this. I couldn’t vote for any of the options. I’d say a fan who also is a competent writer, yes. Most fans are not. I’d also say headwriters and show runners have to be competent professionals first and bonus points if they are fans who know the show history and will work with it. It’s more important to me that’s show feels believably Trek, than has a fan or non fan as writer.
Poll Should the fans be running the show?
- Thread starter Timofnine
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this. I couldn’t vote for any of the options. I’d say a fan who also is a competent writer, yes. Most fans are not. I’d also say headwriters and show runners have to be competent professionals first and bonus points if they are fans who know the show history and will work with it. It’s more important to me that’s show feels believably Trek, than has a fan or non fan as writer.
I can’t edit yet or I’d have put this in my post above. The one bit I’d disagree in firebird’s post with is Picard s3. Yes, Lots of fan service but *not only that.* It was a course correction to the series that was needed. The first 2 seasons didn’t feel at all like TNG to me, or even something in the same universe as TNG. s3 introduced strong younger characters while still feeling like TNG. Perhaps because the story and newer characters were strong enough so it didn’t feel only like fan service. Good characters, good story, felt like trek…if you have that you can get away with some fan service
Welcome to the board. Yeah, the edit function will pop up after so many posts.
While I do not care for Season 3 I recognize it appealed to many fans. However, my biggest question, and one that I have long found fascinating, is what feels like Trek?
And to answer my own question, the feel of Trek is variety. TNG didn't feel like TOS by a long shot. TMP was even worse from TOS as it portrayed Kirk in a very poor light as a leader. TMP to TWOK is another feel change. DS9 famously didn't "feel like Trek" as it was on a station.
This isn't meant as a gotcha moment but more a really painful observation that what feels like Trek is hard to nail down.
I am a strong no on the poll question, but I wouldn't object if the powers that be canonized the novels, precisely because they contradict the shows/movies and each other. I think it'd be healthier for the fandom if folks came to accept that there never was and never will be a coherent, airtight narrative thread throughout this franchise. I understand that this is a somewhat radical and unpopular opinion.
I never understood the obsession with air tight continuity. Of late that's become more and more pronounced in Star Trek fan discussions as well as the need to identify "canon status." And this is part of why I would struggle with fans in charge. They would take novels, manuals, articles, and interviews as "word of God" matters and make it in to the particular story so it can be made "canon" because that trumps all.
Which confuses the heck out of me. Like, was I to watch the TOS episode and expect continuity to line up perfectly well and recall that it didn't in Season 3 vs. Season 1? Or was it meant as an entertaining world, contradictions and all. I recall finding sensible chuckles from DITL's reviews and they would have a "Yet Another Trek Inconsistency" section. Now, instead of chuckling apparently a YATI means a different timeline. Who knew?
Which confuses the heck out of me. Like, was I to watch the TOS episode and expect continuity to line up perfectly well and recall that it didn't in Season 3 vs. Season 1? Or was it meant as an entertaining world, contradictions and all. I recall finding sensible chuckles from DITL's reviews and they would have a "Yet Another Trek Inconsistency" section. Now, instead of chuckling apparently a YATI means a different timeline. Who knew?
I was disappointed the other day to discover that Ex Astris Scientia, a website that up until then I had highly respected, considers DIS and SNW to be in a separate timeline. Yet apparently ENT isn't. To be fair, I suppose it's natural that a site so focused on minutiae would also be so rigid about continuity.
Maybe there's a link between people who think DIS and SNW aren't canon and people who take fiction too seriously.
Well, it might surprise you that most singers, unless they are a singer-songwriter, don't compose their own music anyway. Most of it is bought or sold-to, or written specifically for them by other musicians.
What's funny to me is what did people do prior to the whole "it must be an alternate timeline" argument? Like, suddenly the ability to cognitive manage discontinuities has diminished?
I think you misunderstand. It's not that Bernd considers DSC and SNW to not be canon. Canon is just what's on screen as far as the IP holders are concerned. It's that Bernd doesn't consider them to be in continuity with the Roddenberry/Berman era of Trek. Canon and continuity are two different things.
The Christian Bale Batman films are not in continuity with the Adam West Batman TV show. Both are legitimate, 'canon' versions of the same thing. But they are not claiming to take place in the same universe as the other.
Were there people back in 1987 claiming TOS and TNG were in separate timelines?
Yeah. Gene Roddenberry.
I know, I was just using canon as a shorthand.
Besides, the fact that they somehow consider ENT to be any more in continuity with prior series than DIS/SNW immediately calls into question their willingness to place DIS/SNW in an alternate timeline.
Missed it by that much!
I would be more curious to know if their position on ENT changed. Certainly it was widely not regarded as matching up in continuity with TOS, much less future installments, especially from a technological side. Then Abrams' films came out and suddenly Enterprise was becoming more of a protected darling and always in line with Trek.
It was curious.
Continuity is far above their paygrade.
I can't speak for Bernd. I myself do not like ENT, but my dislike of the show doesn't color my perception that it's supposed to take place in the prime universe 100 years before TOS. It's set far enough in the past that it doesn't visually conflict with what came before. Not to mention that when we did see things that were supposed to be from the TOS era (the Defiant, for instance), the visual continuity was the same. There were some anomalies, but they mostly had to do with budgetary concerns.
I love Bernd and the amazing site he has. It is a site that should always be around. He is of course one person and I won't go into a rant on a person. However the one thing that makes me roll is the constant DISC Klingons and then they changed them because they were terrible ideas. When SNW came out they went with TNG style and now he's yelling about them using TNG style when it should be blah blah blah. So to summarize my vote was a heck no to fans writing it. If you are a fan, great! I love all the Treks for different reasons, they are all Trek
