When did canon become such a hot-button issue?

[F. King Daniel]

I was blown away by the Enterprise's destruction... in "Time Squared", which was my first Enterprise Destruction. Then after "Cause and Effect" no spaceship blowing up has any impact whatsoever.

We all know by now that whatever happens, they'll get a new ship by the end if the next movie at the very latest. Did I care about the Enterprise itself in STIII, VII or Beyond? Nope. But I cared about the character's reactions. The look on Kirk's face as his pod launches and he sees the saucer flutter down like a 100,000 ton leaf, or Kirk and McCoy looking up as the Enterprise burns up. They meant something.

 

[Lance]

Gene Roddenberry himself threw the cat among the pigeons with his declarations in the late 1980s. Before then, the idea of canon wasn't one that troubled many.

 

[Christopher]

Gene Roddenberry himself threw the cat among the pigeons with his declarations in the late 1980s. Before then, the idea of canon wasn't one that troubled many.

Right. And the main reason he did that was because he no longer had any direct control over TNG itself, having been eased back to an "advisory" role due to his failing physical and mental health. So he tried to assert his authority over the only things left that he could influence, the tie-ins and the perceptions of fandom. He turned "canon" into a weapon against the stories he didn't approve of -- a weapon that had no actual power over those stories but could taint public opinion against them.

 

[Rahul]

Just to get back to topic for a second:
I stumbled upon this Interview with "The Orville"-writer David Goldman:

https://trekmovie.com/2019/05/03/in...ped-up-season-two-and-where-it-could-go-next/

Now here is the thing: I do like DIS more than "The Orville". But goddamn, this guy has cracked the code on what "canon" actually is:

The other big takeaway after the first season was that we set up this universe, it is our own universe, and people like to play in that universe. People like to have continuity from one episode to the next and build out our alien species. So, for instance, we went back to the Moclans a couple of times this season and really explored stuff that we started early in season one. And we got to see our Union Council chamber and our Union president and built out the admirals. We had these great guest star admirals: Ted Danson, Ron Canada, Kelly Hu, and of course Victor Garber, who has been our central admiral. This season really filled in the details of our universe.

That's it. That's the entire appeal of "canon". That's what it is, and why it's important. People can go home now. I really wish our Star Trek writers would understand that, and not treat canon as a burden. Because it isn't.

"Canon" is just "backstory". If you're writing a story and continuously run into backstory problems, the problem isn't the backstory, it's that you put too much backstory in your main plot.

 

[Christopher]

I really wish our Star Trek writers would understand that, and not treat canon as a burden. Because it isn't.

Like I keep saying, the writers rarely need to think about canon at all, because whatever they create becomes the canon. It's a total non-issue as far as the core work is concerned. It's only a question with regard to the tie-ins, when there's ambiguity about whether they count as part of the canon -- which they rarely do unless they're made by the core creators, because canon is what the core creators make. On rare occasions, it becomes a question when a canon decides to disregard earlier works in the series (e.g. the next Terminator movie ignoring the past 3 sequels), but those are the exceptions to the rule. In normal practice, "canon" is a word that the creators of a canon don't need to think about at any time, any more than you need to worry about the word "breath" in order to breathe. You just do it.

And creators are never "burdened" by canon, because they see it exactly like Goodman (a former Enterprise staffer, recall) described -- just part of telling a story with continuity. If they want to tell a story that requires changing or refining the continuity, nothing in the universe prevents them from doing that, because they are God -- whatever they say becomes the reality. The only people "burdened" by canon in any way are tie-in writers like myself who have to be consistent with it -- but that's not a "burden" any more than the responsibility of a hard-SF writer to get the science right or a historical-fiction author to get the history right. Canon is as often an opportunity and a resource for tie-in writers as a stricture on us.

So really, the only people who feel "burdened" by canon are those fans who are irrationally obsessed with it and mistakenly believe the false premise of a 30-year-old Gene Roddenberry memo that canon is some authoritarian dogma imposed on creators and fans alike by some ill-defined higher power. And that "burden" exists exclusively in their own minds and has no relevance whatsoever to the actual creation of professional series fiction.

 

[Rahul]

Like I keep saying, the writers rarely need to think about canon at all, because whatever they create becomes the canon. It's a total non-issue as far as the core work is concerned. It's only a question with regard to the tie-ins, when there's ambiguity about whether they count as part of the canon -- which they rarely do unless they're made by the core creators, because canon is what the core creators make. On rare occasions, it becomes a question when a canon decides to disregard earlier works in the series (e.g. the next Terminator movie ignoring the past 3 sequels), but those are the exceptions to the rule. In normal practice, "canon" is a word that the creators of a canon don't need to think about at any time, any more than you need to worry about the word "breath" in order to breathe. You just do it.

And creators are never "burdened" by canon, because they see it exactly like Goodman (a former Enterprise staffer, recall) described -- just part of telling a story with continuity. If they want to tell a story that requires changing or refining the continuity, nothing in the universe prevents them from doing that, because they are God -- whatever they say becomes the reality. The only people "burdened" by canon in any way are tie-in writers like myself who have to be consistent with it -- but that's not a "burden" any more than the responsibility of a hard-SF writer to get the science right or a historical-fiction author to get the history right. Canon is as often an opportunity and a resource for tie-in writers as a stricture on us.

So really, the only people who feel "burdened" by canon are those fans who are irrationally obsessed with it and mistakenly believe the false premise of a 30-year-old Gene Roddenberry memo that canon is some authoritarian dogma imposed on creators and fans alike by some ill-defined higher power. And that "burden" exists exclusively in their own minds and has no relevance whatsoever to the actual creation of professional series fiction.

Obviously, my post was a response to the criticism of J.J. Abrams and Alex Kurtzman, the current helmsmen of the Trek franchise, regarding canon, where they continuisly complained about it's restraints, so much so that they decided to make a time-travel reboot for Star Trek 2009 and...

Spoiler: Finale of DIS season 2

... that stupid timejump, ... which apparently was solely motivated to "escape" canon concerns from fans, as he said in an Interview:

We love playing within canon. It’s a delight and a privilege. It’s fun to explore nooks and crannies of the universe that people haven’t fully explored yet. That being said, we felt strongly that we wanted to give ourselves an entirely new energy for season three with a whole new set of problems. We’re farther than any Trek show has ever gone. I also had experience working on the [J.J. Abrams] films where we were stuck with canonical problems. We knew how Kirk had died, and we wondered how we could put him in jeopardy to make it feel real. That’s what led us to go with an alternate timeline; suddenly we could tell the story in a very unpredictable way. That’s the same thought process that went into jumping 950 years into the future. We’re now completely free of canon, and we have a whole new universe to explore.

source:
https://trekmovie.com/2019/04/19/al...ason-3-destination-hears-fans-on-pike-series/

Apart from that, of course your approach is the one writers should take regarding canon, which also is the approach writers in the past did take, and they now take on DIS. I just wish Abrams or Kurtzman or whoever made these decisions on Trek behind the scenes would take this very same approach as well!

 

[Christopher]

Obviously, my post was a response to the criticism of J.J. Abrams and Alex Kurtzman, the current helmsmen of the Trek franchise, regarding canon, where they continuisly complained about it's restraints, so much so that they decided to make a time-travel reboot for Star Trek 2009 and...

Spoiler: Finale of DIS season 2

... that stupid timejump, ... which apparently was solely motivated to "escape" canon concerns from fans, as he said in an Interview:


source:
https://trekmovie.com/2019/04/19/al...ason-3-destination-hears-fans-on-pike-series/

I think you're misinterpreting a choice as a complaint. The choice they made was entirely logical from a writer's perspective. Their brief was to reinvent the dormant Star Trek franchise for a new audience and a new generation, and yet they also wished to go back to basics make it an origin story for the most popular ST characters. The logical way to balance those goals was to reboot the continuity, since that freed them to tell new stories going forward. Of course they could still draw on ideas from TOS in the way you talk about above -- but in the same way that the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Arrowverse draw on ideas from the comics, by being true to the characters, concepts, and themes, but putting them together in fresh new ways. That's a perfectly valid choice to make, one that most reinventions of fictional franchises make and that audiences are perfectly fine with them making, so it is utterly bizarre to me that some Trek fans treat it as some kind of horrible offense. Why is it okay to do it with Batman or Thor but not with Kirk and Spock? That's just silly.

Apart from that, of course your approach is the one writers should take regarding canon

No. Stop right there. You have no goddamn right to dictate to creative people how they "should" tell stories. It's profoundly ignorant and culturally illiterate to think there's only one right way to be creative. The fact that everyone does it differently is what MAKES it creative. And if you can't appreciate that variety, that's YOUR limitation, not anyone else's.

 

[WebLurker]

Gene Roddenberry himself threw the cat among the pigeons with his declarations in the late 1980s. Before then, the idea of canon wasn't one that troubled many.

Also worth noting is that way back when, there was a much smaller canvas to work with and little idea that there would be anything beyond the original TV show (and later, the cartoon); you don't exactly "need" an "official" canon policy if tie-ins aren't going to be stepping on the toes of anything.

Right. And the main reason he did that was because he no longer had any direct control over TNG itself, having been eased back to an "advisory" role due to his failing physical and mental health. So he tried to assert his authority over the only things left that he could influence, the tie-ins and the perceptions of fandom. He turned "canon" into a weapon against the stories he didn't approve of -- a weapon that had no actual power over those stories but could taint public opinion against them.

Didn't he decide he wanted his TMP novelization to be out of continuity when he was still ostensibly in charge?

That said, it does sound about right that a lot of his claims and wishes to set the canon policy were after he was strictly an advisor. I also have to admit that I don't get the logic of all his opinions, esp. if it's as extreme as that claim that he only considered pieces of TOS and the seasons of TNG he oversaw as counting. (Personally, I think the idea of the tie-ins not being canon makes sense for this franchise and placing the cartoons on a lower tier then the live action stuff because of the few contradictions makes sense

Kinda funny that after TMP, Roddenberry was in largely the same position that George Lucas himself is with Star Wars, yet Roddenberry still held some sway over his franchise, to the point that the licensed reference material didn't count the cartoon as canon and flagged the last two TOS movies as being stuff he thought shouldn't be canon even if that was no longer his call. Of course, Lucas has generally been more polite about his disagreements with the franchise when out of his control (more "I personally didn't like it would've done differently," not "it doesn't count"), but still.

I think you're misinterpreting a choice as a complaint. The choice they made was entirely logical from a writer's perspective. Their brief was to reinvent the dormant Star Trek franchise for a new audience and a new generation, and yet they also wished to go back to basics make it an origin story for the most popular ST characters. The logical way to balance those goals was to reboot the continuity, since that freed them to tell new stories going forward. Of course they could still draw on ideas from TOS in the way you talk about above -- but in the same way that the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Arrowverse draw on ideas from the comics, by being true to the characters, concepts, and themes, but putting them together in fresh new ways. That's a perfectly valid choice to make, one that most reinventions of fictional franchises make and that audiences are perfectly fine with them making, so it is utterly bizarre to me that some Trek fans treat it as some kind of horrible offense. Why is it okay to do it with Batman or Thor but not with Kirk and Spock? That's just silly.

The difference is that the MCU, DCEU, and other films/TV shows based on comic books, novels, and other media, are adaptations of a source material. The Kelvin movies are not adaptations in terms of how they fit into the franchise, but an extension and continuation of what came before via the time travel and/or parallel universe trope. So, by the premise of what it is, it has far less creative freedom in terms of what it can and cannot do (if it wishes to remain coherent) then it would had it been a hard reboot a la the different iterations of Transformers and TMNT.

 

[The Old Mixer]

No. Stop right there. You have no goddamn right to dictate to creative people how they "should" tell stories. It's profoundly ignorant and culturally illiterate to think there's only one right way to be creative. The fact that everyone does it differently is what MAKES it creative. And if you can't appreciate that variety, that's YOUR limitation, not anyone else's.

 

[fireproof78]

Apart from that, of course your approach is the one writers should take regarding canon, which also is the approach writers in the past did take, and they now take on DIS. I just wish Abrams or Abrams or whoever made these decisions on Trek behind the scenes would take this very same approach as well!

I think if you read some of Abrams' thought processes on the BTS stuff you'll realize that he a bit more respect for the canon work than he is ever given credit for.

 

[Rahul]

I think you're misinterpreting a choice as a complaint. The choice they made was entirely logical from a writer's perspective. Their brief was to reinvent the dormant Star Trek franchise for a new audience and a new generation, and yet they also wished to go back to basics make it an origin story for the most popular ST characters. The logical way to balance those goals was to reboot the continuity, since that freed them to tell new stories going forward. Of course they could still draw on ideas from TOS in the way you talk about above -- but in the same way that the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Arrowverse draw on ideas from the comics, by being true to the characters, concepts, and themes, but putting them together in fresh new ways. That's a perfectly valid choice to make, one that most reinventions of fictional franchises make and that audiences are perfectly fine with them making, so it is utterly bizarre to me that some Trek fans treat it as some kind of horrible offense. Why is it okay to do it with Batman or Thor but not with Kirk and Spock? That's just silly.

As was already mentioned, this approach really only works for adaptions. The MCU (or Sherlock Holmes stories for that matter) have a vast book canon to draw from, and it's completely fair for them to re-interprate or just straight up adapt memorable moments, characters or lines from the source material.

That doesn't really work if your re-telling is done in the same medium. If somebody decides for a half-continuation/half-reboot of Sherlock Holmes and writes that as a book, it would be utterly weird if he straight up re-creates scenes from previous books. The same holds true for the movies. If you're doing a straight up reboot it's kinda' okay, because that's really the selling point - "remember the stuff? Here it's exactly the same again, just as a modern production". Mixing that up doesn't really work most of the time.

No. Stop right there. You have no goddamn right to dictate to creative people how they "should" tell stories. It's profoundly ignorant and culturally illiterate to think there's only one right way to be creative. The fact that everyone does it differently is what MAKES it creative. And if you can't appreciate that variety, that's YOUR limitation, not anyone else's.

Oh no, I'm not dictating anyone what to do. But I'm voting with my wallet. And neither would I call these "fixes to canon" especially creative, nor do they seem to be successfull. That's not me telling anyone how things "should" be. That's just me giving feedback.

 

[Christopher]

Also worth noting is that way back when, there was a much smaller canvas to work with and little idea that there would be anything beyond the original TV show (and later, the cartoon); you don't exactly "need" an "official" canon policy if tie-ins aren't going to be stepping on the toes of anything.

That really had nothing to do with it. Back then, nobody cared that much about continuity. Nobody cared if a tie-in or an adaptation or a movie spinoff was completely contradictory to the original work; heck, nobody really cared if different episodes of the same series contradicted each other. The modern emphasis on continuity is the result of the way our experience of fiction has changed, with video box sets and wikis and the like letting us experience series as wholes rather than successions of individual episodes. In the '60s, the parts mattered more than the whole. The whole was just a backdrop for the individual stories.

The early Star Trek comics and novels were often quite idiosyncratic and inaccurate interpretations of the show, and that wasn't unusual for the era. Tie-ins and adaptations weren't expected to be authentic continuations; rather, they were alternative interpretations of the same general ideas and characters.

Didn't he decide he wanted his TMP novelization to be out of continuity when he was still ostensibly in charge?

Here's the thing about writers: What we do is defined by the constant effort to improve our ideas. Roddenberry always tried to improve on Star Trek, to come closer to his ideal vision of it, which evolved over time. He saw TMP as an improved version that superseded TOS, and he wanted TNG to be an improved version that superseded both of them. So it wasn't about the novelization specifically, it was about his own desire as a creator to continue improving his creation.

He was still trying to do that in 1989 when he issued the infamous "canon" memo; he was still striving toward his ideal vision of ST. But since he wasn't able to do it in the show itself, all he had left was trying to carve away the parts he was dissatisfied with, the parts that didn't "fit his vision."

The difference is that the MCU, DCEU, and other films/TV shows based on comic books, novels, and other media, are adaptations of a source material. The Kelvin movies are not adaptations in terms of how they fit into the franchise, but an extension and continuation of what came before via the time travel and/or parallel universe trope.

That's a technicality and it's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the larger idea of what's a good storytelling approach for people trying to create a new version of a work aimed at new audiences. And you're right -- you have more creative freedom if you don't let yourself be bound by past continuity. That's what I'm saying. Continuity is a choice, yes, but it's not an absolute obligation, and it sure as hell is not the only way that writers "should" operate.

 

[Lance]

Doctor Who author Lawrence Miles wrote an essay, effectively making the point that fans tend to conflate 'canon' and 'continuity'. The former is essentially whatever the showrunners say it is -- even if it contradicts what has gone before -- the impetus in this case is that the newest material generally retcons the old out of existence, something which has happened in fiction for centuries. Continuity, on the other hand, is as Miles puts it, 'just good housekeeping' -- remembering to acknowledge the past, say if a character has a birthday established a certain day or lost their partner in a plane crash, as a viewer you'd expect them to reflect on that at a certain point. One isn't necessarily contradictory of the other as long as it's internally consistent. The body of work (canon) should be flexible enough to absorb any contradictions that do exist.

The problem with a long running franchise like Doctor Who or Star Trek or Star Wars is that successive showrunners come to the table with fresh ideas, and the sheer body of what has gone before becomes a flood that is used to delegitimize them. I'd argue this has gotten a lot worse since the internet made it easier to discuss these issues also.

 

[WebLurker]

That really had nothing to do with it. Back then, nobody cared that much about continuity. Nobody cared if a tie-in or an adaptation or a movie spinoff was completely contradictory to the original work; heck, nobody really cared if different episodes of the same series contradicted each other. The modern emphasis on continuity is the result of the way our experience of fiction has changed, with video box sets and wikis and the like letting us experience series as wholes rather than successions of individual episodes. In the '60s, the parts mattered more than the whole. The whole was just a backdrop for the individual stories.

The early Star Trek comics and novels were often quite idiosyncratic and inaccurate interpretations of the show, and that wasn't unusual for the era. Tie-ins and adaptations weren't expected to be authentic continuations; rather, they were alternative interpretations of the same general ideas and characters.

Okay, that was way before my time, so I'll take your word for it.

Here's the thing about writers: What we do is defined by the constant effort to improve our ideas. Roddenberry always tried to improve on Star Trek, to come closer to his ideal vision of it, which evolved over time. He saw TMP as an improved version that superseded TOS, and he wanted TNG to be an improved version that superseded both of them. So it wasn't about the novelization specifically, it was about his own desire as a creator to continue improving his creation.

He was still trying to do that in 1989 when he issued the infamous "canon" memo; he was still striving toward his ideal vision of ST. But since he wasn't able to do it in the show itself, all he had left was trying to carve away the parts he was dissatisfied with, the parts that didn't "fit his vision."

Hmmm.

That's a technicality and it's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the larger idea of what's a good storytelling approach for people trying to create a new version of a work aimed at new audiences.

But was it a "new" version in this case?

And you're right -- you have more creative freedom if you don't let yourself be bound by past continuity. That's what I'm saying. Continuity is a choice, yes, but it's not an absolute obligation, and it sure as hell is not the only way that writers "should" operate.

I do like consistency with the project in question, not flip-flopping between the two methods, as a reader/watcher/whatever.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

But remember that a lot of the older inconsistencies were simply due to technical issues, primarily a lack of easily-accessible reference (especially wikis), and some of them could also pass unnoticed for the same reason, so it’s only a natural evolution that now we’d be less accepting of those in absence of a formal handwave (eg. “reboot”, “alternate universe”, “timeline reset”).

 

[Christopher]

But was it a "new" version in this case?

Yes, obviously, in every way that matters -- new stories, new cast, new look, new attitude. The in-universe continuity ties are just a handwave to make a massive reinterpretation palatable to old-guard fans. In real-world terms, looking at it as an exercise in storytelling and marketing, the express intent was to make Star Trek new, to relaunch the film franchise in a fresh way that would attract a fresh young audience. You can't make a profit by catering solely to old fans, since that's a population that's bound to dwindle over time. You have to periodically start over and appeal to new audiences, people who never saw the old version. So when you do that, there's no requirement to make it continuous with what came before, because it won't matter either way to the new audience. That's an option, but it's a secondary consideration. As I keep saying, continuity is not the sole purpose of fiction or the sole standard for judging fiction.

And there are different kinds of continuity. Clearly the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Arrowverse are not in the same continuity as the comics they're based on, but they've been very good at respecting and adapting the characters and storylines and worldbuilding elements of their sources, using past continuity as a starting point and a font to draw from rather than being confined by it. Continuity of ideas, characters, and themes is more important to fiction than the literalistic continuity of events and chronology. You don't have to set your story in the same "universe" as an earlier one in order to be faithful and respectful to its essence.

But remember that a lot of the older inconsistencies were simply due to technical issues, primarily a lack of easily-accessible reference (especially wikis), and some of them could also pass unnoticed for the same reason, so it’s only a natural evolution that now we’d be less accepting of those in absence of a formal handwave (eg. “reboot”, “alternate universe”, “timeline reset”).

Up to a point, but as with anything else, it becomes harmful when it's taken to a fundamentalist extreme. I've always been obsessive about continuity details myself. It's my first impulse. But your first impulse in a place from which to start thinking, not to stop thinking. I have enough perspective and experience to recognize that it's not the sole consideration that matters, that it's one tool out of many that different creators are entitled to wield in different ways, and that there can be good and necessary reasons for prioritizing other things above it. Life is too complicated to judge everything by a single yardstick.

 

[Rahul]

Doctor Who author Lawrence Miles wrote an essay, effectively making the point that fans tend to conflate 'canon' and 'continuity'. The former is essentially whatever the showrunners say it is -- even if it contradicts what has gone before -- the impetus in this case is that the newest material generally retcons the old out of existence, something which has happened in fiction for centuries. Continuity, on the other hand, is as Miles puts it, 'just good housekeeping' -- remembering to acknowledge the past, say if a character has a birthday established a certain day or lost their partner in a plane crash, as a viewer you'd expect them to reflect on that at a certain point. One isn't necessarily contradictory of the other as long as it's internally consistent. The body of work (canon) should be flexible enough to absorb any contradictions that do exist.

That's a great point! Though in all fairness, it seems more like Abrams and Kurtzman are having continuity problems - they don't know how to integrate their newer stories into the larger continuity of previous stories, and try to apply easy "fixes" via time-travel alternate timelines - which are now "canon", but don't solve the original "continuity" problem.

The problem with a long running franchise like Doctor Who or Star Trek or Star Wars is that successive showrunners come to the table with fresh ideas, and the sheer body of what has gone before becomes a flood that is used to delegitimize them. I'd argue this has gotten a lot worse since the internet made it easier to discuss these issues also.

I really don't think "fresh ideas" is the problem. "Writing reliant on past continuity" is the problem. Season 2 of "Discovery" had quite a big story-arc regarding Section 31. Which had a TON of canon/continuity problems. The thing is, they could have entirely avoided all these problems had they actually used "fresh" ideas: They could simply have introduced another, previously unknown branch of Starfleet Intelligence. But it was their insistence on using old ideas - Section 31 - that lead to the problem of their new version running into continuity problems with previous depictions of S31. And it's not that some minor technicalities don't add up - Star Trek is ripe with these things. It seemed that they got the core identity of what the thing is wrong.

 

[Christopher]

That's a great point! Though in all fairness, it seems more like Abrams and Kurtzman are having continuity problems - they don't know how to integrate their newer stories into the larger continuity of previous stories, and try to apply easy "fixes" via time-travel alternate timelines - which are now "canon", but don't solve the original "continuity" problem.

Come on. That's like saying that Picasso didn't "know how" to paint realistically, or that Ella Fitzgerald scatted because she didn't know the words. Choosing to take a different approach is not ignorance. Creativity is not about doing only one thing forever -- it's about innovating and taking chances.

As I just posted in another thread: Continuity is not the sole priority of storytelling. You can tell stories that are in continuity with each other, or you can tell stories that offer alternative versions of events. Both approaches have their own benefits, so it's good that both exist.

I do "know how" to integrate stories into an existing continuity -- I've been doing it as a Trek novelist for about 15 years. But I'd welcome the chance to reinvent Trek from scratch, and I'd welcome seeing someone else try it too. Because taking different creative approaches is a good thing, not a failure.

 

[Rahul]

Come on. That's like saying that Picasso didn't "know how" to paint realistically, or that Ella Fitzgerald scatted because she didn't know the words. Choosing to take a different approach is not ignorance. Creativity is not about doing only one thing forever -- it's about innovating and taking chances.

You're literally the first person I've ever seen that compares Abrams' and Kurtzman's work on 'Star Trek' to the works of Picasso and Ella Fitzgerald.

 

[Christopher]

You're literally the first person I've ever seen that compares Abrams' and Kurtzman's work on 'Star Trek' to the works of Picasso and Ella Fitzgerald.

I had a feeling you'd twist my words in order to ignore my point. Too bad you're not willing to think and listen. I'm clearly wasting my time here.