Should Season 1 TNG be considered "canon?"

[Yukaphile]

This topic came about when I was fuming thinking about how if STD improves, that still doesn't justify giving it a free pass and that it should have had a stronger foundation and failed long before this point, and that the crap they're adding to the mythos amounts to negative world-building and shouldn't be allowed as part of the continuity. But it really did get me to thinking, because my stance has been, as good as Trek got, TNG had no justification for starting out so poor and should have been canned from the get-go. I stand by that point. But similar to how if STD improves, we should consider a certain qualitative "suck era" as the turning point "not canon" for STD, should we do the same for TNG? I consider Season 1 TNG to not be canon, at all, despite being referenced many times later on, and even if the creators treated it as canon, I go with "death of the author." Let's say STD actually improves and becomes as beloved as the original TNG, which is hard to see given how many continuity errors they are, but okay. Let's say they explain away the Mirror Universe characters' newfound hyper-sensitivity to light, Klingons getting twin junk, and all that other stuff. I'm fairly confident most fans wouldn't treat anything prior to the "new era" as canon, and so, similarly, does the same hold true for Season 1 TNG? Season 2 at least had kernels of good every now and then, while Season 1 was almost totally devoid of it. What are your guys' thoughts?

[Makeshift Python]

Honestly, why not? I consider it all canon. That's not an indicator of whether something is good or bad. "Threshold" is as canon as "The City on the Edge of Forever".

[clearspira]

A lot of fans consider season 1 to be the ultimate form of canon as Gene was involved in it.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

[Karha of Honor]

This topic came about when I was fuming thinking about how if STD improves, that still doesn't justify giving it a free pass and that it should have had a stronger foundation and failed long before this point, and that the crap they're adding to the mythos amounts to negative world-building and shouldn't be allowed as part of the continuity. But it really did get me to thinking, because my stance has been, as good as Trek got, TNG had no justification for starting out so poor and should have been canned from the get-go. I stand by that point. But similar to how if STD improves, we should consider a certain qualitative "suck era" as the turning point "not canon" for STD, should we do the same for TNG? I consider Season 1 TNG to not be canon, at all, despite being referenced many times later on, and even if the creators treated it as canon, I go with "death of the author." Let's say STD actually improves and becomes as beloved as the original TNG, which is hard to see given how many continuity errors they are, but okay. Let's say they explain away the Mirror Universe characters' newfound hyper-sensitivity to light, Klingons getting twin junk, and all that other stuff. I'm fairly confident most fans wouldn't treat anything prior to the "new era" as canon, and so, similarly, does the same hold true for Season 1 TNG? Season 2 at least had kernels of good every now and then, while Season 1 was almost totally devoid of it. What are your guys' thoughts?

Let it be canon.

[Makeshift Python]

In a sense, the first seasons of each Trek iteration is the ultimate form of canon as all the creatives were most involved before eventually stepping aside for others to take over.

[Jonathan101]

It would cause some continuity problems if it wasn't canon given it introduced characters like Q and Lore, not to mention the whole crew and many of their relationships.

"Canon" is not the same as "good".

[Makeshift Python]

But it really did get me to thinking, because my stance has been, as good as Trek got, TNG had no justification for starting out so poor and should have been canned from the get-go.

It had very good ratings, so there was no way it was going to be cancelled.

[MixedDrops]

Well if you hypothetically removed Encounter at Farpoint from canon as an example, that doesn't really create a continuity problem per se, because in this theoretical new canon the only difference is that the Enterprise crew met Q off-screen at some point in the past.

Continuity shouldn't even really be that big of a consideration with Trek, every Trek show blatantly contradicted each other and even themselves sometimes, even with stuff constantly mentioned (the classic "beam through the shields", which sometimes happened even in good episodes ie Relics), let alone finer details. If we removed anything and everything that contradicted something else at some point, we'd probably would be left over with like, 2 seasons' worth of episodes. Across all of Trek.

[Makeshift Python]

Let's be honest, this is just another thread for Yuka to rant over DISCOVERY not getting cancelled. Like how he's upset that Chuck eviscerated early episodes of TNG, VOY, and ENT, but didn't give the same fury to DIS.