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The other day I was engaged in a discussion, not an argument mind you, on Twitter concerning Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and its violation of Star Trek’s established canon.

I myself am not bothered by violation of ‘canon’ if the result are more interesting character, deep stories, and compelling plotlines.

Paramount Studios/CBS Home Video

It is interesting to remember that Star Trek was not designed to have a rigid history with a lore and a canon well-defined. The original series is a product of 1960’s television and, in that day and age, television worked quite differently than it does today at the end of the first quarter of the 21st century. A program was deemed successful if it ran for at least 5 seasons of 20 plus episodes. That produced enough episodes that the series could be ‘stripped,’ run on weekday afternoons in random order. Season five episodes might precede season one episodes so there were no continuing storylines, one episode rarely affected the events in another.

Star Trek, and here I am referring to the original run, the original cast feature films, presented a contradictory and inconsistent ‘canon’ for its future history. Here are some examples.

In The Conscience of the King when McCoy asks Spock to share a drink with him, Spock comments his father’s race was spared the dubious benefits of alcohol to which McCoy replied, “Now I know why you were conquered.”  Who conquered Vulcan? No one, this bit of history was discarded.

Pon Farr the mysterious and secretive collection of rituals and biological drives surrounding Vulcan reproduction. Which is it: the thing that ‘no outworlder may know, save for those few who have been involved’ or something Saavik can just casually explain to David Marcus? Additionally with this aspect of Vulcan biology is it something that Spock hoped he would be spared as he said in Amok Time or is it a predictable cycle of every seven years as mentioned in The Cloud Minders and again in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock?

In Space Seed it is established that in the late 20th century a cadre of scientists employing eugenics bred a number of humans with superior abilities creating dictators that sparked the Eugenics War. Eugenics is directed and controlled breeding in human to produce desired traits. In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Chekov explains to his captain that Khan was the product of later 20th century ‘genetic engineering.’ Eugenics, which is breeding for traits, and genetic engineering, which is gene alteration for traits is not the same thing, however advances in science and the public’s understanding of science made the genetic engineering a much more likely scenario, so ‘canon’ changed to fit public perception.

Here’s a biggie. Is it Federation policy to leave planets and cultures to adhere to their own destinies without coercion or as in A Taste of Armageddon or do they have standing general orders for the genocide that any ship’s captain can employ?

My point with these examples is not to ridicule or mock the original series, which I adore, but to demonstrate that a rigid lore or canon has never been an essential element of Star Trek. Strange New Worlds does break accepted ‘canon’, but it does that to give us wonderfully complex and interesting characters and stories so in my book it’s a plus not a minus.

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Apple TV +

In May I posted that I had begun watching the Apple+ series Severance. It’s about a group of workers for the vast and powerful Lumon corporation who toil under a condition called ‘severance’ where their work-selves, called ‘innies’, exist with no knowledge or memory of their lives outside of work, called ‘outies’, and their ‘outies’ have no memory or knowledge of anything that their ‘innies’ experience.

At the time I wrote that post, I had watched two episodes, and now I have watched the entirety of seasons one and two. I had commented that the series, while stimulating my intellectual curiosity, hadn’t really grabbed me emotionally. While my emotional investment has grown, it has never reached the levels that it has with other genre programs. I remember dreading the ending of Andor because some of my favorite characters are never mentioned in the film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and therefore would likely end up dead by the end of Andor. Severance is fascinating and the characters have grown on me, but I think this division of their nature, central and essential to the show, is also creating a barrier to full engagement.

That said, I do not regret watching and have thoroughly enjoyed the ride that is Severance. The show’s creative team is also doing a bang-up job handling what is in essence a mystery show. The first season ended with a massive revelation for the viewers and the characters that created a cliffhanger, which I despise. I watched season two dreading what sort of cliffhanger they would craft for this ending.

And they did not.

Oh, they certainly did not wrap up all the various storylines and threads. There are a ton of things to propel the show into a third season, but there was also resolution to the reveal from the first season, some clear explanation of some of the strange and mysterious work that the corporation commissioned from the severed, along with expansion of the world and the characters. Instead of another stupid cliffhanger, they properly teased the next phase of the story without making it feel as if they were never going to resolve the issues already raised.

Well done.

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I have finally finished watching the Star Wars inspired television series Andor, which follows both the character of Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) introduced to audiences with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and the growth of the Rebel Alliance as they struggle against the Galactic Empire.

Disney Studios

Andor is quite simply my favorite Star Wars inspired media that I have encountered, unique in that it avoids tales of mysticism and chosen bloodlines for a more complex view of people in crisis. While it repeats the phrase ‘Rebellions are built on hope’, it also depicts that rebellions, vast criminal conspiracies, are often riven with conflict, competing power centers, and a willingness to do terrible things for their ultimate objective.

I refer to it as ‘Star Wars inspired’ and not directly as Star Wars because I do think the difference is immense. Star Wars is the collection of stories centered on the Skywalker clan and their associates. Those tales focus on noble bloodlines, characters born ‘better’ than the masses, and have much more in common with fairy tales than the lives of ordinary people living through difficult times facing terrible decisions. In Star Wars the fascism of the Empire is an abstract thing, shown here and there with its casual cruelty to principal characters of the story but otherwise something that we need not actually see. In Andor, the fascism is the day-to-day experience of the people, and we live it not only in the arbitrary ‘justice’ system that dispatches people to labor prisons for minor offenses but also in the bureaucratic nightmare of its security services as talented dedicated officers are hamstrung and eventually crushed for their initiative.

I applaud Andor for its multifaceted depiction of the Alliance, from politicians deluding themselves that politics and policy can still save them, through idealists writing their manifestos while running from the law to fanatics blinded to the suffering and the evil that they do by their need to win.

Andor which began with Cassian leaving a brothel where he had hoped to find his sister and killing a pair of police officers that tried to shake him down is not ‘realistic’, but it echoes our world and its corruption.