I’m not talking about a series that doesn’t try to have continuity like Aqua Teen Hunger Force, but a wildly popular, successful series that has devoted followers and with an established canon. For example, heaven forbid messing with the canon in Star Trek or Star Wars. Fans jump through mental hurdles to keep that canon consistant (e.g. there is an explanation of why Kirk’s middle initial was R. on the tombstone in the second pilot).
But for me, the canon violations in the Terminator series don’t bother me. I guess I see the movies as taking place in parallel universes where the same event (Sarah Connor preventing Judgement Day) lead to slightly different futures. Arthur C. Clarke used a similar explanation for his 2001 series.
So what major TV or movie series have canon violation that make you say, “meh.”?
Red Dwarf played a little fast and loose with canon. Canon wasn’t a high priority with the writers and so they sent the series into some fun, uncharted territory. They also had multiple/parallel universes, often meeting characters from them.
I read an interview with one of the animators who said that the entire production staff deliberately throws in inconsistencies, just to screw with the Comic Book Guys out there who demand every show be perfectly consistent with “the canon.” The one example he recited is the layout of the Simpsons house, which they arbitrarily rearrange from one episode to the next (the door beneath the staircase for instance sometimes leads to a closet, sometimes it leads to stairs to the basement.)
Series’ where time travel, dimensional fiddling, or even heavy interference by the supernatural get a little leeway, in my book. As it’s easier to reconsile problems as being from changes to the timeline or damage to the universe itself.
I think Discworld has used something like that, on occasion, to explain away problems—time had been “shattered” at some point, and basically “stitched back together,” but not all the pieces were there, or fit together anymore.
The comedic nature of the series helps, too, 'natch. If it was epic high drama, it might need a lot more attention paid to work as an explaination.
Gah! Any time someone posts a link to tvtropes, I’m over there for an hour longer than I intended to be.
What about Doctor Who? I’m not really part of the established community of fans, so for all I know there are wild internet fights about this. But it seems to me the show has the ultimate excuse for not having canon matter- if something seems out of place, it’s because it was a different Doctor, or a different timeline.
Concur. When I think “reboot” I think of the new Battlestar Galactica or, hell, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series (which, technically, was a sequel to the original script of the movie, just not the movie as it was filmed).
That’s right. Doctor Who officially has no canon – and for a franchise that’s existed across multiple media, written by various hands, and is now older than most of the fans, and indeed, writers, that makes perfect sense.
It doesn’t prevent endless debate among the fans, though, for whom the idea of canon is so ingrained that they’ve invented the oxymoronic “personal canon” to squabble over.
I’d say that the *Law & Order *canon is pretty loose - especially if you take the “repeat offenders” (actors who keep on returning in different roles) into consideration.
Boston Legal recycled plots from The Practice and recycled several actors. There was also a mixing of actors who played on other DEK shows, some reappearing in their previous roles (Betty White, Chi McBride) and some not (Jeri Ryan, Graham Currie). Boston Legal originated in season 8 of The Practice and there’s quite a significant difference between Alan as we see him in TP season 8 versus BL season 1. And the same for Denny. And the same for Crane, Poole and Schmidt which was a totally different office between the two shows. It can be explained away (renovation) but it seems obvious that the production staff of BL didn’t feel like rewatching season 8 of TP so they just made it up as they went along.
