A few days ago someone on twitter repeated some nonsense that getting irritated about canon violations in, say, Star Trek was a sign that you’re kinda dumb, because canon is an impediment to writers who want to tell stories. Well, guess what: established canon is an impediment to only one kind of writer: the lazy kind.
Establishing canon can sometimes take a while. Take Star Trek: if you look at the early years, canon was quite mutable. Who did the crew of the Enterprise work for? It seemed to change from time to time. Starfleet, of course… but then also the United Earth Space Probe Agency and later the United Federation of Planets. Klingons went from shiny dark humans with a vaguely Soviet-style totalitarian dictatorship, to bumpy-headed high-tech barbarians with a focus on fun, honor and bloodshed. But these things are *now* well established, and have been literally for generations. Changing them is changing the established rules.
And the thing is, established rules are a *good* thing for storytellers. Yes, they constrain storytelling possibilities, but they force the storyteller to be cleverer than if the rules didn’t exist. And the *vast* majority of the time storytellers accept that rules are there and are good. Imagine what nonsense you’d get in a medical show where medicine had no relation to reality. Aspirin cures cancer. Broken bones are set with a smoldering look from Doctor Hearthrob. AIDS is cured by popping the infected into a microwave oven for three minutes on high. Two seasons back, Doctor Heartthrob won a Nobel Prize for curing Type 1 diabetes with a combination of oatmeal and Tea, Earl Gray, Hot. But now, Type 1 diabetes is wholly incurable and causes the sufferers to spontaneously combust with no reference to the prior treatments. This would be bafflingly stupid unless set as some sort of “Naked Gun” style absurdist comedy.
Imagine a legal/lawyer show where the law had no relation to real-world law. A cop show where cops could simply walk through walls, or where once confronted criminals instantly changed their ways. A western set in 1872 New Mexico with Nazis and an invasion of blimp-borne Samurai played straight, or where the cowboys dealt not only with cattle but an infestation of kangaroos and velociraptors. Come on, cowboys vs dinosaurs sounds fun, right? But if the show isn’t sci-fi or fantasy, having the cowboys, who pack Glocks and drink Bud Light from aluminum cans and ride carbon fiber racing bicycles, just wouldn’t make sense. A sitcom set in a penthouse apartment established as 60+ stories high overlooking Central Park, but the apartment door sometimes opens into the hallway, sometimes the elevator, sometimes the roof, sometimes right onto the street…and sometimes that street is in San Francisco or London. It’s either absurdist… or it’s lazy and stupid.
If you want to change the rules you’d best have a good reason. It can be done. Hell, “Young Sheldon” recently changed years of established “Big Bang Theory” canon in a smart way that made things not only make more sense, but made people happy. It was long ago established that as a child Sheldon Cooper had walked in on his dad cheating on his mom with another woman. The sight disturbed, upset and changed Sheldon, and ruined his view of his dad. In the “Young Sheldon” show, the dad has been portrayed as a great guy who was not the cheating type, though tempted from time to time. And they finally got to the moment: Sheldon walked in on Dad and Other Woman. But it turns out Other Woman was actually Mom, who was dressed up in a sort of cosplay. Sheldon simply didn’t recognize her. He misinterpreted. Canon has been changed without actually changing canon.
But the current crop of writers for Star trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who, Rings of Power, etc. do not seem to be either willing or able to navigate their way through established canon. And rather than write compelling, clever stories within the rules… they simply steamroll the rules, often for ideological reasons.
In Star Trek, it’s long established that 23rd century medicine is damn near magical in it’s ability to fix both physical and mental damage. So wouldn’t *have* characters who were delusional to the point of insanity, or trundling around the decks in a wheelchair. But in the name of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, the fact of 23rd Century medicine is simply ignored in favor of The Message.
So you end up with this nonsense:
on
It adds nothing to the story to have Wheelchair Guy. It doesn’t make sense. It yeets the viewer right out of it if they consciously recognize that it’s wrong; if they don’t consciously recognize it, there is still the subtle, unconscious Uncanny Valley-esque sense of something being not right.
Canon isn’t a problem. Canon is *good.* If you don’t like the canon, if the canon gets in the way of the story you want to tell, there are good ways to deal with it:
1) Write a different story.
2) Change your canon-busting story to fit a different property. That apartment with the wacky door? Change it from straight sitcom to a Doctor Who offshoot.
3) Come up with a *clever* way to change the canon. You have a propulsion system vastly better than warp drive for your Star Trek ships? Great. Set it in the *future* of established Trek, not the past.
12 responses to “Canon”
the same people who dislike canon, think the constitution is a living document, and calvinball is a game you can actually win at.
they’re having a similar problem in Dungeons and Dragons with wheelchair bound player characters in a world where life-crippling injuries are literally solved with the wave of a hand at the local temple. and most of the time for free.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZhtuCda_wQ
I’m not into D&D, but I’ve seen this and been baffled by it. A wheelchair bound “adventurer” is going to have a hell of a time in a forest, cave, swamp, meadow, dungeon… basically anywhere not man-made specifically to allow for such devices.
Why not D&D characters in iron lungs?
That was Helva, from The Ship who Sang—or close enough.
Pike had it worse in TOS.
You would think he could do more than blink a light—but I figure he had not just one but perhaps two tragedies…a medical accident where binary was the most they could get out from him.
I could see that here too.
Neuralink allowed a man to play chess—but what if that fried?
See someone in Star Trek times with great medicine who still has a disability?
You know the universe really hates them.
I sympathize.
and if you gie the player in a wheelchair a problem for trying to roll through a swamp…you’re “ableist” or some sort of “ist” or “phobe” (who can keep track of all the “ists” and “phobes”?)
it’s meant to “represent” players who are in wheelchairs..sorry, as the head of the party, first spot we’re going before the dungeon is a place where you can get healed up and out of that wheelchair, if we have to use party money to do it. because you’re gonna get the rest of us killed at the first pit trap.
the character they show is a thief…err…”rogue” (I’ll never get used to that). I suppose there is an age old tactic of appearing crippled to beg while you pickpocket. but an actual wheelchair bound adventurer? Wizards of the Coast is a very DEI company. how much you want to bet they make it mandatory?
It’s identity politics writ large; ‘I am (insert preferred pronoun, preferred ‘gender’, sexual fetish, mental / physical disability, etc.), and I DEMAND that there are characters like me in this game !’
Thereby missing the whole point og RPGs, in that you’re supoosed to pretend to be someone / something that you’re not . . .
Well, the wheelchair scene made Texas Chainsaw, Friday the 13th.
Put them anywhere you have Daleks?
Canon is the whole point of a “franchise.”
A collection of characters, settings and in-universe realities that frame the story.
If you don’t like those, write your own story in another setting that lacks the constraints that bind you.
The problem here is an increasing number of us have decided that an ever shifting worldview must be conformed with under all circumstances. This is somewhere between a religion and a disorder.
Those who play RPGs might remember the old game Paranoia.
Paraonia the game is what happens when you let these loons program your AI.
The Computer is your friend.
The Computer is crazy.
The Computer wants you to be happy.
Happiness is mandatory.
This will drive you crazy.
“A collection of characters, settings and in-universe realities that frame the story. … an increasing number of us have decided that an ever shifting worldview must be conformed with under all circumstances. ”
The recent “multiverse” craze is somewhat of a solution to that; if *this* reality isn’t what you want, just assume that another one a few universes down the way *does* have exactly what you want. A gender-bent Avengers or a Potterverse where the wizards here are the muggles there. Fine, whatever. But the concept is getting as played out as the superhero craze is.
As with all things… enjoy in moderation.
Just because there was an Evil Universe where Spock wears a beard doesn’t mean there needs to be a better one where he wears a tutu. It was fun the first time but the more you do it the better the story has to be. Same thing with time travel.. Its Star Trek not Time Trek… There ought to be enough in the deep black to write about without too much zipping back and forth.
I like what DS9 did with the Mirror Universe. One episode a year, telling a linear but low stakes story. unlike was STD did with it: a major chunk of the first season, with the Mirror Universe arc threatening to destroy not just the Mirror Universe, but the entire multiverse..
Just terrible writing and storytelling.
“A collection of characters, settings and in-universe realities that frame the story.
If you don’t like those, write your own story in another setting that lacks the constraints that bind you.”
I think a lot of this comes from the producers. If you produce a totally new show, chances are no one will watch it. Stick ‘Star Trek’, or ‘Star Wars’ on it, and people will, if only the once, before they declare it rubbish . . .
Poor Prof X