How can these episodes (from TNG, DS9, and ENT) be canon any longer?

I've been all over Trek continuity for decades . . . it's by no means 100%, but (a) that's hardly an excuse to discard the high level we have… er, had… , and (b) it blows most anything else in its class out of the water completely.

 

A big one would be the reversed positions of the Klingons and Romulans in the two shows. Romulans were the honor bound ones in TOS, the Klingons the sneaky villain. They were given each others spot in TNG. Likely due to not wanting Worf to be celebrating his sneaky relatives on a weekly basis.

 

Baum's Oz books don't even come close, and they were the work of a single author. And the Oz books of Baum's successors don't come close to Baum's level of continuity.

Neither do ADF's Humanx Commonwealth, Spellsinger, or Mad Amos franchises. Again, the work of a single author.

The only body of literature that does come close (also the work of a single author) would be the one that is (at least so far as I'm aware) the first non-scriptural usage of "canon," namely Doyle's Sherlock Holmes works.

Quite true, but there is the small matter that it was the Romulans who had cloaking devices (the epitome of sneakiness) in TOS, and I would hardly classify Kor's occupation force in EM as sneaky, nor Kang's crew in DD. (So far as I'm aware, the whole business of Klingons being sneaky SOBs who "fart in airlocks" originated with David Gerrold, when he put them in TT [after being told he would not be allowed to make it one corporation committing industrial sabotage against a competitor, since big business can't be the bad guy].)

 

I'd rather it be rebooted, to be completely honest. I've been watching this stuff since 1975, and I think a ground up rebuild is in order. It doesn't change the stuff I like about those incarnations, just an updated spin, which is long overdue.

I'd have much rather had Discovery be in a rebooted 23rd century. I'd have liked to seen a Klingon war, that was actually like a war instead of nipping around the edges trying to satisfy a 50+ year old continuity. I would have loved to see Klingons marching across the sands of Vulcan while new and reimagined characters fought to save the Federation.

Staying in the Prime continuity is just a dramatic deadend for me, YMMV.

 

Indeed.

 

And I don't mind a reboot, if it's honestly presented as such. That's the opinion of many, too.

 

At this juncture I think a total, complete reboot of Star Trek -- that's promoted as such -- is far more likely in the movies than it is on the TV side of things.

 

I don't either but one has to deal with Star Trek as presented, not as I wish it to be.

ETA: And less we somehow think that Star Trek continuity was perfect with no errors, there is an entire wiki, so this isn't just the Kurse of Kurtzman or some nonsense!

https://explaining-errors-in-star-trek.fandom.com/wiki/Explaining_errors_in_Star_Trek_Wiki

 

A reboot would be OK, but when asked why ST 09 wasn’t one, Orci noted they’d still feel obligated to revisit major beats simply because of the ground being covered, because that’s what reboots do, whereas the KT at least has the built-in premise of “Prime with a twist”, allowing them to take greater liberties such as destroying Vulcan.

One can free Star Trek from audience hooks and set it far into the future, reimagining technology and society without referencing most of what came before. That can be accompanied by a reboot, but even sweeping the past under the rug would be enough for all practical purposes.

Just remember what Star Trek is ideally about: taking viewers out of their comfort zones, archiving earlier Trek like it was merely an early draft, rather than peaks to be revisited and possibly scaled a little higher or from different sides.

 

Spoiler: season 2 spoilers

Plus if they'd made it a reboot there'd be no need for that silly ending to season 2 in which the first two seasons are erased from the official record and never spoken of again under penalty of treason because Canon.

 

Star Trek is an action/adventure platform with social commentary. It is ideally entertainment that allows for thought.

 

Precisely. It’s not “the one with Dr. Spock”.

 

I'm sure Spock has a doctorate. Perhaps two.

 

I don't think of Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories as being exceptionally self consistent. Doyle has the reputation of being a careless writer unconcerned with accuracy or with consistency. When I was a teenager I read all of the Sherlock Holmes stories over the time of a few days, and immediately decided that inconsistencies required that The Valley of Fear should happen in an alternate universe to "The Final Problem" and "The Empty House". Later research indicates that Sherlock Holmes may have time traveled between two stories. And so on.

E.E. Smith was very concerned with consistency. Here is a link to a question about a possible inconsistency in the Lensman series. https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/155795/eddorian-lifespans-and-gharlanes-ancestors And as far as I can tell that wasn't a contradiciton after all.

J.R.R. Tolkien was a very careful writer who tried to avoid all contradictions and errors. There is a link to various mistakes and inconsistencies that have been noticed in the works of Tolkien. http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Mistakes_and_inconsistencies_in_Tolkien's_works

People who read The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and Silmarillion several times or study them can find mistakes and inconsistencies. But it isn't easy.

 

He also had the benefit of several friends and his son who would note inconsistencies (i.e. Bilbo's eyes were blue but no they are green later on). Tolkien also had the tendency to destroy entire manuscripts if it wasn't working right for him.

 

The topic is drifting again a bit, this time from deliberate reimagining to eye-color inconsistencies or Doyle’s inattention to dates and backstory (which has usually been treated as Watson’s obfuscation to protect the people involved, then resolved by looking for patterns and especially clues from real London at the time).

DSC is well-researched and consistent in areas it wants to be. It’s not like those in charge just wouldn’t know how to reproduce TOS style if that were the goal, or at least to carefully evolve the depictions on DS9, ENT and in TOS(-R).

 

It's not the goal and that's OK. I personally expect it.

People do not agree on where it falls in continuity and that's OK.

Of course, we will have disagreement. It is the nature of the beast

 

Yes, just trying to steer it on-topic and see if it runs out of steam by page 22.

 

Probably because it is a agree to disagree place.

 

I disagree with that.