That's no excuse for poor work. If your bosses tell you to incorporate something, you embrace and run with it.
Has Enterprise ever messed up the continuity?
- Thread starter Garren
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That's no excuse for poor work. If your bosses tell you to incorporate something, you embrace and run with it.
Ideally, yes. But sometimes such things are done strategically: If the executives tell you to do something and you do it badly enough that audiences react negatively, maybe it'll get the executives to stop pushing for it so you can drop it and do what you wanted to do anyway. Which is pretty much what did happen with the TCW, since it was barely referenced in season 2, swerved into an entirely separate direction in season 3, and was wrapped up at the earliest opportunity in season 4.
Same staff, same results. The problem was not just a lack of talent, but ideology--Berman and his crew were determined with each new series to remake ST in Berman's own image. A test pattern with "Star Trek" slapped on its face. Even DS9--defended to the death by some--did not become a cultural milestone. Today--outside of places like this board--who among the average people on the street can even name a character from DS9, VOY or ENT?
But here's a BIG continuity error. In the teaser for TNG "Attached" Beverly Crusher states as a fact thatthe United Earth government, as we saw it in Enterprise, was not established til 2150 (I've re watched the scene three times tonight, and while she was asking Picard a "What If" question, she does say "What If one of the old nation states---say Australia, had decided not to join the world government in 2150?"). So if it took 4 years just to complete Columbia, then which Nation State on Earth authorized the building of the Enterprise in 2147? Or for that matter, which Nation State did Starfleet report to before December 31, 2150? And yet, in Enterprise everyone was acting as if the United Earth government had existed since the 2070's at least (and even the New United Nations had ceased by 2036). Apparently the nations of the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany, the UK and every other nation was still an independent nation til 2150.
There is no reason to believe that the United Earth Governement didn't exist prior to 2150. It just might be that if one of the holdout hadn't joined it might have given the Vulcans more weight to throw against the NX Project and Archer's missions, perhaps delaying various conacts and resulting in some dire problems for Earth, if not everyone in the nearby star systems (like a war between Vulcan and Andoria).
Remember that the European Union does not include all of Europe, and yet has existed in one form or another for decades, even with less members than it how now. So it is possible for there to be a United Earth that doesn't quite include everybody.
Remember that the European Union does not include all of Europe, and yet has existed in one form or another for decades, even with less members than it how now. So it is possible for there to be a United Earth that doesn't quite include everybody.
In the teaser Crusher and Picard were discussing how KesPrytt was applying to join as only a three-quarter unified planet. And Crusher was throwing out the hypothetical what if card about if the United Earth government had not been established in 2150 with 100 percent of the world's nations agreeing to it, would Earth have been allowed into the Federation.
It's like if Quebec had not agreed to enter Canadian Confederation in 1867? Would Canada exist today (2014) as an independent country, or would we still be a colony of the UK?
There was probably some sort of "United Nations" prior to 2150, but it was probably like the United Nations of today, where it has no real power, and it can not speak for all the nations and people of Earth. From what Beverly was saying the United Earth government of 2150 had real power and could speak for all nations of the Earth in 2150. Whereas prior to 2150, every nation was speaking for its own people, and each nation had its own power.
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Maybe the network wasn't dumb, though, because you have to ask ultimately--what did the audience want to see?
When I first found out about Enterprise, I thought it would be Captain April in a Cage-like environment. Deliberate 60s retro-ness like Star Trek Continues and Phase II. If they had done it that way, I think it would have been a hit, and people would be talking about how bold it was to deliberately recreate the old look and feel and risk people ridiculing it as cheezy or fake. Retconning it and making it look modernistically retro I think was a gamble that failed from the start.
There's already been a failed attempt to bring back Enterprise. meanwhile crowdfunding flows into TOS (or pre-TOS) fan-shows like Axanar, Continues, and Phase II, and JJ rebooted TOS. Making a prequel show that didn't push any pop-culture buttons in its production design was a fatal mistake. The ship looks more influenced by First Contact than TOS.
I think even Abrams credited Phase II for making him realize that a TOS era movie could actually work and that people would be interested in it.
I have to disagree. I think you're mistaking the tastes of the niche audience of TOS purists with the tastes of the larger, general audience that any series or movie has to appeal to in order to succeed. Most audiences today would not want to see a series set in the future yet looking like it was made in the 1960s. It would've just been too weird. Remember, the advertisers that pay for TV series want to appeal to the prime buying demographic, viewers age 18-49. Most of those target viewers have no nostalgia for 1960s television.
It also would not have been what Gene Roddenberry would've wanted. He created Star Trek to be progressive and forward-looking. He didn't want it to look like a product of the 1960s; he made it look as futuristic as he could using the limited resources he had in the 1960s. That's why, when he got a bigger budget and better technology for ST:TMP, he embraced a wholesale redesign of the entire universe, from the ships to the equipment to the alien makeups. He explicitly told audiences that TMP was a more accurate rendition of a future he'd only been able to roughly approximate with the resources of TOS. So he would've hated it if a modern Trek series had recreated the limitations and flaws he was saddled with in the '60s, rather than the underlying futurism he was aspiring to create.
I believe that a dramatic visual style would have helped the show --- let's say something that looked like a Flash Gordon serial, done to HDTV standards --- at least in making it look original and energetic, and maybe even adding a bit of whimsy to the production. (Trek has never been good at whimsy.)
But there's no way that it would have made the show a hit. The worst problem Enterprise had was starting out with stories that were too often wheezy and tired --- good grief, they did a holodeck episode their first season (with another holodeck cameo that season!) --- that were just too out of synch with what audiences were looking for.
The best you could hope for is a little more curiosity about watching the show, and maybe people going in with a bit of warmer grin, but after that it's the stories that are going to keep or lose the audience.
In Attached Picard said that the World Government was cemented in 2150.
Enterprise started in 2051.
They should have still been cleaning up confetti, but it was never mentioned.
The World Government sounds like a massive #### you to the Vulcans.
(Craven) Please leave, look, I promise, we do have our shit together, we can handle it by ourselves from here.
Or...
(Defiant) We have our shit together. You have 10 seconds to #### off, or there is going to be trouble.
Unless of course, it took the Vulcans a hundred years to force a World Government on Humanity and they were not happy about it every step of the way, and resented the entire liberty.
Enterprise started in 2051.
They should have still been cleaning up confetti, but it was never mentioned.
The World Government sounds like a massive #### you to the Vulcans.
(Craven) Please leave, look, I promise, we do have our shit together, we can handle it by ourselves from here.
Or...
(Defiant) We have our shit together. You have 10 seconds to #### off, or there is going to be trouble.
Unless of course, it took the Vulcans a hundred years to force a World Government on Humanity and they were not happy about it every step of the way, and resented the entire liberty.
Is that the episode some have either tried or did have removed from official canon because it screwed everything up so bad?
The one where Janeway and Paris turn into slugs?
Not to mention that ST was never meant to be retro. It was supposed to be cutting-edge and forward-looking.
First off, "official canon" is essentially a myth. There's no office that goes around sticking "canon" labels on things. "Canon" is a term coined by fandom to refer to the original source material of a franchise as distinct from derivative works and pastiches. The people making a TV or movie series never give any thought to whether it's canon, because that's more a consideration of fans and critics, and because whatever the showrunners create is the canon by definition. The only times creators/studios really address the question of canon is when they're discussing tie-ins created by others and whether they would be acknowledged by the canon.
So the makers of the shows themselves just think in terms of what they choose to count as really having happened. Sometimes writers make mistakes and want to erase or gloss over them. Writing is a process of constant trial and error and editing and refinement. But in serial fiction, they don't have the option to go back and cut out their mistakes, since they're already out before the public; so they have to gloss over their mistakes by retconning them, just pretending they didn't happen. They don't have to try to get a ruling from somebody to get it "officially" removed, since the only people who decide what's "real" in the universe are the people telling the stories. So yes, Brannon Braga and Rick Berman are embarrassed enough by "Threshold" that they both decided it basically never happened. It was removed simply by being ignored.
Oh, and they turned into salamanders, not slugs.
Bless you, Christopher! Your eternal patience in explaining this to people is extremely admirable. Do you ever head-desk or are you supernaturally unflappable?
^I've just had lots of practice because it comes up so often.
Oh, so it's a pocket veto, as in we put that in a drawer and never speak of it again. Or, like my senior year lightsaber battle film
I always like the idea of canon but I know that it isn't a set piece, just a more agreed upon, loosely defined, set of rules.
I do appreciate your explanation
One of the stories in the Lives of Dax anthology is a prequel to "Threshold" where the same warp 10 technology is being tested. So even though they'll likely never speak of it again, it has come up in Pocket's novelverse before.
This is why I love books. I love seeing them take a one shot episode and explore and expand upon the idea that is presented, like the bluegill invasion or Spock' son from "All Our Yesterdays."
Same reason why I like fan productions and art.
United Earth existed in some form as early as 2067 at the time of the launch of Friendship One. Before 2067, maybe then too.
During ENT, Reed stated that Britain still retain a naval force, suggesting that it remained a sovereign entity. In 2135, there was a starship named HMS New Zealand, so some of Britain's naval forces were starships.
However, by 2079 all "United Earth nonsense" had been abolished, as Q reminded Data in "Encounter At Farpoint" (and the courts had gone to the format of "Kill all the lawyers", guilty until proven innocent), and Earth had descended into chaos in the "Post-Atomic Horror", and as Picard noted in "Up The Long Ladder", stayed that way till sometime in the early-22nd Century. The European Hegemony (a loose alliance, and as Picard notes it was the "first stirrings of world government"), which was apparently the beginnings of what would become the United Earth government in 2150, wasn't founded till 2123 (Up The Long Ladder). According to "Up The Long Ladder", the distress call from the Mariposa satellite was in use from the beginning of the Hegemony in 2123 till 2190.
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