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Graham Kennedy wrote: ↑Thu Feb 15, 2018 11:33 pm

Sonic Glitch wrote:Are we going to blatantly ignore the production word of God that it is in the prime universe? Are we as a community so arrogant as to think we know better than the production company?

I don't see why not. They ignore us, after all.

More seriously and less snidely... behind the scenes interviews given by producers are not and never have been regarded as canonical, yes? So why shouldn't they be ignored? They always have been.

And I have no problem taking the producers on-screen choices over their behind the scenes claims.

This is a sound argument. For Discovery to exist in canon, we have to accept the ludicrous notion that only content is canon, aesthetics are not which is unacceptable. That alone should be enough to disqualify Discovery as taking place in the prime universe alongside TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise, and the films.

But in fact Discovery's second season gives us on-screen evidence to strike it from canon too. The second season finale's ending engages in an absolutely silly coverup literally trying to get everyone to forget Discovery ever existed, showing that the writers knew they had created countless continuity errors. Making everything classified was the best idea they could come up with to reconcile it all.

But a close examination of the material offers a better on-screen fix the writers created without apparently realizing it. A plausible argument can be made from on-screen evidence that Discovery exists in a multiverse similar to the Kelvin films. Near the end of the season there was some time travel stuff that altered historical events which could be said to have contaminated the timeline approximately 20 years before the start of the series. It could thus be argued that Discovery was spun off from the prime universe into a multiverse that now exists separate and apart from the main canon, just as Nero spun off the prime universe into a multiverse in the prelude to Star Trek XI (2009). I make the argument in more detail here and here.

As such, the producers' on-screen choices have even further undermined their behind the scenes claims that Discovery could ever exist in the main canon. I have been arguing since that episode aired that unless and until a future episode contradicts this conclusion, we should insist that regardless of what the producers say off-screen, Discovery exists in a multiverse apart from the main canon for this reason. Hopefully the writers either 1. validate this on-screen at some point, or 2. at least do nothing to contradict it in a future episode. If so, this off-screen explanation of Discovery's non-canon status based on on-screen evidence can fix all of Discovery's major breaks with canon.

Personally I just love the idea that the writing of Discovery was so sloppy that despite intending to wedge this story into the prime canon, the writers accidentally dumped themselves into a multiverse because they didn't know what they were doing. Quite fitting I think.

I wish I had something thoughtful or meaningful to add to this discussion. I’ve never watched any of discovery. It is a Star Trek show but as I’ve read through these comments, it’s so far from the other shows canon that it’s almost a comedy like Lampoons: Star Trek. I suppose that makes it not worth adding to here. Unless it’s done as a completely different side bar to the main ditl info.

**update**
Since I’m through season 1 and moving into season 2, I feel I can add something meaningful to this post. To be honest, I feel my original comment is STILL accurate. This show deviates so much from the main stories that it would be extremely difficult to reconcile any technical, historical, or temporal information into the established website. It would setup a huge bias in what is and isn’t canon (similarly to how ENT and VOY have their own differences to the canon of TOS and TNG). If the discovery data, info, screenshots, and technical aspects are added, I hope it’s only as a side.. side note as a stand alone show and no real ties to the others at all. Alternate universe topic material addition.