This was pleasant reading, thanks again.

It’s my opinion that there was no grand conspiracy to get rid of TOS via any of the sister series and so what if the colors weren’t right? There was a long time between ENT and TOS eras. Uniforms change, technology moves on.
Berman and Braga do not sit in a high castle in a perpetual lightning storm plotting the fall of TOS.
WAAAA hAAAAA HAAAAAA.

Is it really incompetence? Or did they just not want to let the little details described above get in the way of potentially good storytelling? So far, nothing pointed out above is a contradiction of canon since they can be (and have been) easily explained away.

I love canon as much as the next guy, but let’s not get ridiculous.

One line of dialogue can be the difference between the audience buying the conflict, or rejecting it as flawed or (in the case of a series or franchise) acts of incompetent or uncaing writers/producers.

“TOS contridicted itself week to week sometimes. Lest we forget.

TOS was a new, develping series, creating a universe on the run….the Berman series–ENT in particular cannot use that excuse when the people behind it (collectively) had over a decade of continuous experience producing Trek!

Either they were incompetent, or wanted to ignore continuity in favor of creating the Bermanverse.

Ok, the uniforms were a different colour in THE CAGE.

But nobody knew what colour the shoulder straps were in 2151. For all we know they could have been pink. The entire uniform could have been day-glo orange. The Captain could have been dressed in hotpants and the helmsman might have worn a top hat.

If you are really so hung up on canon, then this element of the universe can easily be explained away. As can other things. Romulans – classified. Ferengi – no-one mentioned their name. Borg, again classified. The colour scheme in THE CAGE could have been a radical experiment in uniform design that was dropped after a couple of months. There are a million ways to get round it.

This thing has been running for 40 years. There’s simply no point getting stressed out about the minutia. Big stuff yeah, but not throwaway stuff. Frankly trek, nay all television is aimed at the masses. Very, very few people notice the minor stuff. Even less get annoyed about it.

When I was younger, this used to bother me. Not any more. There’s no point.

The quality & drama of the scripts matters, not whether a small part of it slightly contridicts one line of dialogue another episode written 30 odd years ago.

TOS contridicted itself week to week sometimes. Lest we forget.

It was just a small example of how, despite their protestations to the contrary, they didn’t do their homework before diving into the deep end of the canon pool. ”

Cap’n, I lean in the direction of the situaton being more of a “we do not give a rat’s butt about TOS as canon, prefer to erase and/or rewrite history through Berman’s revisionist eyes” situation, rather than a case of failing to do research. I say this because by the time ENT arrived, the Trek franchise PTB had over a DECADE of experience with a non-stop flow of TV series and movies, and above all else, managed to get TOS era sets/costumes/props/vehicles right for DS9’s “Tribbles” special, therefore, with that kind of attention to detail, there would be no logical reason why ENT appeared like another type of crew/vessel in TNG’s era…

…no reason other than a conscious rejection of the TOS look where costumes and set designs were concerned….that is, until the franchise bottom was about to drop out, and used the ENT “Tholian” sequel as a 11th-hour last gasp…but that was not the standard appearance of the series–just a one-shot event.

Using the wrong division colors (apparently in complete ignorance that they were using the wrong colors) is like doing a movie about Janis Joplin and showing her backstage at Woodstock with an iPod.

Of course, the larger point was that they shouldn’t have been doing color bands on the shoulders in the first place. That was a TNG era thing.

It was just a small example of how, despite their protestations to the contrary, they didn’t do their homework before diving into the deep end of the canon pool.

Yes, she was high on trellium… but there’s no evidence to suggest it was affecting her sex drive.

#102

I’m not even sure he was wholly serious, and besides, he never wrote it. Maybe he felt it was “too wacky”. ;)