^It is The Simpsons we're talking about, so being ridiculous is kind of the point. And if they cared about continuity and chronology, then Bart would be thirty years old by now.
The punk in Star Trek IV
- Thread starter DS9forever
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I wish cartoon characters did age... 
The one that really bothered me was the grunge music one, with them in college in the nineties. I haven't been watching the show very long, only like 5 or 6 years (with the occasional early episodes in syndication thrown in there) and I knew that went against pretty much everything ever said about the show's backstory.
They did on King of the Hill.I wish cartoon characters did age...
They did on King of the Hill.I wish cartoon characters did age...
As I recall, they did for a few years, but then Bobby sort of got frozen in early adolescence.
An interesting case is Peanuts. When the strip started in the early '50s, the main characters were about 3 or 4 years old, allegedly (though precocious for their age, as always). But they got older at a pace considerably slower than real time, and by the '80s they were around 9. So they were aging at maybe 1/5 or 1/6 normal speed.
That's right, I remember -- Linus started out as a toddler, which is why the security blanket was so integral to his character. And Sally wasn't even born until 9 years after the strip began. Schroeder was pretty young when he debuted too. Then there was Linus's lookalike little brother Rerun, who came along decades later. So time was definitely passing.
Also, some of the characters leap-frogged in age. I believe that Lucy started out as an infant, but she's now Charlie Brown's age.
Rerun was born in 1972. By the late 1990s, Rerun had started Kindergarten. By that time, I'd say that Charlie Brown, Lucy, Schroeder, Peppermint Patty, and Marcie are all about ten or eleven.
And for anyone interested in my impassioned defence of Peanuts' latter years, see my response to Bob Greenberger here.
Rerun was born in 1972. By the late 1990s, Rerun had started Kindergarten. By that time, I'd say that Charlie Brown, Lucy, Schroeder, Peppermint Patty, and Marcie are all about ten or eleven.
And for anyone interested in my impassioned defence of Peanuts' latter years, see my response to Bob Greenberger here.
Good news, everyone! The years have advanced in the world of Futurama...I wish cartoon characters did age...
I don't know about the general consensus, but I don't care much for it. That said, I wouldn't say the lots-of-coincidental-connections stuff necessarily rises (sinks?) to the level of a syndrome if it's not too much in evidence in a given piece of fiction, though even one or two in each of several pieces of fiction can get to be too much if I read several such pieces in a row.
It particularly bothers me in the context of Star Trek because I think Star Trek's sense of scale is already problematic. The archetypal example for me is the notion that there were only twelve Constitution Class ships at the time of TOS, though I'm not sure if that was ever explicitly stated on screen. In a territory the size of the Federation with a population that has to be at least in the high billions, the idea of twelve ships, seems ludicrously low to me. This seems especially silly when you consider that by the time of TOS, it was explicitly established that the Enterprise had been in service for over a decade, so you can't even excuse it as "they hadn't gotten around to making a bunch yet."
The "here's a back story for a background character" stuff doesn't really bother me at all unless the back story is full of unnecessary intersections with episodes or movies or main characters.
Good news, everyone! The years have advanced in the world of Futurama...I wish cartoon characters did age...
Not for everyone. Even though the stated calendar date has gone up from 3000 in the pilot to 3008 in the latest movie, the characters of Dwight and Cubert are still pre-pubescent.
Why assume that the Connies were the only class of ship they had? It could've been one of dozens of ship classes in use by Starfleet. Typically, the larger classes of ship would be less numerous.
We have seen several other ship classes from in the TOS era 23rd century, including Antares type, Kelvin type, Class J, Huron type, and the comics and books have included pre-refit Mirandas.
Yes, Kirk says it on screen. I recently bought the digitally remastered versions of TOS, having *never* watched TOS before, and I've been making my way through the first series for the last month.
I remember thinking that an odd sentence from Kirk, especially after looking on memorybeta, which has a list of Constitution class starships in service as long as my.... long.
Unfortunately I don't remember which episode exactly it was that he said that, but you can rest easy
he said it.Of course, as Chris has said on many another thread, even canon can be contradicted in the books and later on the screen. Maybe he meant 12 Constitution mark 1 ships, or something. Who knows?
I still struggle with the whole Stardate conversion from TOS to TNG - has anyone come up with a serviceable theory/equation for figuring that one out yet?
What Kirk said was "Only twelve like her in the fleet," and there have been decades of debate over whether that meant twelve including the Enterprise or twelve in addition to it, making thirteen in all. But of course he was only speaking of the state of affairs in 2267; there could certainly have been more built in the years since (and there would've had to be, given that several of them were lost in the course of the three years of TOS).
As for Memory Beta, keep in mind that it lumps together all works of professional prose and comics without regard to continuity. My greatest problem with MB is that it treats all these frequently incompatible works as if they represented a single reality, which is misleading. That list of Constitution-class vessels on MB is just a list of all the ships that have been asserted to exist in the various books and comics over the years. It shouldn't be taken to mean that all those ships actually exist in the same reality with each other.
As for Memory Beta, keep in mind that it lumps together all works of professional prose and comics without regard to continuity. My greatest problem with MB is that it treats all these frequently incompatible works as if they represented a single reality, which is misleading. That list of Constitution-class vessels on MB is just a list of all the ships that have been asserted to exist in the various books and comics over the years. It shouldn't be taken to mean that all those ships actually exist in the same reality with each other.
To be honest, I don't see what's invalid about that viewpoint. I used a similar viewpoint when I wrote the Borg article in Star Trek Magazine this month; for instance, I treated Vendetta (which has the Borg active two billion years ago) as being of equal weight and validity to Destiny (which has the Borg being "born" about six thousand years ago). It's no different than playing The Game as a Holmesian and trying to determine what Watson really meant; treat it all as true, and chalk up the mistakes to an unreliable or sloppy narrator.
Yes, Memory Beta could be more clear that some of the things it documents can't or shouldn't fit together, much as Lance Parkin does in the introduction to his Doctor Who chronology, Ahistory. But I'm not sure how to put that level of editorializing across in a hypertext encyclopedia article in a way that would make sense and that wouldn't muddle the issue more than the current status quo of treating everything as equally valid.
^A valid point, but I'm just saying that the reader shouldn't assume that the information on MB is meant to represent a single cohesive continuity. Mattburgess reacted to its long list of Constitution-class ships as if it meant that Starfleet in the book universe actually had that many Connies in service at the same time. I'm simply pointing out that that's not what the list is meant to represent, that it's inclusive of all the ships mentioned in the literature but is not asserting them as a singular continuity. I'm saying caveat lector.
Consider me "bewarned."
I'd like to think there were dozens of ship classes, but even so, the idea of a class of only 12, particuarly after a decade or more, seems silly. If they only made 12 over a period of several decades, I have to think the ship class was either insignficant, which did not seem to the be case, or was not a successful design. All of that said, I fully recognize that this view point is grounded in a particular brain bug of mine.
Three years of TOS and whatever amount of time the Enterprise was in service before TOS, since Spock was on there with Pike for some years.
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