I won't disagree with your explanation of Roddenberry's philosophy, but I will say that, if he'd really gotten his way and Star Trek had never had a fleshed out continuity and universe, I would probably not have liked it as much. Part of what I like about Trek is that it's a world with a history and a general order of things. I really, really don't like the idea of new stories saying that the old stories just didn't happen at all for the convenience of a plot point.
@@SimuLord I think you're right about that. Story and characters are more important than anything, but continuity is one of the things that makes it work in the long term. That said, I'm really not bothered by something like the SNW versions of TOS characters being either a little or very different from the original versions. I also don't really care that the ship looks different. But I will really be disappointed if the story doesn't dove tail into TOS when it's over.
That's a large part of why I'd not gotten into comics as much as my loved ones think I should be. "A history and general order of things" is an excellent descriptor of my fantasy wants.
How bout like the old Star wars Expanded Universe Continuity plus good storytelling. You'd read things and have them referenced and I loved elsewhere. That way even if you read an eh story you felt rewarded because it be referenced in a peak story like New Jedi Order.
@magnenoalex2 Yeah! Isn't it called like the Holodeck or Holocron? Something like that. Man. That's a literary universe I should delve back into. My uncle had a bunch of novels set in that universe that were a perfect blend of the Star Wars mysticism and samurai-ness, mixed with a more gritty viewpoint. None of the characters were "the chosen one", which is such a better writing choice. I find it so much more evocative and.. I guess substantial when the characters are just normal people in abnormal situations.
@@magnenoalex2 Thanks for reminding me of that. I borrowed those books from my uncle when I was.. idk 13 or 14. That was such a nice warming wave of nostalgia. I hope you are doing well
I think one of Star Trek's greatest strengths is the fact that it has this entrenched established history. It gives the series a tangible feeling that is incredibly difficult to replicate. I think the best example is Mass Effect. I read everything in the Codex in that game because it made the setting, the technology, and the motivations a firm bed rock for them to tell the story. Everything fit together and it felt like Shepard and crew were in a lived in universe. The codex talks about Turian face paint being markers of units and that Turians with no face paint, no identification with something greater than themselves. Later on in the second game you're betrayed....by a Turian, with no facepaint. The details matter. So Star Trek having this extensive history and foundation has been a great boon to it. As for our august founder, Roddenberry got a LOT right. Some rules I think should still be listened to, for instance space is BIG is often ignored to a ridiculous degree. But he also got a lot wrong, no conflict between Starfleet characters in the TNG era jumps out. Them making Zefram Cochrane a bit of a Roddenberry homage was spot on. A man with a great vision, but plenty of flaws...but ultimately still a man worth lauding. As for the Star Trek fatigue of the early 2000s, that wasn't on the creative team, the suits wanted something familiar and tried and true, but with what *they* thought was going to sell. Then Enterprise got cancelled in the CW merger. But the show was originally supposed to have an entirely different feel.
Setting TNG good 100 years in the future was probably Roddenberry's best idea for TNG. Nowadays we can't start a new Trek show without Kirk, Spock, Khan or Picard.
Without any sort of canon a franchise is basically an anthology series. If that’s what they want to do then fine. Outer limits, Twilight zone worked great. But I never worried about missing an episode of buying supplementary materials for those properties. If you want people to truly invest (mentally, and financially) in a property then Canon is the way to go. I’m not going to bother learning about it digging deep into anything in an anthology show because it doesn’t really matter if it changes every episode.
Exactly this is what made the star wars Expanded universe such a big deal it all was canon. So you wanted to buy everything. Even if it wasn't necessarily important.
What about the Simpsons? They never gave a fuck about continuity, Canon, or timeline. Yet I still sat down every week to watch the Simpsons on fox from age 8-18. I have more merch and have rewatched every episode from seasons 1-10 more than I have any star trek show, and I fucking love star trek. James bond is another franchise that completely throws its Canon out the window every 10-15 years and yet it still inspires the same devotion in its fans that you can see in the star trek Fandom. So don't act like having a rock solid Canon is the end all be all secret to great media.
@@kevincoleman2092 The Simpsons DO have solid canon. They just never really change apart from small changes. The status quo is static as much as possible, basically reverting anything that happened in the latest episode and starting over the next week.
"If you're gonna fiddle with the basics, you're better off just making something completely new."--Joss Whedon...before he went off the deep end. With something like Star Trek, I don't think it's such a smart idea to just ignore what's come before--the rules of the mythos--for the sake of the story. That's fiddling with the basics. At some point, it's not so much "franchise fatigue" you have to worry about, but breaking the audience's willing suspension of disbelief. If you blatantly contradict yourself too often the audience starts to lose track of what's going on, and they start asking questions. When that happens, you've got a narrow window of opportunity to create an answer and tie it all together (however loosely) or they'll stop watching out of sheer frustration. If you still wanna throw it all out for the sake of your own story...make your own completely new thing in the first place. Anything else is just disrespecting the audience.
A note on Late Medieval/Early Modern Chivalry novels: the genius of Cervantes's "Don Quixote" is precisely about this (especially the original first part from 1604). Don Quixote becomes obsessed with those novels and loses his mind. As most people know, he then tries to imitate the stories he had read, but also, whenever he could, the character also gets into hilarious debates about "continuity errors" between the many "franchises" that were popular back in the 17th century (and earlier). Most probably Cervantes was mocking people he knew that were also obsessed with discussing and nit-picking fiction _ad nauseam._ Continuity debates are not a new thing!
For that matter, if you ever catch historians in a really heated argument, it starts sounding nearly indistinguishable from fanboi flamewars. Especially once you get back to the middle ages and before, when solid sources are often scarce.
I was watching a panel in San Diego a long time back and Mark Waid was one of the panelists and he said it best. "Earth-1. Earth-2. It's not that confusing."
13:40 Well, on the other had in Stargate: SG-1 I loved in season 6+, when they were building spaceships (Prometheus and Daedalus class BC-304s), they were reference back to previous seasons stories on how/where they found/gained the material or the technology that was build in. I loved that kind of world building and continuity.
I think it also depends on how big the franchise is how long it went and so on. Stargate SG-1 was a single incarnation and stuff should be consistent within it apart from some minor things, but it also changed a ton of elements from the movie, some were explained in-universe ("apparently, Ra wasn't the last of his kind and we were wrong") others weren't (Abydos being in the Milky Way vs. Kaliem Galaxy). I think with Star Trek, especially the original which does have now very dated production values and even compared to TNG and the likes sticks out like a (not so) sore thumb, I can forgive reimagining and updating the aesthetics. It's a little like recasting an actor. And Roddenberry had done it first. I also feel looking over at Star Wars and its much more reverent adherence to continuity kind of limits it. Most novels (apart from High Republic) feel painfully restricted and even the new shows - as good as some of them are - feel boxed in, as RJC had pointed out before. I think it's healthy to play more loose with continuity at times between different installments of a franchise, especially when they were made 55+ years apart.
Side note, I'm not saying that makes these stories necessarily bad. Some of these tightly boxed in novels, like Phasma, Brotherhood or Thrawn Alliances where actually really great. I also enjoy Ahsoka tremendously but I seriously dislike large parts of Picard Seasons 1 and 2. Ultimately it's two different approaches to long running franchises/ myths and both have potential value.
Although I couldn’t agree more on the pushback on the “it’s not canon” gatekeepers.. you should keep in mind that one of the achievements of Star Trek is it’s worldbuilding which many many people love and are invested in. Any writer that takes the time and care to set their stories firmly in the world of Star Trek and then build on it will be rewarded.
Exactly. Worldbuilding kinda requires canon to be kept up in at least some way. Continuity is absolutely necessary. Though on gatekeeping, I view that as a necessity, too. It's like a bouncer at the club - wanna have fun and treat others well, then come on in; wanna cause trouble, well, then get out.
I wonder if Rick Berman is a better example than Gene Roddenberry for building a franchise. Rick Berman oversaw four star trek shows, several of which were on the air at the same time. TNG and DS9 technically both occurred at the same time and DS9 and Voyager did as well, but because the shows took place in different parts of the galaxy it didn't usually matter how their timelines lined up. At least, there was a fair amount of flexibility there for the writers. Also, the three shows had very different settings and so could put their characters in very different situations and could even ask fundamentally different questions. None of this required ditching continuity or not marketing the shows as Star Trek. Plus they weren't obsessed with the past the way current star trek shows are. Just so some partially informed thoughts.
As a writer, I can attest to the heavy burden of respecting continuity. It requires a nerd-level obsession with the content. Best to keep stories to manageable lengths. A lore-master is essential for a franchise.
The funny thing is,, in reality continuity is a joke. Are there Aliens visiting earth or not? Was Trump a Russian plant or was it Biden and Hillary? The timeline is only as good as the faith in it, and the more one knows the less faith one has in the printed timeline. But maybe it's like Oscar Wilde said, “The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.”
And the opposite situation: don't tell too much about the past until the writer needs it. As a non-writer, I noticed that too much details binds the writer to events or facts that get in the way of the new story.
I disagree. Contradictions within an established fantasy universe are not interesting or expression of creativity, they are just sloppy writing. Unfortunately even the same authors make these mistakes, when they suddenly change their mind and try to retcon what they wrote before. This should not happen to a good writer. One famous example is when Isaac Asimov wrote prequels and sequels to his Foundation trilogy in order to merge it with his robot novels. By contradicting events that he had established before, he just destroyed his own legacy. A positive example is Tolkien who was consistent in the universe he created, although the genre of his books changed entirely. But he never contradicted himself. This shows that he was the better writer and more invested in his own creation. And I think, his readers are thankful for it.
A franchise should put off locking down events in a timeline. Don't say this is the first time we've encountered "X" unless the story demands it. Don't say some alien, etc., is the first in the group or the only one. These details might need to change later. If a story doesn't demand it, then don't lock down the narrative timeline. While some cannon change is necessary, the in-story history can't change every other episode, or the history loses narrative impact. So either make the narrative episodic and forget about tying anything together or be limited and thoughtful about what makes it into the canon.
It’s all about the quality of the story. Break cannon to make a deeper and richer story, the audience will embrace it and make that the new cannon. Break cannon and make the story less, then the audience will hate it.
Assignment: Earth could have been a great show. In my head it’s like the 3rd Doctor “exiled to Earth” arc in Doctor Who - central very knowledgeable time-aware protagonist with fantastic gadgets placed by his superiors in one point in space and time (until they decide to send him somewhere/when else this week), less intellectual but feisty and fashionable female companion native to the time as an audience surrogate, possible military contacts/assistance as necessary.
Doctor Who is an interesting example of a series that regularly soft-reboots itself with new casts and creative staff. It's able to slough off continuity on demand, keeping it fresh and -- importantly -- giving new viewers a place to jump on.
If you're a fan of "Assignment: 🌎 EARTH", I believe you'd enjoy the 📚 books "Assignment: Eternity" and " The Eugenics Wars: The Rise And Fall Of Khan Noonien Singh, Books One and Two." (I'm sorry we lost out on an "Assignment 🌎" series, but the above ⬆️ books MORE than compensate for that!)
In Star Trek we actually have several examples of spin-offs that are very different in style and tone from the rest of the franchise. There is Deep Space Nine, where the franchise was bold enough to tell a darker and more realistic story and set it on a space station instead of starship. There is Lower Decks, an even bolder move to make essentially a parody, but still set in the same universe. And there is Prodigy, an attempt to deliver a story for younger audience, which Star Trek has never done before, at least on screen.
I was 5 years old when I fell in love with the original show. By the time I was 10 I was doing everything I could to buy all the toys of Star Trek and loved playing with them to the fullest. I wonder if that counts as a younger audience?
And yet all of these, with the exception of DS9 are total bullshit. Had Gene Roddenberry lived longer, DS9 would never have been made, because it goes against Gene's vision of the future for humanity.
Gene hated fan favorite episode Family from TNG. He thought the premise was stupid according to Ronald D Moore. He thought the idea of Picard recovering from PTSD would be by a machine like in the TOS episode Dagger of the Mind or Whom Gods Destroy not by talk therapy or shore leave. So he could be wrong sometimes too.
Continuity doesn't really matter if the story is strong enough to stand without it. The dis-continuity of phaser settings doesn't matter as long as the story doesn't hinge upon it. What grinds people's gears is when continuity is changed in service of a trite story point to simply service a 'modern day' narrative aesthetic. If the story was good enough, people would readily incorporate the change. If it wasn't, people would highlight the change as part of the criticism.
The issue with this attitude, tho, is that "trite" is often completely subjective. Like, as an easy example, most older Star Wars fans rolled their eyes at the Kylo Ren / Rey will-they-won't-they romance thing, but "ReyLo" caught among the kids and was one of the Zoomers' favorite parts of the sequels. (Source: some very diverse SW groups I'm in.) Not to mention that storytelling trends themselves will shift over time. Like we've seen Star Trek drift back and forth between varying levels of cynicism vs optimism, mostly in response to the culture of the era, or writing stories inspired by current events. Or, at a further extreme, the way that Doctor Who constantly reinvents itself every few years, trying (if not always succeeding) to stay relevant. And that's kept it running for most of sixty years. This sort of storytelling experimentation is going to be hit-and-miss, by its very nature. But since long-running franchises absolutely **MUST** keep bringing in new fans to stay alive, they're going to keep trying to find new ways to appeal.
@@sleepeybunney I used phaser settings as an example simply because it was in Rowan's video. Continuity is a production error really, think of the coffee cup in GOT etc. I think what we are really talking about here is 'unacceptable canon changes'.
@@jasonblalock4429 I agree, but I also think that putting a brand on something doesn't necessarily make it 'that thing'. Is the Kelvin timeline really Star Trek even though its creation came about because of legal rights issues? I think its a bit galling when long lost half brothers and sisters (to the trek universe anyway) appear out of nowhere. Michael Burnham should have been separate from Spock to create something new, instead they shackled her to him because.....it's Spock. At least they didn't do too much with Thomas Riker but it was still a bad choice. I was half expecting him to turn up in Picard S3. Reimagining the Klingons in STD wasn't new, they did it with TMP, it's just that the Klingons didn't really require anymore reimagining and what was done wasn't an improvement. Though the whole angst about Klingon physiognomic changes in Berman trek was ridiculous. ReyLo wasn't a bad thing, just a badly written thing. The character of Rey was compromised anyway with the whole 'Mary Sue' issue, making her OP from the get go and especially with Old Man Luke was bad character development...let's see her get there! By the end of The Last Jedi, I got no real sense of a burgeoning relationship between them, unlike Han and Leia who we absolutely knew were madly in love by the end of Empire. The problem with Mythos is if you water it down too much, it doesn't stand up anymore. You could literally swap out The Orville's production design and nomenclature for Trek and fans would LOVE it. Conversely, you could switch out STD and SNW design and names for something else and it wouldn't change the ethos of the shows. This is the problem of franchise/mythos overload. Both Trek and Star Wars, Dr Who and all of them really should be mothballed for at least a decade.
I'm not sure if I agree with this or not. Inconsistencies within a franchise, or mythos, can only serve to discredit the same. Personally, this is why I tapped out of Star Trek: Enterprise after season 2, and I don't even bother with any of the many Nu Trek shows and movies. Their utter disregard for continuity and even Roddenberry's core values, makes the whole thing seem hollow and artificial. I don't feel like I'm even watching Star Trek, and I think I speak for many fans when I say that.
I think the thing everyone misses is that Roddenberry created “hypermodernism.” Especially with TNG. He created a whole new film tool set for persuading audiences. It’s kind of a trip because postmodernism is considered a rebuttal to modernism, yet in film at least, hypermodernism preceded pm. So he took two toolsets, modernism that includes objective truths, morally recognizable characters, grand narratives and postmodernism, which includes local narratives, blurred lines, morally grey characters and anti heroes, mixed both together, and had characters that operated from above both artistic toolsets. TNG for instance is just about a group of cosmopolitans navigating both the physical and the ethnocentric/limbic universes.This is mostly due to the more purely limbic entities they encounter and rarely of their own objective reduction. Whereas Discovery is the first postmodern Star Trek ever made. It has anti heroes, subjective truths, morally gray characters and so on right there on the bridge searching the stars before they conquered the self. How this compares to other franchises is that other franchises aren’t creating. A director or an individual might create (for instance all of Nolan’s films are hypermodern, yet he isn’t imo smart or creative enough to invent an entirely new toolset), but a studio like Disney has to co opt ideas like the infinity saga, investigate fan wishlists through their research groups, create committees and the like to inform scripts. So what happens when a once in a lifetime idea like infinity stones is milked dry, you’re forced to create something as interesting or better though a great deal of your process is to research fans who don’t know the first thing about writing or creating. So in conclusion: ditch the committee and research group process of making films. Get back to how man always did it, as film is the artistic expression of an individual. Ideas like infinity saga, Inception, the matrix, Star Wars weren’t made and cannot be made through research groups.
Disagree completely. By its very nature, Star Trek has always been about worldbuilding and maintaining as much foundational consistency as possible. Otherwise it ceases to be science fiction and turns into pure fantasy. We don't expect Star Wars to rewrite its own internal canon all the time; neither should we expect that from Star Trek.
The only spinoff show that surpassed the original is Better Call Saul. It showed you can delight with honoring continuity by briskly closing out vignette stories without derailing yourself in endless nostalgia (Picard S3) and pastiche (Strange New Worlds).
This is very enlightening. You’ve pretty much put in words what I’ve been trying to express to some of my friends. Hopefully there will be some people who will internalize this and develop better stories in the future. (Also, way to include OSP in a video! Maybe one day, a crossover is likely.)
Have you seen anything from the western and police stuff Roddenberry did? I think it’s easy to see his slap bang writing style. I’ve often thought about how production has changed since the golden days of film. What we’ve lost. What’s making comebacks Rowan seems to understand this quite well. @Jarrenwalker2357 I agree I’d love to see the new generation with access to all this technology go back to that gritty 60’s-90’s film era styles. I’d love to know what thoughts you guys have. Thanks
I don't consider myself obsessed with canon, but I think in a long-running universe/franchise/whatever, one that spend a great deal of it's "middle age" (TNG, DS9, Voyager, & Enterprise) establishing more & more in the timeline, needs to have some sort of rules to follow. I think they have been getting back to that with SNW more than any (except Picard S3), but still adding to it all with their own. If you want to radically change things to suit your own aesthetics & such, then you should just come up with your own original universe, and not be burdened by the "nitpicking canon" that Trek & it's loyal fans have been holding onto.
I would agree, but Star Trek has aleays been abusing it's own canon so getting mad at some shows for doing it and not ithers not only feels biased but also not very constructive, as the actual issues with those shows just aren't brought up.
@@yggdrasil2 I think it makes sense when people get more angry at currently-running shows, since those can still be changed if the writers decide to fix a problem they caused, for whatever reason.
One thing that annoys me when people tear into Roddenberry is that they decide to go at his personal life or not living up to the ideals he set in Star Trek. More recently there was a post someone made about character biographies about Kirks mother which briefly included how she'd had a "love instructor" which the poster and a lot of replies took the time to denounce Gene as a pervert for such a thing, ignoring any context that this is supposed to show something about the characters history, not Gene himself. But something I've noticed over the years, more and more fans seem to be willing to trash on Gene for any number of things they learn about him, no matter how minor and a lot of it has to do with how they perceive his private life.
I think when discussing continuity people often think of it as one thing, but really there are multiple layers of continuity and only one of them is actually important. At the top layer, the most superficial is visual continuity. Do things look the same, is there an explanation for differences, can a viewer visually recognise and disintguish the show/film from others, etc The middle layer is minutiae, do the details, technobabble, rules, and tropes of the universe/setting/mythos remain consistent, can a viewer/reader recognise some piece of minutiae as uniquely from this mythos, etc And the deepest and most critical layer, does the larger story being told remain consistent, is the universe cohesive enough to support the serialised and episodic stories. It's this layer that separates TOS from Twilight Zone. TNG from Orville. DS9 from Babylon 5. And so on. It's this layer that keeps viewers/readers coming back for more. It's this layer that supports the existence of spin offs and sequels. The universe is compelling in part if not wholly because of this cohesiveness. I don't much care about the first two layers, but the bottom layer is of critical importance, for me, in any long running mythos. Without it it's just a disconnected anthology like Twilight Zone or Black Mirror.
I really like the sentiment of "Star Trek as a place". It as you so well put it allows for other stories, other genres, other concepts. Star trek murder mistery? Star trek spy thriller? Star trek soap opera? All ate possible in some corner of the federation/galaxy. :)
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! Having grown up with Star Trek (I watched TOS during 1st run in the 60's) it has driven me crazy to watch/read critics obsessing over uniform design details, miniscule details in back story, even the shape for nacelles FFS!!! All the while apparently ignoring how blessed we are with new Star Trek content. Yes, TOS is a treasure, but it's approaching 60 years old!! I for one have been overjoyed with the new Trek content over the last few years. Have they changed some things? Sure. We are now well into the 21st century! If they had found a clone of William Shatner and reproduced TOS, it would have been SOOOOO boring!
Sorry bro but Picard was garbage, std was garbage, lower decks was garbage. Strange new worlds looks promising but I have no interest in going forward (what the hell is wrong with Uhura?)
Blessed with nu-Trek?? Are you fucking serious? The thing that alot of us are trying to preserve is HISTORY! Going back in time, EVERY DAMN TIME, is basically doing a period piece in HISTORY. When you go and do a story about the American Civil War, you don't dress the soldiers in camo, give them M-16's with M203 grenade launchers, shoulder fired Dragon and Javelin missile launchers and try to pass it off as 1860. It just doesn't work that way. In the TNG episode Relics, it showed the ORIGINAL unchanged bridge. No bloody A-B-C or D. That was how it should be done. They did the same in DS9's Trial and Tribblations, same look and feel as original, the Enterprise episode with the Tholian Web and the Defiant, AGAIN, same look and feel. Nu Trek is total bullshit and always will be
It looks like two people have proven your point already! My brother tried to get me to watch the Orville saying how its like a continuation of TNG and I tried but found I was done with TNG and wanted something bold and new and different. We get that with Disco and Lower Decks, even SNW with its retro feel is mirroring modern topics, using modern story telling techniques and has a faster pace than TOS or even 90s Trek. I shall join you in celebrating the old while enjoying the new Trek for what it is.
I love all of your videos, but have to say I disagree with your view on canon. I think when multiple shows are set in the same universe, they should be consistent with one another in the mythos. This facilitates the building of a larger world in which our imaginations can live.
Should every writer have to watch the 650+ hours of Star Trek before writing for it? Should they spend a significant portion of their time cross referencing against other works in the franchise? That is clearly ridiculous. While verisimilitude is important, it isn't the highest priority of a writer within a single piece of work. And verisimilitude of the universe, between works, MUCH less so.
@@anonymousscience4095 The hyperbole is real. Should they have to watch it? No, but it will probably help. If this writer is working for (say) Paramount and writing some Star Trek, I'd expect an in-house team to cross-reference all of this stuff, and flag up where there could be problems to the writer. The writer can examine the problem, and either change the story to maintain the verisimilitude, or remove the problem piece and think of a new thing.
@@AverageBritishNerd1138 >" I'd expect an in-house team to cross-reference all of this stuff, and flag up where there could be problems to the writer." On Star Trek II, would we have wanted a team to go to Nicholas Meyer or the writers, and say: "You can't have Chekov say he met Khan. He never did" "Kirk's middle name was established as starting with a "P" in "Where No Man Has Gone Before", so you can't call him "Tiberius"" "You can't have enlisted men on the Enterprise. Everyone up until this point has been shown to be officers. Starfleet doesn't have enlisted men." If the script had to go through re-writes for these things, would Wrath of Khan have been made? This is all a waste of time. It is pulling focus from what is actually important. Creating television is hard enough without adding additional arbitrary guard rails.
Yup. The Prequels in Star Wars have an entirely different tone and story style than the Original movies. People gave Lucas a lot of shit, but you couldn't do the Late Republic the same way as the movies following some ragtag rebels.
@@KingZercules To be honest, George, unlike Gene, did allow people to create their own stories of his universe, Gene did not do that. If it were for TNG, it would have been quickly canceled and Khan's Wrath would not have been made.
Eh, Lucas still cared about the continuity, mostly. MOSTLY. He did change the tone etc., but he tried to keep the lore together as much as possible in the Prequels. The Clone Wars is when lore really starts becoming more like "tall stories" etc., and yes, Lucas did co-create The Clone Wars with Filoni.
Yeah. The only two shows people seem to genuinely like are SNW and Lower Decks, the latter having much more leeway because it's primarily a comedy. Only very few people seem to have liked Discovery, and when discussing it, they are often the most impolite and aggressive people you could ever meet. And as for Picard, only S3 is more or less universally liked.
This entire video put me in mind of something said by Matt Mercer during one of the 4 sided dives about how he doesn't want to be treated as a creative monolith but more as a creator who simply laid the creative foundation for his world and others have built from there
Step 1: Get cancelled Step 2: Hope a similar genre movie blows up Step 3: Ride those coattails to resurrecting your franchise. Step 4: Get fired from your franchise because you're insane, being replaced by the studio.
@@HazriHaili I'd say that but later era Gene had to be removed for Star Trek for it to live. He tried to fight everyone to give the Ferengi massive steel cod pieces for Christ's sake, rofl
I wonder if Gene thought of true continuity as a luxury, therefore; not making it a big priority. If he would have had a guaranteed 10 year green light for the series maybe things would have been different.
While watching I realised that Warhammer 30k hits all these marks and it's probably why it's continually bubbling up into the mainstream across different mediums.
Love your videos. My opinion on canon is that the structure builds a mythos, and rich context can add a layer to storytelling that makes it easier and more impactful to build emotion and meaning, including suspense, tragedy and accomplishment. Discarding canon provokes the question - are you building something equally or more meaningful long term with this choice. The quality is justification, otherwise you've cashed out the benefit of context without anything to show for it. TNG needed to escape TOS' shadow to do something really ambitious. But in other cases it feels like canon is abandoned intentionally to de-identify Trek in the pursuit of conformity with other television trends, to be less ambitious. Ultimately its not important whether you maintain canon, its if you tell a good long term story using the tools you have. Canon elements are tools, and if you break them you better build something else in the process. Most importantly the notion of "franchise fatigue" has never sat that well with me because blaming the tastes of audiences ignores the clear tonal shifts and reduction in quality that took place through VOY to Nemesis and ENT. Nemesis is the only piece of Star Trek from that era I truly don't like and can't rewatch. Blaming the decline of 90's Trek on changing tastes ignores that Trek made its own success to begin with - nobody bet on it succeeding, Hollywood always wanted to make less affirmational and original TV instead. I really think if Nemesis and ENT weren't so bad compared to what came before, they would've kept going. Trek could've continued to evolve without going off the air.
First of all, you reminded me of the Cthulhu Mythos, just by using the word “Mythos”. Secondly, I kinda’ agree with you about Gene Roddenberry’s methods of creating or rebooting Star Trek. That being said, I’m hoping I could use that to my advantage, while creating a webcomic? But Yes, I prefer the word “Mythos” much better than “Franchise”.
If you don't want to follow continuity write your own story. The Original show was built in a TV universe where episodes were standalone. The characters and often the mission was the same but stories didn't follow each other or have to reference each other. The original show got a lot of high quality science fiction writers who at the time wanted the freedom to write the story. As a result in the first three years of Star Trek the Enterprise stumbled across around thirty different species who could wipe out the federation with their minds, if they noticed them. I prefer the continuity of TNG.
My head canon is always that Trek shows aren't documentaries, they're dramatic retellings of historical events. Continuity is as irrelvant as when Greek playwrights did they're own versions of the same stories. It should also be remembered that arguably the orginal canon series, Sherlock Holmes, is riddled with continuity errors.
Good points. I feel like the "rules" for spinoffs have changed in the last couple decades, since there's a hard push for serialized content, and the ultra contemporary implementation almost uses it as a way to lock people into watching everything even if they dislike the content, simply on the hope that there may be future content that relies on it. The disney shows are trying to balance that out, and it seems like a gambit.
One thing that worked in Enterprise's favour was it kind of was its own thing. Sure, we still had Star Fleet and Vulcans and the like - but it really could do almost anything it wanted with the 'grey area' in the canon.
Gary Marshal and Norman Lear adhered to these exact same rules with their phenomenal spinoffs (Laverne and Shirley, Mork and Mindy - the cartoons of Happy Days, Maude, The Jeffersons). Those rules make a lot more sense in show biz than what we have now, but pure chaos like Star Wars has done isn't following those rules either. They blend too much while trashing the original material to "make their own way". In other words, the Rodenberry rules allow for growth by moving forward and modern (Disney) does it by cannibalizing and killing off their foundations.
I disagree pretty much 100%. If you are going to make something that looks like a sequel and smells like a sequel, make a sequel and keep canon. If you want to make a spinoff in the same narrative universe, don't. Make something in a new narrative universe. Don't tie it to the old, because then you are making a sequel. Based on what you are telling us here, Roddenberry got it wrong.
5:26 Avalanche of Major Grin videos, interrupted by none other that your humble servant Rowan J Coleman. ^^ It was perfect ! Also, Gene was wrong in my opinion. If he can't keep continuity whole, he shouldn't have made details that could be used to keep records of continuity (like those stupid stardates). Continuity errors appears everywhere, but avoiding it is also your duty. But he was right to refuse mentioning events or characters from TOS in TNG, you must let your franchise breathe. There is a balance to find between constant references to past canon and complete writing freedom, something old mythos used well.
I'd say Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks encapsules the idea of different type shows and the recent cross over being a unique thing. Then they go back to their own style separate from each other. I think Paramount may have stumbled here and there with Picard and Disco, but overall are learning the right lessons with SNW and LD. Now if only the fanbois would quit trying to tell people what "real" Trek is and isn't.
If the new canon makes the franchise worse or makes a whole show or whatever not make any sense anymore It should be criticized, if you think its toxic get over yourself
This has worked, for some "franchises". Every new Transformers series (TV series, movie, and even comic run) completely re-writes the entire lore "the mythos" of the setting. And it still largely works because as long as the story is about big robot characters that turn into cars - it's still recognizable as "Transformers". You can even see it in the various versions of Spider-man movies, from the Rami trilogy to the current Spiderverse movies. They guy in the red suit swinging around the city is still recognizable as "Spider-man". This doesn't exactly hold for most of the franchises out there, though. Holding "canon" or "continuity" or, as I prefer to call it, the story-so-far-as-we've-already-told-it, "loosely" makes for a WEAKER story in many respects, especially if you're TRYING to build a "franchise" or even merely a "mythos" that can grow and branch out. If you don't know what the rules are that you're playing by, the game isn't as fun (see the Bluey episode "Shadowlands"). Yes, Roddenberry's desire to make Next Generation it's own thing rather than a direct "sequel" constantly tied back to original characters or episodes was a GOOD THING (something all these "prequel" Star Trek series failed to grasp). But it was after Roddenberry's health took him mostly out of the picture in that third season that TNG really took off and connected to the "general audience" in ways the franchise had not done before. The rules became MORE CONSISTENT when Rick Berman took over and easier for the general audience to follow (even though most people still had nothing remotely resembling a basic map of the galaxy or even knew how fast "warp 7" was). They could start to love the ensemble cast, because unlike TOS where Sulu, Checov, Uhura and the other "side characters" were essentially blank slates to tell that particular episode's particular story without having to hire a completely new group of actors, like Twilight Zone had, in TNG each character in the cast was an actual CHARACTER with story arcs that impacted later episodes. It became a better series for it - and certainly more POPULAR with the general audience than the series I prefer. And that consistency made the franchise (or mythos if you prefer) strong enough to support spin-off series like DS9 (which has some of the best writing in all of Star Trek) and Voyager and Enterprise. Roddenberry suggested that each spin off or "sequel" also be a story unto itself, and as long as there was "internal consistency" within that particular "branch" of the "mythos" it didn't matter how much "continuity" (a word which here means the franchise as a whole's "internal consistency") was preserved, changed, or ret-conned. While there is certainly room for the various branches of a tree to be their own things (you cite the early Marvel movies) there does need to be some consistency to the tree overall (the trunk and roots need to be strong) or the tree will fall over (or the weak branches will, anyway, like our old Elm tree that eventually lost all the main branches on one side and started to lean over our house, forcing us to cut the whole thing down). To switch metaphors: you can build this wing of the mythos in Gothic style and that wing more baroque and that wing over there Queen Anne style, and this one modern American manufactured home. But if the FOUNDATION isn't solid and consistent, your building is weak and will constantly threaten to collapse under it's own weight (see the MCU phase 4) and better off as a "neighborhood" of unconnected structures. But at that point you're not building a franchise or even a mythos, you're just building a "style" like the way Robocop and Starship Troopers aren't part of a connected franchise, but they are both obviously Verhoveven movies. I know many modern writers despise "canon" and "continuity" and see them as a ball and chain to telling the story THEY want to tell. All that says to me is "I don't care how LAZY I am about world building - and you shouldn't either. But, watch it, love it, and buy the merch because it's got the logo of your favorite franchise on it." If you don't want to tell a Star Trek story, don't tell a Star Trek story, make up your own setting. If the setting's "rules" are a "ball and chain," make up your own where you get to set the rules yourself. *Ah! but you DO WANT the built-in Star Trek fan base.* So, you take your original not-a-Star-Trek story, slap a Star Trek veneer on it, slap a Star Trek label on it, and sell the thing as if it WAS a Star Trek story. And then you seem mystified that Star Trek fans see through the veneer and don't really like it. They even seem a bit offended as if your "brilliant, subversion of expectations" was some sort of bait-and-switch. And then they go watch the Orville which IS it's own universe with it's own rules - but somehow preserves more of the essence of Star Trek than the shows that actually get a Star Trek label. And that's before we even get into the injection of current year, divisive political messaging and the tendency of the makers of the new shows, when the audience sees through their paper-thin veneer and rejects the "new" interpretation of the "mythos", to call the franchise's fan base (you know, the one they wanted so much they didn't try to make their OWN fictional setting, but used some one else's ALREADY POPULAR one) some sort of racist or sexist bigots for not loving their poorly written - almost entirely unlike Star Trek - stories they're trying to pass off as "Star Trek" (or Star Wars, or Doctor Who, or He-man, or She-ra, or Lord of the Rings, or Wheel of Time, or . . .) stories.
@Irisishunter they used the Temporal Wars from Enterprise to explain away any inconsistencies. They changed the timeline of Kahn and the Eugenics Wars, so basically if something doesn't line up with the old shows time travelers messed it up. Given how much time travel shenanigans happens across the franchise I'd say it fits well.
@@BadWolfei Appreciate you taking the time to answer - thanks! I watched Enterprise back in the day and for the most part enjoyed it, an extremely likable cast. I struggled even back then wrapping my head around it's existence in canon too many things just did not compute. Oddly I remember when the show was announced thinking well that cannot be correct we learn in TNG that 5 ships have bore the name Enterprise and the ships model was not on the wall in Picards ready room. On the plus side they did have my favourite Doctor, my second favourite vulcan and Sam from Quantum Leap. I should do a rewatch
This is why I wished we'd got a Tarantino Star Trek film: it would be utterly unique in tone and content for the universe. The Star Wars series generally don't interest me much as they're just fleshing out a single story, rather than showing the diversity of the universe. Both Star Wars and Star Trek have a huge potential to tell really different stories, but they too often rely on doing more of the same. Discovery, to some extent, attempted this, but fell down in many ways, such as the unnecessary link to Spock. Lower Decks is a fantastic example of doing something new, and I understand that Prodigy is, too
I think the following methodology sums it up just as perfectly. "The literary work of the studios may be divided into various branches. First, the selection of the subject. Many authors have special ability in finding favorable subjects, while utterly unable to develop them respectably. Let them give their subjects to others. Let these subjects, and perhaps separate parts of them -- scenes, pictures, episodes, various types and situations be collected. From this treasure of thought, material will be extracted by others. . . . It is precisely in such studios that a collective composition may be written. Perhaps various chapters will be written by various people. Perhaps various types and situations will be worked out and embodied by various authors. The whole composition may be finally written by a single person, but with the constant and systematic collaboration of the other members of the studio in the particular work."
An inconsistent world makes for poor story telling. Killing characters, galactic events and the like being pushed aside for a story and a character you thought previously dead popping up with no explanation makes for horrendous story telling. I don't care for any trek anymore, after the Discovery era, I gave up. I don't like opinions that discard canon and consistent worlds as something not positive. WORLD CONTINUITY IS FUCKING IMPORTANT. Having galactic events swing wildly from one show to the next and characters being alive and dead depending on whoever has the writers pen for that week sounds awful. I really really don't understand people anymore, the writing is so poor nowadays. I have never cared at all for Roddenberrys vision, I care about good storytelling and this just..wild disregard for strong stories with established worlds is just wrong in so many ways.
An astute look at the world of the Roddenberry legacy. I like it. I’d also say continuity wasn’t a thing for most shows in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. Star Trek being a bit of an outlier because it set up the expectation of literally dating the episode. Per usual this is what I come to the channel for. Thanks!
Those sound like good advise but I don't know if they can all be applied at the same time. Can someone think of another mythos being built right now with this amount of variety within it's shows? Spin offs at least usually stay within the same genre
I would say Fargo. The TV show employs a similar setting and tone as the movie, but each season tells its own story with elements that aren't overtly found in the others. Like how season 2 has aliens (not a spoiler, they show up in episode 1 and it's glorious).
Another one might be the Worlds of DC. Like can we talk about how there are like five or six different Batmans with reoccuring movies? Will Arnett, Ben Affleck, the kid in Joker, Robert Pattinson, the Harley Quinn one, etc.
Honestly, while I agree that multiple people working within a single universe should try as much as they can to branch off and do different things, I also believe canon and continuity should be respected unless whoever is writing genuinely believes they can execute an old idea better. Otherwise, why not just do something new and not be constrained by a name and the expectations that come with? Other than it's not as marketable?
i think gene may have been on to something for television. but i think streaming has changed that. and i think that the direction of current shows makes sense but i will point out that story telling today is also combined with wokeness which i think causes issues.
Honestly, this just confirms what I always thought - the reason I only got into Trek with TNG was that they started to throw off many of the chains Rodenberry put on the franchise and how he thought things should work. Thank goodness that nonsense from the motion picture novel was not made canon in the movie itself. Star Trek NEEDS continuity. It is better for it.
Roddenarry built a franchise that lasted three years. I'm not sure he was an expert on creating a lasting franchise. The fans are the ones that kept the franchise alive long after it had left the airwaves. By the time trek returned to television, Roddenberry was so detached from modern story telling that his participation was an active detriment to the show. Star Trek succeeded despite Roddeberry
Good points for authors. And for fans, let’s try to watch and enjoy the story being told, and not obsess about continuity or (dis)similarities to ‘the books’ or other attempts to tell the story. Consider it in a different branch of the many-worlds of quantum mechanics, if you must.
I have to disagree completely. Star Wars didn't feel like a commanding force even during the sequel trilogy. The only time it got close with disney at the helm was Rogue One. Also I like the Star Trek Encounters music in the background.
This is completely wrong. Star Trek became popular in spite of Gene Roddenberry's disdain for continuity, not because of it. It was the fans latching onto that larger universe that turned Star Trek from a low rated TV show into the mega hit it became. It is that larger universe which propel simple stories into mega hits. Star War, Lord of the Rings, and yes the Marvel Movies would be much less without their continuity. In fact it was the connection to the larger whole that saved many, quite frankly, subpar Marvel movies. It is the lack of adherence to continuity that is suppressing what should be breakaway hits like the The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Quite simply put, if you are not going to firmly exist in the establish narrative world, there is no point in feigning a connection to it. You should instead make an entirely new stand alone piece of work. That would have a greater chance of success since it will set expectations appropriately. An exception to this is when the new work is an explicit reboot or alternate universe story, since those too would set the appropriate expectations.
This pretty much cements what zi have long thought: each new series is essentially its own continuity largely divorced of what came before. Each new production is essentially a reboot.
I meant to add this yesterday, but its so true what you say about this concern with continuity and extended universes. It is such trash trying to maintain crap like that.
What's the point of calling it Star Trek, if it doesn't reference back and add to the universe that was built? Discovery may have been an "okay" show if it was conceived of as an original show rather than a spinoff of the existing Star Trek universe.
Watching this made me think I'd gladly see your retrospectives on Earth: Final Conflict and Andromeda. EDIT: Oh, you already did a video on Andromeda, silly me.
The JJ Abrams Star Trek movies weren't great. They should have started with a TV series or netflix, whatever, and gone on to movies. Hopefully, STrange New Worlds will start doing movies and that'll be the ticket.
This makes so much sense. The most iconic versions of the Universal monsters are almost completely disconnected from the books they were based on, and every adaptation of Dracula/Frankenstein/Wolfman/Mummy/etc. is an almost entirely original concept. (Imagine if "Hotel Transylvania" was bound by the established canon of "The Munsters," or if "Monster High" couldn't contradict anything previously established in the Hammer series.)
Man, this comment section is really disheartening to read. Continuity and Canon are hugely important in creating the verisimilitude (the illusion that the story we’re watching is real) and the stakes. So many people here seem ready to throw all that out in favor of… frankly sludge.
I've actually made this argument with a variety of different friend groups of mine. The reason why I love logging in and watching Star Trek right now is that SNG is different from Picard which is different from Discovery or Lower Decks or Prodigy. Right now, I don't feel over-saturated with Star Trek not because it's always there, but because of the differences. I usually argue about how you have four different time frames going on - 2250's/60s, 2380's, 2400's, and 3190's. These give very different feels to the stories, and yet, that gives us differences in structure. Then you get the different tones. SNG is more hopeful, Picard is somber, Discovery is kind of a bit of both, and Lower Decks is just goofy. Marvel and Star Wars hasn't felt different, and so I've gotten bored. Are there issues with Star Trek? Yes. There are aspects I'm not happy about, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy myself. And I'm glad that they've kind of gone 'ok, cannon is nice, buuuuttttt....we're not 100% beholden to it. Yeah, we're going to keep the major events static, but we can tweak around a bit too.'
The continuity thing is something I’ve been trying really hard to personally not let bother me in the current gen Trek. I wholeheartedly agree that there should be less direct sequels (and prequels). I never understood why the JJ movies, Discovery, and SNW insisted on setting themselves where they did. Carry on from Voyager, do what Disc did in S3 and make it the far flung future. Make that Starfleet Academy show they’ve been threatening since the 90’s. Make a Klingon show based on the IKS Gorkon novels. Star Trek is huge, quit going back to the TOS and pre-TOS era!
When Discovery first premiered, me and my mom watched it on tv. I was excited for any new Trek. My mom, not being a fan of TOS to begin with (she preferred TNG and VOY), upon realizing the show "went back" rather than showing later on (we hadn't seen any of the trailers, only heard about a new Trek show premiering and went in mostly blind), she refused to watch any more of the show, refusing to even consider it the next week when we were looking for something to watch together. (Because she was on the older side, she ended up forgetting about this a few years later and, being in a more accepting mood, decided to give the show another chance and we ended up watching the then three seasons that were available. I still remember how I teased her when they went to the future "Well, you wanted the shows to go forward.") Tl;dr is that my mom felt very similar to you about Trek needing to let go of the past and we enjoyed whatever new Trek we could get
Prodigy is a great Trek show set after Voyager so you have that option: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-hGj0SBjhbBg.html Also, the Starfleet Academy show IS happening and will be set in 32nd century: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-B3Bf-7NQG5M.html
“Continuity and Canon are not set in stone” This doesn’t fit consistently with anything I know about storytelling or franchise building. In my book, canon does matter because if that’s not consistent then your story is not consistent and ends up feeling blubbery and flubbery.
I think what upsets the more "middle ground" fan is when a franchise disregards the legacy and foundation of the source material because they want to promote a specific message, or propel a specific writer/director/actor Then.... Whenever people voice legitimate complaints about whats being done to something, the response is: "obviously you are just a cis gender white racist male..." Continuity is hard, perfect continuity is probably impossible.... But respect and effort are not impossible... Sadly I feel like most modern franchises have run out of both.
those modern shows cannot even maintain the internal continuity within them, they are made by people with no talent who hate the IP. if they don't want to respect the canon and continuity, why even bother with a specific IP and not create a new universe?
I think the Star Wars EU writers of the, now legends, timeline worded it best: they were having fun with writing fan fiction that so happened to be published. They always knew it could be retracted by george himself, giving way to the creation of the then known tiered canon. This is now how I view all franchise media: fan fiction. Sometimes very expensive fan fiction. That sometimes references other fan fiction in the franchise. It's just people/writers having fun in a certain universe I also happen to like. It doesn't mean the franchise is now ruined whenever a piece of bad media is published.
I’ll just repeat what others have said; the better parts of the latest batch of Star Trek have been the ones that risked new things. They haven’t always landed but if my choice is more Season 3 of Picard’s “The Nostalgia Train has no breaks” vs Discovery Season 4? Give me more of Discovery.
Picard season 3 is a reaction to the roughshodding over canon that Discovery is guilty of. The best thing IMO would be the risking of new things, without intentionally destroying what came before.
My general take on the subject of franchise and/or mythos is that at some point we, the audice, became obsessed with the concept of a "right way" to tell a tale in a specific narrative universe. For some reason, I always linked the birth of this attitude with George Lucas and his refusal to incorporate the Star Wars Expanded Universe. In a way, this was very true to the old way of doing things (i.e. many different voices telling many different stories), on the other it created (or solidified) the idea of a corpus of "official stories" labelled as such by the original creator. For me, this attitude had the unfortunate consequence of creating a hierarchy among the creators, leaving some really good ideas in the dust. On the subject of franchise fatigue, I think it has more to do with how the stories are told, not just with the subject and genre. On paper, the MCU explored many genres, but at some point the accepted format became just to fire a joke per minute. The first Thor movie had some levity, but this was used as a tool, to counterbalace the family and personal drama. Thor: Ragnarok, on the other hand, was almost a slapstick comedy, just like many other MCU movies and series in the last five-ish years.
I draw fetish cheesecake art for a living, and even I consider myself an artist. Words like "franchise" and "content" are designed to turn somebody's art they've made with passion into something that can be consumed, briefly digested, and just replaced with more content ad nauseam. Fuck that noise.
I am not 100% sure where Strange New Worlds fits into this but I enjoy it all the same. One of the better "reboots"? Or would it be a prequel series? Or maybe it is a quasi-spin-off reboot?
Stardates, at least how they have functioned from TNG on are based on the same system as Julian Dates - If you're in an excel file and type in a date, the computer converts that to a number, specifically the number of days since January 1st 1901. My assumption has been that the original stardates were days past the founding of the federation, but I don't know that that holds exactly true.
I kinda find this sort of argument akin to the argument over what to do with a person's body after they pass. One can come up with all sorts of statements like "they would have wanted this or that", but all those statements ignore a simple fact: THE PERSON IS DEAD. it doesn't REALLY matter what THEY would have wanted. What should be done is what those STILL ALIVE want. Star Trek is the same. The moment Gene was dead what HE wanted became utterly irrelevant. There's this position many have that Gene was flawless, and everything he felt should be done should be done, to infinity and beyond. This is utter silliness IMHO. The franchise/mythos should do what is deemed appropriate to IMPROVE the situation, to make quality content. Canon IS important up to a point. It's what helps the audience feel 'included' in the content. Humans always want to feel special. Breaking canon has the effect of shattering the immersiveness to those who are aware of it. I'm not saying canon should be held beyond all costs, but one must maintain a certain amount of canon otherwise the show no longer 'feels' right, and the existing audience will leave. Of course the argument can be (and has been) that existing fans can be let go in the hunt for new fans. That's true, but honestly at that point, why not just dump canon all together and make something new and fresh to get those new fans? I for one enjoy some of the new ST content (SNW and Lower Decks are brilliant), I can't stand Disco, and Picard S3 was barely tolerable. For me what's most important in a show is not that it follows the existing genre to the letter, but instead a show has characters I care about, characters that develop, and characters that make decisions that make sense. That's what's missing in Disco and Picard IMHO.
