Should novels set in the JJVerse rectify the film's plot holes?

[EJA]

The "bones" line in the movie killed three birds with one stone: it explained the nickname, fleshed out McCoy's backstory, and got a laugh from the audience.

Mission accomplished!

Indeed. It's worth noting that the "fact" of McCoy's divorce was never actually established canonically in TOS or the earlier movies. So if anything, that scene should be praised for its good continuity, taking an idea that had previously only been part of McCoy's unofficial, behind-the-scenes backstory and making it canonical at last.

They did mess things up a bit though by ignoring McCoy's original Starfleet career as established in TOS "Friday's Child." And what the heck happened to Nancy Crater? By the time NuKirk and NuMcCoy ship off for Starfleet Academy in 2255, NuMcCoy should be in a relationship with her, not just gotten divorced.

Any spin-off novels should at least explain the ridiculous speeds of the Enterprise in XI. All that stuff made absolutely no sense, either to itself or to the wider franchise lore.

 

[EJA]

the purpose of the Abramsverse books is specifically to attract its new fanbase to the novel line, not to repel them by saying "Hey, we think that movie you loved was wrong and here's why in exhaustive detail."

Greg Cox managed to fix some of TWOK's errors in To Reign In Hell without alienating fans of the movie.

 

[F. King Daniel]

EJA, you are joking about the Enterprise speeds in STXI, right?

"Where No Man..." reached the edge of the galaxy in Kirk's lifetime, and somehow fits chronologically before the other episodes. STV got to the centre of the galaxy in half an hour. In one episode of TOS the ship travells something like 1000 light years in a few minutes at warp one. The Romulan Bird of Prey somehow fought competitively with the Enterprise despite only having impulse engines. "Threshold" went at infinity warp speed. Runabouts from DS9 could reach any world in the Alpha Quadrant in about 5 minutes. The NX-01 Enterprise reached Kronos in five days, including a detour to Rigel (and don't give me any of that "it was a different Rigel" BS).

All this is off the top of my head. There are probably dozens more examples.

Time to retire that "warp factor cubed = multiple of c" theory, me thinks.

 

[JarodRussell]

Any spin-off novels should at least explain the ridiculous speeds of the Enterprise in XI. All that stuff made absolutely no sense, either to itself or to the wider franchise lore.

Or how a laser can drill a hole into magma.

And they probably have a big fucking black hole (you know, caused by this GIANT ball of red) somewhere very close to our solar system (I don't think Spock, the Narada and the Enterprise travelled more than a lightyear in the final battle). But then again, they could have travelled the whole distance from Earth to Vulcan again, because it's the speed of plot B.S.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Any spin-off novels should at least explain the ridiculous speeds of the Enterprise in XI. All that stuff made absolutely no sense, either to itself or to the wider franchise lore.

I thought "Broken Bow" was worse in that respect; based on the information in that episode, Qo'noS must lie within Sol's Oort Cloud!

 

[EJA]

EJA, you are joking about the Enterprise speeds in STXI, right?

"Where No Man..." reached the edge of the galaxy in Kirk's lifetime, and somehow fits chronologically before the other episodes. STV got to the centre of the galaxy in half an hour. In one episode of TOS the ship travells something like 1000 light years in a few minutes at warp one. The Romulan Bird of Prey somehow fought competitively with the Enterprise despite only having impulse engines. "Threshold" went at infinity warp speed. Runabouts from DS9 could reach any world in the Alpha Quadrant in about 5 minutes. The NX-01 Enterprise reached Kronos in five days, including a detour to Rigel (and don't give me any of that "it was a different Rigel" BS).

All this is off the top of my head. There are probably dozens more examples.

Time to retire that "warp factor cubed = multiple of c" theory, me thinks.

"Threshold" is definitely apocryphal though. ST V's canonicity is disputed. So I don't think we need worry about those too much. Oh, and I've already offered an explanation for how the Enterprise reached the galaxy's edge in WNMHGB, if you remember.

 

[JarodRussell]

EJA, you are joking about the Enterprise speeds in STXI, right?

"Where No Man..." reached the edge of the galaxy in Kirk's lifetime, and somehow fits chronologically before the other episodes. STV got to the centre of the galaxy in half an hour. In one episode of TOS the ship travells something like 1000 light years in a few minutes at warp one. The Romulan Bird of Prey somehow fought competitively with the Enterprise despite only having impulse engines. "Threshold" went at infinity warp speed. Runabouts from DS9 could reach any world in the Alpha Quadrant in about 5 minutes. The NX-01 Enterprise reached Kronos in five days, including a detour to Rigel (and don't give me any of that "it was a different Rigel" BS).

All this is off the top of my head. There are probably dozens more examples.

Time to retire that "warp factor cubed = multiple of c" theory, me thinks.

"Threshold" is definitely apocryphal though. ST V's canonicity is disputed. So I don't think we need worry about those too much. Oh, and I've already offered an explanation for how the Enterprise reached the galaxy's edge in WNMHGB, if you remember.

And since the galaxy is a flat disc, "the edge of the galaxy" is a relative term.

 

[Christopher]

They did mess things up a bit though by ignoring McCoy's original Starfleet career as established in TOS "Friday's Child." And what the heck happened to Nancy Crater? By the time NuKirk and NuMcCoy ship off for Starfleet Academy in 2255, NuMcCoy should be in a relationship with her, not just gotten divorced.

Everything after March 2233 is a new timeline. There's no obligation for things to unfold exactly the same way. Life is full of random factors and complex chains of causation between things that don't seem connected at all (the butterfly effect). Have the Kelvin destroyed by a seemingly Romulan ship in 2233, have its crewmembers not come home and interact with people or come home as scarred survivors and interact differently with people, have Starfleet and the UFP government react to a possible threat of war that didn't exist in the original 2233, and the ripples of those changes will spread out throughout society, altering any number of things in unpredictable ways. So one shouldn't expect the two universes to match in anything more than the broad strokes.

(Also, we don't know when McCoy was involved with Nancy not-yet-Crater. Anything that wasn't established onscreen is open to interpretation. Besides, the movie skipped over the three years Kirk and McCoy spent in the Academy. Bones could've dated Nancy during that gap, for all we know.)

Any spin-off novels should at least explain the ridiculous speeds of the Enterprise in XI. All that stuff made absolutely no sense, either to itself or to the wider franchise lore.

There are no ridiculous speeds in the film, certainly no more ridiculous than in "That Which Survives" or ST V or "Broken Bow" or First Contact (where the Enterprise seems to get from the Romulan border to Earth in mere minutes). The film is edited to give the impression of a very brief trip to Vulcan, but the savvy observer can tell that Kirk spends a considerable amount of time asleep and McCoy has changed uniforms in the interim. The ship actually takes hours to reach Vulcan, but since modern motion pictures demand breakneck pacing, the filmmakers chose to gloss over the transition and make the sequence appear continuous.

Greg Cox managed to fix some of TWOK's errors in To Reign In Hell without alienating fans of the movie.

Yes, and Vonda McIntyre did the same in her novelization of TWOK at the time, though some of her explanations differed from Greg's. But back then, movie studios weren't as strict about how their films were novelized or tied into. It's a different climate today.

Also, Greg's book was written for a different audience, the established Trek fanbase that's already continuity-savvy and would appreciate such clarifications. I've already explained that Abramsverse tie-ins would have to take a different set of audience sensibilities into account.

And as I've already said, I do believe it's possible to clarify some of the film's issues if it's handled in a subtle and respectful way. What I'm cautioning against is the attitude you seem to be endorsing that the film got it wrong and needs to be corrected or repudiated. And I'm explaining that there are factors in play here that haven't applied before.

 

[F. King Daniel]

EJA:
I don't recall getting a memo about "Threshold" being decanonized, despite the fan backlash. Was there some official announcement (followed by ritual DVD burning)?

Even without that or STV you've still got many irreconcilable speeds and distances in Star Treks past and present. How the 2009 Enterprise reaching Vulcan in minutes or hours (as I said, you can fit hours in where Kirk's outfit mysteriously changes and before his condition deteriorates enough to warrant a trip to sickbay) is somehow worse eludes me.

But if you're willing to ignore STV and "Threshold", mentally censor TWoK and much of TOS (and the rest) because dodgy science upsets you so, why not just ignore STXI too?

 

[Greg Cox]

Or a very subtle moment where McCoy comes into Kirk's quarters at the Academy, while Kirk is reading Dickens' book and during that conversation he refers to him as Bones for the first time. No spoonfeeding, but you have the association to McCoy's actual profession (and not to his divorce, which is silly), you have Kirk's fondness for antiques AND even a hint at why Kirk could have been "a stack of books with legs" at the academy.

I could see this working for KirkPrime, but IMO at least, I really don't see either of those things being true of NewKirk.

Exactly. The point is, this isn't the old Star Trek. So the old explanation for the "Bones" nickname doesn't matter anymore.

The whole point of the new movie was to reinvent and update the franchise. The old "bones" bit worked in the sixties. The new "bones" bit works in 2010. Going to great lengths, and slowing down the plot, just to hang onto some old canonical explanation kind of misses the point . . .

 

[Christopher]

EJA:
I don't recall getting a memo about "Threshold" being decanonized, despite the fan backlash. Was there some official announcement (followed by ritual DVD burning)?

http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Threshold#Background_Information

Some Paramount staff, including Rick Sternbach and Brannon Braga, discount the events of "Threshold", due to its severe scientific flaws. In an interview included as an "easter egg" on the VOY Season 2 DVD release, Braga admits it was the single worst episode he has ever written, stating:
"I wrote the episode, or at least the teleplay. It's a terrible episode. People are very unforgiving about that episode. I've written well over a hundred episodes of Star Trek, yet it seems to be the only episode anyone brings up, you know? "Brannon Braga, who wrote Threshold!" Out of a hundred and some episodes, you're gonna have some stinkers! Unfortunately, that was a royal, steaming stinker. And... it had some good intentions behind it. It had a good premise, breaking the warp 10 barrier. I don't know where this whole "de-evolving into a lizard" thing came from. I may have blocked it out. I think I was trying to make a statement about evolution not necessarily being evolving toward higher organisms, that evolution may also be a de-evolution. You know, we kind of take it for granted that evolution means bigger brains, more technology, you know, more refined civilization. When in fact, for all we know, we're evolving back toward a more primordial state. Ultimately, who can predict? Unfortunately, none of this came across in the episode. And all we were left with were some lizard... things crawling around in the mud. So. It was not my shining moment."

Even without that or STV you've still got many irreconcilable speeds and distances in Star Treks past and present. How the 2009 Enterprise reaching Vulcan in minutes or hours (as I said, you can fit hours in where Kirk's outfit mysteriously changes and before his condition deteriorates enough to warrant a trip to sickbay) is somehow worse eludes me.

Like I said -- it's worse in some minds because it's new. There's a human instinct to react to the new and unfamiliar with suspicion. The most recent Trek productions always get their flaws criticized more aggressively than older ones. Have you noticed how the griping about Enterprise has subsided since ST'09 came out? Over time, we get used to things and they don't seem as bad anymore. If there had been an Internet in the '60s, just imagine the screaming over "The Alternative Factor" or "Spock's Brain."

 

[F. King Daniel]

Thanks for the link, Christopher.

"Some" at Paramount discounting "Threshold" is hardly a 100% definitive deletion from the franchise, though. It's more of a "we're sorry and we don't mind if you choose to ignore it" thing. I'm sure I've read little references to it in novels. I know The Lives of Dax featured a warp ten story, and I'm sure there have been a few snide Janeway/Paris mentions.

Just for the fun of it, I'd suggest that it's a lot easier to reconcile the episode by saying the shuttle warped into another dimension briefly that cased mutations and hallucinations, owing to the weird super-dilithium they were using.

Personally I'm a lot happier in my all-inclusive chaotic contradictory personal Trek continuity. It's only a TV show, after all and undoing one or two episodes isn't gonna make the rest of the screw-ups go away

 

[Greg Cox]

Also, Greg's book was written for a different audience, the established Trek fanbase that's already continuity-savvy and would appreciate such clarifications. I've already explained that Abramsverse tie-ins would have to take a different set of audience sensibilities into account.

.

Precisely. The EW books, by their very nature, were aimed at old-school readers who knew what the "Eugenics Wars" were and were well-versed in the old continuity. I had a ball writing them, but I assumed all along that they would be mostly read by lifelong fans.

The Abramsverse book was a whole new animal. The whole point of rebooting the series was to start all over again and create a new continuity. The last thing you'd want to do is throw in a cameo appearance by Gary Seven or whomever. You don't want to try cramming a nuTrek plot into an old Trek hole . . .

That whole "stack of book with legs" bit doesn't apply anymore. It's a whole new universe--which opens up all sorts of fun possibilities.

The idea is not to "fix" nuTrek by making it more like old Trek. The idea is to go boldly where no Trek novel has gone before.

 

[JarodRussell]

The idea is to go boldly where no Trek novel has gone before.

Well, after reading the blurbs, the stories are not so much like that.

 

[Greg Cox]

The idea is to go boldly where no Trek novel has gone before.

Well, after reading the blurbs, the stories are not so much like that.


.

Alas, we'll probably never know.

All I can say is that I tried very hard to capture the feel of the new movie--and didn't worry about trying to "rectify" anything. Or make it more consistent with the old show.

That wasn't the idea.

 

[F. King Daniel]

The idea is to go boldly where no Trek novel has gone before.

Well, after reading the blurbs, the stories are not so much like that.


.

Alas, we'll probably never know.

WE WILL FIND OUT ONE DAY.

(*casts sideways glance at yellow jumpsuit hung next to samurai sword*)

 

[Christopher]

The idea is not to "fix" nuTrek by making it more like old Trek. The idea is to go boldly where no Trek novel has gone before.

Exactly. This isn't the same old Star Trek. It's a fresh take on the basic premise. And that was the fun part -- to do something that was still ST at its core, but with a fresh approach and attitude, with a fresh twist on the characters and their world, and without 40 years of continuity baggage to keep track of.

And no, maybe you couldn't see how different they were from two-paragraph blurbs, but there are only so many plots in the world. What makes it fresh is in how the stories are told. This Kirk, Spock, Uhura, etc. have had different lives, different relationships. We're seeing them at a much earlier point in their lives and careers. Their context and environment are different. Put them in a given situation and it would unfold differently than it would if it were a TOS story. And yet in some ways it would be the same since their core personalities are essentially the same. That's the fascinating part. It's the core appeal of the Mirror Universe, "Yesterday's Enterprise," Myriad Universes, Sliders, House of M, the whole alternate-history genre of fiction -- examining how the people and events we know would be different, and how they would be the same, if history had unfolded differently. The Abramsverse is alternate-history Trek. Its differences are what make it interesting to explore. They should be embraced, not "rectified."

 

[RookieBatman]

But I don't understand why they (Kurtzman and Orci) couldn't have just had Kirk call him "sawbones." Maybe I'm wrong, but it seemed fairly obvious to me.

You just answered your own question. Why should any writer be satisfied doing something that the audience would consider obvious and predictable? Where's the fun in telling, or watching, an origin story that has no surprises?

Because they are writing for Star Trek? If they want to be free in everything, they should be writing something original. McCoy's nickname being "sawbones" is not only canon, it also makes perfect sense. Their new "explanation" on the other hand, does not.

QFT.

The divorce bit works better in 2009.

Something can't work better if it doesn't work at all, and this certainly didn't for me. Of course, clearly, it did for a lot of other people, but to my ears, it was the clunkiest, most jarring line of the movie. Who says something like "she left me nothing but my bones?" Is that a common saying in the 23rd century?
I guess what really bothered about it (and why I wish they had just "explained" the sawbones thing), is that it really just seemed like they were flailing about desperately for some way to explain the nickname, and couldn't come up with anything. It just didn't strike me as sounding even remotely natural.
(But again, I'm apparently in the minority on that, so I guess all this is good for is a little venting.)

The real problem, I suspect, is that the term "sawbones" has largely fallen out of the vernacular. It's a bit of antiquated slang that would have required too much effort to explain.

Oh no, the effort.

QFT again! (In my opinion, of course.)

When you only have two hours to tell a story, why bog things down explaining what a "sawbones" is? Especially when it doesn't advance the plot.

That's just good editing.

It probably wouldn't have taken any longer than McCoy explaining about how his wife divorced him. That didn't advance the plot; it gave depth to the character. "Sawbones" would've been a natural extension of McCoy claiming to be an ol' country doctor, which would have been an opportunity for similar character advancement.

The "bones" line in the movie killed three birds with one stone: it explained the nickname, fleshed out McCoy's backstory, and got a laugh from the audience.

People laugh at that? I must have no sense of humor.

Or a very subtle moment where McCoy comes into Kirk's quarters at the Academy, while Kirk is reading Dickens' book and during that conversation he refers to him as Bones for the first time. No spoonfeeding, but you have the association to McCoy's actual profession (and not to his divorce, which is silly), you have Kirk's fondness for antiques AND even a hint at why Kirk could have been "a stack of books with legs" at the academy.

I could see this working for KirkPrime, but IMO at least, I really don't see either of those things being true of NewKirk.

I wasn't gonna bring this up because I was afraid I'd just sound bitter, but since you mentioned it... Yeah, "sawbones" would only work if there was any evidence whatsoever that nuKirk had an ounce of culture. Apparently, having a passion for learning and a fondness for times past isn't considered "cool" anymore.

...And yet in some ways it would be the same since their core personalities are essentially the same.

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with you there. The ship may have looked a little different, circumstances may have been altered, but in my own opinion (in which I am, again, the minority), the core personalities was the factor that was changed the most about the new movie. There's not really any way for me to "prove" that, but that was the point where the movie really left me flat.


Oh well. I apologize, because my goal in life is NOT to bust in on every STXI thread and try to convince everyone that it was terrible. It wasn't to my tastes, that's unfortunate, but I'm glad you all enjoyed it, and I still hold out some hope for the next one. So, I'm not trying to be negative, but it is nice to vent (once in a while), and hey, it is a discussion board...

The idea is to go boldly where no Trek novel has gone before.

Well, after reading the blurbs, the stories are not so much like that.

Never judge a book by its blurb. They're not written by the authors, and as often as not, they have only slight resemblance to what the stories are actually about (of course, I may just be jaded by how bad the ones on Netflix are).

 

[JoeZhang]

^Why not? Why can't it be both? Kirk heard McCoy make an offhand crack about his wife leaving him only his bones, it struck him as ironic considering that McCoy was a doctor (i.e. "sawbones"), so he decided to use "Bones" as a nickname because of the combination of both factors. Makes perfect sense to me, and there's no conflict. Heck, it even explains why Kirk's nickname was simply "Bones" and not "Sawbones."

Way to be a good friend, reminding him of his crappy divorce every time you talk to him.

"Hey Bones, remember how your ex-wife left you with nothing?"

Heh - reminds me of the Fantastic Four

Ben: *choke* I'm a monster!

Reed: And I'll call myself Mr. Fantastic!

 

[JarodRussell]

The idea is not to "fix" nuTrek by making it more like old Trek. The idea is to go boldly where no Trek novel has gone before.

Exactly. This isn't the same old Star Trek. It's a fresh take on the basic premise. And that was the fun part -- to do something that was still ST at its core, but with a fresh approach and attitude, with a fresh twist on the characters and their world, and without 40 years of continuity baggage to keep track of.

And that's where I think the whole premise is wrong. First of all, there is no baggage, that's the lame excuse of someone who wants to write for a universe but doesn't want to get know it, and that's just ugly. Second, the characters of TOS where mirrors of problems, fears and hopes of the 1960s. For the 2010s, Trek would have needed a set of completely new characters that mirror the problems, fears and hopes of today. The 60s where dominated by the Cold War and racial segregation, which is why a Russian sits on the bridge, getting perfectly along with Americans, and a black woman has an important position. Today we live in times of religious conflict, so where is the Muslim who gets perfectly along with his Jewish and Christian crewmates? Where's the homosexual? And the truly alien, non humanoid extraterrestial that would make this new Star Trek different from the rest of current mainstream science fiction TV shows and movies?