Has nuTrek been INTERNALLY consistent, so far?

[Lance]

IMO the video game botched a golden opportunity to present true and genuine canonical events, given they had the real actors and everything. It would have been marvelous to have had one more actual canonical adventure outside of the movies themselves, but it was not to be.

While I accept their interest factor, I've never been one for seeing comic books and novels as extensions of the canon, because they lack the participation of the original actors (and sometimes, they even lacked their likeness, lol ).

 

[Tosk]

^Except there's no evidence of other Klingons maturing that quickly -- or even a Klingon-human hybrid like B'Elanna Torres, judging from "Lineage."

Or evidence that they don't. How do you know Torres' human "half" didn't slow the aging down?

And, Worf's sometimes mentioning his childhood tends to give the impression that Klingons don't mature quickly.

How? No one would claim that Worf had no childhood at all. He mentions his childhood because he had one.

Obviously it happened because that's what almost all kids do on TV, but that doesn't mean Klingons don't age faster during that period.

Molly O'Brien is a bit harder to explain.

 

[BillJ]

And before I derail this thread further, could I just ask - was The Omega Glory solution your own invention? It's simultaneously very tidy and very fitting for the episode!

I think its an idea that many different people have had over the years.

 

[Christopher]

OK, but let me just ask: If PineKirk and ShatnerKirk travelled back in time to the year 1901, would they end up in the same timeline?

Theoretically, yes. Although if they arrived at slightly different times and the first one to arrive changed things so that yet another timeline branched off, then the second one would "miss" him.

And if so, and allowed time to pass at its normal rate (using either cryogenic chambers or anti-aging drugs, take your pick) would they end up in Shatner's universe or Pine's universe?

Well, by quantum physics, each would be entangled/correlated with their own timeline, so as long as they didn't do anything to affect events, I suspect they'd each branch off into their own respective timelines at that point. Then again, under the quantum-correlation model, no time traveler should be able to create or perceive any timeline but their own in the first place, so it's not clear whether that would apply in this fictional context.

My point is that non-canon sources and creator's intent are all very well, but that doesn't always mean that they translate perfectly to the screen. And if a few moments' thought can reinterpret what they intended with a more rational outcome, shouldn't more weight be given to that?

I don't see why the "they were alternate all along" explanation is "more rational." On the contrary, it makes no sense, if we assume that Spock Prime and Nero came from the original universe, as was clearly the intent. Why would their time travel cause them to spontaneously jump tracks into a pre-existing alternate, rather than triggering the creation of a new branch? That's an arbitrary, ad hoc assumption, hardly the more rational option.

And before I derail this thread further, could I just ask - was The Omega Glory solution your own invention? It's simultaneously very tidy and very fitting for the episode!

Yes, it is, but it's based on logical deduction from what we were shown in the episode -- namely, that there's no way the American flag and the Bible we were shown could possibly be thousands of years old without having decayed far worse than that, therefore they must be far younger. And Cloud William never actually said that the American/Christian trappings were part of their ancient culture; Kirk just assumed they were, as naive observers of new societies often mistakenly assume that present-day customs stretch back to antiquity when in fact they're often recent innovations. So it made far more sense to suppose that Omega was visited within the previous century by some Earth ship that introduced the Yangs to American history and paraphernalia, and that the Yangs syncretized those trappings with their existing beliefs.

IMO the video game botched a golden opportunity to present true and genuine canonical events, given they had the real actors and everything. It would have been marvelous to have had one more actual canonical adventure outside of the movies themselves, but it was not to be.

I've never understood how video games can possibly be considered canonical, considering that they supposedly happen differently each time they're played -- and usually entail impossibilities like the ability to carry absurd amounts of supplies or recover endlessly from fatal injuries. I suppose the cut scenes could be considered canonical, as long as they're not the kind where you can choose which characters appear; but as for the gameplay itself, it seems to me that the closest you could come is to assert that it's a simulation based on real events, but with concessions made for the needs of game play.

^Except there's no evidence of other Klingons maturing that quickly -- or even a Klingon-human hybrid like B'Elanna Torres, judging from "Lineage."

Or evidence that they don't.

But the burden of proof should fall on the less likely premise. Humanoids developing that rapidly is pretty unlikely, so I'm not going to accept it as an axiom.

How do you know Torres' human "half" didn't slow the aging down?

But Alexander is also part-human. That's the point. Why would one hybrid age insanely fast while another didn't? And I don't believe it's because Torres had more human blood than Alexander -- genetics rarely works so linearly.

 

[BillJ]

Yes, it is, but it's based on logical deduction from what we were shown in the episode -- namely, that there's no way the American flag and the Bible we were shown could possibly be thousands of years old without having decayed far worse than that, therefore they must be far younger.

I don't think it was a unique deduction...

http://www.trekbbs.com/showpost.php?p=5509528&postcount=10

Or...

Perhaps the Omegans had developed similarly to humans and had their devastating wars that blew them back to the stone age. Then, after Earth develops warp flight, one of our own starfarers or a group of them headed to the stars with artifacts of the U.S. government and crash landed on Omega IV. Teaching the Omegans of their ways and the values of the land they came from, which the Omegans recognized as similar to the ways they use to cherish and embraced them as their own.

I wrote that approximately five months before Forgotten History came out. Just one of those things where multiple people had the same idea.

 

[Tosk]

Or evidence that they don't.

But the burden of proof should fall on the less likely premise.

Why doesn't the burden fall on the side with no visible proof? Alexander grows up quickly, so without other evidence we can assume that quarter-blood Klingons grow up quickly. Or that there was a localized space/time disturbance and only Alexander was affected. This is Trek, so that's probably more likely.

Humanoids developing that rapidly is pretty unlikely, so I'm not going to accept it as an axiom.

How about Jem'Hadar? Or if you want something a little less engineered, Ocampa? Sure, they die sooner too, but they do grow fast.

And I don't believe it's because Torres had more human blood than Alexander -- genetics rarely works so linearly.

So a person who is one-half Japanese has no more chance of epicanthic folds than someone who is one-quarter Japanese?

Edited to add: I don't know VOY well, so I MemAlpha'd...what is it about Lineage that says that Torres didn't age quickly as a child? Lineage said she was 11 or 12, but Eye of the Needle, Faces and Extreme Risk said that she was 5 or 6. I say that Lineage got it wrong and the overwhelming evidence is that she was 5 or 6.

Edited again to add: Just in case it's not obvious from the Molly mention and other silliness, I'm not necessarily arguing that this should be seen as anything but what always happens on TV shows...I'm just trying to see if there's any reason why it can't be the case in regards to Alexander. Brian Bonsall already did the quick-aging routine on Family Ties, so why not again?

 

[Christopher]

Or evidence that they don't.

But the burden of proof should fall on the less likely premise.

Why doesn't the burden fall on the side with no visible proof? Alexander grows up quickly, so without other evidence we can assume that quarter-blood Klingons grow up quickly.

One should never assume a general pattern from a single isolated example. You can't know whether it's the rule or an exception. Unless a result is repeatable, it isn't probative.

Humanoids developing that rapidly is pretty unlikely, so I'm not going to accept it as an axiom.

How about Jem'Hadar? Or if you want something a little less engineered, Ocampa? Sure, they die sooner too, but they do grow fast.

Just because it happens in some cases doesn't mean you should preferentially assume it's true in any given case. And in both cases we have evidence that it's a specieswide pattern; we aren't limited to a single example.

And I don't believe it's because Torres had more human blood than Alexander -- genetics rarely works so linearly.

So a person who is one-half Japanese has no more chance of epicanthic folds than someone who is one-quarter Japanese?

I don't know, but the offspring of parents with different hair, eye, or skin colors can often combine their parents' genes in unpredictable ways. I think I just recently read a comment somewhere from a person who's in a biracial family where one of the children looks white and the other looks distinctly nonwhite, so that -- sadly -- she's often assumed to be the maid rather than a daughter. So who knows? One child of a Caucasian parent and a Japanese-Caucasian parent might have no epicanthic folds and their next child might have very distinct ones.

Edited to add: I don't know VOY well, so I MemAlpha'd...what is it about Lineage that says that Torres didn't age quickly as a child? Lineage said she was 11 or 12, but Eye of the Needle, Faces and Extreme Risk said that she was 5 or 6. I say that Lineage got it wrong and the overwhelming evidence is that she was 5 or 6.

When her father left, you mean? You have a point there. Still, B'Elanna looking like a 12-year-old when she was five isn't the same as Alexander looking like a 22-year-old when he's eight. There's too little consistency in what we've been shown.

 

[Enterprise1701]

I'm not so sure - as a complete parallel timeline it would have its own history as well, since NuTrek's future will no longer feature the numerous temporal incursions that shaped PrimeTrek's universe so completely. In other words it wouldn't be so so much as a "Y" split but a complete splintering off of the NuTrek timeline, with its own version of history going back centuries if not to the start of the universe. And no Data's head under San Fransisco

But that's just the point. The official interpretation is that the timeline only split off in 2233, when Nero came back. But that comic story is impossible to reconcile with that model, instead seeming to assume that the timelines were always separate. That's what makes it inconsistent.

Say, Christopher, I just thought of something. Does what you say work for Echoes and Refractions - A Gutted World? Because the A Gutted World reality diverges from the prime reality no later than 2369 as the Cardassians never withdrew from Bajor. Then the story begins just after a near-identical version of Star Trek: First Contact. But this Enterprise-E and its crew never visited Deep Space Nine nor the B'hava'el System. At the very least their brains are different from their prime counterparts who also journeyed through time.

So a person who is one-half Japanese has no more chance of epicanthic folds than someone who is one-quarter Japanese?

I don't know, but the offspring of parents with different hair, eye, or skin colors can often combine their parents' genes in unpredictable ways. I think I just recently read a comment somewhere from a person who's in a biracial family where one of the children looks white and the other looks distinctly nonwhite, so that -- sadly -- she's often assumed to be the maid rather than a daughter. So who knows? One child of a Caucasian parent and a Japanese-Caucasian parent might have no epicanthic folds and their next child might have very distinct ones.

Ouch.

And that's true of children from interracial marriages. Just look at the photo in this article.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/a...ace-sisters-amazed-white-child-brown-one.html

 

[Tosk]

When her father left, you mean? You have a point there. Still, B'Elanna looking like a 12-year-old when she was five isn't the same as Alexander looking like a 22-year-old when he's eight. There's too little consistency in what we've been shown.

How about Alexander also looking like a six year old when he was actually less than two?

 

[Mytran]

OK, but let me just ask: If PineKirk and ShatnerKirk travelled back in time to the year 1901...and allowed time to pass at its normal rate (using either cryogenic chambers or anti-aging drugs, take your pick) would they end up in Shatner's universe or Pine's universe?

Well, by quantum physics, each would be entangled/correlated with their own timeline, so as long as they didn't do anything to affect events, I suspect they'd each branch off into their own respective timelines at that point. Then again, under the quantum-correlation model, no time traveler should be able to create or perceive any timeline but their own in the first place, so it's not clear whether that would apply in this fictional context.

Whether by quantum entanglement or some other means, it sounds like you're describing the actions of two parallel timelines, where each Kirk is unaware of each other's progression of time or even presence

I don't see why the "they were alternate all along" explanation is "more rational." On the contrary, it makes no sense, if we assume that Spock Prime and Nero came from the original universe, as was clearly the intent. Why would their time travel cause them to spontaneously jump tracks into a pre-existing alternate, rather than triggering the creation of a new branch? That's an arbitrary, ad hoc assumption, hardly the more rational option.

Ah, my mistake, I didn't explain my thoughts well. I'm not advocating a parallel timeline that always existed, I'm saying that when Nero jumped back and destroyed the Kelvin he changed the future (obviously). However, since that future previously contained numerous time travel escapades that helped to shape the Federation timeline (prior to Nero), and since those escapades will now not occur, it stands to reason that the pre-Nero timeline will be different too. Tech-talk not withstanding, Nero (to all intents and purposes) created a parallel timeline with a different past and future than the Prime timeline.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Well I can think of some contradictions within each movie:
in Star Trek 2009, Spock maroons Kirk for mutiny via an escape pod. But in Into Darkness, the Enterprise has a brig.

He knew Kirk would escape. There's an awesome (if likely unintentional) bit of continuity here with New Frontier #2: Into the Void where Soleta says...

Starship captains are historically not especially generous when it comes to stowaways, Si Cwan. In extreme cases, the captain would be authorized to punt you out of the ship in an escape pod with a homing beacon and no further obligation to see to your welfare. And since the captain is the one who defines what constitutes 'extreme,' he'd have a lot of latitude.

Which is exactly what happens in Star Trek. Acting Captain Spock punts stowaway cadet Kirk off the ship in an escape pod.

in Into Darkness, Marcus has Carol beamed off the Enterprise right through the shields, but later Khan demands Spock drop the shields and hand over the cryo torpedoes in exchange for Kirk, Scotty, and Carol.

First was seconds after the attack, second was many minutes later, by which the Enterprise had restored a semblance of shield functionality.

Notwithstanding that Kirk's team aboard the K'normian trading vessel made it all the way into Qo'noS's atmosphere without being stopped (which is completely ridicuous, especially for the Klingon Empire's capital planet), the Federation is alright 1 year later in the epilogue of Into Darkness, no war with the Klingons anywhere.

As others have said, they were undercover in civvies, in a K'Normian ship. Recall "Errand of Mercy", where Spock was allowed to remain on Organia despite his people being part of the Federation, who at the time were at war with the Klingon Empire.

In both movies, Earth Spacedock is shown with many Starfleet vessels docked and yet later nobody is around to help the Enterprise against the Narada nor the Vengeance.

In ID, Enterprise communications to SFHQ were being jammed, and the guy opposing them was the commander of Starfleet with absolute power over other vessels. Marcus even told Kirk what the official party line on his immanent death was - that the Enterprise went rogue in Klingon territory and was allied with the terrorist John Harrison.

In ST'09, Nero had Earth's perimeter defence codes and the primary fleet was busy elsewhere.

As for non-canon materials, we could solve their inconsistencies by simply throwing them out of our head-canons, but I'm not generally in favor of this idea. Inconsistencies I've spotted:

In Into Darkness, Scotty says that Starfleet confiscated his transwarp beaming equation. So was that before or after he used it during the Enterprise's journey like in "The Return of the Archons, Part 1" or "The Truth About Tribbles, Part 1"?

After, obviously.

While this is not necessarily "internal", Abrams and his crew have repeatedly iterated that the Narada and the Jellyfish made one-way temporal transits which left the "prime" reality intact. Q himself states this to Picard in-universe in "The Q Gambit, Part 1". But in "The Return of the Archons" 2-part comic story, the population of Beta III is revealed to be descended from the crew of the U.S.S. Archon and not native to the planet. And Landru is a human-invented AI computer. This is completely impossible because it is totally different from the original "The Return of the Archons" episode.

I only flicked through the issue in a shop many months ago, but I wonder if it's possible that massive chamber with the remains of the USS Archon was perhaps there but Kirk and Spock Prime never found it or discovered the truth?

The 2013 Star Trek video game. It's atrocious. The Gorn are from another galaxy???
No.
And a 23rd century Vulcan terraforming device opens up "rips" in space even more powerful than the canonically depicted Bajoran wormhole or Iconian gateways?
No.

Waitasec, why is it wrong for a new and further-reaching kind of portal to be discovered which wasn't in the original continuity? I can understand the Gorn thing rankling, but a portal further reaching than ones discovered "in another life" is no biggie.

My own problem is that the technology isn't consistent with the setting.

Put bluntly, starships don't make sense in the Abramsverse. Interstellar travel appears to take an hour at most, and in most cases much less, so why are they using the nautical paradigm for transport rather than the aviation paradigm?

What's the point of a "Five Year Mission" when nowhere in the galaxy is far enough away that you can't get home for lunch?

It doesn't make internal sense.

How is it any different from TOS, TAS and the classic movies, where the rim and centre of the galaxy were easily reachable? How does the TOS 5-year mission make any more sense that way? It's a flaw of Trek in general (minus Voyager), not one specific to the new movieverse.

 

[drt]

I only flicked through the issue in a shop many months ago, but I wonder if it's possible that massive chamber with the remains of the USS Archon was perhaps there but Kirk and Spock Prime never found it or discovered the truth?

And the Betans may only think it's been thousands of years, the most likely source of their knowlege of the past could be considered suspect after all...

 

[Christopher]

Well, by quantum physics, each would be entangled/correlated with their own timeline, so as long as they didn't do anything to affect events, I suspect they'd each branch off into their own respective timelines at that point. Then again, under the quantum-correlation model, no time traveler should be able to create or perceive any timeline but their own in the first place, so it's not clear whether that would apply in this fictional context.

Whether by quantum entanglement or some other means, it sounds like you're describing the actions of two parallel timelines, where each Kirk is unaware of each other's progression of time or even presence

No, that's not what I'm describing. You asked what would happen when they both reached the point that the timeline diverged between Prime and Abrams. What I'm conjecturing is that they would both be in the same single timeline up to the split, and would be aware of each other if they interacted, but then would see each other disappear at the moment their timelines diverged. Perhaps. It's challenging to reconcile fictional temporal physics with the real deal.

Ah, my mistake, I didn't explain my thoughts well. I'm not advocating a parallel timeline that always existed, I'm saying that when Nero jumped back and destroyed the Kelvin he changed the future (obviously). However, since that future previously contained numerous time travel escapades that helped to shape the Federation timeline (prior to Nero), and since those escapades will now not occur, it stands to reason that the pre-Nero timeline will be different too. Tech-talk not withstanding, Nero (to all intents and purposes) created a parallel timeline with a different past and future than the Prime timeline.

Not so, because we've seen before that a single present timeline can be affected by more than one possible future. For instance, Voyager's timeline was affected by the future in which Kes stayed with the ship and Seven never joined ("Before and After"), the future in which the ship was destroyed in a slipstream experiment ("Timeless"), and the future in which the ship took 23 years to get home and Seven died ("Endgame"). Plot the timelines and you'll see travelers from multiple different futures traveling back into the same single timeline, with the same set of characters having their lives affected by events from multiple incompatible futures.

So there's no reason the past of the Abramsverse wouldn't still be affected by time travels from the Prime timeline, just as the Prime timeline's past has been affected by time travelers from multiple separate alternate futures.

I only flicked through the issue in a shop many months ago, but I wonder if it's possible that massive chamber with the remains of the USS Archon was perhaps there but Kirk and Spock Prime never found it or discovered the truth?

I think that was the intent, but there are enough discrepancies in detail that it doesn't quite work.

How is it any different from TOS, TAS and the classic movies, where the rim and centre of the galaxy were easily reachable? How does the TOS 5-year mission make any more sense that way? It's a flaw of Trek in general (minus Voyager), not one specific to the new movieverse.

Quite right. It's a constant source of bemusement how the critics of any new incarnation of Trek insist on damning it for doing exactly the same things that prior incarnations of Trek have always done. These days they do it with Abrams; a decade ago they were doing it with Enterprise; in the '80s they were doing it with TNG and the movies; in the '70s I'm sure they were doing it with the animated series. There's a perennial double standard: it was okay when "their" Star Trek did it but unforgiveable when the new version does it.

 

[fireproof78]

How is it any different from TOS, TAS and the classic movies, where the rim and centre of the galaxy were easily reachable? How does the TOS 5-year mission make any more sense that way? It's a flaw of Trek in general (minus Voyager), not one specific to the new movieverse.

Quite right. It's a constant source of bemusement how the critics of any new incarnation of Trek insist on damning it for doing exactly the same things that prior incarnations of Trek have always done. These days they do it with Abrams; a decade ago they were doing it with Enterprise; in the '80s they were doing it with TNG and the movies; in the '70s I'm sure they were doing it with the animated series. There's a perennial double standard: it was okay when "their" Star Trek did it but unforgiveable when the new version does it.

Well said, and quoted for emphasis. I use to be bothered by the complaints about what Abrams was doing, when other Treks had done similar ideas, such as multi-verses (Mirror Universe, anyone?) magic cures (Omega Glory?) and action scenes.

I always wonder why on things like this. I mean, it's one thing to not like a Trek iteration, but doesn't make it "anti-Trek."

One reason I see Abrams Trek as consistent is that it really has told a more tightly wound, less episodic, story than previous Treks have. These two movies are more connected to each other, so you don't have the branching off of multiple adventures and reconciling their timeline.

I haven't liked every aspect of the IDW comics (Gary Mitchell being my prime annoyance) but inconsistencies have seem to be minimal.

 

[OpenMaw]

What is the link between 'canonical' status and a 'higher quality product'? I do not see an obvious link between the care put into a story and whether it is unambiguous between the 2009 movie and the comic book whether Ambassador Spock's ship launched before or after Romulus was destroyed.

Well, though not quite what I think was being driven at, more time would have allowed them to not make some of the huge visual blunders they did with some of the comics. Having the movie Enterprise or LCARS stuff just randomly show up because the artists are in a hurry or just don't give a crap would definitely add some polish.

Narratively, maintaining a stronger cohesion between the comic stories and the films would have provided a more consistent feeling to everything, which, YMMV, could raise the quality of the EU material. As it stands I don't buy for one second any of the events seen in the games, or comics, took place between 09 and ID. They just don't fit what we are shown in the characters.

What's so tricky about it? The comics aren't canon, that's stated and established many times over. The only exception was that one interview where Orci was goaded and manipulated into calling them canon, but Orci recanted that within a day.

Or are you referring to the fact that Orci has to sign off on the comics to make sure they aren't covering plot material he has planned for the movies, therefore meaning anything we see in the comics won't be in the movies, like the Klingon war everyone seems to think Trek XIII will be about? That's different from being canon.

I think the comics oversold Orci's actual level of involvement to make them seem more "official" (I'd bet that the '09 Countdown issues he's credited with were more "story by").

Yeah, pretty much this is what I was getting at. For just as many times as people are hammering in that we heard they weren't canonical, I had heard the exact opposite said.

Now, since there seems to be some defensive attitudes on this point let me make it perfectly clear. I don't actually care whether they are or not. That was not the point of my post. I was merely pointing out that we have seen how easily stories in the EU can be washed away by the next film. There's just no keeping it all together. Not even if you adopt the "big strokes" approach. It's going to get destroyed, eventually, by official on screen stories that say with no ambiguity that "things didn't happen that way."

I can't speak for OpenMaw, but to me, it seems like if there was going to be centralized creative control as you describe above, then the person or people doing that control (perhaps a brand management team at CBS) could have done the job right and allowed ALL of it to be canon. If that meant less output but greater care and a higher quality product, so be it. But of course, that runs counter to our corporate culture, and as KDID already pointed out, the pooch is already screwed on this score.

What would really be needed is a BS filter. Someone specifically there to keep track of things and make sure, at least generally, it all held together. The problem is it would tie the hands of the comic writers pretty much right off. If you follow Kirk's dialogue from STID for example, the Star Trek Game pretty much can't happen, a number of the comics can't happen as they are, either. Because according to STID, nobody died under Kirk's command for his first year.

That just wouldn't be prudent, though, because you'd have to tie the hands of somebody, somewhere to keep it consistent. SO it could , in that instance it could result in a less interesting/entertaining product.

 

[fireproof78]

What is the link between 'canonical' status and a 'higher quality product'? I do not see an obvious link between the care put into a story and whether it is unambiguous between the 2009 movie and the comic book whether Ambassador Spock's ship launched before or after Romulus was destroyed.

Well, though not quite what I think was being driven at, more time would have allowed them to not make some of the huge visual blunders they did with some of the comics. Having the movie Enterprise or LCARS stuff just randomly show up because the artists are in a hurry or just don't give a crap would definitely add some polish.

Narratively, maintaining a stronger cohesion between the comic stories and the films would have provided a more consistent feeling to everything, which, YMMV, could raise the quality of the EU material. As it stands I don't buy for one second any of the events seen in the games, or comics, took place between 09 and ID. They just don't fit what we are shown in the characters.

What's so tricky about it? The comics aren't canon, that's stated and established many times over. The only exception was that one interview where Orci was goaded and manipulated into calling them canon, but Orci recanted that within a day.

Or are you referring to the fact that Orci has to sign off on the comics to make sure they aren't covering plot material he has planned for the movies, therefore meaning anything we see in the comics won't be in the movies, like the Klingon war everyone seems to think Trek XIII will be about? That's different from being canon.

I think the comics oversold Orci's actual level of involvement to make them seem more "official" (I'd bet that the '09 Countdown issues he's credited with were more "story by").

Yeah, pretty much this is what I was getting at. For just as many times as people are hammering in that we heard they weren't canonical, I had heard the exact opposite said.

Now, since there seems to be some defensive attitudes on this point let me make it perfectly clear. I don't actually care whether they are or not. That was not the point of my post. I was merely pointing out that we have seen how easily stories in the EU can be washed away by the next film. There's just no keeping it all together. Not even if you adopt the "big strokes" approach. It's going to get destroyed, eventually, by official on screen stories that say with no ambiguity that "things didn't happen that way."

I can't speak for OpenMaw, but to me, it seems like if there was going to be centralized creative control as you describe above, then the person or people doing that control (perhaps a brand management team at CBS) could have done the job right and allowed ALL of it to be canon. If that meant less output but greater care and a higher quality product, so be it. But of course, that runs counter to our corporate culture, and as KDID already pointed out, the pooch is already screwed on this score.

What would really be needed is a BS filter. Someone specifically there to keep track of things and make sure, at least generally, it all held together. The problem is it would tie the hands of the comic writers pretty much right off. If you follow Kirk's dialogue from STID for example, the Star Trek Game pretty much can't happen, a number of the comics can't happen as they are, either. Because according to STID, nobody died under Kirk's command for his first year.

That just wouldn't be prudent, though, because you'd have to tie the hands of somebody, somewhere to keep it consistent. SO it could , in that instance it could result in a less interesting/entertaining product.

With regards to the video game as canon, I think Christopher pointed out that that really cannot be counted. A video game, by its nature, is far more fluid, with multiple endings, character arcs and choices that will engage the player. Even Halo did a novelization of the original Halo game, allowing for the "official" events to happen while letting players have their freedom.

Also, as to Kirk's comment, I would see that as more bragging on his part, with a little bit of exaggeration, as Kirk is known to do.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I'm pretty sure Kirk's line about never losing a crewman was added as part of the reshoots, splitting the Pike's office scene from one longer scene into two parts, the latter in the bar.

 

[Mytran]

I'm not advocating a parallel timeline that always existed, I'm saying that when Nero jumped back and destroyed the Kelvin he changed the future (obviously). However, since that future previously contained numerous time travel escapades that helped to shape the Federation timeline (prior to Nero), and since those escapades will now not occur, it stands to reason that the pre-Nero timeline will be different too. Tech-talk not withstanding, Nero (to all intents and purposes) created a parallel timeline with a different past and future than the Prime timeline.

Not so, because we've seen before that a single present timeline can be affected by more than one possible future. For instance, Voyager's timeline was affected by the future in which Kes stayed with the ship and Seven never joined ("Before and After"), the future in which the ship was destroyed in a slipstream experiment ("Timeless"), and the future in which the ship took 23 years to get home and Seven died ("Endgame"). Plot the timelines and you'll see travelers from multiple different futures traveling back into the same single timeline, with the same set of characters having their lives affected by events from multiple incompatible futures.

I'm not so sure that the three examples you list are that dissimilar to what Nero did - and in all cases probably led to a similar outcome, with the splintering of a new timeline being the end result. After all, the only reason it seems to be a "single" timeline is because we (the audience) stick with a particular sequence of events. With rare exceptions we are not privvy to other realities or outcomes, so naturally would not perceive them as the "real" timeline.

Perhaps. It's challenging to reconcile fictional temporal physics with the real deal.

Ain't that the truth!

 

[Christopher]

For just as many times as people are hammering in that we heard they weren't canonical, I had heard the exact opposite said.

It was said exactly once that I know of that the comics were canonical -- Orci said so in what was evidently a joking manner when an interviewer was pressuring him to say it and he evidently just gave in to shut the guy up (and really, it was deeply obnoxious and unprofessional of the interviewer to try to browbeat his subject into agreeing with his personal wishes). Orci retracted the statement the very next day.

I was merely pointing out that we have seen how easily stories in the EU can be washed away by the next film. There's just no keeping it all together. Not even if you adopt the "big strokes" approach. It's going to get destroyed, eventually, by official on screen stories that say with no ambiguity that "things didn't happen that way."

Yes, and that's true even of tie-ins that are called canonical, like the Star Wars EU. Because ultimately using the word that way is inaccurate. The canon, by strict definition, is the original body of work as distinct from tie-ins and fanfiction. The word was originally used in Sherlock Holmes fandom specifically to mean those stories that were not pastiches or derivative works. There will always be a distinction between the canon -- the core work -- and the derivative works like tie-ins. Tie-ins can be consistent with the canon -- which is what we usually refer to as "canonical" as a shorthand -- but it's a mistake to believe they're in any way equivalent to the canon. They are separate and subordinate, and if the canon ends up evolving in a way that would require leaving its "canonical" tie-ins behind, then that's what it will do.

What would really be needed is a BS filter. Someone specifically there to keep track of things and make sure, at least generally, it all held together. The problem is it would tie the hands of the comic writers pretty much right off. If you follow Kirk's dialogue from STID for example, the Star Trek Game pretty much can't happen, a number of the comics can't happen as they are, either. Because according to STID, nobody died under Kirk's command for his first year.

There absolutely are people whose job it is to make sure it all holds together -- the attentive and talented folks at CBS Licensing who make sure all the tie-ins are consistent with canon. But as you say, requiring it to go the other way around would tie the hands of the canon's creators, and that makes no sense. Tie-in creators being restricted by canon makes sense -- after all, the whole reason our work exists is to follow the lead of the canon, to support and reflect it. But by the same token, it would make no sense for the creators of the source work to be bound by what the tie-ins do. They're free to draw on it if they choose, but it's always their choice, because it's their universe. We're just borrowing it.

So there will never be perfect consistency. Tie-ins can be compatible with canon... until they aren't. That's the best you can get.

With regards to the video game as canon, I think Christopher pointed out that that really cannot be counted. A video game, by its nature, is far more fluid, with multiple endings, character arcs and choices that will engage the player. Even Halo did a novelization of the original Halo game, allowing for the "official" events to happen while letting players have their freedom.

No, I wasn't saying that was actually, officially the case, just that it's the way it seems to me. There are instances where computer games are considered canonical within a franchise's universe, such as with Defiance, which was created to be a multimedia TV/game franchise. The events of the MMO game are treated as "real" in the show's universe and are frequently referenced in the show. But it's just the broad strokes of the events going on in the game, rather than the specifics of how individual players interact or move through the game. It seems to me that the missions are really just about running or driving to a certain place and shooting enemies that get in the way, and then when you finally reach the target site, a bit of story happens or you acquire the object you were looking for. So the overall flow of the story is going to be the same for pretty much every player. It's just the details that differ -- what happens between plot points and what character is experiencing the plot points -- and that throws me because I'm a detail-oriented person. It seems more reasonable to me that the game should be a simulation based on actual events, with those underlying events being canonical.

(Sort of like how Roddenberry's ST:TMP novelization hinted that TOS had been an "inaccurately larger-than-life" dramatization of Kirk's "real" adventures. They happened, just not quite in the way we were shown.)

Not so, because we've seen before that a single present timeline can be affected by more than one possible future. For instance, Voyager's timeline was affected by the future in which Kes stayed with the ship and Seven never joined ("Before and After"), the future in which the ship was destroyed in a slipstream experiment ("Timeless"), and the future in which the ship took 23 years to get home and Seven died ("Endgame"). Plot the timelines and you'll see travelers from multiple different futures traveling back into the same single timeline, with the same set of characters having their lives affected by events from multiple incompatible futures.

I'm not so sure that the three examples you list are that dissimilar to what Nero did - and in all cases probably led to a similar outcome, with the splintering of a new timeline being the end result. After all, the only reason it seems to be a "single" timeline is because we (the audience) stick with a particular sequence of events. With rare exceptions we are not privvy to other realities or outcomes, so naturally would not perceive them as the "real" timeline.

But from the perspective of the characters we did follow, their continuous worldlines were affected by travelers from multiple possible futures. Ultimately, with spontaneous quantum branchings happening every moment, any "timeline" is simply going to be an arbitrary set of selections among the various branchings. But once you've defined a continuous path through the multiverse as a timeline, it is then valid to say that that timeline can be visited by travelers from multiple separate futures. So yes, if Kirk Prime and Kirk Alternate (we need a better name for that universe) both went back to before 2233, they definitely could meet and interact within the same single timeline. I see no reason that shouldn't be the case.

 

[The Wormhole]

I haven't liked every aspect of the IDW comics (Gary Mitchell being my prime annoyance) but inconsistencies have seem to be minimal.

The inconsistencies in IDW's comics are anything but "minimal." We have had characters using their chest insignia like comm badges, 24th century LCARS computer displays are shockingly common, the Enterprise has been shown with TMP era nacelles and the registry number NCC-1701-D, and that's just off the top of my head.