Because continuity is literally what makes it a story? Otherwise it's just a series of random events.
Which is fine for Episodic Television but not for a continuous story.
this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2026
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This bugs me a little with Legend of Zelda fandom. The timeline is nonsense and the lore doesn't matter.
I have played probably a dozen Legends of Zelda over my lifetime and I could not explain a single thing to you about the lore. When I was talking with my friends about the new Legend of Zelda movie, someone mentioned that there are multiple generations of Link and Zelda, and not just the same Link and Zelda falling in to some kind of cryo sleep or being reincarnated or whatever and it was literally the first time I tried to piece together the lore and like... there's nothing in my memory but 3 decades of skipping dialogues as fast as possible. Did we ever find out conclusively if all of reality is but a dream on the eyelid of the wind fish? Hell if I know, even though I played that game through like six times.
The only reason there is a timeline for Zelda is because people wouldn't stop bothering Nintendo about it. Even Shiggy said he regrets making that because now they, somewhat, have to follow it or else people will riot.
"I just wanted a series where a twink and a princess fight a pigman over magical triangles"
Strange New Worlds is en exercise of writers writing themselves into exceedingly narrow corners if in the end they want to connect to TOS. They had a descendant of Khan on the crew, half the crew dated her, yet none of that comes up when they meet the actual Khan. I wonder how they will connect that story point.
During the wedding episode, nobody sees Trelane as Trelane. They see other people he inhabits. In the daily soap ep, only Pike sees him, and he isn't around later. So they kind of got that right, I think.
The first coherent space opera was Babylon 5 where one creative mind oversaw everything and in the end wrote all the scripts. The reboot Galactica is another example. You could tell The Expanse was all made up by these two guys. I'm sure I'm forgetting something, a Stargate possibly. But Trek and also Doctor Who all change with their changing writers and over the decades. There are periods where certain people are in charge and there is stability in story and focus. But then their tenure ends and somebody else comes in. And if it all made sense and everybody loved it the same way we'd have nothing to bitch about.
The Babylon 5 series is such a masterpiece. I watched it several times before finding out more of something said in the first season that's referred and having an impact later. There's still holes and threads that are not going anywhere, but the overall is very coherent and well pieced together.
Even the unpredicted events about production have been worked around.
I thoroughly enjoy watching reactions of people watching the show for the first time. The faces they make when they realize something from multiple episodes ago is having an impact, or is being revealed, is priceless.
Unfortunately, aside from the pilot, which is admittedly a bit different, but still mostly explained, I never really got interested in Crusades, and the other movies, so I can't say for them. But the pilot and the series, mmm, chef's kiss.
There's speculation that La'an is going to somehow be erased from their memories by the end of the series. Memory wipes are often a way fir long running series to handwave things away. The show Once Upon a Time, for example, has flashbacks in almost every episode. Eventually it becomes really hard to add new backstories without contradicting established lore. Memory wipes are used a lot in later seasons to avoid contradictions. For example, they had an episode where Regina meets her long lost sister when they were children. Naturally, their memories were wiped or else it would contradict them meeting fir the first time in season 3. And then sometimes shows just don't bother handwaving things away. Chandler and Rachel from Friends met for the first time three times (though, to be fair, Rachel is consistently bad at remembering people)
A memory wipe would make sense. Or they go back in time, say, to punch some more dinosaurs, come back, and there is just Bob at her station and nobody bats an eye because the timeline was changed. A reverse Sela (the RomYarLin from TNG) move. Because I'd like both of these solutions, I'm very positive they'll find a far less satisfying one.
On Star Trek, the lore and what was canon has always been a mess, even before TNG came into the scene. There were a number of "official" books out on extended timelines, ships, and worlds, but no one ever agreed on them. Then as more came out, the old debated stuff kind of disappeared. And some of it was really good. I actually like the old TOS ship designs like the dreadnaught and scouts in some books, and the back history of things like warp drive being invented and improved including some misfortunes along the way. Made it feel real. Loved the old Starfleet Battles and its history and ships.
But there's never been solid consistency. Same can be said about Star Wars, although I'm not that much into the extended stuff. It does seem sometimes that fan-made ideas are a lot better than studio.
The creator of Alien Earth said something like he doesn't care about lore and that he's not going to limit himself to what Prometheus and the other Alien movies said. And I'm happy for that, some IPs are better as just interpretations of the same universe that strict historical accounts where everything have to check out.