I *hope* @BillJ got the "Community" reference I was making and that it was meant lightheartedly. Or at least, the latter part of that. Though the first part is what would have made it funny.
Are We Being Gaslighted in Regards to Canon?
- Thread starter uniderth
- Start date
Makes espionage a whole lot easier too.
Yeah, I think one of the early novels mentioned that too. And of course it worked for Darvin in "The Trouble with Tribbles"
Oddly, though, IDW Comics' Klingons: Blood Will Tell miniseries, which retold several TOS Klingon episodes from the Klingons' side, portrayed Darvin as a HemQuch (ridged Klingon) who went through extensive and agonizing surgical modification to pass as human (presaging Discovery), even though there were plenty of smooth-browed QuchHa' Klingons around in the miniseries as well.
I've said this before and I'll say it again: 'canon' is whatever the people currently in charge of Star Trek says it is. If CBS all of a sudden said that TOS is no longer canon, it's not canon. If they say that Star Trek Online is canon, it's canon. Now I can disagree with that and think CBS is full of shit (which I do on a regular basis), but they own it, so what they say goes. I can still enjoy my TOS DVDs and tell CBS to go take a flying leap, but I have no control over what they say is canon. And if Star Trek becomes someone else's property in the future and those as-yet-unknown people decide to overturn CBS and say that TOS is canon again, it's canon.
Which is exactly what I was talking about.
I think we care a lot more than The Powers That Be. If they want TOS era to suddenly look and feel more like the JJ Abrams movie version than TOS, it suddenly does but it's still somehow the same and they'll "previously on" Trek's unaired pilot to prove it. Visuals, technology, characterisations... none of it matters anymore outside of the story they're currently telling. One day, holograms are amazing and new in TNG. Another day, they used them before TOS. It's like how everything keeps shifting and changing in the X-Men movies.
Last edited:
You're referring more to continuity rather than canon. Canon is just the body of work. Continuity is how it all fits together. And while at the moment all of the Star Trek series and movies are considered canon, continuity-wise, as you say, it is a royal mess, and the obvious reason why Season 3 is going to take place in the far, far future.
You are of course correct, but I would suggest the word "canon" has undergone something of a semantic change when used in regards to fiction and essentially means continuity. How many threads are actually about canon in the proper sense?
Fan discussion tends to be about the overarching continuity welded together from all of the canon, especially as presented in official publications such as the Star Trek Encyclopedia, which is why the distinction isn’t that relevant here. Of course the individual productions have always had their own (evolving) subsets of continuity, constructed primarily from parts of the canon preferred by the showrunners/producers.
Honestly I think we make too big a deal about canon as fans. Canon really is something for showrunners and tie-in writers to worry about.
I guess part of it is that I'm a novel reader myself and actually include the relaunch novels as part of the Star Trek continuity I follow. None of that is canon, but I don't really care about that.
Now, on the flip side it is one reason I'm a bit concerned the nu-TNG show (I'll be glad when they finally give it an actual name BTW) will overwrite the novel continuity as I was hoping the relaunches would continue---but that's another thread
. That I guess would be a canon issue.
But in general I don't worry too much about canon as a fan. Continuity...well, that's a different story.
I guess part of it is that I'm a novel reader myself and actually include the relaunch novels as part of the Star Trek continuity I follow. None of that is canon, but I don't really care about that.
Now, on the flip side it is one reason I'm a bit concerned the nu-TNG show (I'll be glad when they finally give it an actual name BTW) will overwrite the novel continuity as I was hoping the relaunches would continue---but that's another thread
. That I guess would be a canon issue.But in general I don't worry too much about canon as a fan. Continuity...well, that's a different story.
Of course they care. They work their asses off the make the show, devote huge portions of their lives to it. That requires far more caring than just sitting there and playing armchair quarterback. They just care about different things, and in different ways. Creators often express caring for a thing by turning it into something new, not just slavishly copying it. Did Picasso care less for the subjects he painted than Leonardo did? No, he just expressed his caring in a less literal way, by attempting to capture the spirit of the subject rather than just its superficial details.
The Making of Star Trek (1968) asserted that the Enterprise had a holographic entertainment and communication center on its rec deck. TAS: "The Practical Joker" showed a holographic rec room in 1974. If anything, you should be complaining about TNG retconning it away after it had already been established. DSC just went back to the original intent.
As I've said, showrunners don't have to worry about canon, because whatever they create automatically is the canon. If you're walking, you don't have to constantly worry "Am I walking?" You just are.
Canon is a concept that's only relevant in relation to tie-ins. It's like, you don't have to worry about the presence of air unless you go into space or underwater. It's only when you go outside the atmosphere that the question of the atmosphere's presence is an issue you have to consider. So it's only when you go outside canon that the question of canon's presence needs to be considered.
It was interesting to read that in "The Making of Star Trek". The book even mentioned they had plans on showing it on the show, but as we know they never got around to it.
As far as TNG goes I sort of handwave the continuity issue away by just assuming that by the time of TNG they had perfected the technology. I just assumed the earlier incarnations, things like the rec room in "The Practical Joker" or in Discovery, were less interactive, and maybe didn't have the full sensory experience they had later.
And so far (at least through the 1st season of Discovery) you could still say the holodeck in TNG was much more interactive. I've seen no evidence thus far that they could create, say, an interactive Sherlock Holmes story, esp, original stories. Even in "The Making of Star Trek" I got the impression the hologram technology was more akin to watching TV in 3D then it is taking an active part in the program.
Yeah, I don't really argue with that. I was just trying to say is that I think fans worry about canon far more than they probably need to. As you said canon is what they create. Authors and comic book writers (and other tie in creators) are probably the only ones that really need to worry about it. As far as showrunners I guess it's up to them how much they want to tie things into previous canon--though I guess that's again better defined as continuity.
Sometimes fans sweat canon far too much (and a lot of times I think they confuse canon with continuity). Because of my habit of including novels in my 'head canon' I personally would find Star Trek canon too limiting.
But if I were to ask “About how many ships does Starfleet have fighting the Dominion in 2374?”, I couldn’t just create the correct answer (I’m not a DS9 writer), look it up in tie-ins (unless they’re production sources like Okuda/Sternbach’s, DS9 writers would ignore them), so the closest approach would be to do as a continuity-minded DS9 writer might, which is to search the scripts or ask around for references to recent ship counts. Could a conclusion on that basis still be wrong? Sure, but the whole point is to have fun arriving at an answer that could potentially be confirmed, and eliminating certain sources reduces the risk of being wrong.
Do we? In relation to Discovery, we're simply holding the production crew to what they've stated over and over, this is all supposed to fit together.
I don't think the distinction between canon and continuity is as big of a deal as some make it out to be. Canon and Continuity are fundamentally linked. Canon is the body of work, continuity is the natural result of applying thought to canon. That's why we try an come up with rationalizations for things the appear contradictory. The only way you can have canon without continuity being a factor is to remove humans form the equation. Otherwise you're always going to have some attempt to makes sense of things that don't make sense.
The idea that canon is whatever is seen on screen makes sense for the era when it was more difficult to propagate messages to the viewers and fanbase. The lowest common denominator is whatever is seen on screen.
The idea the canon is whatever the creators decide, while practically applicable in the past, seems more like a by product of the modern era when the creators intent is only a tweet away.
The idea that canon is whatever is seen on screen makes sense for the era when it was more difficult to propagate messages to the viewers and fanbase. The lowest common denominator is whatever is seen on screen.
The idea the canon is whatever the creators decide, while practically applicable in the past, seems more like a by product of the modern era when the creators intent is only a tweet away.
Last edited:
I struggle to see how that is any different than GR's assertion regarding TOS vs. TMP.
Honestly, I think they should have just made Dorn look like the 1960s Klingons. But I had that idea only in hindsight. I wonder if it was even considered.
Similar threads
