Author Habits That Annoy You

[Avro Arrow]

*Here's a crazy/mildly-disturbing idea: What if the Eugenics Wars/World War III had their origin in the US's attempt to make Canada the 51st state? That might help explain "Canadian Khan."

Oof. And here I thought TrekLit was my one refuge from this topic.

If we're trying to tie Trek history into our history, though... this only started coming up in 2025. I believe the SNW episode was set in 2024, which was already prior to that--but even still, Khan would have been born in the 2010s, well before it was even a thing, so I'm not sure how that would help explain Khan.

Obligatory #Never51

 

[DonIago]

No, because as I said, Roddenberry considered it a soft reboot, something that kept parts of TOS continuity while changing others. His view was always that Trek was a dramatization of Starfleet logs, so if he wanted to change something, he could just say (as he said about the Klingons in TMP) that the original depiction was inaccurate due to error or artistic license, and the new version was closer to how it had really been all along.

There are plenty of cases in fiction where a sequel is only consistent with the preceding work in broad strokes while freely changing details. This is quite common in TV series continuations of movies, like Stargate SG-1, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Men in Black: The Series, and the like. They acknowledge that the events of the movie happened approximately the same way in the show's universe, but with whatever changes are necessary to suit the needs of the show (e.g. Agent K never retired in the Men in Black animated continuity).

And keeping the same actor in a role doesn't prove it's the same continuity. See Judi Dench as M in the James Bond movies, or Tyler Hoechlin and Bitsie Tulloch in Superman and Lois.

It's an interesting idea, and I kind of wonder what the franchise would look like now if that idea had prevailed, but I feel as though TNG would have had to take steps to make it explicitly clear that it was in a separate timeline then. Which is to say that I'm not sure fans would have had a lot of patience for, "Is this in a separate timeline or isn't it?"

I'll refrain from commenting on more recent developments in the franchise that have brought up exactly those kinds of concerns for some.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Obligatory #Never51

Unless it's Puerto Rico. The next time the Puerto Ricans decide they want it.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I enjoyed L. Neil Smith's work. More form the Alt History aspect than anything Libertarian. Big Niven fan too.

 

[Christopher]

It's an interesting idea, and I kind of wonder what the franchise would look like now if that idea had prevailed, but I feel as though TNG would have had to take steps to make it explicitly clear that it was in a separate timeline then. Which is to say that I'm not sure fans would have had a lot of patience for, "Is this in a separate timeline or isn't it?"

Except, as I said, that's historically been the rule more than the exception. Countless works of fiction have played fast and loose with their continuity, even within a single series -- like M*A*S*H stretching the 3-year Korean War out to 11 seasons and pushing the in-show date references back from early 1953 to early 1951 midway through the series while still maintaining the current cast and character-development history. TNG's own sister show in syndication, War of the Worlds: The Series, revamped its entire depiction of the world in its second season when new producers took over, changing it from an ordinary-seeming world where the alien invasion from the 1953 film had been forgotten to a dystopian wasteland still feeling the impact of the invasion 36 years later, and massively changing the aliens from how they'd been portrayed in season 1. And that's on top of the changes the first season made to the movie's portrayal of the aliens despite being a direct sequel.

Audiences back then didn't have modern fandom's absurdly literal fixation on "timelines," this bizarre pretense that different artistic depictions of an imaginary work can only be comprehended as alternate realities in a multiverse. We understood that it was all made up and that contradictory interpretations were just different ways of telling a story.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

In different works, it's easier to accept that things aren't always as originally shown. I can read (and write) fanfics that portray the same characters, circumstances, and world completely differently and enjoy it, because it's well written and fun. I can watch/read something that's based on something else, and like both.

I can even appreciate alternate versions of characters in the same world when the rules of the world are set up to allow it. I think it's a little more difficult when a world that isn't supposed to allow it (not wacky, not sci-fi, not a dream) or a world that doesn't say "this is one of those times when something changes and you should ignore it" does these things.

I suppose you could say it's actually more realistic for details to change and everyone pretends it was always that way, if you think glitches in the matrix is a thing, and in this case, the audience is the only one who might remember the way things used to be.

 

[Christopher]

In different works, it's easier to accept that things aren't always as originally shown. I can read (and write) fanfics that portray the same characters, circumstances, and world completely differently and enjoy it, because it's well written and fun. I can watch/read something that's based on something else, and like both.

I can even appreciate alternate versions of characters in the same world when the rules of the world are set up to allow it. I think it's a little more difficult when a world that isn't supposed to allow it (not wacky, not sci-fi, not a dream) or a world that doesn't say "this is one of those times when something changes and you should ignore it" does these things.

But the point is that if TNG had stuck with the original plan of being a soft reboot, then eventually more explicit contradictions of TOS would've been established and it would've been clearer that they were different interpretations. Not a single universe that had changed diegetically, but different fictional takes on the premise that shared certain ideas in common, as often happens with TV series adaptations of movies, for instance.

Look at, say, the 1970s Planet of the Apes TV series (the live-action one). Superficially, it might seem like a continuation of the PotA movie series, in that it uses the same makeup designs and some of the same backstory concepts and character names. But it changes enough of the details that it's clearly its own separate reality that just borrows ideas from the movies and puts them together in its own way. There have been attempts to reconcile it and plug it into the movie timeline, but it's really its own distinct thing.

I suppose you could say it's actually more realistic for details to change and everyone pretends it was always that way, if you think glitches in the matrix is a thing, and in this case, the audience is the only one who might remember the way things used to be.

I reject the idea that every choice to modify how a work of make-believe is told requires an in-universe justification. It's just a story. You don't have to pretend it's real 100% of the time. The reason it's called suspension of disbelief is that it's temporary. You play along with the story's pretense of reality while you're reading or watching it, but afterward, you come back to reality and understand that it's a created work. There doesn't have to be a diegetic explanation for why storytellers make creative decisions to reinterpret an imaginary story. It's enough just to let each alternative version be its own reality within itself. The reason for the difference exists here in the real world, where they're just creative works.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

I know it doesn't require one.

Some shows just feel more real than others - even the funny episodes, surrounded as they are by serious ones. Shows that are pretending "this is our future, you can still keep most of the present and past as they happened, with a few re-interpretations of things (aliens stuck on Earth, time travelers making the future possible".

 

[DonIago]

TNG's own sister show in syndication, War of the Worlds: The Series, revamped its entire depiction of the world in its second season when new producers took over, changing it from an ordinary-seeming world where the alien invasion from the 1953 film had been forgotten to a dystopian wasteland still feeling the impact of the invasion 36 years later, and massively changing the aliens from how they'd been portrayed in season 1. And that's on top of the changes the first season made to the movie's portrayal of the aliens despite being a direct sequel.

Perhaps I represent a minority viewpoint then, but while I hadn't seen the WotW film prior to the series, I definitely found the 'revisions' from S1 to S2 jarring, and I suspect (though I haven't researched it) that many other viewers might have felt the same way.

And that's before you take into consideration the casting and character personality changes that accompanied this 'revision'.

While I still wanted to watch the series, I think the changes did compromise the degree to which I wanted to watch it because it felt somewhat like a different show with only somewhat recognizable main characters (the ones who were retained, at least).

I don't think it's a stretch to say that if it had become clear that TNG wasn't really intended to be considered in continuity with TOS that, as with WotW, I might have continued watching it but would have had less overall investment.

 

[Christopher]

Perhaps I represent a minority viewpoint then, but while I hadn't seen the WotW film prior to the series, I definitely found the 'revisions' from S1 to S2 jarring, and I suspect (though I haven't researched it) that many other viewers might have felt the same way.

I don't know what I said that led you to imagine I don't agree with this. I hated the changes the new producers made in season 2. My point is not to endorse those specific changes, merely to point out that it was commonplace for shows to make major continuity alterations without in-story explanation. Naturally it will work well in some cases and badly in others.

I don't think it's a stretch to say that if it had become clear that TNG wasn't really intended to be considered in continuity with TOS that, as with WotW, I might have continued watching it but would have had less overall investment.

Always possible. But the whole point of a multi-series franchise is to widen your audience, and that means that there will be some people who like one series more than another. A new series or a new interpretation might not please all the fans of the original, but the idea is to balance that by appealing to newcomers who weren't fans of the original and might well prefer the new one. Heck, that happened even with TOS and TNG sharing continuity. To this day, there are many fans who prefer TOS to what came after, and many fans who never got into TOS but loved TNG and the others. And that's fine. Appealing to a range of different tastes is a feature, not a bug, because it gives you a larger audience overall. (For instance, I'm a fan of Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated even though I wasn't that fond of Scooby-Doo in general. Indeed, SD:MI was specifically designed to appeal to people who didn't like Scooby-Doo and enjoyed seeing it deconstructed, even though it was also loaded with affectionate homages for those who did like it.)

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

The reason it's called suspension of disbelief is that it's temporary.

I haven't liked that term since the first time I read Tolkien's essay, "On Fairy Stories."

. . . That state of mind has been called “willing suspension of disbelief.” But this does
not seem to me a good description of what happens. What really happens is that the story-
maker proves a successful “sub-creator.” He makes a Secondary World which your mind can
enter. Inside it, what he relates is “true”: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore
believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the
magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little
abortive Secondary World from outside. If you are obliged, by kindliness or circumstance, to
stay, then disbelief must be suspended (or stifled), otherwise listening and looking would
become intolerable. But this suspension of disbelief is a substitute for the genuine thing, a
subterfuge we use when condescending to games or make-believe, or when trying (more or
less willingly) to find what virtue we can in the work of an art that has for us failed.

 

[Christopher]

I haven't liked that term since the first time I read Tolkien's essay, "On Fairy Stories."

I'm sure even Tolkien would agree that once you finish a story, you don't have to go on pretending it's real but can talk about it as a created work, and attribute the changes in different versions to the choices made by their creators, rather than clinging to the pretense that everything is an alternate timeline in a multiverse or that any change in the storytelling can only be explained as a diegetic time-travel alteration of history. Just because DC Comics likes to do that doesn't require everybody to.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

True. And in the Oz canon, Baum never shied away from contradicting his earlier works, if doing so served the story, and neither did ADF, in at least the early installments of the Humanx Commonwealth canon (e.g., body-surfing enjoying some popularity with the Thranx, in either Orphan Star or The End Of the Matter (I forget which), but the Thranx depicted as having a thoroughly justified species-wide terror and loathing of open water in the later novels).

I note that the quoted material, and indeed the whole essay, ties in rather neatly with the notion (drilled into me by Prof. Loren, in my four semesters of junior college short story workshop) that a grindingly discordant passage in a work of fiction can "throw you out of the story."

 

[Christopher]

True. And in the Oz canon, Baum never shied away from contradicting his earlier works, if doing so served the story, and neither did ADF, in at least the early installments of the Humanx Commonwealth canon (e.g., body-surfing enjoying some popularity with the Thranx, in either Orphan Star or The End Of the Matter (I forget which), but the Thranx depicted as having a thoroughly justified species-wide terror and loathing of open water in the later novels).

I was always determined to keep my original SF universes perfectly consistent within themselves, but when I expanded my first published story into the novel Arachne's Crime, I realized I had to change some aspects of its science that were no longer considered plausible, and I decided to just go ahead and make whatever other changes were needed, so that the novel replaces the original story in the continuity (which I've otherwise managed to keep consistent).

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Keeping things consistent and sane isn't all that much easier even when it isn't SF. For example, if your protagonist is a student, and classes impact the plot, then unit loads and graduation requirements have to make sense.

My novel-in-progress has a rather large spreadsheet identifying every character and venue mentioned (not only in the novel, but also in the various prequel, sequel, and interquel short stories in the universe), and every class my protagonist takes, as well as documenting the general education and major requirements for "Unspecified State University, Springfield." Along with another spreadsheet giving a detailed timeline (again, of the whole universe), and also an organization chart of the College of Fine and Performing Arts at Unspecified State.

 

[Christopher]

Keeping things consistent and sane isn't all that much easier even when it isn't SF. For example, if your protagonist is a student, and classes impact the plot, then unit loads and graduation requirements have to make sense.

My novel-in-progress has a rather large spreadsheet identifying every character and venue mentioned (not only in the novel, but also in the various prequel, sequel, and interquel short stories in the universe), and every class my protagonist takes, as well as documenting the general education and major requirements for "Unspecified State University, Springfield." Along with another spreadsheet giving a detailed timeline (again, of the whole universe), and also an organization chart of the College of Fine and Performing Arts at Unspecified State.

Yeah, in my Tangent Knights audio trilogy, I had to keep track of the timing of the heroine's college terms so that it made sense, although I barely managed to make it work, because I didn't realize it would be an issue until later in the process.

Your background planning reminds me of what I did for the first spec novel I wrote, which was about the filming of the first movie made in outer space. Before I wrote the novel, I wrote the complete screenplay of the movie within the novel, so I could work out a plausible shooting schedule to plot the novel around. I've always been annoyed by how TV/movie depictions of the TV/movie production process tend to be staggeringly unrealistic (when they obviously know better), so I wanted to make sure my depiction made sense.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I had the advantage of still having my CSU Long Beach catalog, and knowing what I wanted to change (e.g., Unspecified State can issue a Ph.D., which CSULB could not, and Unspecified State includes one semester of Industrial Arts in its GenEd -- because I strongly believe that it is crucial for those who don't make their living with their hands to respect those who do).

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

For some books, contradictions arose because they were written so far apart/in non-chronological order that sometimes the author forgot, or thought the readers won't remember everything, or would be able to overlook the odd error, correct? Others were serialized originally, and readers of those books might have been more interested in the main emotional and situational details of the plot than what color dress someone might be wearing?

I've read where a character who was a writer or reader did notice those things, suggesting the author themselves had the same eye for detail as their character when they read other people's works.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

There are plenty of cases in fiction where a sequel is only consistent with the preceding work in broad strokes while freely changing details. This is quite common in TV series continuations of movies, like Stargate SG-1, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Men in Black: The Series, and the like. They acknowledge that the events of the movie happened approximately the same way in the show's universe, but with whatever changes are necessary to suit the needs of the show (e.g. Agent K never retired in the Men in Black animated continuity).

And two of the most well-known TV series derived from successful movies, The Odd Couple and M*A*S*H, both presented versions of the characters that are incompatible with how the movies ended. (The Odd Couple play and movie both end with

Spoiler: The Odd Couple spoilers

Felix moving out of Oscar's apartment after spending only a few weeks there,

and the M*A*S*H movie ends with

Spoiler: M*A*S*H spoilers

Hawkeye and Duke both being shipped home, while Trapper John and Spearchucker stay behind at the 4077th.)

And there were other minor differences, like Felix going from a writer for the evening news to a photographer, the name of his ex-wife (Frances vs. Gloria), or Hawkeye going from a married man cheating on his wife to a promiscuous single man.

I've never heard of general audiences objecting to any of these changes, as most people instinctively understand that most TV shows made from movies are set more or less in the middle of the stories those movies presented. As long as the general essence of the characters stay the same (Felix the neat freak vs. Oscar the slob), people don't really sweat the minor details.

Science fiction fans, on the other hand...

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I've never understood the series versions of The Odd Couple or M*A*S*H to be in continuity with the movies, or the stage plays. (And note that Neil Simon has written several versions of The Odd Couple, including ethnic-specific and gender-flipped versions). And really, M*A*S*H greatly improved as it left much of the original supporting cast behind, and evolved into an ensemble series. I found Potter, BJ, and Winchester far more interesting than Henry, Trapper John, and Frank, and of the characters who were there for the entire run, I found the fully evolved, realistic versions far more interesting than the original caricatured ones.