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| 05 April 2063: Getting closer all the time.... (SOURCE: https://wall.alphacoders.com/big.php?i=498337] |
One of
the tasks with which any historian must grapple in constructing a narrative of
the past is determination what source materials are available and how reliable
are the facts they provide. Many different factors must be considered,
including the proximity of the source to the event, whether it constitutes a
“primary source” providing contemporary first-hand knowledge unfaded by the
passage of time and unmediated by subsequent accounts and influences, or,
alternatively, whether the evidence is to be considered “secondary,” providing
a more distant perspective based on assessment of such primary sources. In both
cases – primary as well as secondary – one must consider in what ways the
recording of the account may have been motivated by an agenda – unconscious or
acknowledged – which determined inclusion or emphasis of certain facts and
deemphasis or even exclusion of other facts which may, objectively, be critical
in creating an accurate reconstruction of the events as they happened.
Such is
no less the case when, based on a body of admittedly fictional work created by
a myriad of authors, producers, directors, actors, and devoted commentators
over the course of more than half a century, one sets out to construct a
reasonable and cohesive history of a near future which has gradually caught up
with and surpassed the earliest accounts provided and yet possesses what has
come to be widely considered a definite terminus – 05 April 2063, the
development of the Warp Drive. I discussed previously [LINK]
the breadth of the still-growing Star Trek franchise of television
series, movies, novels, and assorted supporting materials, how even the future
time-frame in which the adventures are considered to occur developed only
gradually, and what I called “The Perils of Prognostication” to which the
earliest predictions of the near future established in the Original Series,
approaching six decades ago, have inevitably fallen. I acknowledged as well
that what I am attempting to do will ultimately, with the passage of time, be
rendered invalid as time marches on and – inevitably, I believe, given its
demonstrated longevity – the Star Trek franchise literally catches up
with itself in a far more untenable way than was the case when the 1990s did
not (thank God) bring World War III and the Eugenics Wars, and the first couple
of decades of the 21st century did not (unfortunately) see such
things as manned missions to Mars and Saturn as well as an advance in
propulsion technology rendering “sleeper ships” unnecessary for interplanetary
travel by cutting transit times from months or years to mere days or weeks. But
I do consider the task worth doing, if only as an intellectual exercise in what
I tongue-in-cheek call “making history” (more accurately, “making up
history”) by maintaining as many as possible of the “facts” that have been
established over the years while fleshing them out into a narrative that
provides “a reasonable and cohesive history” of the near future.
To be
honest, I must also acknowledge that this is one way that I can play in the
wonderful universe that is Star Trek. From the very beginning – in fact,
blazing a trail in such activities – Star Trek fandom has produced a
huge volume of fan-made creations, in every genre imaginable: fan-written short
stories and novels, fan-created technical manuals and other supporting
materials, fan-acted, -directed, and -produced movies and faux
television episodes. Some attempts at fiction have been dreadful, constituting
wish-fulfillment sexual fantasies “starring” the authors and various of the
characters. Some has been quite good, meriting – and sometimes even gaining –
publication, or at least earning their creators the chance to write something
specifically for publication. The best – and this is where I would place Star
Trek Continues – is, in my judgment, a better recreation of the original
1960s vision of Star Trek than much of what has been officially
published or produced in the fifty years since the original series ended. The
same range of quality can be seen in the various supporting materials – blueprints,
technical manuals, and the like – that have appeared since the mid-seventies at
the very latest. Analysis of the minutiae appearing in the episodes – even in
background monitors and schematics flashing on the screen for a second or less
– have been united with reasoned hypothesis to produce marvelously intricate
speculative materials that are (like any prediction of near-future history will
be) inevitably rendered invalid by subsequent presentations. That does not stem
the tide of such work, however, which has only exploded in volume with the
coming of the Internet. A myriad of web sites are devoted to what is called
“Treknology” [e.g., treknology.org],
offering an overwhelming number of usually contradictory visions by what must
be thousands of devoted fans.
I cannot
write fiction. I have tried – many years ago I spent a huge amount of time over
the course of several years (easily a decade or more) constructing a
science-fiction/fantasy universe owing much to Tolkien/Star Wars/Battlestar
Galactica/Katherine Kurtz’s Deryni Chronicles/and, of course, Star
Trek and just about every other science fiction and fantasy world I read
during my adolescence to early adulthood. I called it The Starsaga. I
constructed worlds and languages and cultures and a vast (60,000-plus years)
historical context set in the Andromeda Galaxy, generating a very thick binder full
of notes and outlines and synopses and so forth … but every time I tried to
turn it into story – whether short story or novel – I foundered on one
inescapable fact I ultimately just had to accept: I cannot write fiction – or
more specifically, I cannot write believable dialogue. I still have that
binder; I occasionally pull it down and thumb through it … and consider burning
it because it is so embarrassingly bad. The overall structure I created is
moreover hopelessly derivative of the aforementioned works.
But, I
can, I believe, interpret sources and write passable history. It is my
profession, after all. I also, having my first degree not in history but rather
in engineering, have some affinity for “treknology,” although I am not adept
enough with image manipulation software to create the beautifully rendered
illustrations that typically accompany such works. Nonetheless, applying my
knowledge of history and its principles seems to me to be an area I can
contribute to the every-growing volume of – admittedly non-canonical – Star
Trek analysis and reference material.
The
admission that what I intend to do will inevitably be “non-canonical” brings me
to the real subject of this essay. As mentioned above, given the vast amount of
Star Trek material ranging in authority from the official productions to
licensed novels and supporting works to the wealth of fan-constructed stories
and “treknology” sites out there, the first task I must accomplish is to identify
what among all of that I will consider “authoritative” and to what degree.
There is, as I have mentioned repeatedly, a huge – overwhelming – amount
of contradictory data from fifty-plus years of episodes, movies, novels, and so
forth – even when considering “just” Star Trek’s vision of its own
in-universe past, our own near-future. As I sift through the material for the
purported facts that have been presented – as detailed in my last post [LINK]
beginning as early as the later episodes of the first season of The Original
Series – it will inevitably entail a process of picking and choosing that I do
not wish to be simply arbitrary.
Definition of Terms
For the
discussion that follows, it will be useful to begin by establishing some
definitions. The use of the terms “canonical” and “non-canonical” (or “apocryphal,”
although I prefer “non-canonical” for reasons which I believe will become clear)
seems initially to be fairly straightforward: what appears in officially
produced series and movies is “canonical,” everything else is not. But then the
question arises of whether to consider, e.g., The Animated Series and the
movie, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier canonical or not. The creator of
the franchise, Gene Roddenberry himself, disavowed both. There is also the
question of various background and supporting materials issued by the
production teams of various series and movies as well as innumerable
contradictions that appear over time – many of them clearly intentional, what
is often termed, in other such broadly serialized ever-expanding narrative structures
that have endured for decades and yet ground themselves in a more or less
cohesive continuity, “retconning” or “retroactive continuity” – essentially changing
the narrative past to preserve the narrative present and future. And that is without
even considering the vast amount of Star Trek written fiction! Clearly
the binary “canonical” or “non-canonical” assessment is too limiting. I believe
a useful analogy expanding the categorization may be found in an area of
historical and literary studies which inevitably confronts a similarly vast and
varied array of sources – the field of Biblical studies, particularly Catholic
Biblical studies, which classifies Holy Scripture and similar writings in four
broad categories – canonical, deuterocanonical, apocryphal,
and pseudepigraphical. Taking those categories in turn:
Canonical means the official, authoritative list of
divinely-inspired writings comprising the Bible, as identified by Tradition and
the Church’s teaching authority exercised in the 16th-century
Council of Trent (for the Old Testament) and by proclamation of Pope Damasus I
in 384 (for the New Testament). The word “canon” comes from the Greek word for
a measuring rod or standard. Of course, anyone familiar with the subject will
realize that the breadth of that “canon” of Scripture is itself a matter of
debate – which is where the second term comes in.
Deuterocanonical literally mean a “second canon” and refers
to several books and portions of other books in the Old Testament were written
later and were not universally recognized as being authoritative until the
Church ultimately decided the issue once and for all in the context of vigorous
challenges to their authenticity during the Protestant Reformation. Specifically,
these are the seven books that appear in Catholic Bibles but not in Protestant
Bibles – 1 and 2 Maccabees, Tobit, Judith, Sirach, The Wisdom of Solomon, and
Baruch, plus parts of Esther and Daniel. Although there was early consensus
about the other 66 books including most of Esther and Daniel, these particular
texts remained controversial until the Council of Trent removed all doubt for
faithful Catholics. Despite carrying the same level of authority as the “primary
canon” of Scripture, the late date of their acceptance led to their being dubbed
“deuterocanonical” by Catholics – although Protestants include them among the
next category.
Apocryphal
– There is a misconception
about this and the last category, that the works so called are somehow
“fraudulent,” but such an assessment constitutes erroneously imposing modern
attitudes and standards on the past as well as imputing motivation to their
authors and those who accepted them that is almost certainly not the case. The
word “apocrypha” literally means “hidden,” which is likewise manifestly not the
case for many so-called works (although at various times their reading and
distribution has indeed been discouraged or outright forbidden). But, in
Biblical studies, “apocryphal” simply means early works that may have been at
one time or by certain groups considered canonical but were ultimately and
authoritatively judged not to enjoy that status. Hence Protestants’ relegating
the deuterocanonical books of the Catholic Bible to “The Apocrypha.” The
category is actually quite a bit wider, of course, as there are works for which
Protestants and Catholics agree in judgment, e.g., The Protoevangelium of James.
Nevertheless, in this cased the popular meaning of the word, that “apocryphal”
means “lacking in authority,” will serve perfectly well for our purposes.
That
aforementioned fourth category that is often considered to align almost
coextensively with “apocrypha,” deserves a moment’s consideration on its own. Literally,
pseudepigraphical means
“written under a pseudonym,” usually (in the case of Scripture) meaning a later
writer assuming the persona of some great personage of the past in order to
lend authority to their own writing. In the modern context, by modern standards,
such an action would clearly be considered deceptive and fraudulent – but one
of the most necessary skills a historian must cultivate is not applying
modern standards to the past he or she is studying. It was a common practice in
the ancient world, in secular as well as religious writing (although that too
is, to a degree, to apply a modern dichotomy where it did not apply or at least
where the line would be drawn in a very different place), and was not
considered “deceptive.” It was, rather, a means of invoking that earlier
authority on a work that the present author considered fully in conformity with
the writer whose name they appropriated. As far as we can tell today in every
instance where we have a clue, it was done by devotees or students of that prior
authority who adamantly believed that they represented his ideals. From later
perspective the lack of authenticity does, of course, deprive the work of
authority, but to attribute malicious intent where such was almost certainly
not present is presumptuous and uncharitable.
Having
said all that, in order to apply the foregoing terms to Star Trek source
materials for my purposes I would define them more briefly as follows,
paralleling the above (although not perfectly):
Canonical – official productions to be presumed
authoritative.
Deuterocanonical – official productions considered
authoritative by some but not by all.
Apocryphal –materials devoid of authority by their
nature, regardless of their intrinsic quality.
Pseudepigraphical – unofficial, unauthorized works of such
high quality that they could well be considered authoritative.
I must
also make several points clear. First, “productions” here is not necessarily
limited to just the television series and movies but may include other types of
material as well. Secondly and indeed corollary to that, it must always be
remembered that when considering the products of an unquestionably fictional franchise
where the lines between canonical, deuterocanonical, et al., are to be drawn is
ultimately a matter of individual interpretation in a way that, for me as a
Catholic at least, similar questions regarding the canonicity of Holy Scripture
is not. Ultimately, as fans of Star Trek, we are each free to construct
our own “head-canon.” Finally, my consideration of the authority to be accorded
various Star Trek sources going forward will be largely, although not
exclusively, oriented toward the purpose to which I intend to put them in
constructing a near-future “history” from the present to the founding of the Federation.
Canonical Hierarchy of Authority
in Star Trek
My
personal “hierarchy of authority” applying those definitions to the Star
Trek source material would therefore be as follows, as discussed below with
noted exceptions:
Canonical
– Live-action
officially-produced episodes and movies.
Deuterocanonical – The Animated Series episodes, as well as
the novelizations of the Original Series and some of the movies. Also, some of
the original novels and official reference materials, I believe, deserve to be
ranked as deuterocanonical.
Apocryphal – Some episodes and movies as well as most
of the original novels and reference materials, for one reason or another, cannot
be considered authoritative.
Pseudepigraphical
– Star Trek Continues.
It is that good. Of course, the fans who produced STC did not put their
fine work out there under the guise of it being authentic 1960s-era television Star
Trek, so it is not technically “pseudonymous.” Vic Mignogna and his
fellow actors and production team afixed their own names to the series. But it
is as close a reproduction of the writing, the sets, the acting, and so forth,
as you will ever see, and I do not know what other category it would fall in.
It is an almost seamless continuation.
There
are, of course, numerous problems and exceptions to the above broad
categorizations. To run down them….
First,
the live-action, officially-produced episodes and movies must be presumed
authoritative and canonical. Like any particular one of them or not, they are
what the professional creators (to whom, for better or worse in each case, the
corporate owners of the franchise entrusted it) chose to do with that authority.
Nevertheless, as might be expected given the sheer number of live-action
episodes and movies (755 at present – and here I do include in that number the
three Abramsverse movies while excluding the ten Short Treks vignettes)
as well as the variety of those creators, their abilities, their knowledge of
and devotion to protecting and passing on intact the body of work that came to
them, there are some individual episodes and movies I cannot bring
myself to include. The essence of some might be salvaged by judicious
allowances and substitutions of detail. To some degree, I freely admit that it often
boils down to personal taste, although I believe I can give some rationale for
most that I would exclude or alter:
The
three Abramsverse movies I do not include at all because they contribute
nothing to this project, the stories of each being well outside its scope. Even
the second, Into Darkness, linking back to the Eugenics Wars and Khan
Noonien Singh, adds nothing that I can remember, except the ludicrous spectacle
of a Sikh prince being portrayed by a blond, blue-eyed Englishman. They are,
moreover, explicitly set in an alternate timeline which only departed from the
main timeline with the appearance of Nero and his Romulans in 2233, having
escaped the supernova of 2397 which destroyed Romulus. Only that destruction of
Romulus and the consequent disappearance of Ambassador Spock as well into that
altered timeline (appearing a few years later) have any relevance to the main, “Prime,”
timeline – and all the dates are well outside of my ca. 2000-2161 scope of
“near future” history. My lack of affinity for the movies has nothing to
do with it (he protesteth too much!).
Of the other, mainstream, "Prime" timeline movies, despite their widely varying quality, the only one I would exclude
altogether from “my” Star Trek canon would be Star Trek V: The Final
Frontier. And in that I find good company. Gene Roddenberry himself
(uninvolved in its production) considered it “apocryphal.” Besides which, it
contributes nothing to this project.
Likewise,
at least so far, Star Trek: Discovery does not contribute anything
relevant to what I am trying to do – at least as far as near-future history is
concerned. Where I will discuss the history and development of the Warp Drive …
well, as I will doubtless repeat myself there, the “Spore Drive” is at once one
of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard of and irrelevant to any
such discussion anyway. Moreover, the first season of Discovery is just
BAD.
Star
Trek: Enterprise, in
common with Star Trek: Discovery, is a prequel to the Original Series.
Before I discuss particulars, let me say a couple of words about such “prequels.”
I think
a good argument could be made that prequels in any franchise or series are by
their very definition at best “historical fiction” from the perspective of the
main narrative. Consider this: Star Trek production began in the mid
1960s portraying events that would ultimately be decided were taking place
three hundred years in the future, with that future time progressing more or
less in step with “production time.” The major exception was Star Trek:
The Motion Picture, made ten years after the end of the Original Series and yet
set only three to four years after its conclusion, but then Star Trek II:
The Wrath of Khan brought the passage of time back into alignment by Khan’s
statement that fifteen years had passed since Kirk stranded Khan and his
Augments on Ceti Alpha V – the exact number of years separating “Space Seed”
from The Wrath of Khan. Allowances being made for the directly
sequential narrative of Star Trek II, III, and IV although two
years’ production time separated each movie, the correspondence was generally
maintained thereafter right up to the last appearance of the original
characters in the 23rd century, at the beginning of Star Trek
Generations, made in 1994 and set beginning in 2293. Of course, in 1987
with the beginning of Star Trek: The Next Generation, there had begun a
second narrative era, set 377 years in the future. But the Next Generation
era progressed steadily as well – once again in general sync with real-time
production years – through Star Trek: Deep Space 9, Voyager, and
several movies until 2002 ended with the release of Nemesis (set in
2379, 377 years in the future).
The year
before the Next Generation era ended, however, Enterprise had
debuted (no franchise name appeared until season three), set only 150 years in
the future in 2151 and 115 years before the beginning of The Original Series in
2266. It was, of course, being produced 35 years after that Original
Series, during which time the real world had, of course, changed radically. That
“temporal dissonance” created all kinds of problems. The cultural sensibilities
and fashions of the early 2000s were almost unrecognizably different from the late
1960s; the sexual revolution, civil rights, political upheavals, the escalation
then sudden end of the Cold War; scientific knowledge had exploded; video-production
techniques had advanced considerably, especially in the critical area of
special effects upon which science fiction depends to create its strange, new
worlds. The considerably more primitive production values of The Original
Series, long considered quaint but fairly easily overlooked, in-universe, as
being, yes, primitive, in comparison with the mid-late 1980s-produced Next
Generation production values depicting a world a century in the Original
Series’ future (and yet themselves now starting to look a bit dated), suddenly
became glaringly obvious, being so much more primitive than those of
early 2000s-era Enterprise which purported to be over a century in the
Original Series’ future! The special effects were just the least of it.
Cultural sensibilities and fashions…. It frankly amazes me that even the
fan-made Star Trek Continues, with its avowed mission to recreate in lovingly
meticulous period detail every aspect of The Original Series, was able to
include the infamous miniskirt uniforms for female Starfleet officers and crew.
I’m not complaining, mind you…. Long considered sexist – and, I believe,
rightly so – these were nonetheless part of the world of the 1960s, which the
fan-creators of STC embraced and made work. Yes, they balanced that with
subtly modern takes on the “morality play” aspect that made Original-Series Star
Trek much more than simply a “monster of the week” sci-fi adventure show,
but even so, I am surprised they did it and got away with it, as far as I know,
without complaints.
But the
inevitably contrasequential look and sensibility evident in Enterprise are
not the biggest problem I see. I do not think there has ever been a prequel
that successfully and seamlessly accomplishes what, by definition, a prequel
sets out to do, which is to tell a previously untold story antecedent to the
story that has already been told. It might succeed in the broad sense of
telling the story, but “seamlessly”? – by which I mean, without introducing
contradictory, anachronous elements based on where the story is known to be
headed? That last is indeed the problem – the later story has already been
told, establishing facts and parameters that, for the prequel to truly succeed,
have to be scrupulously adhered to – and never are. It is, quite frankly,
impossible. It is a trope that appears repeatedly even in-universe in the
numerous time travel episodes where the plot depends on preserving the
protagonists’ own future by not changing the past: Knowing the future
inevitably changes one’s actions in the past – changing that past and
endangering the future. Just so, creating a story prequel to a later story is
going to be informed by knowledge of that later story, and there is going to be
“backflow” of ideas and story-elements from the later but earlier-told story to
the earlier but later-told story. Sometimes it is simply because this or that
idea is too good to take off the table just because it contradicts earlier
established narrative history – for instance, the appearance of the Klingons in
the very first episode of Enterprise, when previous consensus had the
Federation not meeting the Klingons until a generation or so before Kirk – but
what is Star Trek without Klingons? The design of the NX-01 Enterprise
has been criticized since its first appearance because it bears a close
resemblance to the Akira starship class that appeared in the Next
Generation era rather than looking like a legitimate predecessor to Kirk’s
NCC-1701 Enterprise. Canon-conscious production designer Doug Drexler reportedly
wanted to go with one of the earlier designs by original Enterprise
designer Matt Jeffries, perhaps with a spherical rather than a saucer-shaped
primary hull or even finally bringing to the screen the “ring-ship” that has
hitherto only appeared in commemorative picture, but the showrunners overruled
him because they wanted the ship to look “familiar.” It did, too much so. Inevitable
advances in real-world science made technologies not even imagined in the 1960s
(and thus not incorporated in the mid-late 23rd-century world of The
Original Series) commonplace in the early 2000s (and thus imperative in the
slightly earlier 22nd century). Consider the ubiquitous rectangular data-cassettes
of The Original Series (and the larger reel-to-reel data storage units) that
have today been replaced by flash drives; although we do not have them yet, the
holodeck and instantaneous subspace communication via the life-size holograms
that abound on Star Trek: Discovery (a decade prequel to The Original
Series) were apparently just too useful or “neat” to leave out – continuity be
damned! Examples abound, I’m sure, but those are what come most immediately to
mind.
Consider
as well that any artistic form is a two-way street. Not only do the creators of
a prequel work from a perspective providing them full knowledge of “the future”
which influences their creation; so do the audience receive the story with full
knowledge of that future, with preconceived notions and expectations. Hence my
likening a prequel to “historical fiction.” The audience cannot receive it as a
purported contemporary.
From
that perspective, consider as well certain points regarding Enterprise.
I have already mentioned the appearance of the Klingons from the very beginning
of the first episode, “Broken Bow,” which has a Klingon courier crash in
Oklahoma and be taken back to Qo’noS (the Klingon homeworld) in the NX-01 Enterprise’s
first extrasolar mission. The Klingons are thus suddenly introduced into Star
Trek history most of a century before previously understood – which,
although I do not believe it was ever explicit, was widely taken to have
occurred only about forty years before The Original Series. The rationalization
that the disastrous first contact mentioned on at least two occasions (“The
Trouble with Tribbles” and First Contact) that led to decades of war
prior to that era referred to “first contact” between the Federation and
the Klingons rather than between Earth and the Klingons seems to me just
that – an attempt to rationalize away an obvious contradiction. A better
explanation is that the Temporal Cold War which is revealed in that same
premier episode has introduced a major change to the timeline, but you may have
gathered already I’m not big on alternate timelines – which, incidentally,
nullifies Enterprise’s status as the “prequel” it was billed to be.
Moreover, consider that the NX-01 is Earth’s first Warp 5 starship – which has
not yet actually attained that velocity – and the story timeline does not allow
nearly enough time for Enterprise to take Klaang to Qo’noS. Trip Tucker’s
“Four days there, four days back!” is discussed at some length in section 5.2.2
of the S[tar] T[rek] Cartography website page devoted to “The mission of
Enterprise NX-01” [LINK],
“The Qo’noS and ‘Rigel’ Issues.” To cut to the chase, there is no way the
Klingon capital depicted in series placed in later centuries, when the Klingon
Empire and the United Federation of Planets are both multi-system polities
encompassing thousands of cubic light-years, is only four days away from Earth
at Warp 5. According to the well-known traditional Warp Speed formula, where
the relative velocity is the cube of the Warp Factor times the speed of light,
Warp 5 is 125c … which would make four days’ travel only 1.37 light years and
Qo’noS only a third of the way to the nearest star. To make matters even
more ludicrous, along the way the ship is attacked and boarded, Klaang is
abducted, and Enterprise makes an unplanned detour to Rigel X. The star
Rigel is almost 800 light years away from Earth – a 6.2 year journey at Warp 5.
And yet, the events of “Broken Bow” having begun on 16 April 2151, by three
weeks later Enterprise has travelled to Rigel and another unnamed
star system containing a Suliban base orbiting a gas giant, recovered Klaang, and
made its way to Qo’noS – and the events of the next episode, “Fight or Flight,”
have begun (06 May 2151).
(To be
fair, the “Rigel problem” has long been recognized – it appeared in the very
first pilot episode for The Original Series – and has a non-canonical answer
that works for me. It seems that there are two “Rigels” – the “real” Rigel, the
star Beta Orionis, mentioned above, and another star which from the perspective
of Earth lies in close proximity to Beta Orionis, but much closer, less than 90
light years, and was named “Beta Rigel.” [LINK] That is
better. Ninety light years means Enterprise could get there in only 263
days’ travel at Warp 5…. Nope, that’s still a problem.)
In any
case, there is so much wrong with this episode on simple astrometric grounds
that I cannot consider it canon. Whatever was Enterprise’s first
extrasolar mission, I do not believe it made first contact with the Klingons,
nor did it travel to Qo’noS, nor Rigel. Of course, the Klingons end up being a
major presence throughout the series – am I to discount all those episodes as
well? That is certainly my inclination. Or perhaps it can be preserved by
speculation that the “Klingons” who appeared in Enterprise represented a
smaller, much closer, off-shoot of the main Klingon Empire which would not itself
be encountered for another seventy or so years.
I have
not specifically decided how I would handle that with regard to the canonicity
of the series, Enterprise, although I do not discount it altogether.
Although I had problems with it during its initial run, I enjoyed it much
better in a pick-and-choose viewing earlier this year (mainly of the “Temporal
Cold War” episodes). It does, moreover, on occasion contribute historical data
that I can use for my project, especially with regard to the history of the
Warp Drive and the immediate run-up to the formation of the Federation in 2161.
With
regard to the other live-action series, it basically boils down to individual
episodes that I would exclude from canon simply because the premise is
scientifically ridiculous, it employs a plot that was overused (there were
several), or some other reason. Being more familiar with The Original Series
overall, it’s easier for me to generate such a list basically off the top of my
head than for any other series:
- “Spock’s Brain.” “Brain? Brain? What is ‘Brain’?” Need I say more?
- “The Wink of an Eye” is scientifically stupid. The concept does not work. The math does not work.
- “And the Children Shall Lead.” Marvin Belli as a "friendly angel"?
- “The Mark of Gideon.” Kirk fooled by a duplicate Enterprise just so some aliens can harvest a pathogen benign to humans but deadly to them to use as a means of culling their own population? This makes no sense.
- “The Empath” just creeped me out. I have not viewed it in forty or more years, and I did not then know the term "torture porn," but that's how I remember it.
- “The Alternative Factor” was dumb and confusing.
- “The Return of the Archons” has yet another virtual twin planet of the Earth and the over-used trope of "Kirk outsmarts a computer by his use of illogic." “Miri” was one too many duplicate Earths, but the story was interesting. Here, even though this is the first appearance of the trope, I believe, it would be reused (again and again) and would usually work better.
- “Bread and Circuses” – duplicate Earth, down to duplicate Christianity 2300 years later. I don’t really know what was going on here. Roddenberry was pretty hostile to religion in general. The whole episode with its transparent confusion of “The Son” with “The Sun” really seems like pandering to me – and I don’t like pandering.
- “Catspaw,” the Halloween episode, always struck me as an inferior do-over of “The Squire of Gothos” (maybe it was the castle venue). "Squire" did work for me because I imagine Trelane to be either a younger Q or Q’s younger, stupider brother.
- “The Way to Eden.” Hippies in space? I’ll pass. Spock rocking with hippies in space? I just threw up in my mouth.
As far
as the other live-action series go, I would have to give each a great deal more
thought, although, to be honest, much of Star Trek: Voyager would be
skating on thin ice if it depended on my affinity for the series to qualify it
for inclusion. There is none. Throwing Voyager into totally unexplored
space on the other side of the Galaxy where there is no connection to the space
we know just did not work for me. It removed a vital sense of connection
offered by occasionally hearing of the starship travelling to stars I could go
out in my backyard and see with my own eyes. I suspect, if I choose to watch it
(I know I will, eventually), that the third season of Star Trek: Discovery
will suffer from the same lack of connection, although it remains to be seen. Without
Pike, back to essentially the first-season crew, I’m not looking forward to Voyager
redux. On the other hand, Voyager
does provide several key points of near-future history for my project,
especially Ares IV, the ill-fated mission to Mars in 2032. Presumably, however,
most of the live-action series would make my “cut” – with similar
individual “discards” as for The Original Series.
Regarding
The Animated Series, I generally accept those episodes as canonical. I know
that Roddenberry considered it non-canonical, but that is not the final word
for me. The original actors (for the most part) voiced their characters.
Writers from The Original Series wrote episodes. One of the better of the
original writers oversaw The Animated Series. They managed to snare Larry Niven
to write an episode. The stories may have suffered from the very short
half-hour format, and their execution may have suffered in the animated format,
but they were still considerably deeper than anything else on Saturday mornings
– some comparing favorably with live-action episodes. As to the animated
format, it did allow much freer run of the imagination in designing new
planetary landscapes and creatures which could in no way be depicted in
live-action before the advent of CGI, although it also came off as stiff and
repetitive due to the reuse of hand-drawn layers of transparent cells which
were the norm before computer animation. The canonical status of The Animated
Series has inspired decades of debate. Some episodes – most notably Yesteryear
– are almost universally acknowledged as canonical in its essence, providing a
great deal of information about young Spock and Vulcan that would later be
brought into live-action stories. Others – like some Original Series episodes –
cannot be canon. Here I would submit “The Magicks of Megas-Tu.” Although the
science is dodgy in the very last episode, “The Counter-Clock Incident,” I
still accept it as our only insight into the first captain of NCC-1701 Enterprise,
Robert T. April.
Star
Trek: The Animated Series
does, however, provide a prime example of what I consider to be a story or
technological element that must change. The “life support belts” supplying a
glowing aura allowing the crew of the Enterprise to live in any
environment from the vacuum of space to deep beneath the ocean’s depths are
simply not possible. I do not know why the show-runners went that way. The
standard explanation, that it was easier to add the glow than to draw a full
space suit, does not work for me.
With the
exception of the aforementioned Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, I would
accept all the live-action movies – with varying amounts of enthusiasm. If
there were one I would throw in the shredder and try to forget ever existed, it
would be Star Trek: Nemesis. And then they go and make it a major point
of departure for the series Star Trek: Picard ….
That
takes care of televised series and movies. I can sum up my stance with regard
to original novels fairly simply. My head-canon includes none of them per se,
with the following exceptions:
- All of Diane Duane’s novels from The Wounded Sky to Spock’s World and her Rihanssu Cycle make the cut. Details have to be tweaked, but that’s okay.
- Vonda McIntyre’s The Entropy Effect was, when I read it, the best Star Trek I’d ever read. I keep meaning to go back and reread it to see if it holds up.
- Dayton Ward’s From History’s Shadow and Elusive Salvation basically inspired my latest full gainer into the deep end of the Star Trek pool. Particularly the former is a tour-de-force.
- The post series Enterprise novels telling the real story of the “death” of Trip Tucker (and, incidentally, providing the best evidence that many of the events depicted in that series were, for whatever reason, a carefully crafted fiction from the perspective of later centuries in the Star Trek universe as was only discovered by Starfleet officer Nog Son-of-Rom and journalist Jake Sisko) through the events of the Romulan War and the founding and early years of the United Federation of Planets – how can I disregard them?
- The Star Trek: Vanguard miniseries provides a fascinating perspective on wider Federation events taking place during the years of Kirk’s Five-Year Mission.
Novels that
I accept with certain necessary “adjustments” include:
- Margaret Wander Bonanno’s Strangers from the Sky, telling the true story of first contact with the Vulcans. I see no reason the basic event could not have happened more or less as told there – although the historical context would be substantially different.
- Greg Cox’s The Eugenics Wars volumes in his Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh trilogy are amazing. As audacious as his carefully crafted “secret history” keeping the Eugenics Wars in the 1990s may be, however – and it is simply brilliant – it ultimately doesn’t work for me, for reasons I detailed in my previous post. I think the Eugenics Wars have to move into the 2040s. I am, however, preserving as much of Cox’s narrative structure as possible, including the presence of Gary Seven and Roberta Lincoln in at least some of the events that I do place in the 1990s. I think I have even figured out a substitute to carry on Seven’s activities in the later events of the 2040s.
- Cox’s The Rings of Time, likewise – it actually takes very little tweaking except the timing. I’m moving it out a few years, but otherwise changing very little.
As far
as other novels go, I have not read that many, and there are far too many to
subject to a proper read now. According to Wikipedia, s.v. “Star Trek
Novels,” “As of May 2020, more than 850 novels, short story anthologies,
novelizations, and omnibus editions, have been published” [LINK]. The fact
box at the side of that article currently states there to be “860 (estimate).” (I
wrote these words on 09 July 2020.) Fortunately there is Memory Beta, “the
non-canon Star Trek wiki” [LINK], and I consider any
historical data filtered through the yearly timeline compiled there [LINK] to be fair game, even if I have not read the story
and decided on the canonicity of the book as a whole. It really is a case-by-case
decision.
Likewise
for information provided by the many, many, many unlicensed, fan-compiled
technical manuals, blueprints, guides, overviews, and the like. I am ransacking
them like a Viking (either directly when practical or indirectly via Memory
Beta) for any information that can be made to fit my vision but in general
consider them to be unquestionably non-canonical. But again, “head-canon” is a
particularly subjective thing, being whatever the individual chooses to accept
or not. And, ultimately, even the discarded episodes and movie might well be
considered particularly heavily “fictionalized” versions of “real” events. For
instance, even the much-maligned “Spock’s Brain” might reflect some incident
that took Enterprise to Sigma Draconis VI where her crew found, inexplicably,
a hitherto unknown species of highly sexually dimorphic humanoids consisting of
a small population of beast-like males on the surface and a larger population
of females living underground among the remnants of a technologically advanced
civilization. How could such a situation arise – a mystery compounded by the
fact that Sigma Draconis is within the local group of stars less than twenty light years from Earth? Considered in a
larger context, the answer might well impact on wider galactic history and even have
relevance to my task.
In other
words, and put more bluntly, especially for my purpose there may well be found “canonical”
elements hidden within otherwise “non-canonical” sources, just as – to return
to the analogy of Biblical studies, even the most “apocryphal”
pseudepigraphical writing can provide valuable historical data helping to shed
light on the history, context, and even theology and doctrine contained in the
Canon of Holy Scripture. While keeping in mind the distinction between canon
and apocrypha, we ignore those non-canonical materials at our own peril and to
our own impoverishment.
Conclusion and Disclaimer
Will my
use of information from sources I would otherwise consign to the ash-heap of
“future history” therefore be, as I noted near the beginning I do not wish it
to be, “arbitrary” in its selection? Objectively, such an accusation would not be unfair. I believe, however, that just as my primary field of
historical studies, the early Middle Ages, justifies by their relative scarcity
a wider degree of latitude in consideration of available historical sources, incorporation
of every kernel of evidence regarding the near future that can be gleaned from Star Trek sources
is warranted, regardless of its origin, official or unofficial – carefully
weighed and considered, of course. To reiterate what I said a few paragraphs
previously, it will be a case-by-case decision.
The end
product of this project, should it come to completion, will be very much my own
vision, non-canonical by its very nature, but hopefully entertaining to me in
the writing and anyone else who so chooses in the reading. To paraphrase the theme
song for Enterprise, unique within the franchise both in style and for
having lyrics, “It will be a long road, getting from here to there….” But I
intend to have fun along the way.
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