Posted on 05/08/2009 12:03:09 AM PDT by dr_lew
Wait, now. Was this Spock supposed to be 23-24 or Kirk ? The problem with this part is that Kirk shouldn't have even met Spock until Pike stood down from commanding the Enterprise, by which time Kirk was in his early 30s. With Kirk's prior exploits, of course, although Spock would have overall seniority in Starfleet as Kirk would've leapfrogged him in rank.
"I could be wrong about this, as I think the number of years between the attack on the Kelvin that kills JTK’s father IS mentioned, but I can’t remember it."
How Kirk's father died (and when that occurred) was always a bit of an unresolved point as far as canon was concerned (one book, I'm forgetting the name, had Papa Kirk serving on the original Enterprise mission under Captain Robert April). Did they even address when a young Kirk was sent to Tarsus IV when he witnessed the massacre under Gov. Kodos ? How or did they even mention the relationship with his older brother, George ?
"Spock’s advanced rank does make sense, though, because Spock certainly IS older than JTK, or he wouldn’t have been on the Enterprise with Pike during “The Cage.”"
Spock's age was also never clearly specified. Some reference material had him at least a decade older than Kirk (although Memory Alpha Wiki has them at only a year apart, Spock being older). Spock could've been in his early 20s when serving with Captain Pike as a Lieutenant (although he could've been a LTJG), which could mesh with him being roughly the same age as Kirk. But, again, my problem is that there's no way Spock was an instructor at the Academy when Kirk was there since they clearly didn't "know" each other until after Kirk became Captain.
"McCoy is already an MD and enters the Academy at the same time as JTK, seemingly to get away from his ex-wife. (No mention of Joanna, but she was never mentioned in TOS, either)."
There'd be no need for McCoy to even attend the Academy, he'd have gone right into the Medical Corps after college, Med school and residency, so that, too, makes little sense. It was always alluded to that he entered the Starfleet Med Corps after his ill-fated first marriage (and leaving the young daughter behind - her character was supposed to have popped up in that infamous Hippie episode, but they changed it to being an old g/f of Chekov's). I remember talk of "Joanna" popping up in one of the films in the '80s (mentioned for the part at one point was Nancy McKeon, who played, ironically, "Jo Anna Polniaczek" on "The Facts of Life", but they never worked out a way for that to fit).
"Scott is already a Starfleet officer, and I’d say nearly a decade older than JTK. This makes sense to me. (I don’t recall hearing that Scotty did NOT go to the Academy; can you tell me where you heard that?)"
At least a dozen years older (same with McCoy). Some reference material showed Scott had either started off as enlisted or worked his way up through the (Space) Merchant Marines before getting a commission (and thereby bypassing the Academy). That would explain why he would've been a Lt Commander at almost 50 in the series. Had he gone through the Academy, he'd have already been a Captain (and it took until ST3 before he was promoted to Captain, by which time he was in his mid 60s). Kirk had supposedly commanded a ship prior to Enterprise, and IIRC, Scott had served as an engineer/designer with him, and that was how he ended up with him. Scott, I believe, never served with Pike (or if he had, it would've been as a junior engineer - the Chief Engineer under Pike was that bulky-looking man, Clegg Pitcairn, who we saw briefly at the transporter panel in the original pilot, presumably another Scotsman, although he didn't appear to have an accent).
"Uhura is at least a plebe at the Academy when JTK enters."
Uhura is younger than Kirk, obviously, but some discrepency on the age (the actress was short of 34 when she filmed the 3rd episode, her first, but I believe her character was only supposed to be between 26-30. 34 would've been too old for her to still be a Lieutenant). But erring on the side of her being around mid/late 20s, she wouldn't have entered the Academy until after Kirk was already serving on space missions. So that makes no sense there.
"Sulu and Chekov are both already officers. I don’t think Sulu’s commission is too offbase if JTK enters the Academy late, but Chekov...well, in the film he is referred to as “whiz kid” by Capt. Pike, and is only 17 years old. His age is mentioned in the movie as the reply to a direct question to him."
That is maybe the biggest problem right there. Sulu was (at least) anywhere from 7-10 years older than Chekov (Memory Alpha Wiki says 8 years, so they had him playing essentially the same age as his character). Sulu was in the Sciences before he transferred to Command (which I believe was not reflected in this film), and he was already on the cusp of receiving a promotion to Lt Commander. He wouldn't have even known or been with Chekov until the mission was well underway. They had the problem in ST2 when Khan says to Chekov, "I remember you !" which would've been impossible, since Chekov didn't appear until the 2nd season, but a running joke was that he was suffering from Montezuma's revenge during his early posting that didn't permit him to pop up on the bridge until the 2nd season. Khan would've "seen" Chekov on the crew roster when he was studying it from Sick Bay, but he likely wouldn't have come face to face with him. But, again, Chekov wouldn't have been at the Academy with Sulu, let alone Kirk (or serving with Pike !). That's absolutely ridiculous on its face. Of course, what's humorous is that Walter Koenig is actually a year older than George Takei (Koenig was 31 when he began playing Chekov, over a decade younger than himself). That stupid Davy Jones Monkee wig almost did an effective job at making him look like he was only 20, though.
"JTK does complete his Academy training in 3 years and not 4."
I don't think even the best and brightest would've been permitted that. At one point, there was a claim that the Academy was 6 (if not more) years in length... presumably they could explain that by having the equivalent of the middle of high school being a starting point for those exceptional individuals.
"The biggest change, IMO, is that JTK actually takes command of the Enterprise FAR earlier than in TOS. In TOS, he takes command from Capt. Pike around age 30, after serving aboard at least one other ship, namely, the USS Farragut."
Yeah, that is clearly wrong. Some sources claim he was 31, but I believe he said 34 when he first took over in the second pilot. At least they got the Farragut part right, but there were a couple other ships he had served on as well, and they surely didn't jump him from a Lieutenant-grade officer when he was on the Farragut up 3 ranks to Captain. Of course, in the second pilot, he had just two stripes on his arm, so he could've "technically" been just a Commander (although unlikely a Commander would've been entrusted with a top-of-the-line ship), and again, he never served under Pike.
"There is a mention of the USS Farragut in the movie, but JTK is never a member of the crew. No mention of Capt. Garrovick that I heard."
And that clearly was changed, since we know he was a member of that crew for at least a few years. Garrovick he considered a father-figure to him, obviously at some point after the death (by unspecified means) of his own father.
"Hope that helps, and if I made any gross errors, somebody please correct me."
Thanks. I feared that was what they did, trying to put them all roughly in the Academy at the same time, which was chronologically impossible. That Academy idea, btw, had been kicked around for probably 20 years. I thought they weren't going to follow through on it simply because there was no logical way to make it work. Well, since we live in illogical times, they went ahead and did it anyway...
See post #62 on why that isn’t chronologically feasible.
That’s gonna leave a mark.
There was no canon in TOS. Remember TOS was a show with salt shakers for weapons, plastic barf for alien monsters, and jujubees for computer keyboards. Right from the very beginning any concept of canon the show might have had was broken when they didn’t have the budget for a shuttle set so Gene had to “invent” transporters. What little canon they might have cobbled together prior to making STNG was dead long before Gene. Remember Gene was alive when Klingons got forehead appliance, when Orions got replaced by Ferengi, when warp speed got redefined, and when the distance from Earth to the neutral zone shrank a lot more than could be justified with the change in warp speed. There’s simply no canon, there’s an illusion of canon some fans worship, but it’s fake. Every new series and every new movie broke canon.
This new movie brings back REAL Trek, it’s got the one thing that’s been missing from the first real of the first movie, FUN. Kirk is a swashbuckler again, they are once again boldly going places not mewling about whales and cultural validity, once again Star Trek is identifying the bad guy and going to get him. Any “fan” that isn’t experiencing gleeful delight with this movie isn’t a Star Trek fan, they’re a chronic complainer that needs to follow Shatner’s advice from SNL.
It is a rewrite, that’s part of the point of the plot. The old chronology has been set aside by events in the movie, we are now in a parallel Star Trek universe. But they don’t screw around with any “temporal cold war” crap like Enterprise did, there’s two instances of time travel, the first one irrevocably changes the time line in the first 5 minutes of the movie, and then we move on with the adventure in our new universe.
These and other discrepancies are supposed to have been precipitated by the time warps experienced by Nemo and "the old Spock". So the movie respects "the canon" insofar as it has built into itself a justification for deviating from it. The person of "the old Spock" presumably knows "the canon", and even tells Kirk that he has to make himself Captain of the Enterprise, and apprises him of the means to do it, which Kirk then duly applies.
The movie seems to have taken its cue from PRIMER, which promoted an "anything goes" philosophy of Time Travel Paradox, as opposed to the traditional Enforced Consistency, as cleverly presented in e.g. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. "The old Spock" even has a speech near the end where he disparages the dangers of Time Travel Paradox, which he had used to scare the young Spock. This begs the question of why he should have cared at all what happened in this new thread, or have thought that he had any special knowledge of what needed to be done, since everything was already out of whack.
I'm sorry, but I categorically reject that assertion. To use that claim is to give carte blanche to turn it into whatever newest whim the producers/directors have in mind. This newest movie just demonstrates that perfectly.
"This new movie brings back REAL Trek"
'Cept it ain't real. This is 100% fake and phony. Having all the crewmembers at the Academy at the same time (when the characters have about a 25-year age difference !) is as ridiculous and absurd as they come. It's more like Star F**k, not Star Trek.
"Any “fan” that isn’t experiencing gleeful delight with this movie isn’t a Star Trek fan, they’re a chronic complainer that needs to follow Shatner’s advice from SNL."
I'm experiencing something, and it ain't glee. It's something akin to anger at seeing something I've been a fan of over THIRTY years being tossed in the shredder to make a "Lost In Space" movie clone. For those that don't give a f**k, well enjoy yourselves. For those that do, we will speak out our displeasure at seeing the franchise screwed again. Wasn't Enterprise bad enough ? There's enough of the Trek universe left, set way in the future, to do something totally new that doesn't TOUCH the very bedrock of what made this special and turn it into quicksand.
It was bad enough watching Berman Trek when he turned an Alpha Centauri scientist/astronaut into a 7-foot tall Hippie lush who lives in the Montana sticks and makes a warp drive out of an aluminum can. WTF !??
I can’t believe Nimoy had anything to do with this abortion. I liked my idea better, have this as a movie-within-a-movie with some idiot kid director from the 24th century deciding to “retell” the story of the Enterprise to the public, screening it for the old crew and their laughing at it.
Reminds me of when Robert Wise, whom I met at a film seminar, the director of ST1 and The Sound of Music, screened the latter film for the Von Trapp family after he wrapped filming in ‘65. They quite literally were rolling in the aisles because it was so far afield from the real story, and needless to say, Wise was not too happy (even if he did clean up at the Oscars). And like with this movie with Nimoy, they got the real Maria Von Trapp to appear in TSOM to “validate” it.
Gosh, I don’t know. This movie hardly resembled anything that we were used to in the ST franchise, even aside from deviations from “the canon”. I suppose it would be great to see a representation of Kirk’s Academy days in the style and spirit of TOS, but how could such a thing even be possible?
All I know is that I really got cranked on by the trailer that I saw back in March, I believe, when I went to see KNOWING ( and got a speeding ticket! ) This was the scene where the very young Kirk “gets a speeding ticket” and announces his name. Boy, that really seemed to offer promise. Of course, the same scene played out in the movie wasn’t nearly as exciting, because I already knew what was happening.
Well I was sure going to go see it, no question, and after all this time, as I’ve already said, I think we just have to take what we get, and what we got was pretty good, even if it wasn’t exactly what we wanted.
you can categorically reject that assertion, you can even do it in bold, it doesn’t change reality. And the reality is there is no Star Trek canon. Here’s some stuff I found:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_animated_series
Writer-produer D.C. Fontana discussed the TAS Canon issue in 2007:
I suppose “canon” means what Gene Roddenberry decided it was. Remember, we were making it up as we went along on the original series (and on the animated one, too). We had a research company to keep us on the straight and narrow as to science, projected science based on known science, science fiction references (we didn’t want to step on anyone’s exclusive ideas in movies, other TV shows, or printed work). They also helped prevent contradictions and common reference errors. So the so-called canon evolved in its own way and its own time.
David Gerrold, who contributed two stories to TAS, stated in an interview his views on the canon issue:
Arguments about “canon” are silly. I always felt that Star Trek Animated was part of Star Trek because Gene Roddenberry accepted the paycheck for it and put his name on the credits. And DC Fontana—and all the other writers involved—busted their butts to make it the best Star Trek they could. But this whole business of “canon” really originated with Gene’s errand boy. Gene liked giving people titles instead of raises, so the errand boy got named “archivist” and apparently it went to his head. Gene handed him the responsibility of answering all fan questions, silly or otherwise, and he apparently let that go to his head.
trek website http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/help/faqs/faq/676.html
But canon is not something set in stone; even events in some of the movies have been called into question as to whether they should be considered canon! Ultimately, the fans, the writers and the producers may all differ on what is considered canon and the very idea of what is canon has become more fluid, especially as there isn’t a single voice or arbiter to decide. Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry was accustomed to making statements about canon, but even he was known to change his mind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_(Star_Trek)
To further complicate matters, it has been noted that Gene Roddenberry was something of a revisionist when it came to canon. People who worked with Roddenberry remember that he used to handle canon not on a series-by-series basis nor an episode-by-episode basis, but point by point. If he changed his mind on something, or if a fact in one episode contradicted what he considered to be a more important fact in another episode, he had no problem declaring that specific point non-canon.
See, people can easily catch us, and say “well, wait a minute, in ‘Balance of Terror’, they knew that the Romulans had a cloaking device, and then in ‘The Enterprise Incident’, they don’t know anything about cloaking devices, but they’re gonna steal this one because it’s obviously just been developed, so how the hell do you explain that?” We can’t. There are some things we just can’t explain, especially when it comes from the third season. So, yes, third season is canon up to the point of contradiction, or where it’s just so bad... you know, we kind of cringe when people ask us, “well, what happened in ‘Plato’s Stepchildren’, and ‘And the Children Shall Lead’, and ‘Spock’s Brain’, and so on — it’s like, please, he wasn’t even producing it at that point. But, generally, [canon is] the original series, not really the animated, the first movie to a certain extent, the rest of the films in certain aspects but not in all... I know that it’s very difficult to understand. It literally is point by point. I sometimes do not know how he’s going to answer a question when I go into his office, I really do not always know, and — and I know it better probably than anybody, what it is that Gene likes and doesn’t like.[3]— Richard Arnold, 1991
Another thing that makes canon a little confusing. Gene R. himself had a habit of decanonizing things. He didn’t like the way the animated series turned out, so he proclaimed that it was not canon. He also didn’t like a lot of the movies. So he didn’t much consider them canon either. And – okay, I’m really going to scare you with this one – after he got TNG going, he... well... he sort of decided that some of The Original Series wasn’t canon either. I had a discussion with him once, where I cited a couple things that were very clearly canon in The Original Series, and he told me he didn’t think that way anymore, and that he now thought of TNG as canon wherever there was conflict between the two. He admitted it was revisionist thinking, but so be it.[4]— Paula Block, 2005
See, no such thing as canon.
Now for your other objection. Oh and HUGE SPOILER ALERT HERE ANYBODY WHO WANTS TO SEE THE MOVIE CLEAN SHOULD LEAVE THE THREAD NOW!
All the crew members aren’t at the Academy at the same time, Kirk McCoy and Uhura are there at as Academy students at the same time, Spock is a bit of a teacher’s aid, Chekov and Sulu are already on the Enterprise sort of (it hasn’t been christened yet so nobody is really ON the Enterprise, but they’ve been assigned), and Scotty is off on another planet entirely fairly near Vulcan as a punishment post.
You’re experiencing what all canon worshipers experience, the death of a sacred cow. I literally grew up watching Star Trek, I turn 40 in July, some of the first books I ever read were the Blish books, you my friend are what we call a “late comer”, at thirty years of fandom you showed up basically with the first movie, I was picking up nerd magazines reading about the making of the first movie.
The problem with Enterprise wasn’t how the broke canon, canon is silly, canon as you can see from the links and quotes above doesn’t really even exist. The problem with Enterprise was the temporal cold war, it was a stupid plot, it was a stupid plot that involved time travel something Trek has NEVER done well. All the way up until the TPW plot started Enterprise was pretty fun, early days adventure, warp 5 being considered fast, it was great. Could have been less heavy, but that’s been a problem with all post animated series Trek.
The new film doesn’t do anything bad to the bedrock of what made this special it BRINGS IT BACK. What made Trek special was that it was fun. Wagon Train in space, with a swashbuckling rule breaking womanizing captain and his highly skilled though often rather freakish crew, a lot of BOLD goings. That’s what this movie is about, something that’s been missing desperately in the franchise for... well about thirty years now that you mention it. From the first second V’Ger showed up Trek stopped being bold, stopped being fun, and we haven’t had a pirate captain since. Well the pirate is back, we finally have Star Trek TOS on the big screen, which is what my group of Trek fans were hoping for 30 years ago.
You really, really need to watch the movie before you comment. You’re not getting it right at all. Alternate timelines may be confusing, but that’s exactly what they pulled off here. Everything we saw in Trek previously, still happened, but now there’s another timeline to play with.
A decent storyline that made coherent and logical sense. There's enough ingredients from the series to distill something from it. But they could do a film (or parts of) on each one culminating with their arrival on the Enterprise. Kirk from boyhood, Spock, too. And on and on. Not some gimmicky mess like this one that just makes it up and smashes to bits what we already know.
"All I know is that I really got cranked on by the trailer that I saw back in March, I believe, when I went to see KNOWING ( and got a speeding ticket! ) This was the scene where the very young Kirk “gets a speeding ticket” and announces his name. Boy, that really seemed to offer promise. Of course, the same scene played out in the movie wasn’t nearly as exciting, because I already knew what was happening."
I saw it, and it was interesting, although it almost made a young Kirk out to be like... hmm... a young Anakin Skywalker ?
"Well I was sure going to go see it, no question, and after all this time, as I’ve already said, I think we just have to take what we get, and what we got was pretty good, even if it wasn’t exactly what we wanted."
I just think we deserved better. There's so many great things that could've been done and explored following precedent and canon, but they just chose to wreck it all. A true Trek fan wouldn't have done that.
Don't forget he got his start in ZOMBIES OF THE STRATOSPHERE. Hmmmm, maybe they could work that in ...
I’ll watch it when it comes out on DVD, but I’m afraid it’s going to be even worse than I imagined.
Because of his leadership during the Nero crisis, parallel to Riker's performance when the Borg came and kidnapped Picard. Nero's appearance created a new timeline that made events happen that otherwise would not, I think this throws people even though it shouldn't.
In any case, Nero comes out a black hole 129 years from the future with a mining ship outfitted with some Borg technology that can wipe out anything in this area in this timeline, destroys every Federation vessel thrown at it, as well as 47 Klingon ships. It was only because of Kirk that the Enterprise survived, the Federation got its ass kicked and needs leadership more than ever so hence they promote Kirk to captain straightaway. It's all laid out in the movie if anyone bothers to watch it they can't help but find all this out for themselves.
The key word there is “start”, and with newbie actors, beggars can’t often be choosers. He also spent most of his career trying to get AWAY from Trek. He wasn’t going to do the second planned series in the late ‘70s. Robert Wise recounted he had trouble even getting Nimoy when they changed the concept to a film. Wise’s kids had to BEG him to placate Nimoy to get him to participate in TMP. He really was sick of Spock. Nimoy isn’t going to speak ill of this project after they sucked him into it, obviously, especially now that he’s come to terms with the fact that Spock was the best thing to ever happen to him, and enshrined him as a permanent cultural icon, something most actors will never have happen to them.
Good thing the movie explains all this. Actually, they were, and they would have been if Nero did not come out a black hole with a ship with 129 year advanced tech with Borg tech thrown in. This caught the Federation off guard and all they could muster in the defense of Vulcan were 7 starships and even then they needed to bring in all the academy upper classmen because they were short on crews. Movie shows all this.
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