Here is why canon is important to Trek.

[Jayson1]

Someone used the word 'worship' on page one...

Canon/continuity is a good thing for any serial storytelling. No one's saying it's unimportant. The problem isn't the canon. The problems is the near religious approach some fans have with it, and how obsessive they become to make sure everything fits and how angry they become when ultimatly, something can't fit in.

I don't know if most Trek fans get angry. I think people love to nitpick and we also find ways around mistakes in our head thus creating the concept of "head canon" but outright anger? Even with "Discovery" I think most of the outrage is less on the changes and more on the fact that want to put in the Prime universe instead of the Kelvin Universe or a 3rd universe. Basically saying it's okay to change things just not the Trek universe I grew up with.
It's like the reason why people don't complain about Vulcan being blown up or Spock and Uhura having a romance and in fact many of us like those things. The difference was this was all happening in another timeline and they weren't impacting the timeline from the other shows except for Romulus blows up and Spock spends the rest of his life in a alternate universe but those things usually don't come down to canon complaints.

Jason

 

[dswynne1]

Here is another way of looking at the issue:

Canon: Kirk becomes Captain of the USS Enterprise during its historic 5-Year Mission.

Continuity: "Kirk becomes Captain of the USS Enterprise, after serving aboard the USS Farragut, then embarks on its 5-Year Mission" in the Prime Timeline; "Kirk becomes Captain of the USS Enterprise after the 'Nero Incident', and then embarks on on 5-Year Mission, after the defeat of Khan Noonien Singh" in the Kelvin Timeline.

So, what is important: the fact that Kirk was captain of the USS Enterprise, for its historic 5-Year Mission, or the details that led Kirk to become the captain of the USS Enterprise for its historic 5-Year Mission? Continuity versus canon.

 

[Jayson1]

Here is another way of looking at the issue:

Canon: Kirk becomes Captain of the USS Enterprise during its historic 5-Year Mission.

Continuity: "Kirk becomes Captain of the USS Enterprise, after serving aboard the USS Farragut, then embarks on its 5-Year Mission" in the Prime Timeline; "Kirk becomes Captain of the USS Enterprise after the 'Nero Incident', and then embarks on on 5-Year Mission, after the defeat of Khan Noonien Singh" in the Kelvin Timeline.

So, what is important: the fact that Kirk was captain of the USS Enterprise, for its historic 5-Year Mission, or the details that led Kirk to become the captain of the USS Enterprise for its historic 5-Year Mission? Continuity versus canon.

I think both are important and I would add a few other things such as Finnegan,friendship with Gary Mitchell, Carol Marcus and David and Edith Keeler because I think she has become KIrks "soulmate" for many fans. You proably also have to make sure he still has a brother and nephews though that is intresting because in one ep he mentions several I think but then in "Operation Annaliate" we only see one. Granted this is a example were the change can be explained by head canon by simply saying the other nephews were off planet and I know the comic books did that because I read that issue.

Jason

 

[F. King Daniel]

I think both are important and I would add a few other things such as Finnegan,friendship with Gary Mitchell, Carol Marcus and David and Edith Keeler because I think she has become KIrks "soulmate" for many fans. You proably also have to make sure he still has a brother and nephews though that is intresting because in one ep he mentions several I think but then in "Operation Annaliate" we only see one. Granted this is a example were the change can be explained by head canon by simply saying the other nephews were off planet and I know the comic books did that because I read that issue.

Jason

How many times did any of them matter, though? Gary Mitchell was a one-off character never mentioned again despite being Kirk's BFF, same with Edith. Fans like to think she was Kirk's world, but she was forgotten by the next episode.

 

[Jayson1]

How many times did any of them matter, though? Gary Mitchell was a one-off character never mentioned again despite being Kirk's BFF, same with Edith. Fans like to think she was Kirk's world, but she was forgotten by the next episode.

That's true but I sometimes think canon issue's are less about revisting stuff than it is about not having stuff erased. I think more people would be upset if Gary Mitchell was brought into a new show as some random officer that Kirk didn't know more than it does if we never see him again.
Also I think canon is something that is a bigger deal on the 24th century shows than it is with "TOS" because "TOS" feels very isolated from the rest of Trek. In the 24th century you got things that have to crossover such as the Dominion war on "Voyager" and the "TNG" movies. Granted those things are barely mentioned but even the creators new they couldn't ignore it completely.

Jason

 

[UnknownSample]

To be honest, I don't think DSC is going to cross over with any of the old shows. TNG is older today than TOS was when TNG started. DS9 and VOY are both relics of the Clinton administration. A child born the day ENT went off the air is in puberty today and will be old enough to drive a car in four years. The only Star Trek production DSC could plausibly cross over with would be Kelvin Trek, and of course they're set in a different timeline (although I suppose there is the possibility Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, and co. might be persuaded to make an appearance as their characters' Prime Timeline counterparts).

Basically, like it or not, Star Trek is now so old that DSC is going to be de facto more or less on its own, I suspect, in a way that no Star Trek spinoff since TNG Season Five has been.



Is it? Because if the Trill go from being bumpy forehaders to being spotted and Trill symbionts go from taking over their hosts' bodies to forming a new gestalt personality with their hosts, that means that millions of years of Trill evolution have to be pretended by the audience to have gone completely different. That's a pretty damn big retcon there -- at least as big as finding out that in the 2250s, they really did have holographic interfaces and heads-up displays and touch-screens instead of paper print-outs and analogue clocks and jelly-bean switches.



You don't even know the story DSC will tell; it's ridiculous to make that assertion yet. You're just reacting to production design aesthetics, not to the actual story.



I think that's totally fair. Internal continuity within DSC should be respected -- Burnham shouldn't be African American one week and then Ethiopian next week, for instance. But I also think there needs to be some wiggle room if discontinuity makes for a better story.



And Doctor Who has a pretty good attitude towards continuity, I think. It matters when they want it helps the story they're telling, and they don't worry about it if it doesn't.



Doesn't count!



"Doing things right" depends upon what your creative goals are. That is subjective, not objective.

No, continuing a show and then not caring about maintaining continuity is just screwing up, despite any attitude one might choose to take that it somehow doesn't matter. In that case, it's basically choosing consciously to screw up.
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If old shows are irrelevant to anything made now, then I have a wonderful idea... DON'T CALL IT STAR TREK. By calling it Star Trek, you're announcing that you're adding to the story already established. Fandom agitated for Trek to be brought back because they wanted the story to continue, be further fleshed out, expanded on.
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Anyone who has their own creative ideas that involve breaking with the show's internal history, fine. START YOU OWN SHOW. We need more SF on the air. We actually need more and different visions of SF on the air MORE than we need more Star Trek.
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But name recognition is everything now. It's murder trying to get anything made without its being attached to some earlier, established thing. I don't want the label of ST used to get on the air.
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The reason this site exists is that people care about the extended story of Star Trek, going all the way back to day one. All those episodes are being discussed in detail NOW, in the 21st century.

 

[BillJ]

If old shows are irrelevant to anything made now, then I have a wonderful idea... DON'T CALL IT STAR TREK.

They aren't irrelevant. Never have been. They are the basis for what comes now. But what comes now doesn't have to follow every detail to be relevant in its own right.

The minutiae doesn't make Star Trek "Star Trek".

 

[suarezguy]

Someone used the word 'worship' on page one...

Canon/continuity is a good thing for any serial storytelling. No one's saying it's unimportant. The problem isn't the canon. The problems is the near religious approach some fans have with it, and how obsessive they become to make sure everything fits and how angry they become when ultimatly, something can't fit in.

The new model of canon/continuity and somewhat fan expectations for sci fi in general seems to be closer to the extreme of the X-Men movies (where characters can randomly be handicapped earlier than a earlier film implied or even come back from being dead or depowered with little to no explanation) than the closeness generally followed in Berman Trek.

 

[Ithekro]

I tend to think of these things in historical terms (since History was my major in college). So continuity for me would also mean attempting to maintain era specific look and styling as a historical piece within a fictional universe. While most sci-fi doesn't need to bother with that, old sci-fi that have a lineage of decades within basically one continuity start to require the show to present eras of "the future" to be the same or similar to what they might have done decades ago because it is expected to look like that from a historical perspective.

Even Doctor Who, a show that is quite loose with time and space, will use old style prop designs from the 1960s if the episode warrants the inclusion of a specific reference. In recent years, the inclusion of old style Daleks and Cybermen. Using and than updating the costume for the Ice Warriors. And in some instances, using the cheap special effects and sets of the 1960s to their advantage. The TARDIS has changed internally a lot, but the outside has changed not so much. It is different, but it is still a blue police box.

Star Trek, the other very long running sci-fi TV series, should probably do something like this as well. While not slavishly, it would make sense if things looked similar to how they did during a specific time period, even if the production team makes it more advanced due to modern tech and conforming to today's logic. The feel if the set piece, for lack of a better term, should still feel like it fits within the existing continuity. Even if that continuity is fifty years old.

However the only functional set pieces for the likes of Star Trek Discovery, would be Constitution-class starships and K7 style space stations. If they avoid those, than they don't need to conform at all, save maybe attempt to figure out why the uniform styling is different between this and The Cage. That could just be a transitional period. Starfleet had a ton of those in the TNG-VOY era.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I think TV shows are exponentially more engaging when there is good world building, and any show called Star Trek has decades of world building that fans are heavily invested in already done for them for free. It'd be silly to throw it away.

But minor continuity problems to tell a better story or relate more to current culture are okay.

 

[BillJ]

I think TV shows are exponentially more engaging when there is good world building, and any show called Star Trek has decades of world building that fans are heavily invested in already done for them for free. It'd be silly to throw it away.

That's just it, when you reboot you aren't really throwing anything away. You are simply redefining concepts to make sense in a modern context.

Seriously? Are we really going to be that upset if "Spock's Brain", "Code of Honor" and "Threshold" are tossed in the dustbin? And the Eugenics Wars were moved to the mid/late-21st century?

 

[Balok's Decoy]

Canon really is unimportant. At least in my view. I don't care if five different series from three eras hang together or not. What's important to me is that the stories are fun and characters act like real people.

I was going to say something but then you said it so....yeah. What @BillJ said...

EDIT: Okay I'll add this. There needs to be a balance, that's all. Like for example:

Canon that matters (probably): Kirk was captain of the Enterprise during the 5 year mission.
Canon that doesn't matter: What the Klingons look like this week.

Also agree with @The Wormhole that canon is great if it serves the story but should be immediately discarded as soon as it gets in a good story's way. Story > Canon, always.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Continuity, to me, makes it seem like the universe is still the same place. Otherwise, why call it "Star Trek"? If it is too radically different were you can't tell if this is some new sci-fi show, Battlestar Galactica, or Star Command, than it is no longer Star Trek, but something just using the name to get viewers.

I'm not seeing anything that makes it "radically different". They changed costumes and upgraded sets and SFX. They aren't calling the Federation the Galactic Imperium and setting it on a ship of the Imperial Space Fleet. So far there's no erasure of story based continuity.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

That's just it, when you reboot you aren't really throwing anything away. You are simply redefining concepts to make sense in a modern context.

Seriously? Are we really going to be that upset if "Spock's Brain", "Code of Honor" and "Threshold" are tossed in the dustbin? And the Eugenics Wars were moved to the mid/late-21st century?

Rebooting is explicitly saying 'Nothing counts'.

Moving timetable of Eugenics Wars is in
The category of 'Less important bits' since timetable was never a major plot point. And ignoring Threshold is in the category of 'Telling a better story.' But throwing away the history of the relationship between the Federation and Klingons, or the result of the show's major arcs is a giant waste.

I'd rather see original IPs than a show where things are named the same as Star Trek but have nothing else in common.

It gets to the point where it's like, I'd love to hear the story you want to tell, maybe it's a great story but why did you call it Star Trek if you weren't going to use its world except for the names? If you want to just do your own thing, do your own thing, and call it your own thing.

 

[BillJ]

Moving timetable of Eugenics Wars is in
The category of 'Less important bits' since timetable was never a major plot point. And ignoring Threshold is in the category of 'Telling a better story.' But throwing away the history of the relationship between the Federation and Klingons, or the result of the show's major arcs is a giant waste.

But "Less Important Bits" vary by individual. What isn't important to you, may well be important to someone else.

For me, the look of the original Star Trek is important. It was something that I loved during my developing years. The original Star Trek helped define who I was. So when you throw it all out (because some see it as a "less important bit"), all I can do is treat Discovery as a reboot. Because visually (as it stands now), it has nothing to do with what I see as Star Trek.

YMMV.

 

[suarezguy]

That's just it, when you reboot you aren't really throwing anything away. You are simply redefining concepts to make sense in a modern context.

The purpose of a reboot does seem to be that the new producer thinks the old continuity is too heavy and specific with both its timeline/chronology and fan expectations. Most of the older episodes still make sense, with some even playing better, today.

Seriously? Are we really going to be that upset if "Spock's Brain", "Code of Honor" and "Threshold" are tossed in the dustbin?

In a long-running franchise you easily can not follow up on and even ignore a few bad episodes while with a reboot you lose all the good and bad. I do think it's a shame that the new Captain Kirk hasn't gone through "Where No One Has Gone Before" or "Mirror, Mirror" or "Amok Time" or "The City on the Edge of Forever" or "Balance of Terror".

And the Eugenics Wars were moved to the mid/late-21st century?

I don't think a lot of people were or are clamoring to see more of Khan or other supermen/augments so that detail is pretty irreverent, while no one wants to revisit "Code of Honor" or "Spock's Brain".

 

[Jayson1]

That's just it, when you reboot you aren't really throwing anything away. You are simply redefining concepts to make sense in a modern context.

Seriously? Are we really going to be that upset if "Spock's Brain", "Code of Honor" and "Threshold" are tossed in the dustbin? And the Eugenics Wars were moved to the mid/late-21st century?

I think there is a difference between tinkering with backstory and erasing whole episodes or movies so I got to admit I wouldn't like it if even the bad episodes were erased. I mean they can be ignored for the most part but even bad episodes can sometimes lend itself out to intresting stuff.
The Ferengi were almost always awful on "TNG" but then "DS9" made them work and they did that by not really changing them all that much but by simply trying show their perspective with a little more depth and character like Quark who was written almost like a everyman instead of a over the top clown. It would have been easy for Trek to pretend the Ferengi never existed but they saw some potential and did better with it.
If someone wanted to do a Paris story for example then having them explore his first sexual experience as a teenager could be intresting thing to add to a story and it wouldn't matter if that backstory element came from what people see as a horrible episode like "Threshold."
I think canon actually gives you more to work with because without it you might tend to have to rely on alien of the week stories to much if nobody cares about the overal universe your show is set in. I like how "Best of Both Worlds" can lend itself to something like "Family" "I Borg" and then the movie "First Contact." or even little added touches such Admiral Satie in "The Drumhead" using it as a means to attack Picard while he was on the stand or even provide the backstory for Sisko's wife being killed in the pilot of "DS9" or even a little joke in "Voyager" were Q defends the importance of RIker being created by Quinn since he saved Earth from the Borg or Janeway's "Thank you for introducing us to the Borg" line in a episode that I can't recall.

Jason

Jason

 

[urbandefault]

Like an anchor around the neck, so is the canon of Star Trek.

The old can be respected while creating the new, without slavish adherence and endless random references and stunt casting.

I'd like all new Trek, and it looks like that's what we're getting.

 

[Makarov]

Yes it is important, I agree with the OP. To say it's not is taking for granted the great attention to detail writers have been able to pull off over the years even if it's not perfect.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Yes it is important, I agree with the OP. To say it's not is taking for granted the great attention to detail writers have been able to pull off over the years even if it's not perfect.

Writers are notoriously fickle.