What is your Personal Canon?
- Thread starter BobtheGunslinge
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I would love to pitch a show called Westphall in which a group of adventurers jump from show to show in the Tommy Westphall Universe, trying to repair the fabric of reality as Tommy goes mad.
Must you constantly insist that those who don't like nuTrek are all spinoff worshipers? That may be the case with some, but it certainly doesn't apply to all.Everything in VERY broad strokes, varying a lot depending on what I'm watching or reading at the time. It kind of amuses me when fans consider the spin-off series' to be the "true" Star Trek and not the original - and then complain that the new films, based on that original, are inconsistent with the version of the universe that we saw in their favourite spin-off.
It's something I love about Trek, how the additions and changes made in new iterations alter our perceptions of the old. It's fiction and it's meant to be fun, but too often fandom gets lost in "Nooooo, that's not like my preconception!"
I agree with this up until you included TFF and TUC. I didn't like either of those (okay, I loved the Captain Sulu parts of TUC).
There are certain TNG episodes I'd jettison, like "Skin of Evil." Tasha deserved better, dammit! Mind you, if Worf had been killed by the sentient oil slick instead, that would have been okay.
I liked parts of First Contact, but not the actor who played Cochrane. So have a different guy playing that part, and First Contact can stay.
Certain episodes of DS9 can go bye-bye; ditto with Voyager.
Enterprise was never part of my canon/continuity/whatever. For me, those characters and the events in that series do not exist.
Absolutely. She did such a great job of creating a viable Romulan society that included people from various walks of life, and none of them had bony ridges on their faces or wore "Romulanized" football uniforms instead of real clothes. Their planets weren't "Romulus" and "Remus" - they had real names. They also didn't have those ridiculous identical haircuts. Ael is one of the most memorable characters ever created in the earlier TOS novels (what does "Jim" mean in the Rihannsu language, anyway?
).Agreed.
I prefer the explanation set forth in a really excellent fanfic series posted on the Orion Press site. It takes into account that there were several variations of Klingons shown in the TOS episodes (Mara was blonde, remember?), and how the TOS Klingons changed to the movie-era and TNG-era Klingons.
And when I think of The Wrath of Khan - what Khan's people went through on that planet - I accept Greg Cox's novels as true. I can't imagine any better depiction of life on that hellish world, and the circumstances that made Khan as crazy as he was in the movie.
Fair point. There's a quote on canonwars.com supposedly from GR, saying WoK is "not Star Trek"
But again, wouldn't it look the same when ship crews were assembling in the WoK era? I suspect that if they could have afforded hundreds of uniformed extras we'd have seen similar scenes. I mean, it must happen - they don't just Q-foosh! from Starfleet Command to the ship. There must be some mass uniformed assemblage somewhere.The thing with nuTrek for me is that when I saw all those scenes with parade uniforms, the hangar assembly etc. the opening fanfare from "Starship Troopers" came to my mind with everybody saying "I'm doing my part". A really cool addition is the UFP cogwheel flag, so I'm seriously considering editing a youtube video with the sounds and music from "Starship Troopers" but with images from nuTrek. Sounds like fun.
Bob
I take your cogwheel Federation flag and raise you the Air Force-style WoK insignia badge.
First, I'd take a look at the crew assembly in TMP. I don't know whether this has been a deliberate decision but the short-sleeved uniforms and the heterogenous depiction of costumes and ethnic groups created quite a non-militaristic impression, IMHO.
Especially when retroactively compared to TWOK, they all rather look like scientists than military personnel.
In the context of the film the little subplot with David's scepticism ("I knew it! I knew it! All along the military has wanted to get their han...") towards Starfleet is interesting to notice. Almost as if the TWOK producers wanted to express "we know it looks militaristic, but actually it's not supposed to be militaristic".
Bob
Can we get rid of Masks and (yawn) Inner Light too?
This is why we cant accept fan canon as real canon, those are two of the top 20 episodes in my book!!
RAMA
I forgot to mention - my personal canon also eliminates all of the Pee-Wee Herman impressions that Brent Spiner injected into Data's personality, and also eliminates Data acting like an emotionally-unhinged basket case from Generations forward.
"Canon" represents what really happened, right? (in the fictional ST universe, of course, I'm crazy but not that crazy).
Well, what about the things that happened in the Mirror universe? it's other universe, like Star Wars and JJ's, right? is it another canon?
Well, what about the things that happened in the Mirror universe? it's other universe, like Star Wars and JJ's, right? is it another canon?
Very well said. I agree wholeheartedly.Everything in VERY broad strokes, varying a lot depending on what I'm watching or reading at the time. It kind of amuses me when fans consider the spin-off series' to be the "true" Star Trek and not the original - and then complain that the new films, based on that original, are inconsistent with the version of the universe that we saw in their favourite spin-off.
It's something I love about Trek, how the additions and changes made in new iterations alter our perceptions of the old. It's fiction and it's meant to be fun, but too often fandom gets lost in "Nooooo, that's not like my preconception!
Interesting thought. Not sure I agree with all parts, but I do with most of them.
Timewalker said:
There are a few people who seem to have decided at some point that their one-size-fits-all explanation for the NuTrek Unenthused is that they're all Berman-era fanatics conspiring to bring back the bad old days of watching Picard and his staff sit around a meeting table. This makes very little sense at all, really. It mostly seems to be riffing off an idle speculation that Greg Cox tossed out once.
Well played, sir. Well played.
No, its just the collection of works ( movies and episodes) that stuff happened in. The stuff that really happens that counts is called continuity.
Yeah, the only real issue of canonicity has been in regards to TAS, and even that isn't much of an issue these days as a rather large number of references and nods to TAS have made their way into later Trek productions.
I apologize for using the wrong word.
To get even more abstract, one idea that I like in my personal continuity is that the Excelsior's "transwarp drive" was a success: a new type of warp drive with hugely increased efficiency/speed/whatever, with 9 achievable warp thresholds and a theoretical Warp 10 asymptote. I don't understand why the TNG Technical Manual called the Excelsior a failure, "but we have this radical new warp drive now, so we had to change all the numbers." Also, the failure-based Excelsior class has been Starfleet's workhorse for 80 years. What a loser.
The Haynes Enterprise manual reiterates the point, but then they can't even find the Excelsior's "phaser strip"...er, phaser banks, so I ignore it, too.
To get even more abstract, one idea that I like in my personal continuity is that the Excelsior's "transwarp drive" was a success: a new type of warp drive with hugely increased efficiency/speed/whatever, with 9 achievable warp thresholds and a theoretical Warp 10 asymptote. I don't understand why the TNG Technical Manual called the Excelsior a failure, "but we have this radical new warp drive now, so we had to change all the numbers." Also, the failure-based Excelsior class has been Starfleet's workhorse for 80 years. What a loser.
The Haynes Enterprise manual reiterates the point, but then they can't even find the Excelsior's "phaser strip"...er, phaser banks, so I ignore it, too.
^ Yeah, I address the evolution of warp drive in my personal continuity.
The breaking of the "time barrier" mentioned in "The Cage", the evolution of engineering in TOS, the refit in TMP, and the Excelsior experiment in TSFS, in my personal continuity, those all represent advances in warp technology that ultimately lead to the warp scale in the TNG era. In my personal continuity, I think of the TNG warp scale as a unified warp scale.
I figure that the Excelsior was an advancement, but it did not work the way that Federation science predicted. I think that Scotty was right that it wasn't going to work, at least not as planned, even after they put the chips he removed back in. In my personal continuity, the Excelsior's maximum speed simply falls somewhere on the TNG warp scale.
As demonstrated in "Where No One Has Gone Before", and by the inability of Federation science to predict the effects in "Force of Nature", and by the mention of warp 13 in "All Good Things...", even Federation scientists of the 24th century still have tons to learn about the way warp drive works. That's really been true in every era depicted in Star Trek, which is why it takes geniuses like Spock and Scotty to get the most out of them.
The breaking of the "time barrier" mentioned in "The Cage", the evolution of engineering in TOS, the refit in TMP, and the Excelsior experiment in TSFS, in my personal continuity, those all represent advances in warp technology that ultimately lead to the warp scale in the TNG era. In my personal continuity, I think of the TNG warp scale as a unified warp scale.
I figure that the Excelsior was an advancement, but it did not work the way that Federation science predicted. I think that Scotty was right that it wasn't going to work, at least not as planned, even after they put the chips he removed back in. In my personal continuity, the Excelsior's maximum speed simply falls somewhere on the TNG warp scale.
As demonstrated in "Where No One Has Gone Before", and by the inability of Federation science to predict the effects in "Force of Nature", and by the mention of warp 13 in "All Good Things...", even Federation scientists of the 24th century still have tons to learn about the way warp drive works. That's really been true in every era depicted in Star Trek, which is why it takes geniuses like Spock and Scotty to get the most out of them.
For me, canon includes
I. Over all Star Trek multiverse
A. Prime Universe (Universe #1)
Main timeline
Enterprise
TOS
TAS
Star Trek 1-6
Star Trek TNG
Star Trek DS9
Star Trek Voyager
Generations,First Contact, Insurrection, Nemesis
Alternate timelines within Prime universe, IE Yesterday's Enterprise, All Good Things, Endgame, brief timeline created in FC
B. Mirror universe (Universe #2)
In a Mirror Darkly
Mirror, Mirror
DS9 Mirror Universe episodes
C. Abramsverse (Universe#3)
Parallel universe's version of Enterprise
Romulus blows up
Nero Timeline Incursion
Star Trek 2009
Star Trek ID
D. MISC Parallel Universes, as in TNG's Parallels (Universe#4+)
The short explanation is similar to the Marvel comics universe: you have the main universe and the ultimate universe and a whole slew of other universes, within an overall multiverse. Within each universe, there can also be many alternate timelines.
In "my continuity" that makes sense to me, Abramsverse is canon in the Star Trek "multiverse," but is not canon in the prime universe (aka prime timeline). In the prime universe, Romulus does not explode, and there is no Nero time incursion.
In fact, Abramsverse is its own parallel universe, not just a divergent timeline. I consider Nero and Old Spock from a parallel universe, who change their own timeline, which has nothing to do with the prime universe.
This is how I resolve the fact that due to events being so different by Star Trek 2009 and ID. Due to the Butterfly Effect, the course of the Abramsverse time line makes it impossible for TNG, DS9, and Voyager to exist in the Abramsverse, and in fact, many of the characters of those shows may not even exist (IE ancestors killed or never meet to produce descendants). I'm convinced that many of the events that lay the ground work for those shows cannot happen because of the Nero incursion, either.
So, the events of the Abramsverse are canon that exists in its own "box," but not the Prime Universe, and vice versa. Both universes exist in two different and separate parallel universes, that fall under the overall Star Trek Multiverse, so both are equally canon, just not to each other.
For me, canon does NOT include:
cut scenes (depending on if I like the scene, I may consider it an alternate timeline\parallel universe event)
Comics of any type
Books of any type
video games
commercials
Agreed! I don't let minor dialogue inconsistencies bother me. The way I rationalize some minor event inconsistencies can be explained by minor alterations to the timeline, due to time travel as seen in various episodes. This resolves some inconsistencies between TOS and other series, including Enterprise.
.
I. Over all Star Trek multiverse
A. Prime Universe (Universe #1)
Main timeline
Enterprise
TOS
TAS
Star Trek 1-6
Star Trek TNG
Star Trek DS9
Star Trek Voyager
Generations,First Contact, Insurrection, Nemesis
Alternate timelines within Prime universe, IE Yesterday's Enterprise, All Good Things, Endgame, brief timeline created in FC
B. Mirror universe (Universe #2)
In a Mirror Darkly
Mirror, Mirror
DS9 Mirror Universe episodes
C. Abramsverse (Universe#3)
Parallel universe's version of Enterprise
Romulus blows up
Nero Timeline Incursion
Star Trek 2009
Star Trek ID
D. MISC Parallel Universes, as in TNG's Parallels (Universe#4+)
The short explanation is similar to the Marvel comics universe: you have the main universe and the ultimate universe and a whole slew of other universes, within an overall multiverse. Within each universe, there can also be many alternate timelines.
In "my continuity" that makes sense to me, Abramsverse is canon in the Star Trek "multiverse," but is not canon in the prime universe (aka prime timeline). In the prime universe, Romulus does not explode, and there is no Nero time incursion.
In fact, Abramsverse is its own parallel universe, not just a divergent timeline. I consider Nero and Old Spock from a parallel universe, who change their own timeline, which has nothing to do with the prime universe.
This is how I resolve the fact that due to events being so different by Star Trek 2009 and ID. Due to the Butterfly Effect, the course of the Abramsverse time line makes it impossible for TNG, DS9, and Voyager to exist in the Abramsverse, and in fact, many of the characters of those shows may not even exist (IE ancestors killed or never meet to produce descendants). I'm convinced that many of the events that lay the ground work for those shows cannot happen because of the Nero incursion, either.
So, the events of the Abramsverse are canon that exists in its own "box," but not the Prime Universe, and vice versa. Both universes exist in two different and separate parallel universes, that fall under the overall Star Trek Multiverse, so both are equally canon, just not to each other.
For me, canon does NOT include:
cut scenes (depending on if I like the scene, I may consider it an alternate timeline\parallel universe event)
Comics of any type
Books of any type
video games
commercials
Whatever a character says on screen, it is canon that they said it, however that doesn't mean what they said is true within the Star Trek universe. Example when Quark says that the Vulcan didn't re-establish warp flight until the 20th century is false, Quark thought it was true, and it is canon that he said it.
Agreed! I don't let minor dialogue inconsistencies bother me. The way I rationalize some minor event inconsistencies can be explained by minor alterations to the timeline, due to time travel as seen in various episodes. This resolves some inconsistencies between TOS and other series, including Enterprise.
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Don't lose sleep over it. Fans will continue to confuse canon with continuity.
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