10 Star Trek Debates That Tear The Fandom Apart
8. Prime Universe Vs. Discovery
Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman - the latter of whom worked on the Kelvin films, the former of whom worked on the 90s and 00s era shows - developed the idea for this prequel series, Star Trek: Discovery. The word Prequel alone is enough to fuel some fires, with an argument being - why go backwards to tamper with established history, when one can go forwards and create more? This same argument had been levelled against Enterprise when it was announced in 2001, yet Discovery went one step (well, several steps, but we’ll come to that) further - their main character was the previously unheard of sister of Spock.
Making Michael Burnham the adopted sister of Spock puzzled the fandom, to put it mildly. How would she fit into established canon? Why had we never heard of her before? There were those who were quick to point out that no one had heard of Sybok until more than twenty years after we had been introduced to Spock, so who knew how many children were running around out there?
Then that image of those Klingons having lunch was released, and the conversations erupted.
Even now, seven years, five seasons, and a time jump later, the debate about which universe Discovery exists in rages on. It signalled the beginning of an aesthetic shift in Star Trek that seemed to actively disregard what had come before, as well as upgrading technology that - according to strict canon - simply shouldn’t have existed in that time. The violence of the show’s first season riled people, as well as the dour overall tone. Discovery’s first season was polarising. The argument as to its place in canon has by no means faded but the arrival of four new shows - one of which being a direct spin-off from Discovery - with more on the way has diluted some of the argument.
Even some of the people involved in making shows like The Next Generation, Voyager, and Enterprise have come out to say that they consider it an alternate timeline. Now that the show has completed its run, we the audience have entered into our post-mortem phase. Much like Enterprise before it, it is receiving reappraisals. What might the discourse be in five, ten, or fifteen years?