To Accept or Not to Accept

[Captain Robert April]

The "bums" in question who shifted Supes from leaping to flying were named Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

Way to magnificently, spectacularly, miss the point.

It wasn't a valid point. There's a big difference between the creators of a character making some slight alterations within a few years of that character's creation and someone completely different coming along forty years later and overturning the whole applecart just because they can.

Frankly, I think there's more at play here than just JJ wanting to remake Star Trek in his own image and Paramount wanting to turn Star Trek into a big sprawling space epic, ala Star Wars.

I think a big part of this whole mess has to do with the division of the Star Trek franchise between CBS and Viacom, and each party wanting to have their own version to play with as they see fit. And with the vast bulk of Star Trek being specifically television related, CBS got the established stuff, while Viacom, which has the movie side of things, now gets a brand spanking new space opera to play with, with no obligation whatsoever to toe the line with what came before.

Of course, what this also means is that any new "series" based on this film will only be a series of other films. They try and move this to television, then they're crossing that line in the sand with the CBS side of the house, and they've invested a bunch to maintain the integrity of the established franchise, as evidenced by the bucks they spent on remastering and syndicating TOS.

So, on that front, I'm actually rather content. Not only is the primary timeline preserved, it's actually quite safe.

I'm mainly irritated by the shuck n' jive that went on in trying to sell this cockamamie film.

 

[ST-One]

The "bums" in question who shifted Supes from leaping to flying were named Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

Way to magnificently, spectacularly, miss the point.

It wasn't a valid point. There's a big difference between the creators of a character making some slight alterations within a few years of that character's creation and someone completely different coming along forty years later and overturning the whole applecart just because they can.

From what we've seen, neither of the characters changed all that much: Kirk still has a 'commanding' presence, McCoy is still kind of grumpy, Spock stoic and Pike - as the first commander of the Enterprise - is still that über-captain.

 

[Kirk1980]

On a conceptual level this is certainly what I would've preferred, however for the moment I'm open to the possibility that Orci and Kurtzman have an awesome story to tell here that requires this convoluted approach, of which the in-universe explanation for canon violations is merely a convenient and incidental benefit.

I still think they should've made Chekov a woman. Russian chicks are hot.

Agreed on that fact. I once knew a Russian girl who....well, that's moving into TMI territory....

While I hope it is an awesome tale....as Trek fans, we deal with convoluted storylines all the time. However, should we really burden the regular moviegoing audience with our particular brand of insanity?

 

[3D Master]

^"Our Spock" and Nero both travel from the current Trek universe into this one connecting them, this universe however is different to the one we know given how the kelvin looks compared to the prime universes ships of the time. This is a different reality that moves away from our own, the prime timeline still exists along with it.

Frankly, I'm not so sure it's "our Spock" who goes back in time. Rather, I suspect it's the old Spock of the alternate timeline that Nero screws with when he goes back in time in the first place and misses, winding up in the alternate timeline instead of the primary one.

Of course, with that approach, who's to say that Nero is from the primary timeline in the first place?

This gets better all the time.

Actually, the prequel-sequel, or is it sequel-prequel comics to the movie, rather establish the future that Nero is from, isn't the real Star Trek's 24th century. In it, there's a supernova that threatens the Romulans, and Spock proposes an artificial black hole/singularity is used eat the nova. (Scientific bullshit, as it'd only make the nova worse, but eh). Anyway, VULCANS must help ROMULANS build this artificial singularity and must first acquire an exotic material to do so.

While over in the real Star Trek 24th century, Romulans power their ships with artificial singularities, are their master, and obviously don't need Vulcans' help to make it, let alone waste their time mining some exotic material first. They create the things all the time as standard operating procedure.

That would rather say, this entire movie is bullshit.

 

[blaXXer]

As you have stated again and again. If it fires you up so much, why even bother?

 

[Australis]

^ "Queritor ergo sum: I whine therefore I am". It's what keeps these guys going.

 

[Eddie Roth]

At the end of the movie, the crew of the nuEnterprise will probably sail off into a wonderful sunrise/sunset, into a not-quite-exactly-the-same universe, into a different quantum reality. It has nothing to do with "Oh well, it's just an episode in an alternate timeline". It will become a new continuity, running parallel to the already-existing continuity.

Yes, but I find that a good thing. Or at least not a bad thing. The basics are kept, but everything we know is open to reinterpretation. We could get a sequel that shows us the end of the five-year mission, for example. What happened inbetween could still have been roughly the same as what we saw in TOS.

What we DO know is that the U.S.S. Enterprise was in service for quite a while, under two different captains, before TOS started. This means that her construction started when James Kirk was still a toddler...

Do we know that? I only ever saw one other captain before Kirk. (I'm not counting April from TAS, because you can't pick and choose what's "canon" from that show and what is not. It's generally counted as "apocryphal".) Also I seem to remember that the Admiral in STIII said that the Enterprise was 20 years old when she was about to be decommissioned. If we look at Kirk's age then, it kinda fits his age in ST09.

For once, let us have the benefit of the doubt. We are talking about J.J. Abrams here and it seems that he never ever does anything unintentionally! 'Lost' anyone? 'Cloverfield'?

Agreed! And those who know LOST know that they have some wicked time travel going on there, and so far, convoluted as it may be, it still makes sense.

I very much doubt that Star Trek XI will exactly show how Kirk got the command of the Enterprise in the first place. And why should history "as we know it" - in a movie-making, story-telling sense - unfold AGAIN? Been there, seen that, meh...

Again, exactly my point. What I was trying to say was that until something happens in this film or any later film that severely contradicts information we already have we could assume that everything is shown as it happened before the TOS we know. If it doesn't, it will make everything all the newer and more exciting.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

the real Star Trek 24th century

There is no such thing.

this entire movie is bullshit.

Also known as "fiction".

 

[Ensign_Redshirt]

I won't accept this movie as Canon if Kirk's full name isn't explicitly mentioned as "James R. Kirk". Chronologically, this movie takes place prior to "Where No Man Has Gone Before"... and during this time period his name was James R. Kirk. He didn't change it to James T. Kirk until a few months later.

 

[urbandk]

the real Star Trek 24th century

There is no such thing.

this entire movie is bullshit.

Also known as "fiction".

+1

Now I'm going to go back to the real Care Bear universe and not the bastard reboot with the Care Bear Cousins.

Oh, and, science in Star Trek... give me a break. "The Enemy Within," anyone?

I love Star Trek because it has great stories and great fantasy, both of which I hope the new film has in abundance.

 

[Grup]

Simply put. I like Trek. There were episodes of TOS I loved (City On The Edge) and eps I hated (Piece Of The Action). There were spin-offs I liked/tolerated (TNG) and ones I never watched (DS9, Voyager).

As a non-hardcore fan, even I know they goofed on continuity in some story lines. No big deal to me. If this movie doesn't legitimize or keep in tact every episode of Trek ever made, I will not be upset. Imagine if they did a movie today where the character of Rhett Butler wakes up in 2009 as a Civil War reenactor and says "That was a helluva dream". (Or worse yet a 9 y/O kid named Luke wakes up and say that.) I'll think it's stupid. No doubt about that. But it will not diminish the episodes, series or films that I like. It is make believe. It is fiction. It is entertainment.

None of this ever really happened.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

The "bums" in question who shifted Supes from leaping to flying were named Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

It wasn't a valid point. There's a big difference between the creators of a character making some slight alterations within a few years of that character's creation and someone completely different coming along forty years later and overturning the whole applecart just because they can.

Incorrect; Siegel and Shuster had very little to do with the "slight alterations".

Superman's ability changed from leaping to flight for the first time in the 1940s radio program. The narrators of The Adventures of Superman (radio not the George Reeves show) referenced Superman's ability in terms of flight instead of mere leaping. A sound effect of Superman whizzing through the air also sold the ability of flight*.

Flight was visually seen for the first time in the Fleischer cartoons; as was X-Ray vision.

This was, of course, eventually incorporated into the comic.

The radio show introduced a lot of concepts that weren't from the minds of Siegel and Shuster. For example, Batman and Superman were teaming up long before the folks at National (now DC) decided to put them together. It also introduced Kryptonite; although S&S had written and drawn a similar story about a mysterious K-metal that went unpublished because it had Lois Lane learning of Clark's dual-identity (the plan there was to team Lois and Clark up with the former aiding the latter in keeping his "secret identity").

Siegel and Shuster had very little to do with the radio, movie and television adaptations of their creation. Even if some elements, like Jimmy Olsen, Kryptonite, flight, and X-Ray Vision, were incorporated into the comics. And a lot of the elements of the Superman we know today were a result of the additions after the departure of S&S from National in the late 40s/early 50s when the character was under the editorial direction of Mort Weisnberger.

Other powers not introduced by the comics, like those seen in the Christopher Reeves movies, were never added and ignored. In fact, powers that S&S created were also dropped, like the ability of Clark/Superman to alter his face.

So starship polaris' point is more than valid.

*pg.53-64, Superman: The Complete History by Les Daniels w/ art direction and design by Chip Kidd. Chronicle Books, San Francisco. 1998

 

[xortex]

I won't accept this movie as Canon if Kirk's full name isn't explicitly mentioned as "James R. Kirk". Chronologically, this movie takes place prior to "Where No Man Has Gone Before"... and during this time period his name was James R. Kirk. He didn't change it to James T. Kirk until a few months later.

His tombstone read James R. Kirk to show that Gary Mitchell wasn't perfect.

 

[Ensign_Redshirt]

I won't accept this movie as Canon if Kirk's full name isn't explicitly mentioned as "James R. Kirk". Chronologically, this movie takes place prior to "Where No Man Has Gone Before"... and during this time period his name was James R. Kirk. He didn't change it to James T. Kirk until a few months later.

His tombstone read James R. Kirk to show that Gary Mitchell wasn't perfect.

It was more like that his tombstone read James R. Kirk to show that Gene Roddenberry wasn't perfect.

 

[urbandk]

I won't accept this movie as Canon if Kirk's full name isn't explicitly mentioned as "James R. Kirk". Chronologically, this movie takes place prior to "Where No Man Has Gone Before"... and during this time period his name was James R. Kirk. He didn't change it to James T. Kirk until a few months later.

His tombstone read James R. Kirk to show that Gary Mitchell wasn't perfect.

According to whom?

 

[Michael]

I won't accept this movie as Canon if Kirk's full name isn't explicitly mentioned as "James R. Kirk". Chronologically, this movie takes place prior to "Where No Man Has Gone Before"... and during this time period his name was James R. Kirk. He didn't change it to James T. Kirk until a few months later.

His tombstone read James R. Kirk to show that Gary Mitchell wasn't perfect.

According to whom?

According to Xortex' imagination, I'm sure.

 

[Aragorn]

Was he the one who said something shown on DS9 doesn't count in his canon?

 

[pookha]

^"Our Spock" and Nero both travel from the current Trek universe into this one connecting them, this universe however is different to the one we know given how the kelvin looks compared to the prime universes ships of the time. This is a different reality that moves away from our own, the prime timeline still exists along with it.

Frankly, I'm not so sure it's "our Spock" who goes back in time. Rather, I suspect it's the old Spock of the alternate timeline that Nero screws with when he goes back in time in the first place and misses, winding up in the alternate timeline instead of the primary one.

Of course, with that approach, who's to say that Nero is from the primary timeline in the first place?

This gets better all the time.

Actually, the prequel-sequel, or is it sequel-prequel comics to the movie, rather establish the future that Nero is from, isn't the real Star Trek's 24th century. In it, there's a supernova that threatens the Romulans, and Spock proposes an artificial black hole/singularity is used eat the nova. (Scientific bullshit, as it'd only make the nova worse, but eh). Anyway, VULCANS must help ROMULANS build this artificial singularity and must first acquire an exotic material to do so.

While over in the real Star Trek 24th century, Romulans power their ships with artificial singularities, are their master, and obviously don't need Vulcans' help to make it, let alone waste their time mining some exotic material first. They create the things all the time as standard operating procedure.

That would rather say, this entire movie is bullshit.

making one that would be big enough to deal with a whatever is a threat to romulus may be far more difficult then creating artificial singularities to power a ship.
and isnt it part of ds9 that the romulans suffered a lot due to the dominion war.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Well, if we're gonna be citing Siegel and Shuster in determining a "canon Superman", where do we fit the evil mentalist Superman they had in their little mail order fanzine years before National Periodicals gave them a shot with Action #1?

The fact remains that when Superman started flying in the comics and the newspaper strips, Joe and Jerry were still there. Whether it was their idea or not, they went along with it and had a hand in its implementation.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

Well, if we're gonna be citing Siegel and Shuster in determining a "canon Superman", where do we fit the evil mentalist Superman they had in their little mail order fanzine years before National Periodicals gave them a shot with Action #1?

Simple.

Their first attempt, which did not sell and was recycled into the Ultra-Humanite.

Next.

The fact remains that when Superman started flying in the comics and the newspaper strips, Joe and Jerry were still there. Whether it was their idea or not, they went along with it and had a hand in its implementation.

So then what about the last few seasons of TNG, the TNG movies, DS9, VOY, ENT... and all those of your beloved canon, which was not made with Roddenberry or his "hand"?