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Re: Why retcons don't bother me anymore
Posted By: Narcogen <narcogen@rampancy.net>	Date: 5/24/11 1:01 a.m.
: With Nemesis there are a multitude of problems, and despite being an avid : Trekker for 37 years, I have no compunction to watch Nemesis any more : despite it being a cool action movie in and of itself. The sheer number of : continuity or simple physics errors in that film has ruined my enjoyment : of it. Some quick examples: - Deck count of Enterprise is greater than 30 : despite it having to be 24. Having watched it only once, I could not be lured to doing so again. Not because of the deck count-- but because it's not a cool action movie. It is (in my opinion) a rather terrible film for a number of reasons. : - The Enterprise collides and embeds itself in the Scimitar. They are in : space. The Scimitar activates reverse thrusters. The Scimitar actually : breaks free?!?! There's no drag or gravity in space that would allow it. : Simple physics dictates that the Scimitar should have moved backwards with : the embedded Enterprise in tow. : - Picard goes gallivanting around in direct violation of the Prime Directive : for no justifiable reason in a 4-wheeled vehicle on an pre-warp-level : planet. Prime Directive violations are quite common. On the other hand, I agree-- there's a lot in that film that is really in direct opposition to established characters, which I find more inviolable than technical specifications. I get the feeling somebody (perhaps the actors?) just wanted to tool around in a Warthog for awhile. First off, it's been established in TNG that at this time land : vehicles hover. Secondly, this is backed up by a line from Kirk : (chronologically about 90 years earlier) about 1920's vehicles referred to : as "wheels". They had only heard about these primitive land : vehicles before and were considered ancient by Kirk's and certainly : Picard's time. Honestly I hadn't remembered that, but it sounds reasonable. : Anyway, there's lots more but those are some highlights. The thing that burns : me the most is that in interviews the director was insistent on a lot of : this. He didn't care about the franchise continuity, he had no Trek : experience and he just wanted to make a sci-fi action film. His arrogance : in not following established Trek helped the movie tank at the box office : and is generally hated among the most avid Trekkers. That sort of thing bothers me as well. : This has poisoned my enjoyment of the movie for me. I didn't really experience any, so it couldn't be poisoned :) : The reason I get fired up about Halo's continuity errors and such is that I : know what happens when I see too many preventable errors slipping through. : And I don't WANT to stop liking Halo...it's too cool a fictional universe. I think the point where a critical mass of a franchise's original creators get the understandable itch to do something else is a reasonable point for devoted fans to find another object for their attentions, to protect the franchise from fatigue. : I understand your stance on these things much better now and I've enjoyed : this discussion. Thanks! So have I. : One other thing I do is complete things or figure things out when I can. I : know the creators don't do this all the time and they really should. It : comes down to what they feel is relevant or important. : One further example of this. Let's say they haven't established the top speed : of the Pelican. (I don't think we've actually heard of this yet but for : this example it doesn't matter). One thing they have mentioned in the : novel The Flood is that the perimeter of patrol around Alpha Base was so : many kilometers. In another spot in the book it also said it would take a : Pelican so many minutes to get Marines out to the edge of the perimeter. : Whether the author realized this or not, this becomes a calculation for the : Pelican's velocity. If the creators haven't noted this down and figured : out this velocity yet, they're in danger of directly establishing the : Pelican's top speed as being a certain number of km/h. : What if it's a lower number than what is calculable from those two data : points in the novel? I know to you it wouldn't matter and you could : justify the discrepancy. I might be able to as well, but for them to not : have gotten this right, it would disappoint me. To me, they are seeding : those numbers in there just so we can figure it out. It would be courteous : to have done the same for fans like me because I'm sure I'm not the only : one paying attention to this level of detail whether it's directly : relevant to the story or not. Okay-- they're not putting those numbers in there for you to figure it out. It's to create verisimilitude, not realism. Those numbers are flavor text-- they are there because pilots in those situations, if they were real, would be dealing with real values: distances, speeds, times. It's very likely that a writer who is dealing with plot, character, and large themes is leaving a blank for those figures, the way that TNG scripts used to have "insert jargon here" left for someone to insert the technobabble. Some episodes had well thought-out technobabble that supported and revealed the Trek universe. Others... not so much. I get the feeling not that they're putting numbers like that in order to reveal to those clever enough to follow the bread crumbs the technical specifications of vehicles like the Pelican-- to the contrary, they are hoping like heck nobody pays attention because if they do, most likely a conflict will be revealed. I think they'll divide the audience up nicely between "won't notice", "won't care", and "Stephen Loftus". :) I'm sure they think it's really cool that you've worked so hard to make a fan version of the Haloverse's technical specification that's probably more accurate and comprehensive than one they have themselves, but I wonder-- if it wasn't what you wanted to do, how much would somebody have to pay you to do it? How many hours does it take? What's the cost-benefit analysis here show? How many lost sales would have to be attributed to continuity errors to bear that cost? That's the thing with continuity. It can only hurt you-- it can't help. A lousy film with great continuity is still a lousy film. A great film with bad continuity-- that gets a pass. There's no word-of-mouth underground that's spreading the word about films with great continuity, and how it shows that the people created them really care about the details. : I'm reserving judgment on seeing the floating debris of the Autumn (with the : nae Autumn still on it) in the 5th part of the Mona Lisa animation. In my : mind, the Autumn was ground zero of an explosion that ripped a 34km wide, : 10,000km across structure apart. I'm not thinking any hull let alone white : paint survived intact. The ME2 DLC that let the player go over the wreckage of the ship was really cool. If I were involved in whatever 343i was doing, I doubt I'd let a thing like physics get in the way of portraying some Autumn wreckage somewhere, if there was something cool I could do with it. Halo 1's story requires the explosion to be big enough to crack the ring-- even if there's no plausible way that's possible. It's not significantly less plausible that, having done so, some bits remain when they shouldn't.

Death by intelligence

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