# Worst retcons **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 5, 2017, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-retcons/776410 "2017-01-05T19:32:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Don\_Draper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Don\_Draper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_Draper)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-retcons/776410/21 "2017-01-06T18:25:31Z")
The Doctor constructed his own time machine, which his grand-daughter dubbed a “TARDIS.” They are unwillingly separated from their people and long to return to their homeworld due to being exiled. Wait no, the Doctor’s people (known as Time Lords) are a godlike race of beings who all drive around in TARDISes. The Doctor stole a TARDIS and went gallivanting around the universe because he was bored with life on his homeworld. This was a grave crime, as Time Lords live by a strict code of non-interference. EXCEPT when the Time Lords do wish to interfere in universal affairs, for which they have an agent – the Doctor – to do their bidding (even if he’s a reluctant agent.) But then again…Time Lord society is a pompous, bloated bunch of self-satisfied buffoons who are completely out of touch with universal affairs. For that matter, the Doctor himself barely scraped through the Time Lord Academy, graduating in the bottom third of his class. Wait, no! The Doctor is not _just_ a Time Lord, far more than that! In fact, he’s one of the PREMIERE Time Lords…peer to Omega and Rassilon. He left Gallifrey in order to hide one of the Time Lord’s deadliest weapons – the Hand of Omega – and secreted it in the vicinity of Coal Hill School, circa 1963. Which is weird, because…he’s half-human, on his mother’s side. And then he’s the last of the Time Lords – the rest of his people and his homeworld were wiped out in a universal war with the Daleks.\* He’s now a lonely God, known and feared throughout the universe for his might. Well, not THAT lonely. The Master survived, and oh yeah…Gallifrey and all the Time Lords survived. They’re just stuck in a perpetual timeloop. Oh did we say perpetual timeloop? We meant they were shunted off through a CVE to an E-space universe. Same difference though, they’re still lost forever, and the Doctor will never be able to communicate with them again. Except through the Crack in Time. And oh yeah…when he goes back and visits Gallifrey. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-retcons/776410/22 "2017-01-06T18:30:39Z")
Spock being not only brought back to life but to the exact same age he was before in _ST3: Search for Spock_. My understanding is that Nimoy wanted to officially kill the character off for reals/for keeps/for good at the end of Khan, but he was just made offers he couldn’t refuse. We got ST4: The One With the Whales out of it, which was arguably the best of the original cast’s movies, and they worked in his Swiss Cheese mind, but you had to do a lot of ignoring for it to make sense. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-retcons/776410/23 "2017-01-06T18:41:35Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > Spock being not only brought back to life but to the exact same age he was before in _ST3: Search for Spock_. My understanding is that Nimoy wanted to officially kill the character off for reals/for keeps/for good at the end of Khan, but he was just made offers he couldn’t refuse. > We got ST4: The One With the Whales out of it, which was arguably the best of the original cast’s movies, and they worked in his Swiss Cheese mind, but you had to do a lot of ignoring for it to make sense. The whole _katra_ thing always bothered the hell out of me. Wait – so all Vulcans can be immortal if they want? Or at least their minds can be (and if they’re lucky like Spock, they can put it in a new body)? It just works hell with the whole Star Trek universe. Things were better when the Vulcans didn’t have near god-like capabilities, but were just one alien race among many. The whole Star Trek universe would have evolved differently if Paramount hadn’t let Nimoy direct – then his character would’ve stayed dead, and no weird Vulcan metaphysics would have developed. Although not having ST IV would be a pretty high price to pay – it was one of the best ST movies. Or if, instead of the first ST movie being made they actually had gone ahead with a new series. Star Trek Phase II. Like TOS, it would’ve featured episodes written by noted SF writers (Theodore Sturgeon, Alan Dean Foster, Norman Spinrad) (The later ST: Next Generation didn’t do this), and the ideas and conceptions would’ve carried the Star TRek mythos into completely different directions > **[Star Trek: Phase II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Phase_II)** > > Star Trek: Phase II was the initial working title for what officially became titled Star Trek II, an unproduced American science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry as a sequel to (and continuation of) the original Star Trek, which had run from 1966 to 1969. The plans for the series were first developed after several failed attempts to create a feature film based on the property, coupled with plans for a Paramount Television Service (PTS) as a fourth broadcast television netwo... ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-retcons/776410/24 "2017-01-06T18:47:48Z")
> [@ChockFullOfHeadyGoodness](#): > > Worst and most unnecessary: Midichlorians. I hate to stick up for the prequels, but “unnecessary” seems a little harsh; I figure the idea was, imagine Qui-Gon Jinn facing down Yoda and Samuel L. Jackson and the rest of them – and while they’re all saying the little slave kid is too old to undergo the Jedi training, here’s Qui-Gon saying, _naw, see, this boy – he’s got potential._ The whole trilogy hangs on this. The whole _saga_ hangs on this. When people ask why someone who maybe shouldn’t have gotten Jedi training got it – over the objections of folks who frown on that, and who kept saying they didn’t really trust him, and who were right – we need to know why Qui-Gon thought the kid had so much potential. Imagine it the other way around: Qui-Gon just has a position on the matter, and the folks who outrank him have _concrete evidence_ that it’s a bad idea. Does it then happen under their auspices? I kinda doubt it. But the way it played out, with _them_ really just having a position and him having concrete evidence that the kid had off-the-charts potential? Yeah, you can grudgingly go with that story. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-retcons/776410/25 "2017-01-06T18:53:29Z")
> [@Don\_Draper](#): > > The Doctor[…snip…]. “wibbily wobbly, timey wimey” explains everything 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-retcons/776410/26 "2017-01-06T19:01:57Z")
Not film/TV, but if any character has been successively retconned more times than Honor Harrington, I don’t know who it is. Even The Doctor. I gave up after the third or fourth book rewriting her personal history and giving her ever-greater genetics and powers. I understand it got worse. ---
**Author:** ![G0sp3l](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c68b51/32.png) [@G0sp3l](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/G0sp3l)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-retcons/776410/27 "2017-01-06T19:28:29Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > I really, really hate the retconning they did in the recent film **The Thing** – the 2011 film. It’s made as a prequel to the 1982 John Carpenter film **The Thing** , and is intended to fit seamlessly in with that film, except that they took the clear indications from the earlier film and completely changed them, which I found particularly annoying. So the frozen/burned “thing” in the form of a person in the process of splitting into two parts was changed into something completely different. They did that multiple times, but the biggest and most ridiculous change was making the destruction of the ship really recent – less than a day before the beginning of the 1982 film, whereas the intent was that (as in the 1951 film and the original Campbell story) was that an attempt to burn the ice with thermite resulted in the destruction of the ship, something which the 1982 film implies happened well before the Thing woke up and wrought havoc on the camp. The 2011 film has the ship intact and "underground (actually under ice) and destroyed by a thermite grenade blast immediately before the end. So how does the 1982 film show them watching a film of the Norwegians cutting it out of the ice with thermite and burning the whole thing? And why does the site of the ship look much more than a day old and well cooled-off in the 1982 film? The timing doesn’t work. :o I really liked _The Thing_ prequel, that plot-hole flew over my head. ---
**Author:** ![Tired\_and\_Cranky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a87d85/32.png) [@Tired\_and\_Cranky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tired_and_Cranky)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-retcons/776410/28 "2017-01-06T19:51:44Z")
nm. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-retcons/776410/29 "2017-01-06T21:52:18Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > I thought that kind of petty lie was in character for Frasier. Exactly. I can imagine Frasier and Martin having a rip-roaring battle over some small thing that just snow-balled (perhaps Lilith?), ending with Frasier storming out of Seattle saying Martin was dead to him and he was going back to Harvard and never coming back. Face it, Martin could be just as pig-headed as Frasier, and probably more likely to let loose when he was younger and uninjured, more in command of his own life. And then things just froze over until Frasier had to go back to Seattle. For all he was a psychiatrist, Frasier had a lot of unexplored personal hang-ups, and ignoring his family for several years seemed quite in character. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-retcons/776410/30 "2017-01-06T21:56:52Z")
> [@Azeotrope](#): > > Or it could still be a measure of distance, and Han found a shortcut no one else was crazy enough to use or a freak wormhole that drastically shortened the distance for him. This makes perfect sense to me. But, am I missing something in the canon? Did Lucas try to retcon this comment in subsequent movies? ---
**Author:** ![Unpronounceable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/9de0a6/32.png) [@Unpronounceable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unpronounceable)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-retcons/776410/31 "2017-01-06T22:38:37Z")
in the movies? not that I’m aware of. in the pen-and-paper RPG system, they explained it as a trade route that passed between a crapton of black holes. He took a straighter path than anybody thought possible. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-retcons/776410/32 "2017-01-06T22:39:30Z")
> [@Azeotrope](#): > > Or it could still be a measure of distance, and Han found a shortcut no one else was crazy enough to use or a freak wormhole that drastically shortened the distance for him. I guess we’ll see in one year and eleven months, won’t we? I mean, there’s no way the Han Solo prequel will omit the Kessel Run - hell, it’ll probably be the climax of the film ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-retcons/776410/33 "2017-01-06T22:49:05Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > As I write this the ST:TNG episode that introduced the Borg is playing (on BBC America, which is apparently stands for “Star Trek Marathon Channel” in British.) And I was thinking of how generalized and decentralized the Borg were emphasized as being, yet were later retconned to have a “queen.” Not sure that was such a bad thing. The Borg were likened to bees in a hive, and a hive has a queen. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-retcons/776410/34 "2017-01-06T22:58:44Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > I guess we’ll see in one year and eleven months, won’t we? I mean, there’s no way the Han Solo prequel will omit the Kessel Run - hell, it’ll probably be the climax of the film What’s weird about this is that everyone writing about it completely failed to get that Lucas explicitly wrote that Han was trying to pass one over on the local yokels, and Obi-Wan flat out knew what he was going. (Luke wasn’t impressed for other reasons.) ---
**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-retcons/776410/35 "2017-01-06T23:00:37Z")
> [@Mahaloth](#): > > I see the poster, but have not seen the movie and don’t recognize all the symbols. Can you spoil it for me and tell me how the movie says Xenomorphs came about? OK, here goes. There was a race of muscular bluish Spacemen (fig. 1), one of which came to Earth and drank something that turned him into some goo (fig. 2) which seeded all DNA on Earth, essentially creating humans (fig. 3), (and everything else, I guess, or not, don’t really remember). Some time later humans found the Spacemen’s planet (I will spare you the how/why/whats here) and found the goo (fig. 2) and it infested one of the characters, turning him into a goo-man monster (fig. 4). Another character drank a small amount of goo and impregnated his girlfriend (before he became goo-man, IIRC, but it was goo-man sperm I think), which very quickly grew into a squid-baby (fig. 5). After the squid-baby was birthed, a Spaceman (having forcefully been woken up and gotten really angry for some reason, memories are sketchy here - IIRC there was a flute involved), showed up and the squid-baby face-hugged it. After another speedy gestation period, the Xenomorph (fig. 6) chest-burst out of the Spaceman’s belly, and I would presume made its way to LV-426 somehow. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2017, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-retcons/776410/36 "2017-01-07T00:13:13Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > What’s weird about this is that everyone writing about it completely failed to get that Lucas explicitly wrote that Han was trying to pass one over on the local yokels, and Obi-Wan flat out knew what he was going. Yeah, but Lucas is notorious for telling an average of 187.3 different versions of the origin of every detail of the Star Wars movies. ---
**Author:** ![That\_Don\_Guy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/that_don_guy/32/538_2.png) [@That\_Don\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/That_Don_Guy)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2017, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-retcons/776410/37 "2017-01-07T00:29:16Z")
Can we just ignore everything involving professional wrestling? Every organization seems to have any number of storylines that suddenly stop and are then treated as if they never existed (examples: WWE’s McMahons Divorce / HHH & Stephanie Marriage Problems; TNA’s Aces & Eights). I’m a little surprised nobody mentioned the classic “old school” retcon: Chuck Cunningham from _Happy Days_. For some reason, the one that bugs me the most: on _King of the Hill_, some characters (e.g. Luanne) age, while others (Bobby and his classmates) don’t. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2017, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-retcons/776410/38 "2017-01-07T01:39:04Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Yeah, but Lucas is notorious for telling an average of 187.3 different versions of the origin of every detail of the Star Wars movies. This one is actually demonstrable from the original screenplay, though. ---
**Author:** ![Sterling\_Archer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Sterling\_Archer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sterling_Archer)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2017, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-retcons/776410/39 "2017-01-07T03:34:49Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > This makes perfect sense to me. > > But, am I missing something in the canon? Did Lucas try to retcon this comment in subsequent movies? Originally after the “parsec” line in the first movie, the simplest explanation was that parsec was a measure of time, not distance, in the SW universe. But Lucas had to go and ruin that in AOTC when that 4-armed buddy of Obi-Wan’s in the diner described the Kamino system as being some number of parsecs away. Parsec got another mention in TFA as when Rey mentions Han made the Kessel run in only 14 parsecs and then he corrects her. ---
**Author:** ![Sterling\_Archer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Sterling\_Archer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sterling_Archer)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2017, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-retcons/776410/40 "2017-01-07T03:37:36Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > What’s weird about this is that everyone writing about it completely failed to get that Lucas explicitly wrote that Han was trying to pass one over on the local yokels, and Obi-Wan flat out knew what he was going. (Luke wasn’t impressed for other reasons.) This explanation never made much sense to me. It would be like Han was saying “I ran a marathon in only 20 miles!” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-retcons/776410.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-retcons/776410.md?page=3)