[discostu]

The whole idea of canon in Star Trek is silly. It’s something put in there by the nerds, Gene changed his mind constantly. At one point he was shopping a show that would have shown the original Trek to be a TV show within the larger Trek universe, so much for canon. What made Abram’s Trek great is that it was fun again, TOS was fun show to watch, and with every succeeding spinoff and movie Trek became less fun and more obsessed with UN council style blathering.

Here’s a long great discussion on why Trek fan’s obsession with canon was always doomed and kind of silly (it’s 3 parts and he doesn’t cross link well so I’ll do it for him):
http://www.postmodernbarney.com/2009/05/there-is-no-star-trek-canon/
http://www.postmodernbarney.com/2009/05/there-is-no-star-trek-canon-part-ii/
http://www.postmodernbarney.com/2009/05/there-is-no-star-trek-canon-part-iii/

[fieldmarshaldj]

I probably saw all that at the time and debated it. Some of us do feel strongly about canon (as for the first piece mentioning seeing Lincoln in outer space, that’s an easily refutable piece of nonsense, he WASN’T Lincoln, but an alien representation of individuals the crew admired and some villains). Dismissing that for a moment and addressing cheesy episodes, well, that happens. Sometimes shows produce turkeys (although in the case of WKRP, turkeys produced perhaps the best piece of comedy in the history of tv). But when you have a basic established history, characters, technology and the like, and you take it and pretty much rewrite it all except for the names, don’t act surprised when people take enormous exception to that. Abrams could’ve chosen to do something that took all of that into consideration, but it’s clear he didn’t and didn’t want to. I myself could’ve done a far better job with it without sacrificing a thing and setting up sequels for the forseeable future to boot.

Again, if your problem with Trek was that it was getting too UN’ee or not enough action, it’s a fair criticism, but there’s a way to address it without rewriting a whole universe with an established history (and the universe wasn’t all Roddenberry’s doing, either). I had my own problems/criticisms with it, too, where it was going (such as the other spinoffs, with Enterprise being the worst).

[dangerdoc]

I remember interviews with the cast of STV before the series started. They were all bragging about how well they could spout star trek jargon. Not stories, not characters, nope, just more and better jargon.

I never bothered to watch.