Trailer Reaction...authors?

[Christopher]

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I've been wanting to point this out as well. The Iotians had one book about Chicago gangsters as their starting point. Clearly they mimicked the outward designs of the things photographed in the book's pages, but a tome about gansters wouldn't describe the inner workings of machines like an automobile. They improvised. I'm surprised Kirk was able to drive the car at all.

They had more than the one book. Bela Oxmyx told Kirk that the Horizon had also left "Some textbooks on how to make radio sets and stuff like that." Presumably that also included "stuff" like automobiles, firearms, phonographs, and the other Earthlike technology we saw.

 

[EJA]

It just seems to get dicey when writing prequels rather than sequels especially in light of Gene Roddenberry's infamous "canon" memo and an entire television series is labelled apocryphal.

Roddenberry's canon memo was the exception, not the rule. There's no reason to expect any other TV/film producer or studio licensing department to emulate its approach.

From the trailer, it appears that the Enterprise is a brand new ship and that Christopher Pike is her first captain. So what happens to the characters of Robert and Sarah April, that Robert was the first captain, or their five years aboard the Enterprise as stated in the animated series episode "The Counter-Clock Incident"? Is this just dismissed as apocryphal?

Well, "The Alternative Factor" said a matter-antimatter reaction would destroy the universe. That's clearly been rendered apocryphal. "Threshold" said going to transwarp would turn you into a lizard, and the guy who wrote that episode considers it apocryphal. Lt. Leslie died onscreen in "Obsession" but he was back to normal in the very next episode and dozens more, so apparently his death was apocryphal. ST has never had a uniform, perfectly consistent continuity. There are some HUGE contradictions in there. But we accept them, rationalize them, or just ignore them, and we move on.

If Robert April's stint as Enterprise captain is removed from Trek continuity, that only affects one animated episode, and it wouldn't be the first time an animated episode has been contradicted. ("The Magicks of Megas-tu," like ST V, put the center of the galaxy in easy reach, but VGR's premise of a galactic crossing taking generations directly contradicts that. And it's next to impossible to fit "The Slaver Weapon"'s Kzinti wars into Trek continuity as we now know it.)

And what about the years Pike served as Enterprise captain before Kirk came on board? This could be at risk if the rumors about the Ent being "new" at the time of the movie are true.

And btw, I don't think the whole Kzinti thing is that hard to reconcile with Trek continuity. All you have to do is ignore Sulu's line about the last conflict being fought two centuries ago. Mind you though, that's TAS. Stuff from TOS is more difficult to just ignore/alter.

 

[Timo]

And what about the years Pike served as Enterprise captain before Kirk came on board? This could be at risk if the rumors about the Ent being "new" at the time of the movie are true.

How so? The spoiler descriptions indicate that Pike is a Captain already before confronting Kirk in the bar. Kirk then has to go through the Academy, a process which is supposed to take four years although Kirk swears he will do it in three. Plenty of time for Pike to have adventures as the skipper of the ship even if she is brand new when Kirk enrolls.

And it's still entirely possible that the Enterprise is an old lady when Kirk first sees her. We see a starship being built just before Kirk enrolls. When then jump forward in time multiple times, eventually arriving at a moment where the other heroes already have their TOS ranks and Pike is the Captain of the Enterprise, but Kirk is yet to rise to fame. For all we know, Pike had her for decades, and April before him.

I don't recall the specifics of the Goldstein chronology, but it was generally Okuda - 60 years, right? So are you saying it had the Enterprise launched in the 2160s? (FF puts it in 2183.)

Mostly, the Goldstein timeline works if you go Okuda minus 51-52 years. I think the Enterprise launch is indeed in the early 2170s in Spaceflight Chronology, but I gotta check. The FASA RPG in turn has the first Constitution at reference date 1/8801, which is again more or less 2188JAN plus 51-52 years, thus 2239-40 or so, and apparently Carey primarily uses FASA material. The Ships of the Star Fleet and Heavy Cruiser Evolution fan works go for 2217 as the earliest Constitution launch.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[tranya]

The spoiler descriptions indicate that Pike is a Captain already before confronting Kirk in the bar. Kirk then has to go through the Academy, a process which is supposed to take four years although Kirk swears he will do it in three. Plenty of time for Pike to have adventures as the skipper of the ship even if she is brand new when Kirk enrolls.

And it's still entirely possible that the Enterprise is an old lady when Kirk first sees her. We see a starship being built just before Kirk enrolls. When then jump forward in time multiple times, eventually arriving at a moment where the other heroes already have their TOS ranks and Pike is the Captain of the Enterprise, but Kirk is yet to rise to fame. For all we know, Pike had her for decades, and April before him.

This is a fairly selective reading of some of the spoilers -- there have been recaps of the 4 scenes Abrams has been showing which have clearly implied that the emergency on Vulcan is the Enterprise's maiden voyage. If Pike was the captain of the Enterprise for several years, it appears in this new continuity that he was the captain overseeing the refit.

Basically, he's the new Will Decker.

 

[Timo]

Uh? That the trip to Vulcan would be the ship's maiden voyage has never occurred to me on basis of those spoilers and reports. What wording there would suggest this?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[tranya]

Several of the reports of seeing the scenes Abrams has been showing around Europe and the US in the past few weeks have indicated that it's the first or a very early voyage for the new Enterprise, including Anthony Pascale's at Trekmovie. I'll put it in a spoiler tag:

Spoiler: Anthony's account of the scenes

Scene 1 - Kirk’s Romulan Warning
It is now three years later and Kirk has been a "trouble maker" at the Academy. He is still a cadet pending a review (due to the Kobayashi incident) when there is an Emergency on Vulcan and many Starfleet ships are called into duty to help with possible evacuation. Kirk is not assigned to a ship, but his buddy Dr. McCoy (Karl Urban) has smuggled him on board the USS Enterprise for her maiden voyage. [Emphasis mine]

 

[EJA]

Several of the reports of seeing the scenes Abrams has been showing around Europe and the US in the past few weeks have indicated that it's the first or a very early voyage for the new Enterprise, including Anthony Pascale's at Trekmovie. I'll put it in a spoiler tag:

Spoiler: Anthony's account of the scenes

Scene 1 - Kirk’s Romulan Warning
It is now three years later and Kirk has been a "trouble maker" at the Academy. He is still a cadet pending a review (due to the Kobayashi incident) when there is an Emergency on Vulcan and many Starfleet ships are called into duty to help with possible evacuation. Kirk is not assigned to a ship, but his buddy Dr. McCoy (Karl Urban) has smuggled him on board the USS Enterprise for her maiden voyage. [Emphasis mine]

Oh no. Please, please don't let this be the case. I don't think I could take it

 

[EJA]

Several of the reports of seeing the scenes Abrams has been showing around Europe and the US in the past few weeks have indicated that it's the first or a very early voyage for the new Enterprise, including Anthony Pascale's at Trekmovie. I'll put it in a spoiler tag:

Spoiler: Anthony's account of the scenes

Scene 1 - Kirk’s Romulan Warning
It is now three years later and Kirk has been a "trouble maker" at the Academy. He is still a cadet pending a review (due to the Kobayashi incident) when there is an Emergency on Vulcan and many Starfleet ships are called into duty to help with possible evacuation. Kirk is not assigned to a ship, but his buddy Dr. McCoy (Karl Urban) has smuggled him on board the USS Enterprise for her maiden voyage. [Emphasis mine]

Oh no. Please, please don't let this be the case. I don't think I could take it

No one gonna comment on this then? Christopher, KRAD, anybody?

 

[Christopher]

That is the indication that's been given in all the news reports about the preview scenes, that it's the maiden voyage of the ship. Strictly speaking, the only thing onscreen that contradicts is "The Counter-Clock Incident," but I've already read proposed fixes offered by some people. At this point, even with what we do know for sure about the film's story, there are enough remaining uncertainties that it's too early to jump to any conclusions about what anything means for series continuity or book continuity. Best to adopt a "wait and see" attitude.

 

[Timo]

I'd still be extremely wary about these "maiden voyage" reports. It's just the sort of hyperbole that one would expect in this connection, similar to saying that "Where No Man Has Gone Before" was Kirk's first mission, or the maiden voyage of the starship Enterprise. Perfectly natural in the PR context, but not necessarily factually true in the context of the fictional universe.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[tranya]

I'd still be extremely wary about these "maiden voyage" reports. It's just the sort of hyperbole that one would expect in this connection, similar to saying that "Where No Man Has Gone Before" was Kirk's first mission, or the maiden voyage of the starship Enterprise. Perfectly natural in the PR context, but not necessarily factually true in the context of the fictional universe.

Timo Saloniemi

So, you're basically saying that Anthony Pascale is enough of a Trek n00b that he doesn't know what a "maiden voyage" is? Okay, how about Mark Altman's take on the movie and continuity, who has also seen the same preview clips:

Spoiler: Mark Altman's take

At the end of the day, all of us complaining about how the movie destroys existing continuity, despite protestations to the contrary from the filmmakers, are right. There’s no way you can get around Kirk buddying up to Pike (an inspirational Bruce Greenwood in full-on JFK mode) as an Academy student when this was clearly not the case in “The Menagerie” or driving a stick shift when he couldn’t in “A Piece of the Action” or battling the Romulans face-to-face when we hadn’t even seen them in the flesh until “Balance of Terror.” But it doesn’t really doesn’t matter because “I am your father, new Trek audience” and this isn’t your father’s Star Trek.

It's the maiden voyage of the Enterprise, and other elements of established canon have changed. Continuity appears to be changed in the movie, and there's now lots of evidence to corroborate this from people who have actually seen scenes of the movie.

I'm not sure what the big deal is, to be honest.

 

[tranya]

That is the indication that's been given in all the news reports about the preview scenes, that it's the maiden voyage of the ship. Strictly speaking, the only thing onscreen that contradicts is "The Counter-Clock Incident," but I've already read proposed fixes offered by some people.

What about "The Cage"/"The Menagerie"?

 

[Timo]

Okay, how about Mark Altman's take on the movie and continuity, who has also seen the same preview clips:

How about it? Altman claims that Kirk buddying up to Pike or knowing how to drive a manual shift car are continuity violations. But that's utter bullshit - nothing in canon is contradicted by this, even though it may contradict quite a few established interpretations of that canon.

The timeline is changed by Nero's attack, that much appears obvious. But that doesn't mean we should swallow every half-witted claim that issue X or detail Y is wrong in the new movie. The first two claims that Altman makes are obviously incorrect, even if the third carries merit. Perhaps Pascale is also only 33% correct?

It's easy to see how Pascale could get it all wrong. He hasn't seen the movie, after all. He has only seen separate snippets of it, all of them presumably preceded by a verbal introduction that is bound to contain its share of errors and ambiguities.

Were I a betting man, I'd wager about EUR 500 that the words "maiden voyage" are never spoken on screen in the movie, completely regardless of whether a maiden voyage takes place there. I'd wager the same sum that the words were spoken during the showing of the 20 minutes' worth of clips. And so far, I'm willing to speculate that the words were spoken in error.

It's not that big a deal whether this is the maiden voyage or not. What is IMHO a big deal is that people put faith in these descriptions of the movie snippets, when there shouldn't be much reason to do so. The people doing the describing are biased one way or another, and the amount of attention they can pay to detail is limited. They see what they want to see, and they say what they want to say. None of us would do any better. The only way to get an "objective" view is for a large number of people from multiple camps to see the movie by themselves, and then debate it, for example here.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dayton Ward]

Personally, I'm believing the reports that say it's Leonard Nimoy sitting with Winona Ryder on Vulcan, and Kirk sleeps with Uhura.

Everything else is on the table.

 

[TerriO]

Dude, please, tell me you're joking. That's pretty obviously Ben Cross with Winona Ryder.

 

[Dayton Ward]

^ Nope. There was initial confusion coming out of some of these screenings on that point. Same with Kirk/Uhura. There were even a couple of near-meltdowns on the latter right here on the good ol' TrekBBS. Apparently, that's how it was reported by people at the screenings.

So, those who've decided that we should just "accept it," should instead be able to see why there's skepticism about what's being reported. It's why I just shrug and say, "I'm gonna wait until I see the entire movie, or hear from someone who has." Even if there's changes to the "canon," we still don't know in what context, or to what extent, so there's no reason to go screaming and running off the cliff.

 

[Christopher]

That is the indication that's been given in all the news reports about the preview scenes, that it's the maiden voyage of the ship. Strictly speaking, the only thing onscreen that contradicts is "The Counter-Clock Incident," but I've already read proposed fixes offered by some people.

What about "The Cage"/"The Menagerie"?

According to the Okudas' chronological assumptions, "The Cage" took place in 2254, the same year Kirk graduated from the Academy. So there's no inconsistency in the ship's maiden voyage being simultaneous with Kirk's graduation. After all, there's nothing in "The Cage" that requires the ship to have been in service for a long time beforehand.

How about it? Altman claims that Kirk buddying up to Pike or knowing how to drive a manual shift car are continuity violations. But that's utter bullshit - nothing in canon is contradicted by this, even though it may contradict quite a few established interpretations of that canon.

You're wrong there. In "The Menagerie," Kirk explicitly stated that he'd only met Pike once, when the latter was promoted to fleet captain. We've already seen in the movie that Kirk has at least two interactions with Pike three years apart.

So that is a contradiction, although as I've said before, it's no greater than other explicit contradictions already existing in canon.

The timeline is changed by Nero's attack, that much appears obvious. But that doesn't mean we should swallow every half-witted claim that issue X or detail Y is wrong in the new movie.

You're misreading the intent of these comments. Altman and Pascale aren't saying that the movie was wrong to do these things, merely pointing out that the discrepancies exist. Indeed, if you'd bothered to read their actual comments rather than dismiss them out of hand, you'd know that both reviewers praised the movie, saying that it didn't matter if these discrepancies existed because it was still worthwhile. Check your own judgment before you start hurling insults like "half-witted" at other people.

 

[JD]

This is why I'm really hoping that they eventually show these clips on TV or on the internet, there's just way to many different contradictory descriptions popping up.

 

[tranya]

Oh, Timo, Timo, Timo:

I just question what drives the reluctance to accept what's been heavily hinted for a long time now -- that this movie changes a number of established bits of continuity through an alternate timeline plot mechanism.

Spoiler: my read of the trailer...

In the trailer, we see Kirk at around entry-to-Academy time on his little futurescooter, checking out a clearly still-under-construction Enterprise (which, by the way, is in Iowa). Reports from the previews have shown that Kirk then enters the Academy, gets through it in 3 years, and then has to sneak onto the Enterprise with McCoy's help. So, at best, we're talking about two or so years of the Enterprise before Kirk gets on the ship during the voyage to Vulcan? Are you seriously claiming that in those two years, we get, say, April doing a shakedown cruise, Pike (and Number One and Tyler and Boyce, etc.) serving with Spock? I'm not sure what elements of previous continuity you're desperately holding onto, nor why.

Dismiss Pascale's statement if you want, but you've given absolutely no reason to dismiss that particular statement -- estimating 33% of the perceived continuity changes to be correct is all well and good in the aggregate, but doesn't address the very specific statement and phrasing that Pascale made, nor does it address any of the corroborating evidence from the trailer and the other clip reports shown. What causes you to question that particular statement by Pascale other than the dissonance it provides with established continuity? (Which, by your admission, is being changed in many other cases).

Continue to stick your head in the sand if you prefer, but it seems rather sad to me.

 

[Dayton Ward]

^ Well, to me, the biggest question would seem to be: Are any changes "permanent," or are they resolved via the events of the film? Everything pretty much hinges on that. Until that's answered, we're left with a lot of interesting visuals and a few piecemeal explanations for scenes shown without any real context so far as the entire story's concerned.

That's not sticking one's head in the sand; that's being pragmatic. I realize that's a foreign concept so far as Internet message boards are concerned, but I've always been a rebel.

And for the record: I really have no druthers about it being a reboot, partial or otherwise. I just want to understand the true extent before I start pitching TOS novel ideas