Head Canon
- Thread starter Cromwell
- Start date
"Canon" is just a word for fans and is irrelevant as a storytelling device. "Continuity" is highly useful and enriching, up until the point where you've spent 6 whole bloody episodes building up to... an explanation why Klingons in TOS don't have ridges. Or other similar turgid fanboy fap-wankery.
What about the episode Asylum of the Daleks, which did show Daleks as they appeared throughout classic Who?
Yeah, I'm the same. But I do think the words have been betrayed from their true meanings through their misuse in online discussions. 'Continuity' is really just a matter of good housekeeping. Remembering the important things about the characters, and making sure they act in accordance with how their character would behave (and has behaved before), is good continuity. 'Continuity' is not, in my view, about references to past episodes or movies or whatever, even though that's how it gets used on the internet these days (and even more often mistakenly confused with 'serialization', which is really something else again.
)'Canon' is likewise a matter of interpretation. I see the canon as being the base material. The canon are the adventures themselves. How the viewer then chooses to interpret the canon is then completely up to them, up to and including whether they want to add supplementary material (novels, comics, video games, etc) or not. In the same way that different people may interpret the same holy books in different ways to other people. 'Canon' is simply the book itself... it isn't a set-in-stone-Thou-Must-Do-This-Or-Be-Smited set of guidelines about how to read the book.
I'm a big believer in freedom to include whatever we like, and nothing annoys me more than seeing other people (including so-called 'official' sources) trying to impose order on the chaos. Let the chaos reign, I say.
Let the chaos reign, I say.
+1
Or the 1968 Cyberman head in "Death in Heaven", or the 1975 Cyberman head in "Dalek", or K9 looking just as "disco" as he always did, or the subtly different Police Box designs (and the stock footage of their respective Doctors and console rooms) all showing up in "The Day of the Doctor"... It would have been jarring if the "The Tenth Planet" Cybermen had turned up in the '80s too; Doctor Who's iconic elements have been redesigned and updated many times over the years as the show moves with the times - except when it largely stopped doing that and died for 16 years as a result. Just because the show continues to change and adapt its core elements in accordance with the style of the time and the production techniques available, doesn't mean that the '63-'89('96) and 2005- runs should be viewed as separate entities (of course, they are in production shorthand, but I'm talking about narrative consistency). There are plenty of differences between the old and the new, but there are plenty of differences within the old too.
One thing that doesn't make sense to me is that in TNG seasons 3 and 4 (and according to "These Are the Voyages...", 7) some background characters still wear the season 1/2 type uniforms, I look at that as something just forced by the budget and otherwise ignore it.
It could be explained away in-universe as a "transition period" between uniform change-overs. We saw the same thing in Generations, when some people where wearing late-TNG and early-DS9 uniforms at the same time. In real-life, when the US military was transitioning to the digital camo patterns, many soldiers/marines still wore the old woodland patterns, because apparently many of them were inexplicably required to purchase the new uniforms out of their own pocket. Apparently "general issue" doesn't mean anything any more. In either case, their is a precedence for this both in the Trekverse and real-world.
If we are going to use the word "canon," then we should try to use it close to the original sense. There is a long history of debate over which works belong in particular "canons," with different groups maintaining disagreements for centuries, up to today. Sometimes different works have different levels of acceptance.
Here is a detailed breakdown of how I view the Trek body of televised/theatrical work:
Canonical: The Cage, TOS seasons 1 and 2, TMP
Deuterocanonical: TOS season 3, TAS, TWOK, DS9
Apocryphal: TSFS, TVH, TFF, TUC, TNG, GEN, FC, INS, NEM, NuTrek
Heretical: VOY, ENT
Kor
Here is a detailed breakdown of how I view the Trek body of televised/theatrical work:
Canonical: The Cage, TOS seasons 1 and 2, TMP
Deuterocanonical: TOS season 3, TAS, TWOK, DS9
Apocryphal: TSFS, TVH, TFF, TUC, TNG, GEN, FC, INS, NEM, NuTrek
Heretical: VOY, ENT
Kor
That was only done in season 3. In fact, although the background extras in the cliffhanger scene in TBOBW1 are wearing the collar-less uniforms from seasons 1 and 2, in the opening scene of TBOBW2 those same extras are now wearing new uniforms with collars. Well, I guess you're right about TATV, although that was footage taken from a third season.
One attempt to explain it is that those still wearing the old uniforms in season 3 were enlisted, though that raises the question why was O'Brien wearing the new uniform? Then again, maybe no one had decided yet O'Brien was enlisted? He was still wearing Lieutenant's pips, and indeed Riker even referred to him as "Lieutenant O'Brien" in season 2.
This is more or less the point I've come to rest at. I used to care a LOT about what was canon, sanctioned, or whatever people want to call it. But at this point? If the story's good, then good. If it's stupid, ignore it. That was a big thing in Gundam fandom for a while, sniping at each other that so-and-so work proved that another was non-canon, and much vitriol was on both sides. And now I just wonder why I ever cared; the argument was based on a false premise, but even if it was right, if I loved the work anyway why would it matter?
I mean...this way I can just ignore Insurrection, Profit and Lace, and huge chunks of TOS and just focus on what I like, too. Not saying they never happened, but no point in dwelling on them.
tl;dr, the whole canon/non-canon thing for basically any fandom is a moot point imo.
I was walking by a comic book store yesterday and saw a poster for DC's Convergence series, with a tagline something like "you'll see that every character, every story and every continuity matters!" and I thought, "it's not just us who obsess over this stuff, then"
The Hollywood push for low-risk franchising and the rehash/recycle paradigm of so-called reboots has left us resigned to expect nothing more anyway.
That said, my head canon excludes these things as offenses against the audience and so do not exist. I hope they are eradicated by some movie in the future:
The deaths of Newt, Hicks and Bishop - egregious.
The death of Picard's family - profoundly wasteful.
(Shatner's) Kirk's second death - unimaginative.
Well, the new Alien movie by Neil Blomkamp is supposed to be set after Aliens, with Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection being erased from continuity, so maybe Newt and Hicks are still around. As for Bishop, wasn't be essentially done for at the end of Aliens anyway?
I was walking by a comic book store yesterday and saw a poster for DC's Convergence series, with a tagline something like "you'll see that every character, every story and every continuity matters!" and I thought, "it's not just us who obsess over this stuff, then"
Heh. Marvel crossovers, retros and alternate timelines of the 80's 90's have totally inured me to continuity. Heck, reading TrekLit from the 80's made me realize there was no way the original 5 year mission could accomplish every mission I read in addition to the TOS episodes. It made me care a lot less about "Canon" and much more about possibilities. IDIC, if it were.
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