Working as a writer on a prexisting show is precisely that. Work for hire, set rules. Star Trek is Star Trek..
Okay. But what
is Star Trek? And be careful how you answer because, with any definition you give, I'm pretty confident--in the 700+ hours of Trek--I can find one that breaks it.
.if you turn up and try to write game of thrones because you don't like space ships, you aren't doing the job you are hired for.
Unless the job I'm hired for is to come up with ideas for a new Star Trek series and I pitch a show about pre-warp, Feudal Klingons and their constant in-fighting between houses in the vein of Game of Thrones.
There are always rules...be internally consistent or you lose your audience, be aware of your audience or lose the rating or the time slot, be aware of the characters on the show or you can lose your job....
Until your show/film series/whatever starts getting criticized for being safe, homogenized mediocrity.
And what "audience" are we talking about exactly? This thread is evidence that there's no such thing as a unified audience whose tastes and idea of what a product is supposed to be are all in perfect alignment.
it is not an act of pure creation, because you are not the creator or the originator.
If you create something, even under a proprietary trademark or license, you are the true/pure creator and originator. That's why we have credits.
If I paint the last supper, and it is lacking in disciples or Jesus, or symbolic representations thereof....then it's not the last supper is it?
And here's the problem: what exactly constitutes a symbolic representation? The possibilities are just about infinite.
I have heard many an argument against rules in art, in many forms, and usually it's not from the creatively strong people. The creatively strong know how to work with the rules, or at the very least, earn the right to break them by showing they know them.
Pretentious bullshit. Really, look no further than the last 60 years of "alternative" popular music. Or the recent boom in the indie gaming industry.
This is Trek, not a creator owned original work on SYFY. (And I like those just fine.)
All created work is original. If it isn't, than it isn't created work. It's plagiarized work. Ownership is a different matter and one beyond the scope of this thread. But it too, at least within the ground of Star Trek has been consistently inconsistent.
Having someone say 'no' also prevents a tendency towards a bad kind of excess, and is a criticism you see come up time and time again...typically with creators now so big that no one does say no....George Lucas on the prequels, Anne Rice on pretty much everything post Memnoch, any time Ridley Scott makes a sequel to anything, and sometime just spiritual sequels...
.These criticisms pertain to the quality of a work and not the validity of its creation. Those two things are often confused, but they are not the same thing.
The reverse side of that coin is when someone says "It's good, but it's not Star Trek." It's an extremely presumptive and audacious thing to say and it annoys the fuck out of me.
sometimes 'no' or 'you cant' can prevent horrible mistakes.
No such thing as a "horrible" mistake. And mistakes are part of the creative process. The fact you don't seem to understand that might be the crux of the issue.
Like painting acrylic over oil...sometimes there's a reason you just don't do things.
And yet I can almost guarantee you there's a painting in a gallery out there somewhere where the artists used the crackly mess to great effect.
A young painter might try this once only to have it end in disaster. It would certainly be a memorable experience One she would learn from. On the other hand, she might look at her messy canvas and wonder what might happen if she did it broken layers, leaving months of drying time in between Perhaps breaking the oil up with a knife, sort of like a sidewalk--allowing it to harden and bleed throw where she wants it. After some trial and error, she might come up with something wonderful. Or just more messy goo. Either way, it's her act of creation. And it wouldn't happen had someone told her "No. You can't do that."
Similarly, I bet half the trendy chefs across the world all have a favorite dish that mixes two ingredients that "shouldn't be mixed together" and go against all conventional culinary wisdom. I bet you most of them stumbled upon this deliciousness when their parents let them run amok in the kitchen as youngsters.
I think the perfect example of this practice is a guy like Brannon. He threw all this crazy shit at the wall, over and over and Rick never told him to stop or no or can't. Sometimes it worked: Blowing up the Enterprise over and over and then Fraiser. Sometimes I didn't: Hashtag lizards. Point is Rick still let him keep trying.
And certainly there were rules. There are always rules. But the issue is how and when they become intrusive. I can assure you, Braga wasn't worried about canon when he was pitching Lizard Rob and Kate Plus Eight.
All shows have sets of rules. The "show bible" as its usually called. However, most show-runners try to keep the bibles as small or simple as possible.
If you were to go an ask a group of staff writers to choose between a show with a few pages or a big-ass tome (given all other variables being equal), they'd almost always choose the former.
Think of it like the "rules" or defining aspects of a show are each a circle on a Venn diagram. Ideally, you'd like an idea to set within as much of the intersection as possible. However, a good production staff with accept an idea--provided its of good quality and marketable--even if it only sits within one of those outlying circles.
The problem with canon though, is it adds circles upon circles to the diagram. And it's completely unnecessary.
The thing with canon is its an artificial construct, even in real life. To chart the "canon" of humanity would be impossible because it's so muddled by preconception and bias. So why does a TV show need to be held to such a standard?
Even the concept of self or "head" canon shows that it's different for everyone, such that it's potentially infinite. To that end, it has no real weight. Because each person only remembers certain episodes or plot points, even sometimes falsely remembering something. Some people choose to ignore certain things, or accept parts of the "soft canon."
Even if there was a special CBS custodian of all things Star Trek canon, what bits does he choose to accept and reject, especially in cases of contradictory elements (of which, there are many)?
And having said custodian sit in the writers room squelching ideas as they crop up is suffocating creativity at its core.
