It's not even the first time in Trek history. As I mentioned before, Zefram Cochrane has to be 31 in First Contact (he outright says in TOS Metamorphosis that he was 87 when he disappeared, and Enterprise locked down the date of his disappearance at 2119)
Dating Picard
- Thread starter Lord Hobbers
- Start date
A far earlier example, and closer to Speleers's case: Walter Koenig was 31 when he played the 22-year-old Ensign Chekov.
Picard said he had been practicing that speech to her for 30 years. That almost lines up with TNG Season 7, just 1 year off.
I do not think the change was made after filming.
Unless we get something more concrete later that puts it more firmly in 2401 (besides the stardate, which I can ignore), perhaps a headcanon setting of 2405 could work, as the 250th anniversary of the founding of the Coalition of Planets in "Terra Prime"? I can't buy 2401 or 2411, but that seems to split the difference a little.
I just gave an example above this post.
I can ignore that too. People round up and down all the time.
Was his mouth visible when he said it? Dialogue is often altered in post-production by cutting away from the speaking character and dubbing in their new lines while they're off-camera. We're so used to seeing camera angles cut back and forth between characters in a scene that we often don't notice it and assume we saw the character speaking.
I mentioned that possibility above, and I'm increasingly warming to it. I think it's the best compromise.
"Jim, the Enterprise is twenty years old," says Admiral Morrow at least 28 years after "The Cage."
Then there are the "200 years" references in "Space Seed" and "Tomorrow is Yesterday," which by modern canon are off by nearly a century.
Basically, I learned long ago not to take any numbers in Star Trek too literally. You just drive yourself crazy trying to reconcile them all.
Hence why I said, headcanon. It's not solid enough for me so I'll invoke Death of the Author. YMMV.
Well, the whole problem here is that there are contradictory references within the show itself. If they were consistent, there'd be no problem. So a single isolated reference doesn't resolve anything -- it just underlines how inconsistent the show's dating is.
I mean, last season was explicitly said to be the end of 2401 harvest season, which would be October. Yet now we're being told it's April 2401 and it's at least several months after season 2. It is an unambiguous fact that they have contradicted themselves. So invoking Word of God doesn't help, since that word is inconsistent. All we can do is try to rationalize the inconsistencies as best we can, as Trek fans have had to do since the 1960s, because the franchise has always been fraught with inconsistencies and self-contradictions (e.g. "The Squire of Gothos" putting TOS in the 28th century).
Heck, that very inconsistency is part of the reason fans get invested. If everything were perfect and we had nothing to question or wonder about or solve, we wouldn't have to put as much thought and effort into it and we probably wouldn't care as much. Solving problems is fun. It's not wrong to question and challenge fiction; it shows that we care enough to make the effort.
I personally think I would care more.
It barely requires any handwaving though. It's a hologram of a dying man, it doesn't require a line to explain everything, the audience can fill in the gaps. But I understand where you are coming from, there are clearly inconsistencies within the text and in some of the supplementary material on social media.
Is this actually stated? I know we had Picard speculating that he was 23 or 24, which Jack neither confirmed nor denied. I may have missed a line.
Again I don't think this is a smoking gun. She was made acting captain of the Stargazer at the end of season 2, which, with the backing of Picard and Janeway, may easily have become a permanent rank given her relevant experience.
We saw Kira commissioned as a Commander, the Maquis were given provisional ranks which lead to Captain Chakotay, Kelvin Pike did whatever he liked with Cadet Kirk, and there's whatever happened with First Officer Tilly. Starfleet is pretty flexible with handing out ranks and promotions. Unless your name is Harry Kim.
I don't disagree, but I just don't think it's particularly problematic. If they did screw up, they seem to have caught pretty much everything by the time it was broadcast.
As you say above (whilst I was typing!) these things happen during production. There's lots of moving parts between scripting, design, filming, post-production. They won't ever catch everything. So far I'd say they've done a pretty good job at reconciling it all.
Raffi's granddaughter is born sometime around the first season and when she looks at the hologram of her, she's like 2 or 3. Kestra is still young enough to be living with Riker and Deanna at home. Based on how old she seemed to be in season 1, then if it was in 2405 or 2411, she'd be in university, the academy, or grown and away from home. Also the synth ban being lifted is recent enough that brought back some lingering issues in the Riker marriage according to interviews with the cast and Matalas.
All that, plus the Ro and Picard conversation where he says it's been 30 years, points to it being around 2401/2402 and that was always set around there.
All that, plus the Ro and Picard conversation where he says it's been 30 years, points to it being around 2401/2402 and that was always set around there.
Or people can realize that what we see onscreen is a TV show. I can watch an episode of TOS followed by an episode of SNW and I don't ask myself how it can be the same ship. It just is. It looks different because they are from 2 TV shows made 60 years part.
None of this is about "smoking guns," certainly not any single thing in isolation. It's about the cumulative impression it all gives when taken together. Collectively, the evidence seems to suggest that the season was originally intended to take place later than is now being claimed. It's a mystery why that would be the case, but it's the impression I get.
I'm not really interested in the game of handwaving things and explaining them away. You can do that with just about anything, so it's trivial. I'm just curious about the series of decisions that went into creating this work of fiction, and why it seems that they changed their minds after the fact, in a way that appears to create more problems than it solves.
(It occurs to me to wonder if maybe there are some unannounced plans for a fourth season or spinoff series that has to be in 2401-2 for some reason, and that compelled them to compress the timeline for season 3 from what they'd originally intended. But why would that be?)
I disagree. I don't think a 2401 date makes any sense at all. The mere fact that season 3 is evidently set six months before season 2 is bad enough. Even if we ignore the explicit on-camera evidence and assume season 2 was in 2400 instead of 2401, that's still only six months for everything that has to happen between seasons, and that feels far too rushed. Sure, you can force it to fit if you're determined to, but it's a hell of a reach, and a longer interval would be far more believable.
Perhaps we'll get the full story one day. I'd interested in the behind the scenes story of how this TNG reunion came about.
Incidentally, Terry Matalas is a proponent of fans filling in the gaps.
https://twitter.com/TerryMatalas/status/1639319320747720704?t=wIlZOd7Oq_XB7BFlkoVw4Q&s=19
Incidentally, Terry Matalas is a proponent of fans filling in the gaps.
https://twitter.com/TerryMatalas/status/1639319320747720704?t=wIlZOd7Oq_XB7BFlkoVw4Q&s=19
Yeah, too many inconsistencies. They should’ve made it the anniversary of the Federation’s founding. It just makes more sense. I’m surprised that Matalas isn’t getting a lot of heat online for this like other Trek show runners would’ve gotten.
Same. There is a reason why I have my own inside joke about a Terry Voodoo doll. Because if this were any other season he would be treated far worse than that bad joke of mine.
I can see why they wouldn't have wanted to jump a full decade between seasons. But it's all just so weird.
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