Star Trek retcons have been numerous through the decades, although the changes to the canon haven't all been the same size. Sometimes, it's something small that's being altered, and the ripples don't spread all that far into the wider lore. Other, more extreme, Star Trek retcons have been known to create plot holes and other narrative issues within the franchise. Those are the ones that are harder to justify and explain away with retroactive logic.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds just installed a game-changing piece of lore in the show's season 4 premiere that, on paper, seems like it should cause all sorts of issues with established canon. Then, when it's really analyzed, it's a surprisingly airtight addition to Star Trek's worldbuilding efforts. Smaller retcons than this have resulted in much more controversial fallout. I'm impressed and entertained.
FULL SPOILERS for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4, Episode 1, "Valles Marineris."
I can't get over how convincing Star Trek's Martian retcon is
For 60 years, Star Trek has opted not to engage with a very common trend among sci-fi franchises. It has refused to canonize a native Martian species. Sure, Mars becomes colonized by humans, but sentient life is never found to have evolved there in Star Trek. Gene Roddenberry even considered making Spock half Martian in The Original Series, but that idea was abandoned, as was Star Trek's take on a species native to the Red Planet. Strange New Worlds season 4's premiere changes that.
Introducing the Martians as a present-day species who just hadn't ever been shown or mentioned in Star Trek before would have created countless continuity issues, but the decision to establish them in the very, very distant past comes with almost no negative impact on the canon. Set 65 million years ago, "Valles Marineris" allows Star Trek to put its own unique spin on the Martian trope, while keeping things canonically coherent. The fact that Starfleet is implied to bury the revelation at the end of the episode, similar to the USS Discovery's disappearance, accounts for why the Martians aren't mentioned in shows set after Strange New Worlds.
The Martians' place in Strange New Worlds' incredible new causality paradox explained
In a mind-bending loop that puts Star Trek: First Contact to shame, "Valles Marineris" sees the Enterprise pulled 65 million years into the past and forced to allow wartime atrocities to happen so that the future can unfold as it should. In short, if the Martians hadn't destroyed the Dol'drm homeworld (another daring-yet-great addition to the canon), then humanity would never have evolved.
In other words, humanity becomes intrinsically responsible for its own existence, but the Martians and the Dol'drm both had their own roles to play in that macabre sequence of events. The Dol'drm served as the aggressors who catalyzed the violent conflict, and the Martians landed the crushing blow with stolen Starfleet technology. It's a complex web that's woven, and one that can be analyzed for hours on end with new wrinkles becoming clear the whole time.
The biggest reason why Star Trek's Martian (& Dol'drm) retcon works so well
As mentioned earlier, most of the key action in "Valles Marineris" is contained in an era that's now functionally impossible for almost every Star Trek character to interact with. While it was a thrill-ride of an adventure, the Enterprise returns to the 23rd century afterward and closes the door behind it. The anomaly that took them there is so rare that it's fine to accept that another one will never rear its head. When this is weighed against something like introducing Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin Green) as Spock's (Ethan Peck) secret adoptive sister in Star Trek: Discovery, which could come up again in active storylines on several occasions, the Martian twist seems especially tucked away in a neat little corner of the Star Trek timeline.
I will say, however, that "Valles Marineris" isn't perfect when explaining the lack of knowledge about the Martians in Star Trek's core eras. My one issue with the episode is that, sure, Mars' orbit is impacted by the destruction of the Dol'drm homeworld, which accounts for why the Red Planet slips into an orbit that makes it inhospitable, but why has Starfleet never found any trace of the Martian society? I understand that it was a very long time ago, and very little of the society would remain. But humanity has found dinosaur remains from around that period on Earth, which begs the question of why the search for something similar on Mars in Star Trek always came up short. I don't have an answer for that, but I'm willing to let it slide due to all of Star Trek's hard work in making Strange New Worlds season 4's premiere so otherwise flawless.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4 is streaming now on Paramount+. Catch a new episode each Thursday.
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