Is Star Trek V canon?

[ZapBrannigan]

As everyone knows, there's a TAS episode where the Enterprise physically connects to a Klingon ship so they can combine the force of their propulsion systems. And yet, until this thread came along, I never thought about ST5 or the animated story when hearing the "never been this close" line in ST6.

The classic-cast movies never cared in the least about continuity, and I guess by ST6 I wasn't even mentally checking for it. When I heard Kirk's "I lost a brother once" line in ST5, I thought he was going to reference "Operation: Anihilate", and for a moment it was thrilling that they would look back and give Kirk some real-person memory. But no, it was just a bit of facile rhetoric about Spock being Kirk's brother. They didn't remember a thing and they didn't care. So the Klingon business in ST6, including their Pepto-Bismol blood, didn't matter, because beyond a certain point you start to feel like a fool for caring.

I might add that it isn't just the classic-cast movies. There's a TNG movie in which Troi gets mind-raped by an alien telepath. The scene is line-for-line copied from an unrelated TNG episode, but no character had the real-person memory, the awareness, to say "this happened once before."

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Although it might be interesting to try to come up with a Trek viewing order that only includes episodes and movies that are referenced subsequently.

I tried something like that on a thread here a year or two ago. I tried figuring out which TOS episodes were explicitly a part of the movies' backstory through direct or oblique references. (And yes, I know that officially they're ALL canon. This was just a fun intellectual exercise, nothing more.) I think I ultimately ended up with about 50 of the 79 episodes referenced in some form or another.

EDIT: Found the post! It's here if you want to marvel at how anal-retentive I can get during a bout of insomnia. Amazingly, I ended up with 59 out of the 79 TOS episodes being canon through inclusion of things like alien races, the UFP flag, or stuff the Vulcan mind meld.

 

[DonIago]

That's fairly impressive...and surprising...

But now try doing it for TNG/DS9/VOY.

It might almost be easier to watch the episodes in reverse order to catch the episodes referenced that way, except then you may still have to watch those earlier episodes to verify whether they in turn referenced things from earlier episodes.

DS9 would likely get a huge swath of episodes simply by virtue of the Dominion war (unless you wanted to get particularly retentive and say that you needed not just a mention of the war but specific incidents from it). There's probably some pretty droppable S1 and 2 episodes though (anyone remember that "Q-Less" ever happened?).

VOY is at least pretty self-referential. First you've got the Kazon and Vidiians, then you've got the Borg to wrap things up I suppose (though Chakotay did once hilariously say it wasn't every day they go looking for them...). Still, some "minor" events crept in, Like "Year of Hell" and "Equinox".

I imagine TNG might suffer most overall. Lots of episodes with one-and-done races.

 

[Qonundrum]

The Internet claims that: "Gene Roddenberry publicly expressed his own dissatisfaction (with TFF) by stating that certain plot elements were 'apocryphal,' although it is not known exactly which elements he was referring to."

My guesses for that might include, but not be limited or even relating to:

1. Sybok - Possibly for his ability to use empathic telepathy mind control, it would surely take more than reminding a person of how they were made sad and/or abused in life to get them to become a mindless slave? Never mind how he could probe minds ever so magically
2. Scotty - "I know this ship like the back of my hand" (promptly gets knocked down by the corridor pipe shroud because he's not looking where he's going and it's apparently a funny scene)
3. Chekov and Sulu - "I believe we are lost" (because the ship's navigator and helmsman are just total doofuses all of a sudden, and it's apparently a funny scene. "The Way to Eden" had both of them given far better scenes.)
4. Uhura - dancin' nekkid (because she couldn't figure out a better way to cause a distraction than to play into sexist stereotypes and it's apparently a funny scene)
5. The Romulan seemed more Vulcan, if not a generic stick figure with much make-up and perfume you could smell from across the screen, but with no sense of cagey deceit they are known for in TOS (and TNG), looked more like a store mannequin, and had no real point to the story
6. "Go climb a rock" (what Kirk was wearing under his blue coat while climbing a mountain before he switched to his command tunic, and it's apparently a funny scene)
7. Even the electronic log book boings a spring and fails (seriously??) (because the ship made it and the ship isn't properly built and it's apparently a funny scene)
8. implied fart joke (it's apparently a funny scene)
9. McCoy - wants to sing "Row Row Row Your Boat" (it's apparently a funny scene, though he's also arguably better than, say others' attempts to sign - like Bilbo Baggins (the video bit from "Malibu U" also has a very young Erin Gray (Buck Rogers '79) in it) and then there's that other video about a song whose title letters happen to be "L.S.D." because Shatner's covering Beatles mid/late-60s inane fully stuff...)
10. Spock = "Hold your horse" and other conscious attempts at horsing around with the script seem illogical when coming from Spock... (it's apparently a funny scene)
11. Kirk - "Plan B., B as in 'Barricade'." It's a borderline comparison to "Batman 1966" with the Riddler making riddles for Batman to instantly figure out perfectly the first time while not even needing to think for half a millisecond to come to the precise conclusion that Kirk was thinking. At least it makes Scotty a perfect Mary Sue/Gary Stu/whatever since he's doing everything the writer wants on cue. (it's apparently a funny scene)
12. Only 78 decks? Should have made it 99 decks, at which point you can have both a drinking game and start to sing "__ bottles of beer on the wall" to make the dreadful gravity boots escape/recapture scenes pass even more quickly. And, why not, since the movie's loaded with out of place humor, they could have had Barbara Feldon do a cameo as a guard or something... (it's apparently a funny scene)
13. The crew know Morse Code. Surely at some time before saying the spelled out phrase twice would they realize "Oh, stand back. Something's about to go boom boom!" (it's apparently a funny scene)
14. Talbot smokes cigars, but then again there are numerous examples of "no smoking" signs inside NCC-1701 (bridge, transporter room) - unless those signs are 4th wall breaking regarding how every time there's a dogfight in space the bridge and/or transporter room causes a lot of smoke, and that's apparently funny?) It's not a funny scene because the Enterprise no longer has the signs and nobody's on the ship while puffin' away, so...

I'll somehow attempt to defend Klaa being an outlaw of his own people trying to find glory by destroying the Enterprise with Kirk in it and then becoming pally in the end once he gets to know Kirk for 2 seconds... mostly because "The Day of the Dove" did the same thing better, hefty shoulder slaps and all...

Actually TFF genuinely does have a number of rather good scenes, but they really had to go down the comedy road (which is probably what Shatner had been told to do by the studio, given the success of TVH. Even the lack of ILM wouldn't have felt noticed as much if the movie didn't ham it up with the humor.)

 

[Dukhat]

As everyone knows, there's a TAS episode where the Enterprise physically connects to a Klingon ship so they can combine the force of their propulsion systems. And yet, until this thread came along, I never thought about ST5 or the animated story when hearing the "never been this close" line in ST6.

The classic-cast movies never cared in the least about continuity, and I guess by ST6 I wasn't even mentally checking for it. When I heard Kirk's "I lost a brother once" line in ST5, I thought he was going to reference "Operation: Anihilate", and for a moment it was thrilling that they would look back and give Kirk some real-person memory. But no, it was just a bit of facile rhetoric about Spock being Kirk's brother. They didn't remember a thing and they didn't care. So the Klingon business in ST6, including their Pepto-Bismol blood, didn't matter, because beyond a certain point you start to feel like a fool for caring.

I might add that it isn't just the classic-cast movies. There's a TNG movie in which Troi gets mind-raped by an alien telepath. The scene is line-for-line copied from an unrelated TNG episode, but no character had the real-person memory, the awareness, to say "this happened once before."

I believe the only reason Klingon blood was pink in TUC was so that they could avoid having an NC-17 rating instead of a PG rating. They had no intention of keeping Klingon blood pink in future Trek episodes where we saw Klingon blood (and alternately, when we saw Klingon blood before TUC, it was red as well.)

And yes, I also thought Kirk was referring to his actual dead brother when he first spoke that line. But he wasn't, and now that's one of my least-favorite lines in the film, which isn't actually saying much.

 

[DonIago]

I'm pretty sure it was also for the Colonel West ending. The color of his blood gives away that he's not actually a Klingon.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

12. Only 78 decks?

That's the worst ship continuity error in franchise history.

In addition to wanting a super-tall elevator shaft just for the thrill-comedy aspect, I think Shatner had another thing in mind. Decks could be called stories, as in floors. And Shatner appeared in 78 of the 79 original episodes, or stories. So maybe 78 was a clever, Shatner-centric reference and not a random number of decks.

 

[Paradise City]

It's canon. The remarkable bond between the star trio of McCoy, Spock and Kirk as Sybok peers into their souls and tests that bond is a remarkable way to crown legendary relationships at the sunset of their careers that needs to be a part of Trek in my view. For me it's their most majestic moment in all of Trek.

As for the "centre of the galaxy" hub-bub, well, there's alot of references to that in TOS. It's TNG that gave the "centre of the galaxy" a different treatment.

Insofar as the BoP being pals with the Enterprise-A at the end of that movie. It's Koord that arranges for that. It doesn't really impact on the events featured in the next film. Governments may make war or be hostile but that doesn't mean in certain isolated instances crews won't make isolated truces. I think technically the Federation isn't at war since they have full diplomatic relations with the Klingons.

 

[BigDaveX]

If anyone's going to try and discount TFF because it's inconsistent with other Trek episodes and films in certain places, then you'd also have to discount about half of the first seasons of TOS and TNG, which were all over the place in continuity terms due to the writers still trying to get everything nailed down.

 

[STEPhon IT]

I believe the only reason Klingon blood was pink in TUC was so that they could avoid having an NC-17 rating instead of a PG rating. They had no intention of keeping Klingon blood pink in future Trek episodes where we saw Klingon blood (and alternately, when we saw Klingon blood before TUC, it was red as well.)

I've read this theory from articles and those retcon Star Trek books and of course Memory Alpha, but director and writer Nicholas Meyer has never corroborated this theory. In his audio commentaries for Star Trek VI, and his descriptive book titled, "The View From the Bridge", he states on page 217, paragraph 1:
"There was a debate over the color of blood, which I wanted to be different than human blood. I wound up choosing a pink shade that seemed suitably weird, only to regret my choice down the road when I realized it reminded me of Pepto-Bismol."

No bullshit MPAA stuff, no ratings issues like in The Temple OF Doom, nada. Especially NC-17 is a rating prone for sexual content than blood, and R ratings are geared with a combination of strong language, sexuality, and violence. Star Trek VI was not even close to an R rating.

 

[Paradise City]

All the mucking about they did trying to cobble together excuses for the head ridges or lack of thereof, the varying colour of the blood seems like an easily explainable matter in comparison.
.

 

[Dukhat]

I've read this theory from articles and those retcon Star Trek books and of course Memory Alpha, but director and writer Nicholas Meyer has never corroborated this theory. In his audio commentaries for Star Trek VI, and his descriptive book titled, "The View From the Bridge", he states on page 217, paragraph 1:
"There was a debate over the color of blood, which I wanted to be different than human blood. I wound up choosing a pink shade that seemed suitably weird, only to regret my choice down the road when I realized it reminded me of Pepto-Bismol."

No bullshit MPAA stuff, no ratings issues like in The Temple OF Doom, nada. Especially NC-17 is a rating prone for sexual content than blood, and R ratings are geared with a combination of strong language, sexuality, and violence. Star Trek VI was not even close to an R rating.

If that's true, I stand corrected. But the fact was that there was never any intention of continuing to show that Klingon blood was pink beyond that movie.

 

[STEPhon IT]

This just shows directors have their own vision for a film and some don't follow what was done before. Besides I'd follow Meyer's track record of quality than any of TNG producers did.

I doubt JJ Abrams got into that blood nonsense in Into Darkness.

 

[Dukhat]

This just shows directors have their own vision for a film and some don't follow what was done before.

I get that. But not many films are made where there's a tv show concurrently being produced in the same universe (at least back then). Both TUC and TNG were produced by the same people at the same time. So it stands to reason that decisions made in the movie would also affect what happens in the show.

 

[STEPhon IT]

Yes. There's more to the blood drama I believe. Nick Meyer, on record, has detested Spock coming back after leaving St:II. It was Nimoy who altered the baddies from Romulan to Klingon in the retched piece of crap called Star Trek III; and it was that film where Klingon blood was red, and making that species not very smart.

In VI, the Klingons are Klingons and are a formidable threat even if weakened by the crisis. Is it possible VI was Meyer's big F' YOU to The Search for Spock?

 

[Dukhat]

I'm not really sure how the Klingon storyline in TUC is in any way a diss to TSFS.

 

[Lord Garth]

EDIT: Found the post! It's here if you want to marvel at how anal-retentive I can get during a bout of insomnia. Amazingly, I ended up with 59 out of the 79 TOS episodes being canon through inclusion of things like alien races, the UFP flag, or stuff the Vulcan mind meld.

This is truly impressive. I've been posting on TrekBBS on-and-off for 19 years and I can say what you linked to is possibly the most comprehensive post I've ever seen.

Congratulations!

 

[2takesfrakes]

My guesses for that might include, but not be limited or even relating to:

1. Sybok - Possibly for his ability to use empathic telepathy mind control, it would surely take more than reminding a person of how they were made sad and/or abused in life to get them to become a mindless slave? Never mind how he could probe minds ever so magically
2. Scotty - "I know this ship like the back of my hand" (promptly gets knocked down by the corridor pipe shroud because he's not looking where he's going and it's apparently a funny scene)
3. Chekov and Sulu - "I believe we are lost" (because the ship's navigator and helmsman are just total doofuses all of a sudden, and it's apparently a funny scene. "The Way to Eden" had both of them given far better scenes.)
4. Uhura - dancin' nekkid (because she couldn't figure out a better way to cause a distraction than to play into sexist stereotypes and it's apparently a funny scene)
5. The Romulan seemed more Vulcan, if not a generic stick figure with much make-up and perfume you could smell from across the screen, but with no sense of cagey deceit they are known for in TOS (and TNG), looked more like a store mannequin, and had no real point to the story
6. "Go climb a rock" (what Kirk was wearing under his blue coat while climbing a mountain before he switched to his command tunic, and it's apparently a funny scene)
7. Even the electronic log book boings a spring and fails (seriously??) (because the ship made it and the ship isn't properly built and it's apparently a funny scene)
8. implied fart joke (it's apparently a funny scene)
9. McCoy - wants to sing "Row Row Row Your Boat" (it's apparently a funny scene, though he's also arguably better than, say others' attempts to sign - like Bilbo Baggins (the video bit from "Malibu U" also has a very young Erin Gray (Buck Rogers '79) in it) and then there's that other video about a song whose title letters happen to be "L.S.D." because Shatner's covering Beatles mid/late-60s inane fully stuff...)
10. Spock = "Hold your horse" and other conscious attempts at horsing around with the script seem illogical when coming from Spock... (it's apparently a funny scene)
11. Kirk - "Plan B., B as in 'Barricade'." It's a borderline comparison to "Batman 1966" with the Riddler making riddles for Batman to instantly figure out perfectly the first time while not even needing to think for half a millisecond to come to the precise conclusion that Kirk was thinking. At least it makes Scotty a perfect Mary Sue/Gary Stu/whatever since he's doing everything the writer wants on cue. (it's apparently a funny scene)
12. Only 78 decks? Should have made it 99 decks, at which point you can have both a drinking game and start to sing "__ bottles of beer on the wall" to make the dreadful gravity boots escape/recapture scenes pass even more quickly. And, why not, since the movie's loaded with out of place humor, they could have had Barbara Feldon do a cameo as a guard or something... (it's apparently a funny scene)
13. The crew know Morse Code. Surely at some time before saying the spelled out phrase twice would they realize "Oh, stand back. Something's about to go boom boom!" (it's apparently a funny scene)
14. Talbot smokes cigars, but then again there are numerous examples of "no smoking" signs inside NCC-1701 (bridge, transporter room) - unless those signs are 4th wall breaking regarding how every time there's a dogfight in space the bridge and/or transporter room causes a lot of smoke, and that's apparently funny?) It's not a funny scene because the Enterprise no longer has the signs and nobody's on the ship while puffin' away, so...

I'll somehow attempt to defend Klaa being an outlaw of his own people trying to find glory by destroying the Enterprise with Kirk in it and then becoming pally in the end once he gets to know Kirk for 2 seconds... mostly because "The Day of the Dove" did the same thing better, hefty shoulder slaps and all...

Actually TFF genuinely does have a number of rather good scenes, but they really had to go down the comedy road (which is probably what Shatner had been told to do by the studio, given the success of TVH. Even the lack of ILM wouldn't have felt noticed as much if the movie didn't ham it up with the humor.)

"Oh, my ..."
That's quite a lot of ground you covered, there! Much to digest, at one sitting. But I must admit ... I find myself being swayed!

GR also objected to some things he'd done in TOS and it was said he'd get rid of large bits of TOS he wrote if he could and of course he decanonised TAS. So I'm not happy to decanonise stuff based on GR's fights with TPTB.

I'd rather get rid of GEN than TFF. The only thing you'd need is to explain is what happened to the 1701-D and the rest of the TNG movies could run fine. In fact all the TNG movies are far more independent than the TOS movies.

This is very interesting to me. Do you recall any examples of what Gene didn't like about his work in The Classic Series? I'm not sure I ever heard of that, before, of him complaining thus. The cartoon was pretty bad, I have to say .. script wise, it was bad. The design of the characters and some of the rotoscoping was really great, though! Visually, it's a very cute show. Nurse Chapel benefitted from the format, especially.

GENERATIONS' problem was the insistence on including Shatner. His demands forced on the project forced a lot of camp into the plot, overall. I read an interview where Marina stated that Generations "should've been 'our' movie." That all TOS elements should've been excised, or better yet, never entered into it. And I couldn't agree more that assessment!

 

[Commishsleer]

"Oh, my ..."
That's quite a lot of ground you covered, there! Much to digest, at one sitting. But I must admit ... I find myself being swayed!


This is very interesting to me. Do you recall any examples of what Gene didn't like about his work in The Classic Series? I'm not sure I ever heard of that, before, of him complaining thus. The cartoon was pretty bad, I have to say .. script wise, it was bad. The design of the characters and some of the rotoscoping was really great, though! Visually, it's a very cute show. Nurse Chapel benefitted from the format, especially.

GENERATIONS' problem was the insistence on including Shatner. His demands forced on the project forced a lot of camp into the plot, overall. I read an interview where Marina stated that Generations "should've been 'our' movie." That all TOS elements should've been excised, or better yet, never entered into it. And I couldn't agree more that assessment!

This is where I found some of the info about Gene wanting to decanonise stuff. Its from TREKBBS but I didn't know how to find it here. The source is user PMBLOCK (allegedly Paula Block) who used to work with GR so I'm taking her word for it. She even said GR wanted to get rid of all of TOS once TNG got successful. Also the stuff that Gene says in the TMP novelisation where Kirk (to summarise) says that some of his adventures have been exaggerated - implying that some TOS stuff didn't happen
Its like GR is spitting on the TOS fans faces.
http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/HateMail/RSA/TrekBBS-2.pdf

I wish TOS hadn't been included in GEN. The meeting between Picard and Kirk wasn't monumental and probably gave Stewart the idea if Shatner could ask for horses then he could ask for a dune buggy.

 

[Khan 2.0]

it must be canon as Beyond shows the Trek V crew photo thus proving that adventure happened