Assignment: Earth and its Status in Canon?
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Quoting myself..
I try to enjoy the stories without dissecting them. If I didn't I couldn't watch DSC. So many historical and technical violations in hat show alone. I'd be filled with rage if I actually cared about that kind of continuity. Close enough for me and the special effects have upgraded in the last 50 years so why shouldn't the show?
I did like the line about Pike and some guys grandma are the only ones using screens instead of holograms.
Clarification, I am sure there is some "official" list of what is canon and what is not. What I meant was that so many people have their own take on what they consider to be canon that the term has lost it's meaning, to me anyway.
I try to enjoy the stories without dissecting them. If I didn't I couldn't watch DSC. So many historical and technical violations in hat show alone. I'd be filled with rage if I actually cared about that kind of continuity. Close enough for me and the special effects have upgraded in the last 50 years so why shouldn't the show?
I did like the line about Pike and some guys grandma are the only ones using screens instead of holograms.
There is: Whatever is onscreen, is canon. TV shows and movies are all canon. That is literally what canon MEANS.
No, there isn't. "Canon" is not an official label or doctrine. It's a shorthand term that observers and critics use to describe what something intrinsically is. If there is an original body of works by one creator or owner, and there are other people who write fiction that imitates it either as fanfiction or officially licensed tie-ins, then the word we use to describe the original stuff is "canon," because "canon" is short and easy to say. It's a word that only exists to describe the difference between an original work and its tie-ins. The creators of the original work don't have to think or worry about canon, because what they create is the canon, automatically, by definition. The word only has meaning when talking about the relationship of the original work to its tie-ins.
Sure, as a rule, "canon" tends to mean the previous stories that are counted as "real" by new stories in the series. But there's never any "list" that's binding on future creators. Usually creators just treat everything that came before as source material they can draw on if they want to -- but they're perfectly free to ignore or contradict any parts of it that get in the way of the story they want to tell. You see this in movie series all the time, like how Superman Returns pretended to be a sequel to the first two Christopher Reeve films but ignored the later two, or like how the upcoming James Cameron Terminator sequel ignores all the previous sequels after Judgment Day. So there is no "list" saying "you're not allowed to change this." Generally it's just understood that you want to maintain the illusion of continuity -- I mean, duh. So it's all treated as part of the whole -- unless everybody hated it and would prefer to have it ignored. There's no list, just creative judgment and common sense.
And you not caring still doesn't change what canon is. Fans don't decide what canon is. The people who control the rights do.
Oh pipe down about canon. Who truly cares? It was a show made to entertain and to get you to watch the ads. Nothing more, nothing less.
It's not some sacred thing. With so many shows and eps, there are bound to be mistakes, and crappy scenes/shows. Just delete them from your personal canon.
Or better yet, just watch and enjoy the story without analyzing every frickin' detail.
It's not some sacred thing. With so many shows and eps, there are bound to be mistakes, and crappy scenes/shows. Just delete them from your personal canon.
Or better yet, just watch and enjoy the story without analyzing every frickin' detail.
I don't think that keeping Star Trek tied to its '60s roots will somehow invalidate it in future years. What made Star Trek relevant is that it tackled human issues. The episodes that seem less dated are the ones that handled more broad human issues, or the ones that couched timely issues more deeply in alien issues.
On that note in the grand scheme of things the setting, and technology of Star Trek is less relevant than the stories it tells. In 50 years, if Star Trek is telling touching human stories it wont matter that Tricorders are big black boxes or that our history doesn't match Star Trek's history.
Yeah, but now it also somehow includes the show runners intentions, even if that contradicts what 's seen on screen. So there's that.
On that note in the grand scheme of things the setting, and technology of Star Trek is less relevant than the stories it tells. In 50 years, if Star Trek is telling touching human stories it wont matter that Tricorders are big black boxes or that our history doesn't match Star Trek's history.
Yeah, but now it also somehow includes the show runners intentions, even if that contradicts what 's seen on screen. So there's that.
Again, though, it's not about what you think. You're already a fan, so you're fine with it the way it is. It's about what will make it accessible to new audiences in the future, people who don't share your sensibilities or mine. Sure, there might be some viewers who'd be willing to look past its retro elements and see the underlying themes, but for many others, its foundation in '60s or '80s futurism and its increasingly dated chronology would be a turnoff. Giving them a more modernized alternative would make Star Trek more accessible to them.
As I said, it is smart to appeal to multiple audiences. People who liked Batman: The Animated Series won't necessarily like Batman: The Brave and the Bold or vice-versa, and people who like Batman '66 won't necessarily like the Nolan trilogy or vice-versa; but that's why it's good that they all exist. They aren't mutually exclusive, aren't at war with each other; they both benefit the larger Batman franchise by giving it a wider audience base.
Maybe not, but experimentation is good. That's what creativity is supposed to be about -- not closing your mind to new and different ways of telling a story, but eagerly trying them out. I'm a creator; I'm also a fan of a wide range of science fiction beyond Star Trek. And both those sides of me would love to see a complete reinvention of Star Trek that builds on modern science fiction and scientific tropes in the same way that TOS built on the cutting edge of SF and science in its day. There is so much out there in science fiction that is really cool and worth trying, and that Trek is unable to really explore as long as it doesn't allow itself to start from scratch. Maybe it's not "necessary," but as I said, that's a bizarre standard to use when talking about creativity. It would be interesting. It would open new doors. That alone makes it worth the attempt.
I think this is why I sometimes really wonder if Star Trek has anything left to say to me. It just repeats what's been done before; the Kelvin movies had a chance to do this, and mostly tried something different, Into Darkness notwithstanding.
Even Discovery can't resist retreading old ground, which is largely why the show hasn't clicked with me.
I have some hope for the old Picard series, if only because it's not shaping up to be TNG 2.0 from what little has been revealed about it.
The question here is: Who do you trust to undertake this "complete reinvention"? Unlike the 1960s, when Roddenberry et al. were unknown to the general public, today anyone who's going to make the initial creative decisions for a Star Trek series is going to be identified and discussed online beforehand, hence subjected to criticism based on previous work, as has been the case with Fuller, Kurtzman, et al. with respect to the current and prospective CBS All Access series. All this second-guessing (which it so happens I often agree with, in the case of Discovery) works against the trust that's necessary for an audience to "buy in," regardless of the quality of the stories being told.
Also, although I agree that "variations on a theme" is a valid technique for creative artists -
as far back as the 1500s in the case of English virginal (keyboard) music, to take one example - that only takes you so far. There are limits beyond which the variations get either predictable or unrecognizable.
What a strange question. Obviously no attempt is guaranteed success; a continuation of the original continuity could fail just as easily as a restart. That doesn't mean it should never be tried. Nobody thought Guardians of the Galaxy should be tried, until it was a smash. Anything new is a risk, but if risk were a reason to refuse to try, there'd be no Star Trek, either in-universe or in real life.
As Keith DeCandido likes to say, "Don't confuse a few fans bitching on the Internet for any kind of trend." Most audiences don't pay attention to that kind of behind-the-scenes stuff anyway, and creators know that, so they don't worry that much about the online complainers. The problem is that people these days are stuck in their own media bubbles and they assume the opinions that echo around in their own bubbles are universally known or shared.
I mean, seriously, anyone who's been on this board for any length of time should know by now that virtually every new series or movie that gets announced is met with kneejerk skepticism and hostility by a segment of fandom. If creators let themselves be scared off by that, then nothing would ever get made.
Maybe, but how will we know what those are if we never even try?
Christopher: I've given your reply some thought. I think I can understand why you thought my comments were obvious. Although I don't intend at all to disrespect your tie-in novels, I realize that perhaps I am indeed biased (at this point in my life, and as a fan of the original series since 1968) toward "never even trying." I am not someone who avoids risk - nor am I suggesting that CBS, Paramount, et al., do so - but to me, Star Trek is an enjoyable artifact with wonderful music and often-entertaining stories and occasionally even good acting.
Again, though, this conversation is not about any one of us. It's about how to appeal to new audiences, how to keep a franchise relevant for a new generation. I want other people in times to come to be able to discover Star Trek the way I did, to get the same kind of inspiration out of it that I did, as something that fires their curiosity about the universe and the future and science and discovery. I want them to be able to experience it as something cutting-edge and forward-looking, not just one more quaint piece of nostalgia. If you want nostalgic space opera, Star Wars has that sewn up. That's its niche. There's no competing with it on those terms, so let Star Trek keep doing what it does best. What defined Star Trek at the beginning was that it looked forward, not back. It broke new ground in TV storytelling, and it made us believe the future could be better than the past.
But one could easily argue that if something is called Star Trek, it's inherently backward-looking. It would be nice if people in the future were inspired about the universe, etc., in the same way as the best SF TV and movies of the 1960s - Star Trek and 2001 - inspired those of our generation, but I think that if this were to occur, the cause will more likely be something not yet written, and called something new.
Oh, I should have mentioned: I like "Assignment: Earth" and always have.
Oh, I should have mentioned: I like "Assignment: Earth" and always have.
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It seems to me that the title Star Trek, literally "epic journey to the stars," is about as forward-looking as you can get.
Titles are superficial. It's the substance that matters. Ron Moore's Battlestar Galactica was enormously more innovative and intelligent than Glen Larson's Battlestar Galactica. Whereas The Orville has a new title but is basically just an imitation of where Star Trek was 30 years ago. Originality is not about where your idea came from, it's about where you take it.
Many, many works of fiction have been reinvented for new generations. That has always been an intrinsic part of human creativity, which is why we still know the names of ancient heroes like Hercules and Robin Hood. If everyone thought the way you did, then nobody today would ever have read the Odyssey or Shakespeare or Don Quixote or Journey to the West, and we'd have no cultural memory or heritage and we'd be immensely poorer for it. Fiction is how we connect the past, present, and future. Doing new versions of old stories was the primary way that culture survived back before the printing press was invented and literacy became widespread. It's the norm, not the exception.
Once you sell the product to the networks, then you must sell the product to the masses, i.e. ratings! With good ratings, the public accepts anything, including non-canon. 
Assignment: Earth failed step number one. If it made it to step three, then we would be declaring it canon.
Assignment: Earth failed step number one. If it made it to step three, then we would be declaring it canon.Have you seen of heard of the 2012 play Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play by Anne Washburn? It consists of three separate stages of reinterpretation of a Simpsons episode as reenacted by future fans (farther in the future for each stage). I found it to be a most interesting commentary on just this issue.
I wasn't referring to the meaning of the title, but rather to the fact that Star Trek is more than 50 years old.
I think our differing perspectives can be best explained as your regarding Star Trek as the equivalent of a living thing, whereas I see it as incapable of continual creative revival - and not merely because the last groups of producers and writers, when given the chance, chose to give the world the Kelvin movies and Discovery instead of the reinvention that might have occurred.
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Lots of fictional characters are much older than that but still get reinvented. Like I said, it's not where an idea came from that matters, it's where you take it next.
Things go in cycles. Nostalgia is the thing now, but eventually that's going to run its course, and my point is that if Trek is going to survive beyond that, reinvention is the next logical thing to try.
And of course it's capable of revival. I came up with ideas for how to reboot it from scratch long ago -- a hard-SF approach that would push it much further into the future, with humanoid species being descendants of genetically engineered human colonists, and with species like Klingons and Andorians being completely redesigned as non-humanoids. I'd lose the irrational fear of transhumanism and include genetic engineering and bionics as normal practices. I'd also gender- or race-flip some characters, maybe combine characters or mix and match characters from different series and eras, and I'd draw on ideas from current science fiction literature just as TOS drew on ideas that were current in its day. The field of science fiction has advanced a great deal over the decades, and what made the original show important was that it brought a lot of prose SF ideas into mass-media awareness for the first time. Subsequent Trek series have largely lost that connection to prose SF, and it'd be nice to bring it back.
Then there's J. Michael Straczynski & Bryce Zabel's very different reboot proposal from 2004. That one is a more cautious reinvention than mine in a number of ways and makes some choices I don't think I'd care for, but that just goes to show how easy it is to imagine a range of different ways a reinvention can be done -- at least, for people with training as professional writers, whose job it is to imagine such things. Just because laypeople can't see the possibilities doesn't mean professionals can't. I'm sure lots of writers have ideas for how Trek could be completely redone from scratch, because "How would I do that given the chance?" is a question creators often reflexively ask about the stories we read or watch. And I'm sure a lot of those ideas are very different from each other, and most probably wouldn't work but there would be a few that would be amazing.
I agree that picking up ideas from the SF prose world would be a good thing for any TV or movie SF right now. As for the rest: Yes, reinventions are technically possible and have sometimes been successful, sure. (The idea of gender- or race-flipping some characters reminds me of a different kind of creative writing, specifically my graduate studies in counterpoint: manipulating a fugue subject by inverting it, doubling or halving the note values, etc.) But just because (for example) Batman can be reinvented for the umpteenth time, doesn't mean he should be.
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