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Re: Why retcons don't bother me anymore
Posted By: Stephen L. (SoundEffect) <soundeffect@hotmail.com>	Date: 5/18/11 8:54 a.m.
: See, my reaction to that is that there isn't a correct answer. How can there : possibly be? There's no objective reality or other single authoritative : source to appeal to. There is a correct answer. The Enterprise-E has 24 decks. This derived from the actual drafting blueprints created to construct the model from and subsequently the side view cutaway diagram at the aft bridge station. The ship length is known because a human height is known. The deck heights are based on the actual sets constructed. That gives a known calculable value for the number of decks. There was a discrepancy in the script that had one line at 26 and the other at 24. In Nemesis, they seemed to have forgotten the number or didn't bother to count the decks on the sideview cutaway. Not only do the report intruders on deck 29 (5 decks below the outside of the ship), they also show one crawling through a maintenance accessway to the next deck down (the mythical deck 30), but a fight ensues and the bad guy is hurled down an apparent bottomless shaft. WHERE IS THIS on the ship?? This is the kind of lack of adequate attention that bothers me. I've been into Star Trek since I was 3 years old. After Nemesis came out, I've pretty much left it behind as the lack of care was really getting to me. It was noticed by others in other aspects of the franchise as well....all series had 7 seasons starting with Next Gen, but Enterprise got cancelled at 4. : If one assumes that inconsistencies are mistakes, you could perhaps arrive at : a consensus figure, but of what use would it be? : Granted, Star Trek has no wholly abandoned its continuity (a subject for : another day) but let's assume they hadn't. What if the next film had a : scene that took place on Deck 25? What if characters spoke about Deck 25 : multiple times? What if signs on doors and walls said "Deck 25"? : What if an on-screen schematic displayed a diagram of Deck 25? : Does the "correct" answer now become 25, instead of 24? Or do we : stick with 24 and just try to imagine than all the "25s" are : mistakes? Doesn't that make the audience feel that all the characters are : idiots for not knowing how many decks their ship has? It still becomes a mistake if it had been previously established. Doing things the wrong way 100 times will never make them right, will it? 1+1 will be 2 no matter how many time you count in your head or with sticks or even ask someone else. Silly example I know. There are certainly gray area like in descriptions in novels. Some planet was was "about 12,000km" across becomes wrong if it's suddenly defined as 12,301km in a subsequent work. : It just seems untenable to me. If a fictional universe were to be treated as : real, and be forced to maintain a strict continuity, then the audience is : logically forced into one of two unattractive positions. One is that any : apparent contradictions in the implementations of that fictional universe : occur because they are imperfect, and thus unreliable-- which is a problem : since these are the only connections the audience has to that universe, : and thereby throws everything we know about it into doubt. The second is : that there is no one single authoritative fictional universe, but many-- : and if so, on what basis does one point to the one (or even many) that : have 24 decks instead of ones that have 25 or 26 or 29? Is it "most : references wins"? Last reference wins? Do you average them out to the : nearest whole number of decks? For any examples we've been using, I can see any that were not preventable alterations. : Even once you've done that, what has been established? Of what significance : is the number of decks? Even if there was a supposedly reliable method of : establishing as fact the number of decks, it seems to me the only possible : value it has is to stand up in the movie theater and shake a fist at the : screen and scream "you're wrong" when a movie inevitably shows : an Enterprise with 26 decks or 29 decks. The significance of the number of decks tells you something about the size of the ship. Are the ceiling heights 9ft or are they 15ft tall. Your perceptions would change if even a deck or two was off in a total count. : It's hard enough maintaining consistent timelines, characterizations, : emotional authenticity, and all of the other things that help people : suspend their disbelief and immerse themselves in a work. I'm not sure : that the effort spent striving for engineering consistency from work to : work in a fictional universe is worthwhile except where it impacts plot or : character. It certainly doesn't seem that Bungie puts any more effort into : it now than they did in the Marathon days, for instance. It is hard. It takes a lot of research and a lot of time to do that right.

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