I think I read here that the Romulan War was supposed to be 5 years per TOS (I think) and that Humans/Romulans never saw each other during it.
TOS never established the duration of the Earth-Romulan War. The
Star Trek Chronology by Michael and Denise Okuda conjecturally dated it as 2156-60, ending a year before the founding of the Federation (since it was called the
Earth-Romulan War). Had
Enterprise continued another season, they would probably have also had the war begin in 2156, judging from the way things seemed to be going, and the books are evidently following that same conjectural timeline, because as a rule, the novels are expected to follow the Okuda
Chronology even when its dates are conjectural, except in cases where those conjectural dates have been contradicted by later canon.
But yes, Spock did say in TOS: "Balance of Terror" (the episode that introduced the Romulans) that "
no human, Romulan, or ally has ever seen the other."
Does that mean that S&S is planning 5 books about the Romulan Year? Each to be released over 5 actual years? Or less?
Well, first off, it was a 4-year war according to the Okudachron. Second, the interval between the publications of the first two
Romulan War novels will be two years, from October 2009 to October 2011. Third, we don't yet know how long a timespan
To Brave the Storm will cover. Just because the first one spanned a year, that doesn't necessarily mean the second will or that there will be one per year of the war. The overall "master plan" for the series, if one exists, has not been revealed.
Jonathan Archer was the undisputed king of Star Trek time travel and alternate futures. Taking into account what he's been through, it could easily have been him and the same beagle in STXI. Attempting to rationalize a movie packed with batshit crazy instances (Cadet/Captain Kirk? Fluke upon fluke upon fluke? and I say that as a lover of the movie) strikes me as a little silly, anyway.
Whereas my view is that the movie already has enough improbabilities that I'd rather not add another for no reason. I've always found it more desirable to rationalize the improbabilities rather than just throwing up my hands and saying it was useless. And I think that approach has served me pretty well in my career, if I do say so myself.
With all due respect to Mike Sussman, his graphic (that requires HD/freezeframe to see) is nothing more than an easter egg for die-hard fans...
Yes, and that is part of my point.
Both Sussman's graphic
and the filmmaker's intentions are external, non-canonical sources. And they say contradictory things. So if you're going to treat noncanonical authorial intent as evidence, you can't accept one and ignore the other. Both are equally conjectural. If you reject one as meaningful evidence, you have to reject them both.
All that said, with time travel, Archer could even have had a stint as Scotty's instructor in the 23rd century before becoming Space President in the 22nd, if one really wants to take mental gymnastics to thr extreme - it'd make as much sense as the Temporal Cold War.
There is no reason for unnecessarily adding implausibilities. Why in the hell would that convoluted fairy tale be
preferable to simply believing that Archer's descendants like beagles too?
However, as noted by Christopher and in my post, there are a lot more rational reasons to believe it is NOT Archer. Medical tech, I don't think make sense for the time period, but perhaps time travel might. In the end, its kinda cool we're chatting about this / trying to make it all make sense. Also, what do you mean by alternate reality?
Yeah, I should have known that.
) way I can think of that it could be him would be due to time travel. That's it. Not tech. Not good health. Not anything else. However, it seems unlikely to expect him to live that long without something like time travel to facilitate it. That's why an earlier response of mine on this subject included the below:
