Excellent book on original POTA five films, two tv series etc. I have the other A to Z book by Handley too.
My favorite site on POTA:
http://www.goingfaster.com/icarus/tableofcontents.html
When did canon become such a hot-button issue?
- Thread starter Amasov
- Start date
My favorite site on POTA:
http://www.goingfaster.com/icarus/tableofcontents.html
For me, the interesting question is why it is that some people can enjoy this body of fiction as long as it just seems to be set in the same general universe (and the last decade not even that anymore, with those reboots), and that for others, everything needs to be 'correct' down to the tiniest detail before they can apparently start enjoying it (painting only the two extremes here). Sometimes I wonder if this general attitude carries over into other domains as well (for example into religion if someone would happen to be religious).
As for me as viewer, I see canon only as a 'tool' used to tell stories, to create the illusion of a coherent universe / background. If it helps shape and put into clear contrast a story being told, great, that what it's there for (in my view). If it hinders a story -- ditch it, as long as the benefits of disregarding it outweigh the "damage" done to the picture of the universe at large (which, admittedly, can be a hard call to make, and it seems the preferred equilibrium point would be different for everyone).
As for me as viewer, I see canon only as a 'tool' used to tell stories, to create the illusion of a coherent universe / background. If it helps shape and put into clear contrast a story being told, great, that what it's there for (in my view). If it hinders a story -- ditch it, as long as the benefits of disregarding it outweigh the "damage" done to the picture of the universe at large (which, admittedly, can be a hard call to make, and it seems the preferred equilibrium point would be different for everyone).
My theory is it depends on how much it interferes with credibility and story. Or the viewer's perception of credibility and story. But some fans are probably just fanatics and "purists".
I think certain minor things are not enough to ruin a show or episode, but then again some minor things can have a negative effect down the road.
For example, I know the Nu Trek movies are considered a separate timeline, but I always thought having Kirk going from cadet to captain of the Enterprise at the end of the movie, and the others from cadets to senior officers played with credibility a little too much.
Sulu was a nervous raw cadet who needed help getting the ship into warp, by the 2nd movie (a year later) he's acting captain of the whole ship. There are no older, senior officers on the ship at all and all the senior staff are filled by Uhura, Chekov McCoy and Sulu, most of them were previously raw cadets.
It was a strain on credibility. Maybe because of the original "cannon" where they all worked their way up into their positions, whereas here, they are suddenly all plugged into their positions instantly.
I had a sneaking suspicion part this ultimately had a negative affect on the series later on and the fans lost some interest. The series felt like it skipped over a lot of things and filled in everything else with action and explosions.
Everything was so rushed and put together so fast, all the dynamics, the Spock/McCoy thing, Uhura as a person, Scotty and his engines etc., was missing badly.
I think certain minor things are not enough to ruin a show or episode, but then again some minor things can have a negative effect down the road.
For example, I know the Nu Trek movies are considered a separate timeline, but I always thought having Kirk going from cadet to captain of the Enterprise at the end of the movie, and the others from cadets to senior officers played with credibility a little too much.
Sulu was a nervous raw cadet who needed help getting the ship into warp, by the 2nd movie (a year later) he's acting captain of the whole ship. There are no older, senior officers on the ship at all and all the senior staff are filled by Uhura, Chekov McCoy and Sulu, most of them were previously raw cadets.
It was a strain on credibility. Maybe because of the original "cannon" where they all worked their way up into their positions, whereas here, they are suddenly all plugged into their positions instantly.
I had a sneaking suspicion part this ultimately had a negative affect on the series later on and the fans lost some interest. The series felt like it skipped over a lot of things and filled in everything else with action and explosions.
Everything was so rushed and put together so fast, all the dynamics, the Spock/McCoy thing, Uhura as a person, Scotty and his engines etc., was missing badly.
Yeah I can't disagree with you there. The rapid fire promotions were a pretty big issue. I remember before STID came out there were some animated discussions on trekmovie about it. Some of the newbie Abrams Trek fans couldn't care less about Kirk going from cadet to captain, but there was consternation among a number of fans, myself included about that. As much as I liked Star Trek (2009) that was a hard one to bite. Star Trek generally tried to portray itself as realistic as possible, at least as far as it's characterizations go. And in any military that kind of promotion, to captain of the flagship of the Federation just isn't going to happen.
If I recall correctly I believe that's why they wrote the beginning of STID like they did, that maybe Kirk was promoted too fast. Of course by the end of the film everything's back to the way it was. But it was an attempt to address it.
I just wish they had found a way to advance the story in Star Trek (2009) a few years. So that Kirk was at least serving for a period of time. I don't have a problem with him taking command in a moment of crisis. But yeah, having the flagship being run by cadets in all the senior positions just falls apart when you think about it.
I understand the desire for consistent continuity, because I've always shared it. It's always frustrated me when inconsistencies have cropped up in Star Trek. But I've learned to live with them and accept that it's impossible to avoid them, while it seems a lot of other people haven't figured that out yet. And what really bewilders me is when people act as though all previous Star Trek was perfectly consistent and uniform and that the newest incarnation is the first one ever to have continuity errors. That's just naive. I've been frustrated by Trek continuity errors over and over again for most of my life. The only reason I'm so blase about them now is because I've been living with them for four decades or more and it's no longer anything new to me. It still annoys me when they happen, but it doesn't surprise me, and I know that we just have to live with them, because they're not going anywhere and they'll just become part of the whole along with allllllllll the others before them.
Oh, absolutely. Some people see all religions as diferent metaphors for the same core principles and values, while others will kill each other over how literally they interpret a single sentence in a holy text.
I wonder if in some cases it's the amount of inconsistencies. I know in my case the issues I have with Discovery's inconsistencies is just the amount that makes it difficult for me to see it as a true prequel to the original series (now I'll admit a lot of that probably has to do with all the production design changes). Continuity didn't bug me a whole lot in the past. I noticed them from time to time like anyone else, but it wasn't something I sweated until now.
I would have sweated it with the Abrams movies as well except they threw in the plot device of the alternate timeline. So I dismissed any differences there as, well, being an alternate timeline.
I remember that coming up in an Episode of Enterprise during the Xindi year. I forget the exact details but it had something to do with one side thought something happened in 6 days, the other 7 (or something to that affect). It was almost laughable, and I'm sure a bit of satire on how we humans sometimes with kill each other over the most ridiculous things.
It's just the way the human mind works -- over time, we streamline our mental narrative of the past to make it feel more consistent than it really was. That's why the myth of nostalgia exists, the belief that the past was better than the present. It was just the same, but our memories gloss over the bad parts so that it feels better than it was. It's the same way with Trek continuity. A contradiction or reinterpretation seems huge and irreconcilable when it's new, but over time we find ways to rationalize it to ourselves, and its difference from what came before is blurred over in our memories, so it comes to feel like part of the whole. So the newest changes always feel far more massive.
Granted, even with that awareness, I think it's fair to say that Discovery has made more radical changes than we've seen since TNG, if not TMP. But that's because it's the first time since TNG that we've seen a new Prime-universe Trek series from an almost completely new creative team. And no matter how great the difference in degree, the principle is the same: As long as the creators of future installments treat DSC as part of the same reality as everything else, then it will be as far as the narrative is concerned, no matter how we audience members feel about that. The spectators don't call the plays. So while I may wish they hadn't changed quite so much, I recognize that this is the reality now and I have to accept that. Just as I've had to accept many other changes I wish they hadn't made, going back decades.
Yeah, in "Chosen Realm." You're close, but it was 9 days vs. 10 days for the creation of the Chosen Realm (i.e. the Delphic Expanse).
In a sense I joke about the "10 year rule" but in a sense it's probably almost true. 10 years from now we'll probably gloss over the differences in Discovery (though since there is such a change in visual design it may not be quite as easy to group it together with prior shows---but I guess we'll see, in 10 years
).It does help that overall I liked Discovery otherwise. I mean, if I hated the show then the continuity issues would be more glaring for me. But liking a show's narrative helps.
And you're right. At the end of the day I just have to accept it. One of the things I do is try to look for things that maybe due fit. So far I came up with the 'mess hall', as that actually looks like something that would fit between Enterprise and the original series--the food slots remind me of the original series and some of the set up reminds me a bit of the NX-01, just on a larger scale. Sickbay too, maybe, and the engine room (other than the spore drive) is another area that looks like it could be between the NX-01 and NCC-1701 (though with a bit of a different aesthetic).
If the destruction of their planet wasn't so devastating you could almost laugh. "You annihilated yourselves over one day"--I think Captain Archer basically had that reaction, though not in so many words. I think it was definitely a satire on some of the fundamentalism that we humans can be guilty of at times.
In a sense I joke about the "10 year rule" but in a sense it's probably almost true. 10 years from now we'll probably gloss over the differences in Discovery (though since there is such a change in visual design it may not be quite as easy to group it together with prior shows---but I guess we'll see, in 10 years
As far as design changes go, if you think about it, productions like DSC and the Kelvin films draw more on the production designs of the movies from TMP onward, with design similarities like the hull detailing, nacelle pylon shapes, corridor shapes, and the like. If anything, it's TOS that's become the odd one out design-wise, while everything else is more consistent.
I think that's the crux of the matter. It's not the amount of consistency or inconsistency, or coherence. It's what we do when confronted with it, in my opinion.
For me, if it's all in the franchise, it's all in the franchise. I can't change that, and it's pointless for me to go on some campaign to "prove" it's not "really" the same thing. If it doesn't fit for me, or it's not entertaining, I just won't tune in. I won't try to invalidate its very existence in some way, and the enjoyment of the people who like it. I may make wisecracks about Voyager, but I won't try to pretend it out of existence.
And yet TOS is the iconic design of the franchise.
(IMHO, I don't really see differences in tech designs that problematic, excusing stuff like the DSC redesigned Enterprise being slapped in between the pilots which shared a different configuration.)
Which is obvious and does not refute my point. Yes, the broad strokes are iconic and set the template for what followed, but you can say the same about Superman's costume or Batman's, and it hasn't prevented designers from coming up with dozens of variations and updates to those designs. "Iconic" is about the fundamental elements that are retained by every variation that follows, the parts that make all versions of it immediately recognizable no matter what other differences they have from each other.
And what I'm talking about, as I already clearly said, are the details, the nuances of design that differentiate the movie-era Starfleet look from the TV-era version. It's pretty clear that for the most part, subsequent productions have consistently modeled their Starfleet designs more on the movie era. Which is unsurprising, given that the movie-era designs are more detailed and more high-tech/futuristic, so from a design standpoint it's natural to evoke them.
And of course, this is not a competition. TOS designs and later designs are not enemy camps; they're just different drafts of the same set of ideas. So it's natural that later designers would draw on elements of both and try to create a synthesis, like how the DSC Enterprise exterior has elements of both the TOS and TMP versions of the ship, along with design elements shared with other DSC ships in order to make it fit in with the show's aesthetics.
"Today is a good day to die
" Ok, maybe not. I prefer Miles O'Brien's line in "To the Death" "I'm ….very much alive and intend to stay that way"
Speaking of Miles O'Brien I was watching the PBS NewHour and he gave a report on plans on going back to the moon. Nice to see Chief O'Brien is keeping himself busy...and he even talked about something he would know something about
It was just a wry observation, nothing more or less.
If I were writing stories set in the Star Trek Universe, I would too, probably, because then it's become a job, and I do care about doing my job well (and having an 'environment' conducive to being productive). But for me, it's only entertainment so I can "afford" not to care too much about inconsistencies.
I know .... what I meant was if there could possibly be some kind of correlation, whether the type of people that can get really worked up/angry about minor differences in Trek would also be the kind of people that for example in the domain of religion (if they also happen to be religious) would get worked up about minor differences in doctrine. Hence, if a more general personality trait could lie under this. But that's probably an unverifiable hypothesis.
Then again, this might as well simply be indicative of a hidden presumptuous attitude in myself. Need to analyze myself somewhat closer regarding that, I suppose.
Last edited:
People here tend to assume I sprang into existence when SCE: Aftermath was published, but I was a fan of Star Trek for 29 years before I started getting paid to write for it, and it's my experience as a fan that I was talking about above. I've always been a detail-oriented, continuity-oriented person, and inconsistencies in Trek have always bothered me since long before I had any prospect of writing Trek fiction.
In fact, it was partly my frustration at the inconsistencies in other people's fictional universes that made me want to become a writer myself so I could create my own fictional universes where everything was consistent and made sense and worked the way I wanted it to (although I've ended up learning that there are times I have to introduce deliberate retcons to fix mistakes or oversights in prior works).
I like the origin story in 2009 too. I understand what they were doing, an origin story to show them at the academy and being heroes, and have them end up on the Enterprise like we're used to seeing.
But I think that move may messed with credibility enough to turn some fans off and it might have had a delayed effect by the 3rd movie.
It also forced the series to speed up everything and dump a lot of important filler that would have fleshed everything out more. They introduced Khan without the preivious encounter. When Spock yelled Khann!, it probably soured fans because of the gap in time--there was no perceived sense of bonding and friendship between them because of how rushed everything was.
The drop off in box office might have been because of poor promotion, but I also wondered if rushing everything gave the series a hollow feel that the fans eventually picked up on.
I can see something of the same thing with the new star wars movies.
I have a friend who loves TFA and The last Jedi (me not as much). We were talking about the movie Solo before it came out. I warned him that Solo wasn't going to perform well at the box office, because a lot of fans didn't like it all that well or were divided. And were probably going to take it out on Solo because of it.
Sure enough it underperformed and we still debate about it lol. The rise of Skywalker is going to be a box office hit. But tweaking continuity and canon can be risky.
For me, I would rather they take the risk than play it safe and give me the same old thing.
Right. Continuity is not the reason for storytelling. It's pathological to make consistency the only standard for quality. Especially if your definition of consistency is never challenging anyone's cozy expectations and just giving them the exact same stuff they've already seen. The worthwhile stories are the ones that take risks and show people something new. "Canon," despite the religious concept it's named after, is not about rigid, immutable dogma. It's something that's supposed to grow and evolve and change with its audience.
Similar threads
