Star Trek: No Subtitle

[Nate the Great]

Maybe I went overboard with "alternate timeline=BAD", but I think what I really meant was "rewriting history=BAD." Had they just started out with a fresh reboot, not pretending to be the original universe at all, and both realities coexisting, I think I would've been okay with that, like Ultimate Marvel.

But they use time travel to undo everything I think of as Trek, with very few examples. And I still feel that the "We can do a better job of telling the life stories of Kirk and company than Gene Roddenberry did in the original show" sentiment of the creators is absolutely repugnant.

I wasn't referring to Vulcan's destruction being against canon. This is a new timeline, anything can happen. I meant that destroying Vulcan TICKS ME OFF! Just my personal opinion, but destroying Vulcan just seems drastic. And for what? Cheap drama? Is that all Vulcan has become in the eyes of the creators? Just another chess piece on the cosmic board to be kept or tossed aside on a whim?

[Wowbagger]

That's fairer. I had the same objection when the news first broke about the alternate timeline. It was, like, "Yeah, the old timeline is still there... but this new fork is going off into its own territory, and we might never see the Prime Universe again!" And that bummed me out, because so much time and treasure is invested in the Prime 'verse.

However, I do think you're suffering from a misconception. Nero's incursion into the past did not, according to producers, alter the original timeline. Instead, it created a completely new timeline which forked away from the original. Orci took the idea from "Parallels," the TNG episode where we saw hundreds of different Enterprises from hundreds of different timelines -- all of which forked off from one another because different people made different decisions at different points, but all of which co-existed with one another.

According to the producers of the new movie, that's what happened here -- the new timeline is a fork off of the old one, not a rewrite of the original universe. Both universes co-exist simultaneously. In fact, Paramount is relying on this: they're continuing to market new material written for the "Prime" universe, including the upcoming Star Trek Online, which is based in the Prime timeline's twenty-fifth century, about fifteen years after the destruction of Romulus.

HELPFUL INFOGRAPHIC:



This realization helped ease my pain a great deal. Everything we've seen is still there, and we can still revisit it whenever we want; the new movie did not "rewrite" one word of old canon. And the new movie went to such extraordinary lengths to pull that off, with the inclusion of Spock Prime and everything for the sole reason of making this movie fit into continuity without destroying it.

Not that I'm comfortable with everything -- I agree that the destruction of Vulcan was, in the final analysis, not treated as well as it could have been and probably should not have been done at all -- but I do think the filmmakers deserve a lot of credit for the insane amount of work they put into making the new movie tie into the old timeline without damaging it. And they should -- Orci is one of us. He's seen every episode, I believe, and he quotes the Tech Manuals, the series, and the novels with astonishing fluidity in online chats with the fans... especially when some of the fans start to argue with him. It's really quite impressive.

Final note: you'll notice that, if you go back and rewatch TOS, TAS, and everything Gene Roddenberry and the original creators ever did, you'll find that they didn't give us an origin story for the characters or the crew. Not once. Ever. So I don't think they're stepping on anyone's toes here by telling us that story. I certainly couldn't get up the bile to call it repugnant even if I hadn't loved the movie. I mean... the origin story was untold. It was fair game for a movie no matter how you sliced it, as long as you didn't break canon.

And the impressive thing is that, even in the alternate timeline, nothing from Kirk or Spock's backstory is changed. Kirk still grows up in Iowa, still goes to Tarsus, still cheats on the Maru test; Spock still takes his kahs-won early, still falls out with Sarek over the decision to go to Starfleet Academy, and still ends up as Captain Pike's X.O. for a little while. So, what was already there in the Gene Roddenberry backstory for these characters (which was, let's admit it, very sketchy anyways) has not been contradicted by the new film. I mean, wow.

So, I hear you to a degree, but I just don't think you're giving the filmmakers a fair shake here. It's a solid film. Better than TMP, TSFS, TVH, TFF, GEN, and FC, in my opinion. Worse than the others, but hey, fifth place out of eleven ain't half bad, is it?

[Nate the Great]

Whether or not they showed us an origin for the TOS crew onscreen or not, there are hundreds of Trek books out there that show a relatively cohesive version of events that have served as an origin for the TOS crew. I read the books, they fit together rather well.

And you STILL haven't addressed the "we can do it BETTER" mentality. Are there not enough fans behind the scenes to point out continuity or characterization errors behind the scenes yet?

Of course all the old stuff is still there; Paramount is going to sell everything with the Trek name on it for as long as they can make money off of it. It still doesn't negate the fact that they felt that they weren't up to the task of calling in a few fans to create a story that could fit in the mainstream timeline, nor were they confident enough to create a brand new universe without pulling Spock Prime in to muddle the waters in the public's eye about which universe is "real" now.

[Wowbagger]

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

Whether or not they showed us an origin for the TOS crew onscreen or not, there are hundreds of Trek books out there that show a relatively cohesive version of events that have served as an origin for the TOS crew. I read the books, they fit together rather well.

Every Star Trek movie, series, episode, and -- nowadays -- nearly every book out-and-out ignores every Star Trek book. Why? Because respecting them would be ridiculously binding and limit a huge part of the Trek universe to the tiny proportion of it that buys the books. We're not Star Wars, with its now insanely insular fanbase that's almost completely closed to normal people (oh, how the popular mighty have fallen!). I'm very happy with that.

Canon does not contain a TOS origin story. Now it does. It was rich, it was fun, it was beautiful. And scores of millions of people saw it, rather than the few dozen who read the typical Star Trek paperback book.

This how Trek has always worked. It's how Trek is supposed to work. Once you're saying that canon needs to stay away from something because, "Oh, the books already dealt with that," you are way gone from the path that Roddenberry, Moore, Behr, Berman, Braga, Justman, Solow, Hurley, Coto, Coon, the Okudas, and all the rest blazed for us over the course of four decades.

Plus, those books are not consistent. Let's just grab three, the first three that come to mind: Best Destiny, Kobayashi Maru, and Cadet Kirk. Reconciliation of those three works is almost as impossible as reconciling the movieverse and the Primeverse. They're spaghetti. The movie is a decided canonical improvement.

And I haven't even mentioned the Shatnerverse novels. Throw in Collision Course and your head will a'splode.

So, basically, you're wrong, and, even if you were right, you'd still be wrong. This choice of setting and storyline was appropriate, canonical, respectful, consistent... and, based on dramatic opportunity alone, correct.

And you STILL haven't addressed the "we can do it BETTER" mentality. Are there not enough fans behind the scenes to point out continuity or characterization errors behind the scenes yet?

Actually, I did:

Originally Posted by Wowbagger

...if you go back and rewatch TOS, TAS, and everything Gene Roddenberry and the original creators ever did, you'll find that they didn't give us an origin story for the characters or the crew. Not once. Ever.

Bottom line: there was no "we can do it BETTER" mentality, because there was nothing for them to do better than! This is like complaining that Isaac Newton was arrogant for coming up with the theory of gravity. "What gives him the right to publish these theories?" asks Nate the Great, "Does he think he can do a theory of gravity better than all the previous theories of gravity postulated by other physicists?" Since this origin story is the first origin story we've been given for the characters, and since it is consistent with the tiny flecks of background story we got for the TOS characters during the course of TOS (and, incidentally, those "tiny flecks" were themselves highly inconsistent), this complaint is, literally, nonsensical. Parsing the sentence actual results in concrete meaninglessness.

You can feel free to argue that there were characterization problems, but not until after you've seen the movie. For myself and most other fans, no characterization problems were apparent -- though I did find Chris Pine's interpretation of the Kirk character to be interesting and at times surprising, nothing appeared to me to be at all out-of-character for young J.T. Kirk.

Of course all the old stuff is still there; Paramount is going to sell everything with the Trek name on it for as long as they can make money off of it. It still doesn't negate the fact that they felt that they weren't up to the task of calling in a few fans to create a story that could fit in the mainstream timeline, nor were they confident enough to create a brand new universe without pulling Spock Prime in to muddle the waters in the public's eye about which universe is "real" now.

Clearly you have no idea who they had writing the movie. Roberto Orci -- I am not overstating this here -- could eat your knowledge of canon for breakfast. Then he'd polish it off with a spot of Tech Manual. The man is a walking encyclopedia (and apparently relied on Memory Alpha to double-check the script work throughout the process of scripting). They brought in hardcore fans throughout cast and crew, and, of course, you can't beat having a hardcore as co-writer. This is what those fans produced.

Why did they create a new universe? Because they felt it would be wrong to simply dismiss and destroy forty years of Star Trek canon. They love that canon as much as we do. Nonetheless, they did not believe it prudent to begin a prequel series that was locked on a preset course. They believed that doing so would drain dramatic tension, because, for example, if they killed off Sulu, we'd know that they'd have to bring back Sulu in the next movie, and so there would be no dramatic tension.

In their position, I am not certain of what I would do. I definitely understand and respect their position. Anyone who writes on even a reasonably regular basis must understand that. Dramatic tension -- suspense -- is one of the key tools of the craft.

The rest of it -- bringing in Spock Prime and so forth -- is not a cynical marketing move, as you seem to insist on believing. It's the greatest paean to the importance and beauty of Star Trek canon ever composed. That love of the canon, and the insistence on respecting it and linking the Primeverse to the Neroverse to preserve Trek's ancient continuity, was a trade-off. The fixation on canon was the direct cause of most of the movie's plotting and motivation problems.

And if that doesn't argue heavily in favor of an anti-canonista position, I don't know what does.

You're not going to love everything about this movie, Nate. If there is any Trek movie you love everything about, for which you would have done little or nothing different, then I must insist that you're wearing rose-colored nostalgia glasses. I think that if you look at this movie honestly, though, you'll find a series of brutally difficult creative choices, where the filmmakers couldn't get everything they wanted (both a Primeverse setting and a great TOS origin story) and settled for a happy medium in which they produced an incredibly surprising, unbelievably respectful, helluva good movie.

As to your question about which universe is "real": most members of the non-Trekkie public I've spoken to are not aware that there are two universes. They don't think about it. Those who are aware of the fact generally know the correct answer: both are equally real. We're just doing a few movies in this one while the Primeverse lays fallow for a bit. We'll see what happens after that.

Your bile against this film and its creators is so intense, Nate (and it just looks sillier and sillier now that everyone else on the face of the Earth has seen this movie and actually knows what they're talking about). What's your real deal here? What's your bone to pick with Abrams & Co.?

[Nate the Great]

I don't expect the live-action stuff to act like every novel is canon, but there are certain things that most fans can agree on as being very nice ideas. Some of these come from the animated series or whatnot. And what's more, these events carry across novels by different authors in different "novel franchises". The creators don't need to read all of these novels and comic books, just ask the fans! There are millions of Trekkies out there ready to help out the creators for free, all you need to do is ask them!

Yes, the novels contradict each other; you can't expect every author to read hundreds of novels before writing their own, but you never see anybody wiping the slate clean to be able to ignore everyone else's versions either.

And I maintain my position that the creators felt that they can create a "better" universe. Alternate timelines that only exist for an episode or two are created for fun or to tell a single plot. With this movie there was no Reset Button. The universe has been changed (and billions of Vulcans present and future NO LONGER EXIST!) and will not be changing back.

[Wowbagger]

I don't expect the live-action stuff to act like every novel is canon

If you expect the live-action stuff to act like any novel is canon, you're holding them to a higher standard than you have ever held any work of Star Trek. By this standard, you must hate on every single episode Trek produced after Spock Must Die! for disrespecting the non-canon. It's non-canon. It is not part of the universe. Period. Full stop.

but there are certain things that most fans can agree on as being very nice ideas.

...such as?

I'll give you "Yesteryear," though even that is controversial.

The recent "novel franchises" are not only the worst thing to happen in the history of Trek novel writing, on account of being not merely inexcusable dreck, but inextricably interconnected inexcusable dreck -- they're also contradictory of all the "good stuff" from previous non-canon romps. And said franchises tend to contradict each other anyway. And the fans don't agree about any of it being good, each supporting his own favored camp or none at all. (Extra credit challenge: find a New Frontier fan. Find a Shatnerverse fan. Provoke a fight between them. Enjoy. For extra extra fun, involve someone who thought that any Next Gen book released since Nemesis came out was a good idea. Then get popcorn.)

Bottom line is, you're not angry at the filmmakers for disrespecting canon. You're not even angry at them for ignoring the big pile of inconsistent sludge that is the non-canon. You're angry at them for failing to have a vision of the universe that is perfectly consistent with your own, personal, extra-canonical, one-man interpretation of the Star Trek universe. In short: you're a fanboy. And, like all fanboys, you are incapable of absorbing change, for no other reason than that it is change. Had you been born in 1963 instead of 1993, you would have hated Next Gen for its inexcusable depredations against your beloved TOS vision.

IMHO, that is. It certainly seems that way to me (strongly), but, as in all things, I could be wrong.

And I maintain my position that the creators felt that they can create a "better" universe.

That's my Nate. Never let evidence stand in the way of a good conviction.

The creators felt that they didn't have the necessary room to dramatically maneuver in the Prime timeline. They made a difficult decision to split off a new history, but were not willing to destroy the very great good that was the Prime timeline -- and insisted on linking the two together at the very root of the new timeline. They pray every day that their new timeline will measure up to the old one. With Star Trek '09, they're off to a very good start.

[Nate the Great]

Shatnerverse is 100% non-canon. I'll give you that. A lot of Peter David, as great as he is, can't fit into canon.

Spock Must Die is one of the earliest books, back when TOS was the only Trek out there. I don't count any of the pre Pocket Books stuff for the simple reason that Next Gen either didn't exist yet or was brand new. In those days people thought they had the entire universe to play around with without another TV series to muck things up. Look at the intricate designs in Mr. Scott's Guide To The Enterprise, a wonderful book that is unfortunately contradictory to a lot of stuff that came after.

What's wrong with the novels being interconnected? Are the DS9 and Voyager relaunch novel series drek merely because they're interconnected?

I said it before, I'll say it again. Had they ignored the time-travel and just done a simple REBOOT, I'd have no problem. Why? Because they'd be creating the equivalent of Ultimate Marvel. Ultimate Marvel does not pretend to be the "real" universe, just another option. And you can prattle all you like about Paramount still marketing the pre-11 timeline, as far as the casual viewer is concerned THIS is now the Star Trek universe.

From Day One Paramount made clear their desire to ingrain Trek 11 as THE Star Trek universe in the public eye in an attempt to get more viewers. I mean, heaven forbid they just pull a Voyage Home and write a story that lets up on the scifi in an attempt to tell a story that can be accessible to the filmgoing public, right? Heaven forbid they tell a story based on the original Kirk and Spock that relies on drama and can still fit into (if you insist, the film-based) canon?

[Wowbagger]

Nate, this one's for you. I was going to just repost it here, but it is way, way too long for me to post it for a second time, especially because 5MV's word limits are much tighter than the Beeb's.

Eleven is Prime: A (Ludicrously Long) Reconciliation

Enjoy. Or don't. Whatever.

[Nate the Great]

The Vulcan we see in TOS is a resettled, second Vulcan? Covered with "ruins" that are actually recreations of structures used by the ancient Vulcans? I find that insulting. Vulcans are suppose to be logical, and any justification for rebuilding ruins eventually boils down to "sentiment." And that's not what Vulcans have EVER been about. I could buy Romulans doing that sort of thing, but not Vulcans.

This guy is introducing wonky stardate math to correct errors in the characters ages? And claiming that Kirk wasn't really made Captain in XI? He's trying so hard, but the tapestry of Trek canon can't stretch enough to cover the holes made by XI without ripping a seam elsewhere.

The refit proved unstable, so the ships had to be "defitted?" I call B.S. It would be a zillion times easier to just junk the ship and start over with a new Enterprise. Saying that they had to rebuild key structural systems for a ship of a smaller size is also absurd. Since when does "our new tech is unstable, so we have to rebuild the ship" equate to "we also have to make the ship smaller while we're at it"? That would involve replacement of just about every piece of the ship's skeleton. Nonsense!

This guy is trying, that's obvious. But the amount of Fanwank would choke a cat, and I'm dead serious.

[Sa'ar Chasm]

This guy is trying, that's obvious. But the amount of Fanwank would choke a cat, and I'm dead serious.

"We all know that Star Trek 2009 took place in an alternate reality. BUT DID IT?!

Yes. Yes, it did...
...As I said, this “interpretation” is just for fun,"

The cat's too busy playing with a ball of string (or torturing some small mammal) to care. Less serious, more revelling in insanity.

[Wowbagger]

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

The Vulcan we see in TOS is a resettled, second Vulcan? Covered with "ruins" that are actually recreations of structures used by the ancient Vulcans? I find that insulting. Vulcans are suppose to be logical, and any justification for rebuilding ruins eventually boils down to "sentiment."

Explain to me why Vulcans have art at all, then. Why does Spock love the lyre? Why is the Hall of Ancient Thought so glorious? Why the ornate robes of the Vulcan clerics? Heck, why Vulcan clerics? Why is the mountain where Kohlinar studied (freakin' Kohlinar!) literally covered in astonishingly ornate artwork?

Is all that "sentiment"? Either way, your conception of Vulcans does not seem to conform to canon. Not even your personal Nate-canon. It simply has nothing to do with Star Trek.

The refit proved unstable, so the ships had to be "defitted?" I call B.S. It would be a zillion times easier to just junk the ship and start over with a new Enterprise. Saying that they had to rebuild key structural systems for a ship of a smaller size is also absurd. Since when does "our new tech is unstable, so we have to rebuild the ship" equate to "we also have to make the ship smaller while we're at it"? That would involve replacement of just about every piece of the ship's skeleton. Nonsense!

Everything you said may well be true. But all that would also be true of (drumroll)... a refit! So I presume you're also declaring TMP and all subsequent movies featuring the original 1701 non-canon. I mean, it's undeniable that the TMP refit saw the "replacement of just about every piece of the ship's skeleton" and the "rebuild[ing of] key structural systems for a ship of a [larger] size." Just like the defit.

This guy is introducing wonky stardate math to correct errors in the characters ages? And claiming that Kirk wasn't really made Captain in XI? He's trying so hard, but the tapestry of Trek canon can't stretch enough to cover the holes made by XI without ripping a seam elsewhere.

The stardate math is definitely sketchy, but I'm not one to care about character ages very much (no more than I care about, say, characters' middle initials). But the author's work on the Kirk captaincy, claiming the last scene of the movie takes place in 2263 instead of 2258, checks out very nicely, especially in light of the travel-time-to-Vulcan sequence. If you'd watched the movie, you might recognize that, but -- since you haven't seen how the narrative flow actually works on-screen -- you can't.

Plus, I thought you liked fanwank. Last I checked, that was the basic theme of the movie you proposed.

The cat's too busy playing with a ball of string (or torturing some small mammal) to care.

Oh, yes. And that small mammal's name is Nate the Great. :P

[Nate the Great]

1. Why do Vulcans have art?

Because a person can't meditate or study lab equipment all day. Because creating art exercises the mind. Because becoming fully logical takes time, and this art could be really old. Tradition.

2. Why does Spock love the lyre?

"Love" may be a strong word. Because creating music exercises the mind. Because everybody needs to listen to music every once in awhile.

3. Why is the HOAT so glorious? Why the ornate robes? Etc.

Because ancient Vulcans were more like Romulans and actually had emotions. You can't attribute logic to anything more than (say) a thousand years old. It takes time to fully purge emotion.

Replacing key structural members to increase size and replacing key structural members to decrease size are different propositions. And at least to increase a ship's size you can simply technobabble-bolt on more bits of beam.

Every piece of a starship's infrastructure is based around supporting a crew of X people traveling at Warp Y assuming the warp core has power capacity of Z. This guy is suggesting that Z proved unstable, so that had to be shrunk, requiring X and Y to be shrunk as well. This is drastically altering the fundamental formulas that dictate the design strategy of a ship.

Before any structure can be built we must know what forces will be applied to it. We then magnify (for safety) and combine (for simplicity of design) the forces to find out what each piece of the puzzle could be subjected to. Lowering the power output of the engines and the maximum speed of the ship reduces the magnitude of the forces acting upon each structural member. Hence a slower ship with a weaker engine could handle a larger infrastructure size. If the new "defit" engine is THAT much weaker that the ship STILL has to be shrunk, shrinking the ship enough to move is just creating an engineering disaster.