When did canon become such a hot-button issue?

[Boris Skrbic]

If the official Enterprise(-D) blueprints had been drawn earlier, they might have shown up on TNG in part, as Franz Joseph’s did in the initial films and Doug Drexler’s Defiant plans did on DS9. But either way essential accuracy is expected: it wouldn’t make sense to ignore DSC and say that “The Cage” version applied in 2257, but you also can’t mix and match styles because the technical illusion would be broken.

That’s why I’m saying that for some tie-ins the Prime Timeline label isn’t enough, and Star Trek: Discovery is needed at least to identify the revised production design.

 

[Rahul]

Long-term planning is optional even for serialized shows: it’s more about day-to-day management. Breaking Bad wasn’t planned according to its writers, merely built up from the premise by taking the characters where they needed to go. Even the famous Babylon 5 arc remained the same only in general terms (when compared to an early outline published in Volume 15 of the script collections); what really made it work was Straczynski engineering the details as actors came and went and other real-world changes occurred.

I wish people wouldn't have ignored this post so much. It perfectly encapsulates the major problems that both Star Trek, Star Wars and a whole lot of other franchises have, and why MARVEL was so successfull, and DC's finally steering back on course after many misfires.

Because all these former franchises are so, so stuck up their asses on "re-inventing" their franchises or "course correcting" it via incredible forced means *cough DIS season 2 finale *cough - from the outside - focussing on arbitrary stuff like "canon", "continuity" and other circumstances - they forgot the important part is to focus on RELIABLY just telling a good story first and foremost. Every week. The continuity then would pile up completely on itself. People didn't dislike DIS season 1 for all the "canon inconsistencies" - that were just the most obvious signs everyone could point out when they were searching for problems. And people didn't start to like season 2 because Pike was wearing a mustard uniform. But because it suddenly started to deliver better stories every week.

The main problem is that the creators still haven't figured out what a "regular", enjoyable episode of Star Trek is. It seemed they figured it out early during season 2. But then they went back to franchise management in the end. But it's really the day-to-day managament - the stuff that makes up "filler" episodes - because it ain't game-changing, but it's the part that in the end makes up the majority of the shows runtime and thus identity - that's where the issues lie hidden.

 

[BillJ]

...because we're all grown-ups who understand that it's not 1966 anymore.

That can be just as applicable to the continuity as the visuals. A continuity that is built on a 1960's view of the future.

 

[fireproof78]

That can be just as applicable to the continuity as the visuals. A continuity that is built on a 1960's view of the future.

If that were the conceit of Star Trek's premise I would agree. However, it is not and I don't think it needs to be.

but you also can’t mix and match styles because the technical illusion would be broken.

I'm not 100% this true, at least for me.

The main problem is that the creators still haven't figured out what a "regular", enjoyable episode of Star Trek is.

What is it?

 

[Christopher]

Star Trek was never meant to be retro. It aspired to project the future; the 1960s aspects that dated it were shortcomings of its attempts at futurism, not intentional features. That's why Roddenberry was so quick to update the entire look of the universe in ST:TMP.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

Yes, and later installments kept it fresh by building on that and not refurbishing earlier Trek, which was treated as period and something to look back on from time to time. DSC and the Kelvin Timeline restrict the idea of Star Trek to having specific, audience-grabbing characters be involved in a projection which can otherwise be updated, thus breaking precedent and essentially saying that Star Trek can explore the future so long as the century is the 23rd?

 

[at Quark's]

I'd say that in a certain sense the entire premise of Star Trek might seem a bit retro now. The way things are going, a future with human intelligence uploaded in a vast interstellar "cloud", sending out probes with nigh-indestructible bodies that can be 'taken over' by a human (or perhaps an artificial intelligence vastly beyond human level) seems more likely. (that is, of course, if we ever manage to reach such futuristic levels of tech)

Although of course you could argue that stuff such as the Eugenic Wars, and the Borg act as rationalisations why they didn't choose such a path, the out-of-universe reason perhaps being that writers don't want to tell those kind of stories because we can't readily identify with such an 'enhanced' form of humanity?

 

[Boris Skrbic]

I wouldn’t overthink it since ST is just a storytelling framework. I ran into a note in an early TOS writers’ guide making the analogy with the romanticized Old West vs reality. If VGR was “up to date” in 2001, it’s 18 years later so the next season should be set in 2396, whatever the detailed content.

 

[Christopher]

I'd say that in a certain sense the entire premise of Star Trek might seem a bit retro now. The way things are going, a future with human intelligence uploaded in a vast interstellar "cloud", sending out probes with nigh-indestructible bodies that can be 'taken over' by a human (or perhaps an artificial intelligence vastly beyond human level) seems more likely. (that is, of course, if we ever manage to reach such futuristic levels of tech)

If anything, I think it's that kind of Singularity/posthuman SF that's getting a bit retro now, at least in prose circles (mass media SF tends to lag a couple of decades behind the literature). There was a ton of stuff like that in the '90s and '00s, but I think now we're seeing more writers skeptical of the idea and recognizing that upward technological and social trends tend to plateau eventually rather than rising infinitely. And that uploading data means copying it rather than moving it, so that an uploaded mind would not be the original mind, and thus a human consciousness still needs to reside in a human brain. Where I see clouds and information networks in SF these days, they connect and unite biological humans rather than replacing them.

 

[Rahul]

I'd say that in a certain sense the entire premise of Star Trek might seem a bit retro now. The way things are going, a future with human intelligence uploaded in a vast interstellar "cloud", sending out probes with nigh-indestructible bodies that can be 'taken over' by a human (or perhaps an artificial intelligence vastly beyond human level) seems more likely. (that is, of course, if we ever manage to reach such futuristic levels of tech)

I doubt it. We're still humans, and part of the human experience is "doing it themselves". You haven't "been there" until someone actually has been there. We got tons of rovers on the Mars doing lots of important scientific work. But there is still an enourmous drive to get there in person.

What IS dated, is the notion of "being out there, farting round, and going where-ever one just feels like", as seen a whole lot on early ENT, and the final scene with Pike and Spock in season 2. But that was already dated back during TOS and TNG - a much better mission statement would probably be "our observatorise/drones/whatever catched this weird thing in the xxx starsystem, now we go there personally to science it directly".

 

[valkyrie013]

They have sensor drones, sub space telescopes, but that can only tell you so much with out a either an advanced enough ai, or a human to interprerite and to ask questions of what it is etc.
If you just want to send a probe in, catalog raw data, and leave, sure probes are good, even a telescope, but Star Trek is a bit of a western.. people wanting to explore, go out there, be the first people there, which I would love to do, and so would alot of people, maybe why most ships are human manned because were more adventeurous!

I would like to have some stories in the S3 disco on that stuff with mind uploading, or lets say an Ai takes over the federation and we loose that adventurous spirit!

 

[fireproof78]

I wouldn’t overthink it since ST is just a storytelling framework. I ran into a note in an early TOS writers’ guide making the analogy with the romanticized Old West vs reality. If VGR was “up to date” in 2001, it’s 18 years later so the next season should be set in 2396, whatever the detailed content.

Which means there is no wrong way to tell as Star Trek story.

 

[mos6507]

I'd say that in a certain sense the entire premise of Star Trek might seem a bit retro now.

THIS

Those who think you can just do a superficial refresh onto Trek to make it contemporary "speculative fiction" have no firm grasp of where technology is really heading (assuming we don't wind up getting dragged back down to the stone age by climate change and fossil fuel depletion).

 

[fireproof78]

THIS

Those who think you can just do a superficial refresh onto Trek to make it contemporary "speculative fiction" have no firm grasp of where technology is really heading (assuming we don't wind up getting dragged back down to the stone age by climate change and fossil fuel depletion).

YAY! Optimism!

 

[Kor]

Indeed. When you look at the cutting-edge notions proposed by futurists, the whole notion of crewed spacecraft going out to explore the galaxy is hopelessly antiquated. They speak instead of "mind uploading" to automated long-distance probes. Now there's some riveting drama... watching a probe float through space and record scans of space dust for an hour.

Kor

 

[Christopher]

Indeed. When you look at the cutting-edge notions proposed by futurists, the whole notion of crewed spacecraft going out to explore the galaxy is hopelessly antiquated. They speak instead of "mind uploading" to automated long-distance probes. Now there's some riveting drama... watching a probe float through space and record scans of space dust for an hour.

Again, I wouldn't call that cutting-edge, since authors like Greg Egan were doing stories about that kind of future 20 years ago. Heck, I had a story like that published in 2017, "Abductive Reasoning" in Analog, and I wouldn't call myself a trailblazer. True, there are still stories along those lines being published, but there are also still stories about crewed spacecraft as well -- though often crewed by humans who've been genetically or cybernetically modified for spaceflight, immortality, etc. Some stories (including "Abductive Reasoning") use a mix of both, with characters transitioning between cybernetic forms and synthesized organic forms depending on the needs of a particular situation.

 

[Nightdiamond]

In Voyager season 2, the writers tried to do a serialized story arc with Michael Jonas spying for the Kazon, but it didn't work out as well as they hoped, and I remember Jeri Taylor (IIRC) saying in an interview that their mistake was that they chose to do a plot arc that came from outside the ship instead of a character arc that came from within. Maybe that's why the biggest serialized threads from then on were character-driven -- Seven of Nine's evolution from Borg to human, Paris and Torres's romance, the Doctor's pursuit of personal growth.

Voyager had some of the weirdest character continuity. Right before they were stranded in the DQ, Janeway was engaged to a guy named Mark.

A couple of months later they come to a planet. The leader is a guy named Gath and they spend time together. She seemed charmed by him. Even the other crew members make a comment about it.

Harry Kim was even worse.

Before they were stranded, Harry Kim was supposed to have a girlfriend named Libby (possibly engaged). In the same episode above there was a mention he went on a date with a crewmen. Then later when he meets a female local on the planet they're visiting, he gets very cozy and flirty with her.

Unless Harry was a two timer.

It wouldn't surprise me that arc wasn't as popular. I had a hard time understanding Seska's motives, if she wanted to get to the AQ as fast as possible. It made little sense.

Originally Seska wanted to get home as fast as possible and she didn't think Voyager was ever going to do it Janeway's way.

But she opts to escape and stay with the Kazon who are technology behind Voyager. So she tries to recapture Voyager so the Kazon will get the advanced ship they wanted. She even gets a crew member to spy on them for her.

The problem was, she wasn't going anywhere. That was like a plan to travel in the wrong direction. Why a crewman would want to waste time with a traitor on an alien ship with inferior tech in region that they were leaving behind made little sense.

Voyager had a lot of weird continuity issues, at least from what I've noticed.

 

[Rahul]

They have sensor drones, sub space telescopes, but that can only tell you so much with out a either an advanced enough ai, or a human to interprerite and to ask questions of what it is etc.

If you just want to send a probe in, catalog raw data, and leave, sure probes are good, even a telescope, but Star Trek is a bit of a western.. people wanting to explore, go out there, be the first people there, which I would love to do, and so would alot of people, maybe why most ships are human manned because were more adventeurous!

As I said, in my opinion a good approach for a [unnamed, future] Star Trek series would be - all thse drones and telescopes and sensors existing - and collecting (and analyzing) raw data at a much higher rate than any starship ever could.

And then the main ship of the [potential] series being tasked with to personally fly to and check out all the interesting spots were anomalies are detected, data doesn't add up, or interesting phenomena or life-forms are spotted. To get a personal look at it. And have the ship's scientists personally poke with a stick at it.

 

[Christopher]

Voyager had a lot of weird continuity issues, at least from what I've noticed.

Which was partly because UPN resisted letting them have strong continuity and pushed them to stick to a more episodic format, since TV hadn't yet embraced serialization as completely as it has today.

 

[Finn]

If the official Enterprise(-D) blueprints had been drawn earlier, they might have shown up on TNG in part, as Franz Joseph’s did in the initial films and Doug Drexler’s Defiant plans did on DS9. But either way essential accuracy is expected: it wouldn’t make sense to ignore DSC and say that “The Cage” version applied in 2257, but you also can’t mix and match styles because the technical illusion would be broken.

That’s why I’m saying that for some tie-ins the Prime Timeline label isn’t enough, and Star Trek: Discovery is needed at least to identify the revised production design.