Submitted 11 hours ago by StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website to startrek@startrek.website
https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/star-trek-the-next-generation-the-wounded-35-year-anniversary
Star Trek fans have become very sensitive to introductions of new characters, aliens or historic events arguing that things that haven’t previously been mentioned ‘break canon’ or disrespect lore.
This piece by Inverse shows how profoundly TNG retconned Federation, Starfleet, and main characters’ history on the fly.
Worth thinking about.
I don’t think this was “blistering.” At the time watching it as a kid I thought it is weird that nobody ever talked about the Cardassians or the war before. But things get introduced like that in Star Trek. And it is a big universe. I don’t think this is the worst or the most pivotal of retconning because it fit into the story and quickly got expanded on.
Chekov hadn’t met Khan. WW3 didn’t happen in the 90s. Mark Leonard was both a Romulan AND Soock’s daddy. Picard meets versions of his parents during TNG that are nothing like the ones in PIC. Virtually all main TNG main characters lost at least one parent early in their life (or their sight). There is no way in hell that Riker can just stay #1 after Wolf 359 and not get his own ship. There wasn’t a queen but baby borgs! Scotty knew Kirk was dead already. And there are plenty of cases when beaming through shields is possible.
That’s just a few examples that grind my gears more than the introduction of the Cardassians. But I love Trek and am willing to forgive a lot.
Trek is a statue that many sculptors work on at different times. Inconsistencies must happen as a result. It’s not like The Expanse where the story has been written down before in great detail before they started filming. They took liberties from the original but would’ve succeeded at sculpting their piece of marble as planned if it hadn’t been for the assholery of a certain Mr. Anvar.
That story didn’t contradict established continuity, just added to it, right? Its not a situation of “we’ve always been at war with Eastasia”, it’s a situation of expanding on what already exists to provide more depth.
I think this kind of flexibility is good… but it also highlights problems I have with certain aspects of modern storytelling. Namely things like The Flux in Doctor Who and The Burn (which I, admittedly, have not watched stories for, only read wiki articles) which seem to fundamentally affect every aspect of the universe at once with far reaching consequences that fundamentally change the nature of the universe of that setting. They do so for the sake of one story, then everything after has to accommodate for this, not because of interesting storytelling elements… but because the storyteller wanted to raise the stakes.
I think the initiating premise of Picard had this, with the destruction of Utopia Planetia causing a massive shift in how Starfleet, and The Federation as a whole, operated.
Alternatively, something like the Dominion war, which had a similar effect on the universe, didn’t encapsulate it as a singular event meant to shake things up. Rather it was a slow build over time that actually showed what was happening as it happened. The story wasn’t “Oh no, thing happened, what do we do?” It was people living their lives as the world moved in a direction they had to deal with.
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?’
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.
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.
Calling it retconning is a strech when it mostly added new story where there was none.
That’s a point.
Although in the case of the introduction of the Cardassians, there were significant contradictions vs the geopolitical situation of the Federation as presented repeatedly in the earlier seasons of TNG.
In relation to fan outrage though, even modest ‘filling in gaps’ — or ‘dancing between the raindrops’ as the EPs of SNW call it, is frequently met with with complaint that “no one has ever mentioned that before.”
I would say any story becomes ‘sensitive’ to additions of all sorts. As a story universe grows, it establishes more and more. As more and more gets established, there is simply more and more that new story has to fit in with. It’s basic.
A good story must be self-consistent, or what the fuck is even the point!? If literally anything can happen, then who cares about what makes the universe unique?
I’d say it’s not the fans who have become sensitive, but the IP owners who became indifferent to what makes Trek a unique, compelling universe.
Almost everything TNG retconned from TOS were positive things, like getting rid of the sexist uniforms for women.
Well, I can see your point.
I also was always supportive of WW III being pushed back by a half century.
But you can’t argue that there haven’t been major retcons.
xyguy@startrek.website 10 hours ago
I guess I’m not sure what the title is getting at.
The article is about the first episode featuring the Cardassians and how they mention the Cardassian war that took place directly before the series currently in progress.
Honestly the point of the article seems to be that changing canon is secondary to telling a really compelling sci-fi allegory story.
A great way to not have to worry a lot about canon is to move far into the future or to go farther into the past.
I don’t really care if they introduce a new thing that wasn’t mentioned before, I get more grouchy about them introducing stuff that directly contradicts really important stuff established in the show. Like “turns out the paradise on earth was bullshit all along” for instance.
ValueSubtracted@startrek.website 10 hours ago
I think that’s exactly the point, and it’s one that is often disregarded.
And to be honest, the sudden retcon of the Cardassian wars is not very easy to square with the way the Federation was presented in early TNG, existing in an era of unprecedented peace. “Contradiction” might be a stretch, but it’s inconsistent.
StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website 6 hours ago
It’s interesting though.
We get the perception in early TNG that it’s been a long stable period of peace, exploration and expansion that’s suddenly disrupted by the Borg.
Then, we find that there have been significant ongoing regional conflicts with the Cardassians, some in Starfleet service have seen combat and torture, and that there have been marginalized refugees that have been marginalized and largely forgotten the Utopian Federation worlds.
BUT we accepted at the time as an audience.
In fact, unlike many of the elements of TNG that were outraging TOS fans in 1987-1989, there was nary a murmur about this at the conventions or on the BBS about the introduction of the Cardassians and Bajorans or the significant retcons.
As someone who was around for the TOS fan backlash in the early years of TNG, I don’t think that this has anything at all to do with the cumulative weight of lore or lack thereof.
My thought rather is that a show at the height of its popularity can get away with a great deal in terms of retcons and rewriting its own canon/lore.
A new show that does that takes a larger risk and is more likely to attract backlash.