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.
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.