Stupid double post.
Time Frame From Star Trek 2 - 4
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Carol Marcus bore his son. And apparently he was well aware of that fact prior to TWOK. This was arguably the most important woman in Kirk's entire past, but we'd never heard of her before.
This is what TV shows did in the '60s-'80s. The heroes routinely had old flames, lost loves, best friends, etc. popping up when the story called for them even if we'd never heard of them before. Star Trek was no exception. Even TNG did it with character like Jenice Manheim and Philippa Louvois. So it doesn't bother me too much here.
You know, I'm so used to having the Chronology at arm's reach and Memory Alpha on my bookmark bar that it never occurred to me there might be fans who weren't clear on the timing of the films. I would've figured those would be considered essential references by most Trek fans.
While I prefer the "modern" approach of not piling on important relationships from the hero's past, I think we, as fans, sometimes go overboard in our resistance to characters "who have never been mentioned before."Christopher said:
By the time of Generations, we had spent less than 100 hours "with Kirk," and that's basically counting the entire length of every live action episode and all six "original cast" films, without regard to time Kirk wasn't on-screen. This out of a life of 50 or so years. And during much of that time he was involved in adventures, not reminiscing about his past. So, yeah, it can feel neat when a character's past "fits together" with his present, but there's also almost certainly a lot about Kirk's past that we wouldn't have any reason to know.
Doesn't bother me too much either - like I said, no biggie. But at this stage of Kirk's life - not to mention that the moviemakers were 3 decades on from the 1960s - we'd seen enough of his women that maybe a nod to continuity by mentioning one of them might've occurred to the writers.
I've never once looked at either and probably never will. Ultimately, they're someone else's idea of the timing and chronology of the movies.
And I think it's pretty hard to really reconcile them all anyway - TMP was made a decade after TOS but pretends that only 18 months or so have passed. TWOK was made about 3 years later but refers to 15 years having passed since Space Seed. TSFS has a character describe the Enterprise as 20 years old which doesn't fit with The Cage/ The Menagerie. And the existence of Nimbus III in TFF is at odds with the way the Fed-Romulan relationship is portrayed in TOS. Then you have the query about how long after TFF TUC takes place. So it all has to be a big fudge anyway.
Fair play to those putting in the effort in tryng to reconcile it all, but I'm basically entirely indifferent to the idea.
Perhaps, but who could it have been? Since his retirement was before TWOK, it couldn't have been Carol. Ruth was evidently an older woman he had a crush on in his Academy days, and it's unclear whether he actually had a relationship with her outside of his fantasies. Janet Wallace had moved on and gotten married. Janice Lester went insane and was institutionalized. As for women he was involved with during the series, the majority died, moved on, or were villains. It couldn't have been Janice Rand, because we know she stayed in Starfleet well after these events and wouldn't have fit the "alternative to Starfleet" role that Antonia served.
So pretty much the only pre-established "old flame" it could possibly have been was Areel Shaw, and I don't think she's someone that any fan would consider one of Kirk's great loves or a character whose return was eagerly awaited. Plus there's too much baggage between them.
Antonia served a specific, symbolic role in the narrative that none of Kirk's established love interests would really have worked for even if they were still available. The whole point of her was that she wasn't a part of Kirk's Starfleet life, that she came from a completely different direction and gave him an alternative to Starfleet for the first time in his adult life. Given that, it actually makes perfect sense that we never heard of her, because we only ever saw Kirk in a Starfleet context, and she was from another facet of his life.
But those "someone elses" actually worked on the show, and their ideas about the timing became incorporated into the canon in many cases. Although some of the Chronology's assumptions have been contradicted by later canon; for instance, it had the 5-year mission end in 2269, almost immediately after "Turnabout Intruder," but Voyager: "Q2" canonically placed it in 2270, allowing room for the animated series and maybe some novels and comics.
The refit has taken 18 months, but Kirk's been Chief of Starfleet Operations for two and a half years. And that's after the end of the 5-year mission, so it's probably more like 3-4 years after the end of TOS.
I've never read the Chronology but I thought the timing of the films was evident simply by watching them.
And you're quite right about consistency. It's really only been in the last 20 years or so (in my viewing experience) that writers and show runners actually cared about any real continuity with characters and backgrounds.
Hmm. I wonder why. Is it simply that since shows started being released on video and DVD the writers made the extra effort knowing there would be repeated viewing and more scrutiny by the fans?
I'd say more like 30 years, starting in the '80s. There were still a lot of episodic shows, but they more often featured recurring characters and stories that followed up on past stories.
Partly, yes. It's also the rise of serialization starting with shows like Dallas and Hill Street Blues, but those are related. These days, with home video and the Internet, we tend to experience shows in the whole; it's easy to get a perspective on the entire series as a unit and to pay attention to how its pieces fit together. Back in the '60s or '70s, people only had reruns and the occasional companion book, usually published after a series ended. And before the '70s, reruns weren't even that common. (Star Trek changed the game by proving that people were interested in watching syndicated reruns, which ultimately may have been a bad thing because it led to a reduction in the number of new episodes per season.) So back then, the experience of a TV show was on a week-by-week basis rather than a holistic basis. The emphasis was therefore on making each individual episode a complete and self-contained story, an experience that didn't depend on remembering what had happened in an episode a year or two before.
I think it's (a bit) interesting that despite the trend for shows to have greater continuity and consistency in recent years, some of the shows which have been subject to great scrutiny in those regards have been quite sloppy.
For example, 24 took often massive gaps in time between seasons, certainly compared to real time. But the producers held to the conceit that Jack Bauer was only ever as old as the actor who played him, Keifer Sutherland, despite the fact that Jack should have been at least a decade older than Keifer by the end of the run.
Buffy The Vampire Slayer's town of Sunnydale was shown to have a port and docks area but in the finale was shown to be surrounded by desert. And while it's been years since I watched The X-Files, I think there may have been some changed premises regarding ages, dates etc.
Christopher, I didn't mean to downplay the importance of the likes of Memory Alpha but I think it's probably of more interest or use to someone like yourself, a writer who clearly strives to ensure that his novels adhere to onscreen continuity, than it is to a fan like myself, who doesn't really look too closely at things like timelines and dates.
For example, 24 took often massive gaps in time between seasons, certainly compared to real time. But the producers held to the conceit that Jack Bauer was only ever as old as the actor who played him, Keifer Sutherland, despite the fact that Jack should have been at least a decade older than Keifer by the end of the run.
Buffy The Vampire Slayer's town of Sunnydale was shown to have a port and docks area but in the finale was shown to be surrounded by desert. And while it's been years since I watched The X-Files, I think there may have been some changed premises regarding ages, dates etc.
Christopher, I didn't mean to downplay the importance of the likes of Memory Alpha but I think it's probably of more interest or use to someone like yourself, a writer who clearly strives to ensure that his novels adhere to onscreen continuity, than it is to a fan like myself, who doesn't really look too closely at things like timelines and dates.
Josan said:
It's worth pointing out that Star Trek did pay Kellam DeForest as a consultant, and one of his duties was keeping track of previous character and plot developments (though his suggestions for keeping continuity weren't always followed). It's not as if the producers didn't care about having real continuity, but, as Christopher points out, the emphasis was on telling self-contained stories.
Also, Star Trek not only relied heavily on freelance story submissions, but it had a lot of turnover when it came to writers, so it's no surprise that details were forgotten or ignored as the series went along; De Forest kept pointing that stuff out, but he was one of the few people to stick with the production from the first pilot to the final episode.
^ There were actually 2 people working on Star Trek called DeForest?! What are the odds?! I've never heard of two people called that in the world!
It's spelled Kellam de Forest, so it's not quite the same as DeForest Kelley (whose full name was actually Jackson DeForest Kelley).
I know ST was better at it than most. And I know about self-contained stories back in the day. I grew up on... oh never mind. Don't wanna show my age.
I was curious about the take others had on continuity coming to the fore. I wouldn't have cited Dallas as an example though. A prime time soap is still a soap.
30 years is more correct than my 20 though.The 80s doesn't feel like 30 years ago. I'm getting old. Thanks for the reminder, Christopher.
And you do indeed learn something new every day. I thought I'd read pretty much everything about the behind the scenes stuff on TOS but I don't recall ever hearing of Kellam de Forest.
He's mentioned a few times in The Making of Star Trek and Inside Star Trek: The Real Story, but I think he could stand to receive some more credit than either book offers him. Amusingly, William Shatner's Star Trek Memories, which promises to be "the definitive Star Trek book," doesn't mention Kellam de Forest (nor his company, de Forest Research) a single time.
He did script clearance and research for most of Desilu's television productions and eventually was put in charge of the same task for Paramount (both television and film) after they bought out Desilu. He also worked on every episode of The Twilight Zone, as well as many, many other television shows and movies, in the same capacity.
I was curious about the take others had on continuity coming to the fore. I wouldn't have cited Dallas as an example though. A prime time soap is still a soap.
True, but Dallas was a pioneer in making soaps respectable in prime-time, and "Who Shot J.R.?" was the granddaddy of season-ending cliffhangers (though I've seen it argued that it was "The Best of Both Worlds" that started them as a yearly tradition in TV). So it was influential on non-soap prime-time programming.
Oh, Christopher, stop being so serious and just laugh once in a while. 
It is a common fallacy, it seems, to mistake "thoughtful" for "humorless." One can recognize a joke yet still have thoughts about the underlying subject that one wishes to share.
I rest my case.
^And you prove my case. Just because you said something that you imagined was funny, that doesn't mean everyone else is obligated to stop thinking and fall over laughing. Especially when it wasn't actually funny in the first place.
Wow. I was simply trying to have a little playful banter, Christopher. Now I understand why some consider you pedantic and too serious. No worries. I won't bother attempting to interact with you again.
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