I've been thinking about this, and here's my takeaway. If "storytelling beats canon", then, it has to be asked:
- Is the new story being told actually better than the old story that would be contradicted by it?
- Is it impossible to tell this new story without said contradiction?
If the answers to both of those questions are "No", then what he says
sounds good, but he's really just being lazy. I'd feel differently if I was giving SNW episodes all 9s and 10s out of 10. But that's not the case.
So, as far as I'm concerned, Akiva Goldsman's stance cuts both ways. If he thinks he can tell a better story by contradicting others, then I hope he realizes that one day some other Showrunner could decide to do the same with
his stories and contradict
those.
I would suspect he'd be fine with that. In my experience, most professional writers are not nearly so precious about continuity and canon as fandom, and most of them extend the professional courtesy of understanding that future writers will
also be under immense pressure both to produce a show on time and on budget, and to reflect at least something of their own creative vision. Goldsman seems like the kind of guy who would accept that turnabout is fair play -- if he gets to retcon past writers, future writers will get to retcon him if they want.
this is why I don’t understand why they don’t embrace the “alternate universe” idea.
Probably a couple reasons:
1) There is already one alternate ST timeline in the Kelvin Timeline. Adding yet
another alternate timeline just needlessly complicates things for new fans.
2) No matter what choice they make, someone will yell at them for it. If they set it in an alternate timeline, someone will be upset that they abandoned the Prime Timeline. (And potential new fans risk being so confused by the different timelines as to be alienated and turn it off.) If they set it in the Prime Timeline and get super-strict about continuity, they'll get a lot of people upset that they're re-creating the production values of the 1960s -- and possibly the social values of the 1960s, if they were to interpret strict continuity as depicting women in the same sexualized, marginalized way TOS did. They'd also have people upset that they're leaving storytelling possibilities on the table. If they do what they've done, which is set it in the Prime Timeline but not be super-strict about visual continuity, continuity of character personality, or strict story continuity, people will be (are) upset. It's a no-win scenario.
So they go with what they want to do: Tell stories about the
Enterprise, the same
Enterprise we saw in TOS, in their own way.
The story of the Gorn being thoughtful, having their own point-of-view, and taking actions that can be understandable. As Kirk came to realize at the end of "Arena" and thus the reason why the Metrons chose to spare him.
That old story. The one where the Metrons call Humanity still half-savage, but maybe that'll change in 1,000 years. A common Roddenberry trope, but it's there.
I haven't watched the episode in over a year. I've seen every episode of SNW exactly once.
But, then why does Akiva say this, "But when I was writing the pilot, I was looking for something that was just monstrous, that was Cthulhu-like. Something that was unthinking. Our shows are empathy generators and I wanted to have an element which was in relief of that. I wanted something that you couldn’t identify with, something that was utterly alien, something that was all appetite and instinct in ways that we couldn’t quite understand." His exact words.
I'm not convinced that there's a contradiction there. Sure, in the context of
one episode the Gorn we saw weren't thoughtful and were just pure predation. But we still don't know much of anything about the Gorn lifecycle or Gorn culture. For all we know, the apparent Gorn we saw in "All Those Who Wander" might have been genetically engineered bio-weapons that got out of control from their Gorn keepers. Or for all we know, Gorn start out as murderous killing machines and then develop intelligence and a conscience later in their lifecycles.
