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

Was that really worse than later when he fell on his head?

 

Thank you, Captain Buzzkill.

 

True, but storytelling was "by the seat of one's pants" by design (and nobody cared as much back in the 1960s with this sort of thing in any number of shows, especially on something completely new with the blank chalkboard to sketch on). The 1990s started more pre-production story mapping, complex arcs that adhere to self-made rules ("continuity"), and so on - for which producers in the 21st century keep reminding us how audiences are "more sophisticated" today*, thus a greater reliance on continuity, canon, blah blah blah. Which is a separate argument best saved for another time because you can guess where I might go with that...

...Apart from the obvious that TNG had so much time put into canon and continuity compared to TOS, and yet the TNG movies were way too quick to toss it all into the bin, with even Picard saying a flippant and unsophisticated one-liner about the number of letters in the alphabet** ...

The more a new series has to wallow in established pools than moving forward only compounds the issue, which is not unfair after a certain point.

But in the end, minutiae is up the to the individual viewer. Some people didn't mind the revisionism of "Broken Bow" despite being comparatively major compared to other revisions TOS/TNG/DS9 brought to the table and the reasons therein. But as a franchise's universe gets bigger, it's easier to forget such details. Which is another reason why prequels are seen as an idea brighter than a trinary***** solar system's light source.


* at least as a crutch, if nothing else

** but thankfully we didn't get a 1701-F***. Especially with TNG movie script quality going down, you can guess how many people would be quick to latch onto "F" and make cute euphemisms from it to explain the nature of the final few films and how they treated the characters and the audience too... I'm amazed they didn't show the cadet photo of uber-bald Picard with a b&w photo just to hit home this is the same character but from the past but never mind "Violations" and other TNG episodes showing a younger Picard had a full or mostly-full head of hair, but before I really digress to things other than minor minutiae...

*** But a prequel**** did sell us on a 1701-J. It should have been 1701-JJ. As in James Evans Junior from Good Times, for that ship would really be
"D -- D for DYN-O-MITE!!!" (cue uproarious studio audience laughter here.)

**** and there's your biggest canon mess right there. Prequels. They serve no purpose, save for answering questions nobody asked and getting fankwanky with minutiae that you know they're not going to care about. Two Trek shows did prequels, IMHO neither fits. Trek usually benefits more from forward-thinking than self-pigeonholing in a parochial and less flexible narrative, thanks to what was already established and nobody cares about the Earth/Klingon conflict (per TOS, which ENT completely forgot about and to the point its actions retroactively render TOS incorrect, which just makes the whole franchise appea-- naah, make any prequel and chuck in as much just for fun. Never explore the future and make sure it's always dystopian because copping the feel of 1970s sci-fi is always an insta-win! Or not, especially if the substance isn't there or feels artificial... like when people ditched ENT after the melodrama with Archer and the first contact with the Klingons, which didn't lead to major maudlin war Kirk said there was... even TOS did better continuity with that, exemplified by "Errand of Mercy", "The Trouble with Tribbles", and "Day of the Dove". Not bad for a show that flubbied up its continuity a number of times during its initial 3-year run... I recall Klingons had six TOS episodes in total. One of the other three may have violated their own continuity too, I just don't remember right now. Does Kahless in the penultimate story count as one of them? At the time, I laughed when TNG pretended that stoned TOS episode didn't exist when digging up his name for a season 6 episode... )

***** the spellchecker thinks that word ought to be 'urinary'. All hail the spellchecker! Also, I bent the rules of "p.s." annotations by going from 1, to 2, then jumped to 5 when I should have rekejiggered the numbers to have proper continuity...


On edit: Minor clarification.

 

It's okay I love prequels enough for the both of us. They challenge our preconceptions and I love that.

 

I'm with you 100%. I like seeing "the past" filled in. I think it's a lot of fun and I like having my own preconceptions challenged as well.

 

The problem with prequels is that they never work. The writers can't just do what they are supposed to and show us how things we know of, started; They keep adding things that we've never heard of and so after a time the prequel becomes a jumble of anachronisms and inexplicable crap and defeats its purpose.

 

I guess it depends how important continuity is to you. A prequel that adds nothing we don't already know about is pointless. A prequel that makes us re-examine the originals in a new light can be amazing.

 

I'm with you on prequels being something that can be great for a franchise.

But there are a LOT of dangers in doing prequels, and to be fair, they generally do not do well.

 

Indeed, yes. The point of a prequel is to go "Oh, I didn't realize that!" rather than "Oh, ok, that makes sense."

Because what he know of probably didn't have that much thought put in to it in the first place. It started out as Character A is Awesome and he had a bit of a backstory but that's not important to the story being told. The audience gets hints at it and then fills in the gaps. So, the prequel forces a relooking at it and that's not always fun.

 

Another vote from me for the Klingon augment virus. Everyone knows the Klingons were simply a bunch of space Mongols with shoecream in their faces in TOS. To canonise that is to canonise low-budget production. Whenever the virus is brought up, everyone knows it's just an excuse for TOS production. When I read canon, I want to read something that can be taken seriously in-universe. I don't want to read something that is obviously just a bad excuse for 60s TV production. The "virus" just hurts the canon. A lot.

And even if we're doing that, then please give me a canon explanation why so many planets were littered with styrofoam "rocks" in the days of Kirk. How can I take the "virus" seriously if the canon has no explanation for the styrofoam rocks?

 

^^ Those "rocks" were made of alien pumice, I tell you. Alien. Pumice.

 

Now all they have to do is explain why the Gorn looked so fake!!!

 

I gave Endgame the gold medal of crap canon, and I'm sticking with it.
Silver goes to the decision to have Enterprise feature...
* Photon torpedoes instead of spatial ones.
* Regular use of the Transporter.
Made it too much like regular Trek, instead of a prequel.

I will add individual canonical disasters, too.
3. A Night in Sickbay. A travesty.
2. Spock's Brain. An catastrophe.
1. Threshold. An abomination.

Finally, the bad decision with the least excuse for it: the matter of Harry Kim. He didn't do anything on Voyager that he couldn't have done with a ○● on his collar.

 

I never could get behind Sisko's role being partly due to a human/alien joining. It ruined the whole thing for me. I like humans to stay human in that I think that it took away from his destiny rather than add to it. I rather him just be seen as the right person for the job based on his personality and abilities. Fated and war just doesn't... uh well its a personal feeling. I think he was cooler without that. Plus I liked his moments with his father and I think it alters the humanity of the series a bit. I like humans in amazing situations better when it comes to Trek.

 

Sisko and the prophets were retconned so many times that they don't make sense anymore.

 

No, prequel is not required to so that. I'd rather see new stuff that happens before what we've seen than explaining how things we've seen got to be.

 

I don't really see the Prophets as Sisko's ancestors so much as I see them manipulating events in the past to ensure he existed. Kind of like when Kirk & Co. went back to the 1980's looking for whales.

 

Always felt that DS9 had the right way of addressing it in Trials and Tribble-ations, with Worf saying: we do NOT discuss it with outsiders. (As if they were saying 'No, we're not going to invent some half assed 'explanation' , we'll make it a joke instead. Everyone knows why it happened in the real world, now forget about it and just enjoy the show.')

 

This isn't necessarily a contradiction. Lester's line "Your world of starship captains does not admit women." may not have been intended to mean "Starfleet doesn't allow women starship captains," but rather that Kirk's world as a starship captain didn't include her, since they were talking about their relationship not Starfleet.