two words: Benedict Cumberbatch.
Khan’s starfleet jacket
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Or, say, the Wachowskis. They got great mileage out of blackfacing in Cloud Atlas.
It's a bit weird that scifi would have a problem with altering the racial identity of an actor, considering this is the bread and butter of scifi acting to begin with...
Timo Saloniemi
It's a bit weird that scifi would have a problem with altering the racial identity of an actor, considering this is the bread and butter of scifi acting to begin with...
Timo Saloniemi
Ugh, don't even get me started on that. I liked Cumberbatch as an actor and villain, but I always wished he was just "John Harrison"
I liked Cumberkhan. Somehow, to me, he was more frightening. Montal-Khan was scary at points, but not like Cumber-Khan.
It's worth pointing out that, as a result of genetic engineering, Khan's skin colour or visible ethnicity would be at the whim of his designers or a byproducts of the gene mixing. He needn't look like a typical Indian, really. The Marla line still makes zero sense, since when she first saw him he was clean shaven and without a turban. Even if he was a "bad" Sikh, you wouldn't recognise them on sight as such.
For all the anger that Khan was a white Brit in Into Darkness, can you imagine the backlash if the space terrorist who did 9/11 x 10,000 when he crashed the USS Vengeance into San Francisco had been brown skinned?
Khan's backstory is a total mess, though. I can fudge Space Seed and Wrath of Khan together just about, and for Into Darkness I just assume he's a white Brit in that universe.
For all the anger that Khan was a white Brit in Into Darkness, can you imagine the backlash if the space terrorist who did 9/11 x 10,000 when he crashed the USS Vengeance into San Francisco had been brown skinned?
Khan's backstory is a total mess, though. I can fudge Space Seed and Wrath of Khan together just about, and for Into Darkness I just assume he's a white Brit in that universe.
It also looks absolutely nothing like anything seen in TMP, either. It really leaves so many fun possibilities to think about, if each look is actually its own continuity. I always thought it would be fun if STC had remade Wrath of Khan with the TOS aesthetics. The Genesis planet as a cheap TOS soundstage, the actual original Connie blowing up with a bunch of TOS Klingon's on board....
Because it always looked like that, in that universe. I like this game.
I've always rather liked the thought, that TMP, its aesthetics, and its future adventures are on a completely different track than the other 5 movies. In the Bennetverse, the ship always looked like that, and was old and retired, and TOS happened with all of those aesthetics the entire time.
In the TMPverse, the ship is refit, Kirk gets to keep it, and heads off into a whole set of new, unknown adventures. A second Phase, if you will. This is not the same Kirk that in just a few years, is bored and having a midlife crisis because of how long he's been stuck at that desk. TMP Kirk escaped that fate after just a few years. Bennetverse Kirk, not so lucky. TMP Kirk would not go back unless something huge forced him to, and it would have only been a few years before TWOK.
I'm not against all of this being reconciled with some awesome, epic story waiting to be told at the end of the second 5YM, that explains the militarization of Starfleet, the unrest with the Klingons, Kirk losing the Enterprise AGAIN, the monster maroons, etc, but the alternate universes take is just a lot of fun, and easier to explain massive oversights.
Which novels and comics, can you give some examples of what they do? I'm very intrigued.
Even more proof that the Meyer/Bennetverse is a separate continuity.....
Well, don't forget in "Space Seed" that Marla told Khan "I know exactly who you are." It's likely she recognized him right off the bat and probably in her excitement at the beginning let a little of that slip. Now, the real world explanation is sloppy writing. Someone didn't know their facts. But in universe there are ways to explain that. And as I noted on another Khan board Greg Cox in his The Eugenics Wars duology explained Khan did have a beard and turban once, but as he became more arrogant he felt he was above such observances and tossed the turban and shaved the beard in defiance. And knowing Khan's arrogance I can definitely see that being a possibility.
I think had they cast Benicio Del Toro as Khan they probably would have been ok. He's a well known Hispanic and people don't usually associate Hispanics with Al Qaeda type terrorist groups. And he has played villain types over the years so I don't think that would have caused them any major problems.
That being said, I just wish they had left the whole Khan thing alone to begin with. I was never a big fan of having Khan as the villain in the first place. I give the Abrams team credit for mostly doing a new angle on Khan, but there were still things I had a hard time buying. They should have let Cumberbatch play a different villain (he could have even been another of Khan's band of merry supermen--other than Joachim in "Space Seed" and Joaquin in TWOK we never really got to know anyone else).
But that's just my take on it all. There was still a lot I liked about STID, it was just one of those things that bug me about the film.
especially as him being Khan had no impact whatsoever on the story, the only thing it enabled was the brief and contrived Nimoy cameo.
Yeah. I love Nimoy, he's legendary. But that was really a wasted scene. All kinds of action going on, then let's stop everything for 2 minutes so he can tell them Khan is a very dangerous individual. Um, really?
I'm actually surprised Nimoy even did the scene. He didn't want to appear in Generations because he thought the scenes he would have been in would have been little more than a cameo. Um, like STID.
Age will do that.Yeah. I love Nimoy, he's legendary. But that was really a wasted scene. All kinds of action going on, then let's stop everything for 2 minutes so he can tell them Khan is a very dangerous individual. Um, really?
I'm actually surprised Nimoy even did the scene. He didn't want to appear in Generations because he thought the scenes he would have been in would have been little more than a cameo. Um, like STID.
I suppose. I just never knew why they wanted to even do that scene in the first place (of course it pales in comparison to the ridiculous "Khan" scream....but that's another thread I suppose
).I'm a big believer in letting the new crew stand on their own. We had Generations as a hand off from the original series to TNG in the films (though that was less necessary I thought because TNG was well established--but I liked Kirk's initial sacrifice at the start of the film--sacrificing himself to save the Enterprise, and he was alone in keeping with TFF to boot, but like it was noted in TWOK he managed to cheat death even then).
Now in Star Trek (2009), Nimoy's presence served a real purpose and it wasn't just some idle cameo. They wanted to give themselves a clean slate, but they still wanted it to be linked to the existing Star Trek universe so Nimoy was that link. It allowed them to say this was still a continuation, a sequel of sorts to what came before, with some prequel elements and still allowed them to reboot things in their own vision.
But in STID it just was a wasted scene I thought. It added nothing to the story as he was simply stating the obvious, it was a halt to a lot of action going on, and it just smelled of a bunch of fanboys who just wanted to get Nimoy in the film any way possible (I don't necessarily blame them, Nimoy is a legend, but it just felt forced to me).
But all that being side, I consider that a minor nitpick. I mostly liked STID. The couple of things that knock it down a bit for me really have nothing to do with that scene. Of the Abrams films, being the contrary person that I am, Beyond is my favorite, with STID coming in at 2nd place and Star Trek (2009) in 3rd (for whatever reason Star Trek [2009] has not aged as well IMO, I find I like it just a little less each time I watch it--it's still a great film, but I find I don't think it's as great as when I first saw it).
I remember so many threads, fanfics and gag videos and whatnot back in the day about the crew asking Spock Prime for advice. It was logical they'd do a cameo like that for the movie. And of course it telegraphed to the "in the know" fan that someone was gonna die.
The only thing I wish they'd done differently in the cameo would be for McCoy to say something.
The only thing I wish they'd done differently in the cameo would be for McCoy to say something.
Wo
Wow….I never thought of it that way, but I agree with you. Bennetverse was , essentially, the first reboot and new universe before jj
Nah, that was TMP.
I'm being nitpicky, but those names are backward. Joaquin was in "Space Seed" and Joachim was in TWOK.
But that came along with all sorts of "in universe explanations" for stuff. It could be a direct sequel to TOS, or it could have existed in a Universe where some of the TMP aesthetic always existed, and the ship was more like the Phase II model during TOS.
There is enough dialogue about the ship being changed and upgraded, the plot points of Kirk's unfamilarity with it and time away..... there is not nearly as much reason to send it to its own track, as there is for the Bennetverse starting fresh with Wrath of Khan.
Yup. One of the biggest contrasts going from TOS to TMP. Everything felt different.
Works even without TOS though. Old captain returns, doesn't really know the ship. Makes mistakes. Pulls it together. The explanations are just fan service
The uniforms have no real connection to TOS. Totally different aesthetic.
Bennett's trek reuses a lot of TMP sets and costumes. And of course TWOK is a direct sequel to TOS' "Space Seed".
I'm fine with them all being separate continuities; just pointing out the TMP tries to connect those dots, at least vaguely, while WoK completely ignores everything after TOS. WoK uses some TMP assets, but changes the atmosphere so completely, plus the new uniforms, that it really feels really divorced from what came before. One can imagine that the "Space Seed" that happened in the Bennetverse looked a bit different, and it doesn't require TMP to have ever happened.
TMP may NOT come after TOS - it could be a totally different set of 5YM adventures, considering Gene's view of it all at the time of the novelization. (I rather like thinking that the TMP adventurers had NOT already gone through all of that with Nomad earlier, honestly.) Lol.
I can't say I ever had an issue going from the original series to TMP as far as being in the same universe. Later shows like TNG, DS9 and Enterprise have shown the original series aesthetic and have established that's how it actually appeared in canon.
As @Phoenix219 noted, TMP does provide dialogue to establish the Enterprise was an 'almost totally new Enterprise,' that there was an extensive refit to upgrade its systems and so forth. Now, we can argue whether 18 months is enough time to do such an overhaul, but the dialogue I think makes it clear the original series was supposed to be taken as seen.
As far as going from TMP to TWOK, I never thought of it as anything but the same universe. It's the same sets. And new sets they built for TWOK have the same aesthetic. Other than some lighting changes, and moving two or three stations around on the bridge (and re-upholstering the chairs) they are all the same sets. The outside of the ship is the same. And these are all things that can be explained because TWOK takes place about a decade later, give or take a year.
Granted, TWOK does not acknowledge TMP 'in story.' There's no references to those events, though not necessarily surprising since it was years before in universe. But, at the same time, TWOK does not contradict TMP. Much like "Obsession" does not reference "The Conscience of the King." There's a tendency in films to expect a sequel to acknowledge it's predecessor movie, which doesn't happen with TWOK. But it is in keeping with the original series.
And there are a few minor things that carry over from TMP. For instance, when Chekov rejoins the Enterprise he is asked to take the weapons control station, a station he was first assigned to in TMP. And Spock seems more at ease with himself. In TMP, after his encounter with V'Ger he realizes logic is not enough. That his human half might have something to offer after all. That is one trait that seemed to have carried over into TWOK. Now, granted the 2nd point might be more just happenstance (or maybe that was one thing they liked about TMP and decided to develop it further). But the 1st point about Chekov seems to be a direct acknowledgement that TMP did exist in this universe.
As @Phoenix219 noted, TMP does provide dialogue to establish the Enterprise was an 'almost totally new Enterprise,' that there was an extensive refit to upgrade its systems and so forth. Now, we can argue whether 18 months is enough time to do such an overhaul, but the dialogue I think makes it clear the original series was supposed to be taken as seen.
As far as going from TMP to TWOK, I never thought of it as anything but the same universe. It's the same sets. And new sets they built for TWOK have the same aesthetic. Other than some lighting changes, and moving two or three stations around on the bridge (and re-upholstering the chairs) they are all the same sets. The outside of the ship is the same. And these are all things that can be explained because TWOK takes place about a decade later, give or take a year.
Granted, TWOK does not acknowledge TMP 'in story.' There's no references to those events, though not necessarily surprising since it was years before in universe. But, at the same time, TWOK does not contradict TMP. Much like "Obsession" does not reference "The Conscience of the King." There's a tendency in films to expect a sequel to acknowledge it's predecessor movie, which doesn't happen with TWOK. But it is in keeping with the original series.
And there are a few minor things that carry over from TMP. For instance, when Chekov rejoins the Enterprise he is asked to take the weapons control station, a station he was first assigned to in TMP. And Spock seems more at ease with himself. In TMP, after his encounter with V'Ger he realizes logic is not enough. That his human half might have something to offer after all. That is one trait that seemed to have carried over into TWOK. Now, granted the 2nd point might be more just happenstance (or maybe that was one thing they liked about TMP and decided to develop it further). But the 1st point about Chekov seems to be a direct acknowledgement that TMP did exist in this universe.
