How many timelines/universes/realities do you take seriously?

People are still confusing 'canon' with 'continuity'.

 

It's who ever has their hands on it with the approval of who ever owns it.

Why not? Should just anybody be able write a book or make a film of any property?

Nope. Canon is the collected body of work. All those Batmen are canon. (Because DC/WB signed off on them) What they don't share is continuity. Same for Star Trek. Roddenberry/Berman and Abrams are part of the canon but have different continuities.

 

The weed option (for the meta).

 

Agree.

 

Yeah, which is exactly why I gave up on those discussions.

 

About the only parallel universe in Trek that I never took seriously is this one, I can't remember which novel (I'm pretty sure it was TOS, and it was WAY back in the days of the "numbered" books), but it featured this, which I swear I am not making up:

Spoiler: novel

a version of the Klingons who dress in pajamas, wear jewelry, and are called "Klingees."

But that was just a joke, a throwaway scene. Obviously not MEANT to be taken seriously.

I may not have liked what DS9 did with the MU, but it was clearly meant to be an actual, recurring plot line, so I did take it seriously. You can take things seriously and still #(%)*#$ing hate them.

 

I follow the physics of the modern Star Trek novels, which says that the timeline is always branching though not technically infinite. When I'm watching/reading something besides the novelverse, I simply think of it as a completely separate sub-franchise that can have its own laws of physics.