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What happened to Pike/Kirk and the age of peaceful exploration?

this era of Star Trek was meant to be one of peaceful exploration epitomized by Pike/Kirk. Yes you have the nasty skirmishes with the Klingons, the chess games with the Romulans, crisis with the augments but by and large the Federation and its neighbours are largely at peace. Even the Kelvin timeline kept up the upbeat exploratory premise. Yet in STD we have already seen a near genocidal cross species war between the Federation and the Klingon empire, the start of a new Temporal war and now a factional civil war within the Federation between starfleet and section 31. So much for peaceful exploration. The stakes are already higher than anything Kirk/Spock experienced, and yet we have never heard of Michael Burnham before, the USS dicovery? Spock never mentions any of this despite it being more significant than anything he goes through with Kirk?

The stakes aren't any higher than Kirk and Spock came up against (See Nomad, Lazarus, Space Aomeba, Gary Mitchell, V'Ger, Doomsday Machine etc.)
 
Peace through superior firepower?

thearsenaloffreedom_hd_040.jpg
 
this era of Star Trek was meant to be one of peaceful exploration epitomized by Pike/Kirk. Yes you have the nasty skirmishes with the Klingons, the chess games with the Romulans, crisis with the augments but by and large the Federation and its neighbours are largely at peace. Even the Kelvin timeline kept up the upbeat exploratory premise. Yet in STD we have already seen a near genocidal cross species war between the Federation and the Klingon empire, the start of a new Temporal war and now a factional civil war within the Federation between starfleet and section 31. So much for peaceful exploration. The stakes are already higher than anything Kirk/Spock experienced, and yet we have never heard of Michael Burnham before, the USS dicovery? Spock never mentions any of this despite it being more significant than anything he goes through with Kirk?
Treat it as a reboot, it makes life a lot easier.
 
this era of Star Trek was meant to be one of peaceful exploration epitomized by Pike/Kirk.

What era, though?

In TOS, we saw the 2260s, where Kirk was flattered to be called "the finest military commander in the galaxy" even if he coyly said he was "more an explorer now". This era, which involved constant fighting against random foes, was thus in contrast with the 2250s where Kirk earned his reputation as a formidable warrior! So a show depicting the 2250s ought to be more brutal than TOS, and feature at least one major war, in order to meet the requirements outlined in TOS.

And a Pike that was ready to retire and open up an orion slavegirl dealership. Good wholesome peaceful stuff.

That was only a joke by the dirty old Boyce, though, lest somebody mistake it for a real, honest-to-great-bird-of-galaxy pseudo-factoid.

Timo Saloniemi
 
America in the 1960s was, in rather contradictory fashion, both a vastly more optimistic place than it is now for the most part while confronting far worse and more acute problems than we do today.
 
America in the 1960s was, in rather contradictory fashion, both a vastly more optimistic place than it is now for the most part while confronting far worse and more acute problems than we do today.
IDK if I would say it was all that more optimistic as most everyone thought a U.S. U.S.S.R. nuclear exchange was inevitable.

Also, since were STILL confronting the same issues today (corruption in government, issues of racial/sexual/gender...et. al. discrimication, poverty, homelessnes, etc.) again, on that front the only thing that changed was some laws and regulations were passed that those in power still try to skirt as they see fit or find ways to invalidate/ignore them.
 
Some of the posts here make me think that making a prequel in something as massive as Star Trek is, that might not be the smartest idea.
How many years and episodes do we have? And then trying to fit something in before that or in this case almost during that, might get difficult and break some established plotlines.
 
Some of the posts here make me think that making a prequel in something as massive as Star Trek is, that might not be the smartest idea.
How many years and episodes do we have? And then trying to fit something in before that or in this case almost during that, might get difficult and break some established plotlines.
Nah. Only the canonistas care about that. Break it all, but entertain me
 
I think this is all a problem of scale.
The political landscape of TOS was quite versatile, though obvious at peace overall.

Yes, Kirk definitely had military accolades. He definitely has been involved in some skirmishes throughout his career. But at the same time, it was stated multiple times that the Federation was at peace and has been. There was frictions with both the Romulans and the Klingons. But none involved a major, galaxy-shaking WWII-IN-SPAAACE to have happened before. In fact, all of Kirks accolades made it very clear that it was an exception to have those. They pretty much all come from forreign assignments, indicating the Federation never went through anything comparatively bigger than the US with the Vietnam war at the time. Which is still a big thing mind you - but not as dire as a world war.
 
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