Can we drop the "alternate timeline" nonsense?

I agree (maybe).

 

Over the years I have heard many, many fan theories about how different bits of TOS, different movies and different series were all alternate realities, corrupted timelines, or whatever. A phrase that comes to mind is "ad nauseum." I was absolutely certain whenever whoever rebooted Star Trek eventually, not half a second would pass before fan communities lit up with the conclusion that the new stuff is an alternate reality. I congratulate Orcii, Kurtzman, and Lindelof for getting that and just beating their built in audience to the punch while turning it into an entertaining hook for a fun movie. Yes, it is just a fig leaf and it never need be discussed again in any future films. However, I for one enjoyed it.

 

That will do. That will do.

 

At this point the folks who use the words "alternate timeline" and "Prime timeline" most frequently are also quite open in their distaste for nuTrek, so as I tend to ignore what they say anyway, the words "alternate timeline" or "Prime timeline" serve as a handy marker.

 

Well yeah, the point is that all that's in the past. It's done. Spending any time at all worrying about the eye color of actors or why characters appearing in nuTrek don't closely resemble the old version in back story - or appearance - is dumb.

 

You forgot "Abramsverse."

Yes, the world is a much better place when we can ignore opinions that conflict with ours. Lots of green grass, people who look just like us, believe the same things, and no one to challenge our worldview make it a comfy gated community. Gotta love that!

 

Define "worried."

Eye color isn't something that concerns me unless it's something specifically mentioned about the character or an obvious character trait and is suddenly different for no reason ever mentioned. Of course it's obvious that if a recast happens the character could be played by someone with a different eye color. But if it was something important to the character him/herself, there needs to be at least a line or two mentioning that.

Example: In Doctor Who, Leela was originally brown-eyed. However, the actress was really blue-eyed and found the brown contact lenses difficult to wear. So finally they found an in-story way to have her eyes change color (at the end of Horror of Fang Rock).


There's quite a difference between "worried" and "annoyed." As for the people who enumerate every little detail about the episodes and movies and come up with ideas of many different universes/timelines... well, Mark Andrew Golding wrote an essay about that many years ago, and it was published in one of the Best of Trek books. He wrote that long before TNG came along, and even then the number of different timelines he came up with was in the dozens.

Was he worried? I very much doubt it. Did he do it for fun or for the challenge of finding all the differing details, no matter how small they were? Probably. At any rate, I enjoyed his essay, as I'd never actually noticed about half of the things he enumerated,

 

Well, as I see it I have two options - either argue with people who's mindset I am NOT going to change or ignore them when they go on a rant about something that in my opinion doesn't matter.
I like the second option, as I have enough stress in my regular life to preclude me from seeking out stressful situations online.

 

Look, the time to "drop the alternate timeline nonsense" would have been before Trek XI was released. Just promote the film as a TOS reboot and be done with it. But they didn't do that, they made sure we knew it was an alternate timeline with Leonard Nimoy returning as the original Spock, and for months prior to XI's release we had interviews with Orci ranting about how "quantum mechanics" made the film possible. Seriously, he really said that! After all that, the idea these movies are an alternate timeline to the other Star Treks is too firmly entrenched in the minds of everyone to simply ignore. And so, the Abrams series will always be know as the alternate timeline, probably even after another Trek reboot set in a new continuity simply because the Abramsverse came first and was heavily publicized as an alternate reality. We're already six years into this, that's nearly the length of one of the 24th century TV shows. That's like walking into TNG's sixth season and asking "Can we drop this 'in the future' nonsense?" Or DS9's sixth season and asking to drop "this space station nonsense" or Voyager's sixth season and requesting to drop this "stranded nonsense." It's an inherent part of the backstory and set-up and it's too late to hand wash it away.

If we're going to change the "Maybe" guy, then instead of Montalban the "Yep" icon should have Dave Hester from Storage Wars.

 

Yeah, Chemahkuu's made me lol. Awesome.

I also made this one for those indecisive moods.

 

The right to express an opinion does not imply the right to have that opinion viewed as other than boring or dumb if that's how the listener perceives it.

 

Agreed. To wit:

While not quite the same concept, the central thesis would seem to still apply. There are more than a large few on this message board who could probably benefit from a close reading of this article.

 

Thanks

The Neutral People from Futurama seemed both geeky enough and appropriately super neutral/indecisive.

I even left off the full stop of the others on purpose, he's that 'eh' about his opinion.

 

Bookmarked for future use (might make it required reading for all my students from now on).

 

Heh, I was going to post that quote yesterday from the article, but feared the flames. I'm glad Karzak also found it.

No matter how many times I read the replies, I'm not sure whether my quoted sentence above, taken out of context, was understood as the sarcasm it is.

 

Fixed it for you

 

The article you linked specifically says that opinions of things like color, food taste, and fave TV shows are completely legit things to mention as an opinion. So how does the article help to invalidate an opinion over whether nuTrek is good or bad?

If someone likes it, good. If they don't, that's good too. Neither option hurts anyone else, even if some people act like it does.

 

That op piece was a good read.

And I've never really been bothered about the alt reality stuff (despite what's said on screen). Three (almost) movies in, it's just Star Trek with new faces.

 

I'll let Karzak speak for himself but my impression was that it is one thing to have an opinion and another to allow that opinion be used as a reason to look down upon others and their opinion.

Also, that the right to having an opinion does not preclude others from disagreeing, dismantling and providing evidence to the contrary. Having an opinion does not protect that opinion from others having opinions. Also, disagreeing on opinions should not be viewed as a personal attack.

 

But it's the Internet! Everything's personal, dammit