Agreed. It is inappropriate to assume the 'trial' was held the next day after they crashed in the bay. It could have been as soon as a week, or as long as three(more) months later, time enough for Gillian to get her ship appointment.
Question about the trilogy continuity.
- Thread starter sariel2005
- Start date
Elsewhere in the Chrono, though, it puts Kirk's birthday in March, the same date as Shatner's. TSFS can't be more than a few weeks after TWOK, assuming that Spock's regeneration started slow and accelerated. (Vonda McIntyre's novelization made it only three days.) So it would have to be in April, putting the start of TVH in July '85. The final scenes could well be weeks or months later, but still in the latter part of '85; I doubt very much that it took the Federation Council over six months to decide to exonerate Kirk. Going by Harve Bennett's datum of a 6-month shakedown between films, that would put TFF in the first half of '86 at the latest.
I doubt that. Look at the script:
First, they sustained a hell of a lot of battle damage. It would take weeks to months to get things patched up. Second, the reassignments of the trainees would've taken a while, plus Star Fleet would have to declare Genesis off limits, then it takes a short time for it to become a galactic controversy, then send Grissom to investigate the planet.
Kirk's line about 'we are almost home' implies its taken a while to get there.
^I think that Spock's regeneration puts a cap on the interval between the films. He grows from the equivalent of 9 years old to fairly advanced maturity in only a few days, so it's unlikely to have taken months for him to regenerate from "conception" to age 9. As I said before, I'm willing assume the regeneration rate started slow and accelerated, because I believe there's evidence of that in the film itself. But I think it would be pushing it to assume it took months.
Also, I have a hard time believing it took months to repair their battle damage. First off, it wasn't that severe. Going by visual evidence, there was one major hit to engineering, some damage to the port side of the saucer, one hit that caused an explosion on the bridge, and one major hit (or series of hits) to the port torpedo tube. Second, we've seen Trek ships sustain heavy damage in battle, or come to the brink of destruction, and then be ship-shape again in the next episode, no more than a couple of weeks later. Third, if they'd had months to get repairs done, surely they would've fixed the external battle scars; indeed, that would be pretty important for the integrity and airtightness of the hull. But not only are the scars sustained in TWOK still there in TSFS, but several more have inexplicably appeared!
Fourth, you're forgetting that the scene was changed when it was moved to the start of the film. Kirk's log entry in the final version said "The death of Spock is like an open wound." While it's true that Kirk was profoundly close to Spock, he's also a reasonably well-adjusted adult, so it seems likely that if months had passed since Spock's death, he'd be far enough along in the grieving process that it seems unlikely he'd refer to it as an open wound.
So the preponderance of evidence in TSFS suggests that a relatively short time has passed since TWOK. The only exception is that Saavik has gone from a cadet red undershirt to a command white one, suggesting she graduated in the interim. You make good points that it had to take longer than the three days McIntyre asserted in her novelization, but it's unlikely to have been longer than a few weeks.
Also, I have a hard time believing it took months to repair their battle damage. First off, it wasn't that severe. Going by visual evidence, there was one major hit to engineering, some damage to the port side of the saucer, one hit that caused an explosion on the bridge, and one major hit (or series of hits) to the port torpedo tube. Second, we've seen Trek ships sustain heavy damage in battle, or come to the brink of destruction, and then be ship-shape again in the next episode, no more than a couple of weeks later. Third, if they'd had months to get repairs done, surely they would've fixed the external battle scars; indeed, that would be pretty important for the integrity and airtightness of the hull. But not only are the scars sustained in TWOK still there in TSFS, but several more have inexplicably appeared!
Fourth, you're forgetting that the scene was changed when it was moved to the start of the film. Kirk's log entry in the final version said "The death of Spock is like an open wound." While it's true that Kirk was profoundly close to Spock, he's also a reasonably well-adjusted adult, so it seems likely that if months had passed since Spock's death, he'd be far enough along in the grieving process that it seems unlikely he'd refer to it as an open wound.
So the preponderance of evidence in TSFS suggests that a relatively short time has passed since TWOK. The only exception is that Saavik has gone from a cadet red undershirt to a command white one, suggesting she graduated in the interim. You make good points that it had to take longer than the three days McIntyre asserted in her novelization, but it's unlikely to have been longer than a few weeks.
Yet the book e.g. drops the idea that the birthday would be Kirk's fiftieth. So, many of the offscreen ideas about the movie were ignored by the book, and in most cases rightly so.
As for Kirk's birthday, his tombstone had it at SD 1277.1, which in the tradition of later stardates would be more like somewhere in September-October. For comparison, "Charlie X" sports SD 1533 for Thanksgiving, in a relatively nice match.
To be sure, the scars are patched in ST3 - somebody has slapped big white rectangles on the wounds on the side of the secondary hull. Perhaps that's the best the ship's crew could do in several months of hard work with limited resources and skills?
The big gap would probably be after the trial and before the crew was given their new assignment...
Timo Saloniemi
I can't say I've noticed it myself but according to various sources
Kirk's birthday is confirmed in a display in Enterprise episode "In a mirror, darkly"
(The tombstone was of course for some fella named James R Kirk
)Actually, I think all the original TOS movies (except for TMP) have a story arc running through them.
II, III, and IV are of course the Genesis Trilogy.
V continues Kirk's antagonism with the Klingons (You want me, you Klingon bastards?), and his struggles with aging and spirituality.
VI resolves his conflict with mortality and with the Klingons.
That's one way to look at it.
II, III, and IV are of course the Genesis Trilogy.
V continues Kirk's antagonism with the Klingons (You want me, you Klingon bastards?), and his struggles with aging and spirituality.
VI resolves his conflict with mortality and with the Klingons.
That's one way to look at it.
But that's not so much a story arc as a character arc. An "arc" (a sadly overused and overinflated buzzword these days) is not a singular thing. Every story has arcs. In a multipart story, each individual installment has its own arc (a story structure building to a climax and then descending to a denouement), but there can be a larger arc binding them together, and there can be character arcs of various lengths, starting points, and ending points within it. For instance, the overall story arc of the Genesis trilogy is three films long, but David Marcus's character arc is only two films long and Saavik's is slightly over two films long. And each individual film in the trilogy has its own story arc and its own self-contained character arcs. Kirk has an arc that stretches beyond the trilogy, while Professor Nichols has an arc that only takes up a few minutes of one film.
Another question about these films: What are the crew's positions at the start of TWOK? It seems like it's been a while since some of them have seen each other, and there's no mention of the intervening years since TMP (Kirk commanding the Enterprise as per the novels, then retiring, then coming back to Starfleet) or what everyone has been doing. Any backstory here?
^There was a line in the script about Sulu being given command of the Excelsior, but it was cut. Otherwise, I don't think anything was established.
Mike Okuda.
Similarly, Rick Sternbach posts here under the username of... (Go on, guess.)
Wah Chang?
Daddy Warbucks?
I got the sense that, with the exception of Chekov, that the others -- Scotty, Uhura, and McCoy -- were semi-retired, and like Spock, were instructors at the Academy. At that point, it seems like Kirk is the commandant of Starfleet Academy. And since Sulu gets command of Excelsior, I always assumed he was between assignments as of TWOK, and doing Kirk a favor by coming along on the training mission. In my own "personal canon," I think Sulu had been a first officer aboard another starship sometime between TMP and TWOK. -- RR
I recall speculations at the time that Uhura was acting as Admiral Kirk's personal assistant/communications specialist at HQ. Note that she even ends up carrying his birthday present after Spock gives it to Kirk.
Scotty seems to be the training vessel Enterprise's permanent chief engineer, overseeing the midshipmen. McCoy was training the medical cadets. Sulu was between assignments, and about to be promoted to captain (in an abandoned scene), which was originally promised to be added in order to get George Takei to sign his contract.
Great thoughts guys, it helps to get a feel for what the status quo of that time period is.
