Has Star Trek: Discovery Been Wiped From Continuity?

So, at the risk of starting the Star Trek Wars, as foretold in Futurama…

…I wanted to talk about Star Trek and canon, because I have been hearing people claim that Star Trek: Discovery had been removed from canon—i.e. the events that are acknowledged as actually having happened in this fictional universe (multiverse, really).

Now, first off, you can only get me so invested in canon in the first place. I remember when Disney bought Star Wars and then made a declaration of what is and isn’t canon that left a lot of beloved stories out in the cold. I discussed it with a fan of Timothy Zahn’s Star Wars novels, who was very upset to learn that his books were now ‘legends,’ and I expressed indifference. So, this friend said to me ‘but that means that none of the things that Kyle Katarn did really happened’ referring to a character in several Star Wars games that I enjoyed.

I responded ‘But none of it did happen. Not even the original Star Wars really happened.’

He got very annoyed with me. But I followed it up by saying ‘I don’t need Disney’s permission to enjoy a story.’

And let me say one more thing before I dig in. I am not a super-duper fan. I like Star Trek, and I have watched or will watch every single season of every show and every movie and usually each of them more than once. So, I know a lot but I am not quite at ‘my wedding vows were in Klingon’ levels of fandom. Please don’t get too annoyed if I don’t know something.

In any case, it starts with a Star Trek show called Lower Decks, which is supposed to be about people who aren’t top officers on their ship. Basically, it’s a cartoon, and it aims to be Star Trek with a heavy dose of Rick and Morty in it. Call me weird but while I don’t find the show very funny, I found it watchable. So sue me.

Anyway, it just had its series finale and the whole episode was dealing with some kind of anomaly in space which would put out these waves that would transform you or your ship into alternate versions. So, if Mr. Spock was hit with one of these waves, he might be replaced with an evil, goateed version of him who somehow looks cooler than regular Spock. There, I said it.

Yes, I know this is in the weeds a bit here, but you can’t understand it without getting in the weeds so bear with me. And really, did you expect us to have this kind of discussion without some nerding out?

At one point a Klingon ship is hit with one of these waves and suddenly a Star-Trek:-The-Next-Generation-style Klingon transforms in to a Star-Trek:-Discovery-style Klingon. This Twitter user is kind enough to screencap the change:

In the teaser of #StarTrekLowerDecks' "The New Next Generation", one of the Klingon captains and his Bird of Prey ⬅️ transform into their respective #StarTrekDiscovery season 1 era counterpart ➡️. Does this mean Discovery is set in an alternate timeline? No, it doesn't! pic.twitter.com/gnbuwFIxGH
— Jörg Hillebrand (@gaghyogi49) December 21, 2024

The top two pictures are the same guy. He started off looking like he does in the top left photo, and changed into the guy in the top right before his entire ship was destroyed.

Why does that matter?

Okay, the official story is that originally there was one major timeline in the Star Trek universe—or really, multiverse. All the shows were officially part of the same time line, or so the story goes. This kept going until the show Star Trek: Enterprise had its finale and the franchise went quiet for a while. This ends up being called the Prime Timeline.

Then we had the 2009 J.J. Abrams Star Trek, starring a younger Kirk, Spock and so on. But early on you learned that this movie took place in an alternate timeline. Basically, a Romulan ship went back in time and changed history, creating a new timeline. In that timeline, for instance, Kirk’s father died while his mother was giving birth to him and numerous other changes were made affecting the lives of the crew. I always thought this was a good idea because it allowed them to change things about the characters while giving a story reason for most of the changes and it also meant that you couldn’t be 100% sure which characters would survive—which is a problem when a movie is a true prequel. Anyway, this J.J. Abrams timeline is known as the Kelvin timeline, because it starts with the destruction of the USS Kelvin (and the death of Kirk’s father).

Then, later on, they decided to try to get a show going again and that was Star Trek: Discovery, and while it was associated with Abrams on the creative end, it officially took place in the Prime Timeline. It was supposed to take about a decade before Captain Kirk’s adventures in the original series.

But the problem is that the fans hated it. And when I watched it very late to the party, I was pretty lukewarm at first:

2/ of course, I am referring to the Battlestar Galactica of this millennium, not the version from the 70’s.

And I can’t quite explain why this approach isn’t working for Star Trek. I think part of it is the clash with almost everything else that came before.
— (((Aaron Walker))) (@AaronWorthing) August 1, 2022

4/ Star trek was always more gritty than Star Wars, so it was even more jarring in the last Jedi when they started worrying about fuel, but still… BSG was closer to hard sci-fi than any of them.

And Christ they are so mishandling the Klingons.
— (((Aaron Walker))) (@AaronWorthing) August 1, 2022

6/ just do what they did in the hunt for red October. When the Russians were alone, they spoke English with a momentary scene showing you switching to English so you understand that they’re actually speaking in Russian. Then, when they encountered Americans, suddenly…
— (((Aaron Walker))) (@AaronWorthing) August 1, 2022

8/ … an ensemble cast.

which is one of the reasons why the narrative focus on one character was a very questionable decision. The other problem is that when you have this decision to constantly focus on one character, then you end up risking Mary Sue-ism
— (((Aaron Walker))) (@AaronWorthing) August 1, 2022

10/ so, for instance, she is good at almost everything scientifically, because if they run into a problem that’s outside of her expertise, she doesn’t have as much to do. Oh, and she killed the Klingon Messiah, so that the Klingons will focus on her.
— (((Aaron Walker))) (@AaronWorthing) August 1, 2022

12/ … for a show so microscopically centered on one character. And then I think it might motivate why she is openly insubordinate—because she has to sometimes elbow her way into a situation where she’s in the middle of the story.
— (((Aaron Walker))) (@AaronWorthing) August 1, 2022

14/ so at least she faced consequences for that. But in the last episode I watched, she was being told to stay behind when they beamed on to another Klingon ship, and she openly questioned the orders to the captain’s face on the bridge
— (((Aaron Walker))) (@AaronWorthing) August 1, 2022

16/ The captain is doing a terrible job to tolerate that kind of disrespectful behavior in front of the crew, and even to encourage it by giving her what she asked for, without so much as a reprimand. It was baffling
— (((Aaron Walker))) (@AaronWorthing) August 1, 2022

18/ so I don’t hate the show, but I could see how somebody might call it STINO: Star Trek in name only. A similar accusation was thrown at the newer Battlestar Galactica show and, I can see the point. But that doesn’t stop me from actually liking that show a lot and…
— (((Aaron Walker))) (@AaronWorthing) August 1, 2022

19/ … maybe I will feel the same way about Discovery. I think I will at least give it to the end of the season to make up my mind. /end
— (((Aaron Walker))) (@AaronWorthing) August 1, 2022

So originally the show as a bit of a slog for me, and then about midway through the first season it actually had a very solid plot twist, and I shared my thoughts on that:

2/ I’ll add that my comparison to BSG2004 (what I am going to call the 2004 reboot of Battlestar Galactica) is getting stronger. I’d elaborate but that would also involve spoilers.

of course, I still understand why Star Trek fans would reject this.
— (((Aaron Walker))) (@AaronWorthing) August 2, 2022

4/ except I will get started, anyway. Do you remember how Klingons looked on the original show? Here’s one ⬇️

(Played by an actor who later was prominent on the original BSG—but that’s not important, just funny) pic.twitter.com/zteEd3AlCH
— (((Aaron Walker))) (@AaronWorthing) August 2, 2022

6/ …they started to get a makeover. And as Star Trek the next generation got going, their culture was changed. So they looked like this ⬇️ and became more of a hot blooded warrior race—basically space Vikings. And I think most fans embraced the change. pic.twitter.com/0wxWPj5p53
— (((Aaron Walker))) (@AaronWorthing) August 2, 2022

8/ …that gave us Khan and most of their species looked more human like, explains how they looked on the original show. Which is a ridiculous length to go to to explain away “we had a lower budget” but it’s kind of weirdly impressive and even explains the change in personality
— (((Aaron Walker))) (@AaronWorthing) August 2, 2022

Let’s give you an embed of that scene on Deep Space Nine (DS9) because it is fun. The context is that the crew of DS9 went back in time and were basically interacting with the original crew in the classic episode ‘The Trouble With Tribbles.’ It was all to celebrate the 30^th anniversary of the original show and it was actually pretty cool using a bunch of tricks to make it look like the DS9 crew were actually interacting with the crew in the original series. And in that episode they made fun of how radically the Klingons had changed in appearance, lampshading the issue brilliantly.

In any case, I finished up my thoughts on the first season, here:

10/ and this is very subjective, but the reason why the redesign worked so well starting with “the motion picture” was frankly it looked cool. It looked metal af. As it is often said: the rule of cool abides.

and IMHO the new design isn’t cool. /end
— (((Aaron Walker))) (@AaronWorthing) August 2, 2022

So, yeah, I’m not a fan of Discovery’s Klingon design. But overall, I actually thought the first season was pretty good. I felt that the real way to think of the first season was to see the entire season as the equivalent of a single long episode and if you see it that way, the huge twist in that season saved a lot of it, even if the Klingons still looked dumb.

But as I said, a lot of the fans hated it and I always understood why, even if I didn’t 100% agree. And I personally liked the show less the further it went on. I haven’t seen the last season yet, though, so who knows what I will think when I see it.

And yes, the LGBTQWSRSUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS+ messaging gets really obnoxious at one point.

Still, since Discovery premiered, we have also had Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which is Kirk’s Enterprise, just before Kirk took over as captain. And there was the aforementioned Star Trek: Lower Decks, which takes place after Star Trek: The Next Generation. Indeed, I am too lazy to look this up, but maybe it even takes place after Voyager. But Strange New Worlds was clearly a spin off from Discovery—you met this crew of the Enterprise on Discovery. And Lower Decks takes place in the same universe as Strange New Worlds because in one episode, the characters went back in time and met the crew of Strange New Worlds. Literally the cartoon characters went back in time and became live action actors and they dealt with some problems, and then went back to the future at the end.

So, are you starting to see the problem with a regular ‘Worf’ style Klingon turning into a Discovery type Klingon on Lower Decks? The anomaly was changing things and people from the Prime Timeline version into an alternate universe version and that alternative universe version looked like a Discovery Klingon. Thus, some people have taken it to mean that Discovery must have taken place in an alternate Universe and thus it was erased from canon, or so the theory goes.

Here’s one of my favorite YouTube channels, Midnight’s Edge, running with that theory:

Now, our host Andre isn’t explaining one of his points very well, because he is building off of prior reporting. According to their prior reporting, starting with the 2009 Star Trek movie, everything created in Star Trek had to be 25% different from regular Trek. Since that includes Discovery and all of the shows that followed—even Star Trek: Picard—according to them, it means none of that is truly in the original timeline. I’m not sure I buy that argument, but there you go.

I will add that a ‘25% different’ clause in this kind of contract is baffling to me as a lawyer. How would one measure whether or not two versions of Star Trek is 25% different from the other? Like, yes, the 2009 Star Trek movie presents a different version of Star Trek from the original series, but how could you say whether or not it is 25% different? One person might say it is only 5% different and another might say it is 80% different. And that can be a big problem if there is any dispute on this point.

Which doesn’t mean the contract doesn’t have such language, only that it probably gave any lawyers who looked at it a migraine.

Midnight’s Edge gets even more into it, here:

And I should probably share the Giant Robot article that they are citing:

"Star Trek Just Erased An Entire Series From Canon" - Giant Freakin Robot #SmartNews https://t.co/BvZ4leQ1us
— Basura en Fuego (@nofarhorizons) December 20, 2024

So, are they right?

Well, first off, saying that it didn’t happen in the Prime Timeline in Star Trek is not the same as saying it never happened at all.

By the way, this bi-polar view of Star Trek isn’t particularly accurate. They were altering timelines all the time before the 2009 soft reboot. In one classic episode, McCoy accidentally got drugged out of his mind, went back in time, and accidentally caused Hitler to win World War II. Then Kirk and Spock went back to fix what McCoy broke. (I’m oversimplifying: It’s actually a great episode). In The Next Generation, they went back in time and met Mark Twain. They also witnessed the Enterprise C coming through a spacetime rift altering their own history and then sent it back through the rift with Tasha Yar, who was dead in the Prime Timeline, and that in turn altered the so-called Prime Timeline so that Picard had to deal with Tasha’s Romulan daughter (long story). And then there were the time travel shenanigans involving Deep Space Nine I mentioned above.

And even without time travel shenanigans, there are clearly many, many alternate universes in the Star Trek multiverse. The Dark Mirror universe—the one where Spock wears a cool goatee—is probably their most famous example. But I also saw an episode where Worf kept being moved through alternate universes and then multiple Enterprise D’s from multiple universes end up coming together. I have even seen someone credibly argue that Worf never truly made it back to his original universe and every episode after that took place in a different universe.

And that’s just what I can remember off the top of my head—I am sure I am missing a lot. In other words, there’s a ton of time travel going on in Star Trek and tons of alternate universes.

Second, I really don’t see such an impossible contradiction that it means that Star Trek Discovery has to be taken out of the Prime Timeline. Discovery takes place about 10 years before the original show, in the 2250’s, according to ScreenRant. Lower Decks, according to the official Star Trek website, takes place in the 2380’s. That means that there is about 130 years between the events of Discovery and Lower Decks. So maybe in the Prime Universe somehow the Klingons started looking like classic ‘Worf’ Klingons by the 2380’s but in another universe, they never solved the problem.

That’s one of many ways more than a century is plenty of time to explain the seeming contradiction.

But maybe that is missing the forest for the trees. According to Midnight’s Edge, the decision to air this gag on Lower Decks is allegedly an olive branch to fans that hated Discovery. So, whether it actually creates an irreconcilable contradiction in the lore between Discovery and Lower Decks that forces Discovery out of the Prime Timeline or not, it still might be interesting as a sign that something might change at Star Trek.

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