Carol getting pregant would have been way too soon. they needed one movie to set up their relationship first.
It's predictable and lame because the moment her character was called Carol, people were fast assuming that her only purpose is being Kirk's baby mama just because it's what happened in the tos movies. No other reason. Even the actress was already saying this is what would happen in spite of those two not even having a relationship in stid. Because of this 'premise', their relationship needs no build up or real development for them (especially if them having a son also is a set up to write her off like in tos)
In the podcast, they said that the idea was they were having a secret affair (likely due to the implications of him being the captain ) and they have a big fight from the start with him not knowing she's pregnant. Sounds familiar? Bet the baby would be a boy named David that she would raise alone (because she 'wants him in her world not Kirk's' ).
The whole idea is such a big soap opera. We are talking about two humans in the future who work aboard a spaceship, are having an affair and she gets pregnant. It's as if birth control doesn't exist. She's an officer too here, I find it hard to believe these characters don't have access to the most efficient contraceptives (or that using them isn't part of the rules they gotta respect as officers). I always thought that a pregnancy subplot on the ship can only make sense if it's represented as a deliberate choice made by the couple or at the very least, the 'accident' should be explained with something reasonable that makes sense in context.
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This is a just a small example, I feel, of what could possibly be the main problem with the creative teams that worked or tried to work on this trek after the first one.
This guy here is talking about characters and the importance of developing the relationships more but, on one hand, he's praising the spock/uhura relationship in stid (and what Zach did with Spock) as something clever that we didn't see in tos, thus something that is part of the genius of a new reality where things can happen differently, and yet, when it comes to Kirk, their most original idea apparently is giving him a doomed love interest with a baby just because it happened like that in tos. Just because her name is Carol. So it's a new universe with so much potential. .and yet you still make the characters doomed by tos. You still push for the idea, essentially, that the characters are destined to do what they did in tos, no matter what.
And this is their issue. If you create a new reality you gotta try to do something new and unpredictable with the characters because you totally can. Why not give Kirk a romance with Rand or a new female character from another world? Why not pair Carol with Mccoy instead? With the villains and general plot too, why not create new ones? There is a fine line between tos homages and them being unoriginal.
My point is that as much as they appreciate the potential of a new reality they still waste it and are still held back by tos nostalgia and the naive idea that borrowing stuff from tos or the old movies is 'great' because it's easier and more safe.
To be completely honest here, I also find it frankly limited that they insist making it the Kirk show after the first movie just because he's the captain, but will bring up these storylines that aren't half original or interesting for me. Take the "let's bring George Kirk back from the dead" one too.
I really struggle to be super interested about Kirk's daddy issues, and his struggles as a young human dude who didn't even have to earn his role as a captain here, tbh, when his conflicts pale in comparison to that of Spock for example. Always did, always will.
To focus on Kirk and his issues only again, Spock's ptsd was barely touched on in stid and we never saw the vulcans again, nor they truly developed or hinted what the destruction of vulcan meant for starfleet.
The first movie was pretty much about Spock. The issue is if you want to make it the Kirk show it might be too late, you had to do that from the start. But then again, I don't find him a strong protagonist that has all this potential to carry a movie alone with his story. He surely doesn't deserve to be the priority for me at the expense of the ensemble and, finally, developing the other characters more in ways the old movies never did. This was their chance to fix where the old movies failed. I like this Kirk but I find he needs Spock and the others in his story much more than they all need Kirk in theirs.
It backfired too because had them truly built an ensemble, or were them a tad more creative, they wouldn't find themselves in big trouble when Chris Pine isn't available. The fourth movie was cancelled precisely because they painted themselves into a corner with their fixation for a story that needed the two Chris as they were front and center. They didn't, obviously, have alternative plans thus other stories that didn't need his dad and perhaps didn't need Kirk in a big capacity either. With such a cast and how much people love it and the way this trek was started, it's lame that they didn't have other stories to use.
