ST canon is inconsistent and contradictory.

[Agony_Boothb]

[

Because that would not be Superman; that would be someone else. The fun of canon is to have a consistent story line.

His name is still Clarke Kent, he still has super powers that derive from living on planet with a yellow sun he just has a rebooted origin story nd the comics would still be DC. Why wouldn't he be Superman?

Ok let's say we keep the kryptonian backstory but Clarke is a black man, is he still not Superman?

 

[Replica Picard]

Some things are core to the nature of a character, and some are not. Supes has to have been Kryptonian, and orphaned on Earth but raised by good salt-of-the-earth people who instilled good values in him. Doesn't matter if he's "black" or "white" or whatever, because he's really not, even the current one: he's Kryptonian.

Wonder Woman, on the other hand, has to be Greek. It's so much a part of the essential nature of the character that if you change it, she's not Wonder Woman. There's some wiggle room with her mom having made her out of clay to allow that mom might have molded her to look different. But she has to be Greek in culture, at any rate.

The question of how much drift is allowed before they aren't who they're supposed to be anymore is about on par with how much milk can you add to coffee before it becomes milk with some coffee in it.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

ST: TOS has very little continuity as, like other shows made during that time period, they were more interested in telling stories rather than the minutiae. Things changed if the stories required them to.

TOS actually did a much better job of keeping its continuity consistent than it gets credit for. Things like the mention of Christopher Pike as the previous Captain of the Enterprise in "Mirror, Mirror", Kirk saying that they've been to the energy barrier at the rim of the galaxy before in "By Any Other Name", Sulu referencing the silicon creatures of Janus VI in "That Which Survives", and mentions of the Organian Peace Treaty in "The Trouble With Tribbles", "A Private Little War", and "Day of the Dove" show that they were keeping track of that stuff. None of those references to previous adventures were essential to the stories of those episodes, but the fact that they made the effort to keep things consistent gave the Trek universe greater verisimilitude. Inconsistencies like whether or not Vulcan was conquered were the exception, not the rule.

Canon is important but it's also expendable for the sake of good stories and should never serve to hog-tie a a writer. If someone rebooted Superman (to borrow your example), to be a black man whose real parents were aliens hiding on earth from Kryptonians, and later mentored by a white farmer who was his father's best friend, why would that be a bad thing if great stories came from it?

What you describe could be an interesting story in its own right, but it's not Superman. A Superman whose biological parents come to Earth with him, who spends much of his life in hiding from Kryptonians hunting him, whose adoptive father Jonathan Kent is best friends with Jor-El, and one who grows up as a black man in Kansas, is a Superman who would have very different life experiences than the character that's been around for 80+ years. You can adjust or update the details of a character as long as the essence of the character remains the same, but you're changing the basics of the story.

I mean, I could create a Superman who's a private eye in San Francisco instead of a reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, but he wouldn't be the classic Superman, either. And it'd be silly to pretend that he was.

 

[Replica Picard]

Inconsistencies like whether or not Vulcan was conquered were the exception, not the rule.

I'm still convinced that was McCoy screwing with Spock, and was not to be taken literally.

 

[fireproof78]

I mean, I could create a Superman who's a private eye in San Francisco instead of a reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, but he wouldn't be the classic Superman, either. And it'd be silly to pretend that he was.

The argument isn't that it is the classic superman. It is that you can still tell the Superman story with alterations to the back story and still tell it about Superman. Canon is malleable.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

I'm still convinced that was McCoy screwing with Spock, and was not to be taken literally.

Yeah, McCoy was at least a drink or two in when he said that, so that's a valid argument, IMO.

The argument isn't that it is the classic superman. It is that you can still tell the Superman story with alterations to the back story and still tell it about Superman. Canon is malleable.

It is, but there are still certain things you have to keep the same in order for it to be the same character. The broad strokes, in other words. What Agony Boothb was suggesting was remaking Superman into a different character.

 

[STEPhon IT]

I don't know if this has been discussed before, so I'll mention it.

The other franchise is far more unified and integrated. To give one example, Rogue One has a similar feel to Star Wars: A New Hope, in terms of uniforms and fell. Our franchise, however is not, and, to give the most famous example, the Klingons look different, which leads to problems explaining why they look different. And, to give a second example, the Starfleet uniforms are also different.
Not only that, our stories tend to contradict each other, because, when TOS started, they were literally making it up as they went along. And, after that, they didn't bother to maintain a consistency. And let's not even talk about the reboot.

That may be because only one man owned it for decades, and, even now, there is a centralized story group of writers who tell that story. Ours, on the other hand, are owned by Paramount and CBS separately, with no central command to ensure consistency. And that detracts from our enjoyment of the stories.

Any thoughts?

That was the thing which still boggles my mind, from fans I talked to who lived during that era of the 70's, and 80's made up and accepted there own conclusions of why they're different looking Klingons. Some had the ridges and teeth that made them look like space werewolves, and others from TOS didn't. Most Trek fans back then were smart enough to realize not all races look alike because on Earth they're different creeds and color among us all. No stupid viruses or genetic nonsense for an explanation which never needed to be explained. All was well until the little minds from DS9 "Blood Oath" had to dig up the fossils from TOS Klingons and gave them the werewolf look. Until this era the craziness continues, fans who turned pro has complicated creativity for modern trek. Peter Allen Fields' fanwank story was awful, but what Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens' had done was and still is a travesty to Klingon lore. It's best to leave these things alone and allow the people in charge to add but don't alter or shit on what other creative had done.

As much as I didn't like PICARD, I appreciated to see Romulans look like Romulans without those TNG face-lifts with the ridges. Audiences prove they're smart enough to know the difference between a Vulcan and a Romulan and just surfing through the PICARD threads I haven't seen anyone questioned who was who. Canon can be spared if the Showrunners simply respect their audience better, because they know more about Star Trek than the showrunners do.

 

[fireproof78]

Canon can be spared if the Showrunners simply respect their audience better, because they know more about Star Trek than the showrunners do.

But, then fans demand an absolute answer, especially nowadays.

 

[STEPhon IT]

To avoid that stop making prequels and leave TOS characters alone. Star Trek can be a large canvas if the showrunners would just stop chasing trends and be trend setters.

 

[fireproof78]

To avoid that stop making prequels and leave TOS characters alone. Star Trek can be a large canvas if the showrunners would just stop chasing trends and be trend setters.

Too afraid.

 

[Orphalesion]

I dunno I just always assumed they just updated the makeup for the Klingons because they now could afford more elaborate makeup.
No need to force the existence of subspecies into being.

 

[fireproof78]

I dunno I just always assumed they just updated the makeup for the Klingons because they now could afford more elaborate makeup.
No need to force the existence of subspecies into being.

Indeed but that's not how fans treat canon materials now. There is a huge desire for "Word of God" confirmation of continuity, canon and explanations. It simply isn't good enough any more for fans to come to their own conclusions.

 

[Replica Picard]

Indeed but that's not how fans treat canon materials now. There is a huge desire for "Word of God" confirmation of continuity, canon and explanations. It simply isn't good enough any more for fans to come to their own conclusions.

I've run into that before, and it's very strange to me, because for me, my own interpretation is the ONLY one that really matters in my own head. If I have holes in that interpretation, I may allow those to be filled by others, and I may weigh the ones from the show creators a bit more heavily, but ultimately, art is supposed to be subjective. Heck, even if I was the sort of fan that believed for some reason that Star Trek depicts a REAL set of events and that accuracy matters for that reason, I'd still feel the same way, because in canon, we've already seen infinite, slightly different parallel universes in play. I'm right in one of them.

 

[Orphalesion]

Plus it's just plain fun to do a bit of World building for your favourite franchises.

 

[fireproof78]

Plus it's just plain fun to do a bit of World building for your favourite franchises.

I did that for years. Still do, really. Trying to create a tech manual for the Kelvin Universe

 

[Trekkie27]

Canon is malleable.

Then it is by definition NOT canon.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Then it is by definition NOT canon.

Sure it is. Canon is just the collected works.

 

[fireproof78]

Then it is by definition NOT canon.

In fiction yes that is exactly how canon works.

 

[Schlegelmilch]

I dunno I just always assumed they just updated the makeup for the Klingons because they now could afford more elaborate makeup.
No need to force the existence of subspecies into being.

Worf explained it best. Enterprise should have left it alone.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

That was the thing which still boggles my mind, from fans I talked to who lived during that era of the 70's, and 80's made up and accepted there own conclusions of why they're different looking Klingons. Some had the ridges and teeth that made them look like space werewolves, and others from TOS didn't. Most Trek fans back then were smart enough to realize not all races look alike because on Earth they're different creeds and color among us all. No stupid viruses or genetic nonsense for an explanation which never needed to be explained. All was well until the little minds from DS9 "Blood Oath" had to dig up the fossils from TOS Klingons and gave them the werewolf look. Until this era the craziness continues, fans who turned pro has complicated creativity for modern trek. Peter Allen Fields' fanwank story was awful, but what Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens' had done was and still is a travesty to Klingon lore. It's best to leave these things alone and allow the people in charge to add but don't alter or shit on what other creative had done.

As much as I didn't like PICARD, I appreciated to see Romulans look like Romulans without those TNG face-lifts with the ridges. Audiences prove they're smart enough to know the difference between a Vulcan and a Romulan and just surfing through the PICARD threads I haven't seen anyone questioned who was who. Canon can be spared if the Showrunners simply respect their audience better, because they know more about Star Trek than the showrunners do.

Werewolves? Really? That's one I've never heard before...

In any case, just leaving prior series alone is just not a recipe for making everything hunky-dory. Looking to the past is a fundamental part of building new things (especially once the Klingon empire was established to be this hugely conservative and traditional society). Sooner or later they were always going to be faced with the prospect of how to portray Klingons who lived in the TOS era (or Pre-TOS era) and it was pretty much always inevitable that they would simply portray them as being physically comparable to all the other Klingons on the show. There's nothing disrespectful about that, since it's stupid to demand that a modern show have to take time out of its stories to explain to the audience why Klingons used to look different than they do now when everyone and their mother knows it's because 1989 is not 1966 and modern tv shows are expected to look modern.

It really would have been better for the franchise as a whole if it had just stayed that way, but then someone had the idea of doing an homage to TOS using actual TOS footage and they loved it so much that they willingly wrote themselves into a corner regarding Klingon physiology to make it. And, personally, as a lifelong fan who has seen literal tons of canon that doesn't line up anyway, I think they made the right choice. Trials and Tribbleations is one of the funniest episodes in the franchise and easily the coolest tribute that a modern Trek has ever done for its predecessors and the fact that it temporarily broke the illusion of Klingon history to do that really isn't that important. It is, after all, just a tv show. And only one episode, at that. If ENT had remembered that and let things lie, it would probably be long forgotten/forgiven, anyway.

Although, I didn't even have any problem that ENT wanted to go there, because fixing 'holes' like that absolutely can lead to great stories - it was just a shame that ENT's fix was boring and barely relevant to the Klingons and all about terrible characters mostly played by even worse actors.