Star Trek has 50 years of intersecting — and often contradictory — stories that make it very difficult for all of them to correctly fit together in a way that makes fans happy. That's probably not going to change any time soon.

The latest entries in the canon are the Original Series prequel Star Trek: Discovery as well as a forthcoming series with Jean-Luc Picard, which will be set 20 years after Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Digital Spy and other media chatted with Star Trek executive producer Alex Kurtzman at New York Comic-Con earlier this month specifically about the continuity issue — and Kurtzman admitted discrepancies between the various shows and spin-off media is unavoidable.

Mike Coppola / Getty Images

[Alex Kurtzman with Sonequa Martin-Green and Jason Isaac]

"Everybody is always trying to maintain continuity," Kurtzman told us. "But given the 50 plus years of Star Trek, it literally becomes impossible because people decide that they want to follow a character in a book series after the show has been cancelled, and so they'll invent stories.

"And then 15 years later, a new show will come on that will take that character back and you can't be consistent with everything. Our goal is always to try, always, always to try and never to negate what has existed in the novels and graphic novels but it is a literal impossibility.

CBS

"And part of what has kept Trek going for so long is everyone's wonderful imagination to keep writing books and keep making graphic novels and keep making shows. And at a certain point, given the volume of things that are out there it's just impossible for everything to sync up perfectly. So we give it our best effort."

Star Trek: Discovery airs on CBS All Access in the US and Netflix internationally, including the UK.

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