Poll Is Star Trek: Khan khanon?

[FredH]

The ur-literary-Canon, the Sherlock Holmes stories, is also occasionally contradictory -- what is Watson's name?

…is there anywhere that it’s not John? (My memories of the stories are hazy.)

 

[Allyn Gibson]

…is there anywhere that it’s not John? (My memories of the stories are hazy.)

His wife Mary calls him James in one story.

 

[FredH]

His wife Mary calls him James in one story.

Ah. Thanks.

 

[Christopher]

His wife Mary calls him James in one story.

Which led to Dorothy L. Sayers offering a very clever theory that John H. Watson's middle name is Hamish, and Mary was using its English equivalent James as a nickname. I've seen a number of modern works accept Hamish as Watson's middle name, including the BBC Sherlock and the CBS Watson.

 

[DonIago]

His wife Mary calls him James in one story.

Maybe that story was set in an alternate timeline.
(ducks)

 

[JD]

That's not remotely how it works. It's never been a requirement that writers personally familiarize themselves with every bit of the canon; it's the job of the editors and the studio licensing people to let authors know if something in a story conflicts with the canonical continuity. If they or the writer think it's important, the editor can just arrange to send the writer a copy. Back in the 2000s when I was starting out, Pocket would mail me broadcast-quality videotapes of episodes I wanted to consult, though I had to send them back when I was done.

Of course, it looks like this is a free, ad-supported podcast that should be easy for anyone to access if they think it's relevant. But there's no reason it would be "required" for anyone who isn't writing anything related to its specific subject matter. I mean, come on, why would someone writing a TNG or Starfleet Academy novel have to know about what happened to the Augments on Ceti Alpha V? If they should happen to make some passing reference that's inconsistent with it, the editor or studio licensors would just tell them what was wrong with it so they could fix it.




No, it's just that "canon" has never meant "absolute internal consistency." That's one of the many ways that fandom gets the definition of the word almost entirely wrong. A canon is just a complete body of works with some common element. The word refers to the collective whole, not the individual parts. A fictional canon is generally a set of stories that pretend to represent a shared, internally consistent reality. But that internal consistency is often as much an illusion as everything else, requiring the audience to suspend disbelief and play along with the conceit. Canons often rewrite themselves as they go and pretend they haven't, like Marvel Comics pretending everything from 1961 to the present has happened in a single reality while the characters have aged no more than 10-15 years, with the real-world historical and cultural details being rewritten every time the older stories are retold.

For me another one of the most inconsistent "canons" would have to be the M*A*S*H* TV series. Hawkeye went from having a telling his dad to say hi to his mom and sister, and his family vacationing Crabapple Cove Maine, to spending how whole life in Crabapple Cove and being an only child whose mother died when he was a young kid. How many kids Potter had and what sex they were was also kind of inconsistent, but it was a little more ambiguous than the blatant contradictions with Hawkeye. I'm pretty sure there were contradictions with other characters too, but those are the two that stood out in my mind.

 

[thribs]

Okay I'm not allowing the "k" thing. That's Mortal Kombat.

 

[Christopher]

For me another one of the most inconsistent "canons" would have to be the M*A*S*H* TV series. Hawkeye went from having a telling his dad to say hi to his mom and sister, and his family vacationing Crabapple Cove Maine, to spending how whole life in Crabapple Cove and being an only child whose mother died when he was a young kid. How many kids Potter had and what sex they were was also kind of inconsistent, but it was a little more ambiguous than the blatant contradictions with Hawkeye. I'm pretty sure there were contradictions with other characters too, but those are the two that stood out in my mind.

The big one is how the date references got up to early 1953, but then they realized the show was too big a hit to be likely to end anytime soon, so they retconned it back to 1951 while still acknowledging all the character history and cast changes that had come before. Also just generally taking 11 years to chronicle a 3-year war.

When I rewatched the Alien Nation TV series for my Patreon a while back, I was startled by how much the series contradicted itself within the course of a single season. In the pilot movie, the Overseers who'd ruled over the alien refugees on their slave ship before it crashed on Earth had been a deep dark secret because the slaves had been drugged and kept docile aboard the ship, so nobody remembered them and their existence was the shocking revelation at the climax. But later in the season, it was assumed that their existence had been common knowledge all along. Then there was an episode saying that the Overseers couldn't be tried in the US for crimes that happened in outer space, but one of the revival TV movies a few years later said they had been tried but funneled into an Operation Paperclip-like project to develop technology for the government. Not to mention the other continuity changes between the series and the revival movies, like retconning the dates the series took place. Not to mention decanonizing the entire cliffhanger finale episode of the series, since the child actors were four years older so they couldn't just pick up where they'd left off, so they ignored the finale and started over with a standalone version of the cliffhanger event. And then there was the movie establishing that humans needed to take a weeks-long course to learn how to have sex with Newcomers without injuring themselves, contradicting an early episode about Newcomer prostitutes. (All that on top of pretending to be a sequel to the original feature film, but changing so many details that it was always an alternate continuity from the start.)

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Pocket would mail me broadcast-quality videotapes of episodes I wanted to consult,

Just out of morbid curiosity, 3/4" , 3/4" SP, or Betacam SP?

 

[Christopher]

Just out of morbid curiosity, 3/4" , 3/4" SP, or Betacam SP?

Well, they were VHS, so maybe not full broadcast quality, but better than I'd ever seen or heard the episodes before (the audio in particular was beautifully clear compared to what I got on TV).

 

[Extrocomp]

No, it's just that "canon" has never meant "absolute internal consistency." That's one of the many ways that fandom gets the definition of the word almost entirely wrong. A canon is just a complete body of works with some common element. The word refers to the collective whole, not the individual parts. A fictional canon is generally a set of stories that pretend to represent a shared, internally consistent reality. But that internal consistency is often as much an illusion as everything else, requiring the audience to suspend disbelief and play along with the conceit. Canons often rewrite themselves as they go and pretend they haven't, like Marvel Comics pretending everything from 1961 to the present has happened in a single reality while the characters have aged no more than 10-15 years, with the real-world historical and cultural details being rewritten every time the older stories are retold.

Canon just means an official body of work.

The ur-Canon, the Bible, is contradictory and not consistent with itself. The ur-literary-Canon, the Sherlock Holmes stories, is also occasionally contradictory -- what is Watson's name? where is Watson's wound? what was Sherlock Holmes doing in 1892? -- and inconsistent.

A Canon is a body of work. It makes no value judgments. It's just work.

I'm aware of all that. The reason fandom changed the definition of canon to mean consistency is because "official body of work" doesn't really mean anything. Every Star Trek work that was licensed by Paramount or CBS is "official". What sets the shows and movies apart from everything else?