Revisions to The Antares Maelstrom, Greg?
Spoilers New Picard TV Series and Litverse Continuity (may contain TV show spoilers)
- Thread starter chrinFinity
- Start date
Nice!
Perhaps that will come with time. Don't worry, I'm keeping an open mind. Thinking of it as a reboot is sort of a default for me at the moment.
I still remember when TNG started I was a Trekkie for only about a year. But already I loved the original characters and I thought, you can't have Star Trek without Kirk and Spock. What are they thinking. But TNG became a favorite. DS9, same thing, how can it be Star Trek on a space station. And it was another great show. I actually was looking forward to Voyager, but I admit it was a tad disappointing in some ways. I loved the new species/exploration angle, but I wish there had been more conflict with the Maquis, at least until the crew grew to trust each other, and the ship should have had more difficulties then it did (maybe not quite as bad as Equinox, but an in between). I liked the idea of Enterprise, but that too took a time to catch on (once they realized they were supposed to do a prequel and shed themselves of TNG era finally).
Discovery's changes is a bit more drastic, so it may take me more time to feel it out. And it's not that I don't like it. But it may take me a while to feel like it's a proper Star Trek show, in my own mind. But half the battle is won as I don't hate it (well except the Klingon design, but no one's perfect I suppose).
BTW. My new Discovery novel came today. I plan on reading it as soon as I'm done with Probe. So far I've liked all 3 novels, this will be the first time I read a novel since I started watching the show though.
And Tilley is a good example of having a change of heart. When I first saw her on the show I thought who was the idiot that wrote a character like that on a starship. How did she even make it through the Academy. But she grew on me. She did a great job as 'captain' once she practiced a bit in the mirror universe "i'd cut your tongue out and use it to lick my boot", I still love that line
And Tilley is a good example of having a change of heart. When I first saw her on the show I thought who was the idiot that wrote a character like that on a starship. How did she even make it through the Academy. But she grew on me. She did a great job as 'captain' once she practiced a bit in the mirror universe "i'd cut your tongue out and use it to lick my boot", I still love that line
DaiMon Bok doesn't read Treklit.
Or it could be that we expect a little more from television nowadays. They're still giving us the kind of blatant contradictions that would have made first-run watchers of the original show cringe.
You're just repeating the same mistakes as fans before you. This same reaction crops up every time a new incarnation of Trek comes along, and people always assume it's the first time it's ever been that way. More broadly, every generation always assumes its problems and complaints are new and different and greater than those of past generations, but if you go back and see what people were saying in the past, every generation reiterates the exact same complaints, and the exact same assumption that theirs are unique.
And if you go back and look at things like the Best of Trek collections, you'll see that first-run watchers of the original show did cringe at its many blatant contradictions -- and then they made up solutions for them.
Or, arguably, people take "canon" a little too seriously these days. As I like to point out, the laissez-faire approach to continuity in, say, the old TARZAN or MUMMY movies series would probably make a modern, canon-obsessed fan's head explode. But, you know what, people enjoyed those movies and didn't get all cranky about such things.
And, yes, one can argue that people "expect" more today, but does that enhance the experience or detract from it? Were audiences happier, and more easily entertained, before "canon" and seamless continuity became the Holy Grail?
I admit I occasionally pine for the days when folks didn't lose sleep over whether THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD was "canon" or not.
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The Japanese Kamen Rider and Super Sentai franchises still take a pretty laissez-faire approach to continuity. Their format is to make a new show with a new cast and storyline every season, and generally each one is set in its own distinct reality, except when they cross over in movies and video specials. For instance, there are two Super Sentai series that take place in 1999 -- the 1995 series that projected a few years into the future, and the 1999 series that was set in the present day. Each one had its own separate alien or demonic invasion that nearly destroyed the world, supposedly during the same year, but neither referenced the other. Also, each season usually gets a theatrical feature version as well, and the features are often inconsistent with the contemporaneous TV storylines, either because they get a few chronology or character details wrong or because they're deliberately alternate tellings of events.
You don't have to go back that far, Greg: look at DC Comics adaptations, which has in the past twenty years given us two completely different versions of the Flash (Grant Gustin and Ezra Miller) and Batman (Christian Bale and Ben Affleck -- arguably three if you throw David Mazouz in there), and three completely different versions of Superman (Brandon Routh, Henry Cavill, and Tyler Hoechlin) and Ra's al-Ghul (Liam Neeson, Matt Nable, and Alexander Siddig).
True, but those are separate series. I was thinking that even, say, a single sequence of movies, like the Universal Frankenstein flicks, tended to be play fast and loose with the continuity in ways that would inspire a hundred angry Facebook posts today.
True, but those are separate series. I was thinking that even, say, a single sequence of movies, like the Universal Frankenstein flicks, tended to be play fast and loose with the continuity in ways that would inspire a hundred angry Facebook posts today.
That's kind of what the X-Men movies do, though. They purport to be a single continuity but often contradict each other. And there have been plenty of angry Facebook posts about it, but it doesn't stop the filmmakers from doing it anyway.
M
marlboro
Guest
I'm not exactly a continuity feteshist, but I don't think fans should accept shitty, lazy writing.
As Harry Shearer said " Don't punish your audience for paying attention. "
^ Im paraphrasing a bit there, I think.
As Harry Shearer said " Don't punish your audience for paying attention. "
^ Im paraphrasing a bit there, I think.
That's a specious argument, though, because flexible continuity is not automatically the same thing as bad writing. Continuity is not the single overriding purpose of fiction; it is one of the tools an author uses for the purpose of telling a story, and there are times when it is legitimately necessary to prioritize other things above it. Yes, sometimes a continuity error is the result of sloppiness, but often it is an informed and conscious choice made for good reason, and it is shallow, lazy criticism on the audience's part to assume those are the same thing.
Yes, I can see some of that. And this would be for any continuing franchise. If you have to adapt or change something to make it better, that's one thing. But if you're just changing something because you're too lazy to do a little research, esp. it it's crappy, that would be a problem.
I'm not saying that's what's going on with Discovery. At the very least any new showrunner should look at what's been done before, if for no other reason there may be something you like that will work for your show. It seems for the nu-TNG show they are looking at a lot of extra-canonical stuff and doing some research. And I think that's a good think because, like I said, there may be some ideas you can mine from that material for good stories. You have a ton of resources out there these days. Use it.
I think this is an important point that is often lost in these kind of discussions--different franchises set up different expectations depending on how they approach continuity, so the same person will react differently to contradictions based on that.
The James Bond film franchise never tried to establish a strict continuity, so viewers don't look at those films that way (though, as @Damian mentioned, even that has changed with the Daniel Craig series being more connected than before). Marvel Comics might gloss over most changes within a single timeline, but DC Comics creates multiple Earths (an infinite number, you could say
) to explain away similar contradictions, and people read those comics knowing the two companies have different takes on this.If Star Trek fans are complaining about visual discontinuities now, it's mainly because the franchise set up an expectation of greater visual consistency in its previous visits to the past of its main timeline (including uniforms, even when incorporating past footage wasn't required), and because they are capable of comparing how other long-running franchises are approaching the same issues. When a franchise wants to trade on the nostalgia of its fans, it shouldn't be too surprised that (at least some of) those fans will counter that what they're nostalgic for is missing.
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First, many thanks to the authors on here, without them and there brilliant work ( Reading Legacy trilogy right now, great!) there wouldn't be a treklit verse! So, thank you!
Second, said authors arn't in charge of the trek lit verse, they either are given an idea from the editors, or asked to submit and idea, or come up with an idea and ship it past the editor to see if there game. At no time are they in the captains seat. So if there wonderful editors and higher ups at the book maker, decide to go in a certain direction, thats up to them, and the authors will be informed of whatever changes, and they can adapt, and create work based on that decision, or say, nope, not going there, find another author. We have the privilege of a great cadre of authors that create some great work.
But there a the whim of Cbs.
Take the Hobus Supernova, Im pretty sure a number of the authors have ideas that they want to put to paper on what happened, who done it, etc. However, they probably won't be able to do it at all since Cbs is going to fill in the blanks on that period. It kinda sucks sometimes when you have a great idea that you can't put to paper to let others enjoy.
So I hope things go well with the new Picard show, with 10% more eagles, and that the trek lit verse can continue with there great stories!
Second, said authors arn't in charge of the trek lit verse, they either are given an idea from the editors, or asked to submit and idea, or come up with an idea and ship it past the editor to see if there game. At no time are they in the captains seat. So if there wonderful editors and higher ups at the book maker, decide to go in a certain direction, thats up to them, and the authors will be informed of whatever changes, and they can adapt, and create work based on that decision, or say, nope, not going there, find another author. We have the privilege of a great cadre of authors that create some great work.
But there a the whim of Cbs.
Take the Hobus Supernova, Im pretty sure a number of the authors have ideas that they want to put to paper on what happened, who done it, etc. However, they probably won't be able to do it at all since Cbs is going to fill in the blanks on that period. It kinda sucks sometimes when you have a great idea that you can't put to paper to let others enjoy.
So I hope things go well with the new Picard show, with 10% more eagles, and that the trek lit verse can continue with there great stories!
M
marlboro
Guest
A writer has to earn the benefit of the doubt. I've read too many "I'm a huge fan of character/franchise X!" interviews by writers/directors which are followed up by crummy products that show little to no appreciation or knowledge of the characters.
If media tie-in guys can put in the effort to think about the details as well as the big picture, why shouldn't the audience expect as much or more from the big time, big budget Hollywood guys?
As long as Kirsten is part of the writing staff, then they have access to all the Trek information they need. And Kirsten has told me that the other writers have indeed done their research and expanded their own Trek knowledge as they went along. Just because they choose to interpret some things differently than you or I would have does not mean that choice was made in ignorance.
After all, if someone is willing to work on a Trek show, that presumably means they're interested enough in Trek to devote a portion of their lives to it, to immerse themselves in it totally for as long as they're on the staff (because being on a TV writing staff leaves little room for anything else in one's life). So it doesn't make any sense to assume they'd be uninterested in exploring all that Trek has to offer.
But those expectations of continuity in Trek took a long time to evolve. TMP was as drastic a reinvention of the universe's look as DSC is now, and it took fans a while to get used to it. The later movies and TNG reused that look for reasons of economy, but they were quite loose about continuity, drawing on TOS only selectively and being flexible with the details. I gather that Roddenberry even considered TNG a soft reboot of TOS, intending to keep only the bits from TOS that he liked or believed still held up, and disregarding or retconning the rest. It was only once he was gone and TOS fans started to write for and produce the show that we started to see stronger continuity ties to the original series.
I guess that's why I see things differently than a lot of modern fans -- because I grew up in the era when Trek continuity was more obviously mutable. The idea that it has ever been consistent overall is a revisionist viewpoint, and a very inaccurate one.
No, you're overstating it. We're never "given an idea from the editors." After all, coming up with ideas is the whole thing they hire us to do, so why would they do it for us? They may occasionally say "Do a novel on this topic" or "Do a novel that incorporates this event," but the story we come up with around that topic or event is for us to decide. Yes, the editors and CBS have to approve our ideas before we get the go-ahead, and sometimes they object to an idea and ask us to revise it within a certain set of parameters, but it's not as dictatorial as you make it sound.
Whatever happened to "innocent until proven guilty?" Giving people the benefit of the doubt is basic morality. If you assume someone is innocent and they're actually guilty, then that's on them. They're the one doing wrong to you or to others. But if you presume them guilty and it turns out that they're innocent, then you're the one doing wrong to them. So giving others the benefit of the doubt isn't about them -- it's about yourself, about making sure that you don't do wrong to other people. We should strive to get our own ethical houses in order before we go around judging others.
Indeed, your sentence is contradictory. "Earning" would mean having proof of innocence, in which case there is no doubt and no need for the benefit of it. The phrase "the benefit of the doubt" specifically means that your own doubt about the truth entitles them to the presumption of innocence, with no "earning" needed.
