Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2020 February 21

= February 21 =

ST:ENT Vulcans
I've been watching some ENT (hadn't seen it before) and boy howdy, that Vulcan High Command is sure obnoxious. They just did an unsubtle allegory where they go around repressing Vulcan mind-melders because of their filthy and disease-spreading telepathic habits. My question: what happened to IDIC? Was there some kind of retcon or reboot of the Vulcans into bureaucratic oafs? Surely the Great Bird of the Galaxy never thought of them that way. Thanks. 2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:7AC0 (talk) 08:19, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Added: Oh hmm, it looks like Vulcan (Star Trek) explains some of this. Maybe I should unask the question for now.  It's late here, so I'll probably read the article tomorrow.  2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:7AC0 (talk) 08:22, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
 * IMO with each successive incarnation of Star Trek, the series gets less and less like Trek. I think it is time to hang up the Star Trek title and come up with another title. Star Trek: Discovery has, again IMO, has absolutely nothing to do with Star Trek, apart from some characters from previous series getting a mention. It should just have been called Discovery; indeed it work with the same stories and some rebadging of characters and species. PS The Vulcans in Discovery are even worse. --TrogWoolley (talk) 15:26, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
 * It's not a retcon, it's backstory. Remember that ENT is a prequel to the original series.  So the writers of ENT decided that in that area Vulcans were more like bureaucratic oafs than they would later be in the era of the original series or STTNG eras.  As to Trog's comment, I suggest that the point when the franchise really jumped the shark was when essentially the entire Vulcan species was killed off in the 2009 movie. --69.159.8.46 (talk) 20:10, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
 * It's still a retcon, as it was established after the original series by different writing teams. --Khajidha (talk) 21:54, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I mostly lost interest in ST sometime during the first sequel (the one where Kirk was replaced by a bald French guy and the Federation turned into a big bureaucracy) though I did see a bunch of those.  Babylon 5 killed ST off the rest of the way.  But the cable station here (El Rey Network) is showing 5 hours a night of ST shows (all but the most recent ones that probably aren't as cheap to show in reruns) and someone else here watches it so I've been watching some too.  ENT has a few likeable aspects but other parts are annoying. 2601:648:8202:96B0:C8B1:B369:A439:9657 (talk) 08:08, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Quick side question, you do know that Babylon 5 wasn't Star Trek at all, right? Or are you saying that you found B5 better/more interesting than ST? Or were you perhaps confused with Star Trek: Deep Space 9?--Khajidha (talk) 17:01, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, I meant getting caught up in B5 made me lose interest in Star Trek. You're probably aware that DS9 was a B5 rip-off by the way.  One of the ST movies was made sometime during B5's run, and before the movie's release, word got out that its plot involved time travel (no big deal per se).  The joke at the time was that the ST movie was going to be about the crew of DS9 travelling back in time to retrieve Deep Space 8, which had mysteriously vanished immediately after its construction (that's a reference to the B5 episode "War Without End" if you didn't see it.)  There was also a saying "you're looking for a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem", when e.g. someone wanted to use a techno fix on a social or political conflict.  Good times. 2601:648:8202:96B0:C8B1:B369:A439:9657 (talk) 19:39, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Per the lead of that article, retcon implies not just that it was established after by different writing teams, but that it adjusts, ignores or contradicts previously established facts. I.E. continuity needs to be broken, hence retcon. Admittedly the text claims simple additions can also be called retcon, but from my experience this isn't isn't how the term is used nowadays maybe why that part is poorly cited. (It lacks any in line citations, but does quote one person.) Did the earlier Star Trek's establish or at least suggest that Vulcan's weren't like in that era? I don't know or care, but if it didn't, that by many common definitions, it's not a retcon. You do get grey areas where maybe something is changed but the writers come up with some reason why it's not, e.g. in the last episode of season 2 of Discovery a reason is given why no one has ever heard of the spore drive etc in future seasons. From my experience, no matter how convincing such stories can be, they are generally also called retcons. But when the future additions just choose one of the reasonably speculated possibilities of the possible backstories, this isn't usually called a retcon. Maybe also when the previous writing team has one clear idea in mind (which they mentioned in interviews or whatever), but their story completely left open another possibility, and the new team chose the other possibility. But not when the original writing team had no real consideration of the matter that the new team decides on. Nil Einne (talk) 15:29, 23 February 2020 (UTC)
 * There are citations pertaining to purely additive usage in the etymology section. --Khajidha (talk) 18:24, 23 February 2020 (UTC)