A Canon Discussion
- Thread starter Nedersong
- Start date
As long as it's nothing GLARING, I don't care too much about canon. If it's fun to watch, that's all that matters to me. As many seasons as the franchise ran, a few mistakes here and there are bound to occur. They all fit together nicely enough, including TAS.
Agreed. This is true of any TV show. Producers of television are basically asking viewers to make an investment in the show mentally/emotionally. You could be watching another show or doing something else completely but you choose to watch their production. Most writers seek to further that relationship by creating new storylines that build on what has already been established.
The difficulty with Trek is that after 5 separate series and 10 movies creativity has suffered. Plus throw in the fact that 3 out of those 5 series were basically produced by the same people. If you have to choose between canon and creativity, creativity should win out. A highly rated episode, that steps on the toes of canon, is better than an episode that follows canon to a whim and fails to attract viewers. But when you can bring the two together that makes for some great Trek.
I ,for one, am willing to forgo some canon if it will make the show/movie better.
Because one of the key features of Star Trek is that it forms a basically consistent story over an immense amount of material, and the fact that it more or less clicks together is an impressive achievement.
And because breaking canon in my experience usually happens when writers are too lazy to pay attention to canon, or just ignorant, and the canon-breaking happens for the convenience of the writer, not in the service of a good story.
The creativity-vs-canon argument is bogus. DS9 was a very creative series, and followed canon as well as any. I doubt that if canon were tossed out on its ear, writers who are not showing creativity would suddenly see a vast improvement in the quality of their material.
A better question is "when." It should be followed when there isn't a very good reason to violate it. No canon should be considered inviolable when it's just stupid. The no-women-Starship-captains rule from Turnabout Intruder is a good example of should-be-tossed type canon. It's also a good example of how flexible canon often is. That one can be rationalized away - Janice Lester was just making up an excuse for her own failure. A lot of canon problems can be solved by bending, not breaking.
One of the few examples of canon that needs to be re-set is the Eugenics Wars happening in the 1990s.
But examples like that are rare.
And it's considered to be the least popular of all the Trek series even though it's our favorite. The ratings for Trek series in general have declined since TNG ended its run. The creative efforts within the realm of canon are not bringing viewers back to the small or big screen for Trek productions. If moving in a completely new direction will revive interest, that's the path that should be taken. The ideals behind Star Trek can still be maintained without rigidly adhering to a past that isn't working.
The screen writers have always been allowed to overwrite the ST canon if it means their script will tell a better story.
The concept of ST canon is for the writers of licensed ST tie-ins: novels, comics, short stories and RPG scenarios.
The only reason Richard Arnold started to remind fans about ST canon at ST conventions and in "ST Communicator" was because people were challenging Gene Roddenberry as to why episodes and movies of ST seemingly often ignored new tech, events and characters from the licensed tie-ins.
it's not 'canon' we should be discussing, it's continuity...
canon is a bogus idea.
continuity is what they should worry about, like making sure that Orions don't suddenly become red, Kirk doesn't suddenly gain a daughter instead of a son or whatever.
but, saying that, there's inconsistencies in every series and especially in TOS, that shouldn't be surprising when there wasn't a concrete series bible laying everything out...
canon is a bogus idea.
continuity is what they should worry about, like making sure that Orions don't suddenly become red, Kirk doesn't suddenly gain a daughter instead of a son or whatever.
but, saying that, there's inconsistencies in every series and especially in TOS, that shouldn't be surprising when there wasn't a concrete series bible laying everything out...
Nardpuncher
Rear Admiral
Well said!
Also, this is a bit subjective, but nothing should be glaringly out of order, such as Kirk having a daughter. Small things, that need a real trivia master to point out the discontinuity, can be disregarded.
You also have to consider that watching episodes and movies by different writers is like listening to accounts of events by different people. There are bound to be inconsistencies.
Anyone ever read the "Thieves World" series of books? Each chapter was written by a different author with a different perspective of events. It worked very well and was a popular series.
Anyone ever read the "Thieves World" series of books? Each chapter was written by a different author with a different perspective of events. It worked very well and was a popular series.
Glaring continuity errors bewteen series take me out of the story. The Romulans being able to cloak in Enterprise, for example. It says to me "We're not paying attention to what's come before. History isn't important to us, and we don't care what you think."
A series should have a continuity person/fact checker. There are certainly enough of us out here with sufficient trivia knowledge and references that a production could hire one geek to sift through a script and say, for example, "The planet has been called 'Andor' in fanfic for 30 years, 'Andoria' sounds stupid. Please change."
The example I like to use is historical novels. A novel written about characters in World War Two will not change significant world events (and I'm not talking about Turtledove-style alternates histories, m'kay?). The Germans won't have jets during the Battle of Britain. Agincourt won't happen during the English Civil War. Ben Franklin won't place a telephone call to Wyatt Erp. A good author writing a historical novel will research the time period thoroughly, and make sure nothing happens in the book that contradicts known historical events.
I see no reason Trek writers can't be as thorough.
A series should have a continuity person/fact checker. There are certainly enough of us out here with sufficient trivia knowledge and references that a production could hire one geek to sift through a script and say, for example, "The planet has been called 'Andor' in fanfic for 30 years, 'Andoria' sounds stupid. Please change."
The example I like to use is historical novels. A novel written about characters in World War Two will not change significant world events (and I'm not talking about Turtledove-style alternates histories, m'kay?). The Germans won't have jets during the Battle of Britain. Agincourt won't happen during the English Civil War. Ben Franklin won't place a telephone call to Wyatt Erp. A good author writing a historical novel will research the time period thoroughly, and make sure nothing happens in the book that contradicts known historical events.
I see no reason Trek writers can't be as thorough.
Nicely said. There is rarely a good reason to violate continuity and when it's done without a quick explanation, I cringe. Like for you, it negatively affects my interest in the story. It always bothered my that Jedzia looked nothing like Odan (TNG) and that the former could transport without a problem but the latter could not. Are they two different species of Trill? I always thought it would've been cool if Ezri was of the same Trill species as Odan with the same appearance and limits. I loved it when events, people, places, or items from past episodes or series were mentioned in later ones. It helped to create an entire universe that had an aura of believability, which got me to buy in to that universe completely. ENT should've been the most consistent with continuity since the staff was the same from the previous three shows and three movies and there was a complete bible of information on TOS and its movies. Errors there were not so often but quite glaring.
Canon ist very important because it keeps the all different incarnations of Star Trek together. Without it, we would have just some random SciFi movies/series' that aren't connected to each other. I wish they had done more crossovers between them.
Yes, canon and continuity is important to me.
It's why I keep bitching about this new movie.
These guys should have just chose to do a prequel or a reboot, one or the other.
Whatever they do, don't redesign the Enterprise and expect me to accept it's the same one I saw in TOS.
If you want to redesign the ship, just go for a full reboot and be done with it.
But no, they just want to string Trek fans along until they separate them from their money, and then give them a punch in the gut.
It's why I keep bitching about this new movie.
These guys should have just chose to do a prequel or a reboot, one or the other.
Whatever they do, don't redesign the Enterprise and expect me to accept it's the same one I saw in TOS.
If you want to redesign the ship, just go for a full reboot and be done with it.
But no, they just want to string Trek fans along until they separate them from their money, and then give them a punch in the gut.
G
Garrovick
Guest
I agree...
For those who want "canon" to go away, just convince Paramount to drop the term "Star Trek" and the backgorund of "Star Trek" and create a random series of movies with no connection to any of the previous ones.
Once movie two uses movie one for facts and back ground "canon" is created. Once a movie uses "Enterprise", "Kirk", "Spock" it's tied to the Oiginal series "canon".
Not sure this is a good example. Surely the Romulans could always cloak since their first appearance in Star Trek TOS, "Balance of Terror".
