On Redesigning Details of an Established Setting

WARNING: Nerd ranting ahead. I apologise.

NOTE:This blog gives me a kind of catharsis. If something bothers me I can just write it here and it makes it seem better.
That's why I wrote this. I go back on my own opinion a lot here. Some of it seems a bit pointless. It's because writing this wasn't for other people, even if it was shown to others. It was for me, and my nerd rage, and my immaturity, and my inflexibility.

I like to believe that my favourite fictional worlds are sort of real somewhere. It's immature, I guess, but I've always been this way. It's part of who I am. I don't want to be That Asshole who uses their ASD to explain everything they do like it's a universal get-out-of-jail-free card, but I did some research and this affinity for fictional worlds is an Asperger's female thing, not an immature-womanchild thing.

That's probably why it distresses me when a detail from an established setting is redesigned or thrown out altogether. Little things just get to me. I never meant to become the guy in the current page image for this TVTropes article, and I'm not quite that bad, but I'm still irked by the little things, unless there's a suitable retcon or other explanation provided or I can think of a convincing one myself.

Like, I'm not bothered by the fact that TOS Klingons and every-other-installment Klingons look different, because canon explained that, but I'm a little bothered by the Discovery redesign because so far there doesn't seem to be an explanation supplied (although if there isn't one built in then there will be soon enough because Angry Nerds). But if there is one, I'll be cool with it. Meanwhile, I'm not bothered by the fact that TOS Orions had dark hair and reboot Orions are redheads - maybe it's just a phenotypic difference (or hair dye?), and the distribution is a coincidence. (I'm annoyed for a whole other reason that the divergence is due to green-skinned redhead women supposedly being hotter, but to be honest Orion women seem to have been created for the Rule of Sexy to begin with so, regrettably, this actually isn't that new. *heavy sigh*)

I'm not bothered by the fact that reboot Chekov and Chekov Prime look so different - they were conceived at different times and so could conceivably have different phenotypes due to inheriting different combinations of alleles. I'm not...okay, I'm a little bothered by the fact that Kirk Prime and reboot Kirk have different eye colours, but brown eyes (yes, I know hazel isn't exactly brown) are just blue underneath - who knows what being born in space would do with that? And the fact that both his parents apparently had blue eyes can be handwaved by the fact that there are apparently surgeries to change eye colour. The same principle applies in reverse with the two versions of McCoy. But I can't forgive ginger Scotty, because his existence predates Nero (so I can't use the Chekov argument) and I can't find a plausible retcon (because black was clearly Scotty Prime's natural colour, and no-one dies their hair ginger, especially if you're a British man because (at least in the current era) several of them seem to have this irrational prejudice against people with ginger hair).

Sulu is gay in the Kelvin Timeline but attracted to women in the Prime Timeline - so what? Sexuality is fluid, and the proof of the differing orientations occur in different years, so here we have a possible way of reconciling the two things.

I'm not annoyed at the differing technology levels between the two different versions of the Enterprise (NCC-1701) because technology could have been altered by Nero's messing with the timestream. I'm annoyed that the women didn't get proper rank stripes until Beyond, but again, different issue. I am, however, annoyed by the fact that ships predating the TOS Enterprise look more advanced, although I guess we can just assume it looked less shit in fake-reality because let's be honest, the TOS budget was like $3.95 or something. This weirdness is pretty unavoidable.

I can tolerate the delta being the generic Starfleet insignia in the Kelvin Timeline because alternate reality, but in the Prime Timeline that symbol was Enterprise-exclusive at first - but Discovery takes place before TOS on a ship not named Enterprise and uses that symbol, and that's a little annoying. I know a lot of TOS minor details have been jossed and I'm cool with those because there was no continuity in the early days, so I guess mission patches are just one of those things, and it never really came up anyway in TOS. Now I think about it, placing the mission patches in a little box labelled 'Early Installment Weirdness' (along with 5+ years at the Academy, the word 'Vulcanian' and that one-episode implication that TOS took place in the 29th century) probably unifies the multiple continuities and shows (Enterprise used a similar emblem for everything, according to Memory Alpha) better than the standard fanon explanation, but it's going to take some adjusting to. And I can do that. I'm flexible - but when you overhaul previously-established continuity or joss accepted fanon, people get a bit upset. (Fortunately, half the world's forgotten about the mission patches anyway, but dear God, eventually there'll be some other major deviation and shit will hit the fan.)

I'm not trying to bash Discovery - it looks like it's gonna be an awesome show (and it's really not that implausible for Spock to have another sibling he never mentioned because let's be honest, he didn't mention his parents and brother either). I'm not bashing the Kelvin Timeline either, because I like it when it isn't defiling canon, and it seems to have stopped doing that now so it's all fine.

I'm a little irritated, but I don't feel angry, exactly. Just disappointed, and a little betrayed. Because so much of Star Trek stretches suspension of disbelief, but as long as there's internal consistency I'm okay with that. It's just when something is radically changed with no explanation (or sometimes with just the invocation of Rule of Cool or Rule of Sexy) that my suspension of disbelief starts to be strained.

It's annoying. Just because you can overhaul an element of something, doesn't mean you should.

I'm not saying you shouldn't make changes or throw in new elements for fear of angering the nerds. I mean, if my ship (Kirk/Spock) became canon in the reboot there would be screaming from half the fandom for the change. (The other half would be yelling about how they fucking knew it and how it really doesn't change that much because in the original universe they were probably married anyway.) Same with, say, T'Pring/Uhura, although I do admit that would be a massive alteration being as it discards two canonical endgame ships. But the point is, if you change something in a setting people know and love, you'd better make it a plausible change and you'd better have a damn good in-universe explanation for it to satisfy the nay-sayers. And also preferably have relevant quotes from other sources to justify yourself. People tend to like that.

UPDATE 25/07/17: The email I received from Eaglemoss made the Klingon redesign seem way more drastic than it appears now I've gotten a better look. I'm not sure whether this makes me feel calmer or Very Afraid.

Shipper Bias

WARNING: This post may contain overuse of caps lock and angry ranting. Spock/Uhura shippers might not enjoy this post. I'm sorry. I'm sure you're all wonderful people, and apparently your ranks include the late Leonard Nimoy and Nichelle Nichols, which kind of says a lot. I'm not trying to insult you, I promise.
NOTE: In writing this I have assumed that Kirk/Spock is a thing. It might not be a thing. You might not personally consider it a thing. It is, overall, irrelevant to what I am actually saying here and therefore if we disagree it does not matter.

Recently I was reading some of the Kelvin Timeline comics and became annoyed. Why? Because Spock/Uhura was very obviously a thing. Reboot!Galileo Seven was full of nods to their relationship (ON DUTY NO LESS) and ends with Kirk confining them to quarters together. Reboot!Operation: Annihilate! featured then discussing mission stuff post-coital. We did not need to see this. I was irked, and that would not do.*

It just feels like kind of a 'fuck you' to anyone who doesn't ship Spock/Uhura, y'know? Like (SARCASM MODE), you ship Uhura with Chapel? Fuck you! You ship Spock with Bones? Fuck you! You ship Uhura with Bones? Fuck you! You ship Uhura with T'Pring? Fuck you! You ship Uhura with Scotty? Fuck you! You ship Spock with Kirk? Double fuck you; Kirk ships this bullcrap!** (SARCASM MODE DEACTIVATED.) Well, fuck you too, comic book/movie people. Fuck. You.

I don't need to look at this frankly unnecessary coupleyness.

But then I was reading fanfic for Spirk and there's a very cute domestic-y scene in this one fic, and as I read the utterly lovely and not-at-all-forced-sounding scene I noticed something - it was pretty much a clothed version of one of the Spock/Uhura moments which I had so derided the previous day. And that's when the horror sank in: I'm a fucking hypocrite. Because let's be honest, if these scenes were for my OTP and not my NoTP I would be far more tolerant of them. If they were for a ship I'm indifferent to I probably wouldn't even have noticed except to point out that some of it's just fucking unprofessional. And if that unprofessionalism were applied to my ship (and sometimes it is - in both main canons, no less! HA!) I'd squee in delight. Because in my dumbass mind, shipping justifies a lot. Not everything, but a lot.

 When I was younger and even more idiotic than I am now I came up with a lot of ways to 'fix' the departure of a character from my then-favourite show and un-sink my ship. The character was married to someone else, with kids, and probably wouldn't have stayed in the show's setting for love nor money. Try telling younger!me, that, though. And those ways were stupid, and made zero sense, and dear God what was I thinking? But my shipping justified the stupidity, in my view. And now I can see what an utter moron I was being, because hindsight is 20/20.

I think we're all like that, really. When something happens that we approve of we're happy and when we don't approve we're not. When a friend texts you out of the blue it's nice because you get to feel like somebody gives a fuck about you. When someone who thinks they're your friend but isn't texts you out of the blue you grimace. If I shipped Spock/Uhura I'd probably love these scenes, and honestly, I'm not going to begrudge someone else happiness until something really stupid happens (if t'hy'la is suddenly a Spock/Uhura thing, for example). They can have their ship, and I can have the hope that, if the reboot's similarities to the Prime Timeline are due to the universe trying to fix itself, Uhura will end up with Scotty (or Chapel, or T'Pring, because she definitely fancied all three of the aforementioned) and Spock and Kirk will eventually get Vulcan-married.***

And, like my mum said, it's just fiction, and if you don't like canon, you can always make your own. And your ship can have as many unprofessional shoehorned-in romance-novel moments as you like.

When it comes to shipping, it's maybe okay to be a little bit hypocritical, just as long as you can admit it to yourself.


*I was hoping to link to a YouTube clip of where that line comes from (Disney's Bolt, which was my favourite movie when I was about 10) but couldn't find one. Sorry. If you find a clip, let me know so I can link to it.
** I don't ship all of these. One of them is actually a NoTP and I only included it in the iterests of fairness.
*** Fun fact: If you operate under the assumption that the Prime versions of Kirk and Spock bonded after The Motion Picture certain things might actually make more sense. And most of what initially doesn't is easily explained away, save for maybe one throwaway line in The Final Frontier. And Antonia requires a bit of handwaving - but then, she never made much sense to begin with.