Before I started watching Star Trek, I had heard about it on the Big Bang Theory. The way it was talked about, I was expecting a franchise with very airtight and complex lore. In reality, it’s kind of a muddled mess. And really, it’s better the creators don’t worry too much about continuity, why let continuity get in the way of a good story? It doesn’t make sense that half the cast of the original series had encountered Trelane before but in the end, does it really matter?
Anyway, fans of big franchises who keep track of all the lore and act as though it’s all consistent, put way more thought into continuity than the creators.
Then there is Stargate SG1 that, especially if you have the dvds, are fully aware of continuity errors and apologize. They have said a few times that they did something that was necessary for the episode, later realized it was kind of stupid, and then ignore it in the future until they can reference it in a Wormhole X-Treme! episode or such.
40k on the other hand seems to have overall gone with the idea that it’s all screwed up and full of unreliable narrators anyway. The fact that things contradict each other is just on theme for the grim dark.
The big problem with Trek, at least for me, isn’t the continuity issues or not-entirely-hard-science plots. It’s the lack of internal consistency between series. Not in plot points, but in attitude and mood, and what ‘Trek’ is supposed to represent. It’s not supposed to be space drama with a bunch of immature shits running around with scifi tech. It’s supposed to be an imagining of a better future, where humanity has come together and gotten so cohesive and nice that they don’t even use money in their own economies any more. The drama and action is supposed to come from things going awry or other external forces, not humans being just as shitty as they are now IRL. That doesn’t mean the franchise has to avoid dark topics or stories. DS9 is great and does just that.
It’s depressing when it’s just random scifi with a coat of Trek paint instead of a better version of humanity facing problems.
The last actual Star Trek show was The Orville. The more recent ones have all followed the action sci-fi route, not asking the big questions.
Though I did enjoy Lower Decks.
Maybe we have regressed so now the better us are worse then when Trek started.
This bugs me a little with Legend of Zelda fandom. The timeline is nonsense and the lore doesn’t matter.
I never saw a need for an overall Zelda timeline, rather that each game is a variation on the theme. Like with Mario; I don’t really consider the past games “canon” to newer ones except in the vague sense that the characters have a history together.
The only reason there is a timeline for Zelda is because people wouldn’t stop bothering Nintendo about it. Even Shiggy said he regrets making that because now they, somewhat, have to follow it or else people will riot.
“I just wanted a series where a twink and a princess fight a pigman over magical triangles”
I have played probably a dozen Legends of Zelda over my lifetime and I could not explain a single thing to you about the lore. When I was talking with my friends about the new Legend of Zelda movie, someone mentioned that there are multiple generations of Link and Zelda, and not just the same Link and Zelda falling in to some kind of cryo sleep or being reincarnated or whatever and it was literally the first time I tried to piece together the lore and like… there’s nothing in my memory but 3 decades of skipping dialogues as fast as possible. Did we ever find out conclusively if all of reality is but a dream on the eyelid of the wind fish? Hell if I know, even though I played that game through like six times.
Nintendo didn’t care about lore and continuity, just in creating unique and interesting gameplay. They were genuinely surprised when people started fan theories connecting all the Zelda games together.
So they eventually whipped up a generic lore, stating there was a prophecy that Link and Zelda would always be reincarnated at some point in history when they’re needed most. Ganon too; he’s the personification and embodiment of all evil and can never be truly destroyed, only defeated for a time. He will always come back in some form or another.
Skyward Sword is canonically the first game in the franchise, showing how the prophecy started and how they ended up stuck in an infinite loop of reincarnations for all time.
An official timeline was created at one point over a decade ago, which Nintendo promoted to officially tie all the games together into a branching timeline of events. I believe they actually published an official timeline book around that time too. Although I hear it’s already contradicting some of the current lore and may no longer be considered canon by Nintendo.
It’s actually been a while since I looked into the Zelda timeline, so if anyone here is more up to speed on it, let us know!
Technically at this point, Tears of the Kingdom marks both the earliest and the latest entries in the series. Both BotW and TotK are set in futures where all of the previous Zelda games happened, all timelines converging.
I just treat every LoZ game as if it’s the only one in the series. I couldn’t care less about the other games when i’m playing one. The only game that felt repetitive, or derivative, was TotK…because BotW was so good.
Exactly. Within the world of TotK/BotW, Twilight Princess is just folklore: yet another “Legend of Zelda”, one legend among many.
Similarly, think of all the self-contradictory narratives surrounding the founding of the United States of America:
- The Book of Mormon (1830)
- The Patriot (2000)
- National Treasure (2004)
- Assassin’s Creed III (2012)
- Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012)
- Hamilton (2015)
- The 1776 Report (2020)
- President Curtis (2026)
Trying to integrate Majora’s Mask into some sort of consistent Legend of Zelda branched timeline makes my brain hurt in the same way as when I try to make a non-contradictory timeline of all these other works.
It kind of started with Wind Waker which starts by telling the story of Ocarina of Time, which implies you’re fighting the same Ganondorf as Ocarina of Time.
Twilight Princess heavily implies a character is the ghost of hero of time, which in turn implies you’re fighting the same Ganondorf as Ocarina of Time. So after those games it kind of became expected that the games are connected in some weird way (same evil, different reincarnations of the same heroes).
Because continuity is literally what makes it a story? Otherwise it’s just a series of random events.
Which is fine for Episodic Television but not for a continuous story.
Strange New Worlds is en exercise of writers writing themselves into exceedingly narrow corners if in the end they want to connect to TOS. They had a descendant of Khan on the crew, half the crew dated her, yet none of that comes up when they meet the actual Khan. I wonder how they will connect that story point.
During the wedding episode, nobody sees Trelane as Trelane. They see other people he inhabits. In the daily soap ep, only Pike sees him, and he isn’t around later. So they kind of got that right, I think.
The first coherent space opera was Babylon 5 where one creative mind oversaw everything and in the end wrote all the scripts. The reboot Galactica is another example. You could tell The Expanse was all made up by these two guys. I’m sure I’m forgetting something, a Stargate possibly. But Trek and also Doctor Who all change with their changing writers and over the decades. There are periods where certain people are in charge and there is stability in story and focus. But then their tenure ends and somebody else comes in. And if it all made sense and everybody loved it the same way we’d have nothing to bitch about.
The Babylon 5 series is such a masterpiece. I watched it several times before finding out more of something said in the first season that’s referred and having an impact later. There’s still holes and threads that are not going anywhere, but the overall is very coherent and well pieced together.
Even the unpredicted events about production have been worked around.
I thoroughly enjoy watching reactions of people watching the show for the first time. The faces they make when they realize something from multiple episodes ago is having an impact, or is being revealed, is priceless.
Unfortunately, aside from the pilot, which is admittedly a bit different, but still mostly explained, I never really got interested in Crusades, and the other movies, so I can’t say for them. But the pilot and the series, mmm, chef’s kiss.
There’s speculation that La’an is going to somehow be erased from their memories by the end of the series. Memory wipes are often a way fir long running series to handwave things away. The show Once Upon a Time, for example, has flashbacks in almost every episode. Eventually it becomes really hard to add new backstories without contradicting established lore. Memory wipes are used a lot in later seasons to avoid contradictions. For example, they had an episode where Regina meets her long lost sister when they were children. Naturally, their memories were wiped or else it would contradict them meeting fir the first time in season 3. And then sometimes shows just don’t bother handwaving things away. Chandler and Rachel from Friends met for the first time three times (though, to be fair, Rachel is consistently bad at remembering people)
A memory wipe would make sense. Or they go back in time, say, to punch some more dinosaurs, come back, and there is just Bob at her station and nobody bats an eye because the timeline was changed. A reverse Sela (the RomYarLin from TNG) move. Because I’d like both of these solutions, I’m very positive they’ll find a far less satisfying one.
Fans claiming ownership over stories and direction has caused more harm than good.
Examples?
Games Workshop and Black Library enters the ring vs fans
It’s funny to see how the fans keep track of continuities and rules (and retcons) Warhammer and 40K supposed to have and there have been word of the authors clashing with headcanons. It got exarcebated when there are “lore” channels that just doesn’t know what the fuck they’re talking about without sources, and all based on vibes and taking the faction too seriously.
Not that it really matters because GW is giving lore and retcons them to serve as side dressings to sell plastic crack for their tabletop games.
On Star Trek, the lore and what was canon has always been a mess, even before TNG came into the scene. There were a number of “official” books out on extended timelines, ships, and worlds, but no one ever agreed on them. Then as more came out, the old debated stuff kind of disappeared. And some of it was really good. I actually like the old TOS ship designs like the dreadnaught and scouts in some books, and the back history of things like warp drive being invented and improved including some misfortunes along the way. Made it feel real. Loved the old Starfleet Battles and its history and ships.
But there’s never been solid consistency. Same can be said about Star Wars, although I’m not that much into the extended stuff. It does seem sometimes that fan-made ideas are a lot better than studio.
And really, it’s better the creators don’t worry too much about continuity, why let continuity get in the way of a good story?
Exactly. Creators make stories, not brands. When something becomes a franchise, it’s no longer a story, but a brand that gets used and reused in different works. For some reason, very few people seem to understand this
The creator of Alien Earth said something like he doesn’t care about lore and that he’s not going to limit himself to what Prometheus and the other Alien movies said. And I’m happy for that, some IPs are better as just interpretations of the same universe that strict historical accounts where everything have to check out.
Exactly, good for him. Storytelling isn’t religion, your new story isn’t supposed to cause a schism. What you choose to carry forward (or not) from a pre-existing body of work can be really meaningful on its own. Like some versions of Terminator treat time travel as a way to show that you can change the future (hopeful) and some of them do the hackneyed bit about fate conspiring to force an outcome (deliberately rehashing the copyrightable nouns of the franchise for cheap nostalgia).
Then why tie yourself to a franchise? Just make your story and not be a part of that franchise.
My thesis is that storytelling as a whole is about ideas and themes more than it is about particular nouns. I reject the idea that so much weight should be given to the components of storytelling that can be made into intellectual property. And sometimes you do want to tell a story that uses a compellingly iconic thing; Giger’s xenomorph is an incredibly compelling creature that resonates across decades because it has so much psychological weight. If you tried to tell an Alien story with anything else people would notice and ask “why didn’t they just make an Alien film?” and if the answer is “because they had interesting ideas that couldn’t be incorporated into the exact continuity of a dozen different films made across four decades”, that to me is a poor reason not to tell a good story.
