Romulus - The original Homeworld of the Vulcan Species?
- Thread starter Unimatrix Q
- Start date
I just hate that kind of warring-camps approach to Trek fandom, that exclusionistic mentality pitting different parts of the franchise against each other. Star Trek isn't some unchanging fossil, it's a living, growing thing that's always evolving and adding new ideas. That's a feature, not a bug. Sure, not all the ideas are gems, but they never were. There are good things and bad things in every incarnation of Trek.
My usage of the word theory meets definitions six and seven:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/theory
I choose not to accept Enterprise and the JJ movies as part of my conception of "real" Star Trek universe. Therefore my approach to topics within that universe will reflect my views. You are certainly free to have and express a different opinion. I respect that. However, I will not be following suit in limited my speculation and conjecture by the information presented in Enterprise or the JJ films.
P.S. I should say I also don't include The Animated Series either.
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Thank you, Christopher and Wormhole, for the answers. However, I really am more interested in how those ridges were introduced to the species. Interbreeding with Remans and other conquered beings? We're they an unpopular minority on Vulcan who fled with the Romulans? Augments?
And for the record, I completely favor exclusionism in any fandom. Buffy ended after Season 5. Babylon 5 never had any sequels. No one in Star Trek ever said, "Get this cheese to sickbay." Life is better that way.
And for the record, I completely favor exclusionism in any fandom. Buffy ended after Season 5. Babylon 5 never had any sequels. No one in Star Trek ever said, "Get this cheese to sickbay." Life is better that way.
It's all canon. Especially the cheese.
Sure, for Christopher, who has to follow the terms of his contract. For a fan who is into ST for enjoyment and not a paycheck, there is no reason to countenance such cringeworthy crap. Why should I struggle to overcome the stupidity of Threshhold or TFF when I have the freedom to ignore them?
This is an attitude the licensors must support. It would cost them dollars if, say, Star Wars fans were forced to accept the prequels with equal standing to the originals in their hearts, killing their desire for Star Wars merchandise the way Anakin killed those kids.
Well, Star Wars is just a handful of movies; all the rest is in the fuzzy "extended universe" territory where feuds of this sort seldom gain relevance. Few fight to make the televised Wars "canon", largely thanks to them all being animations directed at kids (except for the Christmas Special, the mentioning of which must be followed by a cleansing ritual).
Trek in turn is hundreds upon hundreds of hours of visual entertainment, the movies being a relatively minor part of it. It really isn't much of a phenomenon without the TV bits. The best and most-quoted stories aren't movie scripts or even individual TV episodes, they are arching structures created by many writers, sometimes unaware of the contributions of the others, sometimes deliberately perverting those contributions for greater fun.
The storylines being discussed here are definitely among those that derive from dozens of episodes and several movies, rather than from the work of a single writer. And they all begin with the derivative crap known as "Balance of Terror", from a cringeworthy show traditionally dismissed by many. But they couldn't be discussed without acknowledging that piece of non-art first.
Picking and choosing is fine for getting entertained (who has time to do episode marathons anyway?). For discussions, though, it's just throwing the entire maternity ward out with the bathwater.
Umm, and referring back to all of the material costs us nothing: resources like Chrissie's transcripts site send not a cent to Paramount, CBS or the families of the writers...
Timo Saloniemi
Trek in turn is hundreds upon hundreds of hours of visual entertainment, the movies being a relatively minor part of it. It really isn't much of a phenomenon without the TV bits. The best and most-quoted stories aren't movie scripts or even individual TV episodes, they are arching structures created by many writers, sometimes unaware of the contributions of the others, sometimes deliberately perverting those contributions for greater fun.
The storylines being discussed here are definitely among those that derive from dozens of episodes and several movies, rather than from the work of a single writer. And they all begin with the derivative crap known as "Balance of Terror", from a cringeworthy show traditionally dismissed by many. But they couldn't be discussed without acknowledging that piece of non-art first.
Picking and choosing is fine for getting entertained (who has time to do episode marathons anyway?). For discussions, though, it's just throwing the entire maternity ward out with the bathwater.
Umm, and referring back to all of the material costs us nothing: resources like Chrissie's transcripts site send not a cent to Paramount, CBS or the families of the writers...
Timo Saloniemi
No one's saying it's not canon. But there's no requirement for a fan to acknowledge all canon, and there's no need for that to be any sort of "warring factions" type thing; just means that different people like different things. If you want to ignore what you don't like and pay attention to what you do like, what's the big deal? Two people that have different preferences towards what to pay attention to in Trek and what not to pay attention to can still be friendly about their Trek interest, doesn't have to become some kind of fight.
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Also, with the reboot movies, TPTB are basically asking everybody to ignore all previous Trek series, movies, books, and whatever else, in favor of this new vision of the franchise. Is that factionalism as well?
Them's fightin' words.
Kor
Them's fightin' words.
Kor
Well, while I won't comment on Timo's appraisal of TOS or the episode quality-wise, "Balance of Terror" is extremely derivative. It's basically a straight adaptation of The Enemy Below, just moving it into space.
Well, guess which TOS episode I rewatch the most often...
The point probably being that "quality" isn't much of a criterion either in terms of direct enjoyment, or in terms of deriving second-order enjoyment from nitpicking, speculating and arguing. I wouldn't skip "The one with the cheese" for anything, either. (Even if that covers most of VOY!)
In terms of Trek's own "expanded universe", the absolute top fun bit for me is in explaining how Romulus is called Romulus both by the Romulans ("Minefield") and independently by the humans (The Romulan Way). A cosmic coincidence? Perhaps not...
Timo Saloniemi
The point probably being that "quality" isn't much of a criterion either in terms of direct enjoyment, or in terms of deriving second-order enjoyment from nitpicking, speculating and arguing. I wouldn't skip "The one with the cheese" for anything, either. (Even if that covers most of VOY!)
In terms of Trek's own "expanded universe", the absolute top fun bit for me is in explaining how Romulus is called Romulus both by the Romulans ("Minefield") and independently by the humans (The Romulan Way). A cosmic coincidence? Perhaps not...
Timo Saloniemi
Granted, there are individual episodes I disregard because they make no sense or are contradicted by other episodes. But disregarding whole series seems like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Every series has its duds, and every series has its gems. I can understand an approach that would disregard "The Alternative Factor" and acknowledge "Similitude," say -- my own approach does that -- but I cannot see the value in an approach that would do the reverse. Making the decision on a series-wide level means that you're including a lot of garbage and excluding a lot that has value.
That's needlessly melodramatic. Nobody's being "forced" to do a damn thing. This is recreation. You're not employees of Lucasfilm or CBS or whoever, so they can't make you do anything. But they have the right to tell their stories the way they choose. They're under no obligation to change their approach to telling stories just because certain individuals may not like their decisions. Stories need to have their own integrity, to be shaped by what the storytellers themselves feel is right for them. Some people are going to dislike some of their decisions, that's inevitable. And different people are going to dislike different things. So it would be counterproductive for storytellers to try to chase after fan approval or make certain parts of the story "optional" to pander to exclusionists. They'd drive themselves crazy trying, and it would only hurt the integrity of the work. The whole thing is already optional anyway. You could just walk away and be a fan of something different. Saying they're "forcing" you to do something is ridiculous.
They're doing nothing of the sort. They made a point of including Leonard Nimoy and defining their new continuity as an alternate timeline branching off of the original. That's acknowledging what came before, honoring it and choosing to preserve it by operating alongside it instead of overwriting it.
And even if it had been a total reboot, unconnected to the prior continuity, that's still not "asking us to ignore" what came before. Batman: The Animated Series didn't ask us to ignore the Batman comics. The Daniel Craig James Bond reboot didn't ask us to ignore the previous Bond movies. Elementary doesn't ask us to ignore Sherlock. They're just alternate versions of the story. It's not like you're only allowed to be aware of one version of a character. It's not like there's only one slot in your brain labeled Star Trek or Batman or Sherlock Holmes and you have to empty it out of one version before you can plug in a new one. You can be a fan of as many parallel versions of a single concept as you like. I have no trouble being a fan of Batman '66, Batman: TAS, and The Dark Knight all at once, or being a fan of both Elementary and the original Doyle stories at once. So why should anyone have to "ignore" one version of Star Trek in order to enjoy another? That makes no sense.
It's not needlessly melodramatic to frame Trek fans disagreeing on what aspects of the franchise to accept using the metaphors of warring camps or tribal divisions? No one's warring with each other, it's recreation. Different people are going to dislike different things, it'd be counterproductive for a fan to insist that no one exclude a full series just because they themselves include all series. The whole thing is optional, you can just accept that not everyone will have the same outlook on a fictional universe that you do.
It's not insisting, it's expressing an opinion. People don't have to be rigid. They can listen to alternative points of view and sometimes be convinced to change their minds. I think that people who shut out entire series are missing a lot of good stuff, because every series has its strong episodes. I'm advocating a more open approach because I think there are benefits in it. Nobody has to be convinced of my point of view, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong to advocate it.
If you're talking about The Clone Wars and Rebels, they are very much part of the Star Wars canon. Just because their animated doesn't mean they're directed at kids, they're pretty much on the same level as the movies. Rebels is pretty light, but by the end TCW got surprisingly dark and fairly violent.
When it comes to picking and choosing what you accept about a franchise, that's fine for yourself, but it's not fair to those of us who accept everything to limit what we can use in our arguments.
Well, I know I personally discard 90% of Enterprise, although not on an episode-by-episode basis. I'll accept some of the overarching social and political trends in the series, as well as some of the species and some of the ships (even though the Romulan and Klingon vessels are going right into the 'late 24th century' file in my brain). I'll even jive with some of the time travel stories. However, the characters and plots in that show make me very unhappy. Voyager is much more tricky, since it adds a lot to my favorite era, but it also has Neelix, so it's kind of a wash. (That was a cheap shot. My real problem with Voyager is the inconsistency of the characters, plot quality and continuity.)
Really? Just last page, didn't you tell Uniderth that he couldn't choose to dismiss the canon he dislikes, even from his 'personal canon'? You and some of the other posters came across as if you find any fan who ignores any parts of the canon to be a lesser fan. When I stated that I pretend some fictional event didn't exist (because it was awful), the response was "it's canon," as if I were fanning wrong. Seemed a bit tribalistic, ya know?
Umm... The movies are directed at kids. All of Star Wars is directed at kids and always has been. The whole thing is George Lucas's homage to the adventure serials he grew up with as a kid, and those serials were directed at kids. There's nothing wrong with fiction being directed at kids, and no reason it can't be enjoyed by adults too.
"Couldn't?" Of course not, what a bizarre way of reframing it. I have no power to control someone else's actions, so how could I possibly say they "couldn't" do something? I just said I disagreed with it. Our culture needs to get past this attitude that being disagreed with is some kind of assault on one's freedom.
I always years ago Lucas said that the original trilogy was meant for "the kid in us," not specifically for those of child-age.
In recent years (especially with The Phantom Menace, he has been more insistent that the whole thing was always for kids.
But The sight of barbecued Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru in Star Wars (1977) is a little grim for children's viewing, in my opinion.
Kor
In recent years (especially with The Phantom Menace, he has been more insistent that the whole thing was always for kids.
But The sight of barbecued Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru in Star Wars (1977) is a little grim for children's viewing, in my opinion.
Kor
Not exclusively for children, of course, but for families.
I saw the original film in the theater when I was nine years old. When I was that age, my father would never have allowed me to see a film that wasn't for kids. And there were always countless Star Wars toys -- and this was long before toy collecting became a hobby of adult fans. Plus there were all the bedsheets and Halloween costumes and the like. I went trick-or-treating as C-3PO once. So trust me, the movies were absolutely marketed to kids from the get-go. I know because I was there, and I was the target audience.
That's why I'm so bewildered by the modern myth that the Star Wars franchise was somehow originally meant for adults only. I know from my own direct experience that that's revisionist history. At the time they came out, the original films were never seen as anything more than lightweight popcorn movies for the whole family.
Ever seen the death of Bambi's mother? Lots of kids' movies and books go dark. Nobody's saying Star Wars was meant for 3-year-olds. But most kids who are, say, nine years old can handle some scary stuff, and even enjoy doing so.
