When did canon become such a hot-button issue?

[Damian]

And while I tolerate the word "headcanon," under no circumstance will I use "fanon"

I don't care for either word, though I'll admit I've used the term "headcanon" from time to time when discussing how I consider the relaunches part of the continuity I follow (since it's easier than saying "the continuity I follow").

Fanon--that sounds a bit, er, pretentious--like something I personally consider continuity is something all fans consider part of the continuity. Not that fans who use that term intend on that being case.

It's fun in some ways to debate continuity. I'm not as enamored with debating canon though. I'm not even sure how to argue canon. It is what it is. It's sort of like debating water is wet. Continuity, now that's another matter, as is consistency. I've learned over the years what level of inconsistencies fans tolerate varies greatly from individual to individual.

And that's where I do think Christopher makes a good point. There are lots of inconsistencies with Star Trek over the years, but I know myself I gloss them over as the years pass.

 

[fireproof78]

And that's where I do think Christopher makes a good point. There are lots of inconsistencies with Star Trek over the years, but I know myself I gloss them over as the years pass.

Yup. It's important to recognize that continuity errors are neither new nor offensive to Trek lore.

Or, as the song goes, you got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them...

 

[Christopher]

Even a single author working alone can't avoid the occasional continuity error in an ongoing series. Hundreds of people working on hundreds of installments over decades? Of course there will be all sorts of inconsistencies, even if everyone tries their best to keep it consistent. So there has to be room in the audience's minds to forgive a certain degree of imperfection -- to play along with the conceit that it fits together even when it doesn't.

 

[yotsuya]

You missed the joke. I cranked it up to 11 because I was playing it up for laughs. That's why I went so far over the top.

It was an exaggerated version of what I really think.

Cool. I wish humor came across better in text form.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

I'd accept that if it weren't for at least one underlying problem in your argument.

It isn't the discussion which fades, it's the hyperbole.

Here we are on a site discussing a TV series from over half a century ago, often in excruciating detail, but the venom, the anger is all reserved for the latest iteration. No one seethes over the TMP changes now, but that doesn't mean TOS and TMP aren't still discussed, rather they are discussed with the benefit of hindsight and the perspective and balance that brings. They are familiar, known, entities and don't challenge us the way they once did.

But I don’t see any venom or anger from the active participants in this thread, so I’m not sure how that’s relevant. In other places, I still believe it has much to do with something new being a more interesting topic for reactions of all sorts, but yes, if we were to see an entire franchise based in DSC, the original revisions and even future revisions would become the new normal, which doesn’t answer the question of why weave between the good-old, reimagined? Why decide that the new normal for Star Trek ought to be the 23rd century, “standing on the shoulders of giants”, as opposed to immediately leaving all that in the past like TNG did?

DSC, on the other hand, is brand spanking new. It takes us out of our comfort zone by virtue of being something quite different to what came before, much as DS9 was quite different to TNG. Some of the criticism aimed at it is doubtless valid and thoughtful, but doesn't it seem just a little strange that we yet again heard so much about the fact they changed the Klingons, that the ship is too big/too advanced, that the crew behave differently to the last lot, so on and so forth.

Because the new production once again chose to be creative in those departments even though Star Trek doesn’t have a precedent of continuous reimagining like some comics, more like stitching together of somewhat incompatible visions. The Bermanverse made it clear that the ultimate tendency is towards seamless continuity, not a multiverse, so the natural preference tends to be no more stitches, especially when the underlying motivation is renovating a safety net before bouncing off it for a time.

In other words we are voicing much the same complaints time and again, seemingly willing to overlook the relevance of those complaints to each and every series which has come before.

All of this has happened before and it will likely all happen again.

Probably, if future productions continue to view Star Trek as familiar elements reimagined and stitched together, rather than the same exact elements left behind in a different time and a different corner of the galaxy, because now they’re risking everything on their own.

 

[Spot261]

But I don’t see any venom or anger from the active participants in this thread, so I’m not sure how that’s relevant. In other places, I still believe it has much to do with something new being a more interesting topic for reactions of all sorts, but yes, if we were to see an entire franchise based in DSC, the original revisions and even future revisions would become the new normal, which doesn’t answer the question of why weave between the good-old, reimagined? Why decide that the new normal for Star Trek ought to be the 23rd century, “standing on the shoulders of giants”, as opposed to immediately leaving all that in the past like TNG did?

We aren't discussing this thread, this thread is where we are doing the discussing.

Big difference.

If you haven't seen the hyperbole and the anger out there then I'd like to introduce you to a website called Youtube and they aren't typically discussing it because it's "interesting". They're having tantrums much like we saw over TMP and TNG and ENT and 09....

Because the new production once again chose to be reimaginative in those departments even though Star Trek doesn’t have a clear precedent of reimagining, more like stitching together of somewhat incompatible visions. The Bermanverse made it clear that the ultimate tendency is towards seamless continuity, not a multiverse, so the natural preference tends to be no more stitches, especially when the underlying motivation is renovating a safety net before bouncing off it for a time.

Star Trek has a long history of reimagining, hence the discussion we are having. The Berman era tied things together visually for a while, but the whole shebang is full of more stitches than a rag doll.

Probably, if future productions continue to view Star Trek as familiar elements reimagined and stitched together, rather than the same exact elements left behind in a different time and a different corner of the galaxy, because now they’re risking everything on their own.

That risk has been paying off since the 1970s.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

That risk has been paying off since the 1970s.

I mean they should risk creating something utterly original so they don’t feel restricted by a standardized mapping such as here and now = 2019/20 = Bermanverse year of 2396, rather than add even more stitches. Keep going forward, continue Roddenberry’s vision of a series of crews in different times rather than Kirk, Spock, McCoy and all the fan service that goes with them. Characters and their actors will come and go, but Star Trek will remain as an idea, a framework for different shows to be their own thing in parallel rather than become derivative by calling back to a famous original.

 

[Spot261]

I mean they should risk creating something utterly original so they don’t feel restricted by a standardized mapping such as here and now = 2019/20 = Bermanverse year of 2396, rather than add even more stitches. Keep going forward, continue Roddenberry’s vision of a series of crews in different times rather than Kirk, Spock, McCoy and all the fan service that goes with them. Characters and their actors will come and go, but Star Trek will remain as an idea, a framework for different shows to be their own thing in parallel rather than become derivative by calling back to a famous original.

You think possibly that's where they're going with the next season?

 

[Boris Skrbic]

You think possibly that's where they're going with the next season?

Spoiler

No, because that’s still time travel on top of reimagining

, and we don’t know what other series will do. Basically, the easy ways to draw in viewers should be left behind, and IDIC applied literally to create an anthology of productions set in the same exact continuity, visual or otherwise. If you want to write more for Kirk, you can, but let’s make it inconvenient so all the artifacts of the 1960s come with it, and then you’ll probably make it an episode or a limited series.

 

[Spot261]

Spoiler

No, because that’s still time travel on top of reimagining

, and we don’t know what other series will do. Basically, the easy ways to draw in viewers should be left behind, and IDIC applied literally to create an anthology of productions set in the same exact continuity, visual or otherwise. If you want to write more for Kirk, you can, but let’s make it inconvenient so all the artifacts of the 1960s come with it, and then you’ll probably make it an episode or a limited series.

I think you need to bear in mind here that the Berman era ended for a very real reason, it was dying.

VOY drew in ever fewer viewers whilst ENT didn't even make it into season 4. NEM and INS were flops.

'09 showed us there was still an audience out there and it became clear that if the brand was to sell it did so by using its' most marketable and recognisable assets and they weren't LCARS and blue nacelles.

There's no way we can even remotely expect the franchise to all come together coherently at this point and what attempts are made just tie writers up in knots, just look at the klingon forehead debacle.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

The Berman era ended because Berman or his superiors weren’t willing to take massive risks with storytelling, although they had the right idea in creating DS9 and VGR. That’s what I’m proposing: stop remodeling the scenery or bringing in nostalgia acts, say the year is 2396 (= “Bermanverse now”), hire competent showrunners and do an anthology of productions which don’t rely on callbacks.

 

[yotsuya]

As Voyager proved, the Star Trek universe is huge and the series does not need to take place on a ship named Enterprise. DS9 proved it doesn't even need to be on a ship (though as ship to use is helpful). You can build a series on any size ship in any corner of the universe at any point in time. If you set it in the past, you have constraints in terms of technology and uniforms (though there is some freedom... had Discovery been set 20 years earlier, before the Enterprise was launched, a lot of the issues vanish.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

My point is that audiovisual continuity would only be punctuation and not the end goal here. It would be a framework, a useful tool that discourages retreading and gap filling, because as pointed out Star Trek needs to evolve in order to remain futuristic, which in that framework means moving forward in time with consistent year-to-season mapping (hence the late 24th century setting, though later centuries are also an option if one is willing to extrapolate further, then stay there for a while).

 

[yotsuya]

Or you just do a reboot and then you don't have to match anything and are free to play as you like. Battlestar Galactic did that quite well.

 

[fireproof78]

Or you just do a reboot and then you don't have to match anything and are free to play as you like. Battlestar Galactic did that quite well.

I think a straight reboot would be highly beneficial for a variety of reasons. The main one being keeping up with technological advancements, rather than trying to retrofit current tech understanding in to Trek tech.

 

[Lord Garth]

They had four chances to do a straight-up reboot: in 1979, 1987, 2009, and 2017. Each time, they didn't. They chose something else or went with a half-measure. 1979 and 2017 were only "visual reboots". 2009 was a "soft reboot" where the timeline split off at Kirk's birth. And in 1987, they just set it a century later. They've never done a full, total BSG reboot. At this point, I don't think they will. It seems like Star Trek is going to follow the Doctor Who model and keep building. Occasionally they'll adjust things in order to keep building, but they won't start over from scratch. At least not in TV form.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

Most of the time you’re expected to match all the major and some of the minor beats at least, because the purpose of a reboot is usually to streamline continuity by going back to basics. There is an interesting comment from Orci in which he explains how the alternate reality (as opposed to a reboot) allowed them to explore the unusual, because the expectation is that anything can happen following Nero’s interference. It’s still the good-old with a twist, though, which is why I’d prefer staying in a forward-moving future timeframe if the goal is to keep Star Trek up to date, and have it explore ever-changing characters and settings.

 

[Christopher]

I think a straight reboot would be highly beneficial for a variety of reasons. The main one being keeping up with technological advancements, rather than trying to retrofit current tech understanding in to Trek tech.

Yes, not just tech but social changes (we wouldn't have to try to ignore the sexism in TOS anymore) and updated futurism (like transhumanism and AI being more commonplace than Trek showed). As well as history -- there are already a ton of events in Trek's past that are in our past now, like the Eugenics Wars, sleeper ships, the Millennium Gate, etc., and we're closing in on the Bell Riots.

They had four chances to do a straight-up reboot: in 1979, 1987, 2009, and 2017. Each time, they didn't. They chose something else or went with a half-measure.

As I mentioned, it seems like Roddenberry originally intended TNG to be a soft reboot, but later producers chose to tie it more closely into TOS continuity. Sometimes that happens -- something that was meant to be separate ends up getting folded in. It's happened repeatedly in the Japanese Kamen Rider franchise. The first revival in the late '70s was meant as a reboot, but they decided halfway through the season to bring back the previous Kamen Riders from the original run and turn the reboot into a direct sequel. The second revival in the late '80s went nearly two whole seasons as a standalone, but then brought in all the past Riders for its climactic arc. And the third revival starting in 2000 went nine whole years before it started acknowledging the 20th-century shows as part of its past.

And sometimes something seems like a continuation at first, but then decides not to be. The short-lived Spider-Man Unlimited animated series initially presented itself as a sequel to the more famous '90s animated series on the same network, even briefly quoting its theme music in the first episode, but it soon went off in its own incompatible direction and was clearly a separate continuity. (Or maybe that was always the plan and it was just faking being a continuation at first.)

Lots of fans want there to be a simple, black-and-white binary -- everything is either a pure continuation or a pure reboot. But many revivals, possibly most, have been somewhere in between the two, or have changed from one to the other.

At this point, I don't think they will. It seems like Star Trek is going to follow the Doctor Who model and keep building.

Hmm, maybe, but that just means fans will have to learn to become more flexible about continuity, because the inconsistencies are just going to get greater. Doctor Who can get away with constantly rewriting its past because it never really tried to be consistent to begin with, and because it can use timeline changes as a handwave.

 

[Greg Cox]

BATES MOTEL pulled a fast one on viewers. After spending several seasons presenting itself as a prequel to PSYCHO (albeit set in modern times, as opposed to the 1960s), it veered off in the final season to present a whole new ending for Norman Bates. The turning point being when Marion Crane decided NOT to take a shower after all.

I suspect this wasn't the original plan, but more that producers eventually decided, as the series finally caught up with the beginning of the movie, that it would be kinda pointless to spend the last several episodes just remaking the Hitchcock film.

 

[Spot261]

The Berman era ended because Berman or his superiors weren’t willing to take massive risks with storytelling, although they had the right idea in creating DS9 and VGR. That’s what I’m proposing: stop remodeling the scenery or bringing in nostalgia acts, say the year is 2396 (= “Bermanverse now”), hire competent showrunners and do an anthology of productions which don’t rely on callbacks.

"Bermanverse" as you call it was dying on its' feet because it grew stale, the writers ran out of steam and became unimaginative, people at all levels became disillusioned and the market for trek was saturated.

Picard looks very much like a return to that setting but we wouldn't be seeing anyone take that chance had the Abrams movies and DSC paved the way and shown the appetite was there.