Spoilers Discovery and the Novelverse - TV show discussion thread

[Damian]

I will say I am a bit disappointed to here that it appears Discovery isn't going to be as neat an tidy as far as on screen canon and tie-ins as I initially thought.

When the show first came out I had a distinct impression that this time they were going to try to maintain a larger universe continuity. Not that it would have been perfect. Nothing ever is. Somewhere along the line something would be contradicted because of a story need, or the simplest someone just forgot because there are a lot of details. But I had thought maybe from a macro perspective there was going to be an attempt to keep it all together.

I'll have to wait to see the 2nd season when it comes out on Blu-Ray (so I've avoided reading any major spoilers about it). However, from the sounds of it, it sounds like we are back to the default in Star Trek. That is the novels (and other tie-ins) will have to be consistent with canon, but they'll be little interest in the reverse. A shame. It might have been nice to see a universe that fit together almost hand in glove.

 

[Christopher]

I will say I am a bit disappointed to here that it appears Discovery isn't going to be as neat an tidy as far as on screen canon and tie-ins as I initially thought.

I never thought that was a realistic possibility. And as we've seen with Star Wars, the only way to make it work would've been to shut down all previous tie-in continuities and start fresh. After all, the novel continuity is just one of several mutually contradictory tie-in continuities, alongside IDW, Star Trek Online, and Star Trek Adventures at the very least (and IDW doesn't even have a single overall continuity). So which one would they choose?

When the show first came out I had a distinct impression that this time they were going to try to maintain a larger universe continuity. Not that it would have been perfect. Nothing ever is. Somewhere along the line something would be contradicted because of a story need, or the simplest someone just forgot because there are a lot of details. But I had thought maybe from a macro perspective there was going to be an attempt to keep it all together.

Well, I think the key is in that Ted Sullivan quote -- "it's canon unless we do something that invalidates it." Which just underlines how meaningless the "canon" label is. You can do your best to make the tie-ins feel like they fit the show's reality, you can even draw on character names or ideas from them, but the bottom line is always going to be that the show is the primary work and the tie-ins exist to support it, not the other way around. The tie-ins are read by only 1-2% of the audience, so if the makers of the show decide they need to tell a certain story, then of course they're not going to abandon it because the tie-ins did something different.

Besides, look at how much season 2 is retconning from season 1. Even screen canon isn't binding on continuity. Fans need to get over this delusion that "canon" is a promise that nothing will change. It has never, ever meant that.

 

[Tuskin38]

I will say I am a bit disappointed to here that it appears Discovery isn't going to be as neat an tidy as far as on screen canon and tie-ins as I initially thought.

When the show first came out I had a distinct impression that this time they were going to try to maintain a larger universe continuity. Not that it would have been perfect. Nothing ever is. Somewhere along the line something would be contradicted because of a story need, or the simplest someone just forgot because there are a lot of details. But I had thought maybe from a macro perspective there was going to be an attempt to keep it all together.

I'll have to wait to see the 2nd season when it comes out on Blu-Ray (so I've avoided reading any major spoilers about it). However, from the sounds of it, it sounds like we are back to the default in Star Trek. That is the novels (and other tie-ins) will have to be consistent with canon, but they'll be little interest in the reverse. A shame. It might have been nice to see a universe that fit together almost hand in glove.

They’ve always said the writers will not have to follow them

skulls reduced in size

Not all of them, it only appears to be L’rell’s That was shortened. All the of the others in episode 3 still had the bigger skulls.

season one featured a new D7 battlecruiser design

Considering every single official source outside of the show calls it something other than a D7, I’m willing to overlook that as a error in the script.

I'm pretty sure I read they are the same skulls with the just hair stuck over the top.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/240485808509812737/540195024483385364/image0.png

 

[Damian]

I never thought that was a realistic possibility. And as we've seen with Star Wars, the only way to make it work would've been to shut down all previous tie-in continuities and start fresh

I was thinking just internally to Discovery. That they were going to try to keep all things related to Discovery as internally consistent as possible (it seemed at the beginning that they were going to try to keep the show, novels and comics in line with one another, again, as much as possible).

Besides, look at how much season 2 is retconning from season 1. Even screen canon isn't binding on continuity. Fans need to get over this delusion that "canon" is a promise that nothing will change. It has never, ever meant that.

That's interesting. So the show isn't even staying consistent with itself? I guess then tie in consistency is caput, if they're even retconning the show itself. Usually the shows (at least since TNG) have been mostly consistent within themselves, with any 'retconning' being either due to the passage of time or being of a minimalistic nature (i.e. it being suggested in season 1 the Klingon Empire was part of the Federation to later years being allies and not part of the Federation--which can be explained away with minimal effort).

 

[Christopher]

I was thinking just internally to Discovery. That they were going to try to keep all things related to Discovery as internally consistent as possible (it seemed at the beginning that they were going to try to keep the show, novels and comics in line with one another, again, as much as possible).

Again, consider the Sullivan quote -- "canon unless we do something that invalidates it." They never made the promise you imagined.

That's interesting. So the show isn't even staying consistent with itself?

No more than Star Trek ever has. TOS retconned the Enterprise from an Earth ship into a Federation ship midway through season 1. TMP redesigned the Klingons, then TNG reinvented them from treacherous moustache-twirlers into honorable warriors, then DS9 pretty much put them back. TWOK retconned Starfleet into a more military organization and then TNG changed it back to a peaceful scientific organization, but then "The Wounded" retconned in a recently ended Cardassian war that contradicted the first two seasons' portrayal of a Starfleet so accustomed to peace that Picard objected to the idea of even doing war games as an exercise. Then the movies came along and went from saying that Data's emotion chip was permanently fused in place to casually saying he'd removed it two films later. DS9: "Emissary" portrayed the wormhole aliens as having no prior understanding of corporeal life, but later seasons retconned them into active gods who'd intervened directly in Bajoran affairs and Sisko's conception. And so on.

What DSC's season 2 producers are doing now -- dialing back the more radical changes in season 1 to make the show fit better with previously established Trek continuity, e.g. by giving the Klingons hair again and introducing the D-7 cruiser -- is pretty much what TNG's later-season producers did after Roddenberry had tried to distance it from TOS as much as possible and even treat it as a soft reboot. Or what ENT's season-4 producers did with the Vulcans to bring their culture in line with their 23rd and 24th-century portrayals.

Usually the shows (at least since TNG) have been mostly consistent within themselves

No... not really. It's more than fans have worked very hard to rationalize the inconsistencies and convince themselves it all fit together. Fandom always sees the newest incarnation's changes as bigger than previous ones, but that's only because they haven't had as much time to make excuses for them in their heads. I've seen it happen over and over. We went through this same exact process back when ENT was on and I had exactly the same debates with TrekBBS posters back then. And you can see the same complaints in old magazine letter columns going back to the early '80s.

 

[Damian]

Again, consider the Sullivan quote -- "canon unless we do something that invalidates it." They never made the promise you imagined.





No more than Star Trek ever has. TOS retconned the Enterprise from an Earth ship into a Federation ship midway through season 1. TMP redesigned the Klingons, then TNG reinvented them from treacherous moustache-twirlers into honorable warriors, then DS9 pretty much put them back. TWOK retconned Starfleet into a more military organization and then TNG changed it back to a peaceful scientific organization, but then "The Wounded" retconned in a recently ended Cardassian war that contradicted the first two seasons' portrayal of a Starfleet so accustomed to peace that Picard objected to the idea of even doing war games as an exercise. Then the movies came along and went from saying that Data's emotion chip was permanently fused in place to casually saying he'd removed it two films later. DS9: "Emissary" portrayed the wormhole aliens as having no prior understanding of corporeal life, but later seasons retconned them into active gods who'd intervened directly in Bajoran affairs and Sisko's conception. And so on.

What DSC's season 2 producers are doing now -- dialing back the more radical changes in season 1 to make the show fit better with previously established Trek continuity, e.g. by giving the Klingons hair again and introducing the D-7 cruiser -- is pretty much what TNG's later-season producers did after Roddenberry had tried to distance it from TOS as much as possible and even treat it as a soft reboot. Or what ENT's season-4 producers did with the Vulcans to bring their culture in line with their 23rd and 24th-century portrayals.




No... not really. It's more than fans have worked very hard to rationalize the inconsistencies and convince themselves it all fit together. Fandom always sees the newest incarnation's changes as bigger than previous ones, but that's only because they haven't had as much time to make excuses for them in their heads. I've seen it happen over and over. We went through this same exact process back when ENT was on and I had exactly the same debates with TrekBBS posters back then. And you can see the same complaints in old magazine letter columns going back to the early '80s.

I don't know. When I takes Star Trek as a whole some of those changes don't seem all that unexplainable. For instance, in the original series, there's nothing to say in the early episodes there was no Federation. It just wasn't mentioned. I don't really see a major inconsistency there. The redesigned Klingons in TMP have a satisfactory explanation from Enterprise now (at least IMO), and frankly, I always thought genetics was a good explanation for that. As far as the militaristic view of Starfleet in TWOK, then changed by TNG, that's pretty easily explained by the passage of time and the priorities of the Starfleet brass. In any military organization sometimes priorities change. I don't really feel it's inherently inconsistent, simply the needs of the time period. The Cardassian War is a bit more significant, but even then, one could simply say the war was winding down by the time the Enterprise-D was launched. Starfleet may have felt it was important to maintain their exploration arm, and obviously having families on ships was revolutionary at the time so I'm sure they wouldn't send the Enterprise to the front lines. The Prophets, well, I never saw much of an inconsistency there to be honest. Prior to Sisko's contact with them, they provided more in the way of guidance then outright intervention. Later they took a more direct role, such as eliminating the Dominion fleet, but mostly it was in the form of visions. That doesn't mean they had a strong handle of time as we know it. It was likely a forgotten skill, since they exist outside of time they may have simply lost their understanding of linear time. To them, the guidance they provided Bajor may have happened, be happening and will happen, all at the same time. They could probably view Bajor in the past, present and future as one. So I don't necessarily see an inherent contradiction there.

I suppose I'm arguing you're point , in a way. I guess what I'm trying to say is when I think of Star Trek (at least on screen canon), I can see a general storyline that makes sense from Enterprise through Nemesis. There are some contradictions, sure. But on the whole most of it are things that can be pretty easily explained. In fact some of you guys have done just that in your novels, to varying degrees. And it's precisely that they can be explained away that makes them easier to swallow, and less significant to me (in fact, even some of the things you noted I never thought of as a big deal really).

I'm not sure how far Discovery will go in retconning itself. So far what I've seen in Star Trek when it comes to that sort of thing, most inconsistencies can be explained away, sometimes in one sentence, sometimes a bit more. Does Discovery go past that point, where you can't explain it away? Where it goes too far and it's inexplicable? I don't have the answer to that obviously--partly because I won't see season 2 for a while, partly because we may not know until more seasons pass.

As much as I might argue about consistency here in various threads, to be honest, I'm more concerned with consistency on a macro scale. I also have a certain fetish about production design consistencies if you haven't noticed . But I don't look for every little inconsistency. My earlier example about season 1 indicating Klingons were actually part of the Federation, and later being allies---I never sweated that. That's not a big deal to me. A simple explanation could explain something like that away. Even Data's emotion chip, I simply figured they found a way to remove it, or turn it off, as time went on. It's all perfectly reasonable to me so I don't dwell on it.

 

[Christopher]

I don't know. When I takes Star Trek as a whole some of those changes don't seem all that unexplainable.

Yes, that's part of my point, as you acknowledge. The franchise contains many contradictions that fans have always found ways to explain. That's why it's so annoying when fans look at the newest contradictions and start wailing and tearing their hair out about how they're impossible to fix short of alternate universes and have ruined Trek forever. And it's the exact same nonsense now that fans 15 years ago were saying about Enterprise. They always forget that Trek has always, always been a mass of inconsistencies and that their perception of it as a unified whole is the result of using their imagination to stitch it all together. So why are they always so dadblamed convinced that they can't do the same with the new inconsistencies?

I suppose I'm arguing you're point , in a way. I guess what I'm trying to say is when I think of Star Trek (at least on screen canon), I can see a general storyline that makes sense from Enterprise through Nemesis.

And people 15 or so years ago were insisting loudly that it would never be possible to reconcile Enterprise with the rest of the continuity. And before that they said the same thing about the TOS movies and TNG. The perception always exists that the newest version is irreconcilable, but just wait a decade or two and it'll all be seen as a unified whole. Back when the continuity purists were damning Enterprise as irreconcilable, I predicted that 10-15 years later, people would be talking about ENT as a unified part of the whole exactly as you're doing now. You've proven my point. And so I can say with confidence that 10-15 years from now, people will look back at Discovery as part of the same unified whole as every prior series. It just takes time for people to integrate the new information into their mental models.

 

[JD]

I heard that too, but photographic comparisons of L'Rell prove otherwise.

They’ve always said the writers will not have to follow them


Not all of them, it only appears to be L’rell’s That was shortened. All the of the others in episode 3 still had the bigger skulls.

I thought she looked different, but I wasn't positive, thanks for posting that. It's also worth pointing out that Kol-Sha (link contains Disco Season 2 spoilers) could pretty much fit with the TNG-Ent Klingons without being noticed.
The moment we found out that Pike and the Enterprse were playing a role in the new season I figured there was a 50/50 chance Desperate Hours was going to be contradicted, and while I am disappointed, I'm not surprised it was. The book was written when a different showrunner, with a different plan, was in charge, so once those things changed, I'm not surprised what was said about the book before is not the case now.
As for contradictions in the old shows, one that's always bugged me that I don't see mentioned very often is how the Trill completely changed between The Host and DS9. They went from having forhead ridges, with the symbiont as the dominant personality, to having spots with the host as the dominant personality and the symbiont as not much more than a memory storage device.

 

[marlboro]

Didn't they explain the differing Trill in Forged in Fire? Augment Virus infection, I think it was.


I hadn't thought about it until it was mentioned here, but the serialized nature really does pose a challenge when it comes to writing tie-in novels. It will be interesting to see how that is dealt with.

 

[Damian]

Yes, that's part of my point, as you acknowledge. The franchise contains many contradictions that fans have always found ways to explain. That's why it's so annoying when fans look at the newest contradictions and start wailing and tearing their hair out about how they're impossible to fix short of alternate universes and have ruined Trek forever. And it's the exact same nonsense now that fans 15 years ago were saying about Enterprise. They always forget that Trek has always, always been a mass of inconsistencies and that their perception of it as a unified whole is the result of using their imagination to stitch it all together. So why are they always so dadblamed convinced that they can't do the same with the new inconsistencies?




And people 15 or so years ago were insisting loudly that it would never be possible to reconcile Enterprise with the rest of the continuity. And before that they said the same thing about the TOS movies and TNG. The perception always exists that the newest version is irreconcilable, but just wait a decade or two and it'll all be seen as a unified whole. Back when the continuity purists were damning Enterprise as irreconcilable, I predicted that 10-15 years later, people would be talking about ENT as a unified part of the whole exactly as you're doing now. You've proven my point. And so I can say with confidence that 10-15 years from now, people will look back at Discovery as part of the same unified whole as every prior series. It just takes time for people to integrate the new information into their mental models.

I'm just curious, does Discovery, or some future show, make it that it can't be explained away? I don't think it's a question anyone can answer now, as Discovery is still pretty new. So far, most inconsistencies can be explained away, sometimes with just a bit of imagination. But does it ever get to the point where it doesn't.

I've already gone on ad nauseum about why I find it easier to treat Discovery as a reboot for the time being, and I won't bore people again with that. But I've left the door open that my opinion could change with time. It is the first time I felt that way though. Honestly I never felt TNG through to Enterprise didn't 'fit.' I might have had my doubts about some shows when they started, but it was more story premise and early episode quality. TNG was uneven to start, DS9 being set on a space station made me wonder if that premise would work. But for me it was never a continuity issue up to now.

I never saw TNG as a retcon, or soft reboot, or anything else even at the beginning. I saw it as a continuation. I easily attributed any perceived changes in focus or design, or the premise of the show as it being 78 years after TVH. So it never bothered me. They didn't make a lot of TOS references early on, but I never gave that much thought either. People don't typically reminisce even about important historical figures in their day to day life so it made some sense.

Enterprise, well, I gave that show a bit more latitude because they were trying to achieve a balance, and for the most part I felt they succeeded. The episode with the Ferengi may have tested me a bit, though they were careful not to name them in the episode. But overall, I didn't agree at the time with some of the complaints about continuity.

 

[Damian]

Didn't they explain the differing Trill in Forged in Fire? Augment Virus infection, I think it was. That thing gets around.


I hadn't thought about it until it was mentioned here, but the serialized nature really does pose a challenge when it comes to writing tie-in novels. It will be interesting to see how that is dealt with.

I remember one of the novels explained it as a different type of Trill, sort of like how Chinese people, Caucasians and African Americans look different, if I remember correctly--and forget trying to remember the specific novel.

 

[Christopher]

I'm just curious, does Discovery, or some future show, make it that it can't be explained away?

The point is, with every new incarnation of Trek, there are some fans who claim it can never be explained away, but they're always wrong, because it always ends up being incorporated as part of the whole, with the inconsistencies handwaved or ignored. It's all just pretend anyway, and sometimes that means pretending things fit when they actually don't.

Honestly I never felt TNG through to Enterprise didn't 'fit.'

But there were always very vocal fans who insisted they didn't. The screaming about Enterprise's "canon violations" was as bad as what you hear now about Discovery. Heck, it took years for TNG to win over the TOS purists -- not to mention some of the TOS cast members.

I never saw TNG as a retcon, or soft reboot, or anything else even at the beginning.

Why are you assuming this conversation is about you? I was saying that Gene Roddenberry himself intended TNG to be a soft reboot. There was a lot about TOS and later productions that he was unhappy with, and he saw TNG as a chance to carve away the stuff he didn't like and get it right this time. But his influence on the show quickly waned, and later producers who had grown up as fans of TOS started tying the two shows more closely together.

 

[Greg Cox]

There was also some inconsistency on TNG about whether Betazoids could sense the thoughts and emotions of Ferengi. Early on, they could, but then somebody realized that this made it too easy for Troi to see through the Ferengi's schemes, so they retconned it so that Betazoids couldn't sense what a Ferengi was feeling.

Same way DS9 quietly forgot that Trills couldn't use transporters . . .

 

[marlboro]

I remember one of the novels explained it as a different type of Trill, sort of like how Chinese people, Caucasians and African Americans look different, if I remember correctly--and forget trying to remember the specific novel.

Hmm...that does sound familiar. I don't know if I've read that in a novel or if I've just read it here on the forum. I googled and CLB mentioned it in an old thread. Who knows? All this stuff runs together after a while.

The Trill freak me out. That worm triggers a fear and loathing response in me that I have a hard time getting past. There was an unjoined Trill character (Kell Perim I think) who was very anti-symbiot. She made some interesting points. I wish we had got to see more of her.

 

[Greg Cox]

I think most people would judge quality by whether the story is enjoyable. Trek novels have never been acknowledged by canon and have often been contradicted by it, but that hasn't kept them from being popular and commercially successful.

Amen. I've always resisted the idea that an enjoyable story somehow loses "quality" if it ceases to become "canon" for some reason. Did you enjoy reading it the first time around? Has it it suddenly become less enjoyable, or not as well-written, just because it was contradicted by a later movie or episode or whatever?

You sometimes see this attitude with comics fans, too. A comic-book series reboots its continuity, rendering a previous story apocryphal, and suddenly folks act as though that story is no good now--and may even bitch about wasting time and money on a story that doesn't "count" anymore

What difference does that make? Did you enjoy the story before, was it a pleasurable reading experience, is the "quality" of the art and dialogue as good as it was before? Parsing which made-up story is more "real' than another strikes me as akin to arguing about how many Organians can dance on the head of a pin. It's kinda pointless.

At the risk of playing curmudgeon again, I never worried about such things when I devoured GET SMART and DARK SHADOWS novels in my youth, so why hold modern tie-in novels to a different standard? Tie-in novels will NEVER be canon in any way, regardless of the franchise. That's simply the nature of the beast.

 

[Damian]

Why are you assuming this conversation is about you?

I'm not. I was just expressing my own personal opinion is all. By no means do I think my opinion is the prevalent opinion out there (in fact, since there was no internet back when TNG started--at least not how we see it today, I never really knew back then other's opinions about it--where I grew up I was pretty much the only Trekkie around so I never really talked to anyone about Star Trek in those days---that and Trekkies were sort of stereotyped as nerdy types, at least where I lived and being a teenager I was concerned about such things so I didn't readily admit I was a Trekkie).

I'm just saying when I watched TNG when it came out I just thought of it as a continuation of Star Trek as a natural course. I can only talk about what I think after all.

The point is, with every new incarnation of Trek, there are some fans who claim it can never be explained away, but they're always wrong, because it always ends up being incorporated as part of the whole, with the inconsistencies handwaved or ignored. It's all just pretend anyway, and sometimes that means pretending things fit when they actually don't

I was just curious, could Discovery--or some future Star Trek show, push things to the point that a hand wave doesn't work anymore. Where it's so inconsistent that it can't be ignored or explained away (at least without some showrunner saying it IS a full reboot)? It's not something I really expect an answer to because, frankly, I don't think it can be if and until it happens. I look at Discovery as a reboot, FOR NOW, because I can enjoy it better without trying to force fit the show in the original continuity. It's a personal thing and I'm open to the possibility it eventually fits for me. But it would still be about my own personal view.

Amen. I've always resisted the idea that an enjoyable story somehow loses "quality" if it ceases to become "canon" for some reason. Did you enjoy reading it the first time around? Has it it suddenly become less enjoyable, or not as well-written, just because it was contradicted by a later movie or episode or whatever?

Yes, I agree there. I didn't stop liking Strangers from the Sky, or Federation because First Contact came out negated most of those novels. And if someone wants to consider the parallel universe theory that some canon shows and movies have noted, you could even treat those as parallel timelines (I don't really worry about it to much, believe it or not).


You know, I keep thinking, I don't know how I end up in some of these debates. I like continuity. And it'd be nice if everything fit. But I don't consider myself a purist actually. Like Greg's example about Betazoids reading, or not reading Ferengi. Or Christopher's example about the Cardassian War. Those things didn't bother me in the least. I barely gave those things a second thought. I actually expect there to be a few inconsistencies here and there. TNG, Enterprise--the continuity issues weren't a big deal for me. It fit well enough that I didn't dwell on it.

It's only with Discovery I find so much that it's a lot harder for me to ignore. I like the show, despite my misgivings about continuity. But I'm finding it hard to place it in the proper context. And it's something I noticed because it's the first time I personally felt that way about a Star Trek show. It's not an issue I've had before, so I guess I'm magnifying continuities importance to me as a result. But honestly, it's not as huge deal to me overall as I've made it sound.

Now that's just my personal take. I don't pretend or even know how common that opinion is. And I know it's not about me, I just can only opine about things I know and feel.

 

[Christopher]

I can only talk about what I think after all.

But you can listen to what other people think. That's supposed to be the point of conversation -- to listen to other points of view and learn things that might lead you to reassess what you think, or at least gain a better understanding of its context.

My whole point, after all, is that different fans do have different perceptions of Trek, and that their perceptions change over time. There have always been people who thought that every new incarnation of Trek was impossible to reconcile with what came before, and yet other people alongside and after them -- including you -- decided that it could be reconciled after all, and it was the latter opinion that always won out. If you think about those other people's points of view and compare them with your own point of view about Discovery, you might gain some perspective beyond your own point of view.

I was just curious, could Discovery--or some future Star Trek show, push things to the point that a hand wave doesn't work anymore. Where it's so inconsistent that it can't be ignored or explained away (at least without some showrunner saying it IS a full reboot)?

The premise of the question is faulty. There are many, many fictional franchises that contain irreconcilable contradictions but that still pretend they're consistent universes. Like M*A*S*H doing 11 seasons to depict a 3-year war and jumping backward in the calendar from time to time. Or Dallas dismissing an entire season as just a dream while its spinoff Knots Landing continued to refer to events of that season as real. Since this is all make-believe, it doesn't actually have to be self-consistent in order to pretend that it is. So there's no amount of contradiction that makes it impossible for the creators of a franchise to pretend it's consistent if that's what they want to pretend. The only way it's a separate reality is if the creators decide that it's a separate reality. The audience doesn't have the authority to decide that any more than the spectators of a football game have the authority to declare whether a ball is in bounds or not. You may think the referees got a call horribly wrong and the ball should've been called out, but if it's officially declared to be in bounds, then that's what will shape the rest of the game and be listed in the statistics for all time.

 

[marlboro]

You know, I keep thinking, I don't know how I end up in some of these debates.

Well, your first mistake was signing up at Trekbbs. Pointless debate is our bread and butter.

I am like you in that I don't consider myself some sort of continuity purist, but the amount of fanwank that's needed to fix some of Trek's crappier writing reminds me of that Simpson's episode where Lisa steals Homer's bbq'ed pig and he chases after it saying:

It's just a little dirty. It's still good, it's still good!
It's just a little dirty. It's still good, it's still good!
It's just a little airborne. It's still good, it's still good!

Eventually, you have to just resign yourself to the fact that things can't be fixed. That's where headcannon comes in.


Canon and tie-ins and all that stuff:

I agree with Greg for the most part. The thing about tie-in novels is that, many of them, imo, don't stand up on their own. They are good, sometimes great, because they build upon other people's stories. So, when they no longer fit in the larger puzzle, some of the magic is lost.

But let's say that the book is great even though it has very little to do with current continuity. Hell, let's imagine there is an accident at the printers and War and Peace gets shipped out with a pic of the Enterprise on the cover. Now, the book would still be a masterpiece, but would a Trek fan be happy with his purchase? Probably not. They are expecting a Trek book. Now, to a much lesser extent, wouldn't a Discovery fan likely be disappointed if the novel they buy contradicts the show that they love?


No practical solution to this, obviously. The novel writers can only work with what they've got. Veteran Trek readers should have seen this coming. Just playing devil's advocate.

I do believe that a large majority of these issues could have been solved if Discovery had been placed post Voyager.


EDIT: ^None of that crap matters because apparently not only are Get Smart novelizations a thing that exists, the author of those books also wrote novelizations of Welcome Back Kotter!

Some day we need to have a discussion about obscure, odd, and just plain awesome media tie-in novels.

 

[Greg Cox]

EDIT: ^None of that crap matters because apparently not only are Get Smart novelizations a thing that exists, the author of those books also wrote novelizations of Welcome Back Kotter!

Some day we need to have a discussion about obscure, odd, and just plain awesome media tie-in novels.

When I was a kid, I thought those GET SMART tie-ins were the funniest things on Earth. I vaguely remember getting in trouble for laughing out loud at them in school, when I was supposed to be reading quietly.

And, yes, I'm fascinated by vintage tie-in novels, too. Dare I admit that I once picked up an "Annette Funicello" mystery novel at a yard sale? And was recently amazed to discover that there was at least one "Bridget Loves Bernie" tie-in novel. It's not a new phenomenon; movie novelizations date back to the silent era, while I'm pretty sure radio shows like The Lone Ranger and The Green Hornet spawned tie-in novels long before the advent of television. See also The Shadow, who started out on radio before expanding into the pulps.

I like to think we're carrying on a long and noble tradition.

 

[MadeIndescribable]

DS9: "Emissary" portrayed the wormhole aliens as having no prior understanding of corporeal life, but later seasons retconned them into active gods who'd intervened directly in Bajoran affairs and Sisko's conception.

I know it wasn't yout intention, but thanks to this post my new headcanon is now all the changes were caused by the wormhole aliens non-linearly altering the past based on their interactions with Sisko throughout all seven seasons. Cos you can do that when you're non-linear.