You do realize you're responding to KRAD lmao
What's the worst non-canon decision in the history of Trek?
- Thread starter F. King Daniel
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Rephrased so I'm no longer replying to him in the third person. But then again, I wasn't replying to a PM, or even by a PM, so at worst, the original wording was a bit awkward. Glad I provided some amusement.
Yeah, I'm sure this was completely unintentional, but I even I noticed it after a while. I guess Deanna was luck their relationship didn't last very long.
I started rereading Immortal Coil, and it reminded me of another decision that annoyed me, when Rhea McAdams was killed in the Cold Equations trilogy. I really liked her and towards the end of trilogy I really started to like the idea of Data as a family man with him Rhea as his wife and them raising Lal together. I did like the stuff we got with single dad Data, but I still think happily married family man Data could have been an fun direction for the character.
Yeah, it's been a while, bit the execution seemed a little arbitrary, too- like, a contrived 'you can only choose one' scenario that wasn't very organic. But, I do remember at least appreciating Flint's characterization afterwards, that he wasn't vengeful, but still gracious in working to restore Lal.
For me, Ford's Klingons are kind of the upper class Klingons, maybe a bit throw-back, at times. Perhaps to an older, popular dynasty?
Kor and Martok are more popular culture, down with the boys types.
I've seen it said that the way Ford portrayed Klingon culture is basically how the shows portrayed Cardassian culture.
That was me who said that. I realized it when re-reading TFR in preparation for writing the first I.K.S. Gorkon book back in 2003: Ford wrote them as a people who value soldiers and service to the state, a dictatorship that's jointly run by the military and the shadowy intelligence organization. Which as a perfectly valid interpretation of the empire, based on the original and animated series and the first three movies.
And it's also exactly how the Cardassians developed over the course of TNG and DS9....
Indeed. "Errand of Mercy" established that Klingon officers are under constant surveillance by their superiors, and season 2-3 and TAS showed them mainly engaged in Cold War-style spy antics, dirty tricks, and infiltrations. The only TOS/TAS episode that really portrayed them as anything like the noble warrior culture we see them as today was "Day of the Dove." The Making of Star Trek defined Klingons as celebrating treachery and despising honesty, while Romulans were the honorable ones. The main reason that changed is that ST III was written to have Romulan villains and they were name-swapped to Klingons in later drafts, so that suddenly Klingons had cloaking Birds-of-Prey and talked about honor, even though that made no sense in prior context. And then TNG took that single throwaway reference to honor and built it into the Klingons' whole culture, since that's the stock way to portray a "warrior culture" as good guys rather than bad guys, as if killing people based on a code somehow makes it better. (And yet nobody has ever explained how it's honorable for warriors to sneak up on their enemies in invisible ships.)
And still, people insist that Trek always fit together perfectly until the newest productions started "changing the canon"...
Well, I think people tend to give a little more slack to 'they didn't know any better and were stuck with what they'd established without realizing they'd have to come back to it in the future' vs. 'we've spent 50 years nailing this down, there's no real excuse to suddenly go changing it now.' We tend to hold one-year-olds and fifty-year-olds to different standards. ;-)
Although one can argue that it was more fun when we didn't worry quite so much about having everything all nailed down . . . .
Do we really want to STAR TREK to feel as though it's getting on in years?
"Hey, you kids! Get off my canon!"
(And now I'm imagining a Trekkie Home Owners Association: "You know the rules! No holodecks before TNG!")
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I generally agree with you, but I don't think inconsistencies that have occurred and will occur in every show (star trek or otherwise) in television history as the writers, actors and staff figure things out on the fly is quite the same thing as the inconsistencies between a show that has been off the air for over 50 years and a show that is expressly presented as a direct prequel to that show. The explanation for the intrashow inconsistencies ('we figured it out over time') doesn't apply to the prequel context, unless they're going to come clean and say yes, this is a reboot/is happening in an alternative timeline, etc. SNW is for all practical purposes a reboot, and the owners of the IP are certainly free to do that. Personally, however, I can't help feeling my intelligence insulted a bit when I am told otherwise.
I acknowledge it's arguably a strange thing to focus on, and normally I am able to just appreciate the single artifact before me without worrying about continuity. But the cognitive dissonance I experience every time SNW Spock and/or Christine Chapel, Tomb Raider appear on screen has begun to make the show an overall unpleasant experience.
Not really. It would be hard to find a prequel that didn't alter some of the details about the series it pretended to lead into. For instance, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys presented Jason (of Argonauts fame) as a contemporary of Herc's mother (and eventually Herc's stepfather), but the Young Hercules prequel aged him down to be just a few years older than Hercules so they could be co-leads. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is set a year before Raiders of the Lost Ark, but has Indy encounter a supernatural phenomenon a year before he dismisses them as fantasy in the original film. Even Andor has a few inconsistencies with Rogue One, like completely changing who actually delivers the intelligence about the Death Star, so that the character who told Andor about it for the first time in the movie is retconned into someone who was just confirming what he already knew.
Continuity is always an illusion, and prequels alter continuity for the same reason that the original series do -- because continuity is not the end in itself, but merely a tool for telling stories, and the needs of the story outweigh the niceties of continuity. And, yes, sometimes because the creators' memories are imperfect, and it's irrational to expect absolute perfection from any human undertaking.
Rather, they respect your intelligence enough to assume you understand that fiction is an artistic creation and thus can be more figurative and flexible than concrete reality. Two painters will depict the same model differently. Two bands will cover the same song differently. Two actors will interpret the same character differently. Two directors will stage the same play differently. Two makeup designers will depict the same alien species differently. And two creative teams working 60 years apart will depict the same conjectural future differently, based on the available technology and cultural attitudes of their respective eras. The difference is in the interpretation; the underlying thing being depicted is still intended to be the same. The fact that every creator filters the idea through themselves and produces a unique result is a huge part of the point of artistic expression. Different creators' versions of Star Trek shouldn't be identical. They'd be soulless if they were.
I will be sure to keep your admonitions in mind before I start expecting absolute perfection from human undertakings and/or demanding that different creators' versions of Star Trek be identical.
Perhaps. To me, it's much more fun when it both respects the choices of creators past, and doesn't cause the cognitive dissonance of conflicting with what I already know. Sometimes it feels like new creators want to punish me for paying close attention (and paying for) the work that was previously done as well as what's currently coming out. (Fortunately, present company excepted! :-) ). 'It's not my fault that I took both what you told me then, and what you're telling me now, at face value, and you didn't check they were consistent! I'm just trying to enjoy these stories without getting distracted by the conflicts!'Although one can argue that it was more fun when we didn't worry quite so much about having everything all nailed down . . . .
Do we really want to STAR TREK to feel as though it's getting on in years?
"Hey, you kids! Get off my canon!"
(And now I'm imagining a Trekkie Home Owners Association: "You know the rules! No holodecks before TNG!")
I guess consistency is my way of 'fun' (or at least, inconsistency is a barrier that keeps it at bay). I freely recognize that my media consumption attitudes do not reflect the entire public-at-large's, however.
And obviously, say- referring to Sisko's father in the past-tense in Emissary vs. his later being alive, or never mentioning his siblings again, is on a different level than the holodeck or Klingon-makeup-and-ship-design issues that have cropped up recently- it's the more blatant contradictions that are more distracting... and also the ones that are self-assumed by CHOOSING a time period and then not playing by its rules when one did not HAVE to try and cash in on, say, TOS nostalgia, that I have less tolerance for, because they feel less like the unavoidable mistakes inevitable in active production, and more like the arrogant choices of those who want to have their nostalgia cake, and eat it (with an 'I'm not beholden to the past' fork) too. To torture a metaphor.
What are the consequences of these "violations of canon"? Like I could care less that the Gorn changes or vulcans are different.
A major restructuring of Kirks past tho would bother me.
With respect, I think that's a false dichotomy. Just because the Enterprise should look like the same ship design (that's in the frickin' Smithsonean it's so iconic) in all series depicting it doesn't mean that the series are soulless and identical. TNG and DS9 had the same-looking Klingons despite being vastly different takes on the Trek universe. The idea that consistency or continuity requires soulless conformity is a false premise; indeed, we have three concurrent series that pulled it off over the course of 15 years to demonstrate otherwise. (And arguably, a fourth, even though the practical nature of Enteprise meant that sometimes those identicalities were a *detriment*, such as those same photon torpedo casings showing up anachronistically...)
When someone entirely redesigns an iconic ship or race from Star Trek, I don't consider that to be respecting my intelligence. I consider that to be someone who (arrogantly) wants to put their own stamp on something established, yet isn't willing to put the show in a time period because they are free to do so because they also (greedily) want to cash in on the iconic nature of the era or setting. And I have no respect for that. Nor is it done out of respect for the audience- only out of purely selfish and self-indulgent purposes.
Now, perhaps that is an overly cynical way to look at it- but I don't think that it is any more fair to simply say 'artistic interpretations don't have to follow any rules of aesthetic or factual consistency.' Mayhaps I am offering the creators too little leeway- but I think that attitude offers them far too much. And, with all respect to them... many others have successfully maintained that continuity over the course of many years and different creative interpretations without having to drastically redesign these things. (Again, DS9 did not reinterpret or rewrite the continuity- visual or factual- of TNG in any major ways; yet I hardly think anyone would claim its storytelling was stifled!) So the notion that it is a necessity for giving new shows new identities rings false to me.
I'm not sure of your point. You do not care; I do. We consume media differently. The consequences are- as stated- disrupting the enjoyment of some fans with the conflicts. Hardly earth-shattering, I grant you. I wouldn't really frame it in terms of 'consequences.'
But I would also suggest that it has the same consequences of serving you up a plate of food that turns your stomach (but that I find perfectly palatable). No consequences in the long run- but you'd still be unhappy if it's what you were handed for dinner. :-) (Especially if the chef were equally capable of serving up a dish that you liked perfectly well, and I still found palatable, as many chefs before him that used to work at the same restaurant had been doing for years with no problem.)
I'm really not bothered by inconsistencies between Strange New World and The Original Series, because I knew there was absolutely no way that a show written 60+ years later, by a totally different group of writers would ever been completely consistent with TOS. Honestly, I've been impressed with how consistent it is with TOS and how much it has set things up. But I could also a little biased since I much prefer SNW's versions of pretty much everything that has crossed over between the two shows.
Honestly, I think a lot of it comes down to expectations, and in my case the show has met, or even at time exceeded my expectations, for example I never expected Spock's relationship with T'Pring to be such a big part of the show.
Honestly, I think a lot of it comes down to expectations, and in my case the show has met, or even at time exceeded my expectations, for example I never expected Spock's relationship with T'Pring to be such a big part of the show.
Indeed. Some would say that given the nature of Vulcans and the way Amok Time goes, one would have expected their relationship not to have played *any* role, since they seem implied to have not seen each-other since childhood... ;-)
Don't get me wrong, in spite of my complaints against continuity issues and visual reboots - which I mostly laid the feet of Discovery, since Strange New Worlds just inherited most of those decisions - I actually enjoy Strange New Worlds quite a bit.
Don't get me wrong, in spite of my complaints against continuity issues and visual reboots - which I mostly laid the feet of Discovery, since Strange New Worlds just inherited most of those decisions - I actually enjoy Strange New Worlds quite a bit.
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