No ice cream for you.
SNW truly respects TOS continuity!
- Thread starter C.E. Evans
- Start date
“Broader minds,” huh?
Anyway, I’m just going to say that ultimately WE don’t get to decide what canon is. The people in charge do. If you choose to reject a series or episode, that’s up to you. I personally think that this kind of thing is less heady and intelligent as opposed to what Trek fans used to do when something didn’t fit exactly instead of rejecting it, they came up with their theories of how it could fit.
There’s more than a few hours of Star Trek I don’t like but I don’t reject those out of hand because of that. Otherwise if I were to start rejecting things, it’d get a little odd if suddenly there were like 300 fewer episodes of Star Trek in total.
But you do you.
Neither you nor Roddenberry meaningfully make that determination. Everything appearing onscreen is part of continuity, including contradictions, and the people who actually create the shows at the time are the only folks who get to make the call at that time.
During the relatively brief periods of the last hakf-century that Roddenberry was in charge of making Trek he could add to the body of continuity, but the only sense in which he could take away from it was to decline to use past continuity while he was in control.
What you're defending is the opposite of broad-mindedness.
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Roddenberry himself wanted to decanonise various episodes of TOS including much of S3, TAS and various movies. Or sometimes bizarrely, just scenes from movies.
It didn’t stick. Not even from the Great Bird.
If it’s on a screen, big or small, it’s canon for whatever the stupid concept is worth. Kurtzman said Discovery is part of the Prime canon so it is. By extension that includes SNW.
Head canon is fine. But there’s a distinction between head-canon and the real thing. If I want to say The Deadly Years isn’t canon that would be my opinion and my opinion would be wrong. Because it is canon.
I’m all for head-canon but that’s all it is. Something in one individuals head that in no way affects anything in any way whatsoever.
It didn’t stick. Not even from the Great Bird.
If it’s on a screen, big or small, it’s canon for whatever the stupid concept is worth. Kurtzman said Discovery is part of the Prime canon so it is. By extension that includes SNW.
Head canon is fine. But there’s a distinction between head-canon and the real thing. If I want to say The Deadly Years isn’t canon that would be my opinion and my opinion would be wrong. Because it is canon.
I’m all for head-canon but that’s all it is. Something in one individuals head that in no way affects anything in any way whatsoever.
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Ironic statement of the day?
He'd gone after earlier shows as well... not nearly as much, but the occasional gem showing inconsistencies with the older shows IS refreshing.
Sometimes I feel like 95% of the discussion on this forum regarding Star Trek is just anal -obsessive fans screeching about canon.
New episode comes out and fuck any subtext, allegory or message. Fuck the design work and character work. Fuck it all because X contradicts Y from 30 gazillion years ago.
There’s a lot more to any Star Trek show than canon.
New episode comes out and fuck any subtext, allegory or message. Fuck the design work and character work. Fuck it all because X contradicts Y from 30 gazillion years ago.
There’s a lot more to any Star Trek show than canon.
Your experience of this forum is my experience in watching it, except the people whining are the thoughts in my head, and they're doing it while I'm trying to watch. It really takes me out of the episodes.
While I agree the canon gripes can be grating, I'm not sure the people complaining about the canon gripers are much better. Mainly because they don't realize how good they have it here. Over at that other star franchise, there is also massive "canon has broken!" proclamations every week despite a much greater attention to visual continuity than Trek has, complete with set recreations and deepfakes. This is the same franchise that turned what was supposed to be the Tantive IV into the Tantive III in Revenge of the Sith over complaints on cosmetic ship differences that are literally a thousand times more minor than the cosmetic ship differences between TOS Enterprise and SNW Enterprise.
I personally can't tell Tantive III and Tantive IV apart, interior or exterior, while I very much can tell SNW and TOS Enterprises apart, especially the interior.
I personally can't tell Tantive III and Tantive IV apart, interior or exterior, while I very much can tell SNW and TOS Enterprises apart, especially the interior.
That would cover any series forum. The shows on the air get the most attention since they've got new canon violations to whet the appetite for pedantry but the other forums have their unique topics to whinge about.
Just follow the folks who do discuss such things. They are around. Get to know the screamers and scroll on by.
"Canon" with respect to stuff like Trek is just shorthand for "established onscreen as part of continuity."
It has no other meaning of consequence.
Two things established onscreen can contradict one another - so can three or four or a hundred things. Contradictory information remains part of established onscreen continuity.
"But that makes no sense!"
Yeah, uh, what's your point?
It has no other meaning of consequence.
Two things established onscreen can contradict one another - so can three or four or a hundred things. Contradictory information remains part of established onscreen continuity.
"But that makes no sense!"
Yeah, uh, what's your point?
No, they're all the same universe.
There's no "universe."
They're all Star Trek-branded productions of Desilu/Paramount/Viacom/CBS/Paramount+/Whatever, the people who own the property.
The only ones that take place in a separate continuity are those that are explicitly stated by the owners as taking place in a separate continuity.
They're all Star Trek-branded productions of Desilu/Paramount/Viacom/CBS/Paramount+/Whatever, the people who own the property.
The only ones that take place in a separate continuity are those that are explicitly stated by the owners as taking place in a separate continuity.
If you don't like it, don't watch it. There are tons of Trek stories to rewatch and the bright side of things are... there will be another series some day.
It's kind of funny, but I don't really mind the issues they have with canon here. I guess there's two things that have informed my feels. First, do I like the characters and the story being told? Then it's fine if the story has some errors. Secondly, do the storytellers care about the previous work? It's obvious they do. If they get 99% of the show perfect and they need to change one or two things here and there to serve the plot, then I can't get mad at that.
So if the Star Trek movies along with TNG change the way Klingons look, that's fine. They nailed the rest of it. Or even if Picard gives Romulans cranial ridges and different hair styles, that's fine too. It's not too far off and it makes sense. But if in the first show you show us Klingons that look nothing like what we've previously seen. They speak a language we've never heard. Their customs for the dead have changed and the interior of their ship and the way they act is completely different. And a large majority of the show is focused on them... well... then there's an issue.
So if the Star Trek movies along with TNG change the way Klingons look, that's fine. They nailed the rest of it. Or even if Picard gives Romulans cranial ridges and different hair styles, that's fine too. It's not too far off and it makes sense. But if in the first show you show us Klingons that look nothing like what we've previously seen. They speak a language we've never heard. Their customs for the dead have changed and the interior of their ship and the way they act is completely different. And a large majority of the show is focused on them... well... then there's an issue.
At the end of the day, characters are fallible. Even characters like Spock and Data. We can only trust so much that everyone says. Not to mention sometimes there’s the official story and the real story so you can’t necessarily trust everything the ship’s computer says.
If we blindly believe every line, it doesn’t allow for growth of story or changes of perspective, which sometimes is an interesting than following things so exactly because it’s based on one line from act 3 of episode 22. Or whatever.
If we blindly believe every line, it doesn’t allow for growth of story or changes of perspective, which sometimes is an interesting than following things so exactly because it’s based on one line from act 3 of episode 22. Or whatever.
You do know how many languages and cultures there are right here on Earth right? And we're told the Klingon Empire comprises many worlds outside just Qo'noS.
No, I wasn't aware of how many languages and cultures there were on Earth. That's a really good rebuttal!
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