Spoilers New Picard TV Series and Litverse Continuity (may contain TV show spoilers)

[Greg Cox]

One thing: folks often assume that if a show or movie gets something "wrong" it's because of ignorance, that somebody couldn't be bothered to watch an old episode, or read an old comic book, or look up the actual facts behind a real historical event.

That may be the case sometimes, but more often than not the folks making the change know they're making a change and are doing it on purpose for what strikes them as a good reason. Now, this may or may not be the right call in any particular instance, but let's not always jump to the assumption that "Stupid writers don't know their STAR TREK trivia!"

Chances are, they're just as well-versed in the lore as any of us. They just made a conscious decision to go another way for whatever reason.

EDIT: Hah. I see Christopher just made the same point while I was typing this.

 

[Christopher]

Chances are, they're just as well-versed in the lore as any of us. They just made a conscious decision to go another way for whatever reason.

Yes, exactly. Creators like to create. They don't just want to copy what other people did with an idea; they want to put their own stamp on it, to tell it in their own way. That's why John Romita, Jr. doesn't draw Spider-Man the exact same way his father did. That's why Chris Pine's Kirk isn't just a William Shatner impression. That's why bands that cover classic rock songs do them with new arrangements and singing styles. It's always been understood that artists get to bring their own style and voice to their work, to reinterpret rather than just copying. Because that's why it's called creativity.

Stories are not just Wikipedia entries. It's not just about enumerating the facts and figures. None of this stuff really happened anyway; it's all just abstract ideas and symbols. So it's the prerogative of artists to reinterpret those ideas and symbols.

 

[Damian]

If Star Trek fans are complaining about visual discontinuities now, it's mainly because the franchise set up an expectation of greater visual consistency in its previous visits to the past of its main timeline (including uniforms, even when incorporating past footage wasn't required), and because they are capable of comparing how other long-running franchises are approaching the same issues.

That's probably part of it. When I first got into Star Trek there wasn't much continuity. But then over the years there was a greater attempt at that during the Berman years. And I got spoiled. I admit I'm someone that likes continuity (007 movies is an exception, but they were never really sequels to begin with). I even remember TNG episode "Identity Crisis" when they viewed log recordings of Geordi's older mission they made sure to use the original TNG uniform. "Tapestry" and "Night Terrors" did the same with the modified TWOK uniforms. Now I'm not saying it was perfect. But I got spoiled by that continuity.

As long as Kirsten is part of the writing staff, then they have access to all the Trek information they need. And Kirsten has told me that the other writers have indeed done their research and expanded their own Trek knowledge as they went along. Just because they choose to interpret some things differently than you or I would have does not mean that choice was made in ignorance.

Yeah, I get that. I was speaking more generally to Marlboro's point. I think it becomes more of an issue for a franchise that ignores what came before and puts out a lousy product with all kinds of contradictions. I think sometimes you can tell when someone's been careless (not all the time of course). I may not like some of what they are doing on Discovery, but I don't believe it's because anyone is lazy and not doing their homework. I'm just not a fan of their reinterpretation of things and am having a hard time seeing it in the original continuity right now.

I get what Marlboro is saying that you can't just come in as a 'fan'. There has to be more than that. Otherwise I could write a Star Trek story--I tried once for one of those compilation books of amateur writers stories Pocketbooks used to do. I got 2 pages in and realized it was lousy. It was like reading a science report. I bored myself. Now, I haven't seen anything that would lead me to think that about Discovery, or any of the other previous shows. It's obvious from comments Kurtzman made about the nu-TNG show that they are even going beyond canon in their research, doing more than they need to.

 

[Christopher]

I think it becomes more of an issue for a franchise that ignores what came before and puts out a lousy product with all kinds of contradictions.

Like I said, that's blurring two separate questions. There are many cases of really well-done sequels or ongoing series that play quite fast and loose with continuity, and there are cases of really consistent sequels/series that aren't any good at all. The one does not cause the other.

Continuity is nice to have, sure. I care very much about continuity and consistency in my own work (though I have made changes in reprints of my original fiction when it was necessary). But I am bewildered by the attitude that's taken root in fandom that it's somehow the only consideration that matters in fiction.

 

[Damian]

Boy, I feel out of the loop with some of this stuff. When it comes to Marvel Universe stuff the limits of my exposure are the original Superman movies (with Christopher Reeves). I mean is that even Marvel related?

I've never been much into the superhero/comic book genre though. When I see people talking about some of that I'm lost.

 

[Damian]

Like I said, that's blurring two separate questions. There are many cases of really well-done sequels or ongoing series that play quite fast and loose with continuity, and there are cases of really consistent sequels/series that aren't any good at all. The one does not cause the other.

That's true. I was trying to get at the idea that you could have a bad product or sequel because someone didn't do their homework and messed up the characters and the essence of the franchise. When you come out wondering what you just saw, was it even Star Trek, that sort of thing. Where they are so far off base and you can tell somebody just put stuff together and had no clue. I haven't seen that with Star Trek thus far. But examples out their I'm sure exist of someone that just totally missed because they had no clue about the franchise they were working with.

But I agree, that should not be the default interpretation. I don't care for the redesigns and some of the plot lines a whole lot, and I have a hard time seeing Discovery as anything other than a reboot right now, but I never felt it was because somebody was not doing their homework. It's just simply I'm not a big fan of their reinterpretation of it, plain and simple.

 

[marlboro]

Boy, I feel out of the loop with some of this stuff. When it comes to Marvel Universe stuff the limits of my exposure are the original Superman movies (with Christopher Reeves). I mean is that even Marvel related?.

Record scratch

Every nerd in the room simultaneously turns towards Damian with Gowron eyes.

 

[Damian]

Record scratch

Every nerd in the room simultaneously turns towards Damian with Gowron eyes.

 

[Damian]

I know. I have a lot of fan interests. Star Trek is at the top, and is really the only thing I take the time to post on. For instance, I don't post on James Bond sites, though I check for news from time to time. I love Hitchcock movies, but as there won't be anything new coming out from the master of suspense that's sort of a dead end (no pun intended).

Star Wars movies are fine, but I don't get into it beyond that. And I love horror films and some sci fi films. I admit I have a bit of a fetish with 60's and 70's dystopian sci-fi films (i.e. The Omega Man, Soylent Green, Rollerball, Logan's Run, the Planet of the Apes films). I just ordered "The Time Travellers" on DVD (I could only get it as a box set of other B-sci-fi films. I loved that film, a pretty good B-film. But I'm not as much into modern sci fi/fantasy. I think some movies today focus too much on action and not enough on the drama and story. I liked the Abrams Trek films but at times they drifted a little too far to the action side and lost some of the narrative.

However, I did like Unbreakable and Split by M. Night Shyamalan and am very much looking forward to Glass, which is a sort of real-world look at Superheros.

 

[marlboro]

Lol

Asking that question is sort of like having your grandma walk in while you're watching TNG and asking where Luke Skywalker is.

FYI: Superman is a DC comics character. Same for Batman, Flash, Wonder Woman. Basically, just think of the old Super Friends cartoon.

Marvel would be your X Men, Spider-Man, Hulk and so on. Just look for a list of mindless big budget action flicks that didn't bomb and you should be caught up on Marvel characters.

p.s. Hitchcock rules. I don't think any director comes close to him when it comes to high quality films. Well, except for Russ Meyer, of course.

 

[F. King Daniel]

You're just repeating the same mistakes as fans before you. This same reaction crops up every time a new incarnation of Trek comes along, and people always assume it's the first time it's ever been that way. More broadly, every generation always assumes its problems and complaints are new and different and greater than those of past generations, but if you go back and see what people were saying in the past, every generation reiterates the exact same complaints, and the exact same assumption that theirs are unique.

We've not had a situation where the entire premise of two spin-offs is rendered ridiculous because the latest one has retconned a means to cross any distance in an instant into the continuity. This is several orders of magnitude more significant than Khan not having met Chekov, or the Federation allowing genetic engineering in one episode and not another.

And if you go back and look at things like the Best of Trek collections, you'll see that first-run watchers of the original show did cringe at its many blatant contradictions -- and then they made up solutions for them.

When watching a serialised show mostly aimed at a mature audience of established Trekkies in 2019, one expects better than the continuity of a 1960's television show which existed before home video, and was almost an anthology by comparison.

 

[Damian]

FYI: Superman is a DC comics character. Same for Batman, Flash, Wonder Woman. Basically, just think of the old Super Friends cartoon.

Marvel would be your X Men, Spider-Man, Hulk and so on. Just look for a list of mindless big budget action flicks that didn't bomb and you should be caught up on Marvel characters.

Oh boy, I forgot all about the DC Comics world and that Superman was from that family. I thought your comment was related to my lack of comic book experience.

I never even thought it might because Superman wasn't Marvel. I just assumed it was all one thing. Oy.

 

[Christopher]

That's true. I was trying to get at the idea that you could have a bad product or sequel because someone didn't do their homework and messed up the characters and the essence of the franchise.

Yeah, but the thing is, unless you have behind-the-scenes insight, you're just guessing as to the reasons why something didn't work. You have no way of knowing whether the creators really didn't research the source material, or whether they knew it like the back of their hand, tried to reinvent it in a fresh way, and did a poor job of it. All you see is the result; you don't know what led to it.

In my experience, audiences are really bad at guessing how much knowledge the creators of one thing had of another thing. For instance, if they see some superficial resemblance between New Thing A and Slightly Older Thing B, they'll immediately say "Oh, the makers of New Thing A were obviously ripping off Slightly Older Thing B." But usually, if the makers of NTA had been aware of SOTB, then they would've changed NTA to resemble it less, to avoid exactly such accusations. The reason for the resemblance is that they didn't know about the earlier work. So audiences assume they had knowledge that they actually lacked. So why should the audience's assumption that they lacked knowledge of an earlier thing be any more trustworthy?

We've not had a situation where the entire premise of two spin-offs is rendered ridiculous because the latest one has retconned a means to cross any distance in an instant into the continuity.

You keep ignoring the fact that the ultimate abandonment of spore drive is already built into the premise, no differently than with the soliton wave in "New Ground," transwarp in "Threshold," etc. It's just one more of the many revolutionary-but-fatally-flawed new technologies in Trek that get briefly tried and then forgotten. The only difference is that it's taking more than a single episode for it to be abandoned, and that's only because TV today is more arc-based so plot points take longer to resolve. But it's been made crystal clear that it can't be used safely or ethically over the long haul. It's basically a rehash of Voyager: "Equinox," where the Equinox crew developed a really fast FTL drive but it turned out to require murdering sentient life forms so it was never used again.

When watching a serialised show mostly aimed at a mature audience of established Trekkies in 2019, one expects better than the continuity of a 1960's television show which existed before home video, and was almost an anthology by comparison.

And there you go making the same lazy assumption that continuity and quality are equivalent. Continuity is a choice. It's one tool in the kit. Yes, we now have the means to research nitpicky continuity details more effectively and easily, but that doesn't make them more important than they used to be. Continuity is still just a means to the end of telling a story. It is not the only thing that matters.

 

[Damian]

I did see one of the Batman movies though, the one with Val Kilmer. I see that's Marvel related.

 

[Damian]

Yeah, but the thing is, unless you have behind-the-scenes insight, you're just guessing as to the reasons why something didn't work. You have no way of knowing whether the creators really didn't research the source material, or whether they knew it like the back of their hand, tried to reinvent it in a fresh way, and did a poor job of it. All you see is the result; you don't know what led to it.

I guess I was adding two things together. A lousy show or movie in a franchise that makes numerous continuity errors (I mean mistakes in that case and not revisions. An extreme example would be like saying Scotty is a science officer).

I guess a better way to put it is sloppy work. I think there are times when you can tell when a work is sloppy. If it's more nuanced, that's a different story. I wish I can think of an example where I thought something was sloppy work, and not just a reimaging.

 

[Christopher]

I think there are times when you can tell when a work is sloppy.

And I think that unless you know how a job is done, you're only guessing about the process that causes the result you see. And uneducated guesses are prone to be wrong.

 

[Damian]

And I think that unless you know how a job is done, you're only guessing about the process that causes the result you see. And uneducated guesses are prone to be wrong.

I'll point you to Troll 2, an extreme example of a sloppily done movie, but there are times you can tell if something is sloppy and just badly done.

 

[F. King Daniel]

You keep ignoring the fact that the ultimate abandonment of spore drive is already built into the premise, no differently than with the soliton wave in "New Ground," transwarp in "Threshold," etc. It's just one more of the many revolutionary-but-fatally-flawed new technologies in Trek that get briefly tried and then forgotten. The only difference is that it's taking more than a single episode for it to be abandoned, and that's only because TV today is more arc-based so plot points take longer to resolve. But it's been made crystal clear that it can't be used safely or ethically over the long haul. It's basically a rehash of Voyager: "Equinox," where the Equinox crew developed a really fast FTL drive but it turned out to require murdering sentient life forms so it was never used again.

Except they haven't shown us a single thing to indicate Janeway wouldn't risk using it just once to get her crew home. To indicate that the Starfleet who were willing to commit genocide in order to win the Dominion War wouldn't risk it (or willingly sacrifice officers) in order to get vital strikes in behind enemy lines.

I'm not so hopeful their eventual permanent retirement of the Spore Drive will be any more convincing than their conclusion to the Klingon war. We shall see.

And there you go making the same lazy assumption that continuity and quality are equivalent. Continuity is a choice. It's one tool in the kit. Yes, we now have the means to research nitpicky continuity details more effectively and easily, but that doesn't make them more important than they used to be. Continuity is still just a means to the end of telling a story. It is not the only thing that matters.

Of course it does. It was never expected in the 60's that fans would rewatch Star Trek episodes. Now we're expected to binge watch shows on Netflix and the like in a few afternoons. Rewatching our favourite shows over and over is part of geek culture. To say it matters no more now than it did back then is silly.

Discovery's internal continuity is fairly sound. It's only their insistence that it's part of the greater Trek continuity that makes everything from Spore Drives to Klingon foreheads to Mirror Universe eye sensitivity a joke. Trek continuity is now on par with that of the X-Men movie franchise.

 

[David Weller]

As long as internal continuity is maintained I have no problem if Discovery is not consistent with the other Star Trek series.

I'm also a Doctor Who fan and they've done a number of stories showing contradictory explanations for the destruction of Atlantis.

 

[ryan123450]

The eye sensitivity thing is a real head scratcher. Surprisingly at this point that has to be even worse than the Klingon redesign for me.