Agreed here, Myk. There are quite a few fans who would prefer for all the individual facts of each particular story to be sewn in without any seams -- for instance, for the silent film star Clark Gable to have been the descendant of the great Middle Ages conqueror Napoleon. That's a degree of continuity which, with a story this big and nearly half-a-century long now, and with so much "sloppy writing" along the way, is no longer possible.
That said, I think of it like this: A great story should be defined as one which, when told by a single person over a campfire, mesmerizes its listeners without any 3-D, any CGI, or any props. When you boil down a great story to a simple narrative, whether it's half-an-hour or half-a-century long, it requires a modicum of basic continuity, otherwise your listener will get up, go back to his tent, and read C. S. Forrester.
ENT is where I "got up." It's where I raised my hand and said, the end of the story doesn't match with the beginning, and the storyteller responded that I should just shut up and forget the beginning. Given the choice of forgetting the great beginning or the dull-as-dishwater end, I chose the latter. And that, as Frost said, has made all the difference.
DF "Having Perhaps the Better Claim" Scott
