A theory for the supersized Abramsverse fleet.

[F. King Daniel]

I can imagine, in Trek's magical fantasy land (and don't pretend this stuff was ever consistent), a situation where Nero appearing in 2233 set off a chain of undone and alternate interferences, where people in the future weren't there to affect the past as they "should", leading to a different parallel past as well as a future.

I can also imagine that Discovery takes place in a post-Temporal War universe, which wasn't fixed as perfectly as Daniels and Archer thought at the end of "Storm Front". Maybe the "true" TOS world is out there somewhere with it's jelly bean buttons, paper printouts and bright jammies, or maybe the grimdark bluniverse is the shape of it now, the result of Future Guy, the Xindi, the Borg, the Sphere Builders, Vosk and god-knows-who-else sticking their fork in history.

It's fun to think about.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

But that also means that we can't confirm that the look of the Abrams-universe is what Starfleet looked like at that time period in the prime universe

Well then, we seem to be at loggerheads, don't we?

Yes, yes, we can't confirm OR deny. It's all just a theory at this stage. Me, I like the thought that it's a simple branching off from 2233...IMHO, the look and feel of the Kelvin is entirely compatible with the spirit of TOS.

Sure, the Kelvin is huge. But we should remember just how little of the fleet we actually SAW in TOS. Hell, the Constitution class is the only ship we ever got a close look at. There's no reason why Starfleet couldn't have had ships that are bigger than the Connie.

 

[Verteron]

We all may have to agree to disagree for the moment ...

 

[Dukhat]

I’m a big fan of Occam’s Razor. It makes more sense to me that Nero’s incursion created an alternate branch from the prime timeline, but that both timelines share the same past, rather than some gobbledygook about the timeline changing in both directions simply because some people can’t fathom the idea that Starfleet had big ships.

 

[ISS Enterprise]

Or maybe the size differences are the result of Abrams spit balling stuff lol

 

[F. King Daniel]

I’m a big fan of Occam’s Razor. It makes more sense to me that Nero’s incursion created an alternate branch from the prime timeline, but that both timelines share the same past, rather than some gobbledygook about the timeline changing in both directions simply because some people can’t fathom the idea that Starfleet had big ships.

Don't forget the new look of everything, Khan being British, the Klingons looking different (although Discovery has made their re-imagining look tame by comparison!), character ages having shifted (Pike, who was born pre-2233) and so forth, the Franklin technology and phaser pistols being de-evolved versions of Kelvin Enterprise technology and totally unlike NX-01's.

At the very least, there's as strong of an argument to be made that Kelvin Trek is entirely seperate as there is that Discovery is too.

 

[Dukhat]

I'm not seeing anything in your examples that I find problematic.

Don't forget the new look of everything,

Everything looks new because Nero changed the timeline from 2233 on.

Khan being British,

Khan wasn't British. John Harrison was British. But John Harrison was just a fake persona that Khan was using.

the Klingons looking different,

Klingon appearance has never been consistent.

character ages having shifted (Pike, who was born pre-2233)

When was Pike supposedly born?

and so forth,

What other characters have problematic ages? (Other than Chekov, but since he was born after 2233 in both timelines, Yelchin's Chekov being younger than Koenig's Chekov isn't problematic, since he probably isn't the same person biologically as the latter.)

the Franklin technology and phaser pistols being de-evolved versions of Kelvin Enterprise technology and totally unlike NX-01's.

While the Franklin was built before the NX-01, we didn't see her or Edison's crew until years after the formation of the Federation, by which time their technology would have changed from the pre-Federation Earth Starfleet.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Maybe I'm just fed up of having to qualify everything with some convoluted off-screen explanation.

How plausible is it really that Franklin hand phasers will never be seen again until one branch of one possible history will make them the norm a century later? How plausible is it that Khan would keep using his supposed fake British accent once he'd outed himself to everyone? How plausible is it that San Francisco's skyline would be so radically different after just 25 years of timeline divergence? That fans in the DSC forum have had to magic up the term "visual reboot" pretty much says it all. It's basically "the visuals are entirely different so those differences don't count, and all these dozens of storyline discontinuities aren't discontinuities because of [dozens of improbable explanations that explain why rain isn't wet and black is actually white]"

 

[Dukhat]

Well, why does TMP look so different than TOS? Why were the TWOK Starfleet uniforms used with minimal changes for 70 years right up until a few years before TNG? Why did the crew of the Enterprise-C inexplicably wear phasers from TWOK when newer phasers were introduced in TUC? Why did Data's emotion chip change from a small Pac-Man shaped disk to a giant block? Why are there two moons over Vulcan sometimes and sometimes not?

 

[Tenacity]

Well

why does TMP look so different than TOS? The different appearance of the Klingons was explain on screen in ENT. The ship was stated on screen to have undergone eighteen months of redesigning and refitting.

Why were the TWOK Starfleet uniforms used with minimal changes for 70 years right up until a few years before TNG? Because they look good, were popular with the troops, and they worked. The TMP uniforms were replace shortly after issue with the TWOK uniforms owing to looking ridiculous, not working in many Starfleet duties, and being unpopular.

Why did the crew of the Enterprise-C inexplicably wear phasers from TWOK when newer phasers were introduced in TUC? TUC phasers were recalled by Starfleet after initial issue because of design problems, they switched back to the previous phaser design.

Why did Data's emotion chip change from a small Pac-Man shaped disk to a giant block? It wasn't the original Soong chip, it was Data's version of a emotion chip, which was flawed and malfunctioned.

Why are there two moons over Vulcan sometimes and sometimes not? Both on the other side of the planet at the time

 

[Dukhat]

^And none of those explanations for my questions requires that the timeline had to change in reverse as well as forwards.

 

[Captain of the USS Averof]

Never mentioned (iirc) in the prime universe, unless you believe that the beginning of ST'09 was the prime universe, which I don't.

Agreed. And so does Simon Pegg.

 

[Dukhat]

Agreed. And so does Simon Pegg.

Except Simon Pegg was only a co-writer for one nuTrek film. And nowhere in that film did anyone state that the timeline changed both ways.

 

[F. King Daniel]

^And none of those explanations for my questions requires that the timeline had to change in reverse as well as forwards.

But if the timelines were separate, you don't have to make up any excuses at all.

Imagine for a second how liberating that is!

 

[Dukhat]

But if the timelines were separate, you don't have to make up any excuses at all.

Imagine for a second how liberating that is!

Well, uh, yeah, that's exactly how I feel about Discovery. But the Abrams films are different. It was specifically mentioned in the first film that the original (read: prime) timeline changed when Nero came back to 2233.

 

[fireproof78]

Well, uh, yeah, that's exactly how I feel about Discovery. But the Abrams films are different. It was specifically mentioned in the first film that the original (read: prime) timeline changed when Nero came back to 2233.

And I prefer it. It doesn't really feel that different beyond going, "Hey, things changed because a Starfleet vessel got attacked by a 'massive Romulan ship.' Weird that Starfleet would want bigger ships."

 

[Dukhat]

And I prefer it. It doesn't really feel that different beyond going, "Hey, things changed because a Starfleet vessel got attacked by a 'massive Romulan ship.' Weird that Starfleet would want bigger ships."

Actually I think the issue was more that the Kelvin and her sister ships (which were built pre-Nero's incursion) were much larger than most people thought prime universe ships should be for that time period. But there's no evidence to disprove that, since we never saw any Starfleet ships between ENT and TOS. Unless you count DSC, which if it does indeed take place in the prime universe would definitively prove that ships much larger than the TOS Enterprise were in service at the same time.

 

[fireproof78]

Actually I think the issue was more that the Kelvin and her sister ships (which were built pre-Nero's incursion) were much larger than most people thought prime universe ships should be for that time period. But there's no evidence to disprove that, since we never saw any Starfleet ships between ENT and TOS. Unless you count DSC, which if it does indeed take place in the prime universe would definitively prove that ships much larger than the TOS Enterprise were in service at the same time.

I honestly think that the Constitution was more of a test bed for Daystroms computer systems, designed to increase automation and reduce crew size to a certain degree.

 

[Timo]

...As regards crew size, "eight hundred" can't be right for the Kelvin.

George Kirk was supposed to have saved the quoted number through his actions. Only the people who departed in the shuttlecraft were saved. We saw the entire swarm of shuttles in the final wide shot. We could count to 20 at a maximum. And we know how big those shuttles were (we saw there were no giants in the mix, even if without the current superduper screencaps we couldn't yet 100% verify the studio truth of all 20 being of the exact same type flown by Robau). There would have been no room for 800 evacuees there, no way to cram 40 people in a single shuttle.

So Pike apparently says "a hundred" instead... And the question then goes, what percentage of the total crew do those survivors represent?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[F. King Daniel]

...As regards crew size, "eight hundred" can't be right for the Kelvin.

George Kirk was supposed to have saved the quoted number through his actions. Only the people who departed in the shuttlecraft were saved. We saw the entire swarm of shuttles in the final wide shot. We could count to 20 at a maximum. And we know how big those shuttles were (we saw there were no giants in the mix, even if without the current superduper screencaps we couldn't yet 100% verify the studio truth of all 20 being of the exact same type flown by Robau). There would have been no room for 800 evacuees there, no way to cram 40 people in a single shuttle.

So Pike apparently says "a hundred" instead... And the question then goes, what percentage of the total crew do those survivors represent?

Timo Saloniemi

Or there were groups of shuttles ahead of the one we saw, which would have been the last to leave. Plus, the shuttles were roomier than what we've seen before on TOS and TNG. You could probably cram quite a few people in there in a panic situation. The only one we saw inside of was the medical shuttle, which obviously required space.