Same canon?
- Thread starter Captrek
- Start date
Yep. I'm not sure the writers realize this yet, but Spock is the character with the vastly more interesting arc, and they're naturally going to gravitate towards him in subsequent movies. Spock comes from a culture where he's expected to repress his emotions and has been whalloped with unimaginable emotional trauma. How can anyone switch from writing that character over to "Jimmy Kirk grows up?" There's no contest.
That's pretty much the way TOS worked back when it was a living series, much to Shatner's chagrin. 
kkozoriz1
Fleet Captain
I think that the film would have been much ore effective from a storytelling point of view if the focus had been more on Spock from the start. He was the much more interesting character, at least from my point of view. Kirk was and still is an unlikeable character. He's arrogant and without the charm that Shatner gave to his version. Spock was a more sympathetic character. Having his carefully ordered life turned upside down by the loud mouth ass should have been the focus. Unfortunately, Spock comes across as needing Kirk's recklessness in order to grow while Kirk is shown that he doesn't require anything or anyone. He just barrels though, making choices that just happen to be right while everyone else is wrong. All the time. Kirk doesn't screw up. Kirk doesn't lose. He's selfish and arrogant and brash and he gets promoted to Captain.
Spock is shown as loyal and intelligent and he gets his planet blown up, his mother killed and is right back where he started at the start of the mission.
The other characters are there mostly as supporting characters for the two leads. They all get their moment in the sun but the focus is on Kirk & Spock. Unfortunately, the "winner" ends up being the least sympathetic of the two.
Spock is shown as loyal and intelligent and he gets his planet blown up, his mother killed and is right back where he started at the start of the mission.
The other characters are there mostly as supporting characters for the two leads. They all get their moment in the sun but the focus is on Kirk & Spock. Unfortunately, the "winner" ends up being the least sympathetic of the two.
kkozoriz1
Fleet Captain
There is canon. The setting is the same, only the people were changed. And the changes produced by their actions changed the setting more and more. However, the Supreme Court decided that they would still connect back to the existing canon. It's still there. They didn't do a reboot. Things would have been much simpler if they had, much like the recent 007 reboot.
Strangely, I feel much the same way about the new Bond as the new Kirk. Still the same character with the sympathetic parts of the character filed off.
The canon will end when whoever owns Star Trek stops making Star Trek based products. The people doing all the movies and TV shows having been "doing whatever the hell they want" since 1964.
Wrong, the canon ended every time a series ended. Then a new canon would start with a new series, then end when that ended.. etc. "Canon", in the sense that fans often use it never actually existed.
Exactly. And if they say that Sarek was really a Romulan spy in the next movie, or that Klingons have ridged boobs and anvil-heads, then so be it - regardless of whatever the past 40 years of Trek ever said.
Those fans are using it wrong. Canon is the works approved by those who own the property. They're thinking of continuity.
Possibly. But I tend to doubt it. Though that "attitude" did give us ridge head Klingons.
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That's pretty much the way TOS worked back when it was a living series, much to Shatner's chagrin.
I have heard — I don’t know whether this is rumor or established fact — that Shatner used to count his lines and Nimoy’s lines.
According to a quick check through Chrissie’s transcript, Kirk had 249 lines and Spock had 126. This includes young Kirk and young Spock but not Spock Prime. If you include Spock Prime, Spock’s number is 178.
Re: Should novels set in the JJVerse rectify the film's plot holes?
Star Trek's canon is a guide for the licensees and that's pretty much it. The people who make the tie-in books, comics, videogames and the rest have to abide by it. And you know what? Whenever there's a conflict, new canon supersedes old canon, whether fans like it or not. Thus James Kirk's middle initial is "T", the first Starship Enterprise was Archer's one, Kirk's dad was XO of the USS Kelvin, huge ships like Kelvin preceeded the smaller TOS Enterprise, a journey across the galaxy should take 70 years despite TOS and STV reaching the rim and centre of the galaxy in no time at all, everything Spock said about Romulan War-era tech was wrong, the Defiant mission patch was the one from "In a Mirror, Darkly" and not the TOS Enterprise arrowhead from "The Tholian Web", Klingons always had bumpy heads until "Affliction"/"Divergence" re-re-wrote things...the list goes on forever.
It doesn't always make sense, it contradicts itself all the time but that's how it is. It doesn't bother me
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Star Trek's canon is a guide for the licensees and that's pretty much it. The people who make the tie-in books, comics, videogames and the rest have to abide by it. And you know what? Whenever there's a conflict, new canon supersedes old canon, whether fans like it or not. Thus James Kirk's middle initial is "T", the first Starship Enterprise was Archer's one, Kirk's dad was XO of the USS Kelvin, huge ships like Kelvin preceeded the smaller TOS Enterprise, a journey across the galaxy should take 70 years despite TOS and STV reaching the rim and centre of the galaxy in no time at all, everything Spock said about Romulan War-era tech was wrong, the Defiant mission patch was the one from "In a Mirror, Darkly" and not the TOS Enterprise arrowhead from "The Tholian Web", Klingons always had bumpy heads until "Affliction"/"Divergence" re-re-wrote things...the list goes on forever.
It doesn't always make sense, it contradicts itself all the time but that's how it is. It doesn't bother me
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Wrong. Try again.
I've pretty much just settled with the whole alternate reality and canon issue as being pointless. I honestly don't see why the alternate reality element had to be brought up in the first place. If they wanted to honor canon and all the stories that came before it, why not just be set the darn thing in it rather than throwing in all this time travel and alternate reality stuff? The alternate reality has absolutely no meaning or value and doesn't serve the story at all. You can cut out Uhura's "An alternate reality" and Spock's "Precisely" exchange out and nothing would be different. Nero has traveled back in time, is changing the course of events and everything is different. That's pretty much it.
And being a Star Trek fan, I don't need to be told that the original timeline is fine. I've got my DVDs and BluRays for that.
And being a Star Trek fan, I don't need to be told that the original timeline is fine. I've got my DVDs and BluRays for that.
I-Am-Zim
Captain
Yep. Jeyl definitely hit that one on the head.
The alternate reality angle was likely important because it allowed future Star Trek movies to move independently of whatever happened in the TV shows. At the same time, it allowed any future TV show to continue in the original (or Prime) universe.
Now whether or not there will ever be any future TV shows set in the Prime universe is a matter of endless debate, but the option to do that is still there for now.
To a further extent, it can probably be also looked as a result of the 2006 falling out between CBS and Viacom that resulted in the Trek TV shows and movies now having separate owners with different plans on what to do with their half of the franchise (we currently don't know what CBS is planning or even if they're planning anything for now)...
kkozoriz1
Fleet Captain
It would have been easier for them to simply do a clean reboot if they wanted to move independently of what had come before. That would have also left the prime universe untouched. Easiest. Cleanest. They chose not to go in that direction so they are still tied to the previous shows.
I fail to see how STXI being tied to the previous shows is in any way a problem. Try hard enough and the butterfly effect can be used to explain away anything from an epic Klingon/Federation war or extragalactic invasion that didn't happen in TOS to the later non-appearance of the Doomsday Machine, V'ger and the whale probe.
As for inheriting the shared past of the Trek multiverse, I seriously doubt nuTrek is gonna spend it's time worrying about what Captain Archer was doing 100 years ago - TOS certainly didn't and they got on just fine
As for inheriting the shared past of the Trek multiverse, I seriously doubt nuTrek is gonna spend it's time worrying about what Captain Archer was doing 100 years ago - TOS certainly didn't and they got on just fine
Actually, the end result is the same as if they had done a total reboot. But we also got one last appearance of Leonard Nimoy as Spock out of it too. I tend to think most audiences liked that and what the original Spock brought to the film...
I fail to see how STXI being tied to the previous shows is in any way a problem. Try hard enough and the butterfly effect can be used to explain away anything from an epic Klingon/Federation war or extragalactic invasion that didn't happen in TOS to the later non-appearance of the Doomsday Machine, V'ger and the whale probe.
As for inheriting the shared past of the Trek multiverse, I seriously doubt nuTrek is gonna spend it's time worrying about what Captain Archer was doing 100 years ago - TOS certainly didn't and they got on just fine
Well, you see the butterfly effect, Orci sees "a timeline healing itself".
Subtract Gorn, Maquis, and Cardassians, and add Klingons, Vulcans, and numerous other things, and you have this movie.
So this point is moot. There was nothing that made making another movie in the established universe "virtually impossible."
I'll bet that if JJ Abrams had made a true origin story instead of an alternate universe, just as many people would have seen it.
You missed my point. It was about approachability and perception, not the literal fact.
