From Newsgroup: alt.tv.star-trek.tos
From Address: graemecree{at}aol.com
Subject: Re: Enterprise Was The Best. Trek. Ever.

On Wednesday, December 11, 2013 6:45:04 AM UTC-6, Dani...{at}teranews.com wrote:
> "fictional reality and real." No, no such thing as fictional reality, 
> 
> something is either fictional or real!!
> 
> Daniel
We went through this in the other thread, which you may not have seen. 
Stories have their own internal consistency.  It's fictional, but the
characters in the story don't know that, and act as though it's real.  For
example, New York City.  Within the fictional reality of Batman, it's not
called that, it's called Gotham City.  Does that mean that the writers of
Batman are stupid, don't realize that the real name is New York City, and
they just got that wrong?  No, they realize that in the real world it's
called New York.  But in their fictional reality it's called Gotham.
Wiseguy was completely unable to grasp that point.  We had a set-to about
Robert T. April, the first captain of the Enterprise, kinda sorta.  The FAQ
is careful to distinguish the real from the fictional.  In the real world,
he was the first captain.  Meaning that when Roddenberry came up with the
idea for Star Trek, April was the first name that he assigned to the
Captain.  Within Star Trek's fictional reality, it's more complicated.  For
a long time, April had no official existence at all.  Then when he was
mentioned in TAS, he became a part of Trek's fictional reality.  Then when
TAS was decanonized, he fell back out of it.  In the real world, April is
and always will be the first Enterprise Captain, but within Trek's
fictional canon, he doesn't exist at all.
This distinction completely went over Wiseguy's head, and ever since, he's
insisted that I'm the one who doesn't realize that Trek is fictional, and
no amount of evidence to the contrary will budge him.  Over the years I've
learned that this is his way of conceding an argument.
--- Synchronet 3.15a-Linux NewsLink 1.92-mlp
--- SBBSecho 2.12-Linux