Time Frame From Star Trek 2 - 4

[22 Stars]

The cohesive feel of II-IV is another reason I feel V really blew it. People here already know I have no qualms about putting V in its place, but really, after making 3 very good films, on multiple levels, V was such a let-down.

They had a great thing going, with thoughtful, well told stories, produced with care and expertise and due to contractual obligations handed the franchise at its peak, to Mr. Shatner who proved he was not up to the challenge.

[Timo]

I guess one of the aims there was to exploit the trilogy: "Kirk is young again - now let's show him putting that to use! Let's show he is back (to what he used to be in TOS)!"

Too bad that the movie started out trying to fight what had just happened. The heroes got a new ship, and suddenly they didn't have it any more; they had celebrity status, and suddenly they didn't have it any more. All this would seem to call for some time separation between 4 and 5, really.

Timo Saloniemi

[Ian Keldon]

Christopher wrote:

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True, but Dallas was a pioneer in making soaps respectable in prime-time, and "Who Shot J.R.?" was the granddaddy of season-ending cliffhangers (though I've seen it argued that it was "The Best of Both Worlds" that started them as a yearly tradition in TV). So it was influential on non-soap prime-time programming.

Dallas also has the "distinction" of having introduced the concept of the "reset button" in modern entertainment (the infamous "Bobby in the shower" scene).

[ssosmcin]

Christopher wrote:

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And before the '70s, reruns weren't even that common. (Star Trek changed the game by proving that people were interested in watching syndicated reruns, which ultimately may have been a bad thing because it led to a reduction in the number of new episodes per season.)

Absolutely Star Trek was a part of that, but really, nearly EVERY halfway successful show in the 60's was rerun endlessly in the syndication market. I think you and I are close in age, so our generation was raised on the 60's rerun. I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, Gidget, Please Don't Eat the Daisies, My Favorite Martian, Lost In Space, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Nanny and the Professor, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Gilligan's Island, and many many more shows were huge hits in the later daytime hours. Trek was obviously at the top, but so were The Honeymooners and I Love Lucy. Star Trek proved that a show could be hugely more successful in reruns, but all these other series were part of the proof that reruns were a viable means of gaining viewers.

Christopher wrote:

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It's spelled Kellam de Forest, so it's not quite the same as DeForest Kelley (whose full name was actually Jackson DeForest Kelley).

True, but it's still an amazing coincidence that someone using the rather off beat name of DeForest Kelley would be on a show utilizing the services of the even more off-beat Kellam de Forest. The similarity never ceased to give me a chuckle. Imagine the introduction at a party: "DeForest Kelley, I'd like you to meet, Kellam de Forest. Kellam, DeForest. Deforest, Kellam."

Christopher wrote:

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True, but Dallas was a pioneer in making soaps respectable in prime-time, and "Who Shot J.R.?" was the granddaddy of season-ending cliffhangers (though I've seen it argued that it was "The Best of Both Worlds" that started them as a yearly tradition in TV). So it was influential on non-soap prime-time programming.

I would say BOBW popularized the tradition. There were lots of cliffhanger endings after "Who Shot JR?" made them a success, but mostly among the primetime soaps and a couple of crime dramas (Miami Vice did it at least once). After BOBW, everyone got into it, and now we have sitcoms wearing the premise thin. Now producers use them as bargaining chips to try to keep failing shows on the air, never realizing that the networks don't give a crap if their money losing cancellations remain unresolved (see the recent V remake).

Funny how this also connects to the length of TV seasons. The JR shooting cliffhanger was only created because CBS wanted two more episodes that season. The show was doing really well and wanted to extend the year (and therefore their profits). The producers had no idea what to do, because they already decided how to end the season. In a burst of inspiration, one of the producers said "JR needs to get his. Let's just shoot the bastard."

Emperor Norton wrote:

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The time was very tight between 2,3, and 4, which is why it's considered a trilogy.

A trilogy has little to do with how soon a story takes place after the prior installment. It's more in how the stories connect. Star Wars The Phantom Menace takes place something like 10 years before Attack of the Clones. The story space between The Godfathers I & II is the same as the films release dates, yet it is still considered a trilogy. Star Trek's 2, 3, & 4 are a trilogy because they have a connected narrative throughout all three films, resolved in The Voyage Home.

[Christopher]

ssosmcin wrote:

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True, but it's still an amazing coincidence that someone using the rather off beat name of DeForest Kelley would be on a show utilizing the services of the even more off-beat Kellam de Forest. The similarity never ceased to give me a chuckle. Imagine the introduction at a party: "DeForest Kelley, I'd like you to meet, Kellam de Forest. Kellam, DeForest. Deforest, Kellam."

Well, sure, it's more striking than, say, TNG having a writer named Ronald D. Moore and a visual effects coordinator named Ronald B. Moore. But coincidences happen. Maybe "DeForest" (in various spellings) was a more common name a few generations ago.

After BOBW, everyone got into it, and now we have sitcoms wearing the premise thin. Now producers use them as bargaining chips to try to keep failing shows on the air, never realizing that the networks don't give a crap if their money losing cancellations remain unresolved (see the recent V remake).

I actually felt the V-remake series finale worked pretty well as an ending to the story -- it's just an ending where the aliens decisively won. Which I can't really see as a downer in that case, because the show was just so damn awful and the heroes so unsympathetic and inept that by the end I was rooting more for the villains. Here's what I said about it on another board:

Then again, if the show doesn't come back, then the world was conquered, Anna won, the end. And all because Project Ar(i)es, despite having vast worldwide resources and intelligence with which to combat the Visitors, just sat passively by and entrusted the future of the human race to five morons in a basement. Kinda serves them right. Anna was far smarter, more proactive, more subtle, more careful, and more effective from start to finish, aside from getting temporarily sidetracked by trying to destroy the human soul. But she overcame that and rallied for the win, demonstrating great cleverness and poise under fire and great willingness to risk herself to achieve her goals -- and ultimately she succeeded because of the love and loyalty she inspired in her followers. In short, Anna showed more admirable qualities here than anyone else in the whole damn episode. I'd say she earned her victory fair and square.

Funny how this also connects to the length of TV seasons. The JR shooting cliffhanger was only created because CBS wanted two more episodes that season. The show was doing really well and wanted to extend the year (and therefore their profits). The producers had no idea what to do, because they already decided how to end the season. In a burst of inspiration, one of the producers said "JR needs to get his. Let's just shoot the bastard."

I didn't know that. I've heard other stories where major events like that came about for similar reasons, though. (Can't think of any at the moment, except for Q being added to ST:TNG when the pilot got extended from 90 minutes to 2 hours and they needed a subplot to fill out the time.)

A trilogy has little to do with how soon a story takes place after the prior installment. It's more in how the stories connect. Star Wars The Phantom Menace takes place something like 10 years before Attack of the Clones. The story space between The Godfathers I & II is the same as the films release dates, yet it is still considered a trilogy. Star Trek's 2, 3, & 4 are a trilogy because they have a connected narrative throughout all three films, resolved in The Voyage Home.

Quite right. The time intervals between the original three Star Wars films, and between AotC and RotS, are all about three years, corresponding fairly closely to real time. In literature, the original Earthsea trilogy has a gap of a few years between the first and second books and a couple of decades between the second and third, and there's a 20-year gap between books 1 & 2 of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy (while the trilogy as a whole spans about 200 years).

[Greg Cox]

I do think people are a little more concerned with continuity and consistency than they used to be. The old Universal horror movies (and even the later Hammer versions) take a very laisez-faire approach to continuity that would probably cause fans' heads to explode these days . . . .

(In the Mummy movies, an entire town moves from New England to the Deep South between films--and nobody seems to notice!)

[Christopher]

Greg Cox wrote:

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(In the Mummy movies, an entire town moves from New England to the Deep South between films--and nobody seems to notice!)

Well, Angel Grove in Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers somehow managed to be both a colonial town in the 1790s and an Old West town in the 1890s, and seemed to be on the Pacific coast in the 1990s. Whereas Buffy's Sunnydale was a coastal city for several seasons but ended up in the middle of the desert in the series finale.

[Greg Cox]

Christopher wrote:

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Well, Angel Grove in Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers somehow managed to be both a colonial town in the 1790s and an Old West town in the 1890s, and seemed to be on the Pacific coast in the 1990s. Whereas Buffy's Sunnydale was a coastal city for several seasons but ended up in the middle of the desert in the series finale.

And Smallville was set in a Kansas that strangely resembled British Columbia, but that's a whole 'nother issue . . . .

[Christopher]

I think Smallville, Sunnydale, The Simpsons' Springfield, and a number of other TV communities have had a similar continuity issue in that they start out relatively small but then just keep getting bigger, accumulating their own universities and stadiums and multiple neighborhoods and industrial sectors and whatever else needs to be accreted onto them for the sake of a story, and thus ending up as pretty big cities. In around Smallville's second season or so, they even concocted a backstory that the city was founded by a Mr. Small, in order to reconcile the name with the city's growing size. (Not to mention that it ended up being anywhere from 3 hours' to a few minutes' drive from Metropolis.)

[Greg Cox]

Christopher wrote:

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I think Smallville, Sunnydale, The Simpsons' Springfield, and a number of other TV communities have had a similar continuity issue in that they start out relatively small but then just keep getting bigger, accumulating their own universities and stadiums and multiple neighborhoods and industrial sectors and whatever else needs to be accreted onto them for the sake of a story, and thus ending up as pretty big cities. In around Smallville's second season or so, they even concocted a backstory that the city was founded by a Mr. Small, in order to reconcile the name with the city's growing size. (Not to mention that it ended up being anywhere from 3 hours' to a few minutes' drive from Metropolis.)

Exactly. Sunnydale started out as a dinky "one-Starbuck town" that eventually acquired museums, a waterfront, and its own university. Granted, this led to a funny, self-aware bit in "Buffy versus Dracula" where the town suddenly acquires a gothic castle that nobody remembers noticing before!

Let this be a lesson to us all: if you're developing a new TV (or book) series set in a small town, make sure you have everything you need from Day One: parks, zoos, museums, tunnels, beaches, forests, a nuclear power plant . . . .

I'll be curious to see if "Univille" on Warehouse 13 enjoys a similar growth spurt!

[RPJOB]

Captaindemotion wrote:

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I never liked how GEN brought this Antonia one out of thin air, someone we'd never heard mentioned before yet who was supposedly so important in Kirk's life.

If it were up to me the name would have been Edith.

Love of his life who died by his own actions. He prevented McCoy from saving her even though he save millions of others. I would imagine that didn't make Kirk feel any better about it though. When he found himself in the Nexus he could have had her in the back of his mind as I'm sure she always was. Seeing Edith and realizing that it was all a dream would have been much better than the silly "I wasn't afraid to make that jump" bit. His emotional mind may have wanted Edith to be alive but he KNEW that she was dead. Once he realized that she could be real he would have questioned the rest of it and the story would have carried on as it did.

[Greg Cox]

RPJOB wrote:

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If it were up to me the name would have been Edith.

Love of his life who died by his own actions. He prevented McCoy from saving her even though he save millions of others. I would imagine that didn't make Kirk feel any better about it though. When he found himself in the Nexus he could have had her in the back of his mind as I'm sure she always was. Seeing Edith and realizing that it was all a dream would have been much better than the silly "I wasn't afraid to make that jump" bit. His emotional mind may have wanted Edith to be alive but he KNEW that she was dead. Once he realized that she could be real he would have questioned the rest of it and the story would have carried on as it did.

The problem there is that you would have to take time to recap "City on the Edge of Forever" which would have complicated an already convoluted plot involving bits and pieces of both TNG and TOS. Remember, you can't assume that the average moviegoer would know "City" by heart the way we do--and the movie already had to explain about the Nexus, Soran, Guinan, the Klingon sisters, Data's emotion chip, Picard's family in France, etc. The last thing GENERATIONS needed was a lot of TOS backstory about Edith, the Guardian of Forever, alternate timelines, and so on.

Me, I would have just mentioned "Carol" or "Gillian," neither of whom we were ever likely to see again anyway and whom don't require a lot of exposition. If audiences recognized the names from the earlier movies, cool. If not, no harm done.

[RPJOB]

Greg Cox wrote:

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The problem there is that you would have to take time to recap "City on the Edge of Forever" which would have complicated an already convoluted plot involving bits and pieces of both TNG and TOS. Remember, you can't assume that the average moviegoer would know "City" by heart the way we do--and the movie already had to explain about the Nexus, Soran, Guinan, the Klingon sisters, Data's emotion chip, Picard's family in France, etc. The last thing GENERATIONS needed was a lot of TOS backstory about Edith, the Guardian of Forever, alternate timelines, and so on.

Me, I would have just mentioned "Carol" or "Gillian," neither of whom we were ever likely to see again anyway and whom don't require a lot of exposition. If audiences recognized the names from the earlier movies, cool. If not, no harm done.

It's not like you'd need to summarize the whole plot. For the non-fans Edith is just as generic as Antonia. For the fans it would be one big easter egg wrapped up in a big bow.

Kirk - Edith...?

Picard - A friend?

Kirk - Someone I knew a long, long time ago. But it can't be her. She died.

Picard - I'm sorry

Kirk - But if she's not real (glances around) then is any of this real either.

There, all summarized.

Carol, maybe. We don't know how long they were together. They could have been friends who had no intention of marrying and David was a surprise. He would be their point of connection more than what they had together.

Gillian, not a chance. Farthest that went was a peck on the cheek and a polite brush off.

[Timo]

Why break a good pattern, though? Kirk always kept coming up with hugely significant love affairs that led nowhere. And he seldom looked back. In ST2, he was in amicable terms with Carol at best, preferring a good book to her company when all was said and done. And when the Shore Leave Planet offered him Ruth, he chose to spend his time getting sweaty with Finnegan.

When in ST:GEN we see the old warrior look back for a chance to get it right after so many wrongs, we need to understand that he will fail, again, and not actually care all that much. Antonia is good for that pattern, solidifying the evidence on Kirk only ever seriously loving one thing.

Timo Saloniemi

[Greg Cox]

RPJOB wrote:

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It's not like you'd need to summarize the whole plot. For the non-fans Edith is just as generic as Antonia. For the fans it would be one big easter egg wrapped up in a big bow.

Kirk - Edith...?

Picard - A friend?

Kirk - Someone I knew a long, long time ago. But it can't be her. She died.

Picard - I'm sorry

Kirk - But if she's not real (glances around) then is any of this real either..

Okay, you sold me. That works.