Countdown to Darkness - Review and Discussion

It's incompatible. It doesn't make the comic a bad story in its own right but it should've been an original story.

 

How exactly is it incompatible?

The main possible differences I can see relate to the apparent age of the Beta III civilization. In the comic, the civilization is in a single city less than a hundred years old, product of a single Earth colony mission using some advanced technology to get started; in the TV show, the civilization is presented as upwards of six thousand years old and apparently indigenous.

 

I think the two versions of the story can be compatible. The 6000 years are just an information that was given by the computer and the people on the planet had to believe.

The main difference in the comic is that the crew of the enterprise met a person who has never been under Landrus influence and was able to tell the true story.

It's absolutly possible that in the Prime Universe the team that stayed on the planet after Landrus destruction found out the truth too.



P.S.: Please excuse my bad English. English is not my native language.

 

But shouldn't they have encountered the saucer hull of the archor in the episode as well?

 

^The USS Archon's saucer must have been in the next room.

I'm used to Trek (especially Trek lit) subtly and sometimes not-so-subtly rewriting things. That the Next Gen crew somehow missed that Soong wasn't really dead in "Brothers" and had an underground lab with an advanced android body he was just waiting to transfer his conciousness into? Yeah, LOL, okay. *wink*

Then there's the whole concept of how literally we should take events from a TV show or movie. For example The Captain's Daughter implies that Evil!Kirk raped Janice in "The Enemy Within", although of course his attack was not shown going that far in the epsiode itself. But could it have happened given the situation? Unfortunately, yes. Would a real-life Gorn look like the guy in the rubber suit from "Arena" or even the dodgy CG from "In a Mirror, Darkly"? Of course not.

Open to a lot of interpretation, I say.

 

Think you pretty much summed up why they're incompatible.

 

Except, as MFB said, the Prime version's date isn't exactly from a reliable source...

 

And in the original episode, Landru (the original) is native to Beta III. He's not a Starfleet officer named 'Cornelius Landru' as in the comic.

Then again, I agree that the only things we ever know about Beta III's past in the original episode came from the people talking about it. So I suppose it could have gone down as the comic showed. Besides, the people on Beta III look so completely human, as does their city...

 

^That's right. As I said, it's incompatible with what the characters in the episode believed to be true, but beliefs can be wrong -- especially beliefs about history. Just because a character in a story says something is true, that doesn't absolutely prove it's true. Fictional characters can be mistaken in their beliefs and conclusions, they can be misinformed, they can be liars, or they can be deluded.

Of course, it's easier to reconcile the comic with the episode than with the sequel to it in SCE's "Foundations" storyline, which delves into Beta III society more deeply.

 

Just three points:

1. There seems to no disbelief by Reger and the other gentlemen with him when Kirk says they come from the valley. So this would be indicative of more than one settlement on Beta III.

2. Never once does Spock make a connection between the technology and Starfleet technology like in the comic.

3.

 

I'm one of those who want to go strictly off the evidence from the new films and comics, and have thus concluded that the Abrahmsverse was always a parallel universe, not only after 2233 was the filmmakers intent. This lends even more evidence to that theory.

 

I'm afraid it very much doesn't. No matter how far you go back, there is no quirk of the multiverse that would explain how an indigenous civilization 6000 years old would be replaced or recreated by such a close facsimilie caused by a Starfleet ship crashing there 100 years ago.

 

^Exactly. As I said, just because something was claimed and believed by all the characters in an episode, that doesn't guarantee that it's actually true. What the comic is evidently claiming is that what we thought was the case in "The Return of the Archons" was actually a lie, and that Kirk Prime just never uncovered the truth.

And let's face it, the comic's interpretation does explain why this supposedly alien civilization has 12-hour clocks with Arabic numerals and has fashions and architecture that exactly match historical American designs.

 

Haven't others said there's more to the differences than just Kirk Prime not digging deep enough? I don't know because I've not read it either, but I thought someone had breifly talked about other big differences that can't line up.

 

But they never mention exactly what is IN the valley. It doesn't have to be another city or settlement. There could be other reasons why people would be out there. Especially if Landru had so indoctrinated the population that they didn't think to question anything at all (even those who weren't of the Body).

 

I posted this over in the XI+ thread, but I figured it would be of interest here too:

Possible spoiler from the cover of Star Trek Ongoing #21, set AFTER Star Trek Into Darkness.

Spoiler: cover pic

I know you can't take a comic book cover as definitive proof of anything, but it looks like everything is back where it was at the end of the first movie. All the crew are there and the Enterprise looks fine.

 

^Spock's uiform on backwards / picture image reversed

 

Spoiler: Into Darkness

Spock has been killed and replaced by Mirror Spock!

 

LOL, they were lied to in the Original Series.

Hey, they could introduce a new Khan, the real one. The Khan in the Original Series was just an impostor.