Where did Spock go?

CRA, I do hope you were having a laugh when you posted those TOS "fixes" and then tried to gloss over the fact that the mistakes were just as bad in every possible, measurable way as the ones in STXI.

 

Call it an eccentricity.

There are things I like post TOS. There are some moments in the '80s films I like. There's some TNG and DS9 I like. But as a whole I've been very disappointed.

 

So is Hitler (thread is long enough for a Godwin)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9i9N-Ez5Y8&feature=related

 

That is just too fucking funny!

 

The guys who own the franchise, you know like it's been done for the last almost 50 f@$king years.

And how would you suggest Spock change this and yes I want something more than go back in time because Spock Prime doesn't have anything in the 23rd century to take out the Narada with short of a fleet and I think getting that many ships to do the time warp around the sun thing and arrive at the same time period would be really hard and may be imposssible seeing as how precise the calculations would have to be.

Well I can see some problems with that

1) Starfleet would have to help to pull this off and they don't have the same relationship with Spock Prime that alt. Picard had with alt. Guinan did in Yesterday's Enterprise so I doubt they would just take his word for it. They may also not like the fact that Spock Prime would be (from their point of view) screwing with the lives of billions even trillions just because he doesn't like how their existence turned out. Also again from the point of view of the people this would be just like whenever an entire civilization was wiped out by some scary big bad in TOS, you'll notice that they never went back to save the Constellation, Intrepid, Excalibur, or Defiant, they never used time travel to save the worlds destroyed by the Doomsday Machine or Nomad.

2) If they do it the Narad showed up on the Federation/Klingon border how the hell do you think the Klingons are going to respond when they see an advanced Federation ship appear out of nowhere and use highly advanced and destructive weapons to destroy another highly advanced ship? To answer that question I suggest you watch Star Trek III.

Nice to see that at least one Downfall parody survived Youtube's forced purge.

 

My beef ISN'T that the film contradicts established TOS continuity. Hell, it's a freaking reboot--it isn't beholden to established continuity.

My major beef is I think it's a bad and stupid movie. My second beef is that it's argued to be the original continuity altered (which it plainly isn't) and the insistence that the older nuSpock is from the original timeline/universe whatever. He plainly isn't.

 

Where did Spock go? To the bank, of course. It was highly logical.

 

Spock said, "You want me to what? Go where? Hmm... For the first time in my life I'm saying to hell with this and going out for a beer. You may later inform me how this highly illogical and extremely irrational exercise turns out... Jim Kirk must be rolling in his grave."

 

Hmmm... I'll break this down into different parts.

I. Support that it's the TOS universe altered:

Nero didn't know when he was at the beginning of the movie and it's possible Spock didn't know when he was either, until he mind-melded with nKirk. In the theater I thought it was odd that Spock forgot when Kirk became Captain but if he doesn't know when he is, then it's understandable. nKirk was chronologically 25 and I can say that physically there isn't much of a difference between 25 and 30. Unless you don't take care of yourself, and you're a hard drinker or smoker, which adds 10 years to your appearance automatically, but nKirk clearly stayed in shape.

nChekov isn't the same as person as the original Chekov. Different sperm, different egg. His parents decided to have a child four years sooner for whatever reason.

Nero's ship destroying the Kelvin probably halted R&D on all prospective Starfleet ships. Starfleet would've wanted a fleet of ships that could withstand an attack from that type of ship. Clearly Starfleet did extensive research on the incident, nPike at the very least focused his doctoral studies on the Kelvin's destruction.

One or both of Chekov's parents could have even been in Starfleet and this halting affected their lives to the point where Pavel was born sooner.

Kirk starting the Academy at 22, was starting older than the traditional age which I assume is 18. If Uhura and Sulu were 19 in 2255, that would put their births at 2236, making them early-30s in TOS, which closely if not exactly matches Nichelle Nichols' and George Takei's ages at the time TOS was produced.

II. Support/possibilities that it's not:

nPike clearly looks older than Pike in "The Cage".

I'm reserving judgment that on whether or not Nero traveled into the past of an alternate universe instead of the past of the same universe until they unveil Khan, if they do. Either they'll ignore when Khan was from and not mention it, or they'll move up the time he was from. If it's the former, then it could still be the same universe but altered from 2233 on. If it's the latter, then it's an alternate universe all around.

III. Miscellaneous:

Dax said McCoy was a student at Ole Miss. He could still have been a student at Ole Miss when he became a doctor. Then, in the new movie at least, went to the Academy afterward.

There are a few more things, relating to TOS and not ST XI, but I'll save them for the next post. This one is long enough.

 

You're associating development with inconsistency. It's not inconsistency if the development is happening along a curve. There's a difference between randomness and progression.

Spock smiles in "The Cage" but the reason for that is solely behind the scenes. Spock was not established as the analytical emotionless character. Number One was supposed to be the analytical one. Spock gained the analytic and emotionless demeanor only beginning with "Where No Man Has Gone Before". So that was inconsistency because the character's parameters had not yet been established. It was simply a reality of television production.

Now, setting aside "The Cage", if we look at Spock's development over the course of three seasons, he mellows a bit. Kirk used to rib him in the first season for becoming more human all the time. Spock did tell Rand a joke in poor taste but Spock did have a sense of humor throughout TOS, a dry sense of humor and Spock would deny it, but it was there.

After the five-year mission, Spock probably felt that he had spent too much time around humans and that it had affected him, and it would make sense for that to prompt him to wish to attain Kholinar to purge all emotion. To "purge" all emotion instead of just submerging it would mean control tighter than ever before. When he doesn't attain Kholinar, returns to the Enterprise, and makes contact with V'Ger he has the equivalent of an emotional release. The reason why he couldn't attain Kholinar is because he could never purge the emotional pressures he wanted to submerge.

By TWOK, he's clearly accepted his two halves. That's not inconsistency. That's character development, getting older, maturing, and reconciling the different parts of who you are.

This all gets reset by TSFS so it takes until TUC to get back to where he was at TWOK and then move on from there.

But Spock's development after "The Cage", when the writers and Leonard Nimoy figured out who the character was, was not inconsistent at all. It's called growth. It happens to all of us. It happens to you, it happens to me, and it even happens to Spock, fictional or not.

 

^^

Thank you.

 

It wasn't Spock that got developed it was Nimoy, your honor.

 

I believe it was indeed TOS Spock, but he (and Nero) emerged into the past of an alternate universe. This is because of the black hole. It wasn't simple time travel, it was inter-universal travel as well. It would explain how the original timeline can continue to exist even now.

 

I would like to officially nominate this thread for the title of the Nerdiest Thread on TrekBBS, a new award given for the thread that best justifies the stereotypes about Trek fans.

Of course, it will face strong competition from the thread I previously thought would be the clean winner, "When the person is beamed up it's not the same person".

 

^^ Actually I remember James Blish addressing that very issue way back in 1970 with his novel Spock Must Die!

 

I don't think it is that simple... as far as Science Fiction goes, TOS set the standard for consistency that most everything else since has been held up against. It raised the bar of what fans of SciFi were willing to accept.

That is the history, that is why (no matter what) Star Trek is above and beyond anything else in our culture.

But we can look at it more closely...

TOS was around for 5 years, had numerous writers and made 4171 minutes of episodes in that time. STXI was produced in 4 years by two writers and ended up with a 127 minute movie. Given that, I'm more than willing to cut TOS a lot of slack compared to STXI.

But above and beyond the numbers, the people who made STXI didn't consider consistency to be that important.

Were they wrong for not considering consistency important?

In 2010... apparently not.

But in 2054, who knows. I, personally, think they went for the short term box office gain over trying to make something with the staying power of TOS. I enjoyed it as a summer block buster, but it is already a last year movie for me (which is funny when you consider the fact that people who hated the movie care more about it than many people who liked it). And I sure wouldn't spend 40+ years focused on STXI the way that I have TOS.

And if anything, the biggest problem with the movie is that those who enjoyed it are generally apathetic to it. If they make another one, I really don't care. But that was the same problem by the end of the TNG movies too... I didn't really care if they made another one.

But by most standards STXI was successful. It sold almost as many tickets as TMP, it made more money than any Trek movie before it, and it won lots of awards. At the same time I have to wonder if it left people in the same place that Superman Returns did (a nice, enjoyable movie, both made about the same amount of money, but were generally forgotten a year later).

From what I've seen, a lot of people went to the movie (many more than once) and really enjoyed the experience... but we didn't really gain any new fans.

It would have been nice if STXI had as much depth of story as Avatar or Moon, but from what I understand the writers of STXI aren't known for that type of thing. But 10-25 years from now I doubt people will look on STXI as one of the important SciFi movies of 2009... it'll most likely be lumped in with Transformers 2.

But these were choices that the makers of STXI made, not mistakes. If STXI isn't as consistent as TOS, it wasn't a mistake... and needs no one to apologize for it.





Oh... and for the record, TOS Spock died in TWoK. So the fact that the doppelganger that assumed his identity doesn't have a clear memory of events which he didn't actually live through shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.

 

^ It's Spock's body regenerated and it's Spock's memories he has inside him. Like they say, "A difference that makes no difference is no difference."

Save for Pike*, I think all the differences between TOS and ST XI are explainable, even the Romulans. I meant to mention this earlier, but there were so many other things I was typing in my first post that I just forgot. If Rabou (sp?) had never seen a Romulan before, he might be thinking they look like Vulcans, but he's not going to exclaim "You look just like the Vulcans!" in that situation. His first thought would be to attempt reasoning with Nero and then he can bring up the Romulans' resemblance to Vulcans later... except he gets killed. Afterward, there are 25 years between destruction of the Enterprise and the launching of the Kelvin where they can look at images transmitted and recorded from the event, so everyone knows what the Romulans look like.

* If this is an alternate reality all the way around that Old Spock and Nero traveled into, then Pike can be born earlier in addition to the Eugenics Wars happening later if it all.

R&D halting and being rethought, in light of Nero, can be the direct cause for the Enterprise's alternate appearance.

At the same time, I know that ST XI was a fig-leaf "have our cake and eat it too" reboot, so I'm willing to entertain Old Spock isn't even Spock from TOS, though I personally believe he is. I mean, you can rationalize the inconsistencies or you can call it like you see it. We could match each other into a stalemate.

Without being able to disprove an opposite opinion definitively it's like religion, literally, with its canon. You can interpret and analyze all you want, but there's nothing to prove concretely. My answer to anyone whenever they talk to me about religion is "I won't know until I'm dead and I'm not in a hurry to die."

Old Spock is Old Spock, however it means.

 

So TOS is the alternate universe and Star Trek XI is the assinine universe. Gotcha!

 

No. I happen to like ST XI. Why would I try to explain how its differences make sense if I didn't?

But that doesn't mean I'm going to criticize someone simply for having a different opinion from mine. It also doesn't mean I'm not even going to try to at least meet them half-way. IDIC.