Continuity porn....

[Warped9]

One of the aspects of TOS that I loved, and one I continue to enjoy when I can find it in science fiction whether on television, film or literature, is novelty. Although there may be some familiar elements involved ultimately we're being shown something new. What fun is there in predictability?

For me "strange new worlds" doesn't literally have to be planet of the week, but the idea that we're seeing something not seen before or at least a fresh angle on a familiar idea.

Far too often I feel stories get caught up in what I think of as continuity porn: either revisiting a previous idea over and over and/or cramming as many references as possible to prior events. Far too rarely I feel we get to see something fresh and interesting.

So which do you prefer?

 

[Nerys Myk]

New stuff.

 

[Warped9]

New stuff.

Nicely succinct.

 

[DevilEyes]

POOOORN!

 

[Kelso]

Yeah, I'd rather see our heroes dropped onto a totally alien situation.

The occasional nod to the past can be fun, but that isn't a priority for me.

 

[SpyOne]

Assuming those are the choices, I guess I prefer new stuff.
But if an episode's events are just going to be a re-hash of something that was done before, I kinda prefer that they admit that.

 

[DonIago]

I definitely prefer the arc'iness of DS9 to the episodicness of TOS. OTOH, I'd rather see an episode done well than an arc done poorly.

Greg Cox's Eugenics Wars books are loaded with references but I still find them quite entertaining.

Trials and Tribble-ations is largely nothing but continuity porn, but it's consistently considered one of DS9's Top Ten. Then there's VOY's Flashback, which I don't think anybody would consider a top ten episode. Good versus Bad porn.

I feel the question as phrased seems somehow biased.

 

[sbk1234]

I personally like continuity, and nods to what's been done before, but only if it's legitimate to the plot. For example, in DS9's early days, I think they had too many guest appearances from TNG folk, such as Picard, L'ursa and Be'tor, Q, Vash, and probably some others I can't remember now. I seem to recall that at the time I thought it was too much.
It's a bigger galaxy than that.
But I do like when the situaiton legitimately allows for it, once in a while.

 

[Nardpuncher]

TOS could've used a bit more, even TNG.

The novels could do with much less. Especially when it comes to referring to other Trek novels.

 

[Warped9]

I feel the question as phrased seems somehow biased.

We're not talking about exclusivity. For starters the simple fact that you have regular continuing characters in a familiar setting is already good continuity. There's nothing wrong with periodic references to something before, but the major push of the story is to address something new. Far too often, though, it feels like a story is cobbled together just for the sake of tie-in references.

At first viewing DS9's T&T was amusing. The second and third time it's, "Why did they bother to do this?" To show that they could and to have a tie-in episode. Comics and books do the same thing, tie-in to what we've already seen. TWoK was also a tie-in story albeit one that furthered the original story "Space Seed."

Sometimes it can be fun, but often I find it tiresome. DS9's "Crossover" was a decent revisit to the Mirror universe. After that I couldn't care less.

 

[Admiral Shran]

Porn. I love continuity.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I like a mix of everything--stand alone stories and stories that acknowledge a previous event earlier in the series. But I would prefer more of the former than the latter, and when an arc is done, it's done. A good example in TOS would be "The Menagerie."

 

[Warped9]

"The Menagerie" was a unique tie-in to something that had been done but practically no one had seen before (at the time).

 

[DevilEyes]

I feel the question as phrased seems somehow biased.

We're not talking about exclusivity. For starters the simple fact that you have regular continuing characters in a familiar setting is already good continuity. There's nothing wrong with periodic references to something before, but the major push of the story is to address something new. Far too often, though, it feels like a story is cobbled together just for the sake of tie-in references.

At first viewing DS9's T&T was amusing. The second and third time it's, "Why did they bother to do this?" To show that they could and to have a tie-in episode. Comics and books do the same thing, tie-in to what we've already seen. TWoK was also a tie-in story albeit one that furthered the original story "Space Seed."

Sometimes it can be fun, but often I find it tiresome. DS9's "Crossover" was a decent revisit to the Mirror universe. After that I couldn't care less.

That's because DS9 Mirror Universe episodes sucked. The first one was OK, but the writers didn't have any good ideas for the continuation, they just used MU as an opportunity to have a silly camp fun episode with people dressing up and girl-on-girl action. It had nothing to do with arc-iness. You could have listed a bunch of great storyarcs in DS9 and other Trek shows, but you choose one that sucked to make your point. You could as well name a bunch of bad standalone episodes. Or, maybe more to the point, a bunch of great episodes whose events were cheapened by the lack of any references to them later on. (Since we're started talking about DS9 - Hard Time is a good example.)

I love a good standalone, but the only shows that really and fully support standalones 100% are shows like The Twilight Zone, with stories that are truly separate and not connected in any way. But when you have the same main characters in every episode, there has to be some continuity. See, for instance, Homicide:LOTS, a cop show where most stories are standalone (though with a few arcs that spanned over few seasons, but not in every episode, more like one episode in 5), but the regular characters are the heart of the show: the focus was on the ways that they were affected by the cases, and the characters changed in important ways and had things happen to them, some of them died, had a stroke, committed a murder of a suspect, left police, went to jail... all as a result of the cases they were working on.

Now if there is very little continuity, when main character have all sorts of things happen to them and witness all sorts of things in a standalone, but never seem to be affected about it afterwards, it becomes tiresome and absurd after a while. You start wondering, why I am even watching these people if they are never going to change a bit, and if they don't even care what happened to them a week ago?

Now TOS, for the most part, made the format work, due to really interesting characters, but the lack of development was starting to show in season 2 and 3, and it would have even more if it had continued as a show. All those endings with the trio bantering and everyone laughing on the bridge were getting silly.

 

[Sky]

I like a good balance. After watching and loving Babylon 5, I've definitely started to prefer longer stories with an arc.

 

[C.E. Evans]

"The Menagerie" was a unique tie-in to something that had been done but practically no one had seen before (at the time).

It also had the benefit of being a short, self-contained arc. We learned a lot of the Enterprise's early history in this story, but the need to refer to that history was kept to these two episodes.

 

[Joel_Kirk]

One of the aspects of TOS that I loved, and one I continue to enjoy when I can find it in science fiction whether on television, film or literature, is novelty. Although there may be some familiar elements involved ultimately we're being shown something new. What fun is there in predictability?

For me "strange new worlds" doesn't literally have to be planet of the week, but the idea that we're seeing something not seen before or at least a fresh angle on a familiar idea.

Far too often I feel stories get caught up in what I think of as continuity porn: either revisiting a previous idea over and over and/or cramming as many references as possible to prior events. Far too rarely I feel we get to see something fresh and interesting.

So which do you prefer?

I prefer the continuity porn:

Right there...right there...Ohhhh yeahhh...

Reference 1! Oh...my Gooood...Ohhhh....Number 2.....



****

If I got your question/post correctly:
I don't mind the new stuff, but I feel that Trek--for awhile, at least--stepped over itself in terms of continuity. Ex: It will be established that 'something' occurred, only to have that 'something' forgotten, mishandled by bad writing, etc....

I do like the way the novels tie in all the crews; it shows that there actually is one universe rather than each series on its own continuity....

 

[Red Ranger]

I like the balance. I always found it fun when, for example, you'd hear a reference to Cestus III on DSN -- for example, Sisko and Cassidy Yates are talking about seeing her brother's baseball team on that planet, last seen in Arena, and one of the team names was the Pike City Pioneers. So two past references there.

I do agree that too much revisiting of past characters and situations can get a bit stale, unless there's something new revealed about those situations. Delving more into characters seen but never developed, like how ENT fleshed out the Andorians, is the preferred approach, as we found out new things about the Andorians nearly every time they appeared in the show.

I think most of the shows had a healthy balance myself.

BTW, I didn't vote in the poll, since there wasn't an option for "both done well."

 

[Ronald Held]

As a rule, I prefer the continuity porn

 

[Lord Garth]

I like "continuity porn" if it makes sense to have it there.

The thing with "continuity porn" (hate the term but I'll use it anyway) is that it's gradual and accumulative.

When TOS was on, it was less than three years old by the end. Outside of a few bedrock concepts like the Neutral Zone and Organian Peace Treaty, used to keep the Romulans and Klingons at bay, and with the exception of Harry Mudd appearing twice, there wasn't any revisiting of previous storylines. There wasn't any building on what was already established. Every episode was a new story or, at most, a variation on a previous story. But new or variation, there was always a different world or a different set of guests and when the story was done, we never saw them again.

Leaving out DS9 for now, when TNG ended you had 10 seasons worth of stories. Gradually it's going to become harder and harder to come up with new ideas entirely from scratch. There were still aliens you wouldn't see again but there were now other major races besides just the Klingons and the Romulans. The Borg, the Cardassians, and the Ferengi got to join in. Also, the intro notwithstanding, the Enterprise-D didn't really spend a lot of time going where no one had gone before. Starfleet sent the Enterprise to a lot of worlds the Federation was already familiar with. It's like in TOS we got to know the neighbors but in TNG we've already known the neighbors. This should be expected since it's a century later and if they really were exploring in the TOS era, than a lot of space would be mapped out by TNG's time. Another thing to consider is that since TNG had more seasons than TOS, there were more opportunities to go back to what we'd already seen before and get to know a guest character or a race of aliens better.

Then you get to DS9, we already knew all these people and places from TNG but DS9 also has the crew stationed in a single location where you're always around the same aliens and it's not like you're never going to see them again. They're here to stay. Because of this, DS9 was even more prone to "continuity porn" than Star Trek had ever been during the first two series. Add into the mix that DS9 overlapped with TNG for a bit and inherited a lot of its stories.

With DS9, "continuity porn" reached its tipping point. It got there because the story kept growing and growing and growing. That's why VOY took place on the other side of the galaxy, that's why ENT took place before any of it happened, and why ST XI was put into an alternate timeline. During the movies, TNG, and DS9 "continuity porn" grew. With VOY, ENT, and especially ST XI, they tried first to nullify and then to eliminate it.

I don't think filmed Trek will ever be as saturated with "continuity porn", as it was by the end of the '90s, again.