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Comment on 35 Years Ago, Star Trek Retroactively Created New Canon, And No One Noticed

StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

Oh, it definitely did contradict established continuity — certainly more than Spock having had a foster sister or Khan descendants that we hadn’t heard of previously.

TNG initially presented a stable and peaceful utopian civilization. Picard and his officers spoke repeatedly about this in the early seasons.

There were long term stable borders with the Romulans, established relations with the Klingons but no major armed conflicts in the lifetimes of the senior officers.

‘Yesterday’s Enterprise’ was given as the exemplary lesson on how the alternative, more violent, alternative history would have played out but even that was quite far back, with the Enterprise-C.

The Ferengi were in early TNG a new and mysterious alien group on the borders.

The Borg was the most disruptive threat in generations, one that required new technology and new more military forward leadership approaches.

And then suddenly it turns out there has been a major ongoing border conflict with Cardassia, marginalized refugees from occupied planets living in camps bordering Federation utopia, and Starfleet has had its serving crew in armed conflicts.

How can you sincerely argue that isn’t a ‘major change?’

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Zorque@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
They had a conflict, sure, but by now means a major one. They made mention of other conflicts as well, like with the Zenkethi.

That doesn’t mean their society was all about war and conflict, it means they had border disputes. Conflict with smaller groups, like the Cardassians and Zenkethi, would not have nearly the effect as one with a much larger, much more powerful foe like the Klingons, Romulans, or eventually the Dominion (as shown in DS9).

With the latter, they have to specifically dedicate their resources conflict and war. With the former its mostly peacekeeping. Making sure their colonies and allies are defended while still being able to dedicate the majority of their resources to exploration and diplomacy. They won’t simply overrun the Cardassians, or the Zenkethi, as they’re likely potentially able to do (as im sure is implied with the Terrans in the mirror universe), as that is simply not part of their ideal.

Conflict with the Cardassians, or other smaller powers, is simply the price of being a large power. Conflict with a power more matched to their resource level, like Klingons or Romulans, would have more if an effect. Thus what you see in Yesterday’s Enterprise.

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- ValueSubtracted@startrek.website ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Respectfully, I think this is a bit of a retcon of the retcon.
  
  “The Wounded” makes it seem like a fairly major conflict - certainly more than just “peacekeeping.”
  
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xyguy@startrek.website ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I would say that a war like that suddenly coming up isn’t that insane. In the real world I think about Desert Storm.

Short armed conflict, lots of Americans and Iraqis died. Did it to fight a dictatorship. But 10 years later by it wasn’t a thing that just came up every day on the news. (Iraq 2 notwithstanding that suddenly made it all the more relevant). But my point is that there was a war in the 90s that affected a ton of people but after a while, it wasn’t constantly in everyone’s mind.

Is it a big change, absolutely. But so were the Klingons makeup in The Motion Picture, and the Klingons being good guys.

But if suddenly no women were allowed in starfleet or slavery was cool as long as its XYZ race, that would be a continuity change that affects the world not in a retconny way but in a way that fundamentally changes the kind of show that it is.

If you want to make a sci fi show where Earth has been taken over by sexist slavers to tell a very compelling and gritty story about human nature, maybe dont make a Star Trek show.

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