writing – Trekking with Dennis

A Year In Review

Spoiler Warning: Beware spoilers for Star Trek: Discovery.

Six years ago, on the 30th of November 2019, this website went live for the first time with a short, simple test post. The anniversary has always seemed like a good moment to reflect and take stock – so if you’ll forgive me the indulgent waffling, that’s what we’re gonna do today. This isn’t my “end of the year” piece, looking at the entertainment highs and lows of 2025, and it annoys me to see publications putting those out before Christmas, or even in November! I’ll publish my annual End-of-Year Awards in late December, so be sure to check in to see which films, games, and TV shows will win an imaginary statuette!

Well… where to start?

It’s been an interesting year. In November last year, I learned that my sister was going to have a baby, and my niece was born in the spring. This prompted me to do something I haven’t felt able to do in a long time: undertake a significant journey. I’m disabled, as you may know, and for a long time – basically a decade now – I haven’t really felt up to leaving the house very often, let alone travelling. But I had to meet my niece! So I managed a difficult and painful journey and made it to the hospital a few hours after she was born. And I’ve been back to visit about half a dozen times since then. These trips are still uncomfortable for me, but I think – I *think* – I’m doing a little better each time… or just getting more used to it.

Stock photo of a train at a railway station. — I’ve been on several expeditions this year!

Last year, when I marked the website’s fifth anniversary, I talked about how I felt some sense of pride at having stuck with it for half a decade, and how I’d be happy to keep going to see if I could make it to the ten-year mark in 2029. Immediately after writing those words – literally within a few days – I had a major health scare. I’ll spare you the gory details, but suffice to say that one of my regular blood tests came back with some alarming news, leading to a series of scans, a biopsy, and some treatment. But because I’m me, and because my head always goes to the most catastrophic extremes when such things arise, I was definitely thinking about and planning for the worst as last Christmas and New Year were approaching!

My health is poor, and it’s been in what I’ve half-jokingly referred to as a “managed decline” for years at this point. I’ve known that things are going to get worse rather than better, but I admit that I’d been somewhat lulled into believing that I could continue coasting; that I was relatively settled. Last year’s bad news, because it wasn’t directly related to my ongoing health issues, felt like a lightning strike coming from nowhere, and it definitely unsettled me. Perhaps that’s why, after I got the all-clear on that front, I was so keen to do things like visit my niece earlier in the year; it felt like something had shifted and I had to try, for once, to get out of my safety zone. Or maybe I’m doing another thing I always do and I’m overanalysing it!

Stock photo of an MRI machine. — Being loaded into an MRI machine for a scan made me feel like a torpedo…

But those visits to my niece, sister, and brother-in-law – the first of which was the first time I’d visited them in their “new” home – gave me the confidence to do something else. You might remember this if you’re a regular reader, but in late August I made the journey to Blackpool to attend a Star Trek convention for the first time in almost fifteen years.

Although the journey was long (three trains and a tram), and it ended up being a ridiculously long day for me, I had a whale of a time. I met several actors from The Original Series, Deep Space Nine, Enterprise, and Strange New Worlds, shaking their hands and getting my picture taken. How often, these days, can one claim to have met an actor who appeared in *the first-ever* episode of Star Trek? That’s definitely something neat that I can add to my résumé as a Trekkie! And as I said in my piece, sitting down with Chase Masterson (Leeta from DS9) for a script-reading session was an absolutely wonderful experience. My thanks, once again, goes out to the folks who organise Destination for making the event accessible and for offering extra support to disabled folks like myself. I simply wouldn’t have been able to attend, or to have any of those experiences, without that additional support.

And yes… I’m still eyeing next year’s event and seriously considering attending!

Photograph of the Blackpool promenade with Blackpool Pier in the background. — I snapped this photo on the way to the convention.

On the home front, I got my hands dirty with some DIY for the first time in a long time. I’ve lived in this house for more than twelve years, but I’ve never redecorated the living room, if you can believe that! My cat tore a big hole in the wallpaper just after Christmas, and after living with it for a while I finally took the plunge and began working on redoing the walls. And, as with any job, it took longer, cost more, and was more complicated than I originally hoped!

There’s still some work to do, but I’m quite proud of the results. I managed to replace some broken drywall that had been hiding beneath the wallpaper, swapped out the old cream/beige colour in the room with something a bit brighter and more cheerful, and even put up some small hooks for hanging Christmas lights and other decorations. Next year, finances permitting, I’ll replace the old carpet, too, completing the refurbishment of the room where I spend most of my time!

Stock photo of a paint can and paintbrush. — I’ve been doing some redecorating!

Here on the website, there have been a few changes that you may have noticed. When I started writing lots of articles and reviews about modern Star Trek, I gave each of the new shows its own static webpage, just for ease of organisation if nothing else. But the older shows, pre-Discovery, were all lumped together on one “Classic Trek” page. As time wore on, though, the Classic Trek page had become massively long and unwieldy. It was overladen with so many articles and pieces about those older shows that it had become too difficult to navigate. So I deleted it and have replaced it with individual pages for every Star Trek show. As you can see in the menu above, they’re currently categorised as “Older Treks,” in contrast to the “Newer Treks” of the CBS All Access/Paramount+ era.

I think this change has been for the better, and it was a bit of fun to put the new static pages together, as it gave me another chance to talk about some of those shows. I still haven’t done individual episode re-watches for DS9 or Enterprise, but I did finally get around to The Original Series this year, when I wrote up my thoughts on the classic episode Arena. Stay tuned for more of those episode re-watches in the weeks and months ahead. If – as I’ve predicted – Star Trek might go off the air again before the end of the decade, re-watching older episodes will be all we’ve got!

Still frame from Star Trek TOS showing the Gorn captain. — I wrote up my thoughts on *Arena* earlier in the year.

While we’re talking of pages being changed, you might notice that my old Jedi: Fallen Order page and my newer Mass Effect page have been taken down. The reason for that is a bit complicated, and I lay out my thoughts in more detail in an article you can find by clicking or tapping here. But the long and short of it is that, now that Electronic Arts (the publisher of those games) is being taken over by the Saudi government’s investment fund, I no longer feel I can purchase or support their games. EA has been a shady and ugly company for a long time, but this change in ownership would mean I’d be putting money directly into the hands of people and organisations that I feel fundamentally conflict with my values. So that, rather unfortunately, means no Jedi: Survivor sequel and no Mass Effect 4 for me – unless something changes on that front.

It isn’t easy to be an “ethical consumer” in this late-stage capitalist marketplace, and some folks say it’s so far out of reach that there’s no point even trying. Again, I’ll direct you to my longer piece on the topic, linked above, but suffice to say that, when something is relatively clear-cut, I think it’s worth *trying*, at least, to refuse to purchase from a corporation or organisation that conflicts in such a fundamental way with our own personal beliefs and values. So if you hoped to hear more from me on Fallen Order and Mass Effect… sorry.

Screenshot of Jedi: Survivor showing a visual bug. — I won’t be picking up the sequel to *Jedi: Survivor*.

The final change to the static webpages saw me shift the old Starfield page to the more broadly-titled “Bethesda Games,” as I’ve been talking more about the likes of The Elder Scrolls and Fallout. I have no plans to return to Starfield, quite honestly – especially now that I no longer use PC Game Pass (more on that in a moment!) – so this change, again, seemed like the right move. It means that page can include my coverage of the Fallout TV show, the upcoming Elder Scrolls VI, and more.

That leaves the “Video Games” section of the website with just three pages: Bethesda, Mario Kart, and my sometime Video Game Spotlight series – which I really ought to do more with! Truthfully, I haven’t played as many games this year as I planned to, and some that I had been looking forward to and might’ve expected to sink a lot of time into (*cough* Civilization VII *cough*) turned out not to be as engaging or as time-sinky as I expected. Still, I played and reviewed Dynasty Warriors: Origins, Indika and South of Midnight this year, all of which were excellent and all of which I thoroughly recommend! With winter sales coming up in the next few weeks, it might be a good time to wishlist them.

Screenshot of South of Midnight showing the player character approaching a river. — *South of Midnight*.

But those webpages aren’t the only things to have changed around here! If you’re on a mobile device or tablet, you might not’ve noticed this, but the website’s background image changed in July. I used to have a fairly plain grey gradient as a background, but I changed it to be a black background with white stars. It reminds me a little of some of the Star Trek fanpages that I used to frequent in the ’90s, when I was first getting started with using the internet, and I think it’s on theme for the website! Is it super basic? Yes. Is it modern? Absolutely not! But I like it, so it’ll stay for now – at least until I change my mind again!

You can’t see it, because the current logo is my Christmassy one, but I also redesigned the website’s main banner and logo in July at the same time. That change wasn’t as extreme, basically just a change of font and a slight change in colour, but again, I liked the end result. I’d be absolutely awful if I had to run a major brand, because I’m *constantly* changing my mind when it comes to what I like and what I don’t, and how I want things to look! For a website of this size, though… let’s just say it doesn’t matter in the slightest!

Trekking With Dennis main website banner July 2025. — The redesigned banner/logo as of July.

I mentioned a moment ago that I’ve cancelled my PC Game Pass subscription. I’d been a subscriber to PC Game Pass (the PC version of Xbox Game Pass) since it was in beta, and I’d really enjoyed having access to the library of titles on the service. But earlier in the year, Microsoft hiked the price significantly – on top of a similar price rise just twelve months earlier. Taking the two together, I’d have been paying 70% more for my Game Pass subscription in November 2025 than I had been in the summer of 2024, and that kind of price hike is just unacceptable to me. As I wrote in my piece about Game Pass, a subscription model like this *should* be the “wave of the future” in gaming, as gaming moves ever closer to an all-digital model. But Microsoft’s greed messed it up, and I won’t be returning to Game Pass unless and until it feels like good value again.

Game Pass wasn’t the only subscription I cancelled in 2025. For years, I’ve only been picking up the likes of Netflix and Paramount+ for a month or two at a time, in order to watch specific shows and films. I’ll take advantage of my subscription at those times, binging some shows and catching up on some of what I might’ve missed! But for a while, I’ve retained Disney+ as an ongoing subscription. But I cancelled that this year, after realising I hadn’t been using it anywhere near as much as I thought. I’ll still pick up Disney+ sometimes, but I’ll do what I’ve been doing with Paramount+ and Netflix and use it for a month or two to watch a few things before pausing it again. That leaves Amazon Prime as my only subscription, and that’s not really because of Prime Video! It’s because I like the next-day delivery.

Promo graphic of Xbox Game Pass for PC. — I’ve cancelled Game Pass thanks to the 70% price hike.

Let’s talk traffic! Back in January, the website ticked past the 250,000-hit mark. That’s a quarter of a million visitors in just over five years. And later in 2025, it passed the 300,000-hit mark, too. At time of writing, we’re sitting at just below 330,000 hits, which is a pretty staggering number if you think about it! That’s *almost* a third of the way to one million since November 2019. And after 2024 had seen a bit of a dip in clicks as the year wore on, 2025 has seen a significant uptick. The website had eclipsed 2024’s total numbers by the summer, and has kept on growing since.

In terms of individual articles and posts, I got a ton of hits last December for my piece titled Uh, Guys? Star Trek: Discovery Is Still Canon, which I wrote in response to some awful clickbait that I’d seen doing the rounds. January was also a good month for traffic, as my piece about the unfinished novel The Winds of Winter picked up some attention. My coverage of the Section 31 TV movie also did pretty well, despite being interrupted by Storm Éowyn and a days-long power cut! My review of Futurama’s recent season in March got quite a bit of attention, and through the summer, my reviews of several Strange New Worlds episodes were racking up the clicks. More recently, the top-performing piece on the website since its publication has been my review of the popular Netflix film KPop Demon Hunters, which I wrote back in August.

Still frame from KPop Demon Hunters showing Rumi singing Golden. — And yes, I’m still listening to *Golden*.

I’ve added three pieces to my “Greatest Hits” collection over the past twelve months. First was my look back at the classic Dreamcast game Shenmue, which I wrote to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its launch back in December. Shenmue remains, to this day, one of my all-time favourite video games, even though its story remains tragically incomplete all these years later. Next, I finally wrote up my “Borg teasing theory,” which is something I’d been kicking around for a long time! And not long after that article went live, I wrote up my thoughts on Star Trek: Discovery’s “post-apocalyptic” setting, and why I felt it didn’t work as intended after Season 3.

2025 has also been a year in which artificial intelligence has been on my mind – as I’m sure it has for a lot of folks. I wrote two pieces about A.I. this year, the first of which considered one possible future for generative A.I. in the film and TV space, and the second of which was my response to a paper titled A.I. 2027, which was quite an alarmist take on a possible future “rogue A.I.” scenario. This technology seems to be moving quite quickly at the moment, so there may be more to say on the topic in the months ahead. Although technology is a little outside of my usual wheelhouse, I think it’s kind of on-brand for a website where Star Trek, sci-fi, and general geekiness are the order of the day!

Still frame from Star Trek: TOS showing the M5 computer. — The M-5 Multitronic Unit from *Star Trek*.

So that’s all for now. If you made it to the end of this waffling ramble (or rambling waffle), thank you! The past twelve months have been more hectic than I expected when I last sat down to write a piece like this, but we made it here in the end. I appreciate your support, your visits to the website, and you taking the time out of your day to share in some of these geeky topics with me. Writing about Star Trek, video games, and everything else continues to be a source of fun and enjoyment for me, and getting the chance to spend a bit more time thinking about some of these fictional universes is just fantastic.

As to the future… well, I’m still hoping to hit that ten-year milestone, which is now just four years away. If I made it this far, surely I can keep going till the end of the decade! And maybe, health and finances permitting, I’ll be heading back to Blackpool in August to celebrate Star Trek’s 60th anniversary with my fellow Trekkies. But until then, I’m going to kick back in my newly-redecorated living room… and maybe indulge in a mug or three of mulled wine, since it’s that time of year!

Thanks again for all of your support, and I hope you’ll join me through December and into 2026 as I continue to geek out about Star Trek, gaming… and so much more.

-Dennis,
Sunday, 30^th November 2025

All properties mentioned above are the copyright of their respective broadcaster, studio, developer, distributor, company, etc. Some stock images may be courtesy of Unsplash. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

It’s My Fifth Anniversary!

Sat 30.11.24Dennis

Today is a special occasion! Five years ago, on the 30th of November 2019, I made my first post here on Trekking with Dennis, kick-starting a writing project that’s now been running for half a decade! I can scarcely believe it’s been five years already, but as I do every year, I wanted to step back for a moment and reflect on the website’s progress as well as talk about a few personal things that don’t really fit in anywhere else.

Firstly, I want to make note of the fact that this website is now my longest-running project… ever. I’ve been writing here on Trekking with Dennis for five whole years – which is longer than any individual job I’ve ever had, and longer than any other side-gig or hobby I’ve ever had. In many ways, five years doesn’t seem like a lot of time. It feels like it passed in the blink of an eye, to be honest with you! But at the same time, five years is half of a decade, more or less one-eighth of my life to date, and a pretty decent amount of time to be occupied by one thing! I’ve taken a few breaks here and there, sure, but there’s always something in my writing pile and I’ve usually been able to find something that interests me to talk about.

A photograph of a fountain pen. — I still enjoy the process of writing here on the website.

Beginning in late 2022, I definitely found myself writing less often than I had been when I started out – and that trend has continued this past twelve months, too. The first couple of months of 2024 saw eight pieces published in eight weeks, and I guess it’s beginning to stretch the truth to say that I write “several new articles and columns every week” – a boast that’s still on the homepage at time of writing! But I’m happy doing things this way, and as I said last year: writing what I want to write about at my own pace was the entire point of this website.

This past year I’ve had a pretty big problem with my internet connection. I’ve been disconnected for weeks at a time on two occasions – in December 2023 and June/July 2024 – and I’ve had shorter disconnections lasting anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days seemingly at random throughout the year. I’m still not convinced that my ISP has solved the problem; there seems to be confusion about whether there’s a “software” or “hardware” issue at the core of these repeated disconnections. I was able to work around it, getting back online using my phone’s hotspot and mobile data. But it’s been a pain in the backside to say the least – and probably a minor contributing factor to writing fewer posts this past twelve months.

A photo of a smartphone displaying a wi-fi symbol on the screen. — I’ve had some internet connectivity problems over the past twelve months.

Back in June, I published my 800th piece here on Trekking with Dennis. At time of writing I’m now at 828 posts… which is a pretty decent amount in five years! I’m still slowly chugging away toward that 1,000-post milestone – but barring any major problems, we’ll get there eventually. Though on current form it might not be until 2026! Still, it’s fun to look back on some of these articles and columns, sometimes. I remember most of them… though occasionally a piece will pop up that seems to have been entirely wiped from my memory, for some reason! I put that down to a combination of age and my general mental health!

With all of this looking back comes some reflection. There are several pieces in my writing pile that I haven’t completed this year for one reason or another, and a couple that proved more personal or more difficult to tackle than I initially expected. Sometimes, when the website may appear to be on hiatus, I am actually still working… but with no real deadlines to force my hand, articles and columns don’t get rushed to publication. There are a handful that I’d like to think will make it in the next couple of months… but watch this space, I guess. I don’t feel a huge amount of pressure.

Still frame from Star Trek: Enterprise showing the Enterprise-J. — It’s some kind of spaceship…

As we come to the end of the first half of the 2020s, that sense of time marching on that originally inspired me to carve out a small slice of the internet for myself has returned. But this time, I feel a little different about it. I have an archive of my own to look back on thanks to Trekking with Dennis, and as self-indulgent as it may seem, stepping back to re-read some of the pieces I’ve written over the last five years – most of which I’ve not returned to since their original publication – has been genuinely interesting.

Time catches up with all of us in the end, and although my health has been in what I’ve jokingly called a “managed decline” for a while, these moments of reflection re-emphasise that things aren’t static. Day to day, it can feel like not very much changes. But looking back over a short five-year span, I feel different. In some ways, I’ve grown and improved: I had the confidence to build my own computer for the first time, and running Trekking with Dennis has undoubtedly helped both my writing and design skills (though the latter is still lacking, for sure!) But in others, I notice a decline. My arthritis has worsened, and that’s having an impact on things like my ability to play games – especially for long periods of time. And my general health is noticeably worse than it was five years ago; some basic tasks are more difficult now than they were then, even though the difference day to day means it hadn’t really registered until I took a step back.

A photograph of colourful wax crayons. — I’m still not the best artist or designer in the world…

I mentioned that this website is the longest project I’ve ever had, and I confess that I feel a sense of pride in sticking with it for five years already. I’ve always been a “jack of all trades” in some ways; I dabble in different hobbies, activities, and even career paths without ever really settling. These things seem like fun at the time… but again, when reflecting and looking back, what I see is a succession of half-finished ideas, failed projects, and the debris of various hobbies that never got off the ground.

As a couple of examples, back in about 2015 I built the base-boards for a model railway, spent some money on pieces of track and the like, but only ever modelled a very small section of it before drifting away. I bought a guitar in 2006 that I played for about a year, on and off, but I was never satisfied with my progress and never took it any further. During my career in the games industry I moved several times, never sticking in one position or at one company for longer than a couple of years – before quitting altogether to focus on being a freelancer. That also didn’t last for very long.

A photograph of a guitar chord being played. — I never learned to play the guitar…

I guess what I’m saying is that I feel like I’ve finally settled on… something. Trekking with Dennis may not be the best website in the world. It may not have the most consistent output, nor even really stick to one theme or type of content. But it’s mine, and I’ve stuck with it longer than I’ve ever managed to stick with anything else. I haven’t been perfect; there are Star Trek episodes, seasons, and plenty of other things I should’ve reviewed or talked about that I didn’t get around to. But despite that, there’s something here that I can look back on with… well, some semblance of pride. And that’s kind of a new feeling for me.

When you’ve lived a bit of an itinerant life, never settling in one place for very long, never sticking with a job or even hobby for very long, and when you’ve got a divorce and other broken relationships in the past… having some consistent thing running for this long feels like an accomplishment. And maybe this is nothing but self-congratulatory drivel from someone who still has no real achievements to speak of. But I’ll take what I can get!

Photo from the first Oscars ceremony showing an award being presented. — Am I giving myself too much credit here?

So here’s to five years – the first five, at least. I don’t like to set goals, but having completed five years of writing and reviewing… why not push for five more? Why not try to make it to November 2029 and see how much more accomplished I’ll feel with an entire decade under my belt instead of just half? Why not make this article something I can look back on in another five years’ time and reflect on how much more progress I’ve made? Maybe that’s my next objective: to stay alive long enough to reach that milestone!

And there are plenty of things to look forward to over the next five years. Obviously there’s gonna be more Star Trek: two new seasons of Strange New Worlds for starters, as well as Starfleet Academy, the Section 31 TV movie, and the untitled comedy series. There are films on the horizon that I’m looking forward to, and remakes of a couple of great games from years past: Max Payne and Knights of the Old Republic. I’d love to still be here when all of these projects are released to be able to talk about them and share my thoughts on them with all of you.

Still frame from the KotOR Remake teaser showing Revan. — I’m still looking forward to the *KotOR* remake!

I should’ve mentioned this at the beginning, but this isn’t my “end-of-the-year” piece. I find it so frustrating to see publications putting together their “best of the year” lists or articles summarising the events of the year this early! There was one I saw a few days ago – in late November – that claimed to be a “summary” of the events of 2024… while there’s still almost five weeks left! That’s bonkers to me, so if you’re new around here please rest assured that my review of the year’s entertainment experiences will come at the end of December! That’s when I like to hand out some made-up awards and imaginary statuettes to my favourite entertainment experiences of the year.

So that gives me a few weeks to catch up on some of the projects I’ve missed, eh?

If you’ve stuck with me this far through this awfully indulgent stream-of-consciousness ramble, thank you! I hope you’ve enjoyed at least some of what I’ve had to say over the past twelve months. Whether you’re here as a fellow Trekkie, a gamer, or just as someone who enjoys blogs and websites about the wide world of geeky entertainment, I genuinely hope that I’ve written something this past year (or over the past five years) that you’ve found interesting or enjoyable. Thank you for your support, for clicking on the website, and for coming back to check out my totally unsolicited opinions on some of my favourite entertainment topics. See you… out there!

– Dennis
Saturday, 30th November 2024

The Canon Conundrum

Sun 14.01.24Tue 16.01.24Dennis

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek Beyond, The Empire Strikes Back, and The Rise of Skywalker.

Where do you stand on questions of “canon” in works of fiction? That’s the thorny issue we’re going to grapple with today!

The term “canon” as it’s applied to franchises and fictional universes today comes from the realm of theology, surprisingly enough. The first “canon” referred to the Bible, specifically to which books of the Bible were considered sacred and authentic. It has its roots in Latin, and is etymologically distinct from “cannon” – the large gunpowder weapons that we often associate with pirate ships.

A stock photo of a cannon. — No, not *that* kind of cannon!

In the context of fictional universes and modern entertainment franchises, the word “canon” has kind of taken on two meanings. Firstly, we have the authoritative list of which stories are the accepted ones in a particular series. And secondly, we have the meaning that we’re looking at in more detail today: how the word “canon” has been applied to individual story threads, narrative elements, and the minutiae of a fictional setting.

As more and more films and television shows have grown and been turned into ongoing franchises by their corporate overlords, the question of canon in its secondary meaning has come to the fore in fan communities. It’s worth noting that some fandoms have been wrangling with questions of canon for longer than others: Star Trek fans, for example, have been caught up in these kinds of debates for literally decades, as have fans of some comic books. Other franchises and fictional settings are new to the debate, prompted by new additions to their series, or in some cases, by corporate decisions that overwrite what had been previously established.

A still frame of Encounter at Farpoint, the premiere episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, showing Captain Picard and Worf on the bridge. — The Star Trek fan community has been caught up in these debates for decades!

Very few people would dispute that a film or television episode produced officially as part of a franchise is “canon.” That’s not really what we’re looking at today – though there are certain exceptions, such as how Star Trek: The Animated Series was “officially” considered to be non-canon for several years. Debates instead tend to focus on smaller story elements – the background of a character, how a fictional technology works, or whether Event A clashes in an irreconcilable way with Event B.

Some television shows – particularly comedy, but not exclusively comedy – tend to play very fast and loose with matters of canon. If a good joke requires a character to act completely differently, or even for an entire setting to be transformed, then these kinds of shows will do it. Why waste a good joke, after all? But other shows and films like to take themselves seriously, presenting their fictional worlds as big, persistent alternate realities in which audiences are invited to lose themselves. It can be jarring for some viewers when a new film or episode comes along that seems to challenge or even “violate” some aspect of what had been accepted as canon.

Still frame from Season 31 of The Simpsons featuring Moe and Homer at Moe's Tavern. — Questions of canon and consistency matter far less in a comedy series.

In fan communities – or at least, in those of which I’m aware – folks tend to fall into one of two rather rigid and well-defined camps.

On the one side are the “purists.” These people insist that the tiniest minutiae must be respected at all costs, and any perceived violations of canon must be given a satisfactory explanation. Overwriting or undoing an element of a story that had been previously established doesn’t usually sit well with canon purists.

Opposing the purists are the “don’t cares.” As the name suggests, these folks are completely uninterested in whether a story fits with the rules and backstories that have been established; as long as the story itself is entertaining, they’re happy to ignore such criticisms and concerns.

Still frame of Star Wars: The Force Awakens featuring the character of Rey. — Some characters and storylines attract more criticism than others…

Canon purists will often argue that a story falls apart if the newest chapter doesn’t “respect” or fall in line with everything that has been previously established. On the other side of the debate, the don’t cares will argue that none of that matters and that they’re happy for the writers of a new chapter to take them on a different and unpredictable journey.

So where do *I* sit? What’s my answer to the canon conundrum?

The answer, as you’ve probably guessed, is that it’s a bit more complicated! I don’t buy into the black-or-white nature of this argument, and my position tends to be a bit more nuanced.

A cartoon depicting people fighting in front of an abstract background. — There’s no need to get into a fight…

Let’s define one more term: internal consistency. In the context of works of fiction, internal consistency has a fairly literal meaning: within the confines of a setting or fictional universe, basic rules are established that don’t change, in a fundamental or transformative way, from chapter to chapter or story to story.

Internal consistency is, for me, one of the essential pathways to suspension of disbelief. To give a couple of examples: if a fantasy universe establishes that magic works because magic users are born with innate magical power, the writers can’t arbitrarily change that later on to say that magic is actually something that anyone can learn from spellbooks. In a sci-fi setting, if we establish that a machine can travel backwards in time because it uses black hole technology, that also mustn’t be changed later to say that the time machine works by fusing together time-mushrooms in its engine.

Still frame from Context is for Kings, Star Trek: Discovery 1x03, showing a CGI rendering of a mushroom garden. — The cultivation bay aboard the USS Discovery.

In short, canon matters because basic internal consistency matters. The fundamental building blocks of any fictional setting or world must remain consistent from one story to the next, and can’t be changed at the whim of the writers simply to force a particular story beat to fit. If that story beat can’t fit with what’s already been established because it clashes in an irreconcilable way with one or more of those building blocks, I believe it should be changed or even abandoned outright.

But that isn’t all there is to say.

When it comes to smaller things, like designs and aesthetics, I’m much more forgiving. If characters in a fictional organisation used to wear blue jackets, but in a new story they’re wearing red jackets… that’s not a “violation” of canon in my book. And that extends to smaller story beats, too. If a couple of lines of dialogue two seasons ago established that an event happened “200 years ago,” but a brand-new flashback shows the event happening 100 years ago – and it fits better with the story – then I’m content to let it slide. There are many, many cases where stories have technically “overwritten” something that had been hinted at or even explicitly stated, but the outcome ends up being positive.

Still frame from Star Trek Beyond showing the USS Enterprise-A. — Things like redesigns and visual overhauls don’t phase me.

These debates can often be incredibly subjective. Fans can be willing to overlook a change or disruption to canon if they like the outcome or if it takes place in a story they enjoy, even if they’d otherwise consider themselves to be sticklers for internal consistency. Likewise, fans who might otherwise have a more relaxed approach to canon might find themselves calling out inconsistencies or retcons if the story is unenjoyable to them for some other reason.

And it’s worth acknowledging that some changes to canon or retcons have just… worked. Although some Star Wars fans didn’t like it at the time, you’d struggle to find many folks in 2024 who are adamant that Darth Vader being retconned to be Luke Skywalker’s father is a bad thing that “ruined” The Empire Strikes Back. Or Trekkies who’d argue that the way the Borg changed in between their first and second appearances was to The Next Generation’s detriment.

Still frame from Lego Star Wars: Terrifying Tales featuring Luke and Darth Vader. — Darth Vader’s revelation in *The Empire Strikes Back* is an example of a popular and well-received retcon.

Time is also a great healer. I wasn’t wild about Enterprise when it premiered, and some episodes in that show tripped over what had been established in Star Trek episodes set further along the timeline. Many Star Wars fans in the late ’90s and early 2000s felt that the prequel films messed up the franchise’s internal consistency… but those arguments have fallen by the wayside in the intervening years. Don’t get me wrong, you can still find fans who are bitter about these things, but the passage of time has paved the way for many folks to accept the changes that were made.

Speaking of the passage of time, it isn’t just modern entertainment franchises that have had to deal with this issue! Going all the way back to the end of the 19th Century, some readers of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories were mortified when the character was resurrected after his supposed “death” at the Reichenbach Falls. If these arguments have been raging for more than a century, what hope have we of resolving them now?

Illustration of Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty's fight at the Reichenbach Falls, published in 1893 by Sidney Paget. — Sherlock Holmes’ survival proved controversial with fans in the 1890s…

At the end of the day, I’m happy to admit that I fall somewhere in between the “purists” and the “don’t cares.” Canon is important because a fictional setting needs to be basically consistent from one story to the next. Too many overwrites and retcons erode the fundamental building blocks of a world – bringing the whole story crashing down. I also don’t believe that new writers coming in to a long-established setting can or should have totally free rein to do whatever they want; they are, whether they wish to be or not, constrained to an extent by what has already been set up. If they can’t create a story within reasonable limitations… then they aren’t a good fit for that franchise, and their story should probably be discarded.

Having said all of that, though… I’m also not someone who’s a stickler for the minutiae of canon. If a new writer comes in with new ideas for a fictional world, I’m happy to give them the chance to tell their story and add to our understanding of that setting and its lore. Just because a particular character or event hasn’t been mentioned before… that doesn’t mean it didn’t exist, and there are ways to interpret many stories that can include new additions without feeling like something has been entirely cancelled or overwritten. Retcons and changes can also work incredibly well, representing an improvement on the original story or idea in many cases. We don’t have to look far to find great examples of that.

Still frame of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds featuring the character of Una Chin-Riley. — The Star Trek franchise has some great examples of how changing canon can work.

At the end of the day, I want to be entertained. I return to a familiar fictional setting in part because I’ve enjoyed what writers and creatives have built and want to see more of it – so it can be jarring if a new story changes too many things too quickly, or seems to overwrite something I particularly enjoyed. But at the same time, a strong script, fun ideas, and high production values can win me over before too long. A new story that strikes out in an unexpected direction can keep me on my toes, challenge my expectations, and prove incredibly fun and engaging.

There is a time and a place for canon. Basic building blocks that are key to the functionality of a fictional world, or well-established origin stories for major characters are the kind of things that I feel either shouldn’t be challenged or that have a very high bar to overcome. But smaller things involving secondary characters, or the likes of designs and aesthetics, are absolutely fair game in my book.

A stock photo of a bricklayer using cement to construct a wall. — Canon represents the “building blocks” of a fictional universe.

I hope this has been an interesting look at “canon.” This is a subject that I’ve touched on in other reviews, articles, and essays over the past few years, and it’s one that I’ve been meaning to delve into more deeply for some time. In fact, it’s been in my writing pile since I first set up my website more than four years ago. I’m glad to have finally been able to get around to it and try to explain where I stand!

Hopefully I’ve been able to get my point across as clearly as possible. This is a big topic, one that could easily be a whole series of articles with dozens of examples and anecdotes! I’ve tried to keep such things to a minimum this time, instead taking a “big picture” look at canon as a whole. But there may be time in the weeks and months ahead to dig a little deeper using some specific stories from across the world of entertainment.

Still frame from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier showing the character Sybok. — And there’s no shortage of examples!

It’s been fun for me to finally put (metaphorical) pen to paper and tackle this question. Canon is a big deal for a lot of folks in fan communities, and I get that. There have been times over the years where I’ve felt that a story could’ve benefitted from staying true to canon a little more… and other times where I’ve felt that a story played it too safe, or that a retcon wouldn’t have gone amiss!

But I confess that I get a little tired of this black-and-white argument, with “purists” and “don’t cares” caught in a seemingly endless back-and-forth argument that never makes progress. We won’t always agree on what makes a good story – nor even on what the basic needs of a story are. That’s okay, and I share this piece with the world in that spirit. This is my subjective opinion on questions of canon – and nothing more. A lot of folks can and will disagree, and I’m totally fine with that. It’s up to all of us as individuals to decide what’s important and how we wish to approach entertainment franchises and fictional worlds.

All properties discussed above are the copyright of their respective company, broadcaster, distributor, or studio. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.