Trek Books Set in TOS Movie Era?

[Damian]

But with IV, the 1986 date also seems to come from TV ads and other promotional material, and Leonard Nimoy.

Granted, there's no reason it couldn't be in 1986, and that's the simplest assumption to make, but neither is there any reason that it couldn't happen a couple of years earlier or later.

I found the below on Memory Alpha

According to dialogue, the film begins at some point during the third month of the crew's exile on Vulcan, after the end of Star Trek III. Kirk makes a reference to the 1789 HMS Bounty mutiny, having occurred five hundred years ago. Gillian from 1986 mentions that she has three hundred years of catching up to do. Suggesting that, Star Trek IV takes place in the mid to late 2280s, around 2286 or 2289. Television ads for the film specifically say, "Stardate: 1986" indicating the year, and Leonard Nimoy, in an interview at the film's release on "Good Morning America" in November 1986, specifically mentions that the crew journeys back in time 300 years to "now," again confirming the 1986 date.

and:

The date on the San Francisco Register was Thursday, December 18, 1986. This date is correct for that year. [1] However, a prop for the pawn shop ticket for Kirk's glasses was on display at Star Trek: The Experience (but not seen on screen) was dated 19 August 1986. [2] It can go either way.

If the date for the newspaper was seen on screen, that would likely make it canon--the pawn shop ticket was not seen on screen so if I had to give weight I'd go with the December 18 date.

At one point I thought I saw something that said the 20th century portion was in 1987 but I can't remember where. I checked my novelization quickly but didn't notice anything with a quick review.

 

[Christopher]

If the date for the newspaper was seen on screen, that would likely make it canon--the pawn shop ticket was not seen on screen so if I had to give weight I'd go with the December 18 date.

Background text and graphics aren't necessarily meant to be canonical or story-relevant info, which is why so many productions make them in-jokes (like the giant rubber ducky on the Enterprise-D cutaway map) or meaningless lorem ipsum text or just whatever the guys in the graphics department happened to grab to fill a space. Even in the linked image on Memory Alpha, you can barely make out the date, so it surely wasn't meant to be important to the story for the audience to see it. It's natural enough that the graphics artist charged with doing a newspaper mockup for a movie made in 1986 and set in the present day would put a 1986 date on the paper, but that's precisely because it didn't matter to the story what the exact year was, just that it was "the present," the late 20th century. So the date was just a placeholder.

A story told on film or video is meant to be experienced in real time. If the audience is supposed to notice something, it will be something they can notice while watching normally. If you have to freeze-frame or enlarge the image to make something out, then it doesn't matter to the story. At best, it's an Easter egg for alert viewers, a bonus and therefore not crucial to the narrative. More often, it's just meant to be part of the background and its specifics don't matter.

 

[Damian]

Background text and graphics aren't necessarily meant to be canonical or story-relevant info, which is why so many productions make them in-jokes (like the giant rubber ducky on the Enterprise-D cutaway map) or meaningless lorem ipsum text or just whatever the guys in the graphics department happened to grab to fill a space. Even in the linked image on Memory Alpha, you can barely make out the date, so it surely wasn't meant to be important to the story for the audience to see it. It's natural enough that the graphics artist charged with doing a newspaper mockup for a movie made in 1986 and set in the present day would put a 1986 date on the paper, but that's precisely because it didn't matter to the story what the exact year was, just that it was "the present," the late 20th century. So the date was just a placeholder.

A story told on film or video is meant to be experienced in real time. If the audience is supposed to notice something, it will be something they can notice while watching normally. If you have to freeze-frame or enlarge the image to make something out, then it doesn't matter to the story. At best, it's an Easter egg for alert viewers, a bonus and therefore not crucial to the narrative. More often, it's just meant to be part of the background and its specifics don't matter.

I get what you're saying. It's sort of fun to debate it, and I always love researching useless information (I always tell people I'm a wealth of useless knowledge). But it's not crucial to the story. I enjoyed TVH, for some reason I thought the year was 1987 (if I ever find the basis for me thinking that I'll certainly share--because I also love sharing my wealth of useless knowledge ). But if it was meant to actually be 1986, well I'm not going to throw my copy in the garbage over it--though as you said, it's not pivotal, it just happens to fit.

Though if someone really wanted to, they could probably research the headlines and see if they fit December 1986. I'll let someone else take that one up

 

[Damian]

I couldn't help myself. I did look up the main headline (I know, I'm nuts but I got curious) and there was nuclear arms talks that stalled

From the BBC

Reykjavik summit ends in failure

There was a note that Gorbachev and Reagan were to meet in Geneva but no firm date was settled.

This was in October 12, 1986 though:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/12/newsid_3732000/3732902.stm

This was the best I could come up with. There obviously is no such paper as the San Francisco Register and they apparently put some articles together, possibly real articles, to make it look genuine. But the main story does fit the time period in question.

 

[Christopher]

There obviously is no such paper as the San Francisco Register and they apparently put some articles together, possibly real articles, to make it look genuine.

No, I looked at the screencap on Memory Alpha, and the actual column text on the newspaper page is just the same few paragraphs repeated over and over. Both column 1 and column 4 (reading left to right) begin with the same paragraph ("A suggestion that public..." etc.), and the fourth and fifth paragraphs in column 5 are the same ("An independent investigation..." etc.).

Movie/TV newspapers tend to be printed from standardized forms where only the main, plot-relevant headline or two need to be filled in and the rest is just boilerplate. If you watch enough vintage movies and shows, you'll see the same smaller headlines showing up on multiple newspapers.

 

[Damian]

No, I looked at the screencap on Memory Alpha, and the actual column text on the newspaper page is just the same few paragraphs repeated over and over. Both column 1 and column 4 (reading left to right) begin with the same paragraph ("A suggestion that public..." etc.), and the fourth and fifth paragraphs in column 5 are the same ("An independent investigation..." etc.).

Movie/TV newspapers tend to be printed from standardized forms where only the main, plot-relevant headline or two need to be filled in and the rest is just boilerplate. If you watch enough vintage movies and shows, you'll see the same smaller headlines showing up on multiple newspapers.

Oh, ok. I couldn't make out most of the smaller text on my computer. I guess the headline was the main thing, to let the viewer know it was at least somewhat contemporary, since nuclear arms talks were a current event.

I wonder if it was a reference to the summit that had failed. However the timing doesn't seem quite right. The movie was released 11/26 according to Wikipedia. The article I found was from 10/12. Could they really put that newspaper headline referencing that summit so close to the release date to the film? I mean, it's only a month later. Wouldn't the film be completed by then? Or did someone just make a lucky prediction?

 

[Christopher]

I wonder if it was a reference to the summit that had failed. However the timing doesn't seem quite right. The movie was released 11/26 according to Wikipedia. The article I found was from 10/12. Could they really put that newspaper headline referencing that summit so close to the release date to the film? I mean, it's only a month later. Wouldn't the film be completed by then? Or did someone just make a lucky prediction?

It wasn't about a specific summit; it was about reminding the 23rd-century characters that they were in a primitive, warlike era. The headline was meant to illustrate the general fact of the nuclear arms race and the lack of progress at ending it. Over the years, there were many headlines in that vein, in both reality and fiction.

 

[Damian]

It wasn't about a specific summit; it was about reminding the 23rd-century characters that they were in a primitive, warlike era. The headline was meant to illustrate the general fact of the nuclear arms race and the lack of progress at ending it. Over the years, there were many headlines in that vein, in both reality and fiction.

What I mean is could they have used that headline in reference to that summit literally. Was 5 or 6 weeks before the movie came out enough time to insert something like that, or would the movie be a finished project by then?

I'm just curious did someone making the movie want to use that headline because it was a then current event that people would recall? Or was it just a coincidence that they used the headline and it just happened to match a recent news story (including the reference to a possible upcoming Geneva convention).

 

[Christopher]

What I mean is could they have used that headline in reference to that summit literally. Was 5 or 6 weeks before the movie came out enough time to insert something like that, or would the movie be a finished project by then?

Think it through. It was seen in a San Francisco location shot, which means it was filmed during principal production, months before the film's release. As far as I can tell, the location shooting was done in April 1986.

Again, there were many, many headlines like that during the Cold War. So it's not that huge a coincidence. You're massively overthinking this.

 

[Damian]

Think it through. It was seen in a San Francisco location shot, which means it was filmed during principal production, months before the film's release. As far as I can tell, the location shooting was done in April 1986.

Again, there were many, many headlines like that during the Cold War. So it's not that huge a coincidence. You're massively overthinking this.

Ok. I wasn't sure. It was the two things that caught my eye (though this is frankly the first time I gave it this much thought).

Nowadays I imagine they can add detail like that in post-production using computer and editing tricks. But back in 1986 I imagine it was a real newspaper they created for the scene, with real, though fictional print on the front.

 

[Christopher]

Nowadays I imagine they can add detail like that in post-production using computer and editing tricks. But back in 1986 I imagine it was a real newspaper they created for the scene, with real, though fictional print on the front.

Of course. Now, it was only in a close-up insert shot where you could read the headline clearly, but I checked an HD screencap on TrekCore and it looks like the same headline in the subsequent long shot with Kirk and the crew, and definitely the same page composition. And even if that weren't the case, it's unlikely they would've gone to all the trouble to shoot and cut in a new insert shot at the last minute just for an obscure Easter-egg nod to current events.

In sum, it's just a generic Cold War headline, and the reason it happened to align with real news is because it was generic, the sort of headline you might plausibly see at any given time in the era.

 

[Damian]

Of course. Now, it was only in a close-up insert shot where you could read the headline clearly, but I checked an HD screencap on TrekCore and it looks like the same headline in the subsequent long shot with Kirk and the crew, and definitely the same page composition. And even if that weren't the case, it's unlikely they would've gone to all the trouble to shoot and cut in a new insert shot at the last minute just for an obscure Easter-egg nod to current events.

In sum, it's just a generic Cold War headline, and the reason it happened to align with real news is because it was generic, the sort of headline you might plausibly see at any given time in the era.

I remember catching the headline briefly when I saw the movie at the theater back in 1986. But I wasn't so much thinking about current events, but more about their need to find a nuclear reactor to regenerate the dilithium crystals.

I had found it mildly interesting and ironic at the time that they were looking for something to help return to their own time and save Earth using something that could have annihilated all life on Earth. The newspaper sort of highlighted that irony for me a bit.

 

[Christopher]

I remember catching the headline briefly when I saw the movie at the theater back in 1986. But I wasn't so much thinking about current events, but more about their need to find a nuclear reactor to regenerate the dilithium crystals.

I had found it mildly interesting and ironic at the time that they were looking for something to help return to their own time and save Earth using something that could have annihilated all life on Earth. The newspaper sort of highlighted that irony for me a bit.

Well, Starfleet in the 23rd-24th century still uses nuclear fusion reactors to power its impulse drives (or nuclear fission if you go by "Where No Man..." and Mitchell and Kelso talking about the points decaying to lead, which means they were originally uranium). So it's not like nuclear power is either (a) unique to the 20th century or (b) intrinsically evil. And nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons are two different applications of the science. Contrary to countless ignorant works of fiction, you can't turn the former into the latter.

 

[TheAlmanac]

I checked my novelization quickly but didn't notice anything with a quick review.

IIRC, the novelisation only refers to "autumn weather" (and pinning this down was my main motivation for buying it!), so my own chronology had the events in San Francisco coincide with the failure of the Reykjavik Summit.

 

[Leto_II]

Isn't that where we were finally able to lay out a more solid timeframe for when Star Trek takes place though (that being TNG episode "Neutral Zone" where a year was finally given (which was actually 2364). We were told TNG was 78 years after TVH (that was on promotional material so technically it's not canon, though it seems to be accepted nowadays and there's nothing to contradict that).

Come to think of it maybe that's how Okuda timed out TVH, because 2286 is exactly 78 years before "The Neutral Zone"

Actually, the "78 years"-dating originally comes from the early-1987 TNG series bible:

http://www.roddenberry.com/media/vault/TNG-WritersDirectorsGuide.pdf

 

[Christopher]

Interesting. The uncorrected version suggests that they considered TOS to take place early in the 23rd century, if 78 years later is the beginning of the 24th.

 

[Therin of Andor]

But with IV, the 1986 date also seems to come from TV ads and other promotional material, and Leonard Nimoy.

That's how I took it.


Star Trek IV movie poster by Ian McLean, on Flickr

We were told TNG was 78 years after TVH

"78 years since the time of Kirk and Spock..." is how I recall it, never pinning down if they meant since TOS or since the latest movie.

 

[Christopher]

"78 years since the time of Kirk and Spock..." is how I recall it, never pinning down if they meant since TOS or since the latest movie.

Yeah, that was unclear to me at the time. Until "The Neutral Zone" came out, there was no way to be sure.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Until "The Neutral Zone" came out, there was no way to be sure.

Yep. Cue the sound of thousands of Trek fans reaching for their notepads. I remember that night so well.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Honestly, I've often suspected that the only reason the 2364 date was given in "The Neutral Zone" was because that episode was made during the '88 writers' strike and had to be shot from an unrevised first draft script. Roddenberry preferred to keep the date vague, so I suspect that that date might've been dropped if the script had been revised, and may have just been a placeholder anyway.

I think it's interesting--and amusing--that such a pivotal part of the ST Chronology turned on something so arbitrary.

The dates we have now make sense for the most part, though there are some discrepancies (Data's comment, unless Class of '78 wasn't necessarily a year, but I can't fathom what else it could be).

I read a fan theory--here on the BBS most likely--that "Class of 78" referred to the number of people in the class, so likely those 78 students did something particularly significant or noteworthy.

Yeah, it's total fanwank, but it's a creative interpretation.

On the ST Chronology's dating of STV to 2287, that was partially determined by the backstory given on Nimbus III, "the Planet of Galactic Peace." Since the film says that it was colonized by the Federation, Klingons, and Romulans together 20 years previously, it had to have been founded some time after "Balance of Terror," where the Romulans reappeared after 100 years of radio silence. So Nimbus III would've been founded in 2266-2267 at the absolute earliest.