IDW Star Trek Ongoing...

[Allyn Gibson]

Fer wrote:

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Actually, Diamond is shipping their comics early with instructions that it's not to be put on the shelves until December 26th (and sending out Secret Shoppers to make sure it's enforced). So #16 should still come out next Wednesday, at least in the US.

No, Star Trek #16 isn't one of the books that's being held for the 26th. Per Diamond, it will be out on the 2nd.

[Fer]

Allyn Gibson wrote:

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No, Star Trek #16 isn't one of the books that's being held for the 26th. Per Diamond, it will be out on the 2nd.

My mistake, apparently I misunderstood.

[Pauln6]

Well, the second part of the Mirror story was good fun, if undemanding. The artwork was great. They might well revisit it if they do a proper 'Mirror Mirror' retelling I suppose.

We've got the prequel comic coming up, can anybody remind me what ongoing stories are in the pipeline?

[bullethead]

Eh, this issue of Ongoing was kinda weak. It was cool that certain characters did some stuff, but the resolution was kind of contrived.

[Christopher]

Pauln6 wrote:

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We've got the prequel comic coming up, can anybody remind me what ongoing stories are in the pipeline?

The issues leading up to the movie's release date will be one-part flashback stories focusing on several of the major characters in turn -- I believe Uhura, Scotty, and McCoy are the first three, not necessarily in that order.

[The Wormhole]

Okay, so part two is confusing me. What's the deal with elderly Spock? Given the lack of goatee, references to the Federation, Starfleet, Kirk being a good man, and that the Terran Empire is something from an alternate reality he once encountered, he's obviously not from the MU from the other Trek episodes. However, he can't possibly be Spock Prime either, can he? After all, if he were, than how the hell could Nero be in this MU's Rura Penthe and killed by Kirk last month? My guess is this Spock is supposed to be from another universe similar to the Prime Universe.

Anyone else have thoughts/explanations?

[Christopher]

Well, the opening scene of part 1 (which I read in the online previews) did have Scotty say that there's an infinity of different timelines. Clearly the MU in this comic isn't meant to be the same MU from canon, since if it were, the Enterprise and the uniforms would look like they did in "Mirror, Mirror." It's supposed to be some other alternate timeline that corresponds to a Mirror-style counterpart to the Abramsverse. So yeah, I guess it's supposed to be some alternate Spock as well. (Which is only going to feed the convictions of those people who assume the whole Abrams continuity is an alternate history including the destruction of Romulus.)

[Therin of Andor]

Pauln6 wrote:

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can anybody remind me what ongoing stories are in the pipeline?

http://www.startrekcomics.info/idwstongoing.html

Regularly updated. #17-19 are listed already.

[Pauln6]

Christopher wrote:

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Well, the opening scene of part 1 (which I read in the online previews) did have Scotty say that there's an infinity of different timelines. Clearly the MU in this comic isn't meant to be the same MU from canon, since if it were, the Enterprise and the uniforms would look like they did in "Mirror, Mirror." It's supposed to be some other alternate timeline that corresponds to a Mirror-style counterpart to the Abramsverse. So yeah, I guess it's supposed to be some alternate Spock as well. (Which is only going to feed the convictions of those people who assume the whole Abrams continuity is an alternate history including the destruction of Romulus.)

Yeah it's an alternate Spock from alternate Prime - we'll call this one the Prime universe where Harry Kim died.

I thought it was funny how he mentioned the supernova that threatened the Galaxy again. That cracks me up every time.

I saw a documentary about Trek's origins and how Roddenberry wanted Trek science to be rooted in reality. I bet lines like that have him orbiting in his grave!

[Christopher]

Pauln6 wrote:

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Yeah it's an alternate Spock from alternate Prime - we'll call this one the Prime universe where Harry Kim died.

If you're referring to the events of "Deadlock," that wasn't a parallel timeline, it was a physical duplication of the ship -- basically a shipwide "Enemy Within"/"Second Chances" kind of deal, except that the duplicates were "out of phase" and occupying the same physical space as the originals.

I saw a documentary about Trek's origins and how Roddenberry wanted Trek science to be rooted in reality. I bet lines like that have him orbiting in his grave!

It's hardly as if previous Trek series were devoid of bad science. An energy barrier around the rim of the galaxy is completely ridiculous. The telepathic and telekinetic powers, incorporeal consciousnesses, and mind switches/possessions that we saw routinely displayed in TOS are pure fantasy. The recurring trope of starships falling out of orbit when their power goes out is ridiculous (what, did they think the Moon has engines?). The idea of alien planets spontaneously evolving exact duplicates of Earth cultures -- and even explicitly speaking English, as in "Bread and Circuses" -- is complete nonsense, a production convenience with no possible justification in credible science.

And many of those are from episodes that Roddenberry himself wrote. So while he may have aspired to credibility to a certain extent, he wasn't that much better at it than his successors. At least, he didn't hesitate to set aside credibility for the sake of storytelling and drama -- which is what you're supposed to do. The first priority in fiction is what the story needs. If scientific accuracy helps the story, you use it, but if it impedes the story, you set it aside. Roddenberry understood that. And so does Abrams. Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman are actually among the more science-savvy writer/producers in the industry today, and from what I've gathered, their original script for the '09 film had better science than what we ended up with. But Abrams is the director and he makes the final call on story decisions, and he evidently decided that setting aside scientific accuracy in some respects served the dramatic needs of the story better.

[The Wormhole]

Pauln6 wrote:

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I saw a documentary about Trek's origins and how Roddenberry wanted Trek science to be rooted in reality. I bet lines like that have him orbiting in his grave!

The truth of the matter is, if Roddenberry were still alive, he'd only care to see how much money Trek XI pulled in. Since it brought in a decent amount, he'd be happy and we wouldn't hear anything more from him aside from the occasional public endorsing of Abrams for publicity sakes. Galaxy-threatening supernova wouldn't even be brought to his attention, unless by some fan at a convention, and even then Roddenberry would shrug and wonder how much longer he had to stay on stage to get his paycheck.

[Pauln6]

Lol - yes and Roddenberry would be especially happy with NuTrek if it garnered him some more attention from the laydeez. Admittedly, a fair amount of Trek science was nonsense for storytelling purposes but I'm not wholly convinced that the basic level of the inaccurate science in NuTrek should be let off so lightly.

One of my friends is an amateur astronomer and her level of education was to A level standard (I suppose that's high school equivalent?) and she is becoming increasingly intolerant of bad basic level science in Hollywood movies. If she can tell the science is bad then it must be REALLY bad.

What a shame that we are just going to get some one-shot origin stories leading up to the movie. That's a long time to wait for some proper stories to start up again.

[Christopher]

Pauln6 wrote:

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Lol - yes and Roddenberry would be especially happy with NuTrek if it garnered him some more attention from the laydeez. Admittedly, a fair amount of Trek science was nonsense for storytelling purposes but I'm not wholly convinced that the basic level of the inaccurate science in NuTrek should be let off so lightly.

It's no worse than Genesis. A tiny torpedo that somehow has the magical power to transform an entire planet in minutes and create life with godlike ease? (I read the book before I saw the movie, and I was expecting a huge missile-like device, so when I saw this dinky little thing in the movie, I thought it was ridiculous that it could conceivably contain enough power to have effects on a planetary scale.) Not to mention somehow being able to create an entire planet, and possibly even a star, out of a nebula when it was never programmed to do anything of the sort? That's probably the most ludicrous, sheer fantasy idea in the history of Trek movies. Not to mention the whole Sha Ka Ree/center of the galaxy thing in ST V, or the Nexus in GEN (which supposedly orbits the galaxy in a matter of decades despite travelling slowly enough to be intercepted at impulse), or the magic fountain-of-youth rings in INS, or the particle-of-the-week weapon in NEM. Trek movies have never been all that scientifically credible. Even TMP, which had an actual NASA rocket scientist as its technical advisor (not to mention Isaac Asimov), had some fanciful elements (like the whole "higher levels of existence" thing, or the question of how you fit a cloud multiple AUs in diameter inside a warp field).

One thing I've noticed repeatedly over the years is that fans are always less forgiving of problems in the most recent Trek incarnation that are no worse than equivalent problems in earlier incarnations. A decade ago they were doing exactly the same thing with Enterprise. It's just that they've had more time to get used to the errors and flaws in the earlier stuff, to gloss over them in their minds or learn to forgive them, so the newer errors and flaws stand out more. But looked at objectively, they're really not that different.

What a shame that we are just going to get some one-shot origin stories leading up to the movie. That's a long time to wait for some proper stories to start up again.

How is a one-shot issue not a proper story? If anything, they're increasingly a lost art in comics today. And getting flashback stories to fill in the backgrounds of the supporting characters strikes me as a good supplement to the first movie, which did the same for Kirk and Spock. Anyway, it's only about five months.

[Allyn Gibson]

The Wormhole wrote:

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Okay, so part two is confusing me. What's the deal with elderly Spock? Given the lack of goatee, references to the Federation, Starfleet, Kirk being a good man, and that the Terran Empire is something from an alternate reality he once encountered, he's obviously not from the MU from the other Trek episodes. However, he can't possibly be Spock Prime either, can he? After all, if he were, than how the hell could Nero be in this MU's Rura Penthe and killed by Kirk last month? My guess is this Spock is supposed to be from another universe similar to the Prime Universe.

That was exactly the way I read it. In another universe similar to the Prime universe, events happened (probably like Countdown) that led Nero and Spock to tumble into the past. But instead of coming out in their own past, they came out in the Mirror Universe's past.

This may suggest that the 2009 film isn't a time loop like "Yesterday's Enterprise." If Nero and Spock could end up in the Mirror Universe's past, they could just as easily have ended up in a different Prime-like universe's past as well. That's not a reading of the film I particularly care for, but it's now a valid and justifiable one.

[Christopher]

Allyn Gibson wrote:

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That was exactly the way I read it. In another universe similar to the Prime universe, events happened (probably like Countdown) that led Nero and Spock to tumble into the past. But instead of coming out in their own past, they came out in the Mirror Universe's past.

You know, there are some continuity glitches between Countdown and the actual film... so maybe Countdown actually is in the alternate timeline this Spock and Nero came from...?

This may suggest that the 2009 film isn't a time loop like "Yesterday's Enterprise." If Nero and Spock could end up in the Mirror Universe's past, they could just as easily have ended up in a different Prime-like universe's past as well. That's not a reading of the film I particularly care for, but it's now a valid and justifiable one.

Well, it's valid within the comics' version of the universe, which is officially not canonical, according to Orci. (A TrekMovie interviewer browbeat him into saying the comics were canon at one point, but Orci only said it in jest to get the interviewer off his back on that issue, and he retracted it hours later.) So it doesn't necessarily have any bearing on the canonical interpretation of events, though like I said, the fans who want the whole Abramsverse to be separate, including the 24th-century portions, are bound to jump on it as "proof."