Star Trek: No Subtitle

[Wowbagger]

Originally Posted by NAHTMMM

Who caused that, and why? And who else might they try it on . . . ?

Personally, I think you're exactly right.

I think that the best way to explain Spock's reticence regarding the cuprit, whether natural or artificial (plus his obvious failure to explain radical violations of every known law of physics in the destruction of Romulus) is to suppose that Spock knew who it was, and that he left it out because explaining would have had dramatic, immediate, local effects on the "new" universe.

Specifically, I think Spock caused the supernova that destroyed Romulus. I think this stands to reason: he obviously wouldn't explain it to Young Kirk, because Young Kirk would freak the heck out on Spock Prime and that'd be the end of that. It explains Nero's really rather bizarre obsession with killing Spock, the Vulcans, and the UFP. It explains why Old Spock makes no apparent attempt to remedy the situation -- having just killed an entire populated star system, he's been humbled, and will not play God with time or space again.

This only leaves the question of why Spock would destroy a star. I sat with this question for a while, and it seemed so out-of-character for him that I put this theory aside for several months.

Then, one day, it hit me. Who was the last character in Star Trek who went around deliberately blowing up stars? Why did that character do that? What is returning to Federation space in 2410? What interest does Spock have in that phenomenon?

Answer these questions and I think you have a compelling reason for Spock to accidentally destroy Romulus in the course of an insanely hubrisitic rescue attempt.

I could, of course, be wrong. It's just an interpretation. Well-evidenced, I think, but an interpretation.

As for you, Nate...

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.

As far at the casual viewer is concerned there is only one Star Trek universe. Only nerds realize the extent and nature of the continuity fork.

From Day One Paramount made clear their desire to ingrain Trek 11 as THE Star Trek universe in the public eye...

Give me one quote from anyone involved in production to illustrate that. In fact, if you are so insistent that this was made "clear" from "day one," give me three. Shouldn't be that hard, if your convictions are rooted in anything other than fantasy.

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?

Ch'yeah, because sending a Klingon warship around the sun to travel back in time using a warp drive so that its dilithium crystals burn out and have to be reenergized using stolen protons while Kirk and Spock try to steal two whales to beam into a newly-invented transparent aluminum tank so they can save the Earth from a climate-ending whale probe that's travelled from beyond the galaxy to talk to whales was really a big letup on the science fiction.

Did I mention they time-travelled back at the end of the movie?

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?

This one does fit into film-based canon. As Roberto Orci observed, it is takes place chronologically in 2233 - 2258, but, causally speaking, it takes place after Star Trek Nemesis. You're just bugged that they found away around certain restrictions that another kind of story would have had. Don't pretend this movie threw away canon when it didn't.

Meanwhile, the whole argument of the creators in doing this was that they could not make a good movie, based on drama, that fit into the known lives of Kirk Prime and Spock Prime, precisely because the ending of those movies would be prefigured, automatically destroying any sense of dramatic tension.

It seems, incidentally, that they were right. Star Trek 2009 sold more tickets and pleased more crowds than any other Trek film in history, even after adjusting for inflation and limiting the figures to domestic audiences.

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.

Exactly. You don't count it. But thousands of fans do. There's a faction of fans outraged that there was no reference in the movie to The Return. And, yes, The Return and Spock Must Die and Before Dishonor and Q&A and Mission:Gamma and House of Cards all have equal claims to canonicity -- which is to say, exactly zero. Anything you choose to accept or not to accept is your own personal deal, but it has nothing to do with canon. You're creating your own Nate-canon, which is unique to you and distinct from every other fan's definition of canon in the whole wide world, and demanding that all subsequent Trek movies either adhere to Nate-canon or throw all canon (all real canon) in the trash and start over in some Ultimate Trek reboot. That's insane. Not to mention incredibly egotistical.

(Incidentally, I personally accept Spock's World and much of Prime Directive, as well as To Reign In Hell, Dark Mirror, The Good That Men Do, large portions of Unity, and, just for funsies, The Entropy Effect. But this has absolutely no relation to what actually exists in canon -- it's just a way for my personal imagination to have fun fleshing out the Star Trek universe that exists in my head and no one else's.)

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.

Same with poor old Star Trek: Star Charts. Every non-canon reference book eventually gets overruled in some respect. Correction: every non-canon work eventually gets overrruled. This obsessive defense of the non-canon is (fortunately) a young plague that didn't pop up until Enterprise got canceled and the authors realized they had the entire Prime Universe to themselves.

For the record, the interconnectedness of the new novels is bad because (as is traditional in Trek novels) about half of them are horrible. Awful beyond words. I can't even look at a copy of Greater Than The Sum, much less the bloated These Gray Spirit or the poorly-constructed Death in Winter. Now that these stories are all tied into each other, the absolute suckitude of one affects the suckitude of everything else in the line. Used to be you could read a bomb like the Double Helix sextet and, once finished, immediately forget all of it, forever, and never be haunted by any of its absurd storytelling contortions. Now we are stalked by the insanity of Before Dishonor and The Farther Shore not for a day but forever. Every other novel has to deal with the suck; every other novel sucks more.

Awesomeness, sadly, fails to leak over in quite the same way. Ergo, the books which were once tolerable now suck almost universally. It's those magic standalones, like Burning Dreams, which can still be good if they try.

But this is largely irrelevant to our discussion of Trek XI.

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.

Given that a reboot would have (1) terminated the use of the Primeverse much more surely than Trek XI did, (2) rejected outright everything about the original verse, (3) ignored just as (in fact, much more) completely everything else you love in Star Trek's non-canon, (4) been presented far more strongly as the so-called "real" universe to the exclusion of the Primeverse, and (5) blown up Vulcan anyways, your claim here makes no sense. I think you would have been just as pissed off.

Why? Because I think you're a fanboy. You cannot tolerate change. By the standards you have laid out here (great respect for non-canon material, insistence on non-contradiction of fanon, insistence on reboot over a sequel in continuity, championing own personal view of canon over official canon, rejection of anything surprising or original or new in the franchise), it would be utterly inconsistent of you to have enjoyed TNG or any of the spinoff series. You would be, if just a few years older, one of those irritating forum lurkers who to this day deny the canonicty or validity of any Star Trek made after 1987 (if not earlier).

You're just throwing this "Ultimate Marvel" stuff in here as tinfoil -- an excuse to hate the movie because "you could have done better" with so easy a stroke.

It's silly. At this point, though, I'm pretty much ready to let this go as "Oh, Nate's just being Nate: obnoxious, irritating, petulant, irrational, fanboyish," and call it a day. I suppose the only reason I've stuck with it so far is that, while I don't mind people not liking the movie, I do mind people accusing its creators of nastiness and/or ignorance and/or a failure to love/appreciate Star Trek, because that's just not fair to them.