Are Discovery and Picard really Star Trek?

Prime Lorca

The debate rages in many threads. It's tiresome. Discuss it here. Vote if you want. Present arguments in a respectful manner, please. Hopefully the debate here will keep most of it out of other threads.

I'm not adding "other" as an option. If that's how you feel, then don't vote and explain your position in the comments.

Thank you.

Septani Ainalrami

IMO this issue goes hand-in-hand with a more fundamental question of where we draw the line between "traditional" television canon and newer multimedia alternatives. An old-school trekkie (like myself) might only consider the regularly aired programs to be valid, while a latter-day fan might not even consider the concept of "airing" if they get all of their entertainment through streaming. Entertainment is still entertainment I suppose...but Trek fans are historically particular about what subject matter should be regarded as official. Oftentimes, none of the literature out there is included. The animated Filmation episodes are usually ignored, and feature-length films are carefully scrutinized as to how they do or don't conform to ST canon. What it always seems to boil down to (in my personal experience), is that the various live-action episodes represent the core chapters of the Trek bible, while everything else is up for debate. But then fans even disagree on specifically which programs/episodes should be considered official, so we're not done yet...

One almost fundamentalist school of thought doesn't acknowledge any Star Trek not created by Gene Roddenberry himself. So that essentially leaves us TOS, the cartoons, & TNG...by the time DS9 was green-lighted, Roddenberry's credit had become an honorarium. I can be old-fashioned in my ways, but that feels a bit extreme. In my mind, ST's greatest legacy is that of being a television phenomenon. Once a week it came into everybody's living rooms...everybody's, regardless of their social, economic, or political positions...and offered glimpses of a future frontier shared by all. This experience came to an end when they stopped broadcasting over-the-air, free for everybody to view. IMHO, that's when it stopped being television. I certainly don't object to newer programs being sold for a premium, but for me the last true Trek show was Enterprise.

[Deleted User]

Both Discovery and Picard are Trek

As I've stated in the past, they're Trek.

We don't have to like it, we don't have to like them, we don't even have to include them in our own personal 'head canon', but we don't get to dictate to other fans what franchise series are, and are not, Trek.

In 4 decades of being a fan, I've seen every movie and series post-TOS given the once over by people who wish to preserve the last point they found the franchise acceptable in aspic.

It's something of a bitter irony that a show that gave us IDIC, has a history of a social messaging from the get-go and revels in open mindedness and inclusiveness has some of the most entrenched, embittered, closed-minded, dictatorial and self-entitled fans out there.

It doesn't just border on the shameful and embarrassing at times, it's sat on the other side hopping up and down like Yosemite Sam in full rage flow.

There is zero wrong in pointing out flaws, things you don't like, things you don't agree with, debating from the smallest minutiae to the biggest plots, that's all part and parcel of being a fan, but when you start telling everyone else, in all seriousness, your personal edits to the franchise are to be regarded as overriding everyone else's, you've overstepped the mark and need to wind your neck back in.

If someone wants to tell me DISCO and PIC aren't their Trek, that's fine, I take no issue with that, I have a deep dislike of most of both VOY and ENT, but if they want to tell me they aren't Trek at all, then they're a clown, and in keeping with that I will point and laugh at them.

Septani Ainalrami

Very well thought out and stated. When somebody becomes so tightly wound-up that they're aggressively dictating their opinions upon others, no doubt they've crossed a few lines...