Does it really matter?

[Stoek]

Personally I find nit picking and apologetics to be a great deal of fun.

The things that bother me are what I consider violations of the spirit of Trek.

One of the best examples of this to my mind is Specter Of The Gun. Where Kirk is under orders to force contact with a race that wants NOTHING to do with the UFP or Starfleet, for no good reason.

Also for anyone who wants to condemn the obsessive compulsiveness of many fans, well personally I think it is one of the best things about Trekkers. We want it to make sense. And in attempting to make it all make sense we get really neat ideas like the ENT episodes dealing with the legacy of the Eugenics Wars, and the Klingons. A storyline that is much neater than the real world explanation for why no bumpy foreheads during TOS.

 

[Kelthaz]

Well let's put it this way, Power Rangers is scientifically plausible enough for me. The moon has a breathable atmosphere, normal gravity, and the US military conducts routine exercises on it despite having modern day technology? No explanation? Works for me.

When it comes to entertainment I honestly don't care about the technical details or inconsistencies with reality. I'm interested in the characters and the plot. Now that's not to say that something like "Threshold" won't get a WTF response or uncontrollable laughter from me, but that will have no effect on my enjoyment of the episode. I generally subscribe to the Magic A is Magic A school of thought with some leeway given to bending the rules for the purposes of the plot.

Also, if the writers change or do something that has no effect on the characters or the plot, such as improving the Klingon make-up, changing the colour of the phasers, missing combadges, two Geordis appearing on the bridge because of a bad SFX shot, Picard calling Riker Jonathan by mistake, TNG getting filmed on the DS9 sets by mistake, or changing the power source of warp cores from dilithium crystals to jelly babies I would be fine with that.

 

[Anji]

Yeah, a certain amount of consistancy does matter. We are all required to be consistant in our everyday jobs and so should the writers and producers of Star Trek.

Small errors can be overlooked but if a producer overlooks it because he has the "I can because I am the producer" attitude well that is something I have to speak on.
(I won't name names here but you all know who I'm talking about.)

An honest mistake is acceptable. A careless or an error made as a "to hell with you" attitude towards the fans is not.

 

[Destructor]

I know that this is somewhat important to die-hard fans, but how much is it important to you?

You're on a TREK BULLETIN BOARD. We are the die-hard fans.

 

[Finn]

^A good number of posters here don't even post in the trek-related forums.

 

[Sector 7]

Or you just forget about it, and simply enjoy watching Star Trek, your #1 sci-fi franchise for life?

^This.

Many people complain about various inconsistencies, errors, continuity problems, etc. throughout the Star Trek forums.

I know that this is somewhat important to die-hard fans, but how much is it important to you? Does it really matter whether nacelles glow or not? People talking while being transported? Blue or gold deflector dish? Hi-tech or ''brewery'' engineering? Ship scaling problems? Misplaced comm-badge? Sybok finding God? Data's death? Stardate fluctuations? Klingon foreheads? Enterprise built on ground? Re-used planet/city scenes? Original or remastered?

Or you just forget about it, and simply enjoy watching Star Trek, your #1 sci-fi franchise for life?

...but I really don't care about stardate accuracy or the color of the original Ent's radar dish (although that's because I think the radar dish looks stupid anyway).

^You had me when you called it a radar dish...

RADAR DISH?!?!?! Are you kidding me?!?!?! Anyone can see its a satellite dish! The real question you should be asking is DirecTV or Dish Network?

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Continuity errors are bad when they're caused by sloppy writers who can't be bothered to get their facts right. But they're good when they deliberately overwrite bad writing (currently this is more a factor in Star Wars than Star Trek).

 

[ALF]

Many people complain about various inconsistencies, errors, continuity problems, etc. throughout the Star Trek forums.

I know that this is somewhat important to die-hard fans, but how much is it important to you? Does it really matter whether nacelles glow or not? People talking while being transported? Blue or gold deflector dish? Hi-tech or ''brewery'' engineering? Ship scaling problems? Misplaced comm-badge? Sybok finding God? Data's death? Stardate fluctuations? Klingon foreheads? Enterprise built on ground? Re-used planet/city scenes? Original or remastered?

Or you just forget about it, and simply enjoy watching Star Trek, your #1 sci-fi franchise for life?

That's a great list of nerd-rage topics.

"Teh canon" used to be extremely important to me, as I poured over technical manuals before the internet and created TNG role playing games as a truly fanatical nerd-lord. These days, as life goes on it is no longer the driving force in my life, although I still love Trek tech.

Although I do still enjoy this forum and it's posters immensely, I don't have the enthusiasm to endlessly nitpick a television series which was actually executed quite well in comparison to other TV shows of the era. The anger shown at the most pointless of details is kind of amazing sometimes. It is almost as though some take it personally that a continuity error occurred from time to time.

Family, friends, work, health and good times are my preferred priority over such discussion. I used to be very interested in the production side of Trek but that's slipped out of my interest as well. Trek's my escape from reality because it does such a great job of making real life problem disappear for 42 minutes. To me, that's priceless. TOS to ENT, it gets the job done.

I still love Star Trek most of all because when I turn it on I truly feel as though I'm off-planet, and even with all the inconsistencies in "Teh Almighty Canon" I'd learned to ignore those things and enjoy it for what it is, a well crafted television show. As others have stated, well told stories are well worth enduring any conflicts of fact.

In conclusion, try and embrace "suspension of disbelief." Try not to take the wonder out of the magic of tv/movies. Without it, it's just not very much fun, and you're better off watching the news or (shudder) reality Tv.

 

[Geck]

Plot holes within an episode and inconsistent characterisation bother me the most. Most continuity errors between different episodes/series/movies are minor enough that I can accept without them ruining my enjoyment. And I don't really give a sh!t about any of the technical/sciency stuff.

 

[Nick086]

I'm not a die hard Trek fan, but i miss hearing people cursing and yelling at one another in the voice chatrooms on yahoo. I miss the naming calling on the message boards whenever I would see a heated debate on a certain topic on the fourm. I would just I never nit pick in my life when it comes to trek, but seeing people getting angry over the littlest things and as long I wasn't in the picture made it fun to watch or hear online.

 

[CommanderRaytas]

Inconsistent characterisation is a good point. That's the kind of continuity I think matters the most. When they get a character doing something that doesn't add up at all, well, that's the kind of thing that makes me nerd-rage a little. Can I use that as a verb?

 

[Navaros]

I reject the loaded poll question and all the poll statements, which do not provide much of a choice of different statements, also seem to be implying that a Trek fan must accept continuity errors as fine - which in reality is not the case.

Continuity errors are extremely annoying and break immersion in the show/film, so long as they are not related to minutiae like small tech details. Things like Spock saying he doesn't drink in one episode and yet does drink in another, or lying in the series as a major plot point of an episode, yet saying he cannot lie in Trek IV - stuff like that is simply sloppy writing and significantly weakens the artistic and entertainment value of the work. Bad writing like that should not be excused.

 

[ALF]

^^ I think the general rule of thumb is that the producers aim at Joe Six Pack, who doesn't notice or care about such trivial matters. Nitpicking fans are in the vast minority of the muddy soap that is ratings, sponsors and $$$ TV production and that's why we have such irritations.

So yes, the Spock inconsistencies mentioned can't easily be dismissed.... but at the end of the day you have to either take it or leave it.

Plus, I can't see where television production on a super-tight deadline could function with a real-life version of Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons pouring over each line of each script in detail before approved for production. They do their best.

I'm reminded of when shortly after TAVT aired (Ent "finale") and there was so much nitpickery about the boards, one such thread I believe was dedicated exclusively to the turbolift of the ENT-D being that of the ENT-E. It was deemed as unacceptable in the extreme, for a very brief glimpse. Someone from the production team (was it Okuda?) came on the boards and basically said, "listen, we did our best but the turbolifts from ENT-D are long destroyed, and everyone on the production end really put a lot of extra effort into making the last few episodes of ENT as good as they possibly could have, particularly within the constraints of time + budget" or something to that effect.

Suspension of disbelief. Seriously, it's worth looking into.