I think what’s more important then canon is something like an analog of continuity from calculus. A function can be continuous everywhere, which is analogous to having perfect adherence to a canon. It can also have major discontinuities (like 1/x at x=0), which I think of as like a reboot. There are even single-point “removable” discontinuities (like x²/x at x=0), which can be fixed by adding a single point to a function, are more analogous a tiny detail being wrong that doesn’t affect anything else and can probably be fixed with a simple retcon if anyone even cares.
You can do all kinds of calculations that depend on continuity of a function as long as they’re restricted to parts of the function with only removable discontinuities. Similarly, you can tell perfectly good stories in a broken canon as long as the story doesn’t focus on things in the canon that are broken. Each individual story needs to maintain its own continuity (or else we say it has plot holes), but discontinuities between stories don’t matter as long as stories feel like Star Trek to the audience.
Of course, feeling like Star Trek is very subjective, and feeling like a bunch of connected stories share the same continuity can be very satisfying, but overall, I agree with Nimoy that fans should just relax and not let discontinuities ruin their enjoyment of a good story.
Oh the irony that this quote is in response to the negative criticism of the Kelvin movies.
Even if those movies had not been fun, even if they had not birthed a new generation of Star Trek fans that went on to discover the classics and literally revived the Star Trek franchise, even if they had not been genuinely interesting stories unto themselves… they allowed Leonard Nimoy to reprise his role as Spock one last time, they allowed Majel Barrett to reprise her role as the voice of the ship’s computer one last time.
So, for those reasons, I am glad we got them how we did and when we did. Star Trek might still be shelved otherwise.
Yes however, though I enjoyed the movies, and though I am not a stickler for canon, I do dislike how they don’t really contain the hopeful futurism that Trek was created to portray.
You don’t need every tiny detail to be right. But if you’re just doing whatever the hell you want, changing literally everything, and most importantly, changing a thoughtful and positive show with great characters and stories into a simple CGI driven pre pew show with a bunch of anti social ashhats as your main cast… Then don’t call it star trek. Then make your own show, call it what you want.
Don’t take existing characters and strip them of everything that made them great and then whine about toxic fandom if fans call you out.
I’m not on Reddit, I don’t know how the fandom is, but on Reddit I’d say “now queue the down votes and bans” because new trek fans there apparently don’t like people who remember what star trek was.
I’m not on Reddit, I don’t know how the fandom is, but on Reddit I’d say “now queue the down votes and bans” because new trek fans there apparently don’t like people who remember what star trek was.
I thought it was appropriate to the tag at the end of your little gatekeeping rant.
As someone who’s been watching Trek since before TNG, I’ve seen arguments like yours applied to nearly every new iteration of the franchise from TNG to the modern day.
Not the guy you’re responding to, but Discovery and Picard are awful entirely on their own merits; so bad, in fact, that it took me four years to recover enough to try Strange New Worlds, which was great by the way. Lower Decks and Prodigy aren’t really for me, but I’ve caught enough of them to know they’re quality entertainment, too.
I think he was using hyperbole but I understand his point of view. You watch a show, you don’t like it, you don’t watch it again. Every now and then you browse for something, see it and think “I remember I don’t like it.”
Four years later you forget you how much you didn’t like it and go, “Meh, there’s nothing else on.”
I was that way with Hyperdrive, the BBC comedy scifi from 2006. I watched an episode 10 years ago and didn’t get even to the end of the first episode. Tried it again a few months ago and kind of liked it. It wasn’t great, but had several good episodes.
It wasn’t like hating Hyperdrive took up any part of my thoughts at all over the past 10 years.
Besides, even if it was part of the OP’s thoughts, how is fandom love of a fictional television show different than fandom hate?
Hey man, if someone is making the choice to be the sort of pathetic loser obsessed with hating a television show, that’s their choice. Just as it’s my choice to be judgemental of them for the brief period of time they’re in front of my eyeballs before I go do something fun and cool.
Then how come you can’t see the difference between tos to TNG, and classic trek vs the new crap? I say crap, because that’s what it is. Discovery was beyond godawful, horrible characters… ST Picard destroyed nearly all love I had for trek, I haven’t watched anything for over a year now, first the first time in my life.
Look at the Orville, THAT is TNG in a modern jacket, done by someone who knows and loves trek. The nu drek was done by people who don’t give a damn about star trek and it shows.
Look at the Orville, THAT is TNG in a modern jacket, done by someone who knows and loves trek.
Yeah man, the show where they solved a galactic conflict by giving the leaders of both civilizations date rape pheromones so they’d fuck one another is definitely the torchbearer for TNG and DS9.
That’s not really about canon though. That’s more the broader feel of the shows and character development. Picking over canon is picking over “facts” which were established in previous episodes.
I think the show runners have largely realised the mistakes of the early seasons of DISCO which is why LD, SNW and Prodigy have been received much better; they simply feel more right.
I love subverting expectations, so if I was writing a battle between two big, popular characters I’d have a 3rd character that I like come in and steal the victory.
I dislike cannon contradictions because they are basically headcannon rewrites by the writers ignoring cannon
I understand that mistakes do sometimes happen in writing where they miss a cannon detail but those are mistakes and mistakes aren’t intentional
If someone wants to write a new star trek story there is plenty of rich cannon already there to craft into a story or a new story could be made following trek universe rules to add to the cannon
A lot of what fans think is canon just isn’t anyway. Most so-called ‘violations’ are just different interpretations of what was shown on screen decades ago.
There’s an entire list out there of all the headcanon that fans hold up that just isn’t supported by what’s on screen.
Writers shouldn’t be held to fan interpretations of what they thought they saw in TOS or TNG.
In other words, fans who clearly live in glass canon houses shouldn’t throw stones.
Gene found it totally cool for previously unmentioned immediate family to show up out of the blue, but fans can’t help going into spasms when things not previously mentioned show up.
I remember reading a rant on reddit (or something, maybe it was one of those TV Show fact sites) about people who were convinced there was some throwaway line in Voyager that implied you needed matter tanks to store matter for replication.
Turns out the line they were talking about had to do with the matter/anti-matter tanks for the warp drive.
Sometimes fans are just dumb and completely reinterpret canon as whatever they want it to be anyways.
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