Joanna's appearances are so scattered I can see where they could probably be worked together to fit. Like she changed careers from nurse to doctor just like Chapel did.
^I say that Joanna should be brought back for the next movie-who's with me? And I have the actress in mind for it:
It doesn't quite gel because they keep playing the 'she's estranged' card each time she appears instead of just, it's been a while. If you close your good eye and overlook the incongruities it just about works.
Kirk: "I lost a brother once." Audience: "Oh god, yes! Continuity porn!" Kirk: "I was lucky I got him back." Audience: whimper...
It was fairplay: No mention of Kirk's brother in this movie, no more mention of Spock's brother in the franchise.
But that is a deliberate callback to George Kirk Jr, because Spock has been more of a (recent) brother than George had been. "Whimper"?
It's striking how stereotypically male Kirk, Spock & Bones were written as and portrayed, with regards to how careless they all were with their seed. Bones has a daughter somewhere, in someone else's care and Bones just goes about his life, like he forgot about her. It has also been implied that Spock knocked up Saavik and again, what happened? She goes on to raise the child as a Single Mother, whilst Spock has his Space Adventures, untied and unbound by what he's done. And then there's Kirk, of course, who's got at least one kid he knew about. Even Sulu had to get in on the act with a kid of his own, from out of left field! In that light, where does that leave Scotty and Chekov? Neither one of whom has a child because of either a bottle of Scotch, or Vodka ... and a Friday night. They must be shooting blanks? That's not very heroic, in the STAR TREK universe ... what's that about?
Maybe because not everyone wants a spouse and kids...? It's annoying how so many people mock the fact that Sulu had a daughter. George Takei is gay, but there's never been a shred of evidence that Sulu is.
His point was that neither Scotty nor Chekov had kids, and he speculated why. I'm offering a possible reason.
His point was that males in Star Trek seemed to be sterotyped as "rolling stone" types. Four characters (that we know of) were portrayed as having sowed their oats and fled the nest leaving the mother to pick up the pieces. He then joked that it was just a surprise that Scotty hadn't had an "accident" during one of his legendary Whisky benders (and he rolled out another sterotype, this time Russians and Wodka). I think that it's a shame that males were sterotyped this way. I'd have liked to have seen a family man who could balance duty with parental responsibility. It was supposed to be a liberal future afterall. Thankfully we finally got a good role-model in Sisko.
For what it's worth, the novels don't follow Saavik getting pregnant, and Spock actually marries her many years later, but Yesterday's Son reveals that Spock impregnated Zarabeth with a son Zar in that cave. The novels also have Sulu raise his daughter as a single father, so he's actually not so bad at all. It's also broadly hinted at in one of the Lost Age novels that Kirk impregnated Rand with a daughter that died at the age of two. Her pregnancy was why she left the Enterprise, but Kirk never knew.
This story idea is absolutely hateful ... and I am so glad we never saw anything like this happening to Rand on the show! I much prefer the common sense (if not rather boring) idea that Rand found out she wasn't going to have Kirk for her own, so unlike Chapel, she moved on from her ManCrush and made a career for herself in STARFLEET. MikeS is correct about what I was getting at in my post. However, TimeWalker's point of view is an interesting one, because, until TNG, STARFLEET did seem to be comprised of people who didn't want families. Even in STAR TREK V, this idea is explored. In-Universe, it does make it appear to be a generational thing, though ...
Trek is populated by children of deceased parents. The humans of the 23rd and 24th century have an astonishingly low life expectancy. But space is big, I mean REALLY big. A 5 year mission out in deep space would not really be the place for a parent. The writers do try to throw in parental angst but they end up doing it for everybody over time and you end up with almost no family structure to any of the characters. The O'Briens' relationship was nearly always used to showcase marital strife. Probably Torres and Paris had the most realistic relationship overall. It was hinted that Kirk might be the father of Annie Rand purely because Rand said that the father was dead (set after Generations) but the reality is that it could be anybody. Christopher L Bennett hated the idea so much that in Ex Machina he wrote Rand as stating the father was deceased pre-TMP to settle it in his own mind but it's still a 'Usual Suspects' moment - since Rand is the only source of the information in both instances, she could just be lying because she doesn't want to talk about it. I rather like the idea that it might be or it might not be Kirk, that there might be a hidden chapter to their relationship... or not. Let the reader decide if they do or don't like the notion I say. As far as Annie Rand goes, I adopted that history for my You Tube comic. I thought it would flesh out Rand more as a character if her dreams about her dead daughter could be worked into the plot. And I'm not done with her yet.
Please understand that I don't mean my comment in a negative way. As someone who at 50 is single with no human children (my cats are my adopted children ), I understand completely that marriage and kids aren't what everyone wants. It's been obvious for a long time that although Scotty and Chekov like women and have had relationships, both are committed to their careers. I think that at the time of TOS, Starfleet personnel who served on ships had to seriously consider all the ramifications of family life before marriage. They couldn't take their spouse/kids along, and it could be months or even years between visits home. And as we saw in the series, starships aren't all that safe; there was a definite risk of the left-behind marriage partner being widowed. So it doesn't surprise me that some of the characters opted against marriage and instead chose non-marital liaisons with other crew or people they met on shore leave. From what I've heard and read, military marriages can be tough in the real-life here and now - and that's on the same planet! It would be even more difficult if the family members were separated by many light-years; after all, not everyone can send subspace messages whenever they want to.
Even though the McCoy divorce backstory was not canonized until the 2009 movie, I always thought it was a neat touch that Bones conspicuously wears a wedding ring throughout the whole of TOS. Kind of a reminder, that here is a man with a family and some kind of marriage somewhere. The backstory is kind of affirmed in the viewer's mind.
And, of course, Kirk marries a couple in "Balance of Terror" . . . but we all know how that turned out!
I always like it when there are married characters in shows. I think it adds realism. Sometimes I think it doesn't happen enough on TV. Like, if you've got a show with a dozen regular characters and maybe a half dozen semi-regulars, it would be nice to see the realism added of at least one or two people being in that kind of relationship, even if it's only off-screen character background. It was always nice that Miles O'Brien was this married guy with a family. I appreciated that, I thought it enriched the character. Of course, the reason it isn't done very often is because it means the writers wouldn't be able to do "boy meets girl" romantic subplots with that character if they are canonically married (at least, they couldn't do them without making the character look like a philanderer).
The novel was The Captain's Daughter I thought the backstory hinted at was that the evil Kirk from "The Enemy Within" succeeded in raping Rand? IIRC, she kept all knowledge of the baby and the incident from Kirk.