When did canon become such a hot-button issue?

[WebLurker]

By that logic, TOS "broke canon" when it replaced James R. Kirk, lithium crystals, Vulcanians, and UESPA. And TNG did when it gave Worf a new forehead in season 2 and retconned away Data's previously demonstrated abilities to use contractions and feel emotion.

Isn't a lot of that "Early Installment Weirdness" more so then contradicting canon/continuity/whatever that had been fairly consistently maintained between different installments of the franchise? Whenever I hear about ENT being clusterfudge of continuity, it always seems they're claiming it's the latter, not the former.

(For the record, I myself was content to write off "James R. Kirk" as Gary Mitchell making a mistake -- although Peter David's explanation in Q-Squared was the best novel fix, IMHO, even if I'm glad that that was not canon. I guess I somehow imagined lithium crystals doing something different then dilithium, like being the batteries instead of the regulators or whatever the heck the crystals were supposed to do. Later installments did fix UESPA and it's place with Starfleet, so non-issue for me. Vulcanians seemed no different then humans getting called "Earthers" and "Earthmen" in TOS by other aliens. Worf's makeup was always a variation of the same thing, so I put this purely as a productional development outside of canon, esp. since we've had far more drastic makeup changes to characters or alien species before and after. As I recall, Data's lack of contradictions, under his "present day" specs, was established as early as "Datalore" and I honestly don't recall the early episode(s) where he had emotions. Mileage may vary)

Canon is not a vase on a shelf. It's a living, growing entity. It doesn't break, it evolves. And if some part of it does break, it heals, even if it's not quite the same as it was before.

I suppose for everyone, it's different whether the final result "works" for them or not. However, the point I had was actually explained above (e.g I don't get how ENT messed up continuity, given that the "mistakes" are minor at best, and no worse then the inevitable discrepancies the previous shows had).

But there are always some who just cling to their hate forever and refuse to change. Anyone remember James Dixon?

Never heard of him before and did some Googling. Wow. I am equally impressed and shocked by that fan chronology he put together; that's a lot of work to put something together that detailed (I've got an in-progress, non-Star Trek fan chronology on my desktop, so I do have a first-hand idea what's involved). While I wouldn't mix canon and non-canon materials myself, it's still a legitimate premise for a fan chronology.

However, the hate for the Spaceflight Chronology, the official Star Trek Chronology, and the idea of tie-ins not being counted alongside canon is something else, esp. when he makes weird claims that don't hold up (like that the latterwas mostly made of stuff they made up) and his whole belief that fan fiction is just a legitimate, if not more so, then licensed stuff. I don't see a problem with reconstructing the timeline differently from the licensed source (heck, even the Okudas noted in their official one that fans should be free to make their own chronologies with differences in order and whatnot), but the pettiness of it all is shocking.

The guy clearly put a lot of thought into his number-crunching, but I think the hate seeping through it really devalues the whole of the work. It comes across less of a work made by a fan for the artistry or to share what they know, but someone completely jealous of the fact that they're not the ones in charge of the franchise's continuity (or that the franchise moved past the stuff they valued; take your pick).

 

[fireproof78]

The guy clearly put a lot of thought into his number-crunching, but I think the hate seeping through it really devalues the whole of the work. It comes across less of a work made by a fan for the artistry or to share what they know, but someone completely jealous of the fact that they're not the ones in charge of the franchise's continuity (or that the franchise moved past the stuff they valued; take your pick).

Unfortunately, all too common with fandom.

 

[WebLurker]

Unfortunately, all too common with fandom.

Yeah, it's an easy trap to fall into. I'm sure we've all said or thought similar stuff at one time or another. Guess the best we can do is try to rise above that impulse.

 

[Christopher]

Isn't a lot of that "Early Installment Weirdness" more so then contradicting canon/continuity/whatever that had been fairly consistently maintained between different installments of the franchise? Whenever I hear about ENT being clusterfudge of continuity, it always seems they're claiming it's the latter, not the former.

My point is that it's a specious distinction. Fiction is a creative process, and that means it's always subject to change and rethinking, no matter how far along it is.

And as I've said before, Trek continuity has not been "fairly consistently maintained." Every new installment has reinterpreted things, and every new installment has been accused by some fans of changing things too much to be reconciled, but fans have always reconciled it anyway by finding ways to rationalize or gloss over the inconsistencies. Then they forget that they did that and mistake their carefully curated illusion of a consistent reality for the objective truth.

The guy clearly put a lot of thought into his number-crunching, but I think the hate seeping through it really devalues the whole of the work. It comes across less of a work made by a fan for the artistry or to share what they know, but someone completely jealous of the fact that they're not the ones in charge of the franchise's continuity (or that the franchise moved past the stuff they valued; take your pick).

That's a pretty good assessment. He always struck me as a fundamentalist, someone who was utterly invested in the version of Trek as it existed by the end of the '70s and who just couldn't accept the heretical reinterpretations of TNG onward.

 

[fireproof78]

And as I've said before, Trek continuity has not been "fairly consistently maintained." Every new installment has reinterpreted things, and every new installment has been accused by some fans of changing things too much to be reconciled, but fans have always reconciled it anyway by finding ways to rationalize or gloss over the inconsistencies. Then they forget that they did that and mistake their carefully curated illusion of a consistent reality for the objective truth.

This is kind of my reaction. I love Trek and making sense of all the inconsistencies has been part of the fun. But I cannot recall laboring under the idea that it all made sense or was one unified reality.

I guess I am surprised at how hard there is of a push back since Abrams and DSC came out to keep this grand unified Trek theory going.

 

[ChallengerHK]

I have a theory, which I put forth a wile back, and I'd love to get feedback on. I have done nothing to research this, but it fits my experience. I think I've posted this here before.

Back in the 70s when I became active in fandom, there were not, at least in my experience, people saying that canon consistency did not matter, or that it was not a worthy goal. We saw the inconsistencies, explained them when we could, debated our explanations, but I never met a person back then who said "It's inconsistent. So what?"

(Nor were there people who were calling for the deaths or maimings of the creators if something was inconsistent. I do recall people questioning the quality of TNG, but that was more a question of writing, directing and acting. Matter of fact, I don't recall seeing any really visceral reactions to inconsistency until Lucas' Star Wars prequels.)

In the early to mid 70s, Trek fandom was pretty much Trek, and people who came together (i.e., at conventions) celebrated Trek. Literary fans pretty much avoided the earlier cons, as they tended to look down on Trek fandom in particular and media fandom in general. Fans of other media did start to show up, however, and in increasingly large numbers. I recall starting to see larger numbers of panels for Doctor Who, and then for Brit SF in general, and when Battlestar Galactica came out there were panels about it. There were increasing numbers of panels for anime. Media fandom became more unified, especially as Star Trek apparently died. Celebrating Star Trek, in the early years, was more like throwing a wake; you enjoyed remembering the good things, but you knew it was gone.

And then there were increasing numbers of panels about comics, and this is where I started to see a change which has become more prevalent. Comics change their "realities" frequently. Reboots are common, characters and situations change often. Comic readers, therefore, are more likely to accept these kind of changes than a fan of the Foundation Trilogy would be, for instance. As more and more fans became fans not only of Trek, but of other media as well (or, as another way of looking at it, as conventions and the ways that fans met fans became infused with fans of things other than Trek), comics became a more prevalent topic of panels, of conversations, and of criticism. This meant that the critics became increasingly likely to accept lapses in continuity, or even wholesale continuity changes, without question.

Comments?

 

[Greg Cox]

My attitude is kinda: When trying to "fix" continuity glitches is fun, when it's a game, when it's something you do for enjoyment, go for it.

But when continuity glitches becomes a source of anger and anxiety, when you're so worried about protecting the "canon" that watching Trek and taking part in fandom isn't fun anymore, maybe things are getting out of hand.

 

[Christopher]

I guess I am surprised at how hard there is of a push back since Abrams and DSC came out to keep this grand unified Trek theory going.

The exact same thing happened with Enterprise before that. The complaints about it were essentially identical to the later ones about Kelvin and DSC.

I have a theory, which I put forth a wile back, and I'd love to get feedback on. I have done nothing to research this, but it fits my experience. I think I've posted this here before.

Back in the 70s when I became active in fandom, there were not, at least in my experience, people saying that canon consistency did not matter, or that it was not a worthy goal. We saw the inconsistencies, explained them when we could, debated our explanations, but I never met a person back then who said "It's inconsistent. So what?"
....
And then there were increasing numbers of panels about comics, and this is where I started to see a change which has become more prevalent. Comics change their "realities" frequently. Reboots are common, characters and situations change often. Comic readers, therefore, are more likely to accept these kind of changes than a fan of the Foundation Trilogy would be, for instance. As more and more fans became fans not only of Trek, but of other media as well (or, as another way of looking at it, as conventions and the ways that fans met fans became infused with fans of things other than Trek), comics became a more prevalent topic of panels, of conversations, and of criticism. This meant that the critics became increasingly likely to accept lapses in continuity, or even wholesale continuity changes, without question.

I don't think it's about comics. After all, flexible continuity has historically been the norm for TV and movie series; TOS's continuity was actually better than average for its era. Trek fans back in the day (myself included) loved to explore and expand its relatively strong continuity, but we understood that continuity in fiction is optional, because that's the way most fiction was in those days.

As I've said, the greater fixation with continuity these days has come from several factors. One, home video and the Internet have made it easier to experience a series as a whole rather than a succession of individual stories, and to become intimately familiar with minor details that would usually have been overlooked in the past. Two, greater realism in film/TV production and higher-resolution screens have raised a generation that expects fiction to feel more "real" than it was in TOS's day of stagey sets and fuzzy TV pictures, and thus is less practiced at suspending disbelief and forgiving imperfections in fiction. Three, Gene Roddenberry's 1989 "canon" memo created the false premise in fandom's minds that canon was a matter of legitimacy dictated by a higher authority, and that the worth of a story was defined by whether it "fit" rather than whether it was enjoyable.

As a result, there's a contingent of fandom that is militantly obsessive about continuity to the point of obnoxiousness. So when others of us push back and say "Don't take continuity so seriously," we're not saying "So what?" We're not saying we don't care about continuity or consistency. Personally, I care very much about it. But I understand that it's not the sole standard of quality in fiction, that some works of fiction embrace it more than others, and that it's unrealistic to expect any human creation to be absolutely perfect and without flaw. So we're not saying continuity doesn't matter, just that some fans take their obsession with it to an unhealthy extreme.

 

[seigezunt]

And as I've said before, Trek continuity has not been "fairly consistently maintained." Every new installment has reinterpreted things, and every new installment has been accused by some fans of changing things too much to be reconciled, but fans have always reconciled it anyway by finding ways to rationalize or gloss over the inconsistencies. Then they forget that they did that and mistake their carefully curated illusion of a consistent reality for the objective truth.

This. Someone here once used the expression "Straw Trek," and I wish I could remember to credit them, referring to the ideal Trek continuity that we hold in our heads, which we grow to become convinced is the actual body of work, and which is utterly consistent. As opposed to head canon, which we consciously maintain things for our admitted preference.

This is kind of my reaction. I love Trek and making sense of all the inconsistencies has been part of the fun. But I cannot recall laboring under the idea that it all made sense or was one unified reality.

I guess I am surprised at how hard there is of a push back since Abrams and DSC came out to keep this grand unified Trek theory going.

I like that, Unified Trek Theory, Great way to put it.

I have a theory, which I put forth a wile back, and I'd love to get feedback on. I have done nothing to research this, but it fits my experience. I think I've posted this here before.

Back in the 70s when I became active in fandom, there were not, at least in my experience, people saying that canon consistency did not matter, or that it was not a worthy goal. We saw the inconsistencies, explained them when we could, debated our explanations, but I never met a person back then who said "It's inconsistent. So what?"

(Nor were there people who were calling for the deaths or maimings of the creators if something was inconsistent. I do recall people questioning the quality of TNG, but that was more a question of writing, directing and acting. Matter of fact, I don't recall seeing any really visceral reactions to inconsistency until Lucas' Star Wars prequels.)

In the early to mid 70s, Trek fandom was pretty much Trek, and people who came together (i.e., at conventions) celebrated Trek. Literary fans pretty much avoided the earlier cons, as they tended to look down on Trek fandom in particular and media fandom in general. Fans of other media did start to show up, however, and in increasingly large numbers. I recall starting to see larger numbers of panels for Doctor Who, and then for Brit SF in general, and when Battlestar Galactica came out there were panels about it. There were increasing numbers of panels for anime. Media fandom became more unified, especially as Star Trek apparently died. Celebrating Star Trek, in the early years, was more like throwing a wake; you enjoyed remembering the good things, but you knew it was gone.

And then there were increasing numbers of panels about comics, and this is where I started to see a change which has become more prevalent. Comics change their "realities" frequently. Reboots are common, characters and situations change often. Comic readers, therefore, are more likely to accept these kind of changes than a fan of the Foundation Trilogy would be, for instance. As more and more fans became fans not only of Trek, but of other media as well (or, as another way of looking at it, as conventions and the ways that fans met fans became infused with fans of things other than Trek), comics became a more prevalent topic of panels, of conversations, and of criticism. This meant that the critics became increasingly likely to accept lapses in continuity, or even wholesale continuity changes, without question.

Comments?

I think your characterization of 70's fandom is pretty accurate, though I would say that, because it had a real sense of fun to it, there were definitely people who said "so what" about inconsistencies. If we could work it out, great, it was fun. And if we couldn't, it wasn't a big deal.

As for your theory about the effect of comics, it's plausible, but I think it's also plausible that the sheer passage of time made strict consistency harder. Also, as noted above, fans had more time to come to believe the workarounds they came up with for fun, were in fact elements of the real canon, and they grew to believe the franchise was more consistent than it really is.

Combine this with the fact that you had a much better attempt at consistency during the 90s, within the TNG-era shows, that the idea of a permanently-pixel-perfect consistency seemed a possibility for many. When it really isn't a fair expectation for a creative franchise spanning a half century.

I don't think it's so much the influence of comics, but that Trek finally had to grapple with forces that the comics had already been making peace with, namely the passage of time, changes in the audience, aging and passing of it creators, etc.

 

[WebLurker]

My point is that it's a specious distinction. Fiction is a creative process, and that means it's always subject to change and rethinking, no matter how far along it is.

And as I've said before, Trek continuity has not been "fairly consistently maintained." Every new installment has reinterpreted things, and every new installment has been accused by some fans of changing things too much to be reconciled, but fans have always reconciled it anyway by finding ways to rationalize or gloss over the inconsistencies. Then they forget that they did that and mistake their carefully curated illusion of a consistent reality for the objective truth.

Yeah, guess there's subjectivity where people think something still fits, can be fixed, or was never a mistake in the first place and what is a mistake plain and simple. Some people are A-okay with everything falling under artistic license, others want stuff to make as much sense "in-universe" as possible, and some people like the effect that stuff like Rogue One has of recreating the old designs like it was a period piece or sorts. (I'll admit that I would've been jazzed if DSC would've gone full TOS pilot in design of props, sets, etc, while fully understanding that the show runners wouldn't have wanted to do that for a variety of reasons.)

Wonder if, beyond what you said above, if there's also something of a generational thing? Some of us were introduced to Star Trek at a time when a lot of the installments had "always" existed, so some changes were "always" part of the "original," from our perspective, not to mention that the '90s/early 2000s installments (where the bulk of the shows were made) were under more or less continuous management, so had a relatively more seamless fit then something like DSC, where the Powers That Be wanted to reimagine certain elements, for "good" or "bad"

(Can't say I see a contradiction between believing that canon is dictated by the Powers That Be and that canon does not measure the value of the specific media in question, but that's me.)

That's a pretty good assessment. He always struck me as a fundamentalist, someone who was utterly invested in the version of Trek as it existed by the end of the '70s and who just couldn't accept the heretical reinterpretations of TNG onward.

The repeated idea that comes up again and again in his writings (the notes and whatnot) is the frustration that the tie-ins were just ignored by the TV shows and then-modern licensed materials. Fair enough if he liked those versions of stuff (I'll always have a soft spot for the LUG RPG's world-building no matter how overwritten it becomes by subsequent TV shows and I do like a lot of the old novels that cannot fit into the modern continuity), but he doesn't really demonstrate a good understanding of how it all works.

For starters, he damning of the Okuda's chronology is because it excludes the tie-ins, despite the book itself making the case that it's narrowed down on a specific aspect of the chronology for legitimate reasons and he certainly did cross quite a few lines with the personal attacks on the authors. I myself am bugged by a couple things about the official reference books they put together (Chronology, Encyclopedia) -- like excluding TAS, constantly dating the original movie in 2271 despite the numbers used to crunch that changing and shifting things forward a bit -- and that warp drive chart that suggested it would take generations to cross the Federation despite how little sense that makes -- but it doesn't justify being angry with them over those differences (granted, their Star Trek Chronology is my favorite book of its kind, but still).

He also has this odd doublethink of damning "modern" Trek for ignoring the past tie-ins despite the fact that the majority of the tie-ins he reveres ignored each other; despite his admission in the introduction of his chronology that he's splicing together stuff that doesn't fit together with each other, he gets mad about new stuff doing the same, almost as if he forgot that his chronology wasn't a holistic take on the franchise in the first place. From a logical standpoint, why make exceptions to the former but not the latter (yeah, I get his bias, but he seems totally unaware of it). It even bleeds through in his documentation; he ignores most of the LUG RPG materials because they were built on the official canon and the writing teams own extrapolations with no concessions to the past tie-ins, despite documenting similar works as "alternate timelines" in his chronology. Even ENT, which he seems to reject as canon just because he hated it, is accounted for with a fair level of detail (albeit incorrectly labeled as an AU).

I've seen "fans" like this before online -- Comicsgate, the more militant Star Wars Legends groups and/or "Disney ruined Star Wars" folks. Even heard about others after the fact when researching toxic fandom for my own edification -- like H.E.A.T., Gamergate, Sad/Rabid Puppies. Heck, Dixon kinda reminds me a bit of Harlan Ellison and the latter's bile regarding the "City of the Edge of Forever," esp. in regards to how they brood over the wrongs, perceived or otherwise, they "suffered" from, and have a sense of ownership of the work they did in someone else's sandbox. While I have seen a few more toxic, Dixon is up there (esp. with that last defense he wrote, spinning this blacklisting conspiracy by power-drunk forum moderators). Too bad he wasn't able to let go of his hate; the chronology in and of itself is impressive as a fan work and arguably preserves stuff that deserves to be remembered, but will probably always be overshadowed by the man's sense of entitlement.

My attitude is kinda: When trying to "fix" continuity glitches is fun, when it's a game, when it's something you do for enjoyment, go for it.

But when continuity glitches becomes a source of anger and anxiety, when you're so worried about protecting the "canon" that watching Trek and taking part in fandom isn't fun anymore, maybe things are getting out of hand.

Like this very much. While I would never blame anyone for not liking a change or mistake (I'll never cotton to Spider-Man One More Day because of what it took away from that iteration of the franchise), I very much agree that you shouldn't take it so seriously, the way things seem to get taken online.

 

[Damian]

I've been in a bit of a funk for the last several days (for reasons I won't rehash here) but one thing something like that does is bring some things into some sort of focus. And maybe some of us get to hung up on continuity and canon for what is just a source of entertainment. Does it really matter? I've sweated some of the production design decisions of Discovery, including most notably the Klingon design. And I'm thinking to myself why? Why am I sweating it? Can't I simply imagine original series style Klingons in place of the Giger-Klingons? Or vice-versa. And should I even bother?

Even though I haven't commented on this the last several days I've been reading some of the comments about it all and I can't help but feel a bit silly that I get hung up about some of the things I do. It's really not a big deal.

My attitude is kinda: When trying to "fix" continuity glitches is fun, when it's a game, when it's something you do for enjoyment, go for it.

But when continuity glitches becomes a source of anger and anxiety, when you're so worried about protecting the "canon" that watching Trek and taking part in fandom isn't fun anymore, maybe things are getting out of hand.

As a result, there's a contingent of fandom that is militantly obsessive about continuity to the point of obnoxiousness. So when others of us push back and say "Don't take continuity so seriously," we're not saying "So what?" We're not saying we don't care about continuity or consistency.

Amen. One of the many things I enjoy about tie-in fiction. While I may be rethinking my own approach to continuity, it doesn't mean there still can't be some fun in trying to put the puzzle pieces together. I can't say I ever got angry about continuity glitches, I did allow it to cause me some consternation in the past. Which is a silly thing to do. Maybe instead of looking at what doesn't fit we should try to look for things that do fit.

TOS's continuity was actually better than average for its era.

It is interesting to see as I rewatch the original series. I'm doing a production order rewatch and I've been looking for things that tie the episodes together. I just watched "Mirror, Mirror" last night and in a nod to continuity they noted how the 'mirror-Kirk' took command after assassinating Captain Christopher Pike.

And I agree. Star Trek did have more continuity then was common for the 1960's. It certainly doesn't compare to today's serializations, but there was at least an attempt to maintain a basic continuity.

fuzzy TV pictures

You can tell they didn't plan on Blu-Ray clarity back then. One drawback to Blu-Rays...you can clearly see the stunt doubles now.

 

[fireproof78]

My attitude is kinda: When trying to "fix" continuity glitches is fun, when it's a game, when it's something you do for enjoyment, go for it.

But when continuity glitches becomes a source of anger and anxiety, when you're so worried about protecting the "canon" that watching Trek and taking part in fandom isn't fun anymore, maybe things are getting out of hand.

Precisely so.

 

[Christopher]

Combine this with the fact that you had a much better attempt at consistency during the 90s, within the TNG-era shows, that the idea of a permanently-pixel-perfect consistency seemed a possibility for many. When it really isn't a fair expectation for a creative franchise spanning a half century.

I wouldn't call it a "better attempt" -- it wasn't because they tried harder, it was just because the same core people were making all those shows. They were consistent (up to a point) because of their common origin. Different creators have different styles and visions, and no two people will interpret the same thing in exactly the same way, so two works from different creators are never going to mesh as readily as two works from the same creators.

I don't think it's so much the influence of comics, but that Trek finally had to grapple with forces that the comics had already been making peace with, namely the passage of time, changes in the audience, aging and passing of it creators, etc.

There's nothing "finally" about it. As I said, it's the other way around -- audiences used to understand and expect a loose approach to continuity, and the idea of continuity being stringent and inflexible is a relatively recent standard. And it's been taken to such an extreme by some fans that others are pushing back and reminding them that continuity doesn't need to be absolute for a story to work -- something that used to be taken for granted but now needs to be explained.

(I'll admit that I would've been jazzed if DSC would've gone full TOS pilot in design of props, sets, etc, while fully understanding that the show runners wouldn't have wanted to do that for a variety of reasons.)

I wouldn't have wanted that. Slavish recreations are okay for the occasional single story like "Trials and Tribble-ations" or "In a Mirror, Darkly," but for a whole ongoing series it made far more sense to update and innovate. I would've liked it if they'd kept somewhat more of the pilot/TOS aesthetic than they did while still updating the tech, sort of like what they did with the Enterprise in DSC season 2, but updating was definitely better than slavishly copying.

Wonder if, beyond what you said above, if there's also something of a generational thing? Some of us were introduced to Star Trek at a time when a lot of the installments had "always" existed, so some changes were "always" part of the "original," from our perspective, not to mention that the '90s/early 2000s installments (where the bulk of the shows were made) were under more or less continuous management, so had a relatively more seamless fit then something like DSC, where the Powers That Be wanted to reimagine certain elements, for "good" or "bad"

To an extent, yes. I was around when TMP completely redesigned everything, and I saw how radically TNG changed things from what we'd come to assume from the tie-ins, so I was used to the idea of Trek being reimagined. People who grew up in the TNG era wouldn't have had that same perspective, so the radical reinventions in DSC are more unprecedented for them.

(Can't say I see a contradiction between believing that canon is dictated by the Powers That Be and that canon does not measure the value of the specific media in question, but that's me.)

The point is, canon is not dictated at all. It's merely a description of what something intrinsically is, a convenient shorthand for talking about the primary work as distinct from its tie-ins and imitations.

Too bad he wasn't able to let go of his hate; the chronology in and of itself is impressive as a fan work and arguably preserves stuff that deserves to be remembered, but will probably always be overshadowed by the man's sense of entitlement.

Well-said. If only he had used his powers for good...

 

[fireproof78]

I wouldn't have wanted that. Slavish recreations are okay for the occasional single story like "Trials and Tribble-ations" or "In a Mirror, Darkly," but for a whole ongoing series it made far more sense to update and innovate. I would've liked it if they'd kept somewhat more of the pilot/TOS aesthetic than they did while still updating the tech, sort of like what they did with the Enterprise in DSC season 2, but updating was definitely better than slavishly copying.

This. I always have concerns with slavish adherence to designs. It comes across as a bit of holding on to the past rather than looking to the future, which, in Star Trek's instance, seems rather odd to me.

 

[-Brett-]

Imagine if more mainstream sci-fi/fantasy properties had Star Trek's attitude toward continuity. If Tyrion Lannister was seven foot tall and humorless. If the Avengers were suddenly cool with slavery and genocide. If Luke Skywalker tried to murder his teenage nephew in his sleep- oh right. Fans, hardcore and casual alike would be pissed off, and rightly so.

Star Trek fandom isn't unusual for caring about continuity. It's unusual for not.

 

[Ovation]

Imagine if more mainstream sci-fi/fantasy properties had Star Trek's attitude toward continuity. If Tyrion Lannister was seven foot tall and humorless. If the Avengers were suddenly cool with slavery and genocide. If Luke Skywalker tried to murder his teenage nephew in his sleep- oh right. Fans, hardcore and casual alike would be pissed off, and rightly so.

Star Trek fandom isn't unusual for caring about continuity. It's unusual for not.

No. None of your exceedingly hyperbolic examples is remotely applicable as an analogue of continuity inconsistencies in Trek.

 

[-Brett-]

No. None of your exceedingly hyperbolic examples is remotely applicable as an analogue of continuity inconsistencies in Trek.

You haven't watched Discovery, I see. You're not missing much.

 

[Christopher]

Imagine if more mainstream sci-fi/fantasy properties had Star Trek's attitude toward continuity.

Many of them do, and then some. Look at how poorly the X-Men movies fit together in their storylines and character continuity. Look at how cavalierly The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow contradict their own rules of time travel or resurrect Eobard Thawne without explanation after he was supposedly erased permanently from existence (at least twice).

Star Trek's actual story continuity is still about as solid as it's ever been -- which is to say, far from absolutely perfect but better than a realistic, culturally literate observer would expect from a franchise stitched together from so many different series from so many different creators over such a large span of time. It's just that some of you are laboring under the mistaken impression that visual design is the same thing as narrative. Portraying the ships and costumes differently isn't a continuity violation any more than recasting Saavik was.

 

[Lord Garth]

You haven't watched Discovery, I see. You're not missing much.

He has. But what on Earth did you watch? I don't remember Burnham being "cool" with what Georgiou wanted to do.

If Tyrion Lannister was seven foot tall and humorless.

What does this have to do with Discovery?

If the Avengers were suddenly cool with slavery and genocide.

Starfleet isn't "cool" with any of these in DSC. The Admirality felt like their back was up against the wall with the Klingons and out of options when it came to survival, but that's not the same as being "cool" with genocide. And ultimately everyone did find another way.

If Luke Skywalker tried to murder his teenage nephew in his sleep-

When did anything equivalent to this happen in Discovery?

Star Trek fandom isn't unusual for caring about continuity. It's unusual for not.

If that were true, there wouldn't be so many threads debating canon and continuity -- nor would there be so many threads devolving into it -- because no one would be debating it at all.

 

[Ovation]

You haven't watched Discovery, I see. You're not missing much.

More wrongness.

I’ve watched all of it twice (some episodes four times) and it’s my second favourite Trek series behind TOS (and I’ve been watching Trek since 1973—seen every series and films multiple times, so my choice is an informed one).

But thank you for playing.