Poll Severe issues with the immense amount of inconsistencies in the Lore ...
- Thread starter A'Tun-Te
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I only have issues when people are like really super lazy and it's super easy to change. But because the lore is like a jigsaw from a dozen different boxes I just compartmentalise the shit I don't really care about. The cloaks annoy me but it's the one in "The Emperor's New Cloak" that I think of because they say "they don't have cloaks over here" and I'm like "Bitch I saw those motherfuckers decloak four seasons ago." They could even have said their cloaks were better or some shit. But that episode was garbage so I have zero tolerance on it's errors. Whereas I like "Minefield" (and part of it could be due to it's problems aren't solved at the end of the episode) but also the ship had fucking sailed on cloaks in Enterprise by that point.
The changes in looks of everything has been going on since, well 1966, so no use crying foul on it now.
There's differences in all Trek and sometimes you just have to shove them in a bag and forget about it.
The changes in looks of everything has been going on since, well 1966, so no use crying foul on it now.
There's differences in all Trek and sometimes you just have to shove them in a bag and forget about it.
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This is one point that sticks in me more than any other as a pet peeve. This notion that a story ceases to matter because a later story contradicts it. I feel myself wanting to scream to the heavens "How!?" How does it cease to matter just because future installments were written differently?
For me, if Trek matters at all (and that's debatable in of itself) the larger inconsistencies add more to the lore, not less.
I don't care at all. It was never meant to go on 55 years, and it is amazing it holds up as well as it does.
Quite simply- it's not real, and my enjoyment of the stories Trek tells is not tied to my ability to make it feel like real-life. Consistency and continuity are a bonus, not a necessity.
Quite simply- it's not real, and my enjoyment of the stories Trek tells is not tied to my ability to make it feel like real-life. Consistency and continuity are a bonus, not a necessity.
A show should be consistant within its own show. I think that matters. Crosspollinating history and events with others in a franchise are not that important to me, but it is a great bonus if it is correct.
A franchise as old as this one... it's impossible to do it fully right. With each passing decade, it's more and more difficult.
As mentioned above, it's pretty amazing a vast majority of it DOES hold up well.
A franchise as old as this one... it's impossible to do it fully right. With each passing decade, it's more and more difficult.
As mentioned above, it's pretty amazing a vast majority of it DOES hold up well.
This might be the correct answer.
Especially if the series take place between long periods of time. With TNG and the series that aired right after it it's more difficult but I guess it would be smart to think all series as their own, even if there's a connection in the pilot episodes and few other things.
I don't care. It's entertainment for me, not some Holy Writ. Inconsistencies (at least minor ones that don't change the entire premise of a show) don't faze me or take me out of immersion.
There are other things I do care about in Star Trek. For example, I take issue with morally dubious decisions in stories, such as letting every last member of a pre-warp species die because apparently, cultural contamination is worse than letting them go extinct. But inconsistencies between stories? Nah.
There are other things I do care about in Star Trek. For example, I take issue with morally dubious decisions in stories, such as letting every last member of a pre-warp species die because apparently, cultural contamination is worse than letting them go extinct. But inconsistencies between stories? Nah.
It just comes down to the inconsistency for me.
I remember back in the day that TNG almost took great care in setting up tighter continuity with itself. As the spinoffs became more distant in filming year and, of course (!!), the movies, which seemed to care less and less, that's when I drifted. The Borg Queen was that special sort of "the beginning of the end" that I still remain on the fence regarding, but it only got worse from there.
TNG was also right to start in a future decade and keep ties to its past minimal. It lets the audience stitch the work together and without any official canonizing of events, which often upend more than they resolve.
There is the other issue, that of the 1979-91 Kirk movie era. They definitely go above and beyond TOS yet without straying just enough that audiences feel alienated from the characters. Though V and VI both reduce many who aren't "the big three" as the wrong side of lame jokes. At least VI softens the blow; had Uhura's "Look at me, I'm the comm expert but I need to mispronounce Klingon vocabulary as a joke tee hee" bit been done in V people would otherwise have exploded. Thank IV for the apparent need for every Trek movie to have gobs of "make it funny." At least NEM, for all its mistakes, tries to switch tracks again.
"Beyond" otherwise breaks the rules, but it's in a different timeline/universe and is done rather well... which goes back to a positive as to why canonical continuity can sometimes be bent, when done right and with a solid focus. If only STID had equal weight applied, and it had moments that impressed me (but it didn't even need to be Khan, the villain was already set up strongly enough... though the altered reason for being put in stasis was arguably better, and we see him engage in physical brutality in a way TOS Khan couldn't... though TOS Khan was more intellectual-first yet was still seen as appealing by audiences...)
Do I care at all? Sure, I'd rather they avoid continuity mistakes. Does it ruin the show for me? Nope
To be more precise, the claim that is usually thrown around is that NBC execs found the original pilot episode which is now known as "The Cage" to be "too cerebral." Apparently somebody made a comment along the lines of "if it wasn't so cerebral...," and then Roddenberry got fixated on that and played it up, and then it kept getting repeated by others over and over again as the primary reason why the episode was rejected. But we all know how Roddenberry liked to spin things to blow up certain aspects and ignore others, and to make himself look like some kind of brilliant visionary as well as a David-like underdog figure against this Goliath-like corporate entertainment industry. Similarly, he also liked to bandy about the notion that NBC was against having a woman as second in command.
This is what we do know:
* Roddenberry pitched an action-adventure and then delivered a downbeat story without much action to speak of.
* Solow and Justman have revealed that NBC did not think that Majel Barret's acting skills were strong enough for a leading role. They would have been fine with a woman in a command role played by someone with better acting chops.
* NBC also thought that various other cast members were somewhat weak in their roles, and that overall casting could be done better.
* The NBC executives were quite impressed and enthusiastic on their initial screening of "The Cage" (aside from the acting) and they saw the potential, but the Sales department pulled the reins in when it came to this story in particular.
* NBC was also pushing for more ethnic/racially diversity in its shows at the time, and "The Cage" didn't quite deliver, as it had only one visible minority character who appeared very briefly and had no lines.
* And a big factor was that NBC was very uncomfortable with putting out a series with the (for the time) overt level of "eroticism" in this episode, what with this notion of the forced mating and the green dancing "animal woman." Yes, literary science fiction had been exploring sexuality for years. And sword and sandal films (especially cheap peplum movies) had scantily clad dancing women aplenty. But for TV this stuff wasn't being done yet. In fact, Solow and Justman revealed that the "too cerebral" line was just a vague, handwavy party line, and that the frank approach to sexuality was a much bigger concern for NBC.
So NBC ordered a second pilot, but they wanted one would be a better indication of what a typical episode of the series would be like, as Desilu had pulled out all the stops for "The Cage" and made something very expensive that was approaching the level of a feature film.
Arguably, "Where No Man Has Gone Before" has just as much "cerebralism" as "The Cage" with all that psychological discussion and the exploration of ESP, which at the time was still considered a valid field of scientific research. The difference was the more tangible and emotional conflict involving the protagonist's best friend, and the one fistfight at the end of the episode which made it a little more "actiony."
But wait... this was about inconsistencies in Trek lore, right? Eh, doesn't bother me much.
You should see some of the other entertainment properties out there.Kor
I remember reading one of Shatner's or Nimoy's books that reframed the "too cerebral" line for me in a way that was a little bit more understandable. Basically, the execs felt the audience couldn't connect with the characters in an emotional way, that it was "too cerebral" as in too impersonal of characters for audience investment.
I'm paraphrasing, perhaps poorly, but that made more sense to me than the line of "Oh, it's too smart for people. Dumb it down" which struck me as ridiculous.
And it's not a documentary.
Inconsistencies don't pull me out of the story too much. If they decided to reboot Trek in 30 years and Kirk became part SE Asian, black, female, African Captain Nyota James, XO was Andorian blue non gendered Mx Sphran, and CMO was half Vulcan half human T'Pau I would still watch it and sit back as the social media blows up in righteous indignation, after I recover from the shock.
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