What is THE Worst continuity error in Trek history..?!

[Christopher Miles]

@Kor

Glory.


Perfect! That's it. Nice.

"Honor" is the one word/concept that encompasses everything that went wrong with the Klingons post TNG. Worf spent his entire post Enterprise w/Picard career in a (mostly futile) attempt to restore a sense of honor to Klingons that either had lost it, or perhaps never valued it to begin with. Did they all forget the ways of Kahless? I think not. Kahless = Victory above all.

From the TOS/Phase II years- look at the Kitumba script- Malkathon was going to launch an overwhelming Klingon sneak attack to strike what would have been a killing blow to Starfleet. Sneaking around isn't honorable. No sir.

Interesting that 'cause Enterprise had ruined the Vulcans in season 1-3 the season 4 powers that be (Coto?) has to retcon that our formerly logical, composed Vulcan friends had "forgotten" the ways and teachings of Surak.

So, to me there are then two fallacious concepts in Trek- Honor and Logic.

Klingons would put aside honor for glory, and Vulcans would put aside logic for enlightened self interest.

Romulans were pretty much... Romulans - (Except for Nemesis when they went out like suckers).

Cardassians were pretty much Cardassians until they too went out like suckers.

Ditto Borg

 

[Terok Nor]

I agree Star Trek : Enterprise is the worst continuity mistake. If a prequel had to be made it should have been done by people who actually watched the original series. Even if you disregard TOS and think of it as a prequel to the spin offs it still doesn't fit in seamlessly.

Enterprise. The prequel no one wanted or asked for. Say what you want about the new movies but at least there was an audience for a prequel featuring Kirk and company even if it ended up being a timey wimey reboot of sorts.

 

[Marsden]

Moore was the TOS fan, but he was doing his Battlestar Galactica reboot and said he didn't want to come back after working (briefly) on VOY.

I wasn't a fan of Moore reinterpreting the Klingons as all about Honor and Duty, when "Balance of Terror" assigned those traits to the Romulans.

In my view, the movie-era Klingons were a better extrapolation from the TOS-era depiction than what we got from TNG onward.

I would have preferred the Klingons to have glory as their ideal instead of honor, based on Kor's famous line, "It would have been gloooorious."

Such glory would be accomplished by brutal conquest and treachery. Most would obediently focus on glory for the Empire, while a select extra-devious few seek personal glory.

Then there's the stuff from "Errand of Mercy" about Klingons being efficient soldiers (not "warriors"), and working perfectly as a single unit. It's hard to imagine all the honor-spouting viking biker-gang cavemen from later Trek working in such a manner.

Kor

Kor, this post is practically perfect!

People talk about ridges, no ridges.
(That makes me want potato chips.)
While that's certainly a difference, it's literally cosmetic. The biggest difference is the dumbing down of Klingon intelligence. They had a mind sifter! Can you even imagine a Klingon scientist like Mara in 24th century set productions. Everyone of them is too busy roaring and butting their heads. I wonder how they even got those ships, it's not like they ever had any smart Klingons to build them.
And I can see the Captain of the Amar, Kruge, Chang and the Klingon Ambassador continuing on that mind set started in Star Trek.

It's a shame they took a clever and worthy opponent and turned them into a collective caricature.

 

[Terok Nor]

I wasn't a fan of Moore reinterpreting the Klingons as all about Honor and Duty, when "Balance of Terror" assigned those traits to the Romulans.

In my view, the movie-era Klingons were a better extrapolation from the TOS-era depiction than what we got from TNG onward.

I would have preferred the Klingons to have glory as their ideal instead of honor, based on Kor's famous line, "It would have been gloooorious."

Such glory would be accomplished by brutal conquest and treachery. Most would obediently focus on glory for the Empire, while a select extra-devious few seek personal glory.

Then there's the stuff from "Errand of Mercy" about Klingons being efficient soldiers (not "warriors"), and working perfectly as a single unit. It's hard to imagine all the honor-spouting viking biker-gang cavemen from later Trek working in such a manner.

Kor

Kor, this post is practically perfect!

People talk about ridges, no ridges.
(That makes me want potato chips.)
While that's certainly a difference, it's literally cosmetic. The biggest difference is the dumbing down of Klingon intelligence. They had a mind sifter! Can you even imagine a Klingon scientist like Mara in 24th century set productions. Everyone of them is too busy roaring and butting their heads. I wonder how they even got those ships, it's not like they ever had any smart Klingons to build them.
And I can see the Captain of the Amar, Kruge, Chang and the Klingon Ambassador continuing on that mind set started in Star Trek.

It's a shame they took a clever and worthy opponent and turned them into a collective caricature.

I agree with this mostly but there were Klingons who differed from the norm of the TNG era. Gowron was ruthless, intelligent and ambitious. The Klingons were indeed dumbed down but I'm sure they still had their scientists and other TOS-like individuals. It's just we almost exclusively saw the dumbed down warrior Klingons.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Enterprise. The prequel no one wanted or asked for.

Speak for yourself...it was my favorite out of all Trek series, and I don't see one stitch of continuity violation in it.

 

[Nerys Myk]

It violates fanon more than canon .

 

[BillJ]

Speak for yourself...it was my favorite out of all Trek series, and I don't see one stitch of continuity violation in it.

I generally agree. But even they admitted to screwing up on the Romulan cloaking device in "Minefield".

It violates fanon more than canon .

Yup.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Speak for yourself...it was my favorite out of all Trek series, and I don't see one stitch of continuity violation in it.

I generally agree. But even they admitted to screwing up on the Romulan cloaking device in "Minefield".

Perhaps. But, given the way that Romulan ship kept cloaking and decloaking at random moments, I totally buy the explanation the novels would later give: it was a prototype and was malfunctioning.

 

[BillJ]

Speak for yourself...it was my favorite out of all Trek series, and I don't see one stitch of continuity violation in it.

I generally agree. But even they admitted to screwing up on the Romulan cloaking device in "Minefield".

Perhaps. But, given the way that Romulan ship kept cloaking and decloaking at random moments, I totally buy the explanation the novels would later give: it was a prototype and was malfunctioning.

You can fix any continuity glitch after the fact, but it doesn't change that it was a glitch to begin with.

 

[Lt. Tyler]

It is fact that all of it is canon as we know. Every pilot episode, all 5 TV series and all soon to be 13 feature films. However, due to all of these continuity errors in the Star Trek universe I truly believe that the powers that be should eventually follow the same principle as the Halloween movie franchise does. In other words, keep it all canon but break them up into different continuities/timelines/universes. So for instance if one series cannot be reconciled with another such as ENT and TOS it should be acknowledged that all the events take place in another universe on a different timeline and I am aware that Bragga did state that was the case for ENT before or during season 1 or 2. Therefore, it should be something like you have several continuities existing separately but all events are canon. So for example, you might have ENT-Star Trek:Insurrection-Star Trek:Nemisis existing in one universe (do to the events of First Contact creating ENT). Then The Cage-WNMHGB-TOS-TAS having its separate universe. TOS movies having there own. TNG-DS9-VOY-GEN. And so on and so fourth.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

keep it all canon but break them up into different continuities/timelines/universes.

They've already done that, with the Abramsverse vs. the regular (prime) timeline.

 

[Melakon]

So for example, you might have ENT-Star Trek:Insurrection-Star Trek:Nemisis existing in one universe (do to the events of First Contact creating ENT). Then The Cage-WNMHGB-TOS-TAS having its separate universe. TOS movies having there own. TNG-DS9-VOY-GEN. And so on and so fourth.

I have sometimes taken that approach in the past with each individual series and a good part of the films. Each one existing in its own variation of the theme, much like classical composers would write variations on another's work.

 

[Kor]

A wise old BBS member once said, "Continuity is the cement of our civilization with which we arise from chaos using canon as our guide."

Now I'm not sure where I was going with that...

Carry on.

Kor

 

[Lt. Tyler]

keep it all canon but break them up into different continuities/timelines/universes.

They've already done that, with the Abramsverse vs. the regular (prime) timeline.

Not like in sections I just listed. The Abramsverse only takes care of those well soon to be 3 movies and the Prime Timeline is everything else but all in one universe. So like I listed above and basing them separately from each other in which series and movies are more consistent with each other and can pretty much easily co-exit together such as TOS-TAS or ENT-TNG. So that is they need to break up the prime universe in different universes/planes on different timelines.

 

[Terok Nor]

TOS, TNG, DS9 and Voyager all fit together apart from a few blips. Enterprise is out on its own with the Temporal Cold War, The Xindi and many other things. Even the episode set during TNG's "The Pegasus" doesn't fit in the continuity of that episode!

 

[Terok Nor]

keep it all canon but break them up into different continuities/timelines/universes.

They've already done that, with the Abramsverse vs. the regular (prime) timeline.

Not like in sections I just listed. The Abramsverse only takes care of those well soon to be 3 movies and the Prime Timeline is everything else but all in one universe. So like I listed above and basing them separately from each other in which series and movies are more consistent with each other and can pretty much easily co-exit together such as TOS-TAS or ENT-TNG. So that is they need to break up the prime universe in different universes/planes on different timelines.

I already do that. There aren't enough continuity issues in the first 4 shows and the first 10 movies to consider them separate realities. Enterprise can easily fit into the same reality as the JJ Abrams movies.

 

[Nerys Myk]

TOS, TNG, DS9 and Voyager all fit together apart from a few blips. Enterprise is out on its own with the Temporal Cold War, The Xindi and many other things. Even the episode set during TNG's "The Pegasus" doesn't fit in the continuity of that episode!

Enterprise's sins are no worse than the other shows. It probably has less errors internally and with the other modern shows than TOS.

 

[Terok Nor]

TOS, TNG, DS9 and Voyager all fit together apart from a few blips. Enterprise is out on its own with the Temporal Cold War, The Xindi and many other things. Even the episode set during TNG's "The Pegasus" doesn't fit in the continuity of that episode!

Enterprise's sins are no worse than the other shows. It probably has less errors internally and with the other modern shows than TOS.

Well TOS is the daddy of the franchise. It was up to the writers of the spin offs to make sure stuff tallied up with events seen and mentioned in TOS. I don't think any of the shows apart from Enterprise went out of their way to ignore TOS. Whatever they did it was to try and improve on what came before and not to ignore it. That Temporal Cold War and Xindi stuff should not have taken place in a prequel. Sure, we can assume those events just weren't mentioned in any of the other shows but that's insulting our intelligence. They mentioned historical events both real and fictional all the time but somehow neglected to mention the time a huge chunk of Earth was destroyed in a terrorist attack? The NX-01 itself, a supposedly important historical ship, was forgotten 100 years later and not even worthy of a reference 100 years after that.

This is a rant. Rants are bad. And embarassing. I'll go now.

 

[Anwar]

Enterprise's biggest sin was merely that it wasn't exactly what most Trek fans imagined the past of Trek to be. TOS contradicted itself more often than ENT contradicted it.

 

[Nerys Myk]

TOS, TNG, DS9 and Voyager all fit together apart from a few blips. Enterprise is out on its own with the Temporal Cold War, The Xindi and many other things. Even the episode set during TNG's "The Pegasus" doesn't fit in the continuity of that episode!

Enterprise's sins are no worse than the other shows. It probably has less errors internally and with the other modern shows than TOS.

Well TOS is the daddy of the franchise. It was up to the writers of the spin offs to make sure stuff tallied up with events seen and mentioned in TOS. I don't think any of the shows apart from Enterprise went out of their way to ignore TOS. Whatever they did it was to try and improve on what came before and not to ignore it. That Temporal Cold War and Xindi stuff should not have taken place in a prequel. Sure, we can assume those events just weren't mentioned in any of the other shows but that's insulting our intelligence. They mentioned historical events both real and fictional all the time but somehow neglected to mention the time a huge chunk of Earth was destroyed in a terrorist attack? The NX-01 itself, a supposedly important historical ship, was forgotten 100 years later and not even worthy of a reference 100 years after that.

This is a rant. Rants are bad. And embarassing. I'll go now.

Enterprise probably had more nods to TOS than all the other shows combined.

I'm not fan of the Temporal Cold War's execution, but I don't see the problem with it as story element. Nothing wrong with the Xindi either. Why shouldn't either be in a prequel? Are there some rules of making prequel that they violated?

Why would these particular things have to be mentioned? The Federation is big and at that point had 300 years of history. (plus Centuries prior for its members) How often do you randomly mention events from two hundred or three hundred years ago unless they are relevant to the immediate conversation? And limiting the shows plot points to the scant information about the 22nd Century presented in the other shows is creatively stifling. Plus it would become a case of small Universe syndrome.

Who said the NX-01 was forgotten? That just an extrapolation put forth by people who dislike the show. Again, context and relevance matters. Unless something prompts me, I don't usually name drop past events, historical figures or vehicles into my conversations.