Trek canon is dead. Thanx JJ!

[gastrof]

Guys?

Look at it this way-

Both fans and "inside people" have bent over backwards over the years to make everything fit so that Trek had one consistent timeline. (For example, "James R. Kirk" simply showing Mitchell was being a snot.)

I'm willing to say that up to now they succeeded.

Looking at the Enterprise as it is in the new film, both inside and out, it's TOO different. If the uniforms were representative of the degree of change to the ship and historical occurences, I could still accept this as essentially the same continuity.

The uniforms, however, seem to be essentially all there is LEFT of the original.

I've got to fall back on my earliest theory, now.

This is a parallel universe to the TREK we knew.

It is NOT the same continuity. It will be able to give us stories of the kind we enjoyed, but it's a DIFFERENT Kirk, a DIFFERENT Spock. VERY similar (far more similar than those in the Mirror universe that we've also enjoyed in more than one episode and novel), but different.

I'm going to miss the original TREK universe. It's something we've enjoyed for 40+ years, but it's no longer being followed.

The only thing I can figure is that maybe, just MAYBE, this nuTrek could be said to lead into an identical TNG, DS9, and Voyager. I mean, isn't it possible that this nu Enterprise could be the predecessor of the ships in those depictions?

If that's the case, even if we don't see anything more of the 24th century, then MOST of the Star Trek we've known is still in place.

At least we can know that post-TOS novels will still be in a recognizable timeline, and not wonder "Which ones are we reading about now?"

Again, I'm put out that they've ejected TOS from Trekdom and are taking up with nuTrek, but at least nuTrek is more stories, and it is about people we know. (Close enough, anyway.)

I don't think Trek canon can be fully counted as six feet deep yet.

We've just had a "foundation transplant" until there's proof to the contrary.

Am I grasping here? Yep. But let's not cut loose any more than we have to. Even nuTrek may end up having much of the TOS continuity we already know. Maybe only a few things will be different.

I'm also still willing to wait and see how the bridge looks in that final scene our new Chekov described to us.

Let's all do the same.

Besides, you're ALL going to buy as many tickets as I am this May, maybe more. You know it and I know it.

 

[Michael Chris]

I certainly hope so. I mean I'm slightly OCD, and I'm just amazed at the obsession.

 

[Smarkey]

I'm also still willing to wait and see how the bridge looks in that final scene our new Chekov described to us.

I'm doubtful there will be any change (when it comes to the bridge at any rate). In addition to the unlikeliness of creating such a large and complex key set for 'single use,' there was a snapshot of JJ on the day of that last bridge scene showing him sitting with his laptop at what we can now identify as the 'Eviron' station seen in a released photo (or another station with similar console design). If they changed the set for the end of the film, they did it subtly (unless of course, the set JJ was on just hadn't been struck, yet.)

 

[gastrof]

A few coats of paint to the iMac bridge could change it considerably, and leave it looking a lot more like the one we knew.

Again, I'm grasping here. I admit it. Still, wait and see.

We don't fully know what we're getting until we see it.

THEN, if we like, we can wait six months, buy copies of the DVD, and burn them.

 

[Ptrope]

It's clear to me one thing the upcoming new Star Trek film ultimately lays to rest... the idea of 'canon' in Star Trek fandom. And I'm happy about that! At least, the assurtion that Trek history is a straight line.

But it still may sorta fit with canon... how? Same trick as Doctor Who... Time Travel.

I do believe a previous Trek producer once said things were a different timeline since First Contact, eh? So who's with me on this? I think it's rather undeniable these days.

I love time travel stories - I really do! If that's the point of the story, and they don't completely f*** it up, then it can be both entertaining and enlightening.

But in Trek, time travel has become not only a crutch, it has become the crutch - just ask that uBnEnRaMmAeNd producer. They seem to have given up on telling new stories and just given in to using all the old familiar tropes, and justifying them all with time travel. It's damned unfortunate. If I want to travel back in Star Trek's time, I think I'll stick with the DVDs and get it straight from the horse's mouth . Trek has pretty much ruined the idea of time travel as a serious concept - now it's just a cop-out.

 

[Captain Fine]

Canon regarding the LOOK of the Enterprise doesn't bother me so much.

As for the other stuff, we already know WHY it's happening in-story and how it's trying to be fixed in-story by a certain someone (are we allowed to mention plot-related spoilers in threads like this?)

 

[gastrof]

Canon regarding the LOOK of the Enterprise doesn't bother me so much.

As for the other stuff, we already know WHY it's happening in-story and how it's trying to be fixed in-story by a certain someone (are we allowed to mention plot-related spoilers in threads like this?)

No.

If you bring up Jonathan Archer and Doctor Who's involvement in this story again, the mods will likely ban you for revealing spoilers without warning.

 

[Plum]

It's clear to me one thing the upcoming new Star Trek film ultimately lays to rest... the idea of 'canon' in Star Trek fandom. And I'm happy about that! At least, the assurtion that Trek history is a straight line.

But it still may sorta fit with canon... how? Same trick as Doctor Who... Time Travel.

I do believe a previous Trek producer once said things were a different timeline since First Contact, eh? So who's with me on this? I think it's rather undeniable these days.

I love time travel stories - I really do! If that's the point of the story, and they don't completely f*** it up, then it can be both entertaining and enlightening.

But in Trek, time travel has become not only a crutch, it has become the crutch - just ask that uBnEnRaMmAeNd producer. They seem to have given up on telling new stories and just given in to using all the old familiar tropes, and justifying them all with time travel. It's damned unfortunate. If I want to travel back in Star Trek's time, I think I'll stick with the DVDs and get it straight from the horse's mouth . Trek has pretty much ruined the idea of time travel as a serious concept - now it's just a cop-out.

Hmm, yes. I realize this is perhaps a danger in Trek (while in Doctor Who it's just par for the course. Gotta love having a TARDIS girls). Time travel can have a disturbing 'Deux Ex Machina' quality that may cheapen the plot of any story (Nexus anyone? Yea, thought so!).

So good point. But then, Trek certainly has it's time travel element that has been present all the while. And perhaps, this might be a handy crutch! At least to explain to ones child why the ships "look different".

I realize that's using complex physics and Timelord level theories regarding various dimentions in space time to explain to a child why the enterprise looks different from the TV show... but maybe that's not so terrible?

 

[M'Sharak]

Canon regarding the LOOK of the Enterprise doesn't bother me so much.

As for the other stuff, we already know WHY it's happening in-story and how it's trying to be fixed in-story by a certain someone (are we allowed to mention plot-related spoilers in threads like this?)

I'd say that if it wasn't seen in the trailer,

Spoiler: it would be better...

...to use the Spoiler tags, just to avoid anyone getting an unwanted surprise.

You can use the

button above the text-entry box.

 

[Psion]

Nah ... it simply establishes a parallel universe. This new one co-exists with the old, and there are even possibilities of cross-overs occurring.

Y'know (and I know you know) this is just popular fiction. I can watch one version for a couple of hours, and then another version for a couple of hours, and enjoy both without feeling any need to make them fit together by means of "parallel universes" or "alternate realities."

Since there is and was zero chance of the studio resurrecting a faithful version of the original 1960s "Star Trek" I can't get wrapped up in our faux "Captain April's" concern about this one "wiping out" or "replacing" the old one.

It is a curious syndrome of Trek fans that we seek continuity in our fiction. Are fans like myself denying reality on some level and substituting an alternative of someone else's creation? Or are we instead so grounded in the real world that we seek out more verisimilar fiction than those who prefer Bond or Batman. I adopted a "parallel universes" outlook on a lot of things years ago, including Star Trek, and since then find it easier to accept continuity weirdness. Without it, I'd be a lot closer to April's camp on the issues.

I look at reality like a tree. It has a trunk, and every time there's a choice, the trunk branches off for each option. These branches in turn subdivide, until ultimately, the place I'm living in -- this moment -- is the tip of a twig on an unimaginably huge and complicated tree. From my perspective, looking back, the choices leave what is essentially a straight line, but were I to somehow crawl back down to the trunk along that line and try to retrace my path to the present, I'd almost certainly get lost and find myself on a different twig on a different branch, with some things similar and many other things very different.

Combining this worldview with my fondness for "realistic fantasy", it's easier for me to accept modern Star Trek by applying exactly the same view to the world Trek inhabits. There's a branch that includes TOS, but objectively, it isn't quite linear. One episode doesn't necessarily follow the previous from "The Cage" to "Turnabout Intruder". Some of those episodes might branch off from the main. It's ridiculous to assume that everything we see happening to Kirk and Spock occurred. Their five year mission would have been nearly non-stop encounters risking life and limb. Even Spock couldn't handle that kind of stress, Kirk would have gone postal, and McCoy'd wind up in a hypo-induced fog.

How would one such collection of limbs on the Star Trek universe-tree appear? Starting with "The Cage", there is a lot of space between it and "Where No Man Has Gone Before". A lot of chances for all sorts of different things to happen. Most wouldn't get close to WNMHGB, but they'd still be rooted to "The Cage". Perhaps Ben Finney is in command of the Enterprise on one of those twigs. Eventually, we get to the main run of the series, and each episode might fork off on its own path, separate from the others. One such fork leads to "Space Seed" and from there to a few more adventures, Kirk's promotion, the Enterprise's refit, Spock taking command, and Kahn's capture of the Reliant. So Star Trek:The Wrath of Kahn is part of the "Space Seed" fork. But Star Trek: The Motion Picture might not be.

Things get even more interesting with First Contact, which mucks up the history of Star Trek by showing Zephram Cochrane what a 24th Century starship looks like. He even learns its name. Time travel means climbing back along a branch, remember, and the contact Picard and company had with Cochrane and Sloane probably introduced a whole new branch to the tree. One where Cochrane takes a more active role in how his discoveries are used and he even goes so far as to suggest a name and possibly design for the first Warp 5 project. So Star Trek: Enterprise worked nicely as a completely separate limb from that which parented TOS -- one that diverged much earlier, but still had a lot in common. Well, it worked well until "These are the Voyages", anyway. [shrugs]

So it's easier for me to shrug off inconsistencies in the design of things, and even things like Tarsus IV and driving a car, but I still get my knickers in a knot over things that seem illogical (like that other subject I keep arguing about but won't bring up here).

But the funny thing is ... the part that makes me chuckle out loud when I'm on the train or in a crowded elevator or at a funeral ... this essentially means there IS no continuity in Star Trek. No canon. Maybe all of Trek up to Voyager could at least claim "The Cage" as a common ancestor, but each movie and series and even episode might have branched off at a different time. Star Trek: The Final Frontier doesn't necessarily precede The Undiscovered Country. Kirk might not even like mountain climbing in The Undiscovered Country! To an outside observer, a multiverse like this would almost certainly look like ultimate entropy with every possibility explored.



Wow. When I hit reply, I meant to keep it to little more than a thumbs-up, Dennis.

Maybe in another reality I did.

 

[Plum]

Things get even more interesting with First Contact, which mucks up the history of Star Trek by showing Zephram Cochrane what a 24th Century starship looks like. He even learns its name. Time travel means climbing back along a branch, remember, and the contact Picard and company had with Cochrane and Sloane probably introduced a whole new branch to the tree. One where Cochrane takes a more active role in how his discoveries are used and he even goes so far as to suggest a name and possibly design for the first Warp 5 project. So Star Trek: Enterprise worked nicely as a completely separate limb from that which parented TOS -- one that diverged much earlier, but still had a lot in common. Well, it worked well until "These are the Voyages", anyway. [shrugs]

... lost it right here.

... But the funny thing is ... the part that makes me chuckle out loud when I'm on the train or in a crowded elevator or at a funeral ... this essentially means there IS no continuity in Star Trek. No canon. Maybe all of Trek up to Voyager could at least claim "The Cage" as a common ancestor, but each movie and series and even episode might have branched off at a different time. Star Trek: The Final Frontier doesn't necessarily precede The Undiscovered Country. Kirk might not even like mountain climbing in The Undiscovered Country! To an outside observer, a multiverse like this would almost certainly look like ultimate entropy with every possibility explored.

Yeeeaaaa... but you make my idea sound so cheap. One can't account for EVERYones personal canon. A canon where all that might be true, somehow.

Right now, I'm thinking it's Q's fault.

 

[Naldo]

I used to be a canon geek. But recently I'm starting to think that a nice blowout of all the cumbersome little tidbits might be a good thing.

/shock: bars instead of braids as rank!!!
/shock: Kirk knows how to drive a stick shift!!

I mean REALLY! Be done with it already, that kind of crap is SO unimportant.

We love TOS, we have TOS, we can see TOS.

Now there's something new, different, updated, sparkly and shiny. Not exactly like the first one, but welcome, overdue and hopefully a great time.

 

[archeryguy1701]

^You know... your first line or two just gave me a thought: Perhaps all Trek needs is people who won't strictly follow the established to the "T". Maybe it needs someone who will do their own thing when they think it's best. I mean, doing their own thing gives the writers and directors a lot more flexibility in the story telling they can do. Eventually, you have so much history and so much back story that you become weighed down on details and minutia, and all that's left to do is either tell a cookie-cutter story to keep everything accurate or start over. So, regardless of what JJ plans on doing with the canon, I think I welcome it.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

how can you think it'll lay to rest the canon debates?

it's more likely going to provoke more!

it's gonna be like Crisis on Infinite Earths! are you a fan of pre-JJ or post?

Exactly.

Once you give up the idea of "consistency," you'll have opened up a Pandora's Box that you can never close again.

Obviously, not everything has been consistent, but there has never been an intentional rejection of consistency 'til this point. You can blame most of the issues on carelessness, or egotism... or someone having a favorite actor who they want to play Cochran despite him having nothing in common other than species and gender with the original portrayal of the character... but it was always at least "pretending to care" about consistency.

This is the first time we've been told "Consistency? Screw that! I know better than the guys who made the original so I'm gonna change what they intended."

It's a huge risk, any way you look at it. No matter what, we KNOW that this movie doesn't take place in the "Trek world" we've known for 40+ years. Whether it "resets" to the world we know at the end, or whether it "spins off" into what some folks here have called "Trek 2.0," it's unrelated to Star Trek as it's existed 'til now.

I've heard the line many times. "You don't have to throw away your tapes and DVDs. They're still there." But then, nobody had to throw away their old Pre-Crisis comics either... they just "no longer existed in continuity."

Funny thing, that... no matter how many times, since then, DC has tried to "clean up" the mess that they made with that, they've never succeeded. The more they try, the more people they alienate, it seems. They try to "reinvent" and they drive folks away... they go back to bits of what used to be and they drive the NEW folks away... nobody's happy. And sales are down. Way down.

 

[DaveyNY]

WHAT IF...

... at the end of this new Trek Movie, we find out that this New "FUNKEY" ENTERPRISE is really the Version that Capt's April & Pike commanded and that when Kirk takes over command...

...Officially,... after the events at the heart of the movie... (just like 'WE' THINK happened in TOS)

...The ship has been sent to drydock for repairs of the "Movie-Inflicted-Damage" and in the process, is ret-conned by having the Secondary hull pushed back and the bridge interior redone in a little bit of the original muted colors???...(kinda like the difference between The Cage and WNMHGB ENTERPRISE's)

Thus kinda-sorta re-establishing TOS... (& thusly explaining the statement of the Chekov guy)


After all...'WE' really haven't seen ALL of the movie,,, YET...

Just bits and pieces glued together in what appears to be a somewhat hap-hazard manner in this Trailer.

Maybe 'WE' are jumpin' the gun??

Maybe JJ is gonna suprise the ever-livin'-shit outta ALL OF US!!

(That Orci dude does keep kinda sayin'...Just wait and see...)

Oh...and I don't think I've said it yet... I'm kinda lookin' forward to the final product.

 

[Deckerd]

A lot of young people will see this film who have never had a brush with Trek before. I'd love to know what they think of a large group of ageing fans in the background, tying themselves in knots over every canon infraction. Laugh? I think so.

 

[Devon]

Canon is non-canon. That's all there is to it.

 

[shipfisher]

I've enjoyed Star Trek greatly over the years, but not as a religion. Beyond a certain point, the whole canon/non-canon thing sort of skates to far into that territory for my tastes. I prefer a fundamental separation of church and sci-fi (with apologies to Tom Cruise).

 

[Therin of Andor]

Doctor Who has not been rebooted. The new show is a continuation of the original. Proof that you don't need to abandon extenssive 40 year canon to appeal to the masses.

I seem to recall that the two Peter Cushing movies were not part of the main "Doctor Who" canon?

 

[Haggis and tatties]

Doctor Who has not been rebooted. The new show is a continuation of the original. Proof that you don't need to abandon extenssive 40 year canon to appeal to the masses.

I seem to recall that the two Peter Cushing movies were not part of the main "Doctor Who" canon?

Yeah that's a strange one for me as i have always thought of Cushing as being part of the whole Dr who canon, strange really that the two movies seems to have been ignored by all involved in the making of Who, especially since recently we had Bernard Cribbins back in Nuwho, it might have been nice to just have him play the same character from the movies, and that would have tied nicely into his hobby of watching for space men in his allotment and him waving off his grand daughter with the personal knowledge that she is about to experience out of this world things with the Dr.......

Still back on topic, canon is not for everybody, and as much as i love the old Shat and crew i love watching entertaining Star Trek stories foremost, that's why TOS is so good, great story telling over everything else, and as far as i can see the new movie will only add more meaty goodness to the history of our Fave Star Trek charactors and time line.