I didn't agree with that, either. I'm sure if I had been there in 1979, I'd be making this same point.
But the point is, within the Trek universe as it canonically stands, there's abundant precedent for Starfleet technology and costumes changing radically in a short amount of time. This movie hasn't done anything new or unprecedented here.
But if it's not going to look even remotely similar, why bother saying it's the same universe and time-frame? (Especially since we can assume they wouldn't slavishly commit to the old continuity anyway.)
I completely disagree with the claim that it doesn't "look even remotely similar." The shape of the
Kelvin is very clearly that of a Starfleet vessel; it could never be mistaken for anything else. The layout of the bridge is the familiar one we've always known. Allowing for artistic license, modern technology, and the greater detail demanded by feature-film cinematography, the overall aesthetic of the
Kelvin bridge strikes me as a reasonable approximation of something that might've existed in the same reality as "The Cage" but 21 years earlier.
And do you really not understand, after more than a year of rehashing this same tedious argument over and over, why they chose to make it an offshoot of the same reality? It's because they
wanted to. Because they were trying to balance the need to create something new and free of continuity baggage with the desire to stay connected to the reality that had come before and pay tribute to it. That was their priority. They certainly weren't going to abandon it just because their costume designer and set designer
used their imaginations instead of slavishly copying 45-year-old designs!
Yeah, I am a little bemused as to why creator's intent is being treated as so sovereign in this case.
Because this isn't the "Was Trek XI any good?" thread. This is the "How will Trek authors deal with the destruction of Romulus?" thread. As long as we're discussing Trek Lit -- which is the only thing we should be discussing here, despite how some people have completely forgotten what forum they're in -- it's a given that the Abramsverse will be treated as an integral part of the whole.
I can understand that the current powers that be wouldn't be interested in contradicting it, that makes sense. But it won't always be the case...
Again you're forgetting that, whatever your personal preferences, this is the most popular Trek movie ever made. They'd be crazy to
want to contradict it.
So, what if the books didn't get to 2387 until there was a new Sheriff in town? If we say, for the purpose of argument, that after one good trilogy, they decide to go with a total reboot and start all over from scratch for the next movie, would Abram's intent be so authoritative then?
The books still incorporate TOS and TNG long after Roddenberry died. They still treat TNG, DS9, VGR, and ENT as canonical even though Berman, Piller, Taylor, Behr, Beimler, Braga, etc. are gone. It's all part of the same whole, and our mandate from the studio is to stay consistent with all of it. Even when we contradict the spirit of a story, as with "These Are the Voyages," we still stay consistent with the letter of what was shown onscreen. Really, you should know this by now. It's a silly question to ask. We're not going to change a sweeping, overarching policy just because you and a tiny smattering of others didn't like the movie.
Or then, they could've not blown up anything. It's not like the destruction of a planet was the only conceivable way to tell that story.
That's a meaningless objection. There's always more than one way to tell a story, but you have to choose one. This is the path they took, and it's obnoxious as hell to suggest that they were wrong to take it just because it wouldn't have been your choice. (And didn't we have this exact same argument a month ago? What is it with these infinite debate loops on the Internet?)
I agree. The whole reason that TOS was considered optimistic was not about the characters' attitudes (about the same as any other show), but the fact that it depicted a future where humanity hadn't blown itself up with atomic bombs, or killed itself off in petty wars, but instead had unified and learned to work together.
As
Sci says, this is dead wrong. On the contrary, TOS and TNG depicted a future where humanity
did blow much of itself up with nuclear bombs, leading the survivors to decide they'd had enough of that and needed to build a better world out of the ashes.
Roddenberry's optimistic view of the future was always built on a pessimistic view of the present. He always assumed we'd have to go through a very rough patch before we got better.
Star Trek, Genesis II and
Planet Earth all postulated a 21st-century war that devastated the planet to a greater or lesser degree, followed by the rise of a more utopian society from the ashes. G2/PE could almost have been his version of how ST's Earth recovered from WWIII, if the timing had been different. "Assignment: Earth" and
The Questor Tapes both assumed that 20th-century humanity was such a mess that it couldn't survive without intervention from benevolent aliens. Roddenberry's whole body of work leaves little doubt that he was convinced we
would blow ourselves up if left to our own devices, and that our capacity to improve ourselves would take so long to mature that it wouldn't happen until after the worst had passed.
(I like to think of G2/PE as an alternate timeline where Gary Seven and/or Questor didn't help ameliorate the chaos of the 20th century, so that when WWIII came, it was bigger and more destructive.)
Well, the Vulcans didn't blow themselves up, but even two people couldn't unify and work together enough to prevent someone else from doing so.
The Vulcans very nearly blew themselves up 2000 years ago, which was why they needed Surak to tame their fury. Again, a better world only arose out of the ashes of war.
Or, to put it another way; if somebody had written a story before 2001 about the World Trade Center being blown up, would that be considered optimistic?
If they'd shown the nation reacting to that tragedy in a positive way and defeating their enemies, of course it would. Heck, there have been countless movies that started with a huge disaster and ended with renewed hope. As I think someone said in an earlier post, optimism is needed most when times are hard.
Look at
Independence Day. That's basically a disaster movie where aliens succeed in destroying major cities across the globe and killing millions of people. And yet the overall tone of its final act is one of great optimism and triumph.
Who would've enjoyed "The Doomsday Machine" if Kirk had figured out how to kill the thing after it had chewed its way through the Rigel system?
Who would've enjoyed it if Decker had figured out how to kill the thing before it destroyed his entire crew?
Don't get me wrong, I like TWoK well enough, but one can basically assume that all Meyer or Bennett knew about Khan was "genetic superman exiled by Kirk."
You're not researching your assumptions at all here, are you? It's well-known that Bennett and Meyer watched many episodes of TOS when they were hired to do the film, saw "Space Seed" in its entirety, and were intrigued by the hook at the end, deciding on that basis to do a sequel. So they knew as much about Khan as any Trek fan did. The changes from continuity that they chose to make were creative license. Now, you can disagree with their choice to make those changes -- heaven knows I've disagreed with it often enough -- but it's petty to assume the changes were the result of ignorance rather than creative interpretation.
