The new Concordance (again) and ST: Of Gods and Men

[RookieBatman]

RookieBatman, I see your point. But unlike CRA, I (usually) fill my posts with IMO's and don't present my thoughts and opinions as stone-cold facts. I should have written "could have been like" instead of "would". I wouldn't have been wishing for faliure or anything like that had the old guard rebooted Trek, but I would have had my reservations about it.

That's a fair point, and I reservedly agree that if Berman and Braga had rebooted the Original Series, it may well have been pretty bad. But then, they weren't even really at the reins by the end of Enterprise, and the later seasons had some pretty good stuff in it. You can't throw out the whole batch just because of a few bad apples.
Now, whether something in the spirit of ENT s4 would've generated as much commercial success is a long shot at best, but at least I probably would've enjoyed it.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

RookieBatman, I see your point. But unlike CRA, I (usually) fill my posts with IMO's and don't present my thoughts and opinions as stone-cold facts. I should have written "could have been like" instead of "would". I wouldn't have been wishing for faliure or anything like that had the old guard rebooted Trek, but I would have had my reservations about it.

That's a fair point, and I reservedly agree that if Berman and Braga had rebooted the Original Series, it may well have been pretty bad. But then, they weren't even really at the reins by the end of Enterprise, and the later seasons had some pretty good stuff in it. You can't throw out the whole batch just because of a few bad apples.
Now, whether something in the spirit of ENT s4 would've generated as much commercial success is a long shot at best, but at least I probably would've enjoyed it.

So would I...

Mind you, I LIKED Trek 09...but there were things it "fixed" that didn't need to be broken, and someone with more investiture in Trek would have gone a long way towards identifying them and making sure they were done right.

 

[seigezunt]

I'm still not buying that a nod to ST09 in the text would require reams of new work. I think it just speaks to the bias involved in this project. Which is really sad, because ST deserves a first-class reference work, and not chest-beating.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

I'm still not buying that a nod to ST09 in the text would require reams of new work. I think it just speaks to the bias involved in this project. Which is really sad, because ST deserves a first-class reference work, and not chest-beating.

Ultimately, the "mission statement" for the Concordance as I understand it is to document TOS and TOS ONLY. Trek 09 has scant little to do with TOS.

 

[F. King Daniel]

^Yes it does.

Lots.

With Nimoy Spock at the top of the list (which alone gives it more TOS weight than any little references in Voyager or Enterprise)

 

[seigezunt]

I'm still not buying that a nod to ST09 in the text would require reams of new work. I think it just speaks to the bias involved in this project. Which is really sad, because ST deserves a first-class reference work, and not chest-beating.

Ultimately, the "mission statement" for the Concordance as I understand it is to document TOS and TOS ONLY. Trek 09 has scant little to do with TOS.

huh?

Kirk, Spock, McCoy...? It kind of bases it appeal on recognition of TOS. Wherever one is on its authenticity vis a vis TOS and post-TOS Trek, it's clearly connected, and makes about as much sense as a overview of Xianity that leaves out Baptists and Mormons...

 

[Christopher]

Ultimately, the "mission statement" for the Concordance as I understand it is to document TOS and TOS ONLY.

No. The original Concordance covered all extant ST at the time, which was TOS and TAS. In fact, it was the only major reference work for a long time that covered the animated series. The 1990s edition added the TOS movies, Generations, and every TNG and DS9 episode up to the publication date which included guest appearances by TOS actors in their original roles -- "Encounter at Farpoint," "Unification," "Relics," "Blood Oath," and the like.

ST2009 features Leonard Nimoy as Spock; therefore, by the rules of the 1990s Concordance, it should be included.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

If includes material from the first six Trek films it goes as far afield from TOS as including the new movie would. TOS is, properly, The Original Series - not the movies based on it. If you're going to do one movie, may as well do all of them.

 

[Christopher]

I guess one could say its topic is not so much TOS (the original series) as TOC (the original cast).

 

[Therin of Andor]

No matter how many reference sources or expert consultants a show or film may have at its disposal, it is still the prerogative of the creative staff to ignore that information and advice if they decide that doing so is in service to the story.

At no point did I intend you (or anyone) to think I was ever suggesting otherwise. I still can't see how you got all that from my post.

Forget it, huh?

 

[Therin of Andor]

I'm still not buying that a nod to ST09 in the text would require reams of new work. I think it just speaks to the bias involved in this project. Which is really sad, because ST deserves a first-class reference work, and not chest-beating.

I think JJ's ST could easily be addressed by adding a synopsis of the film (one page?) and a short paragraph to the Spock entry in the lexicon, discussing how Spock disappeared from the 24th century and ended up in a different timeline. And maybe adding the ships, planets and stars mentioned in their appropriate places.

The last edition of the "Concordance" didn't do exhaustive lexicon entries for all the 24th century material, mainly just the overlap stuff.

 

[F. King Daniel]

^Just to play devil's advocate for a second (and we're not having this argument again people!), there's nothing in the film whatsoever, other than the characters' suppositions, to sugest it's an alternate timeline and not a rewrite of the timeline we know.
Now I'm 100% happy to play along with TPTB's "don't panic, TOS is still there" line, because it's a freakin' ficticious universe. But I don't think the Concordance should specifically state "Spock went to another timeline", when it's supposition and there's nothing "canon" to support it. Be ambiguous, or mention that AU is TPTB's intent, but don't present it as gospel.

 

[Christopher]

At no point did I intend you (or anyone) to think I was ever suggesting otherwise. I still can't see how you got all that from my post.

I wasn't responding to your suggestion. I was responding to Captain Robert April's assumptions as described by you. No offense, but this isn't about you at all.

^Just to play devil's advocate for a second (and we're not having this argument again people!), there's nothing in the film whatsoever, other than the characters' suppositions, to sugest it's an alternate timeline and not a rewrite of the timeline we know.
Now I'm 100% happy to play along with TPTB's "don't panic, TOS is still there" line, because it's a freakin' ficticious universe. But I don't think the Concordance should specifically state "Spock went to another timeline", when it's supposition and there's nothing "canon" to support it. Be ambiguous, or mention that AU is TPTB's intent, but don't present it as gospel.

The original Concordance made use of behind-the-scenes material provided to Bjo Trimble by the show's producers. For instance, she included the terms "Feinberger" and "Jefferies tube" even though those terms were never once spoken onscreen in TOS or TAS but came only from the scripts and production materials. So there has never been a rule that the Concordance is restricted only to explicitly spoken canon.

Besides, as I've pointed out before, the question of the "reality" of any of these things relative to one another is irrelevant. This is a book documenting the installments of a fictional production. It does not judge, it merely presents the assertions of each episode or film. It was asserted in dialogue in ST2009 that they existed in an alternate reality created when Nero came back from the Prime universe. That's all that needs to be stated. The question of whether or not the one timeline "erased" the other is profoundly irrelevant, because the new work of fiction that's the Abrams movie did not erase the earlier works of fiction known as Star Trek. Those episodes and films are still available to everyone on DVD, on BluRay, on iTunes, on YouTube, in syndication, etc., and the new movie is also widely available. So why shouldn't a book whose purpose is to catalog the installments of a fictional production cover all of it?

 

[F. King Daniel]

^I know it's irrelevant in an out-of-universe reference book, and I never suggested the Concordance ignore anything. I don't know why you'd think I said or implied that.

I had forgotten the Concordance used stuff from production notes, though.

 

[Christopher]

Anyway, you're drawing a false distinction. If it's a different version of history, that makes it an alternate timeline, regardless of whether it coexists with or "overwrites" the other timeline. "Alternate" doesn't means parallel, it just means other or different. (Although "alternative timeline" would be a more grammatically accurate term.)

 

[Captain Robert April]

Reminder: It's Bjo's decision to sidestep the new movie, not mine, and it's one she'd made well before this latest kurfuffle. We're still discussing how far afield to go regarding what to include, like the Enterprise episodes that followed up on TOS stuff, like the ultimate fate of the USS Defiant, Klingon forehead ridges, etc, but the general approach seems to be to stick to the main timeline for the most part, a little of the Mirror Universe, and let younger, more ambitious. souls tackle the JJverse.

 

[Captain Robert April]

The amount of work to deal with this one movie would pretty much generate enough references to create a whole new Concordance all by itself. And like I said, this book is gonna be big enough as it is. The lexicon alone is gonna clock in at around 300 pages. The synopses will probably add at least another 150, and who knows how big the art section is gonna be. Like Bjo said, she wants to finish this thing within her lifetime.

Hyperbole, much?

So, 450 pages for roughly 100 hours of Star Trek, pre-2009. That works out to 4 1/2 pages per hour.

The new movie is two hours. So, nine pages.

And you say that the movie would generate an entire book on its own of 450 pages?

What kind of math are you using?

You can't write nine pages? I routinely write twenty pages a day, and I know there are other writers here who write that or more.

So, hyperbole. I just get the feeling you don't want to be arsed, and that's your right, but I also think you're wrong.

You do realize that those extra pages don't just come off the top of someone's head, right? There's the time spent researching the data, cross-checking, etc, on top of all the similar work that needs to be done on all the material we already have to deal with. There's a possibility of another ten to twelve episodes being added to this thing, along with the references that go along with them, so adding to that with more entries that, at best, have a tangential relevance to the rest of the book kinda goes into "bridge too far" territory.

 

[Therin of Andor]

No offense, but this isn't about you at all.

Good! But all your responses have been quoting me rather than CRA.

she included the terms "Feinberger" and "Jefferies tube" even though those terms were never once spoken onscreen in TOS ?

Didn't a security guard report finding the body of Gav the Tellarite "in a Jeffries Tube" in "Journey to Babel"?

 

[seigezunt]

The amount of work to deal with this one movie would pretty much generate enough references to create a whole new Concordance all by itself. And like I said, this book is gonna be big enough as it is. The lexicon alone is gonna clock in at around 300 pages. The synopses will probably add at least another 150, and who knows how big the art section is gonna be. Like Bjo said, she wants to finish this thing within her lifetime.

Hyperbole, much?

So, 450 pages for roughly 100 hours of Star Trek, pre-2009. That works out to 4 1/2 pages per hour.

The new movie is two hours. So, nine pages.

And you say that the movie would generate an entire book on its own of 450 pages?

What kind of math are you using?

You can't write nine pages? I routinely write twenty pages a day, and I know there are other writers here who write that or more.

So, hyperbole. I just get the feeling you don't want to be arsed, and that's your right, but I also think you're wrong.

You do realize that those extra pages don't just come off the top of someone's head, right? There's the time spent researching the data, cross-checking, etc, on top of all the similar work that needs to be done on all the material we already have to deal with. There's a possibility of another ten to twelve episodes being added to this thing, along with the references that go along with them, so adding to that with more entries that, at best, have a tangential relevance to the rest of the book kinda goes into "bridge too far" territory.

Yes. Writing books is hard work.

It just seems to me that it's going to look like an oddly glaring omission to someone that's not aware of the situation (i.e. the editior/co-author's rabid bias). They might assume it's a reprint of an older edition, and wait it out for the new, "complete" version.

Just from a sales perspective, it seems right silly to purposefully leave out reference to the best-ever-selling Trek movie. Mystifying. Think about the bennies, man.

And just because Bjo makes the mistake, still makes it a mistake.

 

[Christopher]

Didn't a security guard report finding the body of Gav the Tellarite "in a Jeffries Tube" in "Journey to Babel"?

Nope.

Lieutenant Joseph, sir. I'm on deck eleven, section A3. I've just found one of the Tellarites murdered. I think it's the ambassador himself, sir.

"Jefferies tube," like "Feinberger," was purely a behind-the-scenes in-joke, a nod to a member of the production staff. But the Concordance popularized the term among fandom, so it came to be universally regarded as the "actual" term for the things, so when TNG came along, they began using the term onscreen.