Star Trek Discovery - 'TOS' Prequel

Star Trek Discovery - 'TOS' Prequel

The final important piece of the puzzle has been rolled into place and I have to admit to a small twinge of disappointment. While clues pointed to it being set in the 23rd Century (the design of the USS Discovery and its registry number, plus show-runner Bryan Fuller having a particular interest in the era), I was still hoping it would turn out to forge further into time at the latter end of the 24th, or early part of the 25th, Centuries. Even the previously 'leaked' timeframe of being post-'Star Trek VI,' or the Romulan War of the 22nd Century, would have been preferred by me. But it's been confirmed that we're getting another prequel to 'The Original Series,' and while I'm still grateful for anything set in the 'Prime' Universe, I can't deny my anticipation has dropped a notch or two. The trouble with prequels is that unless you're going to throw the ship to a distant corner of the Galaxy (which we've already seen perfectly well executed with 'Voyager'), it's tricky to produce an era that you so want to look like as it originally did, yet with a more futuristic design than the sixties series it is prequeling! 'Enterprise' did an admirable job of straddling those two requirements, but even that is going to date more than the 24th Century-set series' which still have a style that is out of time and hard to pin down.

It's also true that whatever the intentions of a series when it sets out, it will always naturally gravitate towards what the general public knows, because that's the best way to get ratings - 'Gotham' was weird for not being about Batman and his period of crime-fighting, but they had to have a young Bruce Wayne, and more and more origins of known characters. It was the same with 'Smallville,' which started as a series purely about Clark Kent trying to fit in during his teenage years, but became about origins of characters we knew. It's what a general audience expects, and it's what we get. I really have no interest in seeing a young Kirk on the Farragut, or a young Pike, or Spock, or anyone who would have to be recast in those classic roles. Thanks to the Abramsverse films we've been set a precedent for recasting roles that, for forty-odd years, had been set in stone as the actors who first played them, which continued throughout the various sequels. Just as I was concerned with the 'TOS'-'TNG' era might introduce young 'TNG' characters, it's even worse here because we're so close in time to the period the famous main characters were living. Whenever a character was brought back from previous Trek it was so much more exciting because they were acknowledging the actors that made those roles their own. That's what was different with Trek compared to anything else: it was a real universe with real people, not interchangeable roles that are continually played by new faces, as superheroes are, or James Bond.

Had the series been set post-'Nemesis' there would have been every chance we'd have seen Captain Riker-Troi of the Titan, or myriad other characters we've come to know and love, and while it's not impossible for actors to reprise their famous roles on 'Discovery,' they'd have to jump through hoops to do it, and when they did that on 'Enterprise' (only managing a couple of times to come up with a way to have existing characters in an episode), it was decried by the vast majority (personally I found the finale to be one of that series' best episodes), meaning it will be harder to justify in future.  One of the things I enjoy most about Trek has been its ongoing nature, that you never know who you'll see again, continuing loose ends or creating new ones. But as I said, I'm not interested in seeing recast characters, and you can be pretty sure that we'll be getting that eventually. And unless they do have a connection to the future of the future (as 'Enterprise' did with its Temporal Cold War, an excellent concept sorely underdeveloped!), they'll have to do some crafty time travelling - we're unlikely to see Captain Worf or any of the other exciting prospects that were waiting eagerly to be explored in the last few years.

At the same time, there are characters that could logically be brought in without bending things out of shape: I was pleased to read that Whoopi Goldberg would be open to appearing, and her character of Guinan would be an ideal candidate since we know she's lived for centuries. Just such a thought is delicious, and if they can bring in a few people like that, then I'd be all for it! But again, although the 23rd Century was what first introduced me to Trek, it isn't my favourite era and pulls up lost of questions about how to address certain issues, such as the look of the Klingons and Romulans. Will we even see these races, and can it be Trek without them? Well of course it can, but we want to learn more about existing races and their cultures, not just hop from planet to planet for a story of the week. That shouldn't be as much of a problem as it was in 'TOS' because, as we already know, the thirteen Season 1 episodes will be part of a serial. I've been reassured by the announcement that episodes will have individual stories, though, which will wrap up each week while contributing to an overall arc. That sounds like the best mix, akin to the 'DS9' style of storytelling.

So it's not the end of the world, and I like the idea of not having a Captain (the lead is going to be a Lieutenant Commander), to counterbalance the familiar perspective we've had from the previous series' - the best series, 'DS9,' also began with Sisko as Commander and provided so much more room for growth. I expect we'll have less of the traditional roles of Doctor, Security Chief, Engineer, though no doubt there will be representatives of these disciplines either in the main cast or recurring. I do feel the era is among the worst choices, but I'm not going to slate the series before I've seen it, and I'm sure Fuller and his team will come up with some great stories, it just remains to be seen whether they'll be able to reconcile the level of technology and design with what we've seen of that era. Section 31 are hinted to 'pop up' in the series in some way, and I still hope for an overarching, multi-time approach so that we could still see different eras, though it sounds unlikely. Jury's out, for now.

Anticipation: ***