[Perry] The Downsides of Retconning

The following post contains spoilers for the “Jurassic Bark” episode of Futurama and “The Day of the Doctor” episode of Doctor Who.

“Retcon” is a mashup of two words: Retroactive Continuity.

Essentially, what this means it that you’ve written yourself into a corner and you can’t figure a way out of it…so you alter the past to fit the future.

Sadly, this happens a lot more than one might think and it’s an awful tragedy almost every goddamned time.

Let’s target some specific examples before we start breaking down why they’re bad ideas.

Futurama – Original

There is a powerful episode of Futurama titled “Jurassic Bark.” In this episode, Fry finds the petrified remnants of the dog he used to have back in the 21st century. The episode spends a lot of time in flashbacks to his past, where it details how Fry met the dog and their life together before Fry accidentally fell into a cryofreeze tube and ended up in the future.

He discovers that the technology exists to reanimate the dog. When he’s offered the choice, he almost goes ahead with it…but stops at the last moment. He’s saddened at the thought of not seeing his friend again, but he reasons that his dog must have continued living after Fry had been frozen. He figures that the dog had found a new owner, and had made someone else’s life happy. And that he had no right to really butt into that at this late date.

So Fry let’s the dog go, and moves on with his life.

At the end of the episode, though? We’re treated to another flashback, of his dog, spending days and weeks looking for Fry after he’d disappeared. Eventually, the dog settles down to wait for Fry to return in front of the pizza shop he used to work at.

The dog waits as seasons come and go, people come and go, and eventually the pizza shop closes. Old and mangy at the end of his life, Fry’s dog settles his head on his paws and waits in front of the closed pizzeria, presumably dying of old age, waiting for his master’s return.

That? Was a goddamned powerful episode and still brings a lump to my throat when I rewatch it.

Then, of course, they had to ruin it.

Futurama – Retcon

Fast forward a few years. Futurama has been off the air for a while, but there’s been enough fan outcry that the studio put together a Futurama movie, to gauge interest and to see if the show was worth bringing back.

The movie deals a lot with time travel and part of the story has Fry going back in time, to live out a life in the 21st century (our time).

Among other plot points…not even as the main thing, but as a tiny little cameo? As Fry returns to the apartment he’s living in, his dog from the episode mentioned above, runs up to him, all happy, for a moment before the scene cuts away.

So, apparently? We’re meant to believe that Fry’s dog hadn’t REALLY lived out the rest of his life waiting for Fry’s return. Seymour hadn’t REALLY died of old age and a broken heart in front of the store Fry used to work at…because another version of Fry went back in time! And reconnected with his dog! And everything’s just so very happy and unicorns prancing around, farting out rainbows and junk.

This bothered me back when I first watched it, and to be honest? Just thinking about it now kind of gets my blood boiling.

It just felt so damned senseless, you know? It seemed so unnecessary.

You already HAD this beautiful, poignant episode that made you feel like your heart was getting hit by a car…why would you ruin that for the sake of a tiny, five second cameo appearance?

It just made no sense to me.

Doctor Who – Original

On another note, right around the time David Tennant was at the end of his tenure as the Doctor, there was this whole thing where he faces off against another time lord called the Master, who had a plan to bring Gallifrey, the planet of the time lords, into existence right above the earth.

The Doctor stops him, after some crazy things. And his reasoning was that in the last days of the great Time War, the gallifreyans and the daleks were BOTH reduced to committing any kind of atrocity they could in order to win.

In essence, the Doctor did what he did (locking away Gallifrey and the remnants of the daleks behind a “time lock”) BECAUSE both races had been reduced to that level. Because all of time and space was being burnt up by the war and that it was time someone stopped it.

So the Doctor took steps, locking away his own planet, beyond hope of rescue, essentially sacrificing billions to save TRILLIONS.

But it was a decision that haunted him, all his long centuries of life. It was essentially his birth point. It was the thing that turned him into the man he was. The man who refused to ever use a gun. The man who would risk everything to save lives that needed help.

Whatever it was? It worked.

Doctor Who – Retcon

…Eeeeeexcept Steven Moffat wanted to change that too.

At the end of the latest season, there was an hour long special episode called The Time of the Doctor. It was eagerly anticipated because it featured the return of David Tennant to the show, for one night only, special appearance.

The episode deals with the current Doctor (Matt Smith), and previous Doctor (David Tennant), meeting each other, and then coming face to face with the man they call the ‘War Doctor’.

The man they were when they chose to end the time war and lock away Gallifrey.

There were some small changes, even here.

The War Doctor wouldn’t ‘lock away’ the planet…but destroy it. Something that would destroy both the time lords and the daleks together.

That? I can get behind that.

Both the 10th and 11th Doctor REGRET the decision they made at the end of the war and during the course of the episode, are brought face to face with the man they were when they made that decision. Reliving that awful choice and all that…

At the end, the War Doctor is returned to that point of decision, and having learned of the type of man he’ll become if he chooses to destroy the planet….the the lives and planets he will save to try and redeem this one act, the War Doctor decides to go ahead and blow it all up.

There was a beautiful quote during the episode, where an AI asks him if he REALLY wants to go ahead with this. He tells her, “Great men are forged in fire. It is the privilege of lesser men to light the flame.”

But just before he does it? He hears the wheezing of the Tardis and the 10th and 11th doctors appear before him. They tell him that they understand the decision they made when they were him and won’t let him do it alone this time.

No, this time, they would help him press that awful button and help him bear the weight of his guilt.

I know this is likely confusing to non-viewers, but if you’d followed the story to this point, it was pretty powerful stuff.

But then?

Ruined.

Oh! They’re suddenly hit with a brilliant idea! A way they can wave their hands and save the planet instead of destroying it! And they do it! Hurray! Except, because of how it was done, their memories of the events won’t change even a little bit. They’ll forget that this happened and they’ll live their life, thinking that they blew up the planet. So while the planet was saved, nothing is going to change because they won’t really remember it.

…really?

That’s just LAZY writing.

Makes my blood boil.

Retconning

Here’s the thing. I’m not saying that retconning is ALWAYS bad.

I mean, just because I personally can’t think of a situation where it was done well, doesn’t mean that I’m completely denying the fact that it MAY be handled well sometimes.

But by and large, it tends to be used as a crutch for lazy writing.

As Tami would likely agree with, retconning is almost always the sole province of the pantsers.

Some people plan the story out in enough detail that retconning isn’t needed. When everything falls into place at the end, it largely does so because it was MEANT to fall into place in that fashion.

Retconning happens when you write without a solid plan. It happens because you get to a point where what’s happening NOW won’t make sense because of something that happened in the past.

Instead of thinking of a better way to forge ahead with a new idea that would chime with what happened before, you ‘cheat’.

You break out your bottle of white out and you liberally sprinkle it over the past. Re-writing history until you have a frankenstein patchwork of history and plotlines and you have something in the past that will shakily support what you want to do in the present.

Planning is the key to help you avoid this mistake.

I’m not really an advocate of balls to the wall, meticulously planning every scene before you start writing…but at least have the highlights set in stone before you set pen to paper.

And, granted, this is much less of an issue with most writing.

It tends to be a problem if you publish in a serial fashion, whether it’s by chapters or novels, or episodes. Because once it’s out there, you have to work with it and regard it as canon, no matter HOW good the idea you’ve come up with is.

So please, take the option of retconning with a large grain of salt.

And if you’ve ever seen an instance where it was done well, give me a shout because I’d be awfully curious to take a look at it!

Related posts:

[Perry] One Last Book
[Perry] Doctor Who: The Bad Bits
[Perry] “Read This”