Star Trek fans have become very sensitive to introductions of new characters, aliens or historic events arguing that things that haven’t previously been mentioned ‘break canon’ or disrespect lore.
This piece by Inverse shows how profoundly TNG retconned Federation, Starfleet, and main characters’ history on the fly.
Worth thinking about.
Oh, it definitely did contradict established continuity — certainly more than Spock having had a foster sister or Khan descendants that we hadn’t heard of previously.
TNG initially presented a stable and peaceful utopian civilization. Picard and his officers spoke repeatedly about this in the early seasons.
There were long term stable borders with the Romulans, established relations with the Klingons but no major armed conflicts in the lifetimes of the senior officers.
‘Yesterday’s Enterprise’ was given as the exemplary lesson on how the alternative, more violent, alternative history would have played out but even that was quite far back, with the Enterprise-C.
The Ferengi were in early TNG a new and mysterious alien group on the borders.
The Borg was the most disruptive threat in generations, one that required new technology and new more military forward leadership approaches.
And then suddenly it turns out there has been a major ongoing border conflict with Cardassia, marginalized refugees from occupied planets living in camps bordering Federation utopia, and Starfleet has had its serving crew in armed conflicts.
How can you sincerely argue that isn’t a ‘major change?’