• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Star Trek Canon Problems

I think every single long-running franchise is going to contradict itself at some point. It's the nature of the beast. I mean, even the Sherlock Holmes stories sometimes contradict each other, and they were written by the same author!
To be fair, Doyle wrote them over a 40 year span (from 1887-1927), and he likely never double checked his older stories to keep things consistent.

(For those who may not know, Doyle considered the Holmes stories to be minor works that took attention away from his more important work like his historical novels. He even tried killing Holmes off, but he kept getting lured back to the series for the money.)
 
If I remember right, TNG was intentionally set 80 years after "the time of Kirk and Spock" (I'm too lazy to look up the specific fictional calendar dates, but I remember that line being used in the promotional material). But if you walked on a US Navy ship in the 1940s, the uniforms, equipment, and tone of the culture would have elements of what you would see in the 2020s, but it would be different while also being familiar. I think from TOS to VOY, you can trace a similar through-line where it all feels connected in the same way.
According to the TNG Companion, by Larry Nemecek, originally TNG was going to be set during the 25th Century aboard the Enterprise-7. That's right. NCC-1701-7. Then TVH was released in November of 1986, and it was changed to the Enterprise-G, to match the precedent set by the Enterprise-A. Then, at some point shortly afterwards, they changed the setting of TNG to the 24th Century and made it the Enterprise-D.

Though now, at the end of Picard Season 3, at the end of the last TNG "Movie", we finally have the Enterprise-G in the 25th Century after all. Full circle.

EDITED TO ADD: If you want to take it even further, the Enterprise-G, which would've been the Enterprise-7 if they'd used number suffixes instead of letters, is commanded by Seven!
 
Last edited:
I think every single long-running franchise is going to contradict itself at some point. It's the nature of the beast. I mean, even the Sherlock Holmes stories sometimes contradict each other, and they were written by the same author!
An interesting one to contemplate is James Bond.

The Daniel Craig movies were intended as a reboot, but before that it's an open question whether the Sean Connery version of James Bond is supposed to be the same "person" all the way through to Pierce Brosnan. Obviously, it's very loose continuity since it spans decades and most of the movies don't really link into a cohesive narrative, so whether we're supposed to believe the Bond in Goldeneye is the same person in Dr. No is anyone's guess.

But all of the Bonds from that time period share the same basic backstory and personal history (e.g., Tracy's death), which has led to fan theories that each Bond exists in a similar but different continuity where only the events affecting that specific Bond occurred, or that Bond and the details of the identity are part of a codename that gets passed down to each new 007.
 
He was the same Bond from Connery to Brosnan. It's on a "floating timeline," linear but asking you to suspend disbelief about the ages and appearances of Bond and Moneypenny from one actor's phase of the franchise to the next. The Bond who was held prisoner in North Korea in 2002 is the same man who defeated Dr. No in Jamaica in 1962 even if Bond by that point should be a man in his seventies and not the relatively young and dark-haired Pierce Brosnan.

This isn't even up for debate anymore. EON Productions itself established that George Lazenby's Bond was also Connery's and Roger Moore was also Lazenby's and Timothy Dalton's was Lazenby's and Pierce Brosnan's was also Lazenby's and by extension Connery's. Need I go on?

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.
 
An interesting one to contemplate is James Bond.

The Daniel Craig movies were intended as a reboot, but before that it's an open question whether the Sean Connery version of James Bond is supposed to be the same "person" all the way through to Pierce Brosnan. Obviously, it's very loose continuity since it spans decades and most of the movies don't really link into a cohesive narrative, so whether we're supposed to believe the Bond in Goldeneye is the same person in Dr. No is anyone's guess.

But all of the Bonds from that time period share the same basic backstory and personal history (e.g., Tracy's death), which has led to fan theories that each Bond exists in a similar but different continuity where only the events affecting that specific Bond occurred, or that Bond and the details of the identity are part of a codename that gets passed down to each new 007.
Up through A View to a Kill, I can pretend it was the same James Bond even though Sean Connery and Roger Moore are so different from each other. It's a real stretch, but I can do it. Starting with The Living Daylights, I regard it as a soft-reboot. Timothy Dalton in 1987 didn't look old enough to have been James Bond in 1962. No way, not buying it. Same with Pierce Brosnan. If Brosnan's Bond is the same Bond that was in Dr. No, he looked pretty damn good for a man in his 60s.

Does it make me like Bronsan's Bond any less? Hell no! Pierce Brosnan is my favorite James Bond. It also might have something to do with the fact that I saw Goldeneye in the theater when I was 16 and he was my first Bond, but still. Loved the movie. Still do. His first outing was his best. I think Pierce Brosnan was the perfect blend between Sean Connery and Roger Moore. He found the perfect middle-ground. But I still consider it to be a soft-reboot.
 
Last edited:
Oh, and Felix Leiter from Jack Lord in 1962 to David Hedison in 1989 is the exact same man except for the Bernie Casey version from 1983's Never Say Never Again, which is in a separate Bond continuity produced by a different set of filmmakers who didn't have the rights to much of the EON Bond symbology and music.
 
Y0OpSZt.jpg

Nice to meet you Fiona Volpe..
It's Blush. Fatima Blush.
Sorry...not sure where that came from .
 
"Oh, look, I made you all wet!!"

"Yes, but...my martini is still dry."

Mediocre film. INCREDIBLE DIALOGUE IN THAT MOMENT.
 
Never Say Never Again is the result of a weird rights issue over Thunderball.

Kevin McClory was able claim IP from Thunderball after working on early treatments for the film. Never Say Never Again is based on Thunderball.

The rights issues from Thunderball is part of the reason SPECTRE and Blofeld weren't used until the Daniel Craig era, when MGM and EON were able to get the rights for the elements connected to Thunderball back.
 
Another point to consider (I don't know if it has already been mentioned) is that simply society and attitudes towards certain issues have changed since 1966. An important example for example are LBGTQI+ people. Until the last episode of Enterprise, the future is populated only by cis-gender straight people. The doctor Crusher herself said in "The Host" that humanity as a whole can't conceive bisexuality. I mean, the only character we can classify as queer are the deviant and evil and immoral inhabitants of the Mirror Universe, so of course they are.

So, is Mariner or Chapel being bisexual a major violation of canon or simply society starting to accept that LBGQTI+ people exist and are not a sick deviation that was "cured" in the future?
 
Another point to consider (I don't know if it has already been mentioned) is that simply society and attitudes towards certain issues have changed since 1966. An important example for example are LBGTQI+ people. Until the last episode of Enterprise, the future is populated only by cis-gender straight people. The doctor Crusher herself said in "The Host" that humanity as a whole can't conceive bisexuality. I mean, the only character we can classify as queer are the deviant and evil and immoral inhabitants of the Mirror Universe, so of course they are.

So, is Mariner or Chapel being bisexual a major violation of canon or simply society starting to accept that LBGQTI+ people exist and are not a sick deviation that was "cured" in the future?
Gonna you cut you off at the pass right there. I've said before that there are some things about SNW I like better. This is one of them. This is a reason why I prefer that SNW not lead into TOS. I think it's a huge disservice to the women that they get downgraded if TOS is what happens next as a literal thing. I've said this before a few times.

It's also why I'm in favor of certain attitudes of TOS being ignored. I even said this back in the early-2000s when Captain Hernandez was introduced during ENT. I said that "Turnabout Intruder" should either be reinterpreted or outright ignored. I got into quite a few arguments with another poster in the TOS Forum at the time about the issue. I won't say his name, but he said "Turnabout Intruder" made it clear women couldn't be Captains in TOS, and I said that should be disregarded. I fought pretty hard for that. So this was something that was going on and something being argued about LONG before Alex Kurtzman ever came into the picture.

When it comes to social issues, that's one thing I take very seriously. I was this close to ripping someone's head off the other day on here, because I'm very much in the Black Lives Matter camp, and I thought this person was going to try to pull some "All Lives Matter!" shit with me, when I want to say, "Yes, but it's the black lives who are being targetted the most right now, so that's why we're standing up for them!" I had to stop myself because I knew that if I kept going, it was going to get ugly really fast. I feel pretty strongly about it.

Also, to add to all of that, I'm not straight. I'm somewhere in-between. So that particular issue is another one that I personally care about as well. It's one of the things i like about DSC and how pro-LGBTQIA it is.
 
Last edited:
I won't say his name, but he said "Turnabout Intruder" made it clear women couldn't be Captains in TOS, and I said that should be disregarded. I fought pretty hard for that.
Well, I think that was clearly the idea of whoever wrote the episode wasn't it? Then obviously we can interpret the words as we want (I am of the opinion that they should be interpreted as "You Kirk are too busy to have women in your life") but I think it is clear what the authors were thinking. I mean, the most important woman in the cast was basically a switchboard operator in a miniskirt.
 
Well, I think that was clearly the idea of whoever wrote the episode wasn't it? Then obviously we can interpret the words as we want (I am of the opinion that they should be interpreted as "You Kirk are too busy to have women in your life") but I think it is clear what the authors were thinking. I mean, the most important woman in the cast was basically a switchboard operator in a miniskirt.
I think you don't know me very well at all.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top