Star Trek Discovery: The Vulcan Hello

[Darth Wedgius]

I had a thought (yeah, that surprised me as much as anyone). As far as I can tell, the last half-season of Enterprise had a lot more appreciation from fans, and it was darker and had the good guys doing things a bit more morally gray than the preceding episodes (such as when Archer stranded some people many light-years from home because he needed the warp coil or such).
Maybe the people behind Discovery paid attention to that?

[AllanO]

Kirk routinely makes fun of prisons in the two times we visit them in TOS too. They say, "they're like luxury resorts."

In Dagger of the Mind Kirk praises the mad scientist of the week (before Kirk realizes the guy is using the crazy ray on his inmates and indeed starts using it on Kirk) for his successful reform of the penal system to a more humane state, so it would be kind of inconsistent if he went on to make light of such things. Of course consistent characterization and world building were not a known strength of TOS.

Captain James T. Kirk: Bones, are you aware that in the last 20 years, Dr. Adams has done more to revolutionise, to humanise prisons and the treatment of prisoners than all the rest of humanity have done in 40 centuries? I've been to those penal colonies since they begun following his methods, and they're not cages any more.

Dr. McCoy: Jim...

Captain James T. Kirk: They're clean, decent hospitals for sick minds.

[Deledrius]

I had a thought (yeah, that surprised me as much as anyone). As far as I can tell, the last half-season of Enterprise had a lot more appreciation from fans, and it was darker and had the good guys doing things a bit more morally gray than the preceding episodes (such as when Archer stranded some people many light-years from home because he needed the warp coil or such).
Maybe the people behind Discovery paid attention to that?

That was Season 3. While often regarded as an improvement over the first two, I usually see Season 4 being the one people consider the best work on the show overall, and it was the one that started doing the coming-together of the Federation plot.

[Anacronian]

I have a question and please understand that my knowledge of Star Trek is rudimentary at best, I am in no way an avid follower of the series and my Trekpertise is minimal.

My question is this, Is there anything in Discovery that necessitates that it is set in the timeline that it is?

So far the only thing I have been able to come up with is that Michael is raised by Sarek.. but that is pretty much all.

From my perspective, the series could just as well be set 200 years after TNG .. Am I missing something here?

[CharlesPhipps]

I have a question and please understand that my knowledge of Star Trek is rudimentary at best, I am in no way an avid follower of the series and my Trekpertise is minimal.

My question is this, Is there anything in Discovery that necessitates that it is set in the timeline that it is?

So far the only thing I have been able to come up with is that Michael is raised by Sarek.. but that is pretty much all.

From my perspective, the series could just as well be set 200 years after TNG .. Am I missing something here?

The fact the Klingons are the Federation's enemies is a pretty big deal.

There's also the Mirror Universe episodes.

So, yes, it's pretty big that it's set now.

[Karha of Honor]

I have a question and please understand that my knowledge of Star Trek is rudimentary at best, I am in no way an avid follower of the series and my Trekpertise is minimal.

My question is this, Is there anything in Discovery that necessitates that it is set in the timeline that it is?

So far the only thing I have been able to come up with is that Michael is raised by Sarek.. but that is pretty much all.

From my perspective, the series could just as well be set 200 years after TNG .. Am I missing something here?

The fact the Klingons are the Federation's enemies is a pretty big deal.

There's also the Mirror Universe episodes.

So, yes, it's pretty big that it's set now.

We don't know how much damage did the Klingon war cause.

[CharlesPhipps]

It's more the fact that the Klingons being enemies is a major theme of the show.

There's also Harry Mudd.

So it's like, "Pretty much everything in the 1st season needs this to be TOS."

[Anacronian]

Harry Mudd doesn't seem to be anything like the old Harry Mudd so he could just be a totally new character and nobody would know and the Klingons and Federation being enemies .. well a lot can happen in 200 years.

Michael could just as easy being raised by any Vulcan really, Being raised by Sarek doesn't seem to add anything particular to her character.

[Fixer]

The Klingon War was completely wasted in my opinion. It's a fairly pivotal moment in Federation history and we know so little of what actually happened in it outside of the magical mystery mushroom tour. With that it's still little more than window dressing for the series.

Prelude to Axanar managed to have a much better premise which involved the entire Federation in an aborted fan film.

Really DS9 and Babylon 5 still hold the high water mark for story telling in galactic scale conflict two decades later.

[Deledrius]

I have a question and please understand that my knowledge of Star Trek is rudimentary at best, I am in no way an avid follower of the series and my Trekpertise is minimal.

My question is this, Is there anything in Discovery that necessitates that it is set in the timeline that it is?

So far the only thing I have been able to come up with is that Michael is raised by Sarek.. but that is pretty much all.

From my perspective, the series could just as well be set 200 years after TNG .. Am I missing something here?

Not especially.

• The Klingons, which were barely Klingons, could easily have been any ruthless enemy lacking motivation. Or even a new foe entirely!
• Harry Mudd, which was barely Harry Mudd, could have been any other prisoner they meet who returns later for revenge.
• The connection with Sarek, while I appreciated how it was handled, really does nothing for Burnham that simply being a human raised on Vulcan wouldn't have done.
• The Mirror Universe segment had no direct connection to the later visits we've seen and in fact works better as some other alternate universe, and aside from a few Enterprise references that had no bearing on the events could take place at any time as well.
• The in-world tech level (not just the visual execution) makes little sense where it is and would actually be better placed later.

The only thing requiring it to take place when it does is cynical nostalgia marketing. In theory, the rumored idea that the show would have started here and then vanished into time to accomplish the Anthology Series would have fixed some of this, but since that's not the direction they took it's now an orphan in its own time.