Spoilers (Somewhat minor spoilers) Guys, Lower Decks has NOT decanonized Discovery. Or SNW.
- Thread starter Allah Gold
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Now you know how the rest of us feel whenever someone posts a Major Grin video.
I'm glad! She's one of the few Trek opinion YouTubers I'm still subscribed to after the rest of them pissed me off by making smug 'Canon doesn't matter' videos. Well, actually that was just Steve Shives now that I think about it.
Also I care as much about Gene Roddenberry's opinions on canon as I care about Ira Behr's opinions on Ferengi episodes, or Brannon Braga's opinions about DNA. Or Mike McMahan's opinions about cosmic koalas.
I think we've just found the pettiest example of the Paradox of Tolerance. "Canon" (as in the term or idea, not the actual canon as all the official works) is often used as a bludgeon by people to argue that their interpretation is objectively correct, and you're watching it wrong.
Like, I've seen it frequently said about a branching-narrative video game that "x felt like the canon choice," which is misunderstanding both the concept of canon and the concept of interactivity, and is implicitly saying the video game had one "real" narrative, and a bunch of fake decoy narratives implemented because, I don't know, development studios like paying for artistically unnecessary work, and anyone who picked one of those "non-canon" choices experienced the story wrong.
As I've seen it said, "'Canon' is a four-letter word."
I would guess because this is actually talking two different things:
One is about the factuality of what is “real” in-universe and what is intended by the authors.
And the other is about whether someone’s enjoyment of a Trek production is influenced or determined by whether it’s canon or not and whether it’s meant to be a different timeline or not.
A hypothetical person can think that canon or alternate timelines don’t matter (in the sense that they don’t influence their enjoyment of it) and still think they matter in the sense of whether it’s factual or not (meaning did the authors intent for something to be canon or not).
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I recall Douglas Adams attitude towards the various versions of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He went out of his way to make sure that every single version; radio, novel, television and movie, were distinct from the others.
I'm starting to feel like this is my attitude towards Klingons. Let's never see them shown the same way twice. Seeing as we have yet to see 32nd century Klingons, I hope that Starfleet Academy shows a completely new version of the makeup without providing any explanation for it. Better yet, introduce an entirely new makeup for the Klingons in an episode that showcases every single version of the Klingons that we've ever seen, also without providing any explanation for it.
I'm starting to feel like this is my attitude towards Klingons. Let's never see them shown the same way twice. Seeing as we have yet to see 32nd century Klingons, I hope that Starfleet Academy shows a completely new version of the makeup without providing any explanation for it. Better yet, introduce an entirely new makeup for the Klingons in an episode that showcases every single version of the Klingons that we've ever seen, also without providing any explanation for it.
For my part, it's that it goes against authorial intent. I might disagree with a portrayal or artistic choice but I still am one to respect what the authors intended.
And the other side is that I struggle with the tendency of what I feel is a double standard when I see the exact same things, time travel, make up changes, or unknown relatives, but don't get tossed out the airlock of continuity the same way.
I just struggle with what feels like a huge double standard.
First of all, let's be clear about something. This isn't actually a discussion about 'canon.' Canon is just the body of work. What we're really talking about here is continuity, and how the different shows link together in that way.
Now, there's a difference between forgetting or not being consistent about a detail here and there that happened before in a 50+ year franchise, and deliberately making an outlandish change just for the sake of change, and still acting like it's 'all the same' when it very clearly isn't. That's what happened with the Fuller Klingons, and every P+ production since then has steered clear of that mistake. The fact that McMahon made a joke about it which people are now overanalyzing to death fails to take a very important thing into consideration: LDS is a show about jokes, that one doesn't really have to take seriously. CBS's intent (despite however piss-poor their execution of said intent is) has always been that it's all 'prime,' so what we saw in that scene where a TNG Klingon turns into a DSC Klingon, and a TNG BoP turns into a DSC BoP, was just a joke. It's not proof that DSC takes place in a different continuity. If Gender's point is that continuity doesn't matter, well, she doesn't work for CBS and doesn't make decisions for them. But if she's saying that people are free to have their own opinions about a fictional TV show, then she's correct. I clearly don't have to believe whatever CBS is toting if I don't want to. But I still don't see this as proof of that belief.
We all dismiss countless YouTube videos every day, this is just another one.
It is so funny seeing a sloplord like Overlord DVD pop up in my feed again with this whole thing. Midnight's Edge too like OP said but that was just disappointing since I like their not so pointed content, which makes this entire thing so confusing. Makes me feel like strange to get that it was just a JOKE. A wink anyone could take anyway they wanted. It is one thing to care about canon and I actually do care about the things I keep seeing that change any 'prime timeline' but this is just absurd.
Definitely. And I didn’t want to imply there was anything wrong with that. This however seemed to be about dismissing the opinion expressed in the video, all based on a vaguely clickbait-y thumbnail. Everyone is of course free to watch or not watch whatever videos they feel like. I just don't think it's quite fair to act as if what’s very likely presented as a personal opinion in the video is some kind of announcement of how everyone ought to view the topic ... and all that based on an abbreviated statement on the thumbnail.We all dismiss countless YouTube videos every day, this is just another one.
Funnily enough what I’m trying to say seems to be in the spirit of why you put “… in my opinion” in your signature, because I’m going to guess you did that because posters were often mistaking your mere expression of an opinion in a post as a statement of fact. Maybe I’m totally off, but that’s how I’ve always read it.
The problem is that people here post a video, offer little to no context for it, and then whine when we say we're not clicking on the video because they didn't bother to take one minute to write any kind of summary about it. Especially when the video is 20 minutes long and the relevant section is like timestamp 18:26-18:45.
