Do continuity errors/contradictions in TrekLit bother you?

[Hoshi_Mayweather]

The way I see it, especially in regards to the new film:

There are a lot of different universes: If two stories are good, but contradict canon in some way, I consider it part of my 'personal' canon that events just happened in parallel universes.

 

[Paris]

So I take it that you can't bring yourself to watch film or TV adaptations of comic book superheroes, since those are always contradicted by the canonical source material (i.e., the comic books)?

Characters like Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, Wolverine, The X-Men, Iron Man, etc. have all had retcons in the comics at some point or other, so to say that their movies violate the canon established in comic book form, would be in error.

No it wouldn't. I mean, Star Trek has featured a retcon or it in its history -- anti-matter destroying the universe in "The Alternate Factor" and then being the thing they routinely use to travel FTL in the rest of the Trekverse, for instance, or McCoy claiming that Vulcans were conquered by Humans in "The Conscience of the King." And yet that doesn't mean that Trek lacks a canonical continuity.

Those characters have a canonical continuity -- it's whatever the continuity is in the current comics. Period. Any adaptation of the comics that does not adhere to the canonical continuity is therefore a contradiction from the canon, and didn't happen in the canon.

OK...what? So canon evolves with these characters over the years...? So we agree then? Canon is what it is, in whatever medium it happens in? Is this right? I'm kind of confused how this is different from what I said in the other half of my post; the part that you didn't include in your quote.

 

[Sci]

OK...what? So canon evolves with these characters over the years...? So we agree then? Canon is what it is, in whatever medium it happens in? Is this right? I'm kind of confused how this is different from what I said in the other half of my post; the part that you didn't include in your quote.

You argued that those characters lack a canonical continuity because the comic books have altered their continuities in the past.

I demonstrated that Star Trek has done the same thing, and that this does not mean that Star Trek lacks a canonical continuity. The implication being that characters like Batman still have a canonical continuity.

From there, I argue that films like The Dark Knight or Spider-Man 2 contradict the canonical continuity, and are therefore non-canonical.

From there, I suggest that not being able to enjoy a non-canonical Star Trek novel if the canon contradicts it in some way is like not being able to enjoy The Dark Knight because the Batman canon contradicts it.

 

[JB2005]

Only one continuity error has ever bugged me...Voyager having Quantum Torpedoes in String Theory...because i just thought that was lazy.

 

[ronny]

It bothers me that there's one minute of canonical screen time for Captain Bateson, establishing that he has at least two female bridge officers and is not in the middle of a crisis, and Diane Carey's Ship of the Line ignores that. She just has to be consistent with a tiny little bit of filmed Trek, it's all she's got to build on, and she ignores it, presenting Bateson and his all-male crew frantically fleeing a Klingon attack. But there are plenty of other reasons I dislike that book.

Exactly. It doesn't bother me overly much if something in a book is contradicted by a line of dialogue from episode 36 scene 4 or something like that but when you're basing your book on a minute of film and you get it that wrong, that's just lame. There are so many things wrong with that book it's unbelievable.

That's about the only time I've been annoyed by a contradiction, because it's so obviously just wrong. Usually if I spot a discrepancy I figure "they just got it wrong" and move on since it doesn't happen all that often.

 

[captcalhoun]

it's when the TV shows get things wrong that annoys me more. i'll let stuff in TOS slide since they were making it as they went along, but when they make cock-ups in the later shows, i get annoyed.

that and doing stupid stuff like making the ship five times bigger and coming out with stupid BS like creating blackholes in the middle of a planet or transporters that can't lock on to moving people when Archer's first time being beamed up was when he was running...

 

[Lonemagpie]

transporters that can't lock on to moving people when Archer's first time being beamed up was when he was running...

There's a big speed difference between a middle-aged man running along, and a body falling at terminal velocity...

 

[Rosalind]

For me, it all depends.

If the contradictions are within a group of works that are clearly supposed to be in continuity with each other, then yes that annoys the hell out of me and will greatly impact my ability to enjoy the story regardless of how good the rest of the story may be. For example: Things apart of a series like the DS9-R, Voy-R, TNG-R etc if those books start contradicting each other that's a problem. Like Steve Roby, I found Before Dishonor's contradictions of Q&A most egregious.

Then let's not get into contradictions within the same book. If a shuttlecraft was destroyed on page 5 then was seen flying around on page 200 without some sort of time jump or other good explanation I'd have a problem with that.

As for things not specifically set in the same continuity (even if in the same universe) I don't have much issue with that sort of contradiction. All one needs to do is apply the "Myriad Universes" concept. So Federation still *ahem* "happened" as did First Contact, they just occurred in different Universes -- er um, Quantum Realities.

quoted because it saves me typing the whole thing again.

 

[seigezunt]

I eat continuity errors for breakfast. After all, I'm a Doctor Who fan, too, and they wrote the book on continuity errors.

Seriously, though, I think of ST as more "myth" than "canon," so discrepancies can be glossed over. It also helps to have a piss-poor memory.

 

[JD]

It does bother me if things in the same series or continuity contradict each other, or if a book contradicts an earlier episode. Now I'm talking about big things here, like saying somebody dying in one book only to have pop up fine in the next with no explanation, I can deal with small things like getting numbers wrong in a stardate.
On the other hand if two things in different continuities contradict each other, or if a later show/move contradicts a book then I just assume it was a parallel reality and I can continue on perfectly happily.

 

[BillJ]

transporters that can't lock on to moving people when Archer's first time being beamed up was when he was running...

There's a big speed difference between a middle-aged man running along, and a body falling at terminal velocity...

Add to that massive gravity distortions due to the planet collapsing on itself.

To answer the question: It doesn't bother me as long as the characters are right.

 

[William Leisner]

It also helps to have a piss-poor memory.

Quoted for... something...

 

[Sci]

transporters that can't lock on to moving people when Archer's first time being beamed up was when he was running...

The transporters in ENT were always much faster than the transporters in TOS. I always took that to mean that there was some additional aspect added to the transport process by the 23rd Century that made it slower: The bio-filters.

Think about it. Transporters in the 22nd Century would necessarily be more primitive, and the ability to detect and then filter out foreign organisms sounds like a much more complex process than just transporting whatever's there. So I figure, by the 23rd Century, they added bio-filters to the transporters, and that both slowed the process down and required the subjects to be relatively stationary (unless the transporter operator was really good, as in the new movie).

 

[seigezunt]

transporters that can't lock on to moving people when Archer's first time being beamed up was when he was running...

The transporters in ENT were always much faster than the transporters in TOS. I always took that to mean that there was some additional aspect added to the transport process by the 23rd Century that made it slower: The bio-filters.

Think about it. Transporters in the 22nd Century would necessarily be more primitive, and the ability to detect and then filter out foreign organisms sounds like a much more complex process than just transporting whatever's there. So I figure, by the 23rd Century, they added bio-filters to the transporters, and that both slowed the process down and required the subjects to be relatively stationary (unless the transporter operator was really good, as in the new movie).

I love this stuff.

Star Trek Fans: Explaining Away Production Goofs Since 1966.

 

[rahullak]

I find it quite amusing that a certain Nasat that takes continuity issues quite seriously has not made its presence felt on this thread yet.

 

[Paris]

I find it quite amusing that a certain Nasat that takes continuity issues quite seriously has not made its presence felt on this thread yet.

Agreed . WHERE ARE YOU NASAT?! SHOW YOURSELF!!

 

[Christopher]

The transporters in ENT were always much faster than the transporters in TOS. I always took that to mean that there was some additional aspect added to the transport process by the 23rd Century that made it slower: The bio-filters.

But there's no evidence that biofilters existed before the 24th century, and episodes like "Miri" and "The Omega Glory" suggest that transporters of the era didn't have the ability to filter out disease organisms. Not to mention "The Mark of Gideon." Would Kirk still have had Vegan choriomeningitis microbes in his blood if the biofilters edited them out?

So I figure, by the 23rd Century, they added bio-filters to the transporters, and that both slowed the process down and required the subjects to be relatively stationary (unless the transporter operator was really good, as in the new movie).

But in "Assignment: Earth," we were shown that transporters could beam up people in rapid motion so long as they were set to wide-beam. As others have stated, the far-from-ideal circumstances of the transport in the movie probably made it more necessary for the target to be still than would normally be the case. (After all, Spock in the Jellyfish was moving quite quickly relative to the Enterprise when he was beamed aboard.)

My take on the transporter-lock problems in the film's Vulcan sequence is that the subjects moved after the initial transporter lock had been established. With Kirk and Sulu, the transporters were initially targeted on the platform, and then once they fell off, the operator had to retarget the scanners and "catch up" with two people who were falling at terminal velocity, much faster than simple running, as someone said above. With Amanda, she moved after the transport had already been initiated. So the beam was calibrated to a stationary target, and since transport was already engaged, it was too late to reset when she fell out of the beam.

 

[Lynx]

Not that much.

I have all the Star Trek Voyager books covering seasons 1-3 and I found no problems to sort them into a timeline without having too many errors and contradictions which disturbs it.

There are some small contradictions here and there but when I come to one of those I just shove it aside mentally and continue to read.

(For those who like the Voyager seasons 1-3 books and wonder where the odd things and contradictions are, read my comments about them in my book reviews)
http://lynx677.110mb.com/bookreviews.html

As for books from other series, I've read some of them occasionally and have no problems with contradictions there either.

 

[Cap'n Crunch]

I don't really have much problems with contradictions. If it's something big I just do what some call "mental gymnastics" to get it to work. For example, when reading Federation I mentally changed some dates, imaged some extra scenes, and "deleted" a few scenes. Like at the end

Spoiler: Federation

when Cochrane is beamed aboard the E-D, I just pretended he recognized the TNG crew, but upon noticing their uniforms (and slightly younger appearance) he just decided not to speak up and risk altering the timeline. In fact, I actually pictured him opening his mouth to say something before deciding not to.

One thing that is somewhat annoying is when you have one page that says something different than the previous one. For example, in Mission Gamma: Cathedral

Spoiler: Cathedral

Bashir mistakenly asks for twenty cc's of isoboromine (it was supposed to be boromine), but on the next page Richter says he ordered thirty cc's, then on the next page it's back to twenty cc's. This confused me because I wondered if it was supposed to indicate that Bashir had made two mistakes, but apparently not. Strangely enough after he uses the antidote he does not administer the boromine as he was supposed to originally, which I assume is another authorial/editorial gaffe.

But when things are that small, I just tend to shrug them off and continue (even though it does stick in my head for a while).

 

[Section 31]

To be honest, continuity errors do bother me, but much less so today now that the books pretty much exclusively carry the story forward and the authors and editors make a substantial effort to keep them consistent with each other. In the old days (1990s), it was pretty annoying when something happened in one book, and then was contradicted by another (or the tv series itself). I guess I'm not a real big parallel universes kind of guy...

Another thing that's annoyed me in the past are errors with copy-editing, for instance if a book has several typos in close proximity. I enjoyed reading the Errand of Vengeance books, but there was one point where several Klingon names that started with 'K' were incorrectly used interchangeably. Needless to say, it was a little confusing, though in most instances I was able to figure out who it really was by looking at the context.