What's the worst non-canon decision in the history of Trek?

[David cgc]

@Zarm, as you go through a thread and find multiple things you might want to respond to, you can click the "+ Quote" button on the lower right corner of each post between "Like" and "Reply" to save the post. Then in the reply box at the bottom of the page, you can click "Insert Quotes..." and put them all into one post. Replying multiple times in a row is discouraged here, it's better manners to put all your replies into one big post.

Welcome to the board!

 

[Zarm]

@Zarm, as you go through a thread and find multiple things you might want to respond to, you can click the "+ Quote" button on the lower right corner of each post between "Like" and "Reply" to save the post. Then in the reply box at the bottom of the page, you can click "Insert Quotes..." and put them all into one post. Replying multiple times in a row is discouraged here, it's better manners to put all your replies into one big post.

Welcome to the board!

Thank you!

 

[JD]

Spoiler: Coda Spoilers

I could even live with 'everybody dies.' At least we still have all the previous adventures. But 'everybody never existed, all those previous books never happened now' is the part that gets me. There's a difference between ending the universe, and retroactively erasing it from ever having existed.

Why does any of that matter? As long as you enjoyed the books, isn't that enough? Why does it matter if they changed the timeline in the books?

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

Why does any of that matter? As long as you enjoyed the books, isn't that enough? Why does it matter if they changed the timeline in the books?

Yeah, and considering the various alternate timelines that have been explored within Star Trek's history - from Yesterday's Enterprise to Year of Hell and PLENTY others - we have plenty of examples where timelines are shown to be undone in some fashion. It's just this time, the timeline had a lot more exploration, but the characters all went in to it aware and knowing. Indeed, in this instance, it's BECAUSE they made this sacrifice that the Prime universe is able to exist, that their actions prevented the threat from stretching into the Prime universe. It's a sacrifice made to save, effectively, the multiverse.

I mean, in my heart, the timeline ended around Collateral Damage and Coda is a separate branch, so that I can imagine that there are further adventures happening in the First Splinter. But as a story, I enjoyed Coda, in large part because it did hit a core Trekkian message - do the right thing, even if no one else will know, not for the awareness but because it's the right thing. Or as it was put on Angel, "if nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do."

 

[Zarm]

Why does any of that matter? As long as you enjoyed the books, isn't that enough? Why does it matter if they changed the timeline in the books?

Because of the existential futility of it- because I'm being told that all those stories I enjoyed no longer happened, even within their own contexts. I don't know- as someone that cares about continuity and consistency, for whom these worlds are real (in their own context) and connected- I guess, who cares about what 'really' happened vs what didn't, in its fictional setting (pedantic or OCD as that may be, it's how I think), what I read in one story in a shared universe affects all the others. If one of them says not that the timeline is corrected, nor that some echo lives on, nor even that it exited and ended, but that it simply never was to begin with- not that all these things happened and then ended, but that they never happened at all... I don't know, for me, that's just a tarnishing, an insult, a ruining that is perhaps hard to put into words. A devaluing of all that came before.

Yeah, and considering the various alternate timelines that have been explored within Star Trek's history - from Yesterday's Enterprise to Year of Hell and PLENTY others - we have plenty of examples where timelines are shown to be undone in some fashion.

I suppose this one struck me as fundamentally different. In Yesterday's Enterprise, Tasha and the Enterprise-C crew still continued to exist. In that and Year of Hell, they are also presented as the main timeline being altered, and then restored. The end is that the altered version ceases to exist, but a repaired main timeline appears in its place. (A is overwritten by B and in the end, it is restored to A.)

With Coda, this feels much more like a separate universe is simply erased. Not fixed, with a 'correct' version of reality taking its place; because it already always existed. This is a separate, parallel timeline that was not interrupting and overwriting the main one, but existing alongside it. And it did not get 'fixed' to the old one at the end, it simply ceased to be with the old one never knowing of its existence (shades of Course: Oblivion). And it wasn't simply that these people lived, and then died- now they simply never lived in the first place. All those adventures never took place. (A and B existed alongside each-other equitably, now B is just gone; not ended, but made to never have even started.)

Again, I think it comes down to existential and philisophical views, to a large part, and maybe that's why it's hard to put into words. But that feels like a tangible loss, a negation that cuts much deeper than heroic sacrifice, and into 'terrible, pointless waste' for me. It taints all those other stories- I can't pick one up without the intrusive knowledge 'This didn't even happen now, reading it is pointless, it's an event that will never be' nagging at the back of my head the whole time.

 

[Zarm]

Addendum- as I can't figure out how to edit previous posts, at the moment...

Those other alternate realities usually didn't contain any exclusive characters that would no longer exist after they were undone. Nor did there being undone remove anything but themselves, the individual story in which the crisis was occurring. None of those ever said, these previous adventures that you have already watched and invested in are also undone by this. Yesterday's Enterprise didn't take encounter it far point with it. Yesterday's Enterprise appeared to take Tasha Yar, someone exclusive to that alternate universe, with it - but it also restored wharf. The point is that in each of those instances, nothing substantive was being lost, and it was always being exchanged for the existence of the normal timeline with which we are familiar, whose existence was mutually exclusive with this new reality.

In the case of Coda, none of those situations really applied. Characters and situations and events that were unique to the novel verse simply cease to exist. They didn't turn back into the regular version of themselves. The timeline wasn't even corrected to become the prime timeline, in such a way that the two of them could not coexist. A new threat that existed only within these novels was prevented from jumping outside the novels by undoing all the novels, taking all of their characters and stories with them. Unlike any of those stories in Trek television past, there was no restoration. There was no transforming of this timeline back into a corrected version in which all or nearly all were still present and accounted for and leading better lives than in the dark alternate version that had been erased. There was just loss. Not an exchange of one timeline for its 'correct' counterpart, but simply the loss of the timeline, taking everything with it. I think that's why it felt substantively different, for me.

 

[Stevil2001]

Addendum- as I can't figure out how to edit previous posts, at the moment...

I don't remember what the threshold is exactly, but you have to be a member for a certain amount of time before you can edit posts. (It's a spammer/troll tactic to post something innocuous, garner some replies, then go back and make it something else.)

 

[The Wormhole]

Because of the existential futility of it- because I'm being told that all those stories I enjoyed no longer happened, even within their own contexts. I don't know- as someone that cares about continuity and consistency, for whom these worlds are real (in their own context) and connected- I guess, who cares about what 'really' happened vs what didn't, in its fictional setting (pedantic or OCD as that may be, it's how I think), what I read in one story in a shared universe affects all the others. If one of them says not that the timeline is corrected, nor that some echo lives on, nor even that it exited and ended, but that it simply never was to begin with- not that all these things happened and then ended, but that they never happened at all... I don't know, for me, that's just a tarnishing, an insult, a ruining that is perhaps hard to put into words. A devaluing of all that came before.

I mean, the novels were never canon to begin with, so as far as the shows are concerned, those events never happened and those exclusive characters never existed anyway. Maybe having that alternate timeline both destroyed and its existence negated is a step too far and not a decision I would have made, but I can see the argument that this would have been necessitated due to the fact that Star Trek fans don't get subtlety, so best to go all in and definitively make it clear this timeline is done and will never be revisited in order to avoid a "Bring Back the Litverse" campaign like how there's been a "Bring Back Legends" campaign plaguing Star Wars fandom for the past decade. Besides, the Litverse was never going to be revisited again after Coda anyway, meaning for once Trek novel authors had free reign to do as they wished in a Trek novel, even freer than the ones writing the novel-only series in previous years. Who can really blame them for going all in on what they could do in the Trek universe now that they had no limits? That is, after all, a literal once in a lifetime opportunity for Trek novel authors.

 

[Zarm]

Well, I'm not saying that I blame them, per se- just that it was a choice that didn't work for me. I guess the difference between 'dying a noble death' and 'never having lived in the first place' was just a little too much for me. I don't mind 'riding off into the sunset.' I don't even (necessarily) mind 'armagedon, no survivors.' (Even though there's a kind of futility there, to a degree; elaborated in spoilers below). Conclusively ending the universe is one matter. But to me... I don't know; it's my hang-up, not a wrong choice for the authors. But ending with 'they never existed in the first place' is just, for me, the ultimate invalidation of all that came before.

And I don't mean to ruffle feathers or accuse the authors of wrongdoing- I'm just saying that for me, personally, that ending just sort of casts a pall on the whole series, and really just hit an extremely sour note, for me, personally.

Spoiler: Coda Spoilers

(As regard the potential futility, I am reminded of DC's animated universe film Crisis on Two Earths, where Owlman is arguing that the existence of infinite quantum realities means that no choice makes any difference- since its opposite will be made in another reality anyway, there is no unmade choice- except the choice to end all realities, because it's the only one with any unique consequence. In a sense, I feel that something similar ends up here- Picard pushing the button to erase reality ends up having a meaning, because it saves the Prime universe and other realities. Arguably, so do other sacrifices of characters that enable that button-push to fulfill its function. But the moment that affected me most- Nog sacrificing himself to save Jake? That ended up... ultimately fruitless. Jake ceased to exist anyway. It's not even like it bought him a few more days with his family; because retroactively, his family never had any days, ever. And again- this gets into phillisophical territory- 'what mattered was the choice that Nog made in that moment,' and in a moral sense, sure. But in a practical sense- no. Nothing anyone did at any point OTHER than the specific actions that led to the end of the universe to save other universes, in the grand scheme, had any point, or at least... any influence that lasted. Again, this is all very abstract- and I didn't mean to use up my whole break at work to type it up :-) - but again, it was just lent a certain air of futility, a certain air of 'whether it had or hadn't happened makes no difference, Jake ended up just as dead' by the ending that I found disappointing.)

 

[Christopher]

For what it's worth, I stated clearly in DTI: Watching the Clock that an event being erased so that it "never happened in the first place" is a logical contradiction and impossibility. If something existed and was then erased, that in itself requires the passage of time, an earlier and later point in a sequence, and so it's not something that can happen to a single moment of time, because a given moment cannot be later than itself. If a time traveler loops back on the same moment and alters it, it will subjectively appear to them that a "later" timeline has replaced the "earlier" one, but from any objective standpoint, the two versions of a single moment in time must coexist simultaneously by definition. So you can't "go back" and undo an event so that it never happened at all. The event exists at that specific moment alongside every other alternate version of that moment. At most, you can end a timeline, prevent it from going forward, and erase the quantum information of it at the moment it ends, so that nobody remembers it happened. But it will still have happened, and any omniscient observer outside of time such as a Q or a Prophet, viewing the entire tree of branching timelines, will still be able to see that it's there for the duration of its existence.

The authors of Coda chose to disregard this for their own narrative purposes, and I suppose you could argue that from a narrative standpoint, erasing people's memory that a timeline ever existed is much the same thing as retroactively erasing its actual existence. But by the rules I laid out in DTI, and by simple logic and scientific sense, any event that happened did happen, even if nobody remembers it later.

 

[David cgc]

I mean, the novels were never canon to begin with, so as far as the shows are concerned, those events never happened and those exclusive characters never existed anyway. Maybe having that alternate timeline both destroyed and its existence negated is a step too far and not a decision I would have made, but I can see the argument that this would have been necessitated due to the fact that Star Trek fans don't get subtlety, so best to go all in and definitively make it clear this timeline is done and will never be revisited in order to avoid a "Bring Back the Litverse" campaign line how there's been a "Bring Back Legends" campaign plaguing Star Wars fandom for the past decade. Besides, the Litverse was never going to be revisited again after Coda anyway, meaning for once Trek novel authors had free reign to do as they wished in a Trek novel, even freer than the ones writing the novel-only series in previous years. Who can really blame them for going all in on what they could do in the Trek universe now that they had no limits? That is, after all, a literal once in a lifetime opportunity for Trek novel authors.

I did speculate that there might've been an editorial mandate to establish in-universe the primacy of the new TV shows rather than depicting them as equal alternatives to the novelverse implicitly or explicitly. Which goes to your final point, as well; you've got the chance to write a finale to the entire breadth of Star Trek, an "All-Star Superman" or "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" or another example that isn't a Superman story, and this is what they came up with? That's the catharsis we're supposed to get out of the Star Trek modern myth, that you gotta die so you better die epic?

I've yet to read it myself, but I feel like Coda was meant to be more along the lines of The Last Policeman, but the scale piled atop scale, followed by the muddled message that "It doesn't matter that they died, how they lived had its own meaning, but also it does matter that they died because their sacrifice preserved a more high-profile and prestigious universe where the Borg Queen did a sex-murder and then ate a bunch of car batteries" undercut the thesis badly.

 

[FredH]

With both Trek’s Prime Splinter and similar fictional cases such as, say, previous iterations of the DC Universe — those stories still matter, because they led to something else happening or being saved. Even if no one in-universe remembers the events, to us they’re part of the real story; they led to the later version of reality, which (in the fiction) literally wouldn’t have existed or survived without them happening first to create/save them.

(To give another example, a major fantasy series by Michael Moorcock — which I won’t name, so as not to ruin a 61-year-old spoiler — ends with the destruction of its world, specifically so that this will lead to the creation of a new one: the one we all live in. I certainly don’t remember that old reality, do you? Yet — within the fiction — the actions that took place in that world still matter, vitally, because we wouldn’t be here without them having happened.)

 

[Zarm]

For what it's worth, I stated clearly in DTI: Watching the Clock that an event being erased so that it "never happened in the first place" is a logical contradiction and impossibility. ... But it will still have happened, and any omniscient observer outside of time such as a Q or a Prophet, viewing the entire tree of branching timelines, will still be able to see that it's there for the duration of its existence.

The authors of Coda chose to disregard this for their own narrative purposes, and I suppose you could argue that from a narrative standpoint, erasing people's memory that a timeline ever existed is much the same thing as retroactively erasing its actual existence. But by the rules I laid out in DTI, and by simple logic and scientific sense, any event that happened did happen, even if nobody remembers it later.

Well, I like that idea much better- and I did rather enjoy the DTI novels quite a bit more (especially the 'Admiral Delgado' wink). So, I would be much happier headcanonning that this is the truth of things, and the splinter timeline crew just had it wrong what was going to happen. :-)

 

[Zarm]

(To give another example, a major fantasy series by Michael Moorcock — which I won’t name, so as not to ruin a 61-year-old spoiler — ends with the destruction of its world, specifically so that this will lead to the creation of a new one: the one we all live in. I certainly don’t remember that old reality, do you? Yet — within the fiction — the actions that took place in that world still matter, vitally, because we wouldn’t be here without them having happened.)

That rather reminds me of the Alpha and Omega (I think that was the name?) short story from one of the earlier Strange New Worlds collections...

 

[Christopher]

I did speculate that there might've been an editorial mandate to establish in-universe the primacy of the new TV shows rather than depicting them as equal alternatives to the novelverse implicitly or explicitly.

I don't think so. My impression is that it was more the novelists' choice to do it that way, as a metaphor for what was happening in real life with the novel continuity ending.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

(especially the 'Admiral Delgado' wink)

Huh??!?

 

[David Mack]

At most, you can end a timeline, prevent it from going forward, and erase the quantum information of it at the moment it ends, so that nobody remembers it happened. But it will still have happened, and any omniscient observer outside of time such as a Q or a Prophet, viewing the entire tree of branching timelines, will still be able to see that it's there for the duration of its existence.

The authors of Coda chose to disregard this for their own narrative purposes, and I suppose you could argue that from a narrative standpoint, erasing people's memory that a timeline ever existed is much the same thing as retroactively erasing its actual existence. But by the rules I laid out in DTI, and by simple logic and scientific sense, any event that happened did happen, even if nobody remembers it later.

Okay, I need to step in here — NO, WE DID NOT. We did no such thing. If that's what you think we did, you’ve had a failure of reading comprehension.

At several points in the text of Oblivion’s Gate, it is stated explicitly that certain entities, such as those you describe, DO remember the events of the First Splinter timeline: the Prophets, the Q, the Travelers, and Benny Russell (and possibly many others). In addition, the novel’s final chapter is meant to convey that echoes of the First Splinter (and many others) live on in every quantum temporal variation of Jean-Luc Picard himself, as he was at the "fulcrum point in time" when the First Splinter was undone.

Coda is not a betrayal of the First Splinter stories, it is a celebration of them, an affirmation that their existence matters because in the end they “kept the flame alive” for the Prime incarnations of Trek. No stories were destroyed or taken away from anyone — they are all still there, and you can read them anytime you want.

Oh, none of it matters because it came to an end? EVERYTHING comes to an end. Our universe's most likely conclusion is an eternity of entropic heat death. Nothing we do will matter in the scope of that. But in the struggles of this moment, if nothing we do matters, all that matters is what we do (as they said on Angel).

Coda is a story about the inevitablity of change and death, but it's also a tale of raging against the dying of the light, about fighting for hope and what's right even when no one will know of your sacrifice. It's about being willing to sacrifice oneself for an idea, a principle, for love, with no expectation of reward.

As far as I'm concerned, stories don't get much more Star Trek than that.

 

[Christopher]

Okay, I need to step in here — NO, WE DID NOT. We did no such thing. If that's what you think we did, you’ve had a failure of reading comprehension.

At several points in the text of Oblivion’s Gate, it is stated explicitly that certain entities, such as those you describe, DO remember the events of the First Splinter timeline: the Prophets, the Q, the Travelers, and Benny Russell (and possibly many others). In addition, the novel’s final chapter is meant to convey that echoes of the First Splinter (and many others) live on in every quantum temporal variation of Jean-Luc Picard himself, as he was at the "fulcrum point in time" when the First Splinter was undone.

Okay, but the point is not about whether people remember them, it's about whether the objective physical existence of those events is undone so that they "never happened." What I'm saying is that physics and logic require that any event that happens happens, and cannot be retroactively unhappened. The most that can occur is that their quantum information is erased after the fact so that people forget them, which creates the illusion that their timelines were retroactively unmade and "never happened" to begin with. I'm not saying nobody in the books remembered them; I'm saying that even if nobody had remembered them, they would still have physically happened and could not have been unmade. The timelines could have been destroyed, yes, but only going forward from the moment of destruction. Visit them at a point in time before the destruction, and they would still be there. It can't be retroactive.

In other words, the fantasy conceit of many stories is that if time travelers from, say, 2100 go back to 1950 and change history, then the original history from 1950 to 2100 completely ceases to exist and never happened at all. But that's a contradiction in terms, because any change (and ceasing to exist is the ultimate change) requires a version before the change and a version after it, and a point in time cannot come after itself. One version of a given period of time cannot "replace" or "overwrite" another, but can only coexist alongside it. So instead, the original events of 1950-2100 are still there in parallel with the new timeline, coexisting for the duration of that 150-year period, but once 2100 is reached, the original timeline vanishes going forward and is forgotten. So it may look to a time-traveling observer as if it were retroactively erased, but in fact it cannot have been.

So I'm saying that if readers are concerned that the events of the trilogy mean that the Novelverse's events never happened, they can take solace in the idea that they still did happen even if the timeline came to an end.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

and possibly many others

El Aurians, maybe? Guinan seems to be sensitive to multiple realities. Indeed, that sensitivity drove the plot of "Yesterday's Enterprise," as I recall.

Be that as it may, while the Coda Trilogy was by no means my favorite multi-volume arc, at times, I found it almost as harrowing to read as KMFB's Last Best Hope, it was not a study in hopelessness, nor a dismissal or or trivialization of the First Splinter timeline.

And FWIW, I see no contradictions between DM's post #497 and CLB's post #498 (and his posts leading up to #498)

 

[Zarm]

Huh??!?

Unless I am misremembering, the main guest figure of the second DTI novel (the one focusing on the TOS era) was Admiral Delgado, who is described as having a salt-and-pepper goatee. And being interested in time travel. :-) It was quite the lovely reference.