Continuity question.

[Tricky]

Not that it affects gaming or my day to day life, but how do you all handle the changes to the Trek timeline(meeting Klingons before Romulans, Ferengi before ST:TNG ect.)?

Also, did anyone see that Andromeda ep. where they kinda poked fun at Trek (the ship was the Beleraphon, they were sent to "meet new lifeforms and discover new civilizations...and bring it all back to Earth for a tidy profit!")?

[Ineti]

Originally posted by Tricky
Not that it affects gaming or my day to day life, but how do you all handle the changes to the Trek timeline(meeting Klingons before Romulans, Ferengi before ST:TNG ect.)?

I take it you mean the changes to continuity that Enterprise may or may not be making? I don't watch the show any more, so I have no idea what's happening, so none of that info will inform my RPG.

[Liquidator Queeg]

Ditto. I watched the show with baited breath up until the Andorian episode. It was the last good one, IMHO (and that's even debatable). The Ferengi did NOT encounter Enterprise NX or its crew in any way, shape or form. It simply didn't happen. Not ever. Nope. It's Hew-mon backed Federation revisionist history and poopaganda, if you ask me.

LQ

[Dan Stack]

You aren't really expecting an answer, are you?

Unfortunately, the question is by its very nature a loaded one. What will instead be discussed is the continuity of Enterprise.

[KillerWhale]

Well... I fill holes and gaps. I interpret. I take what's onscreen as absolute canon and find a way to tweak what's not revealed on the screen to make a new continuity. This becomes "our" canon.

Example: how come Qo'nos is 6 days away from Earth in Broken Bow? A shifting suspace corridor, my friends. And so on. The players know my explanations for these loopholes and we build our own canon like that.

What helps as well is that the players only know well TNG, DS9 and VOY. TOS they don't like and ENT they can't watch since we're in France.

[Dan Stack]

Despite my grumpy answer, I should probably give my own opinion.

This is independent of Enterprise - the reason I feel the question is loaded is it applies to any Trek series.

Take TOS, for example - "The Alternative Factor" made reference to disturbances being experienced both in "our" galaxy and other galaxies, giving the impression the Federation spanned, or at least had contact with, multiple galaxies. The question could just have easily been phrased in reference to assumtions of TOS violated by later series or later seasons of TOS.

There's two ways to deal with any "violation".

The first is to throw it away - an obvious mess-up. This is easiest to do with obvious mix-ups. For example, "Dr. Bashir, I Presume" placed the Eugenics Wars a hundred years after "Space Seed" and "Star Trek II" did. The writer of the episode in question made it clear in an interview it was a boo-boo on his part. Similarly, early TNG has Wesley Crusher mentioning the Klingons as being "part of the Federation". (not allies, but actually part of)

The second is to try to win a "no prize" - explain why something isn't an error - this is more often needed when major plot points or entire episodes depend on a course of events. For example, one can use the Vulcan starcharts explanation to explain how NX-01 Enterprise was able to get to Qo'noS so quickly.


However, I should caution against over-labelling of "errors" - often they are assumptions - albeit long-held ones. This "third" solution involves examining whether something truly is an "error" or if it is merely the violation of something that is a communal assumption - i.e. appearing in two editions of the chronology, three of the encyclopedia, etc. Examples include the dating of Star Trek: The Motion Picture - it was long believed to take place in 2271 but an episode of Voyager pushed itat least a year or two later (Q2 declared Kirk's five year mission ended in 2270 and TMP takes place at least 2.5 years later). Similarly, TOS and TNG did not commit to a date for first contact with the Klingon Empire - Star Trek VI gave mention of 70 years of unremitting hostility and TNG made mention of first contact taking place "several centuries" ago. This is the basis for first contact with the Klingons long being held to be in the 2220s (2290s for STVI, minus seventy years), but it was an assumption. (For example, the post-WWII Cold War began decades of unremitting hostility between the USA and USSR but both governments existed and knew of each other well before).

[Edit - cleared up reference to "The Alternative Factor"]

[Ineti]

Originally posted by Dan Stack
The second is to try to win a "no prize" - explain why something isn't an error - this is more often needed when major plot points or entire episodes depend on a course of events. For example, one can use the Vulcan starcharts explanation to explain how NX-01 Enterprise was able to get to Qo'noS so quickly.

Off-topic, but this is a neat idea for episodes that I hadn't considered specifically in this way. Take a "flaw" in continuity and create an episode around it and attempt to have the PCs "prove" or "disprove" that flaw. Cool.

[StyroFoam Man]

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