Not to beat a dead horse but the spore drive really bugs me when it comes to continuity.
It bugs me too, but there have always been comparably large continuity problems within
Star Trek. For instance, one more example that just occurred to me on top of all the others that have been discussed in this thread -- in TOS episodes like "Wolf in the Fold," they used a computerized sensor that could accurately determine whether a witness was lying. Plus they had psychotricorders that could, supposedly, infallibly read people's memories. So where did those profoundly powerful technologies go in the TNG era?
Take it from someone who's been a Trek fan since the '70s -- we've
always been bugged by continuity conflicts between different generations/eras of Trek. It's nothing new. Trek is an imperfect creation. It always has been. But we choose to forgive its imperfections for the sake of the stuff we do like.
The Klingons in Discovery I admit bug me, but that crossed over to macro for me because their appearance was so far removed from how they were previously depicted, to the point if they weren't explicitly stated to be Klingons, I probably wouldn't have guessed they were Klingons at first (whereas with the subtle changes to Romulans, Andorians and even Tellarites, it was still close enough to the original I easily knew what species they were).
I'm surprised to hear that. First off, they had the primary defining attribute of post-1979 Klingons, prominent ridged foreheads. Plus they were speaking Klingonese, talking up a storm about Kahless and honor, giving the death howl when a comrade died, etc. I never would've recognized James Cromwell as Zefram Cochrane on sight, but sight is not the only source of information that matters.
Na ah. You and a number of your fellow authors have explained plenty of contradictions in your novels. Your DTI novels for instance even explained some inconsistencies that I honestly didn't even think of until you brought them up. Greg Cox made sense of numerous discontinuities between Space Seed and TWOK, including why Khan wears a glove and even why his troupe looks like refugees from Guns'n'Roses. And I love that sort of thing. I mean, the stories still have to be good, and they have been, but I like that you guys pick up on some of those things and provide some rationale for it. And I give you all credit for doing it in such a way that it's actually believable in story. And some of the Discovery novels have offered some explanations for some of the production design, er, alterations that we've seen (just little nuggets here and there but still).
So I do think some contradictions bug you guys at least a little bit
.
Again, I was speaking as a consumer of fiction, not as a writer. As a writer, sure, I like reconciling continuity issues, because it's an enjoyable creative exercise. But as a reader or viewer, I can understand that if two stories by different authors are not mutually compatible with each other, that's just because they're not trying to be compatible with each other, because each is telling its own story in its own way. I don't require in-story explanations before I can understand or accept the difference between the stories. I don't need it explained to me why
Batman: The Brave and the Bold is in a different reality than
Batman: The Animated Series, or why
Sherlock is in a different reality than
Elementary. They're different because they're supposed to be different, because they're not trying to be the same. Because variations on a theme are not an aberration or a mistake, but a vital aspect of human creativity. Continuity is a device used
within certain stories,
when it serves those stories. It's an option, not a universal mandate. Demanding that
everything in fiction fit together as neatly as reality is misunderstanding how imagination works. The fact that we can imagine multiple separate possibilities is part of what makes imagination and creativity so powerful. It's an integral part of what imagination is for -- to let us model multiple possible paths before choosing the best one. So it's not a bad thing to be able to take a story in multiple contradictory directions. Discontinuity has its value as much as continuity does.
By analogy, I've always been very continuity-driven in my original fiction. I've tended to put all my stories in the same universe unless there was a reason they couldn't fit. I've tried to keep everything within each universe consistent and maintain a tight continuity with a minimum of errors or changes; to date, I've only had to change one story, my first, due to some outdated ideas. But when I've considered the question of whether I wanted to "explain" two of my universes as alternate timelines of each other, I've always ended up deciding not to, because it just didn't fit the way I defined the physics and history of those universes. They didn't
need to be reconciled or made compatible with each other. It didn't benefit them in any way and would've been counterproductive, because they were built on different rules and assumptions that would've just gotten in each other's way. I love continuity, but I recognize that it isn't always a necessary or appropriate option, because sometimes it's better for stories to stand apart as separate fictional constructs. Continuity, like any tool, is not meant to be used indiscriminately. There are cases where it's the right tool for the job, and cases where it's the wrong tool for the job.
