People miss the whole point of the canon problem... | Report this post to moderator
By: dark_mr_fripperton (Odo's file, contact) @ 13:56:39 on Aug 28, 2008

If Star Trek just stuck to what it's SUPPOSED to be about-exploring strange new worlds every week-then the whole issue of canon wouldn't be that big of a deal because you would be constantly adding to it and only from time to time going back to what happened in a certain episode.

As much as I love TNG, each season seemed to have a "shopping list" of stories it had to tell-each season had to have a Q story, a Luwaxwanna Troi story, a Klingon politics story and so on. This is how canon starts to build up and become an albatross to a franchise. If Trek in the 90's had stuck to just telling stories of new alien cultures and only rarely telling Klingon/Romulan/Cardassian etc. back stories, there wouldn't be so much canon to worry about.

Of course, Voyager and Enterprise were attempts to do that, but they were half hearted attempts and when the writers on those shows were unable to come up with interesting new alien races they fell back on "this week B'lanna must celebrate the Klingon holiday of G'grrth or she will die!" type of stories.

So hopefully, the new team will give us a great origin story in this first film and in the sequels just focus on great adventures that test the mettle of the Enterprise crew and NOT do any "diplomatic crisis in Klingon space" stories.

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On canon and 'lazy writing' | Report this post to moderator
By: sb2004 (Odo's file, contact) @ 23:34:59 on Aug 27, 2008

First, while the term canon has been in use for many years, it was Trek fans that began to use it with regards to the continuity of a pop culture franchise. Before that it was used to describe a set of works - Sherlock Holmes, Shakespeare, etc. - but Trek fans put a Biblical context behind the term. (Don't believe in the Biblical comparison? Check out how many posts here and at TrekBBS and elsewhere made reference to Enterprise being sacrilgious and in the Star Trek Chronology there's reference to certain storylines being considered apocryphal).

The comment accusing the prequel writers of "lazy writing, not wanting to do the research" is quite offensive. First off, the canon of Star Trek has become so damn top-heavy and convoluted that in my opinion it is no longer possible to write an original storyline that doesn't in some way violate "canon" -- at least not a storyline that the general public will give a damn about enough to pay their $13 to buy a movie ticket. So by doing a prequel they're avoiding coming up with something that may violate 40 years of continuity (at least in terms of TV and movies). Of course as the writers of Enterprise discovered to their peril, being a prequel doesn't mean you won't get bitch-slapped by the fans anyway.

But the Trek XI writers are correct - nowhere in the "official canon" as set by Paramount, meaning the movies and TV shows, has it ever been established how the original crew met. Vonda McIntyre wrote a (very poor) novel giving her take, but it doesn't count. Nor does Gold Key Comics' take. I think Marvel did one too. And anything else that comes up is just fanon, which is an even more insidious cousin of canon because it's all suppositions and speculation that have morphed into fact by some fans. Prime example: that Spock was the first Vulcan to serve in Starfleet. When the issue of T'Pol arose several fans over at TrekBBS watched the entire run of TOS and the movies and found no such reference anywhere. Which means it was a piece of fanon that had either evolved out of a book reference or a comic, or just from supposition and rumor.

Another piece of fanon that keeps kicking around is the issue of whether Uhura has a first name. Roddenberry said she didn't, because her name alone was supposed to mean Freedom. A few years later the fanzine Trek suggested Penda as her first name. And then some of the novels started calling her Nyota which got picked up by some of the fansites. Will Trek XI address this? Who knows.

And then of course there's the Robert April issue, but that's a whole other kettle of fish...

Al

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Avoiding a canon prison cell is not dishonarable. | Report this post to moderator
By: cdydatzigs (Odo's file, contact) @ 20:42:32 on Aug 27, 2008

Just in case anyone is still in doubt, this is the Oxford English Dictionary's origin of the word canon:

canon 1

• noun 1 a general rule or principle by which something is judged. 2 a Church decree or law. 3 a collection of authentic sacred books. 4 the authentic works of a particular author or artist. 5 a list of literary works considered to be permanently established as being of the highest quality. — ORIGIN Greek kanon ‘rule’. Canonical is first attested early 15c.; canonize, "to place in the canon or calendar of saints," is from c.1384.

So there you go, the word canon existed 582 years before Star Trek premiered :) Now, on to more pressing issues:

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Every other Trek writer has had to deal with Trek continuity, some more successfully than others ... I have never been a Hollywood writer, but some folks have wrote 10 Trek films before this one, and they didn't take the easy way out. These guys did.

That is because those previous writers were writing films and TV shows that were continuations of the existing timelines. They had to follow canon. I have read interviews by the Pillers, Bragas, Moores and their counterparts, expressing how frustrating being brought into a confining canon was.. But that they HAD to follow it! These shows and films couldn't veer off track because they would begin to contradict each other -- especially when so many shows aired congruently, with films thrown in-between.

One of the producer/writers behind Enterprise said in 2001 as they wrapped on Voyager, "I don't think I can write another word of 24th century dialogue." So they went to the era that predated Kirk because none of that era had been fleshed out beyond a few small snippets. Yet still, they had to write their stories knowing that every one told could affect the universes of TOS, TNG, DS9 and Voyager that came after it.

Orci and company have been handed the reins to this franchise and have been given an opportunity to tell a new story AND avoid the confining canon-laden time periods that have already been covered. There is nothing wrong with that at all, regardless of the real reasons why they did.

By the way, I know the origin of the word canon "argument" was sarcasm TRexx -- my winking smiley implies I am being sarcastic too. So save it.

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-- Steve



My film Normal Heights is in: Pre-production (script)

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And so it ends... | Report this post to moderator
By: Keoki (Odo's file, contact) @ 17:23:50 on Aug 27, 2008 | (1)

And so ends all the B.S. about how the movie's timeframe was some artistic decision, getting back to Trek's roots and what made it good, etc. In reality, it's just lazy writing, not wanting to do the research to make something that fits into established continuity. How disappointing. Hope they can at least do it well.

Oh, and the word "canon" existed long before Star Trek.

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Jesus Saves... no one dares charge him full price

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