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Spoilers Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2x01 - "The Broken Circle"

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Nyotarules said:
Interesting, what you see as humancentric one can argue are really WesternEuropean or NorthAmericancentric values. Understandable since its a US TV show and can only reflect the cultural values of its producers. However the idea that in the future humanity becomes this idealised version of US society might be considered arrogantly racist.
The idea of exploration, the final frontier is an idealised version of the exploration and frontier pioneer attitude that shaped the Americas, which was anything but ideal for the populations already living there.
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That is an absolutely accurate observation. In that specific context, I was using "human" in terms of "Star Trek" which absolutely does tend to be American-centric, for obvious reasons.

On a tangentially related note to this observation, being a straight white male American... i've always found the concept of "cultural appropriation" fascinating. It's an alien concept to me and my cultural background... historically "my people" were not only ok with others adopting our culture... we preferred it... and often times enforced it.

On the in-universe note, I tend to take a watsonian perspective and want to explain everything that happens in in-universe terms. The stories are much more interesting to me when I dismiss the real-world situations as irrelevant and deal only in story terms. In that regards, in my own head-version of the "History of the Past" so to speak in Trek, it's a fairly grim situation. The tl;dr version is... WW3/Eugenics Wars, while devastating to everyone, are particularly devastating to Asia. Some Western nations emerge relatively inshape, while Asia takes a much longer time to recover. It's partly why we see Earth launching warp colony ships... while ALSO the "post-Atomic horror" is going on, and why Space America seems to dominate everything... there are just physically less other people. Space America took a dominate position within United Earth, United Earth took a dominate position within the Federation.
 
Yes, sadly, there are still cultures on this planet in which individual freedoms and rights, and the equality of all under the law, are considered aberrations . . . or even abominations.

Be that as it may, at present, the whole discussion of M'Benga really amounts to splitting hairs. Cat hairs. Schroedinger's Cat hairs. At this time, SNW M'Benga both is and is not TOS M'Benga, and he remains so until something makes it into a finished episode to establish one or the other. And neither assertion is any more, or any less, of a "reach" than the other.

Likewise, since nothing was ever established on-screen about whether Dr. Chapel was intended to be CMO at the time of the V'GER crisis, she both was and was not so intended. (And to tell the truth, it never occurred to me that she'd been intended for such a posting, since she presumably got her MD sometime between "The Counter-Clock Incident" and TMP, and would barely have had time to complete an internship, much less a residency.)

But to tie this to another thread, I have absolutely no difficulty whatsoever seeing SNW Uhura as the same person as TOS/TAS Uhura, and likewise with Chapel, Spock, and Pike. Indeed, I have an easier time with them than I have with the Kirk Brothers.
 
hbquikcomjamesl said:
But to tie this to another thread, I have absolutely no difficulty whatsoever seeing SNW Uhura as the same person as TOS/TAS Uhura, and likewise with Chapel, Spock, and Pike. Indeed, I have an easier time with them than I have with the Kirk Brothers.
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Sam is fine.

James R is annoying.
 
hbquikcomjamesl said:
Be that as it may, at present, the whole discussion of M'Benga really amounts to splitting hairs. Cat hairs. Schroedinger's Cat hairs. At this time, SNW M'Benga both is and is not TOS M'Benga, and he remains so until something makes it into a finished episode to establish one or the other. And neither assertion is any more, or any less, of a "reach" than the other.
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I just don't even understand the reasoning. There is no uncertainty at all. The character is Joseph M'Benga. It's the same Joseph M'Benga in SNW and TOS. There is literally nothing to suggest otherwise.

It did make it into a finished episode. SNW named the character "Joseph M'Benga". The character from TOS. It's literally right there, in the show. There is precisely zero reason to think otherwise.

Again, if M'Benga is not the same, is Chapel? Pike? Kirk? Spock? Uhura? Why is M'Benga "may not the TOS character" but everyone else is?

EDIT -

SNW James Kirk is an odd one for me. I don't have any actual problem with the character or actor. I just... don't see him as James Kirk. No specific criticism. I just look at him and have to remind myself this guy is trying to play Kirk.
 
M'Benga's given name was never established in canon prior to the debut of SNW. Not once. The non-canon sources give the TOS M'Benga's given name as Jabilo.

And as to there being nothing to suggest that they're not the same person, consider that SNW has a M'Benga who looks to be in his forties, portrayed by a 39-year-old actor, while the M'Benga who appears briefly in "A Private Little War," and even more briefly in "That Which Survives" -- both at least five years after SNW -- looked to be in his mid twenties, and was portrayed by a 28-year-old actor.

White's Merlyn aged backwards; it was a major story point in The Once and Future King. Benjamin Button (in a short story I haven't read, and a movie and a stage musical neither of which I've seen) aged backwards. The people of the alternate universe in "The Counter-Clock Incident" aged backwards, as did those visiting from the Prime Universe. But it's a little implausible that M'Benga would do so.
 
hbquikcomjamesl said:
M'Benga's given name was never established in canon prior to the debut of SNW. Not once.
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Ok.

"Dr. M'Benga" is on both shows.

And as to there being nothing to suggest that they're not the same person, consider that SNW has a M'Benga who looks to be in his forties, portrayed by a 39-year-old actor, while the M'Benga who appears briefly in "A Private Little War," and even more briefly in "That Which Survives" -- both at least five years after SNW -- looked to be in his mid twenties, and was portrayed by a 28-year-old actor.
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It's been well established that nothing in SNW looks like anything from TOS... visuals are unreliable now.

Seriously, this point is beyond nonsense. I'm truly and honestly baffled as to how this even came to be a thing.
 
One thing in the episode I found really interesting is the dialogue between M'Benga and Spock implying that average Vulcans apparently can't feel their emotions instead of simply being able to ignore them, because of their techniques.

It's more like just doing the Kolinahr once and for all, instead of needing to practise meditation and other emotional suppression techniques regularly, like it was presented especially in ENT.
 
cooleddie74 said:
It's a creative choice that doesn't affect in-universe continuity.
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That's a somewhat subjective claim and depends on exactly how you define "continuity" or what you care about.

I would say you are factually incorrect. It does effect visual continuity, which is critically important to a work presented in a visual medium.
 
evilchumlee said:
That's a somewhat subjective claim and depends on exactly how you define "continuity" or what you care about.

I would say you are factually incorrect. It does effect visual continuity, which is critically important to a work presented in a visual medium.
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No.
 
evilchumlee said:
That's a somewhat subjective claim and depends on exactly how you define "continuity" or what you care about.

I would say you are factually incorrect. It does effect visual continuity, which is critically important to a work presented in a visual medium.
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Well then visual continuity hasn't existed in Star Trek since the end of the Original Series making it a moot point in any case.
 
JHarper said:
Well then visual continuity hasn't existed in Star Trek since the end of the Original Series making it a moot point in any case.
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Yes it has.

TNG "Relics", DS9 "Trials and Tribbelations", ENT "In a Mirror, Darkly" were all perfectly in continuity with TOS. PIC S3, Prodigy, and Lower Decks also did a great job at the visual continuity for that era.

TMP-on advanced the look, but that's ok because... it was a progression.
 
evilchumlee said:
That's a somewhat subjective claim and depends on exactly how you define "continuity" or what you care about.

I would say you are factually incorrect. It does effect visual continuity, which is critically important to a work presented in a visual medium.
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No, it's fact. And while visual continuity is kind of important it's not ALL-IMPORTANT, otherwise the James Bond franchise wouldn't have gone twenty movies set in the same in-universe timeline but with five different actors, at least one of whom looked radically different from Sean Connery. And I'm as anally retentive as any member of this board when it comes to TOS Era visual continuity and even I've realized this is a creative choice that doesn't set things on a rigid path that retcons everything else.

Hell, the presence of the TOS Connie design in the form of the U.S.S. New Jersey in Season 3 of PIC proves the TOS aesthetic is still visual canon in the Kurtzman Era of the franchise.
 
Nerys Myk said:
Defining continuity is above our paygrade. Our remit is to like something or not.
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Is it though? It seems almost effortless to be able to establish continuity or not.

cooleddie74 said:
No, it's fact. And while visual continuity is kind of important it's not ALL-IMPORTANT, otherwise the James Bond franchise wouldn't have gone twenty movies set in the same in-universe timeline but with five different actors, at least one of whom looked radically different from Sean Connery.
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Bond is kind of an interesting franchise on this sort of topic as the movies tend to be somewhat unclear if James Bond is actually the same person throughout all the movies. There is some evidence that he is, and some that he is not.

Craig's Bond run somewhat debunked the "Bond Codename" theory in giving Bond a definitive backstory, but in doing so it ALSO essentially proved that Daniel Craig's Bond was absolutely NOT the other Bonds...

There is no actually no clear cut answer as to whether or not the Bond movies all take place in a singular, shared timeline with the same person, a shared universe with multiple people as a codename, or they are all essentially reboots. There is no official word... my personal view on Bond is that each iteration is a reboot that is not in continuity with those previous.

On that note though, I think that this conversation has devolved into just repeating the same stances over and over again, so I think it's time to move along. I respect different perspectives, but I don't think there's anything else to be gained from the conversation.
 
Yes. There is a clear cut answer. The first 20 EON Productions movies are all in the same continuity and Brosnan's Bond is the same as Connery's. Dalton's and Moore's grieve over the loss of the wife they wed when they were played by Lazenby. The studio and the films themselves have been pretty clear on this over the decades. The "Codename Theory" is bunk and Daniel Craig was the first reboot of the timeline to start fresh with the character's origin story and he's the only MGM/United Artists Bond to be a different individual from the Bond we watched during 1962-2002.

This is all public knowledge if fans want to find it.
 
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