Gladly.
Spoilers Starfleet Academy General Discussion Thread
- Thread starter Tuskin38
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TNG is still there. The movies are still there. The “blessed” Picard season 3 is still there. It all can still be used as a backdrop for the new continuity. I don’t see the issue.
I dunno. I guess I could kind of see a model in how the MCU has mined decades of Marvel comics. It's not bound to the continuity, but it can and will lift heavily from different runs and put its own spin on things.
To me, if you're going to go full hard reboot, this is what you want. That is to say, freed from continuity, you can pick and choose which parts of the past to ignore, to embrace, and most excitingly, to reinterpret.
My personal tastes would be to try and jettison some of the silliness of the setting and rebuild as something more internally consistent and grounded, if not exactly hard sci-fi. Ditch the weird things like ESP and pseudo magic powers. Maybe a better explanation of how all the races could interbreed is that the Iconians seeded them all, and they're really just genetically modified humans? Come up with more consistent rules for how things like AI, genetic augmentation, etc. are used within the setting. Then build up a story with this consistent and deep base of worldbuilding.
To me, if you're going to go full hard reboot, this is what you want. That is to say, freed from continuity, you can pick and choose which parts of the past to ignore, to embrace, and most excitingly, to reinterpret.
My personal tastes would be to try and jettison some of the silliness of the setting and rebuild as something more internally consistent and grounded, if not exactly hard sci-fi. Ditch the weird things like ESP and pseudo magic powers. Maybe a better explanation of how all the races could interbreed is that the Iconians seeded them all, and they're really just genetically modified humans? Come up with more consistent rules for how things like AI, genetic augmentation, etc. are used within the setting. Then build up a story with this consistent and deep base of worldbuilding.
Do we keep the post-TOS series as a backdrop or do we blow up everything post-TOS and start over?
Which is it?
The possible trouble with this is that a good idea for a story comes along but it has to be checked against the rules, which I think can end up limiting the universe (though I really like the existence of pseudo-magic and wish they'd bring some more of TOS' fantasy elements back, which might be a minority opinion).
Part of the strength of an episodic series like Star Trek is that every story expands the setting in implicit ways - we know that Kirk is travelling through a dreamlike sea of godlike entities, witches, doomed planets, ancient entities, advanced energy lifeforms, ancient Greeks who torture people for fun (???), brains who bet on arena combat, etc, which largely is a result of so many different writers with varied ideas trying their hand at the show, each able to tell their own story without worrying about a wider continuity.
The universe ends up feeling incredibly rich and varied precisely because it has no set of internal rules or fictional backstory it's duty-bound to follow; the only rules are loose storytelling devices like "phasers have stun" and "Spock can do mind-melds" but beyond that literally anything can happen.
Of course, you can tell a good story as you wish to without nullifying pre-established facts by incorporating time travel, holodecks, "Wonderful Life"-style what-ifs, dreams, alternate realities, locations that break the rules, etc.
Both.
No, really.
One can take the general idea of everything and blow up the detail and still use it as a backdrop. Look at the new Star Wars canon, particularly the new comics and novels. They got rid of a lot of the bullshit and brought back in the better portions of the EU. That’s an opinion of course. It took what it needed and blew the rest to hell. Star Trek could do something similar. There is so much baggage in Star Trek. Having anyone want to start even at a decent starting point still has an almost insurmountable goal of almost 1000 episodes. While I've largely enjoyed nuTrek, I have no issue with starting over. I’ve been saying it since they announced what would become Star Trek: Discovery.
TNG cared so little for internal continuity that the first season had a 53 page world bible that only expanded from there into what was basically the various "technical manuals".
That's what I liked about JMS' "Reboot the Universe" pitch he did back in 2004. Jettison everything and start over from the basics of TOS. Let the show define its own path without having a a foot in the other established canon.
Exactly Laura. The writers and the showrunner are trying to put their mark in star trek. Unfortunately all they are doing is shrinking the fan base. Continuity is not hard to continue if you have good writers that are star trek fans an know their source material. Youre right holodecks and alternate realities as you say can be used for out of canon stories.
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I get your point here, but I think this gets to a problem that speculative fiction generally falls into.
Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of stories that work well:
- Serious stories need to have suspension of disbelief. This means deep internally consistent worldbuilding, which ideally eschews tropes.
- Lighthearted stories, on the other hand, can get away with more grab-bag worldbuilding, tropey writing, even breaking the fourth wall.
I guess what I'm getting at here is I think a two-track model for Trek might make sense. That is to say, having a "core canon" which is pretty grounded, allowing for suspension of disbelief, and then a "wider canon" which can include all the goofy legacy stuff for the fluffier series.
Truth is a hard pill to swallow.
I think you can have serious stories without tight continuity or wider degree of worldbuilding, and TOS did it often - I guess the trick is that you have to rely on the audience to trust that each episode is an iteration of the setting/characters, rather than akin to a chapter in a wider novel, and that each individual story is free to use those characters and ideas in unique ways without an obligation to fit with past or future episodes.
That was common for TV in 1966 but is definitely a very hard sell in 2026, though I think that might be to Star Trek's detriment. I feel like - for me at least - it's one of those things where the more inflexible rules and backstory is imposed on the setting, the less interesting it becomes.
In TOS, they could just say "oh, yeah, there was a massive global war in the 90s" or "Kirk survived a massacre as a kid" if it served the purpose of that week's story, and never require either point to be brought up ever again (or for future episodes to adhere to them), which is a level of freedom that inspires incredible creativity which the modern shows aren't able to access.
I see very little truth from your naysaying.
As others have pointed out, Star Trek has been “dying” for 20 years. Yet a new show just premiered last week and seems to be doing okay. Let me know when it actually goes to hospice.
Also, if Star Trek “dies,” I will be just fine.
Things you can fudge, like the timing of a character's life experiences, are easier to overlook than whether the same character, same reality, same timeline, had the experience or not. Granted, you can ignore anything and everything you want to, if it's a good story. Fanfiction writers/readers do that all the time, myself included.
Of course youll be just fine. Im glad for you. But others here have supported and cared about Star Trek for their whole lives its a downer. To see what the Genes and others started go out this way and with shows that bear little resemblance to older Trek from 1966 to 2005 is very sad to watch.
To give the obvious response here - Ferengi have energy whips and are cannibals, until they aren't. Humans refuse to eat non-replicated meat in the future, until they consider it a prized delicacy. Warp speed tears apart subspace and is banned, until the plot requires us to go higher than Warp 7 to signal urgency. etc. Characters' motivations and worldviews change fairly frequently too - Worf firmly says men and women are equal in "Suddenly Human", then suddenly is misogynistic in "The Outcast".TNG cared so little for internal continuity that the first season had a 53 page world bible that only expanded from there into what was basically the various "technical manuals".
This is all a good thing - the series needn't be beholden to one specific version of its setting or characters if that gets in the way of future stories.
i've been a trek fan most of my life , since age of 11.
I've been through Trek dark ages before. When ENT was cancelled.
I'll be disappointed if Kurztman era ends tomorrow, but i can make it through. Trek always finds a way
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