Kelvin Timeline all but confirmed

[Locutus of Bored]

Honestly, the Romulan change is the only one that really bothers me. They're supposed to be the same species as the Vulcans, so it always seemed weird to me that Romulans got the ridges, but not the Vulcans. Things get especially weird once we throw in Spock going undercover and not being instantly identified as a Vulcan and sent packing.

In TNG: Gambit, Tallera/T'Paal was a Vulcan isolationist posing as an undercover Vulcan intelligence agent posing as a Romulan mercenary. She beamed down to the T'Karath Sanctuary on Vulcan with her ridges still on, which could mean there might be a small minority of other Vulcans who have the ridges themselves, like their Mintakan proto-Vulcan ancestors.

The episode deals with ancient psionic weapons like the Stone of Gol that target aggressive thoughts, so I wonder if the Romulan faction in the war didn't genetically modify themselves with the ridges as sort of a psionic defense against weapons of that sort. In the process, they also eliminated their own ability to communicate telepathically.

The ridged Romulans were always the grunts and the common folk forced to fight in the war, while the ridgeless Vulcanoid Romulans were the upper class and ruling class. The ridged Romulans were always there, just in TOS they were often in the background under the helmets. Eventually sometime after TOS, the ridged Romulans rose up against their betters and conquered them (possibly committing genocide against them), causing a shift in Romulan society, which is why we almost always see ridged Romulans now.

 

[Kemaiku]

While the labour class that exists beneath both of them (but only marginally above Remans, who could have originally *been* a contingent of them) are shaved, marked, and put into legal slavery aboard rigs designed to exist in deep space for years at a time. The markings could indicate what planet or dynasty of Praetor they belonged to.

Encouraged to think of it patriotically and coming to accept their existance and become a subclass of proud Romulan workers in their own right.

Room for everyone. (And possibly exiled Rihansu that refused to assimilate into the new borrowed Roman-esque society)

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Not really good enough. Doesn't explain why the Romulans didn't develop ridges until the 24th Century...but apparently had them in the 22nd as well. Unless you want to tell me that the Romulans also had an augment virus hit them.

Someone really dropped the ball on that obvious four-parter there.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Rrrrromulans have rrrrridges because they just love eating rrrrruffled potato chips.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Romulans developed ridges in the 24th century due to a century of excessive frowning.

 

[Ensign Ogahd Ahmganadai]

Romulans developed ridges in the 24th century due to a century of excessive frowning.

Now we know why Vulcans wished to purge themselves of emotions.

 

[BillJ]

Romulans developed ridges in the 24th century due to a century of excessive frowning.

And then time travelled back to the 22nd century...

 

[Mirror Mirror]

This week on "The Kelvin timeline theory totally busted" we are talking make up eh? Have you guys ever seen the list of races just totally changed, from minor the major changes?

Major races

• Romulans
• Andorians
• Tellarites
• Bolians
• Bajorans
• Jem'Hadar
• Trill
• Klingon

Minor races

• Gorn
• T
  holians
• Tiburonians
• Caitians
• Nausicaans
• Talarians
• Tarkaleans
• Rigelians
• Coridans
• Yridians
• Boslics
• Ktarians
• Norcadians

And then there is a massive list of the times they reused make up. Its just a make up change, it has zero effect in setting and no one notices. That race always looked like whatever the current look is.

 

[137th Gebirg]

And then time travelled back to the 22nd century...

It was the Temporal Cold War man! Plain as the nose on your face!

 

[Kemaiku]

Which is now on your right elbow, damn you time travel!

 

[Ensign Ogahd Ahmganadai]

I just thought of another canon violation that is unexplainable and therefore I have to "white out", or not think too hard about.

O'Brien's rank. If I'm to accept the premise that he has always been an enlisted man, I have to mentally wipe out the lieutenant's pips he wears throughout TNG until Season 6. I have to forget that he was twice referred to as "Lieutenant".

To me, this is a far more blatant violation than improved visuals.

 

[Kemaiku]

Lt. is the first enlisted rank a CPO can obtain by taking officer training in certain military structures. But it usually means going to a naval training facility for an extended leave from active service, not a correspondence course.

 

[Ensign Ogahd Ahmganadai]

It was the Temporal Cold War man! Plain as the nose on your face!

I can't be the only one who doesn't accept the Temporal Cold War as a catch-all to explain differences in ENT and DSC. To me, ENT and DSC look the way they do because they were a product of their times and were not, and should not have been, so beholden to "canon" that they deliberately made themselves look cheap and out of date.

The TCW is one of those things I tend to white out. It's less that I pretend it never happened and more that I pretend it was an utter stalemate that resulted in the timeframe being altered only slightly if at all, or at the very least creating the timeline we think of as "prime" rather than altering it from being prime.

 

[Ensign Ogahd Ahmganadai]

Lt. is the first enlisted rank a CPO can obtain by taking officer training in certain military structures. But it usually means going to a naval training facility for an extended leave from active service, not a correspondence course.

And you keep it once you earn it. You don't go back to being an enlisted man later.

 

[BillJ]

To me, this is a far more blatant violation than improved visuals.

I think the opposite. And I don't see them as "improved", they've created their own look that is completely different from the old look. Which is fine. But, I can't treat the two as the same universe.

 

[Kemaiku]

And you keep it once you earn it. You don't go back to being an enlisted man later.

Yeah. Once you take officer training, the military are investing in your advancement, you either fail the course and leave the navy, obtain Lt. rank and change your mind and buy yourself out of the service (a lot harder above NCO levels deliberately) or embrace being an officer and taking on the role.

 

[Ensign Ogahd Ahmganadai]

I think the opposite. And I don't see them as "improved" they've created their own look that is completely different from the old look. Which is fine. But, I can't treat the two as the same universe.

In my opinion, the reason you feel this way about them is that you've conditioned yourself to expect Trek to look a certain way. Also, don't forget that up until now you've seen nothing but brief clips edited together to get people excited. The still shots released later, to me, anyway, look far different and a bit closer to what we expect.

At this point I know that your the type of Trek fan who thinks of "canon" as literally every aspect of everything you see on the screen. It is obvious that there are plenty of others who don't think that way. I do hope you can at least see this as a "soft reboot" or "visual reboot" that alters visuals alone and not history. I don't expect to hear that the Romulan war never happened, or that Kirk is now Jane Kirk, or anything like that.

 

[BillJ]

In my opinion, the reason you feel this way about them is that you've conditioned yourself to expect Trek to look a certain way.

Been watching for forty-plus years. Of course I expect it to look a certain way.

It is obvious that there are plenty of others who don't think that way. I do hope you can at least see this as a "soft reboot" or "visual reboot" that alters visuals alone and not history.

I doubt CBS cares how I see it, as long as I'm paying for All-Access.

 

[Ensign Ogahd Ahmganadai]

Been watching for forty-plus years. Of course I expect it to look a certain way.

Here's the problem with that mindset; it isn't going to. It looked one way during TOS. Another during TMP, still another for the other TOS films. Yet another for TNG, and the only reason we got so used to it is that we spent way, waaaaay more time in the late 24th century than any other time, and the same art directors and set decorators were there throughout (more or less). To me, the franchise needed a shake-up. The last time it really got one was TNG.

Now, I fully expect that you will say that if they wanted to totally change the look, they should have gone into Trek's future rather than its past. Sorry, I don't agree. I think it's well past time that the TOS era actually look like the future. Not only that, but TOS already had a shake-up; there is simply no frakking way that TMP takes place a scant 3-5 years after TOS, like we're asked to believe. There is also no way a mere "refit" transformed every aspect of the Enterprise, right down to its superstructure. That wasn't a refit. That was a brand new ship. The total change to the Klingons got explained...over 30 years later, but at the time no one even bothered to make an excuse for it. This has all been gone over in detail by greater minds than I in this very thread.

I doubt CBS cares how I see it, as long as I'm paying for All-Access.

I don't really care what CBS thinks. I just hope people learn to accept this series. I'm continually flabbergasted by how long-time Trekkers seem intent on rejecting any new chapter of the franchise. Maybe they think they're protecting it, keeping it pure, but all they're really doing is shoving it into a little box and defining it as narrowly as possible; finite diversity in limited combinations. Considering how liberal most Trek fans are, it's weird how they act like a bunch of old members of the Religious Right when confronted with anything they're not used to.

 

[137th Gebirg]

I can't be the only one who doesn't accept the Temporal Cold War as a catch-all to explain differences in ENT and DSC. To me, ENT and DSC look the way they do because they were a product of their times and were not, and should not have been, so beholden to "canon" that they deliberately made themselves look cheap and out of date.

The TCW is one of those things I tend to white out. It's less that I pretend it never happened and more that I pretend it was an utter stalemate that resulted in the timeframe being altered only slightly if at all, or at the very least creating the timeline we think of as "prime" rather than altering it from being prime.

I don't know about that - when we got to see the timestream "tapestry" with all the interweaving lines emanating out of Daniels' little magic box, it might actually be quite easy for us 3-dimensional hairless monkeys to go yanking on strings, either intentionally or by accident, resulting in some unforeseen catastrophic consequences across multiple time-streams and universes (or both). I didn't care much for the TCW concept either, as time travel stories are rarely done right in episodic format, much less for an entire season, but it was, for better or worse, a big deal to the show and has inexorably become a part of the canon. And yes, it could easily be used as a mega-McGuffin to explain variances in series' continuity, irrespective of our personal feelings on the matter, sadly.