continuity? who cares

[Tralah]

I'd like to see the movie respect canon as much as possible, but if small insignificant details are changed (like who served under Captain Pike) I doubt I'm going to bring myself to care. If the story is as engaging and entertaining as I hope it'll be, I should be too busy having fun and enjoying watching it than to really dwell on those minor things.

 

[JoeZhang]

Ignoring continuity unless there's a good reason for it is just plain laziness. The Trek XI writers are being paid rather well, I assume. Make em work for their paycheck!

Which they will do if they write a good story that connects with a mainstream audience.

If they produce something that only appeals to us inbreeders then we have a problem and Trek is likely dead for a generation.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Ignoring continuity unless there's a good reason for it is just plain laziness.

Uh, no.

 

[Eric Cheung]

Temis the Vorta:

All excellent points. I don't mean to suggest that Enterprise wasn't flawed, it was seriously so, but I just mean that in retrospect its flaws work in its favor...to a point.

I think that the larger issues were just the people involved who couldn't execute their premise more effectively. I think that Berman bears a lot of responsibility here because he seems like he was very much a production producer more than a writing producer, so his priorities were more bottom-line based. It hampered the show. I didn't even really bother watching it between the second half of season 1 and the series finale because I had so soured on TPTB.

It was only when giving it another chance did I see it as at least being better than it gets credit for. Even before the show started I predicted that while VOY was trying to be a poor man's TNG, I anticipated that a Series V would be a poor man's DS9. I think that's what they were going for because there were much more references to earlier episodes than in VOY, and even early episodes often had to do with the consequences of the crew's actions. It was slowly becoming more serialized like DS9 and a lot of other current TV shows.

Is it the best Trek show? Heck no. It's probably in 4th place, though well above VOY, in my view. Again, maybe I'm being more forgiving because I tend to believe the creators of ENT were trying harder than VOY, but I think it was at least a step in the right direction, if a bit too late.

 

[Turtletrekker]

Ignoring continuity unless there's a good reason for it is just plain laziness.

Uh, no.

Uh, yes.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Ignoring continuity unless there's a good reason for it is just plain laziness.

Uh, no.

Uh, yes.

Uh, no.

Most of it is trivia. It has nothing to do with what makes a movie entertaining, a story gripping or characters worth getting emotionally involved with. All of those things should be priorities for the filmmakers and anything that distracts from that - any time they find themselves with a "that would be great, but it violates some fill-in-the-blank bit of continuity" - continuity should be tossed.

Doing otherwise makes it less likely that the movie will be worth the time of anyone but an obsessive fan, not more.

 

[Turtletrekker]

It would take a minimum of effort for a good writer to tell a story within established continuity.

Anything else is laziness. Period.

 

[RobertScorpio]

Ignoring continuity unless there's a good reason for it is just plain laziness.

Uh, no.

Uh, yes.

If ignoring aspects of Star Trek's 40 year history means making it more attractable for the general population, then I am all for it...

In fact if it scares off the fans who are offended when a Stardate is off by .07, or who gets mad because Shatner doesn't know what planet a given episode took place on, then I am all for the new show chasing off those fans...

Sorry..but it is as cut and dry as that. Kind of in that 'get a life' catagory you might say..

Rob
Scorpio

 

[Turtletrekker]

^

I don't give a fuck about that kind of minutiae, the series all contradicted themselves to one point or another with that kind of stuff.

 

[JuanBolio]

As long as they get it mostly right I'll be happy. I'd even accept hand phasers over lasers, though I'd be disappointed.

 

[Eric Cheung]

Real life has continuity errors all the time.

 

[Wheo]

I agree with those who believe that continuity isn't as big of a deal as it seems. I mean, they probably won't have errors of epic proportions, and so I think it'll be fine. Also, even if the movie is a huge flop, I think Trek won't necessarily "die" for a generation. After all, I know plently of people my age and younger who love Star Trek, in all it's incarnations. I couldn't tell you what it's like in the bigger cities, but...^_^;

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

It would take a minimum of effort for a good writer to tell a story within established continuity.

Anything else is laziness. Period.

Wrong.

How many successful screenplays have you written using established characters in a fixed continuity?

Considering Trek's continuity to be not worth adhering to has nothing to do with laziness but possibly a good deal to do with not being overly impressed by the content of that continuity. I'll certainly be glad to see a great many things changed or abandoned - the movie would be better for that, for much of the continuity is not worth preserving.

A lot of fans like to assert that ignoring continuity is "lazy," but they never support that in any way - it's treated as a self-evident assertion, because all it actually represents is the sentiment "I like the continuity and don't want to see it ignored."

Then there's the ever-popular "then do something else just don't call it 'Star Trek'" which insinuates that the continuity is the most or one of the most important things that makes Trek unique and worthwhile. Since that's not so, this assertion is another non-starter.

 

[Franklin]

Character continuity matters. Kirk should be recognizable as TOS Kirk within certain parameters and given the time in his life and career. McCoy should be McCoy. Spock should be Spock. Frankly, the rest of the characters were so more or less two-dimensional that they could do almost anything with them and one wouldn't have a lot of room to holler about it.

Thematic continuity matters. Trek is basically optimistic. While not every story qualifies, the morality play was a big TOS device. To make it dark or cynical is to remove its soul. The assumption in Trek is mankind is basically good. That has to remain. The sense of adventure needs to be there, too. And fun. Face it, TOS was never meant to be taken too seriously.

Trek historical continuity matters, but it matters least. And as far as that goes, using only TOS and the movies as canon (and not a single novel or piece of fan fic), there are enough contradictions, gray areas, and downright gaps of information in the continuity to provide a wide berth for any ship trying to sail through its waters.
That said, the very basics should be there. If you are going to invoke the name of The Franchise, you probably owe it that. But beyond that, trying to slavishly "make it all fit" assumes it was ever meant to go together in the first place. It wasn't. History was invented to fit the story, first. And to that end, XI wouldn't be the first Trek story to bend or rewrite it.

 

[Turtletrekker]

It would take a minimum of effort for a good writer to tell a story within established continuity.

Anything else is laziness. Period.

Wrong.

How many successful screenplays have you written using established characters in a fixed continuity?

Considering Trek's continuity to be not worth adhering to has nothing to do with laziness but possibly a good deal to do with not being overly impressed by the content of that continuity. I'll certainly be glad to see a great many things changed or abandoned - the movie would be better for that, for much of the continuity is not worth preserving.

A lot of fans like to assert that ignoring continuity is "lazy," but they never support that in any way - it's treated as a self-evident assertion, because all it actually represents is the sentiment "I like the continuity and don't want to see it ignored."

Then there's the ever-popular "then do something else just don't call it 'Star Trek'" which insinuates that the continuity is the most or one of the most important things that makes Trek unique and worthwhile. Since that's not so, this assertion is another non-starter.

If you were writing a screenplay about WW2, and decided that since you knew more about San Diego and Nazi's than Japanese and Pearl Harbor, you have the Nazis bomb San Diego instead of the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, that would be lazy. It would take a minimum of research to get those details right (or at least more right). The same applies here.

I'm not saying that Abrams should enslave himself to established continuity, just that he respect it.

 

[Akiraprise]

I'm not saying that Abrams should enslave himself to established continuity, just that he respect it.

^ Which, from every bit of information I've seen, he is. So there really is nothing to get worked up about. He seems to be respecting the established stuff, but he is also not going to be held hostage by it.

 

[EliyahuQeoni]

They should be as careful about "canon" and continuity as much as the creators of TOS were. Which is to say, not so much.

 

[Michael]

If you were writing a screenplay about WW2, and decided that since you knew more about San Diego and Nazi's than Japanese and Pearl Harbor, you have the Nazis bomb San Diego instead of the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, that would be lazy. It would take a minimum of research to get those details right (or at least more right). The same applies here.

I don't get why some people always bring up that analogy. Trek continuity isn't like real history. Star Trek is just entertainment. Its first and most important function is to be entertaining. It shouldn't adhere to a fake history.

Also, I'd love to see a movie that portrays some key elements of world history alternatively. Just to see how different everything could have turned out. I think that would be a bold movie. The best Twilight Zone episodes were about these kind of what-if stories. So that kind of negates your analogy, too.

They should be as careful about "canon" and continuity as much as the creators of TOS were. Which is to say, not so much.

I think that's sig-worthy.

 

[TeutonicNights]

I don't get why some people always bring up that analogy.

The "elizabethan costumes" argument is little better tho. I guess both sides have their stupid analogies.

Personally, I stopped caring. i think it will be more of a remake- roughly following the same canon, but not really being part of the same fictional universe. Star Trek 2.0.

 

[maryh]

If you had the chance of redoing things and eliminating the mistakes you made when you were younger wouldn't you do so? Its taken a while but they are figuring out what makes ST click and what makes it fail. They're figuring what rabbid fans want and what it takes to appeal to the genreal public. This is a great chance to relaunch it and get rid of things that don't work. I'd hate to see them put the failings back into the franchise just to keep continuity and canon. Spock doesn't have to shout.