It always does.
Are people really this fixed on things like the Bell Riots?
- Thread starter Gingerbread Demon
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That's fair, I suppose. It may surprise you to learn that I haven't seen any of the things you've listed, so perhaps I'm just lacking context for that kind of thing.
If I remember correctly, trying to stall telomere division just causes cancer rates to go up exponentially. But there may have been a problem with the mice(?) used in the study, which in theory puts many clinical studies from the 1990's that used the same mouse supplier into question. Off memory from a podcast with an evolutionary biologist from 2017, and its far from my field...
Exactly. Star Trek isn't a comic book or James Bond. At least until (ahem) recently, Star Trek took the continuity very seriously to the point that you could have encyclopedias and chronologies written. You can't pull off continuity call backs or foreshadowing if the past is an unreliable narrator.
All the SNW example did was further establish SNW as an alternate continuity, not only changing the dates of the Eugenics Wars, but greatly expanding the level of death and destruction discussed in FC.
The Star Trek: New Frontier novel series tried to use comic book time to catch up to the live action series in production, and the fans objected enough that they went back and did a time travel gone wrong comic to fix it.
Blade Runner and Alien (sans Alien vs Predator, which the subsequent films haven't treated as canon) have both handled this incredibly well. Unintentional or explicit retro-futurism have been maintained in following productions.
At that point if Star Trek as still around at all, it will be for the franchise's retro-futurism in the first place.
No, the fans took it very seriously and then the fans turned pro wrote everything out in "chronologies" and "encyclopedias". The information contained with in was free to be ignored by any all writers.
Comics reference books are not unheard of. Comic book companies have been issuing "who's who's" and "handbooks" to their universes since the eighties. Then internet had made such things obsolete for Comics and Trek.
I'm will to bet the current crop of writers and producers look more at MA than the Berman era folks looked at the Chronology and the Encyclopedia.
( Yeah I know Okuda and Sternbach were on the lot). I devoured both when they came out. But even the Okudas abd Sternbach acknowledge they were there as guidelines not immutable facts. In fiction, the past is always an unreliable narrator.
Yeah, that's not how it works.
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The writers do not care as much as the fans do about obsessing over the details. That's my experience. Yes, you have beautifully written chronologies which created a beautiful facade, a wonderful illusion of continuity that simply didn't exist to the degree that fans expect.No, the fans took it very seriously and then the fans turned pro wrote everything out in "chronologies" and "encyclopedias". The information contained with in was free to be ignored by any all writers.
Comics reference books are not unheard of. Comic book companies have been issuing "who's who's" and "handbooks" to their universes since the eighties. Then internet had made such things obsolete for Comics and Trek.
I'm will to bet the current crop of writers and producers look more at MA than the Berman era folks looked at the Chronology and the Encyclopedia.
In fiction, the past is always an unreliable narrator.
It's wonderful to look at the world and imagine it as being coherent, but Star Trek, as a fiction, is at the whim of the memory and desire of the writer. We can disagree over their efforts, but, to quote a friend of mine, they can do whatever they want and don't owe the fans a damn thing.
Indeed, no it does not. Fans can rework it to fit in with however they want to make the story work. Be it updating to say that the Eugenics Wars didn't happen, or that Star Trek is a separate continuity from our reality.
I'm a bit more simple now as I get older: Star Trek has always taken our world as part of its history, which means things move and update to reflect that change. It's not a separate reality or a historical period to recreate but a projection in to the future based on our currrent knowledge and events.
"But it didn't happen in the real world, update Star Trek, fix it!"
I don't understand this thinking. I was totally fine with the Eugenics War happening in the 90's while I was a teenager in the 90's. I understood it was fiction.
When they travel in time they go to our 80s, our 90s, our 60s, our 2020s. So clearly that is a common reference point for Star Trek and projecting in to our future. I don't subscribe to it's a different timeline thinking. The reference points are our shared history. Updating it makes more sense to me.
I'm not saying it's a different timeline. I'm saying it's fiction. It's not our future, it's Kirk's future.
And I'm saying it draws references from our future and our history so it is part of our timeline in that sense. Of course its fiction, but the projection in to the future will be based on our understanding and current events. That's usually how fiction works. It doesn't invent things whole cloth.
That was in Goldfinger, actually. Dr. No was released in 1962, when the Beatles were barely known in the U.K. and totally unknown in the U.S.
I understand where you're coming from. What's your stance on WW3 being the 2050's and First Contact being 2063? Once we catch up to that in the real world, I hope they don't go rewriting the "history" of Star Trek. Just leave it as it is.
I watched both Back to the Future, Part II and Blade Runner in the theaters this year, thanks to Special Screenings. I should've first seen BTTF II in the theater when I was 10 instead of on VHS, but stupidly didn't, and I finally corrected that mistake. But anyway...
The fact that we've shot past the futures in those movies doesn't make me like them any less. Blade Runner is in fact my favorite movie. Period.
I'm also looking forward to the series Blade Runner 2099 in 2025. Just like with Blade Runner 2049, they're not changing when things happened to match what happened in the real world. I'll be looking forward to it all the same. Doesn't affect my enjoyment, doesn't confuse me.
The idea that Star Trek is "our future" is preposterous. I love Star Trek (in general, not all of it), but I can't fool myself into thinking that. I could when I was 11, but not now. The Expanse is probably what it would be more like. If anything.
The fact that we've shot past the futures in those movies doesn't make me like them any less. Blade Runner is in fact my favorite movie. Period.
I'm also looking forward to the series Blade Runner 2099 in 2025. Just like with Blade Runner 2049, they're not changing when things happened to match what happened in the real world. I'll be looking forward to it all the same. Doesn't affect my enjoyment, doesn't confuse me.
The idea that Star Trek is "our future" is preposterous. I love Star Trek (in general, not all of it), but I can't fool myself into thinking that. I could when I was 11, but not now. The Expanse is probably what it would be more like. If anything.
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Thank you for taking the time to type this out.
While we're at it, even as ugly as politics are right now, I don't think we'll have a Second Civil War in the United States like SNW said. That line's going to age poorly.
I still lean towards "no" for World War III, but I've moved the needle in my mind from "never going to happen" to "a non-zero chance, but probably still not going to happen."
EDITED TO ADD: One thing "Past Tense" got right was that the Fifth Party System (going by historian Frank DiStefano's definition) has become unsustainable during this general time period.
How the Bell Riots become the tipping point for the US to address the economic issues it had been dealing with for 100 years, I'm not entirely sure, but it'll be fun to try to figure that out.
I still lean towards "no" for World War III, but I've moved the needle in my mind from "never going to happen" to "a non-zero chance, but probably still not going to happen."
EDITED TO ADD: One thing "Past Tense" got right was that the Fifth Party System (going by historian Frank DiStefano's definition) has become unsustainable during this general time period.
How the Bell Riots become the tipping point for the US to address the economic issues it had been dealing with for 100 years, I'm not entirely sure, but it'll be fun to try to figure that out.
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Even The Expanse is unrealistically cishumanist: halfway through the 24th century, humanity still has no significant genetic engineering, nanotechnology, cyborgization, neurointerface, simulated reality, teleoperation, artificial superintelligence, healthspan and lifespan extension, or biostasis. The only exceptions are the protomolecule and stargates built by the ancient civilization which apparently descended to the final level of the Barrow scale.
With its central premise of mind uploading in widespread use for centuries by the time the story begins in the late 24th century (thanks to the reverse engineering of alien technology), Altered Carbon is one of extremely few settings to break the "no transhumanism allowed" trope, but even so, it relies heavily on "holding back the phlebotinum" to remain relatable and allow for easy dramatic tension.
The actual future will lack warp drives, subspace communication, physical teleportation, and a universe teeming with habitable worlds but will be vastly more advanced and difficult to comprehend in all other respects.
Oh, trust me, comics fans can be just as obsessed with "canon" and "continuity" as Trek fans. And there are no shortage of encyclopedias, wikis, handbooks, maps, blueprints, technical manuals, etc. (I have shelves of them for research purposes.)
Funny story: back when I was writing a string of DC Comics novels, they gave the copyeditor a copy of the most recent edition of the official DC Encyclopedia. Problem was, that volume was already a few years out of date so the copyeditor kept querying "errors" that were nothing of the sort, leading to some amusing exchanges:
CE: "You have Hawkman here. According to the DCE, he's dead."
Me: "He got better."
Sounds like something one might find on TVTropes.CE: "You have Hawkman here. According to the DCE, he's dead."
Me: "He got better."
That they will likely rewrite Trek history because Trek is fiction and totally mutable. It is not a history, it is not a historical period, and it is not immutable.
Even our own history is somewhat mutable in that we are constantly learning, discovering and learning. Acting like Trek should remain as this fixed point is odd to me. It's always been looking to our future so I'd rather it update with us.
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