Nice!
When did canon become such a hot-button issue?
- Thread starter Amasov
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People forget, by the way, that the Federation knew about interstellar beaming already in the TOS era, thanks to seeing it done by the Providers in "The Gamesters of Triskelion," Gary Seven's organization in "Assignment: Earth," and the Kalandans in "That Which Survives." So presumably they could've studied the technology that far back, especially since the Kalandan outpost was abandoned and its defenses were shut down at the end of the episode, so there was nothing to prevent Starfleet scientists from studying its systems and discovering how it managed to beam a starship clear across space.
And we saw in TNG: "Bloodlines" that interstellar beaming with subspace transporters was a known technology that just wasn't used because it was too impractical and dangerous -- which is consistent with how "transwarp beaming" was depicted in the first movie (never mind STID), so I just assume they're the same thing. But anyway, it proves that it was a technology the Federation had prior knowledge of, and that could be because it was encountered as early as TOS.
And we saw in TNG: "Bloodlines" that interstellar beaming with subspace transporters was a known technology that just wasn't used because it was too impractical and dangerous -- which is consistent with how "transwarp beaming" was depicted in the first movie (never mind STID), so I just assume they're the same thing. But anyway, it proves that it was a technology the Federation had prior knowledge of, and that could be because it was encountered as early as TOS.
It just demonstrates that Star Trek likes to invent tech and then forget it
Sorry. I've spoiler-boxed the relevant portion in my earlier post.
I apologize, I’m on my phone, so I had to just cut out the main spoiler. Feel free to add it back in under the spoiler tag.
Good crazy or bad crazy?
Batshit crazy.
To me the importance of "Discovery" being canon or not basically comes down to when I have Trek marathons and watch all the shows do I slip it in between "Enterprise" and "TOS" because of it's place in time or do I watch it at the beginning or end since if it's not a Prime show it doesn't have to matter since it is something different.
Had same issue with the Kelvinverse movies and I basically chose to watch them before "TOS " since even though they aren't Prime you got real Spock in them thus they are sort of prime in that they exist in a alternate universe that can at least in theory be connected to the Prime Universe and thus even if it's a reboot it's done in away that it still sort of officially connects to the old stuff.
Jason
Guys....10 year rule. Have we forgotten?
But, to continue that thought I like the idea a number of novels have run with, that the Klingons rediscovered Kahless by the 24th century which guided them back to honor. And the episode of Enterprise (I forget the name offhand) where Archer is imprisoned on Rura Penthe and his advocate bemoans the loss of honor sort of confirms that idea. The Klingons were once an honorable people that lost their way. That the Klingon Empire had lost it's way and became the more deceitful and treacherous Klingons in the original series. In a way that episode helped address that inconsistency.
And it was a revision I personally liked. It gave the Klingons more dimension. Kept them from just being one dimensional baddies. A militaristic society like the Klingons wouldn't last long after all if it was just based on treachery and deceit. Eventually they would start fighting amongst themselves and wipe themselves out. The element of honor instituted some rules for their society to keep it sane.
I mean, that's not really a canon issue I guess, just a personal opinion. But it sort of makes sense. And the Ayelborne in "Errand of Mercy" predicted Klingons and the Federation would be friends one day, you'd have to think the Klingons would have to have a different attitude for that to occur. And Kor and Kang in particular had a few hints of something deeper in their two episodes (I know that's easy to say in light of what we know now, but they weren't just your garden variety killing machines the Klingons were depicted to be)
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Honestly, “canon” should only ever be of concern to writers asking the question “what, in 50 years of this TV show, are we absolutely beholden to?”
The show's own writers don't have to think about canon, because whatever they create is the canon, by definition. It's a word that only has meaning when you're comparing it to stuff outside the canon, like tie-ins or fan fiction. Tie-in writers have to worry about whether our stuff is consistent with canon, because we're contractually obligated to make sure it is. But the creators of canon don't have to worry about that. They never have to ask themselves "Am I creating canon?" any more than you have to ask yourself "Am I walking?" every time you take a step. It's just a description for what you're already doing.
What you're talking about here is not canon, but continuity. And the thing about continuity is that it's not a straitjacket, just a tool in the kit. Yes, ideally, you want to create the illusion of a consistent reality. But it is ultimately just an illusion, and it's in service to the more important goal of telling entertaining and satisfying stories. So if you have to bend continuity or ignore it outright to tell a story that will work for today's audiences, then that's what you do. A canon is a canon whether it's internally consistent or not. The creators of the canon are the ones who define what it is, and that means they have the power to decide how beholden they are to past continuity. All creativity is a process of trial, error, revision, deletion, and change. You try things out and remove them if they don't work. Ideally, you want all that change and removal to happen before audiences see your stories, but the nature of series fiction is that sometimes you have to retroactively change or remove things the audience has already seen. So there is nothing that creators are "absolutely beholden to," except whatever is best for the story currently being told.
It just occurred to me about the Kelvin verse and the Prime verse. There is no difference.
According to the Kelvin movie, Nero traveled back into time in the Prime verse. He destroyed Vulcan.
He altered events in the prime universe. He didn't create a whole separate reality in another dimension.
So in the future in the prime verse, Vulcan no longer existed. TNG should have noted it. DS9 should have noted it.
Its not a separate universe.... It's the same universe!
According to the Kelvin movie, Nero traveled back into time in the Prime verse. He destroyed Vulcan.
He altered events in the prime universe. He didn't create a whole separate reality in another dimension.
So in the future in the prime verse, Vulcan no longer existed. TNG should have noted it. DS9 should have noted it.
Its not a separate universe.... It's the same universe!
I still say the key tipping point was ENT. Sure, the Canon Debates were always there, but they didn't multiply until Star Trek began doing prequels. This continued with the Abrams Films only being a reboot from 2233 on, and DSC only being a visual reboot. There was never a complete 100% break, so that kept fueling the fire. Especially when ENT S4 and DSC S2 made it a point to address concerns from the extremely vocal.
Because the pendulum is about to swing back towards sequels, with the Picard Series and DSC S3, I think we'll start to see less Canon Debates because they don't have to sync up with anything pre-existing that takes place after them.
Because the pendulum is about to swing back towards sequels, with the Picard Series and DSC S3, I think we'll start to see less Canon Debates because they don't have to sync up with anything pre-existing that takes place after them.
*sigh* No, for the five millionth time, that is not the intent. The Kelvin timeline branched off from the Prime timeline; it did not erase it. It's nonsensical to think that the creators of the movies wanted to eliminate the Prime timeline from existence. CBS would never have let them do that, and the very fact that Discovery exists in what's unambiguously a separate timeline from Kelvin (because there was a Klingon war in 2256-7 when STID says there have only been a few minor skirmishes as of 2259, and the Enterprise is already in service in 2256-7 while the Kelvin version isn't launched until '58) proves that Prime still exists.
And yes, decades of time-travel fiction has brainwashed us to believe that altering history "erases" the original timeline, but that's physically impossible and logically contradictory. The writers of ST '09 chose to employ a more scientifically credible model in which the new timeline coexists alongside the old one, both because it's more scientifically up-to-date and because it lets both timelines coexist and continue to have stories told in them.
For that matter, there's already canonical precedent in "Yesteryear" -- when Spock goes back in time to restore his own timeline, he says he hopes Commander Thelin lives long and prospers in his own timeline -- which he would not say if he expected Thelin's timeline to be erased when he restores his own. It's implicit that the two different timelines coexist rather than overwriting each other. As reinforced by "Yesteryear"'s opening log entry describing the Guardian of Forever as "the focus of all the timelines of our galaxy."
As I've been saying, this is not true; there were always fans who objected to the perceived continuity errors in sequels like the movies and TNG, who refused to accept the redesign of the Klingons or the other reinterpretations of the universe. The change to prequels just shifted the topic of the objections. It didn't change human nature, the inability of some people to accept anything that challenges their preconceptions and assumptions.
Not to mention that some fans will attack any difference whether it involves continuity or not. When Voyager came along, there were vicious misogynistic attacks on Janeway. I'm sure there were racist reactions to Sisko when DS9 came along, but I think that was before I got involved in online bulletin boards.
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Discovery and the Picard Series disagree.
The animated series isn't canon.
It was made quite clear in ST09 that Nero had created an alternate timeline (ala Parallels) rather than rewriting the existing timeline (ala Yesterday's Enterprise). They went out of their way to explain it.
Time travel has been reflected in Trek in many ways, from Naked Time to Cause and Effect, from Matter of Perspective to Endgame, from the Temporal Cold War to Wrongs Darker than Death or Night
Presumably a function of the red-matter induced black/worm hole caused this behavior.
This is important because we know that Vulcan still exists in the new Picard show, which adds to the worldbuilding. Without continuity (which is often incorrectly referred to as canon), the worldbuilding that is so important to many of us is reset.
By all means advocate a series where there's no worldbuilding, every episode is completely independent from every other episode, or perhaps advocate isolated series. Personally I like having a linked continuity spreading from series to series. It's why the recent Star Trek books are more appealing to me than the standalone ones. They build on each other.
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