Star Trek V's canon status

Discussion in 'Star Trek Movies I-X' started by sonak, Jul 29, 2012.

  1. Therin of Andor

    Therin of Andor Admiral Moderator

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    Sure, but in this particular case, I really think DC Fontana had a point. Had Sybok been a revered mentor/teacher of young Spock, the film might have been just as strong (or stronger). Had Sybok filled the gap of some of those 18(?) years where Spock and Sarek did not speak?

    Or, perhaps if Sarek had also shared scenes with the now-adult Sybok in ST V?

    That Shatner deliberately pursued his half-brother-Sybok premise after Roddenberry and Fontana (ironically still at odds over the creatorship of TNG at the time) specifically suggested that Shatner reconsider that plot aspect is... telling. Many fans bristled that Director Shatner was ignoring sage advice just because he could. At the time I recall it antagonized fans to start to look for other reasons to dislike the film, too.
     
  2. Captaindemotion

    Captaindemotion Admiral Admiral

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    ^I like the ideas you're suggesting there (re mentor teacher/ non-speaking years) and, especially, the Sarek idea. But for now, we can only look at what was, not what might have been.
     
  3. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    I dunno. We know from "The Menagerie" that Spock can be intensely loyal to the point of breaking the law, but would he really be willing to place loyalty to a childhood mentor over loyalty to Kirk, especially when that mentor was a criminal and terrorist? I think I have to go with Shatner here -- the only bond strong enough to justify Spock surrendering to Sybok once they got aboard the ship was the bond of family.
     
  4. Therin of Andor

    Therin of Andor Admiral Moderator

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    There was also the bond between Pike and Spock, for which Spock risked the death penalty by going back to Talos IV.
     
  5. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    But Pike wasn't a hostage-taking criminal. Loyalty to a commanding officer or mentor would motivate Spock to break the rules to help them if they were in need, but it wouldn't motivate them to help them commit crimes or endanger his ship. To justify him doing that, you'd need an even deeper bond.
     
  6. Nerys Myk

    Nerys Myk A Spock and a smile Premium Member

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    Spock was the criminal in that episode. Falsifying orders. Essentially kidnapping a Starfleet officer. Hacking a starbase computer.
     
  7. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    ^Missing the point. The point was about what would motivate him to do those things for someone else. Spock willing to go to great lengths to help a Pike who's grievously injured and in need of rescuing is one thing. But can you imagine Spock going to the same lengths to help a Pike who had gone rogue, invaded a town, taken hostages, and made demands like a terrorist?
     
  8. Nerys Myk

    Nerys Myk A Spock and a smile Premium Member

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    Oh, I got the point. Fact remains he did commit criminal acts. His motivations were different is all.
     
  9. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Of course he did, but that's got nothing whatsoever to do with what I'm saying, which is that there was a legitimate story reason to make Sybok his brother instead of his mentor.
     
  10. SimpleLogic

    SimpleLogic Guest

    This is a great way to look at it. I never have worried about what is "official" but rather what I've enjoyed. In that regard there are plenty of books and comics that I really liked that I consider to have happened with this fictional universe, and of course there are a few that I don't.

    As for Star Trek V specifically, sure as an adult (unfortunately) I can see some story problems and such, but the 9 year old who saw it when it came out in 1989, not knowing if it would be the last movie or not, thoroughly enjoyed this adventure with his sci-fi heroes.

    Sometimes I miss being a kid simply because back then I didn't care what was official, it was all Star Trek and it was all fun.
     
  11. Methos

    Methos Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Actually, oddly enough, I fall on the other side of this argument...

    "Canon" and "Continuity" are two things that I value greatly when it comes to any media... TV, movies, books... whatever...

    If you have a series as long running as Star Trek, then having a canon or continous history is something that's important, not just to fans, but to writers who have a history that's been built on, expanded, grown and fleshed out... it's something for new writers to be respectful of, looking back at 40+ years of TV and Movies, and going 'yeah, that's the history built here by god knows how many writers, now i'm going to add to it.'

    I do enjoy discussions about canon and continuity, as sometimes people do forget how important have a solid continuity for any series is... People would soon be up in arms if half way through an series of Voyager, the writers suddenly decided to change the fact Warp Drives needed Deuterium to run, changing it to converting the waste products from the crew / mess hall into energy instead... So i think people should be respectful of what writers work on, both for a long time series built continuity, and for what is decided is and isn't canon...

    It doesn't detract from the enjoyment of what isn't canon, but i'd say it's pretty important to know what is and isn't, for the sake of current and future storylines.

    M
     
  12. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I'm 28 and it's still all Star Trek and all fun for me:bolian:
     
  13. CorporalCaptain

    CorporalCaptain Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    It's not like these were hard to find, though.
     
  14. Therin of Andor

    Therin of Andor Admiral Moderator

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  15. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    That's a valid point of view, but the key is not to define it with too much granularity. Canon is about broad strokes, not details. Different creators may be nominally depicting their creations as parts of a shared continuity, but they're always going to have differences in how they interpret the details of that hypothetical reality, in the same way that any two artists painting the same model or landscape will produce differing results. Those decades of prior continuity that we choose to perceive as a uniform reality are actually fraught with self-contradiction. It's just been mentioned in a thread in the Trek Literature forum that if you read old fan publications from back when TMP or TWOK first came out, you'd find that some fans denounced them as non-canonical or alternate-reality because of their differences in detail from TOS. When TNG came along, there was a lot of resistance from TOS fans (and actors!) to accepting it as "real" Star Trek, and it was years before fandom really embraced it as a genuine part of the whole. Every new incarnation of ST is a different interpretation with variances from what came before, and the only reason most of us look back on ST as a uniform whole today is because we learned to forgive or gloss over the inconsistencies that were initially denounced as incompatible with canon. Because ultimately we recognized that they were still representing the same imagined reality at the core, even if they differed in some of the specifics of how they portrayed it.

    So yes, you should respect what came before, but that doesn't mean slavishly duplicating every tiny detail, because what came before has never been perfectly consistent on that level of detail anyway. (TOS itself was wildly inconsistent about lots of details, because its writers were making up the universe as they went along. Are they Vulcans or Vulcanians? Does the Enterprise work for Space Central, UESPA, or Star Fleet?) Respect for continuity means respecting the broad strokes and the overall spirit of the universe. It means not diverging too far from what's come before, but a certain amount of flexibility in the details of the interpretation is the prerogative of every artist.
     
  16. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Yet the Enterprise itself didn't get one until the alternate ending of Nemesis.
     
  17. Therin of Andor

    Therin of Andor Admiral Moderator

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    Actually, seatbelts were featured in an episode of TAS ("Once Upon a Planet") and thigh restraints in ST:TMP.

    [​IMG]
    Seatbelts by Therin of Andor, on Flickr
     
    Last edited: Sep 7, 2012
  18. NrobbieC

    NrobbieC Commander Red Shirt

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    Bashir: Were any of the Trek films canon?

    Garak: My dear doctor, they're all canon.

    Bashir: Even Star Trek V?

    Garak: Especially Star Trek V.
     
  19. JarodRussell

    JarodRussell Vice Admiral Admiral

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    It's funny how it's supposed to be non-canon just because most of the people don't like it.

    I like it.
     
  20. Therin of Andor

    Therin of Andor Admiral Moderator

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    No, parts of ST V were considered by Gene Roddenberry to be "apocryphal". Supposedly he did not care for the the suggestions that Spock had a half brother and that McCoy once killed his own father.

    The movie has always been "canonical".