Hey! The thread has taken an interesting turn! (I think.)
It's Sunday, I have coffee, and I don't want to do my homework. So I will now argue both for and against while I wait another 11 days for SNW.
TL;DR (amen!): No other show has continuity like Star Trek because there IS no other show like Star Trek. And by and large Star Trek has done a surprisingly good job of it. And the "new" shows (post 2005) have had less continuity of creative teams and cast than previous Star Trek. But they are largely still very good. Well, SNW is. And Prodigy. Oh, and I like Lower Decks.
Still here? Here we go!
There have been varying reactions to "It's all the same timeline" or "Disco / SNW / The Dauphin are clearly alternate timelines". Or "Who gives a rats about canon?" (Also "canon" is a dumb word for continuity.) (I don't like "franchise" either. Grrr.)
But why does this come about in Star Trek? Well, what other shows or movies are really like Star Trek?
Battlestar Galactica: BSG / nuBSG are clearly different shows. GINO is meant as a pointlessly derogatory term. But it's also true. nuBSG is NOT Battlestar Galactica 1978. It's not meant to be.
Doctor Who: Probably the only other show that's even in the running. Not the most "canon-y" show in most ways. For one thing even discounting the 1989-2005 break, it's been many different shows through it's run, even within a single Doctor's run. Lots of casts, lots of show runners.
James Bond? While there has been a vague sense of continuity (more so both earlier and later in the series) the fact that it's supposed to be the same character in both 1962 and 2021 makes that impossible.
Star Wars: Well, until The Clone Wars there wasn't much of it. For the first 20 years there were three movies. If you want to stretch, there were a couple of TV movies and a Holiday Special. (Which have been acknowledged in modern Star Wars to a surprising degree.) There were a ton of books and comics that the movies would say they would play nice with, but generally didn't have to. Of course now they have a whole department whose JOB is to do story continuity! (And I'm sure they don't have too much power, but what a fun job!)
So. Star Trek. Star Trek had a single cast (not counting The Cage - more in a moment) for 20 years. Roddenberry was a singular figure for most of that time.
It never occurred to me that while it was a happy accident there was no real reason to make Pike and Kirk two different characters. People might not have responded to Jefferey Hunter but did they have a problem with Christopher Pike? But as it is, Hunter and Shatner play two different characters. Which was fortuitous in using The Cage for The Menagerie. (Were they thinking that far ahead? I know they had a "plan" at an early stage to re-use The Cage. But which was chicken and which was egg?)
Was Star Trek better than Lost in Space at referencing its own continuity? I don't know. Ask someone who watched Lost in Space after they were four years old. Star Trek didn't do it a LOT, but they did it enough to make people notice. When they used the "wrong" model for the Romulans in The Enterprise Incident (for example) they felt the need to justify it. You had episodes like By Any Other Name that were a continuity bonanza. (I don't know how much continuity Bonanza had.)
When they went from TV to movies they took the nearly unprecedented step of keeping the TV cast. (Batman was really a Batman episode that happened to show in the theaters, wasn't it?) As has been noted, Roddenberry took the conceit in the TMP novel that the TV show was a "dramatic re-telling of real events" kind of letting himself off the hook. (I'm not sure where the movie Star Trek: The Motion Picture fits into that.) But TMP gave a "reason" for the Enterprise looking different. We could still dismiss the visuals of the TV show entirely (The Wrath of Khan did) except there is a drawing of the TOS Enterprise on the rec deck.
TNG was a new cast but it was still Roddenberry. They never tried to go with an out of the blue new Star Trek runner. (If they had it would probably have been in the 23rd century.) For practical as well as creative reasons we still got occasional nods and callbacks to TOS. It was always fun to fill in the blanks in that 80 year gap. Sarek returned. We got Klingons again. Lots of movie era ships.
Then we had Relics: The most blatant and explicit statement so far: Yes, the 22whatevers DID look like a 1960's TV show.
Even after Roddenberry died we still had his hand picked successor Rick "I hate music" Berman (sorry) overseeing new shows for another 10+ years. That's continuity in itself.
Then J.J. came along. And Paramount wanted Star Trek. Walk up to most people on the street and say Star Trek and they will most likely say "Shatner and the guy with the ears." But even with J.J. they didn't want to reboot the show! (Which now that I think about it is astonishing in itself.) They came up with a time travel / alternate universe plot that left all the TV shows where they were but let them remake The Wrath of Khan, er, do whatever they wanted.
This is a lot. But that's kind of the thing: There is a LOT of Star Trek. And for most of its history it has tried harder than would be expected to all hang together! I'm sure on most levels it still does.
Where my hackles get up (I don't know what hackles are, really) is when I hear people (show runners or not) say that "Continuity gets in our way." Nonsense. It's a huge universe and there is a LOT that was never talked about. We know like three things about Spock from before TOS. Avoid those three things. (Annnnd they haven't.) We know nothing about the 2250s. Maybe there WAS a Klingon war. Why not? But we know that there wasn't a war with the Romulans. We have a pretty good idea that there was never a Federation / Gorn Superbowl. Cadet Uhura should never encounter a tribble. (And don't do "But she didn't KNOW it was a tribble" either! There were 78 episodes of TOS and only one of them had tribbles. Leave out the tribbles!)
I'm not saying the new shows are bad (they're not!) or that they're doing something wrong (they're not!) but they do seem to have a different attitude to past Star Trek than shows even as late as Enterprise did.
In most threads this would all be woefully off topic. But it IS the Canon, Continuity, and Pike's Accident thread.
Enjoy your day.
It's Sunday, I have coffee, and I don't want to do my homework. So I will now argue both for and against while I wait another 11 days for SNW.
TL;DR (amen!): No other show has continuity like Star Trek because there IS no other show like Star Trek. And by and large Star Trek has done a surprisingly good job of it. And the "new" shows (post 2005) have had less continuity of creative teams and cast than previous Star Trek. But they are largely still very good. Well, SNW is. And Prodigy. Oh, and I like Lower Decks.
Still here? Here we go!
There have been varying reactions to "It's all the same timeline" or "Disco / SNW / The Dauphin are clearly alternate timelines". Or "Who gives a rats about canon?" (Also "canon" is a dumb word for continuity.) (I don't like "franchise" either. Grrr.)
But why does this come about in Star Trek? Well, what other shows or movies are really like Star Trek?
Battlestar Galactica: BSG / nuBSG are clearly different shows. GINO is meant as a pointlessly derogatory term. But it's also true. nuBSG is NOT Battlestar Galactica 1978. It's not meant to be.
Doctor Who: Probably the only other show that's even in the running. Not the most "canon-y" show in most ways. For one thing even discounting the 1989-2005 break, it's been many different shows through it's run, even within a single Doctor's run. Lots of casts, lots of show runners.
James Bond? While there has been a vague sense of continuity (more so both earlier and later in the series) the fact that it's supposed to be the same character in both 1962 and 2021 makes that impossible.
Star Wars: Well, until The Clone Wars there wasn't much of it. For the first 20 years there were three movies. If you want to stretch, there were a couple of TV movies and a Holiday Special. (Which have been acknowledged in modern Star Wars to a surprising degree.) There were a ton of books and comics that the movies would say they would play nice with, but generally didn't have to. Of course now they have a whole department whose JOB is to do story continuity! (And I'm sure they don't have too much power, but what a fun job!)
So. Star Trek. Star Trek had a single cast (not counting The Cage - more in a moment) for 20 years. Roddenberry was a singular figure for most of that time.
It never occurred to me that while it was a happy accident there was no real reason to make Pike and Kirk two different characters. People might not have responded to Jefferey Hunter but did they have a problem with Christopher Pike? But as it is, Hunter and Shatner play two different characters. Which was fortuitous in using The Cage for The Menagerie. (Were they thinking that far ahead? I know they had a "plan" at an early stage to re-use The Cage. But which was chicken and which was egg?)
Was Star Trek better than Lost in Space at referencing its own continuity? I don't know. Ask someone who watched Lost in Space after they were four years old. Star Trek didn't do it a LOT, but they did it enough to make people notice. When they used the "wrong" model for the Romulans in The Enterprise Incident (for example) they felt the need to justify it. You had episodes like By Any Other Name that were a continuity bonanza. (I don't know how much continuity Bonanza had.)
When they went from TV to movies they took the nearly unprecedented step of keeping the TV cast. (Batman was really a Batman episode that happened to show in the theaters, wasn't it?) As has been noted, Roddenberry took the conceit in the TMP novel that the TV show was a "dramatic re-telling of real events" kind of letting himself off the hook. (I'm not sure where the movie Star Trek: The Motion Picture fits into that.) But TMP gave a "reason" for the Enterprise looking different. We could still dismiss the visuals of the TV show entirely (The Wrath of Khan did) except there is a drawing of the TOS Enterprise on the rec deck.
TNG was a new cast but it was still Roddenberry. They never tried to go with an out of the blue new Star Trek runner. (If they had it would probably have been in the 23rd century.) For practical as well as creative reasons we still got occasional nods and callbacks to TOS. It was always fun to fill in the blanks in that 80 year gap. Sarek returned. We got Klingons again. Lots of movie era ships.
Then we had Relics: The most blatant and explicit statement so far: Yes, the 22whatevers DID look like a 1960's TV show.
Even after Roddenberry died we still had his hand picked successor Rick "I hate music" Berman (sorry) overseeing new shows for another 10+ years. That's continuity in itself.
Then J.J. came along. And Paramount wanted Star Trek. Walk up to most people on the street and say Star Trek and they will most likely say "Shatner and the guy with the ears." But even with J.J. they didn't want to reboot the show! (Which now that I think about it is astonishing in itself.) They came up with a time travel / alternate universe plot that left all the TV shows where they were but let them remake The Wrath of Khan, er, do whatever they wanted.
This is a lot. But that's kind of the thing: There is a LOT of Star Trek. And for most of its history it has tried harder than would be expected to all hang together! I'm sure on most levels it still does.
Where my hackles get up (I don't know what hackles are, really) is when I hear people (show runners or not) say that "Continuity gets in our way." Nonsense. It's a huge universe and there is a LOT that was never talked about. We know like three things about Spock from before TOS. Avoid those three things. (Annnnd they haven't.) We know nothing about the 2250s. Maybe there WAS a Klingon war. Why not? But we know that there wasn't a war with the Romulans. We have a pretty good idea that there was never a Federation / Gorn Superbowl. Cadet Uhura should never encounter a tribble. (And don't do "But she didn't KNOW it was a tribble" either! There were 78 episodes of TOS and only one of them had tribbles. Leave out the tribbles!)
I'm not saying the new shows are bad (they're not!) or that they're doing something wrong (they're not!) but they do seem to have a different attitude to past Star Trek than shows even as late as Enterprise did.
In most threads this would all be woefully off topic. But it IS the Canon, Continuity, and Pike's Accident thread.
Enjoy your day.
