Logline
A shuttle accident leads to Spock’s Vulcan DNA being removed by aliens, making him fully human and completely unprepared to face T’Pring’s family during an important ceremonial dinner.
Written by Kathryn Lyn & Henry Alonso Myers
Directed by Jordan Canning
Some of the criticisms fall in another category of beating on SNW’s alleged canon ‘violations’.
These include assertions that Chapel ‘isn’t the same person’ as she doesn’t have the same temperament/personality as in TOS, Uhura not having met or known of T’Pring before Amok Time, etc., Spock would have been ashamed to have eaten animal products (bacon), T’Pring’s ears have the wrong shape
While I can be quite critical of incoherence in plot threads or characters within a single show, especially in a single season (say in Discovery season two or every season of Picard), to me that’s a problem in how a set of writers are telling a specific story.
I’ve come to realize that the fans who just can’t get past continuity changes they can’t resolve immediately across the entire history of the franchise just aren’t going to enjoy SNW as much as I am.
I classify these inflexibilities as:
— not being open to the possibility that the characters may grow and change,
— not being open to the possibility of characters being unreliable narrators or saying things ironically in later shows (e.g., in TOS Uhura might tweak Spock about T’Pring to press him to identify who she is, even if she personally knew exactly who she was),
— refusing to accept that minor changes in timing, visual design, technology and characters are possible due to intertemporal interference as long as the Prime continuity maintains key/essential events.
In the end, hanging out here to have conversations with folks who are a bit more flexible is a better choice for me.
Identifying potentially unreliable narrators is such an underrated strategy! So a character says “The Federation has never encountered this race/phenomenon before.” Off to Memory Alpha to state this as fact! But of course, people state beliefs as facts, incorrectly, all the time in real life!
I find the implicit assumption that everything onscreen is ‘fact’ exasperating.
More episodes than not depend on guest or recurring characters providing inaccurate, incomplete or outright deceptive information. In many cases, the plot hangs on whether the hero crew can deduce or find more evidence about what’s actually going on.
To assume that everything not directly contradicted in an episode is true is boggling.
There’s also another side to it which is that there’s a very big difference in what TOS fans and TNG era fans would consider proper Star Trek.
I’ve always held the belief that SNW is very much a spiritual successor or prequel to TOS, and while TNG was a sequel in some ways to TOS it was a very different tone and style and it’s some what jarring for people who never really got into TOS to accept as Star Trek.
People think that witty banter and quips were something new to SNW but TOS was full of them the entire relationship of the Trio was built on them, or the goofy scenes where someone would do something silly like Scotty getting drunk with comedic music etc.
This combined with as you mentioned above some slight alterations to canon drives people up the wall and it’s just silly. Enjoy the show for what it is or just don’t watch it.