Earliest "Canon Violation"?

[Michael]

Coming from someone who couldn't care less about continuity issues this may seem like a weird question, but does anyone know when Star Trek contradicted itself for the first time? I'm just curious, with all the discussions about "Canon Violations" going on around here, when was the first instance of one fact contradicting another? And I mean chronologically ...

 

[Warped9]

Coming from someone who couldn't care less about continuity issues this may seem like a weird question, but does anyone know when Star Trek contradicted itself for the first time? I'm just curious, with all the discussions about "Canon Violations" going on around here, when was the first instance of one fact contradicting another? And I mean chronologically ...

That will take some thought. I'd have to check but there's a Stardate mixup in two early episodes where the dates overlap each other.

The continuity gets tight in regard to Kirk's backstory as to when he left the Academy. He says Captain Garrovick of the Farragut was his commanding officer since he left the Academy. But That could potentially contradict the reference in "Courtmartial" about Kirk being an ensign aboard the Republic.

There's also the first time (whenever it was) we hear "James T. Kirk" after we see "James R. Kirk" in WNMHGB.

In WNMHGB there's reference to lithium crystals while later in first season we hear reference to dilithium crystals.

 

[SchwEnt]

Because nothing can be simple or easy...

If you're going for an "earliest" example, I suppose you would have to decide between production order or airdate order.
You could start with the airing of "The Man Trap" and find violations from that point on.

Or you could start with "The Cage" pilot and anything produced after that point which contradicted it. That would be an easy choice. Lots of regular production TOS violated "The Cage" canon.

 

[Fist McStrongpunch]

You could start with the airing of "The Man Trap" and find violations from that point on.

In that case it would probably be the uniforms used in WNMHGB.

 

[Noname Given]

The fact that they use "Time Warp" Drive in The Cage

Pike: "Our Time Warp...Factor 7"

and later on the planet:

Ensign: "And you won't believe how fast you can get back, the Time Barrier's been broken..."

When in the second pilot Where No Man has Gone Before - it's now a space warp drive; and it's a signifigant difference as a few episodes in the first season deal with the 1701 and crew getting into time warps, and they are shocked and surprised by them. If they HAD a 'Time Warp' drive (as stated in The Cage); I doubt they'd be all that surprised by, or unfamiliar with time warps as they are in the later episodes.

 

[Christopher]

I've always felt that "Where No Man" contradicts itself. If they're travelling so far beyond where civilization has probed, then why is there a mining station, even an automated one, right next to where they got thrown out of the barrier? Somebody had to get that far out before in order to build the place, and it was obviously designed to be occupied (right down to having a brig). Conversely, if civilization has gotten out this far -- going back all the way to the Valiant 200 years before -- then why has nobody ever gone farther until now, and why is the barrier unknown until now? It doesn't really add up.

"The Corbomite Maneuver" has a major contradiction in the visual effects. The cube buoy is said to be 107 meters on a side, which would require the Enterprise as shown to be somewhere around 3 kilometers long. But the Fesarius is said to be roughly a mile (1.6 km) in diameter, yet the Enterprise is shown to be close to the size of just one of its spherical "cells" (or possibly much smaller, given perspective) which would make the Enterprise on the order of 100 meters or so in length at most. (And of course the line "Reading goes off my scale, Captain. Must be a mile in diameter" is a contradiction in itself, since a starship's science station should be capable of measuring things the size of planets and stars.)

 

[Lieut. Arex]

Why did the U.S. go to the Moon forty years ago and then abandon the effort? Politics and economics. The Valiant mission may have stretched the technology of the era to the breaking point and its unexplained loss caused UESPA and/or Starfleet to reevaluate the program. In the intervening era, there's the Earth-Romulan war, rising tensions with the Klingons, distractions hampering it resumption. It's possible the missions of the Enterprise mark the beginning of a new period of deep-space exploration after decades spent consolidating the inner part of Federation territory.

As for the mining facility, perhaps it was built by automation with the idea of future occupancy or the convenience of the ore ship crews.

 

[plynch]

Yeah, I think we had better go for outright contradictions, not implausibilities, as in mining stations so close to "No Man" land, if you get what I mean. I would list the changes in uniforms as an impausibility, not an outright contradiction. Militaries do change uniforms. "Time warp" sounds like a winner already, for an outright contradiction.

 

[Christopher]

Okay, how about this: "The Naked Time" establishes that the ship is powered by a matter-antimatter reaction. Later, "The Alternative Factor" claims that the ship is powered by dilithium crystals and that any matter-antimatter reaction would annihilate the entire universe. Which, fortunately, was ignored in all subsequent Trek.

Or how about Kirk in "The Corbomite Maneuver" complaining about being assigned a female yeoman (Rand), as though that were unusual, even though in "Where No Man" he already had a female yeoman (Smith)?

 

[Nerys Myk]

Sulu going from physicist to Helmsman? Or iin broadcast orde helmsman to physicist to hemsman. In my personal continuity physicist Sulu is Walter, Hikaru's brother.

 

[SpyOne]

I gotta go with Kirk's name:
In WNMHGB, his gravestone says "James R. Kirk". In Mudd's Women, Harry Mudd calls him "James T." Court Martial confirms is: his name is James T. Kirk. So while it was most of the way through the first season before it was confirmed, the first contradiction was in the fourth episode made (counting The Cage as #1) and the sixth aired.

Unless I missed something else.

 

[T'Girl]

The two explanation I've come up with for the "R."

The R stood for Roy, as in James Roy Kirk. This would help explain Nomad's confusing Jackson Roy Kirk and James Roy Kirk.

The R stood for Romeo. Gary Mitchell made up the nickname James Romeo Kirk, because of his friend's luck with the ladies, at the end of WNMHGB there was still enough of the old Gray left to remember the friendly joke and place it on the tombstone.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

The fact that they use "Time Warp" Drive in The Cage

Pike: "Our Time Warp...Factor 7"

and later on the planet:

Ensign: "And you won't believe how fast you can get back, the Time Barrier's been broken..."

When in the second pilot Where No Man has Gone Before - it's now a space warp drive; and it's a signifigant difference as a few episodes in the first season deal with the 1701 and crew getting into time warps, and they are shocked and surprised by them. If they HAD a 'Time Warp' drive (as stated in The Cage); I doubt they'd be all that surprised by, or unfamiliar with time warps as they are in the later episodes.

Actually I think the drive system in the Cage was Hyperdrive. When they try to leave Talos after Number One and Colt are taking Spock orders the crew to try to use the hyperdrive to escape.

Also another contradiction is Pike's I'm not used to a woman on the bridge (besides Number One) after Colt showed up which was ironic since about a minute before that he read a print out from a station maned by a woman.

 

[Cyke101]

Earliest canon violation? Simple: having a woman in command.

ZING!

 

[plynch]

I gotta go with Kirk's name:
In WNMHGB, his gravestone says "James R. Kirk". In Mudd's Women, Harry Mudd calls him "James T." Court Martial confirms is: his name is James T. Kirk. So while it was most of the way through the first season before it was confirmed, the first contradiction was in the fourth episode made (counting The Cage as #1) and the sixth aired.

Unless I missed something else.

Maybe Mitchell just got it wrong.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Maybe, but he's known Jim since the academy and is a close friend. So the idea he wouldn't know his middle name is a bit dodgey.

 

[Hober Mallow]

There's no real way to find the earliest canon violation, because it's not that cut and dry. A lot of the stuff that producers and audiences only later decided was canon wasn't there early in the series. So is a mention of Space Central or UESPA a canon violation, or is the later mention of Starfleet and the UFP a canon violation of earlier estabished facts?

 

[Ronald Held]

Mitchell thought the "R" stood for racketball.

 

[Nerys Myk]

There's no real way to find the earliest canon violation, because it's not that cut and dry. A lot of the stuff that producers and audiences only later decided was canon wasn't there early in the series. So is a mention of Space Central or UESPA a canon violation, or is the later mention of Starfleet and the UFP a canon violation of earlier estabished facts?

Of course what we're really talking about are continuity errors. "R" and "T" or UESPA, Space Command and Starfleet are all part of the canon. Early continuity was more fluid as the show was being developing as it was written and filmed. Much more so than the later seasons of TOS and in the spin offs. As characters, Spock and Kirk probably evolved more than the rest. Some of the character quirks from early in season one were abandoned as Shatner and Nimoy (along with the writers) shaped the characters. The science and tech no doubt evolved, changed and got contradictory as needed for each episode too.

 

[Christopher]

^Right. Canon is not continuity. Any long-running canon tweaks its own continuity and contradicts itself. Canon is just an overall core body of work that's treated as though it represents a consistent whole, even when it doesn't.