustered, which was a missed opportunity.

Lexa Doig was fine as the sentient computer, but it was constantly confusing to have her on-screen as the computer and then on the set as the android avatar of the computer in the same scene…the edits made it look really amateurish. And then in a case of Stunt Casting they brought her husband, Stargate SG1’s Michael Shanks, on to play a rival ship’s AI and they have to have a CyberSpace Battle(tm).

I have to give Brent Stait credit for doing a relatively understated performance as Rev Bem under all that makeup — which irritated his skin so much he had to leave the show, and only came back for a cameo later with much modified appearance — say what you will about TNG/DS9’s “nose ridge of the week,” it was a lot easier and faster to apply and less harmful for the actors.

One of the cardinal sins of the show was that they constantly talked about how great the Systems Commonwealth was but they rarely showed us how or why. Either through flashbacks or through actions. Why should we care?

Towards the end of the series, it felt like the writers were trying to pile ideas on ideas. Sentient stars? A Big Bad who is the manifestation of pure evil? Our hero is some sort of predestined saviour? AND time travel?

AND a ship whose scale we never quite grasp, that looks like a flying pelvic bone, that depending on which episode you watch, is either Super-Duper-No-Takebacks-Double-Pinky-Swear uber-powerful or constantly breaking down….

If the idea of the time jump originated in season 1, it sounds like they heard the feedback and thought a time jump would free them from restrictions of canon. Now of course had you approached season 1 differently you could’ve started off the show with the time jump or did a better job at making a prequel.

I really expected them to return from the Mirror Universe and find themselves in the far future. Took them a little longer to get there, but it happened eventually.

Yes — when they returned from the mirror universe in season 1, I thought they were going to end up in the immediate post-NEMESIS era.

I think a lot of us did! I remember how excited I felt when they said they went forward in time, I was hoping it was the 24th century but sadly not.

I wonder if this could wind up like Quantum Leap: they attempt to get back to the 23rd century and wind up at different time periods, right some wrong, and keep trying to get home… that could be a really fun Star Trek premise, and allow them to explore different Trek periods with the same crew.

Yeah, but wouldn’t that be more like “Voyagers” and will they meet Jonathan Frakes as Charles Lindbergh?

No it wouldn’t be.

Why not? The concept of QL was to change the timeline the concept of Voyagers to repair it. Do you suggest Starfleet should violate the temporal directive?

EDIT
Or do you think I meant ST Voyager not “Voyagers” the show about two time travelers?

I thought you meant VOY with the concept of “trying to get home.” My bad.

It was confusing. I should made it
more clear. Maybe you should check it out if you like time traveling stuff. If only for Frakes pre Riker.

Technically the temporal Prime Directive does not exist from Discovery’s point of view. However, I think that from a story point of view they simply need to introduce an element that indicates the timeline wasn’t supposed to pan out in this way e.g interference in the past from an individual or group that had traveled back in time or the implication that the timeline was changed because Discovery didn’t do something it was supposed to do in the past when it traveled into the future

Maybe the Temporal-Cold-War starts with DSC ?

While I don’t know if that would make a great story, I think it would be fun to get a name drop– mention Daniels, or Captain Braxton. The kind of thing that would just be world-building to new audiences but would be a nice nod to us hardcore fans.

The idea that they explore different time periods each season is exactly what I’ve suggested up above. However, the moment you travel back in time you alter the timeline. It’s the butterfly effect whereby the repercussions of one small change could have huge implications for the timeline. So if you were proposing that Discovery was to preserve the 32nd century timeline then the only viable way of ensuring this would be for them to isolate themselves from the the rest of the galaxy.

Thank you Akiva for all of your blood, sweat and tears in bringing Star Trek back is such a great way with these fine two series, Discovery and Picard.

Outside of internet fanboy types, the broader set of Trek fans are so proud of what you and the entire Kurtzman Team have accomplished in revitalizing this franchise.

Hear, hear. Well said.

Well said! It’s great to have Trek back in full force!

You forgot the /s there, mate ;)

There are many people today who give up blood and more for their profession. Akiva Goldsman isn’t one of them. Your comment smacks of, at best, sycophancy, or, at worst, astroturfing. Please speak for yourself. No one appointed you to speak for the “broader set of Trek fans” and what makes them “proud.” I’ve spoken to a broad set of Trek fans of the more informed variety. The nice ones view Kurtzman Trek as a disappointment, and the honest ones view Kurtzman Trek as an embarrassment.

got boorish?

Don’t pull any muscles patting yourself on the back there.

Yeah, the funny thing is, I have about 5 or 6 hardcore Trek fan friends, and a dozen more (who are the kind of fans that watches all the shows but don’t obsess over it) and not a single one hates DSC or PIC. At worst, one of my hardcore friends is indifferent. None of them think either show is perfect, and I can think of two specifically who are enthusiastic fans of both shows.

I really don’t know anyone personally who would consider themselves a Trek fan that doesn’t like it. It really feels like a case of the vocal minority, if you ask me.

I even have one friend who went on the cruise, and tells me that most of the attendees are very positive on the new shows.

I personally do not know a lot of people who like Trek. My wife and kid aren’t into it. But I did convince two buddies of mine who are into Trek to share a subscription to CBSAA for the first season. (They had no idea CBSAA existed let alone were aware of a new Trek show. And they were fans!) After watching that first season both said they are not interested in season 2. I personally know no one who is watching the Trek shows at this point. There are colleagues at work who like Trek but not enough to subscribe to CBSAA even for the free trial.

This anecdotal data is just as valuable as yours.

Same with me, except I have a network of “real world” (i.e. apart from the internet) Trek fan friends that numbers close to 50, and I would say around half of them love or like the new series’, a number of others are ambivalent, and I think about 4-5 in total are really down on nuTrek.

I think what we have here is that the fans who don’t like it, tend to be internet fanboy types who love to bitch and moan 24/7 on sites like this — and if you look at this site, it’s like 7-10 people who all can’t stand anything new in Star Trek, who each post like 10-15 times at all hours of the day. THE MOUSE THAR ROARED, basically. LOL

These negative fanboy types are very loud, post a ton, and are sycophants to each other. So you end up with a false perception where a small minority opinion starts to come across to the casual observer as some sort of group-think trend, when nothing could be farther from the truth.

The majority of the broader set of fans either like or love the new direction — that’s why they keep green-lighting new series after new series. Like, DUH!

And hopefully he won’t hurt his knee running on the astroturf. ;-)

I will speak for you and others: I am Vice Admiral Nakamura, I am Vulcan Soul, and I love the new era of Trek!

Agree, and well said! We’re in the midst of the Second Golden Age of Trek!

Thanks. Yes, we are!

Hmm. Hundreds of years in the future and the federation has been disbanded and it’s up to one ship and crew to try and re build it. Have we not seen this before on another show.
Oh yes. Gene Roddenberry’s Andramada. They did just that. Discovery is just rehashing an old script. Just using it as Star Trek. Andramada was actually a good show. I enjoyed it a lot. Will have to see how Discovery handles their version of the original Gene Roddenberry Script.

Oh the whiners are a little late to the party.

I don’t think that seeing the parallels with the Andromeda concept is whining at all. (See also my discussion further along this thread). But I also don’t see that Andromeda was the last word on the concept.

Roddenberry took several cracks at his “Dylan Hunt” post-Armageddon idea. I saw both Genesis II and Planet Earth as a teen.

Andromeda, Dylan Hunt Mark III, was more or less a mash between Star Trek and Roddenberry’s take on the 50s/60s/70s post-Armageddon wave of sci-fi.

Andromeda threw Dylan Hunt (repackaged as a ‘Systems Commonwealth’ admiral) and his self-aware ship forward via a classic Trek-style time anomaly to a future where finds that his Systems Commonwealth has been betrayed and defeated by nihilists.

However unwatchable many of us find Roddenberry’s Andromeda property as it was executed as a series, to take the concept and do it with an entire crew on Discovery shifted forward through time seems much more compelling. Given that the Roddenberry estate is represented through Rod Roddenberry, there would be no IP issues.

One of the key points of Star Trek is that ideal societies will be challenged and threatened, but through the determined efforts and leadership of those who hold on to the values, solve problems and refuse to give into despair, the ideal society will continue. I don’t see the Andromeda concept as inconsistent with that.

More than that, after nearly two decades of post 9/11 grimdark, I’m more than ready for a show that consciously and unapologetically takes on nihilism.

It’s not just seeing parallels, but the way it is phrased, as if it’s a negative… Being thrust into a dystopian future is hardly a concept original to Andromeda, too. That it was also by Roddenberry doesn’t mean they are just riffing on that.

Because let’s face it: having them thrust into the future where everything is just fine is not dramatically interesting. And as i’ve said for years, going well beyond VOY is difficult without some kind of galactic reset. This is that galactic reset.

I said this for years: that if they wanted to go 100 years hence, they’d have to show some kind of cataclysm that decimated the quadrant, thrust it into war, destroyed the Federation, or otherwise created some new status quo.

I’m not trying to be a hipster, but I for one saw this coming years ago when they first announced Trek was coming back.

One of the reasons I disliked Andromeda was that I thought it was an interesting concept but belonged to the Star Trek universe. For me at that time the Andromeda universe felt like a cheap knock off. I don’t want to trash Andromeda because I’ve not seen enough of it, but now I’m positively looking forward to this concept been installed into it’s “right” place.

I’m with you Odarek. I’m actually seeing Discovery in the 33rd century as a much more promising option.

So much in Andromeda seemed to indicate that Gene Roddenberry wanted to set it the Star Trek universe. The differences between the utopian and diverse galaxy spanning Systems Commonwealth and the Federation were mainly in the names.

So, it always seemed that Roddenberry was really trying to come up with a way to put his “Dylan Hunt transported through time to a post-Armageddon future” storyline that he’d been playing with and making pilots for since the early 70s into the overall framework of his utopian Star Trek multiracial society.

If you look at it this way, getting Andromeda made as a television series was Majel’s way to realize a long term ambition of her late husband’s, not just to make money from the estate.

I’ve never been able to watch more than a couple of episodes of Andromeda (despite recording it), and our kids can’t get through more than the odd episode either. Roddenberry’s core idea was interesting though, even if stuck with the Dylan Hunt and rag-tag crew trope.

I liked the first iteration of Dylan Hunt in Genesis II best, he seemed to get more annoying through each morph. Frankly, Anson Mount’s Pike is the closest to the original.

So, I’m cool with Discovery giving this a try.

Well, maybe.

But then George Lucas claimed that he had the whole trilogy planned from day one (e.g., that he knew that Vader and Anakin were the same person, and that Luke and Leia were siblings), which we know isn’t true, and then he claimed that the Special Editions were what he always wanted, and then he claimed that the prequel trilogy was always part of the plan… (He was out of the way when the sequel trilogy was made.)

Forgive me if I’m a bit cynical.

The story that I heard and seems the most reasonable to me was Lucas’ original concept was VERY long. When it was finally made he basically decided to condense things down to what he deemed to be just the first act and moved the 3rd act finale to the end of his movie. After the success he was able to go back to his full treatment, albeit altered some to account for the changes he made to get it made in the first place. The prequels was just the backstory he had concocted. He may have decided he would film them at some point in the future after the original trilogy. Now episodes 7, 8 & 9 is where things get a bit messy. There are reports that Lucas had those episodes mapped out in his head as it was reported long ago that he had, after 4, 5 & 6, mapped out a 9 part saga. Later he claimed not to. Then more recently there were stories that he advised Disney what his concepts were and Disney decided not to go that route. I guess only George knows for sure.

As far as I can see, Lucas made changes throughout the development. You can find eine of his scripts online and the story is simplistic at the beginning and ist gets much complex in the later scripts. Also names and characters changed and switched in each script. Also the final edit of episode 4 differs from the final script.

I think it is fair to say, that he had some ideas for all of the movies, but a complete fully fleshed out Story: I do think so.

Rocket Jump Film School did a video, “How Star Wars was Saved in the Edit”, which used recovered footage from a test screening that got nothing but scorn from his filmmaking buddies. That test screening was very similar to the shooting script.

My favourite bad thing about that test screening is either the very long opening crawl going deep into the galactic politics of the day – very Phantom Menace vibes from reading that – or how they had many minutes of Luke just staring at the sky at a blurry star destroyer going “what’s that?” and going to a bar (or something) Biggs is at to get his take on it too.

Given how much the later films in the original trilogy, and then the prequels, matched up to details in his original boring New Hope opening crawl, to say he had a lot of the worldbuilding planned out from the very beginning seems accurate. That doesn’t necessarily mean he had every major event planned out, but he always seemed stronger on worldbuilding than narrative anyway.

As I recall his original concepts for 7, 8 and 9 were essentially overwritten by Return of the Jedi. Without googling it I couldn’t recite the specifics but as I recall both Vader and the Emperor would have survived the middle trilogy with Palpatine being the big bad of the final three films. At this stage of ROTJ’s development I think that Boba Fett was expected to be the main antagonist that the heroes would face off against.

I’m no giant Star Wars guy but this is the first I’ve heard of this version. I guess we may never know.

I just had a little look on google to see if I was getting mixed up and it seems that it was widely reported back in 2016. I tried posting a link but it didn’t work but if you search for Boba Fett main Return of the Jedi villain you’ll find plenty of reports on it.

in 77 and 80, Leia was not the sister. In 77 Vader was not the father. He literally made it all up as he went. Just like he never originally intended for Han to shoot second or Greedo to yell maclunky. It is rather something that Lucas erased the originals from existence, so people believe all those cartoon cgi effects he added later were always there. Or that Hayden was always at the end of return of the jedi, when i know Shaw used to be there.

Prediction – the series will conclude with Michael Burnham as the President of the UFP

I cannot believe for one second that the idea to shoot them into the far future was planned from day one. No way no how. The closest I think it could get is going back to the now defunct anthology concept of having a different cast in different eras each season. The far future could have been something that was spoken about back then. But certainly not once that concept was jettisoned.

I really hope I’m wrong about what is going to happen in season 3. Because the concept that seems the most obvious to me based on what we’ve seen is a HUGE facepalm.

Which is?

I think it amazingly obvious that the storyline would be Burnham shows up in the future, the Federation is in tatters or the brink of ending or done altogether. She shows everyone how great a thing it was and gets them all on track to rebuilding what was.

If that is not the story or even elements of the story they get some kudos for not going with the obvious. But they would still need to do a good story. Which STD has yet to do.

Why is that a facepalm story? Trek fans near universally want an optimistic story, and the idea of someone from the past showing a dystopian future the way things used to be, and how to rebuild, sounds like something that would give it that sense of “gee whiz” optimism. As you say, still needs to be done well, but not sure why the premise itself is facepalm-worthy.

It’s face palm worthy because its so very obvious and tired and worn and used. It shows very little imagination on the part of the writers. And, quite frankly, that makes it a very lazy story.

Oh brother.

This is not a tired, used, worn out concept. Get with it, friend.

Yeah I don’t have a problem with the idea either. But I know it would get a lot of groans if its Burnham herself that saves the future Federation.

“Get with it” says the guy who absolutely is not trying to be a hipster.

Well, it is tired and worn. And even if you disagree I think it nearly impossible not to call it obvious. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see Burnham give another “we are Star Fleet” type thing at the end that convinces everyone how great the Federation was. I really hope I’m wrong. You have no idea how much I hope I am wrong. I’m a fan and I want Star Trek to be good.

I’m with ML31 on this; the concept sounds trite. Now, it’s true that execution is more than half the battle; we’ll see how Discovery implements this idea in practice. They do have a compelling set of characters, but they also seem to have some fundamental issues with breaking a riveting story (in a way that PICARD does not, incidentally). That’s why I’m a bit pessimistic on the “Andromeda redux” ideal.

Furthermore, so much of what we remember about Star Trek is contextual — Spock and Sarek, Picard and Robert, Will and Kyle Riker, Lwaxana and Deanna, T’Pol and her mother. The Sarek-Burnham plotline was one of Discovery’s best, for precisely this reason. Stranding the crew a millennium hence removes these relationships from the equation entirely.

VOY suffered from similar problems; aside from a small ongoing subplot with Tom Paris’ father, we knew nothing about the VOY characters’ history. Seven, of course, was the exception, and to a lesser extent, the Doctor; that’s why we remember them as the breakout characters. By contrast, with Janeway, the writers had to resort to contextualizing her by doing a show about a distant ancestor, Shannon O’Donnell, who coincidentally looked exactly like her. I fear Discovery is about to repeat these mistakes.

I don’t know about that. Logically, and showing an uncharacteristic amount of foresight, they probably had a writers room/producers conference (they likely had to rent out a meeting room at the Hilton because there are so many producers) that said something to the effect of:

“OK, we’re going to go ahead and change the Klingons, change the way ships look, give Spock a sister that he never talked about, like he never talked about his brother (and look how that turned out, but moving forward), and make fundamental changes to how Star Trek works, and we’re going to set this in the past, as if this stuff PREDATES everything we know.”

And then a small, high pitched voice in the back pipes up. The sole canon freak in the group. And he/she says “OK, I guess I can be on board with this, but it’s likely to piss a lot of people off. How about, as a backup plan, if people get upset by this (despite the fact that EVERYBODY loves a prequel), we can have them jump to the future for a season or two just until everybody cools off. Or if it works out, we can leave them there.”

And then Kurtzman says, “Yeah, sure, Poindexter. That’s a fair point. Someone write that down. SO ANYWAY, let’s get on to how everyone uses holograms for all communications now. People are going to LOVE this!”.

And thus, the idea was there from the beginning, but as a damage control backup, not a main plot goal.

LOL! I can almost envision that happening. ;)

And the funny thing is… We get a Sybok kind of situation in Burnham but even she, nor anyone else ever speaks about Sybok.

Sybok was older than Spock. Quite possibly he was exiled by the time Burnham showed up.

True but no one ever mentioned Sybok once. In season 2 there were perfect obvious opportunities where it would have VERY organically fit. But they decided to ignore it. I find it ironic that the Burnham people think they are “cool” enough (for lack of a better term) to ice out Sybok when there are so very many similarities.

Yeah I agree. I mean if you’re going to give him a sister after 50 years who is IN STARFLEET along with him and we’re suppose to just pretend this has all been par for the course then you can throw out Sybok’s freaking name once in a conversation. I find it odd how some people want to argue why Burnham is canon but then want to pretend Sybok isn’t. I get people may not like the character but its an odd argument to have.

Just because you didn’t like a show or movie doesn’t mean those events aren’t canon. I don’t like STD but accept that Spock now has an adoptive sister even though the show is not good and and the sister I felt was a poor creative choice. I’m not a fan of TVH but I accept that they went back in time and saved some whales, as ridiculous as that was.

I just thought it weird that Discovery creating Burnham is the EXACT same thing as creating Sybok. Yet no one on the Burnham show even speaks Sybok’s name when it seemed they very much could have. It’s almost like even the producers of STD wanted to pretend TFF never happened. Which I find the height of arrogance.

“give Spock a sister that he never talked about…”

He also had famous parents he never talked about. Indeed, he had parents who betrothed him but *didn’t even show up at his wedding*.

Spock didn’t discuss his family. If you dislike that, blame Roddenberry and TOS, not Dsicovery.

Roddenberry called Sybok apocryphal. He had nothing to do with it. It was a Shatnerian money grab, because he was too sick to defend it, and it bombed. And Discovery didn’t learn from that mistake, or worse, was callously rubbing salt in that wound. I blame Discovery.

And Spock and his parents were still estranged during the wedding. They weren’t there because he didn’t want them there, and it would be illogical to upset him on his blessed day.

Roddenberry also hated Star Trek II. Why should we take his opinion as gospel?

Trek has a long history of retconning character’s pasts: from major things like Bashir’s genetic engineering, to little things like Kirk’s middle name. From Sisko strongly implying his father was dead in the first season, to Tuvok revealing his “first career in starfleet” in ‘Flashback.’

And it’s not even the first time they revealed an unmentioned sibling: Mother Troi had a second daughter, Tasha Yar had a sister we’d never heard of, and Data had a mother Soong had somehow never mentioned.

Certainly it’s more head-scratching because Spock is a character we knew a lot more about prior to DSC, but Spock is one of the few characters I can reasonably believe would not talk about an estranged sister. He is a Vulcan after all.

The hubbub over them being related is not really a big deal.

Though I can totally understand the gripe that it feels contrived, because it is. I think my biggest gripe is that it simply wasn’t necessary. You could easily have had Burnham be an orphan raised on Vulcan who Sarek took under his wing to mentor.

“I cannot believe for one second that the idea to shoot them into the far future was planned from day one. No way no how.”

To be fair he didn’t say day one, he only said season one which means they probably decided to go into the future when all the canon issues sprouted up with fan complaints and wanted to change the setting a bit. And yeah that makes sense since they were already working on season 2 when season 1 was airing. He may not mean before the show started airing.

But I LOVE the idea. I always wanted a fallen Federation story line. It was one of the reasons I thought Bryan Singer’s Star Trek idea, Federation, was great. I remember reading that idea on this site (when I was just a lurker then) and it had the same idea of a fallen and stagnant Federation. It even took place to around this show’s timeline, the 31st century.

OK. Fair point. He could have thought about that was how they would deal with it WHILE season one was still “airing.” (for lack of a better term) But in my defense it read like that was the plan from the start.

I’m glad you like the fall of the federation idea. I’m not against it myself, per se… But I’d like for it to NOT involve time travelers. I’d rather see the Fuller concept of it happening to people who are of that time frame. It’s not my favorite concept but I’d rather see it than the Section 31 show.

I only believe that because we know the first show runners originally DIDN’T want to throw Discovery in the future at all and made it clear at the time they thought it would be a bad idea and should stick to its original setting. I always get a chuckle reading this article now seeing where we are today:

https://trekmovie.com/2017/11/16/star-trek-discovery-showrunner-dismisses-post-voyager-setting-says-s2-will-reconcile-canon/

And that was said just a few months after Discovery premiered so CLEARLY they didn’t have that idea on day one unless you want to believe they were just trying to throw off us but I doubt it lol.

So yes I think that’s what Goldsman means, IF he’s telling the truth and that the idea was probably born while season 1 was running and they were coming up with ideas for season 2.

And that article makes it VERY clear just how much this show switched gears. I think they had a very different idea where they wanted season two go in just by reading that article because they talked about how they envisioned sthe show building up to TOS from season 2 on and canon would be ‘resolved’ that way.

But then it sounds like the blacklash got REAL lol, they panicked and just decided to start completely over with a totally new direction. These were the same people who said also that year we would never see Spock on this show only for the guy to have a major story line in it one season later. So yeah, obviously there were a lot of top down changes when fans balked at what they were seeing and the chorus of wanting to see the show in a post-Nemesis setting got louder.

And to their credit, they listened and made those changes. But how well it will come off remains to be seen.

I’m sure that a lot of very different ideas are thrown around and discussed when developing a show or a season of a show. Based on the article you linked Harberts didn’t want to move the show forward in time. Doesn’t mean that it wasn’t discussed as an option.
Obviously, it’s impossible for outsiders to know what ideas were discussed and whose ideas “won out” in the end. Whatever ideas they once had may have been (1) changed in response to fan reaction, or (2) because they realized themselves that something didn’t work as they expected, or (3) because the people who advocated that idea are gone now.

Well yeah, I don’t disagree with any of that. I’m only making the point clearly there was a major change and most likely it went above him for the change because I doubt he would’ve been so adamant about saying it publicly if he knew that’s where it was going to go later.

And for the record its nothing wrong for him to feel that way but I always thought how short sighted that idea was, ESPECIALLY for someone who is running Star Trek. And its especially short sighted because they are now doing these things he thought was not feasible and more. But to be fair about it, even I never thought going so far into the future would happen with Discovery itself, just possibly with future shows.

@Tiger2: If I remember correctly Harberts and Berg were Fuller’s choice as showrunners after he left. If Fuller was very passionate about Discovery being set in the 23rd century maybe they wanted to keep it there out of some sense of loyalty. The interview is from shortly after the show’s premiere.
If you look at season 2 of Discovery you get the impression that the end of the season doesn’t quite match with what was set up in the beginning. Now this could just be bad planning but it’s also possible the ending of the season was changed after Harberts and Berg were fired as showrunners.

The irony in this post DIGINON is that I actually argued that same position in that article I linked to. I basically said Harberts probably just felt protected of the show and wanted to make it clear they just wanted to defend the choices that the show was in the right setting. I definitely disagreed but sure I get it. They don’t want to say ‘yeah, it would probably flow better in another time period’ because then it would throw doubt on what they were doing if they believed it or not. And I can’t fault them for wanting to defend the premise of the show because it did come from Fuller and they were only working on the show because he hired them to work with him in the first place. It would feel like a knock against him.

And man wouldn’t you like to be a fly in that room when the three of them got together after all the drama and just spilled their guts out lol. We know they probably talked about it together since all the firings.

But they were definitely part of the changes in season 2 from the beginning. They oversaw the first five episodes before they were fired and as Goldsman said (the entire reason any of this was brought up) the going forward idea happened when they were still running the show. So yeah they just changed course basically. I would’ve like to have known how they originally saw season 2 if it didn’t involve time travel and the Red Angel stuff but I doubt we’ll know, if there was another idea first.

Last time federation was mentioned was in the 29th century with the federation time ship relativity. In enterprise the temperal cold War took place during the 30th century but no mention of the federation just the time agents do their uniforms look suspiciously familiar. Something tells me the collapse of the federation into the good bit the bad bit which may end up being earth and then anyone else in between. Time travel also three centuries old by the 32nd century. My guess is admiral Cornwell and maybe even pike are from the future and discovery hasn’t come to the future by accident. See the scene with Cornwell and pike in transporter room.

I canceled my Netflix but wasn’t that Georgiou?

im diggin’ this so much… we have picard present day for trek doing 10 part movies… gonna have strange new worlds prequel being stand alone with threads to run through the series… and serialized discovery far in future… now bring back ds9 and i’ll be totally happy

Same!

I love this idea. SNW stays in the 23rd century, Picard in the 25th century and Discovery in the 32nd. And don’t forget Lower Decks will be in the 24th century. Who knows when the other animated show takes place. It could be a post-Picard time period, maybe the 25th or 26th century. I love that Star Trek now represents multiple time eras at the same time. This is the kind of thing I dreamed about for a long time. It gives them a lot of choices to do anything they want since a lot of these shows will be at least a century or more away from each other.

It’d be a nice continuity touch if Future Guy popped up somewhere this season. Actually, he’d probably only have to suffer the misfortune of either being lectured by Cmdr Mary Sue or have to listen to a spaz attack c/o Cadet Silly. Perhaps he’d do better to hide under some coats and hope that somehow everything works out.

Would love to see Daniels back at least. He was born in the 31st century and could still just be living by the time Discovery shows up later. No time travel required. ;)

Why not both? Who says that the future guy isnt Daniels? ;-) oh…wait…the producers would make Burnham aka red angel becoming the future guy…

This time jumping to avoid canon messes could have been avoided if they had just set the show in Season 1 POST ST6. While in the middle of canon eras, it wouldn’t pose the predicaments of setting it 10 years before K&S. The Klingon Empire being in chaos wouldn’t have been a big surprise and they wouldn’t have to retcon the technology as much. Instead of running into Pike you could’ve had them run into the Enterprise B with its new captain who came in on Tuesday. Familiar ship, new crew. They could’ve even thrown in S31 stuff as being more prominent after their rogue adventure involving an assassination of the Klingon chancellor. Oh and Discovery could’ve been a ship that traveled with a revised transwarp drive system (no weird fungi business).

But that’s just me.

I’ve been saying for years the prime era for a new show would be post TUC. And I wish they set Discovery there. That would have solved a lot of their canon issues. But there still would have been plotting and writing issues.

Seems like a Andromeda rip off

I might be more open to this if the last two seasons of Discovery, Picard, and elements of the Kelvinverse movies hadn’t already cast the Federation as a deeply troubled power in need of reform or saving.

So having said that, I’m looking forward to Strange New Worlds. I mean, if they really are going to the frontier and getting into all sorts of weird alien trouble instead of it being about inner turmoil again. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I’ve seen inner turmoil a lot lately. Not just in Trek.

Inner turmoil went viral. The Federation can’t last forever. All empires have a expiration date. It is no different.

Star Trek is not immune to the perpetual chaos.

Indeed, nor am I immune to the fatigue of repetitive themes.

We have no clue what the Red Angel can do.

Looking forward to great entertaining science fiction. Please make it so.

The Federation is dead. Starfleet is a ghost long past its glory days. The Roman Empire all over again. The future is not rainbows and roses anymore. We are not in Kansas anymore Jim.

Strange New Worlds is so Star trek. Discovery is not that, it’s something else entirely. The world is already experiencing enough inner turmoil already.

The escapism is non-existent here and that’s sad.

So: in ?Which? season will they go back in time to stop the Klingon attack on Vulcan and therefore entirely erase this entire timeline?

Time travel is not that simple. It doesn’t work that way. Klingons didn’t attack Vulcan. Vulcan was attacked by terrorists.

I’m just hoping that if STD gets a final season they will do some sort of timey whimey thing that wipes out their entire existence in the prime timeline. If they want, they can continue to exist and go on in an alternate timeline. But they really have no place in the prime one.

My opinion, of course. (I cannot believe I need to add this but some people will have a little hissy fit if I do not state the intuitively obvious)

LOL man that’s brutal! You literally want Discovery’s ENTIRE existence erased from the prime timeline?

But of course if that’s how you feel, that’s how you feel. I just don’t see the point of it I guess, especially since you have argued Burnham having a sister isn’t a canon violation (which I think it is as you know but yeah its fiction so I can live with it at least).

The reason I say that is because of the piss poor production choice to make the show look like it either belonged in the 25th century or the KU. IMHO the radical changes made really mess up the lore. And again, I am NOT endorsing they reproduce the exact same sets from 1964. I’m stunned some people even think that. The show did need to get upgraded for modern TV. But it could have been done and STILL evoke more of the feel of the era they were in. That’s all. Even Enterprise was able to update but feel like was more than a century before Kirk. And of course, it doesn’t help that the show was so very bad. And yes, I do not consider the sister a canon violation but I do consider it a bad creative choice. Shoving the show into their own alternate time line undoes that decision. The only way they could have “fixed” the issues with Discovery was to move it to an alternate universe and set it so it never existed in the prime one. Sending them into the future and shutting up the Enterprise crew about them doesn’t fix any of the shows production problems.

Well you know how I feel about it and not too far from how you feel. Yes, it was CLEARLY a mistake to make this show a prequel and should have been a post-Voyager show on day one. People like us been saying this forever….I just never thought in 900 years they would actually listen to us and do it lol. And yet they did.

But yeah the damage is done now but I give them credit for realizing their mistake and rectifying it. To me, personally that’s enough. And they already basically wiped it from existence in terms of Starfleet since Burnham and Discovery has been officially deemed destroyed by Control. Again assuming they never EVER come back and there is really no reason to anyway.

Yeah they made errors and the show never aligned with the era it was in but I don’t think they need to completely erase it from existence either. Just keep it in the 32nd century while Pike and the Enterprise slowly (in theory anyway) make that production feel closer to the 23rd century which should’ve been done all along and everyone (or most) is happy.

Well I did not have too much of a problem setting the show when they did. My problem (apart from the writing, plotting and pretty much the characters they came up with which is far more important in my book) was that they made the show not look right. From the ship itself to the tech to the clothes they wore. NOTHING on that show looked 10 years pre-Kirk. Nothing. If someone had no idea when it was set they would have rightly assumed it took place a few decades post Nemesis if not more. This was an obvious mistake. One that people who claim to know Trek and respect it should have never made. It felt like the intent was to make it a complete reboot but after production started someone changed their mind and wanted it to be in the prime U. But it was too late to change anything. Because of this, the only solution that would completely free them from canon and their production mistakes would be to send them to an alternate reality and tie up the prime U to the point where they never existed. At this point I honestly do not care what year they would end up in, just as long as nothing about them exists in prime history. Shutting up the crew doesn’t solve the problem. Someone will talk. All they did was legally remove them from history. But not in reality. It’s like when you annul a marriage. Legally it never happened yet there are photos, witnesses, people who were there…. So it DID happen. To me, that doesn’t solve their canon issues in the slightest. It felt monumentally lazy and didn’t seem like it was thought through in any way. Which is why I fear for season 3.

No I wouldn’t had an issue with it either if they did it better the first time. Again we are saying the same thing, just differently lol. That’s why I’m rooting and excited for SNW but I’m also assuming they are going to get it more right out of the gate like Discovery should’ve did. And based on what we seen of it on Discovery it did feel like a vast improvement and why so many people are excited for it.

And I understand what you mean about Discovery but you can’t expect the producers to decanonize their own show. No one would ever go that far. It’s exactly the same things with fans who think the kelvin films should be ‘fixed’ by erasing everything that happened in all three films by restoring the original timeline. No writer would do that with their own work and basically imply none of the stories exists. Same with Discovery.

I think at most you’re only going to get is what they already did and just ‘classified’ what really happened to the the ship and technically took it out of existence that way. And we know how much they love to classify things on that show. ;)

OK. I now see the similarities between me wanting Discovery out of the prime universe and those who want to remove the KU altogether. But unlike those folks, I am not saying Discovery should cease to exist. Just do what it looked like they should have done to begin with. Let it be a reboot and do that by jumping them into an alternate reality. Like the KU. Both exist simultaneously. But them doing that would be them severely swallowing some heavy slices of humble pie. As you said I just don’t see them admitting they made such a mistake. But it is what I was hoping would happen as I was watching season 2. Especially since they claimed they would solve all their canon issues. Which I still don’t think they did. Not one bit.

I’ve already solved that problem. Cancelled CBS AA a few weeks back. If I can’t see it, it doesn’t exist!

They could also go the other way and make time crystals cannon and use them to re-enforce the story: sort of like the way they used Q in TNG

Worth noting, for those who don’t believe him, that Goldsman doesn’t say the idea to go to the far flung future pre-dated the series, or come from the original premise– he just says “it’s an idea that goes back to season 1.”

It could have been at any time during the production of season 1, and the fact that “Calypso” (which may tie into this) aired just a year later, suggests it was at least conceived of well before Season 2.

So, when do we meet the re cast Dylan Hunt? Or did the just keep kevin Sorbo.

Lol

In my view, Discovery shares several elements in common with Singer’s unproduced Federation series. For instance, the lead was not the captain and the Federation was in decline. I’d very much like to see an article comparing the two done by someone who has more insight into both than I do.

“Aaron Harberts and Gretchen Berg, the original showrunners from season one, that idea dates all the way back to that.”

Really now? Because Robert Meyer Burnett says that the idea dates back even further, because he came up with something very similar. But of course this is going to be different, because the “stunning and brave” Mikey Sue Spock as always is the key to everything.

Help us, Mikey Sue Spock. You’re our only hope!!

31st century Earth and Federation were just fine in Enterprise, going by Daniels’ reaction in Enterprise: Shockwave. I wonder if Discovery is going to acknowledge that, in which case whatever puts the Federation in ruins in the 32nd century only happened the last 100 years.

I think that’s precisely why they chose the 32nd century. I think they looked at all the “futures” that have been more concretely shown in Trek (the ones that directly affected episodes), and then went 100 years past that. I caught that right away when they said 900 years forward, in the finale.

Agreed. That’s why I think as well the show is in the 32nd century because the Federation sounds like it was humming along relatively fine through the 31st century. The only other thing I can think of is that Discovery herself could’ve changed the timeline somehow at an earlier date but if not than what happened probably happened in the last 100 years as both you and Yistaan are suggesting.

And then then that would leave the last 600+ years relatively alone and future writers don’t have that as some huge burden canon wise as Star Trek will naturally go more into other centuries in time.

For me, I just want to know when to expect S3 to premiere. Look everyone knows post-production slowed down because of the pandemic, but adjust to the new world and get it done. No things won’t be perfect but if you can’t have a 100 piece orchestra doing the music or certain FX are not quite 100 percent, tough – make do with what you can. There is no guarantee of a vaccine coming this year, so post production should be prepared to adjust. If the producers don’t want to cut corners because of quality, fine that is their decision and its their show – please just let us know it is on hold indefinitely so we can expect it in late 2020 or sometime in 2021. If that is not the decision, then read the post production team the riot act, set a deadline for them to complete the job and announce a date for S3. Sorry for the tirade folks. Okay back to work haha.

Man we ALL want that! ;D

I think they are in a holding position because they probably don’t know themselves yet. That’s happening with a lot of industries right now. But they did suggest it would be in 2020 at least but yes it could be later. I’m just going to assume it will be around fall at the earliest. If it happens sooner I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Akiva has managed to fail upward for years. ST: Picard was abysmal. New Trek is nothing more than moody retcon fanservice. Alex Kurtzman is a hack!

I thought Picard was full of an service to the point where it was distracting. Not that I’m against fan service. I love it. But I love pizza, too. And I’m not going to eat it every day. In this case, less is more.

I just got to say that I love the concept – the TNG Federation was stagnant, boring and nonsensical. I think they should double down on the concept and not hide with time travel (the instant that they go back in time to change the time line, they are heartless for not going back to stop WW2, WW3, etc).
I see it like this – already in TNG you have it where people seem to think free energy is a reality and exploration is boring (they play in the holodeck). When reminded space turned out to be hard (Dominion War) and they can live as androids (Picard) I think you can see half would want to head to the winery or the cabin at the lake and just eat pizza.
You then have organics relegated to the dust bin while perfect AI Data’s take over Starfleet. Turns out that’s what the Borg wanted, Picard was being unknowingly “pushed” into AI development for just that very reason (I’d have it where what is left of the Federation actually turns out to be an farm for the Borg given while new AI is improved, it still needs organics to copy and make new entities, but since the lazy humans are the ones who stayed back they actually go out to abduct and capture those on the frontier).
You have the explorers in the Federation leaving with society essentially seeing them as uncivilized rednecks to the point the AI command decides to ban having privative organics “contaminating” the universe causing half of the races to leave.
The other half ends up in a police state dominated by AI where they are content to play in the holodeck even as the power production drops off as dilthium crystals decay and are not replaced by mining.
The Discovery then returns and has to remind the universe that hard work and exploration have a pay-off. You end up with a battle to restore TOS Wagon Train to the Stars which I think is exactly what Trek is engaged in anyway wither TPTB like it or not.

“A big tonal shift” for Michael Burnham? LOL
What’s that mean? Isn’t she always awesome no matter what?
And the time jump was Kurtzman’s knee jerk reaction to the fans leaving Discovery in droves.
And don’t tell me I’m wrong as CBS refuses to release the actual sub numbers for their Trek shows…
When they release those numbers proving me wrong, I’ll happily acknowledge it but until then, I think cbs allows Discovery to go on because they’ve invested so much money and press behind it and it was supposed to be their most popular show for AA. But…
It clearly wasn’t.
This time jump is a desperate reset.