Star Trek: 10 Times Canon Got In The Way

back in the day Gene Roddenberry thought that a great idea would be a simple five-year mission to explore strange new worlds seek out new civilizations and boldly go where no man has gone before Canon at that time was a mere spark in the twinkle of the eye of its creator who was just out to make some good allegorical stories have William Shatner rip his shirt in impossible ways have Spock say fascinating and McCoy to declare lots of things dead Jim but for the love of syndication that would have been exactly what happened yet nearly 60 years later it's still very much Alive and Kicking when it comes to storytelling this provides a wealth of backstory and material to develop the universe from but in the process of doing just that it can also cause a whole host of problems with just one or two misplaced but originally well-intended lines that can throw the whole timeline out of kilter initially the whole concept of Star Trek Discovery looked to be punching the franchise into dangerous cannon-breaking territory thanks to Spock's never before mentioned adopted sister and the wonders of the eponymous starship's magnificent Source a spinning Spore drive while all of that was neatly wrapped up and tied off in a few lines at the end of the second season Star Trek has not escaped the likely unintended restraints of its own storytelling and now it's time to rip those open with the Finesse of a battle thirsty Klingon so with that in mind I'm Ellie with track culture here with 10 times Cannon got in the way number 10. he's from Iowa the Kelvin timeline comes in for its share of fair and unfair criticism across the course of its three movies did fans need a rehash of the Wrath of Khan would the franchise have seen a rebirth on TV if it wasn't for JJ Abrams both are good questions and while it managed to write its own future history thanks to the pesky incursion of those romulans on the Narada it did manage to still tamper with Canon and all in the first 10 minutes picture the scene the USS Kelvin is faced with the mighty Romulan ship from the future killing George Kirk and seeing James Bourne on a medical shuttle evacuating the devastation it's an epic way to open what could be considered the finest of those three reboots and help set up that alternative 23rd Century but if we follow the true path of Star Trek Canon James Kirk was born in Iowa he even drops that line in the Voyage Home just a cement a point later in the movie it's even noted that the two universes diverged at that moment and not before which means that everything before the destruction of the Kelvin should also occur in the prime Universe never let a good action scene get in the way of plot number nine pork the big big thing with the next generation's second season episode Q who is that it introduces viewers to the most formidable foe the Federation has ever faced the ball or does it although The Hansons aren't responsible for mid-90s fleeting pop success they are however responsible for one of the franchise's most wedge driving Cannon headaches alongside Enterprises regeneration while the latter does get away with it because no one has any idea who these creatures are as they flee Earth The Hansons know before they head to the Delta quadrant that they are seeking out the Borg while their logs are only recovered by seven from the wreckage of the Raven during Voyager it's not a secret where they are heading or what the family is looking for they have models of Borg ships understand the nature of the collective and even follow a cube down a transwarp conduit this is sizable research to have kept to themselves if they did and leaves viewers with the conundrum that Starfleet must have known about the Borg way before Q introduced Picard and his crew to the assimilation Specialists if that's the case who specifically did know and why has this never come up since number eight that'll buff out one of the Star Trek generation's most memorable scenes is the crash landing of the USS Enterprise D sources section following the battle with the duras sisters above Viridian 3. over 30 years later the non-networks desourcer now bolted onto the secondary Hull of the USS Syracuse is unveiled as the big secret hold up in Hangar 12 at the fleet Museum fans rejoiced producers clapped with Elation and full knowledge that merchandise sales would be back up once more but hold that thought because we need to rewind to Captain Jean-Luc Picard's final log entry aboard the Enterprise D which stated that she cannot be salvaged it's well worth taking two minutes to watch the recent Roddenberry archive video 765-784 which shows the recovery of the saucer and something else while Picard does say that this isn't salvageable it is equally likely that he meant that there was too much damage for Starfleet to consider a repair and refit that does not take into account the obsession of a former chief engineer here the lack of a Star Drive section probably made this even less appealing to Starfleet This falls into a bit of a could-go either way argument yes Picard was right also this was a passion project plus Commodore Forge learned exactly how to work miracles after meeting Captain Scott number seven this vehicle is limited to warp 5. force of nature an episode that many a fan would like to add to the remove from Canon list that is headed up with threshold yet why were trekkies want to erase this from the past with more haste and less Grace than anorax resetting the timeline well mainly because the warp 5 speed limit seemed like a good idea at the time but quickly became a huge problem for storytelling the effective speeds above warp 5 were deemed hazardous with only special missions being given permission to stick on the blue lights and Sirens so that the Enterprise didn't get flashed by Intergalactic speed cameras yet as soon as it was introduced it became apparent how restrictive it was voyager's folding engines were suggested to be designed to combat the issue however after a handful of episodes it was never spoken of again this is a wonderful example where the prospect of changing things up within Canon actually backfired completely forcing a less than conspicuous change to level the status quo for not just the end of the next generation's final season but also for every single series that came after it chronologically finally Discovery did away with warp speeds completely for its third season with the burn so in a sense it was inevitable number 6. daunting Prospect speaking of Enterprise carving through Canon like a wrecking ball outfitted with chainsaws let us turn our Collective Trek attention to something that has been hammered home Time and Time Again by writers in the very words of their scripts down the years the ABC suffix to a Starship registry firmly indicates that this is a vessel worthy of extra Merit it's the gold star of Registries if you will confirming that the namesake has performed above and beyond securing a near legendary status in the annals of Starfleet history notables on the list include the USS Enterprise you may have heard of that one USS Voyager glimpsed in discovery's third season up to the letter J and the recent introduction of the USS Titan a in voyager's fourth season closer hope and fear the crew are led to what appears to be their golden ticket back home in the form of the quantum slipstream endowed USS dauntless nx01a hold up what's up the nx01a Canon certainly wasn't an issue for the creators of Enterprise when they dropped the registry of nx01 onto their hero ship however it contradicted everything that has been rubber stamped before and since that episode of Voyager if viewers are to take Canon as quote unquote fact then the crew of The Lost Starship should have spotted the ruse before the end of the First Act number five history conveniently forgets the name Enterprise history never forgets the name Enterprise well that's not actually correct because thanks to the launch of Enterprise in 2001 that's precisely what it looks like happened in the 23rd and 24th centuries chronologically the Scott bakula-led series precedes the original series and leaves the franchise with a huge problem on several occasions throughout the years there are several nods to how many Starships have been named Enterprise with the two most prominent being in trials and tribulations and Star Trek the motion picture temporal investigations agents dolma and luxley note that there have been six named Enterprise in the first of the movies Deca shows probe Ilea a series of pictures of the previous vehicles named Enterprise including the fabled xcv ring ship the space shuttle and a sailing ship but no nx01 in reality there was no way that in 1978 the writers of the motion picture would be considering that in 23 years time someone might want to create a prequel series to a short-lived 1960s series and use the Enterprise moniker for it the way that they do attempt to get around this is by having the vessel part of the earth Fleet prior to the foundation of the Federation but that only closes a few doors and leaves the rec deck photos as a glare sharing error in the timeline number four not the only romulans couldn't let Voyager get away without some form of an entry on this list and it's only thanks to Picard's first season that it does among the ex-borgs aboard the artifact were a number of romulans who had been assimilated indeed these were the last crew to be integrated by the cube and Incredibly the only romulans ever to have been taken into the collective significant in many ways because amongst this group was ramda whose knowledge of the admonition caused the collapse of the Borg sub-matrix and effectively neutered the cube however if we go all the way back to voyager's third season and the pre-pre-borg teaser episode Unity it was clear that the Borg had actually assimilated a Romulan ship before as was proved by the presence of Orem in The Cooperative Community spin back even further and to the neutral zone from the next generation's first season there it was suggested that the Borg were present around the neutral zone and was scooped up in a similar fashion to jewelry 4 in The Best of Both Worlds okay assimilation was only really introduced in that later two-parter but it still doesn't explain how ramda's ship was the only Romulan vessel assimilated when there were lots of other opportunities taken before number three a Klingon word that I'm not even going to attempt to say but if you're not fluent inkling on then the nearest you can get to is Reinventing the wheel over the course of the colorful history of Star Trek the Klingons have undergone several facelifts quite literally as fans there has to be some acceptance for updates reworkings and the like to make things more realistic for each audience and the abilities of makeup artists affects artists and the like yet with Discovery Klingons had a really weird deal suddenly they were all bald with very different facial features less prominent ridges and nothing like the accoutrements from Enterprise or even the Original Series in fact Enterprise had gone out of its way to explain the lack of ridges in the original series due to genetic experimentation that made more sense than Wolf's line about something we do not discuss with Outsiders sitting canonically right between Archer and Kirk Discovery went their own way with the Klingon look choosing to go for a bold update that divided the fan Community even before the first episode aired in this instance though the decision to ignore cannons seemed to backfire as within the second season episode point of light it was noted that the Klingons had now stopped shaving their heads because they were no longer at War a cool way around however it doesn't ring true if you consider they weren't bald for the Dominion War number two who are you if ever there's a prize for best reason for allowing Cannon to slip by unnoticed it has to go to Walter Koenig with the full knowledge that Chekhov had never met Khan on the Enterprise in space seed Koenig chose to keep stump in order to keep his role as sizable as it was in the movie sequel in fact even the director had clocked the issue and likewise decided it was best to just ignore such a trivial detail car never forgets a face so if viewers have to make up some form of headcanon Chekhov must have been hiding away on the lower decks no not those lower decks or that lower decks from the next generation of the USS Enterprise just waiting to take up that bridge position for season two in retrospect this would have worked with any of the other crew had they chosen to swap out Chekhov but then it's impossible not to think that only Walter Koenig could manage such an impressive screaming when the eel finds a new home or carry off the line he put creatures in our bodies with such a plum thus the first cannon in Timeline sequence era was born and a legend created number one blame the transporter some might say unification is the next generation's best crossover with the original series but it's a Concrete fact that this Accolade has to go to the season 6 Scotty Beeman relics there's a reference to every season of The Classic 60s series The Bridge of the original series Enterprise and even that familiar high-pitched wine of a 23rd Century transporter however for some reason Scotty is convinced that James T Kirk has hauled the Enterprise out of mothballs to come looking for for him Geordie and Riker exchange rather uncomfortable glances at this point because as they know Kirk's been dead since the maiden voyage of the USS Enterprise B and Captain Montgomery Scott was right there that transporter bee must have not only degraded so much that it lost Franklin but also took some bits of Scotty's memory as well the reality is that when relics was written in 1992 Generations were still two years away and thus the story that would lead to the apparent death of Captain Kirk had not even been sparked let alone committed to a page Scotty and Chekhov might well have been editorial copy and paste to replace Spock and McCoy but without this convenient oversight of Canon Generations falls apart within 20 minutes and that concludes our list if you think we missed any then please let us know in the comments below and while you're there don't forget to like And subscribe and tap that notification Bell also head over to Twitter and Instagram to follow us there and I can be found across various social medias just by searching Ellie little child I've been Ellie with track culture I hope you have a wonderful day and remember to boldly go where no one has gone before [Music]

Channel: TrekCulture

Views: 112,094

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Id: 2I-11W6JQ3w

Length: 13min 34sec (814 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 05 2023