^You're absolutely right -- I've since had that pointed out to me, about 3 weeks ago in post #28 of this very thread.
Into Darkness and the novelverse [SPOILERS]
- Thread starter F. King Daniel
- Start date
Beyond the issue of religion, Roddenberry, etc. developed Khan as a character who was non-white. Now Abrams, etc. has made him white, with no explanation as of yet. I think at the least an explanation should've been given in the film.
As a person of color I was disappointed that they went that route. To be fair, they were looking at Benecio Del Toro (sp), but I wish they had looked at other non-white actors, particularly Indian actors. Granted this might have forced them to give up the ghost on Harrison's secret identity, which was a big deal for them, but still I think it would've been better than whitewashing the role.
At the end of the day it means, to me, that one less role (and in a major film) goes to a person of color and I don't think that's a good thing for Hollywood or audiences down the line.
Before people think I'm downing Abrams I do think he has been pretty good on the diversity front, compared to most in Hollywood. I like what he did with Alias and Undercovers.
In his Star Trek, Uhura has taken on an importance that she never had in the original series and within Star Trek period black female characters haven't gotten much attention or development at all (possible exceptions Lily Sloan and Kasidy Yates). All that being said, Uhura still is too much of Spock's girlfriend, but at least she gets more face time and is in the mix more than Nichelle Nichols was allowed to be (Nichelle is still my favorite Uhura though). At we got some short but sweet scenes with Sulu in both Trek '09 and Into Darkness. So, I think Abrams gets it to some extent and that's why the decision to whiten Khan is even more disappointing to me.
As a person of color I was disappointed that they went that route. To be fair, they were looking at Benecio Del Toro (sp), but I wish they had looked at other non-white actors, particularly Indian actors. Granted this might have forced them to give up the ghost on Harrison's secret identity, which was a big deal for them, but still I think it would've been better than whitewashing the role.
At the end of the day it means, to me, that one less role (and in a major film) goes to a person of color and I don't think that's a good thing for Hollywood or audiences down the line.
Before people think I'm downing Abrams I do think he has been pretty good on the diversity front, compared to most in Hollywood. I like what he did with Alias and Undercovers.
In his Star Trek, Uhura has taken on an importance that she never had in the original series and within Star Trek period black female characters haven't gotten much attention or development at all (possible exceptions Lily Sloan and Kasidy Yates). All that being said, Uhura still is too much of Spock's girlfriend, but at least she gets more face time and is in the mix more than Nichelle Nichols was allowed to be (Nichelle is still my favorite Uhura though). At we got some short but sweet scenes with Sulu in both Trek '09 and Into Darkness. So, I think Abrams gets it to some extent and that's why the decision to whiten Khan is even more disappointing to me.
Something else I remembered - Admiral Marcus tells Kirk that since first contact with the Klingons, they've conquered two planets that they know of. Those could be recent happenings, but it's possible one or both occurred prior to the timeline divergence, which may be relevant to the Rise of the Federation novels.
Except that Nicholas Meyer made him white 31 years ago. In "Space Seed," Montalban was made up "brownface"-style, his complexion darkened to fit the South Asian ethnicity he was supposed to have. In TWOK, he had his normal, lighter complexion with no explanation. (Not to mention that Meyer turned the ethnically diverse supermen of "Space Seed" into a uniform bunch of blond Nordic types, and made them about two decades too young, given that they'd been stranded as adults 15 years earlier.)
My own color is sort of a light peach, but I was just as disappointed.
In fact, Del Toro was one of four or five Latino actors they tested for the role. Cumberbatch is the only known actor they considered who wasn't Latino. Which does suggest that they genuinely wanted a Latin actor but ultimately went with the best performance and screen presence, which happened to be Cumberbatch.
Still, I agree, if it had been up to me I would've looked at South Asian actors first.
It's not like they were at all successful at keeping the secret anyway -- particularly given that fans were speculating about Khan being in the sequel before the movie was even written.
I agree, it's unfortunate. Hopefully the next film will make up for it. I'd still love to see Lance Reddick as Kang, if they do a Klingon-centric story next time.
True. And Bad Robot seems to be doing pretty well on that front in the upcoming Almost Human too.
I read an essay a while back arguing that having Uhura be Spock's girlfriend didn't really diminish her the way some have said:
So the gist is that by showing Uhura as someone who's a capable, intelligent black career woman who's also acknowledged as someone worthy of being loved by and sexually involved with one of the film's heroes (and desired by the other) is an acknowledgment of her equality. And saying that a female character is diminished by being a love interest is a double standard, because Spock is her love interest too, and nobody says that diminishes him.
Doubtful. The Romulan War novels established that the Klingons drew inward to deal with their internal crises (mainly the rise of the QuchHa' and the resultant racial strife), entering a period of consolidation rather than expansion. This is a handy way to reconcile ENT continuity with what TOS and TUC established about Federation-Klingon conflict only really dating back to the 2220s, about 70 years before TUC. Presumably they began a new expansionist phase around then and began clashing with the UFP.
Although conquering only two planets in the subsequent three-plus decades seems rather unambitious. That line of Marcus's struck me as rather odd -- particularly since it implied that the Klingons had only been recently contacted, even though the presence of models of the NX-Alpha and NX-01 on Marcus's desk in that very scene reinforced that ENT is part of the film's continuity. So I'm disinclined to take Marcus's line too literally.
I also have another friend who is Asian, is called Singh (I wont say last name as that's not really how it work with Sikhs), has the Sikh symbol tattooed on him and in his own words "thinks religion's a load of b****ks". I guess people are more unique than movie characters.
Christopher,
In reply to some of your responses...
-I didn't know about Montalban's appearance being darkened for Space Seed. As for Wrath of Khan, the character came off enough of a person of color where it didn't seem like a whitewashing to me. It's also a good point that you noted how Nordic the refugees were for Wrath of Khan. I hadn't thought much about that before and just assumed that they were the only survivors, along with Khan. When I come to think about it...that could lead to a whole other discussion about why Meyers didn't make Khan's people diverse. At least Enterprise got it right with their casting for the Augment trilogy (even if the augments of color didn't have major roles).
But for the most part, having a guy retain his natural skin coloring is different than casting a person of a completely different race/ethnic group as was done in Into Darkness.
-I am glad that you are concerned about the whitewashing of Khan as a white person. I've read many of your posts over the years and I know that diversity in Hollywood has been an issue you've long supported. As a person of color I couldn't help but groan with a here we go again eye roll at Cumberbatch's big reveal. It gets tiresome sometimes feeling that you are incidental or less important in many of the stories that you love, that the characters who look like you (if they get cast at all) are the less developed (if developed at all), or can be more easily dispatched or possibly replaced.
-As for Uhura I don't have a problem with her relationship with Spock. It is a step up from what the character had been-as that passage you posted really showed-however I wish that so much of her character/characterization didn't revolve around Spock. His doesn't revolve around her that much. His bromance with Kirk and the loss of Vulcan, plus the eternal struggles to reconcile his Vulcan-Human halves are all interesting things they are doing with Spock that don't necessarily include or have to include Uhura. If you took away the Spock relationship, what would Uhura be doing? Who is she?
This isn't a problem that plagues just her, it's also Sulu and Chekov, maybe the new Bones as well. I don't think Uhura should or has to be single, but I wouldn't mind if they also found ways to make her more independent from Spock.
In reply to some of your responses...
-I didn't know about Montalban's appearance being darkened for Space Seed. As for Wrath of Khan, the character came off enough of a person of color where it didn't seem like a whitewashing to me. It's also a good point that you noted how Nordic the refugees were for Wrath of Khan. I hadn't thought much about that before and just assumed that they were the only survivors, along with Khan. When I come to think about it...that could lead to a whole other discussion about why Meyers didn't make Khan's people diverse. At least Enterprise got it right with their casting for the Augment trilogy (even if the augments of color didn't have major roles).
But for the most part, having a guy retain his natural skin coloring is different than casting a person of a completely different race/ethnic group as was done in Into Darkness.
-I am glad that you are concerned about the whitewashing of Khan as a white person. I've read many of your posts over the years and I know that diversity in Hollywood has been an issue you've long supported. As a person of color I couldn't help but groan with a here we go again eye roll at Cumberbatch's big reveal. It gets tiresome sometimes feeling that you are incidental or less important in many of the stories that you love, that the characters who look like you (if they get cast at all) are the less developed (if developed at all), or can be more easily dispatched or possibly replaced.
-As for Uhura I don't have a problem with her relationship with Spock. It is a step up from what the character had been-as that passage you posted really showed-however I wish that so much of her character/characterization didn't revolve around Spock. His doesn't revolve around her that much. His bromance with Kirk and the loss of Vulcan, plus the eternal struggles to reconcile his Vulcan-Human halves are all interesting things they are doing with Spock that don't necessarily include or have to include Uhura. If you took away the Spock relationship, what would Uhura be doing? Who is she?
This isn't a problem that plagues just her, it's also Sulu and Chekov, maybe the new Bones as well. I don't think Uhura should or has to be single, but I wouldn't mind if they also found ways to make her more independent from Spock.
Here's my take on the whole Abramsverse thing (so far):
After the first incursion, and the destruction of the Kelvin, Starfleet is SCARED. Scared enough that they became a good deal more militaristic than in the Prime universe. Scared enough that the original Constitution class plans got thrown out, along with orbital assembly, in favor of a much larger vessel, with a much larger crew, built in an Iowa cornfield and launched into orbit intact, decades after the Constitution class went into service in the Prime universe. One can hardly blame them for becoming scared: it wasn't that many years after the end of the Romulan War, and here was an attack from an apparently Romulan vessel that, even without the Borg tech that had reportedly been incorporated into it, was over a century more advanced than anything the Federation had.
Robert April either retired before the revised Enterprise was completed, or died, or left Starfleet in disgust of what fear was turning it into.
The destruction of Vulcan left Starfleet even more scared. Scared enough that Section 31 achieved a good deal of prominence, and that, with the discovery of a shipload of Augments, decided to play with fire (something they seem to make a habit of doing).
Personally, I still think that the best thing that could possibly happen to the Abramsverse would be (and I've said this before) for Mr. Daniels, perhaps with the assistance of Dulmur and Lucsly, and maybe Ducane, to recruit Spock Prime to take the Jellyfish and its load of Red Matter back to the future, in time to save Romulus, thus wiping the Abramsverse from the memory of the multiverse.
After the first incursion, and the destruction of the Kelvin, Starfleet is SCARED. Scared enough that they became a good deal more militaristic than in the Prime universe. Scared enough that the original Constitution class plans got thrown out, along with orbital assembly, in favor of a much larger vessel, with a much larger crew, built in an Iowa cornfield and launched into orbit intact, decades after the Constitution class went into service in the Prime universe. One can hardly blame them for becoming scared: it wasn't that many years after the end of the Romulan War, and here was an attack from an apparently Romulan vessel that, even without the Borg tech that had reportedly been incorporated into it, was over a century more advanced than anything the Federation had.
Robert April either retired before the revised Enterprise was completed, or died, or left Starfleet in disgust of what fear was turning it into.
The destruction of Vulcan left Starfleet even more scared. Scared enough that Section 31 achieved a good deal of prominence, and that, with the discovery of a shipload of Augments, decided to play with fire (something they seem to make a habit of doing).
Personally, I still think that the best thing that could possibly happen to the Abramsverse would be (and I've said this before) for Mr. Daniels, perhaps with the assistance of Dulmur and Lucsly, and maybe Ducane, to recruit Spock Prime to take the Jellyfish and its load of Red Matter back to the future, in time to save Romulus, thus wiping the Abramsverse from the memory of the multiverse.
I didn't either, but someone recently posted a side-by-side comparison of SS Khan and TWOK Khan, and it was pretty obvious.
He came off as a guy with a Mexican accent -- that's about it.
I figure he was going for a Nazi analogy. Pretty much all the real-life eugenics movements in the 19th and 20th centuries, including Nazism, were grounded in the racist assumptions of European science at the time, the belief that the white race was the pure human ideal and other races were inferior, degenerate offshoots. So I guess Meyer just defaulted to the stock notion that "eugenic superman" equals "blond, blue-eyed Nazi poster boy."
But what made "Space Seed" so intriguingly subversive was that it said, "Look, here's a group of genetically superior human beings, the pinnacle of human eugenics -- and oh, incidentally, they come in all colors and their boss is a Sikh from India." And it never called attention to the fact. It just matter-of-factly presented what, at the time, was the very radical idea that genetic superiority came from racial diversity rather than whiteness.
Since the main ones' names were Malik and Persis, I think they were written to be more diverse than the casting ended up reflecting. Actually I found Abby Brammell's eyes rather exotic in shape, but apparently she's from Kentucky and I can't find any mention of her having mixed ethnicity.
Montalban was the son of Spanish immigrants, so he was probably pretty much pure-blooded European. That makes him a lot closer ethnically to Cumberbatch than he was to Khan.
Except that for most of TOS, everything revolved around Spock. He was the breakout character of the franchise, the one who got more fan mail and publicity than everyone else combined, the one that the network would've happily promoted to the starring role. The only reason Kirk and McCoy remained central is because they were inextricably linked to Spock, because of how they were defined in relation to him: Kirk as his best friend and partner, McCoy as his philosophical rival and gadfly. The other cast members stayed in the background because they didn't revolve around Spock, because he didn't need them and so they only time they got the spotlight was when he wasn't there (as in "Spock's Brain"). So really, having Uhura also be closely linked to Spock was probably the best way to make her more prominent in the context of Star Trek.
Good point. I'm surprised they didn't consider him.
According to the Countdown to Darkness comic,
There was an earlier Enterprise before this one, and it was commanded by April up until 2249, with Alexander Marcus as his first officer. April gave up his command to help an oppressed native people fight off their Klingon-backed oppressors, with assistance from Section 31.
Doesn't work that way. If the alternate reality had replaced the original one, then there'd be justification for using time travel to restore it. But instead it coexists alongside the Prime timeline. Its existence poses no threat to Prime, and so for Prime-universe temporal agents to eradicate it (if they were even aware of its existence) would accomplish nothing except genocide on a cosmic scale.
Besides, since the Red Matter-enabled time travel only created an alternate timeline rather than transforming the main one, wouldn't another Red Matter time travel simply create a third alternative history?
A bit of in-universe commentary, I've got to say that Christopher did a wonderful job in making the characters have pathos and resonance in "Watching the Clock" but that the Abramsverse also really is a horrific gut punch in its own way for Lucsly and Dulmer. They work tirelessly to protect the idea of a "natural timestream" but we, the audience, know that there's no such thing and that time-travel is just an ocean waiting to be explored. It's why the Guardian of Forever let's people play around in the time-stream, it's not dangerous and all they're doing is essentially pointless.
Well, not pointless, they can save lives and avenge wrongs but they can't stop the clock ticking away for a religious belief ("natural time" is no more sane than "no warp travel"). It's kind of tragic they'd view the Abramsverse as the place where someone altered time when the real evil is murdering billions.
[I wrote this before Christopher replied but didn't finish the rest of the post until much later, so I didn't incorporate what he said. Not trying to intentionally ignore.]
Regarding Khan's ethnicity, I'm sorry, but I'm not feeling any of the vitriol over the so-called "whitewashing" of Khan. (That is actually precisely what a fan said during the Q&A with LeVar Burton and Marina Sirtis yesterday at the convention in Boston.)
There is nothing, I repeat, nothing about Khan's character that has anything to do with India, Sikhism, Asia (or Latin America) EXCEPT that his origins are "exotic". His character is "ethnic" for some of the worst reasons that Hollywood had during the late 60's: gasp! an exotic-looking non-white man! he must be quite fearsome!
I'm sorry, but where exactly is the value in that aspect of the character? And furthermore, do we really need another non-Mongoloid Asian movie villain who blows up buildings and crashes flying objects into other buildings? Really?
Khan Noonien Singh was given his name so that Roddenberry would have a small chance at being reunited with an old friend of his from WWII (Kim Noonien Singh). The original script for "Space Seed" called for a Nordic superman, named Ragnar Thorwald (who, coincidentally, originally introduced himself as "John Ericssen"; wink wink, nudge nudge). Sounds like someone along the line (probably not Roddenberry, probably some high network muckamuck) thought that "ethnic" would read better than "Nordic", and Roddenberry said, "Well shit, this is gonna be kinda offensive, lemme at least try to maybe get something good out of this for me."
Cumberbatch got the role because he was the best actor for the story they wanted to tell. Frankly, if they had cast a Latino in the role, that would've perpetuated the destructive notion that all non-white ethnicities are somehow interchangeable. And if they had cast a South Asian? Honestly, that would've been really problematic for current, real-world sociopolitical reasons, perpetuating the deeply destructive notion that all "Muslims" (because, remember, a large segment of the the moviegoing public simply reads any non-Mongoloid Asian, or more generally, any non-Hispanic white person with darker complexion as "Muslim") are terrorists.
I stand 100% with those who feel that people of color should have a greater profile in Hollywood and American media in general. You will get zero argument from me on that point.
But, really, is Khan such a desirable role that it's worth bemoaning the "loss" of a character for whom the only important thing about his ethnicity was that it made him Other?
That line is interesting, though, particularly given how close the Neutral Zone (which the Enterprise always stayed in during the Kronos segments of the film) was to Kronos. Almost like it was at Oort cloud distance. (Obviously there were much closer, but that might have been the intention.)
Indeed, intersteller space seems to play very little role in the post-Nero universe. I'm wondering if the superadvanced warp drive has changed the notion of what an intersteller state is. In pre-'09 Trek, the Federation, the Klingon Empire, the Cardassian Union, etc. were more or less treated like large land-based empires, with intersteller space being treated a bit like loosely patrolled frontier land; nominally under the control of the government, but if you tried really hard, you could sneak through undetected. Lots of open space that was nonetheless considered to be part of the nation.
In nuTrek, though, the Federation and Klingon Empire are treated more like nations of islands. The planets (the islands) are extremely important, but the space between them (the open sea) are really only important as transportation routes, not as land to hold.
They seem to be going for smaller intersteller states, more intimate, less sprawling. An interesting reinterpretation.
Regarding that superadvanced warp drive (and sorry Christopher, but I'm pretty sure this counts as a story idea, or at least a key potential plot point):
Regarding Khan's ethnicity, I'm sorry, but I'm not feeling any of the vitriol over the so-called "whitewashing" of Khan. (That is actually precisely what a fan said during the Q&A with LeVar Burton and Marina Sirtis yesterday at the convention in Boston.)
There is nothing, I repeat, nothing about Khan's character that has anything to do with India, Sikhism, Asia (or Latin America) EXCEPT that his origins are "exotic". His character is "ethnic" for some of the worst reasons that Hollywood had during the late 60's: gasp! an exotic-looking non-white man! he must be quite fearsome!
I'm sorry, but where exactly is the value in that aspect of the character? And furthermore, do we really need another non-Mongoloid Asian movie villain who blows up buildings and crashes flying objects into other buildings? Really?
Khan Noonien Singh was given his name so that Roddenberry would have a small chance at being reunited with an old friend of his from WWII (Kim Noonien Singh). The original script for "Space Seed" called for a Nordic superman, named Ragnar Thorwald (who, coincidentally, originally introduced himself as "John Ericssen"; wink wink, nudge nudge). Sounds like someone along the line (probably not Roddenberry, probably some high network muckamuck) thought that "ethnic" would read better than "Nordic", and Roddenberry said, "Well shit, this is gonna be kinda offensive, lemme at least try to maybe get something good out of this for me."
Cumberbatch got the role because he was the best actor for the story they wanted to tell. Frankly, if they had cast a Latino in the role, that would've perpetuated the destructive notion that all non-white ethnicities are somehow interchangeable. And if they had cast a South Asian? Honestly, that would've been really problematic for current, real-world sociopolitical reasons, perpetuating the deeply destructive notion that all "Muslims" (because, remember, a large segment of the the moviegoing public simply reads any non-Mongoloid Asian, or more generally, any non-Hispanic white person with darker complexion as "Muslim") are terrorists.
I stand 100% with those who feel that people of color should have a greater profile in Hollywood and American media in general. You will get zero argument from me on that point.
But, really, is Khan such a desirable role that it's worth bemoaning the "loss" of a character for whom the only important thing about his ethnicity was that it made him Other?
That line is interesting, though, particularly given how close the Neutral Zone (which the Enterprise always stayed in during the Kronos segments of the film) was to Kronos. Almost like it was at Oort cloud distance. (Obviously there were much closer, but that might have been the intention.)
Indeed, intersteller space seems to play very little role in the post-Nero universe. I'm wondering if the superadvanced warp drive has changed the notion of what an intersteller state is. In pre-'09 Trek, the Federation, the Klingon Empire, the Cardassian Union, etc. were more or less treated like large land-based empires, with intersteller space being treated a bit like loosely patrolled frontier land; nominally under the control of the government, but if you tried really hard, you could sneak through undetected. Lots of open space that was nonetheless considered to be part of the nation.
In nuTrek, though, the Federation and Klingon Empire are treated more like nations of islands. The planets (the islands) are extremely important, but the space between them (the open sea) are really only important as transportation routes, not as land to hold.
They seem to be going for smaller intersteller states, more intimate, less sprawling. An interesting reinterpretation.
Regarding that superadvanced warp drive (and sorry Christopher, but I'm pretty sure this counts as a story idea, or at least a key potential plot point):
I saw a really well-thought out theory on reddit, r/DaystromInstitute specifically, that the Narada, and now all Starfleet and Klingon vessels, have Quantum Slipstream Drive. The theory is here. To add to what the author said/implied, this will never be contradicted in-universe, since the alt-23rd-century Starfleet won't know what the drive is called, they'll just think of it as an advanced warp drive.
As I said, I think it was actually nicely subversive, portraying an idea of a "genetically superior human" that was in direct opposition to the prevailing stereotype that genetically superior meant white.
Actually recent research by John and Maria Tenuto has revealed that the old friend was Chinese and was named Noonien Wang. Which cleared up a lot, because I could find no indication that "Noonien" was a name used by any South Asian culture.
Apparently STID was actually filmed with Cumberbatch's character identified as Ericsson, but then they decided it was too much of a giveaway for Trekkies so they redubbed the dialogue and altered the graphic displays showing his name.
Except, as stated, Sikhism is a religion, not an ethnic group. It'd be easy enough to assume that Khan was of European ancestry all along and was just raised in the Sikh faith or converted to it. That just leaves the change in accent to explain, but surely someone of superior abilities would be able to disguise his accent.
That's sadly true (I remember reading about a Sikh-American gas station owner being murdered shortly after 9/11), and Roberto Orci has said much the same thing in his comments on TrekMovie.com.
I don't recall anything in the film giving any indication that the Neutral Zone was that close to Kronos. They had to be far enough away to avoid sensor detection, and to need to fly in on a warp-capable scout ship. The plan was to fire torpedoes from there, but torpedoes have often been portrayed as capable of travel at warp.
That's a fair point. I think it may possibly have been both; Roddenberry hoping that the more progressive message would come through to those who could hear it, and the network muckymucks hoping to play to the base racism that was still omnipresent among so many Americans during the late sixties.
Wow, that is a fascinating read! Thanks for passing it along! Still, it's clear that the character wasn't created to be a Sikh superman, but just a superman in general (with a Nordic background being the default for such characters).
That's actually awesome. Hadn't heard that; if you don't mind my asking, do you have a source?
What you say is true, but beside the point, I think. Muslims are Muslims because of their faith, but that doesn't stop many people (American and otherwise) from treating "Muslim" as a term of ethnicity. As Roddenberry, Coon and Justman surely realized, many viewers would simply register "Sikh" as equivalent to "Other" or "exotic". The actual in-universe ethnicity of Khan Noonien Singh is technically irrelevant; what is at hand is the most common real-world understanding of what his ethnicity was supposed to be. In several key ways, that question boils down to, "Does he appear to be a nominally Judeo-Christian white person, yes or no?"
Yeah. As much as the "whitewashing" of Khan might be problematic (my personal views aside), I think it would've been much, much worse if he had been perceived as a pseudo-Muslim.
When the Enterprise is thrown out of warp due to sabotage, they are close enough to send the scout ship to Kronos (and are close enough to see Kronos way off in the distance; it's really small, easy to miss if you aren't looking carefully); their orders were to go "to the edge of the Neutral Zone" and as far as I know, they never said anything about having broken those orders.
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Actually, network execs at the time were actively promoting racial inclusion in their shows because studies had proven the buying power of minorities and TV advertisers had realized they were missing out on a potential market. That's why we got a diverse TOS cast that included Sulu and Uhura. It's not something Roddenberry pushed through despite network racism; just the opposite. Roddenberry had promised an ethnically diverse crew to the network, but "The Cage" had a completely white cast, and even the one token Hispanic character in the original proposal ended up being played by a blond guy and having his name changed from Ortegas to Tyler. That was one of the reasons NBC rejected the first pilot: because Roddenberry hadn't given them the ethnic diversity they'd asked for. (Source: Inside Star Trek by Solow & Justman.)
Although, granted, that was mainly seen as including African-Americans. There were still a lot of pervasive Orientalist stereotypes, and nobody had a problem with the idea of depicting Klingons as "space Mongols." So giving the villain an "Oriental" name would've played right into those conventions. So you may have a point. I prefer not to assume intentional malice without evidence, however.
IIRC, it was one of Roberto Orci's comments in a thread on TrekMovie.com, but I can't seem to find the quote at the moment. Maybe I'm misremembering and I read it somewhere else.
Depends on which point it is. I was just addressing the question of reconciling the two actors in-story. You're talking about a deeper issue of social values and perception.
The scout ship presumably had warp drive, as I said. (It certainly did in the Countdown to Darkness comic.) And are you sure the planet visible in the distance was Kronos? After all, if you were in Sol's Oort Cloud, you absolutely could not see Earth from there, not without a damn powerful telescope. Heck, we've never actually imaged any object within the Oort Cloud due to its great distance; we only extrapolate its existence because it's the most likely source for long-period comets.
I thought the planet visible on the viewscreen was the planetoid where McCoy and Carol opened the torpedo?
BTW, in a neat bit of continuity, the Mudd ship in ID has the same shape as Harry Mudd's yellow blob ship in the original version of "Mudd's Women"
BTW, in a neat bit of continuity, the Mudd ship in ID has the same shape as Harry Mudd's yellow blob ship in the original version of "Mudd's Women"
That assumes that comics are canon. Which would give them canonical seniority over novels. I can stomach such a notion in, say, Superman, or Batman, or Spider-Man, but not in Star Trek.
That assumes that the Abramsverse does coexist alongside Prime. Of course, now that I think about it, the existence of Spock Prime in the Abramsverse does support that assertion, but then again, arguably, the universe in which Edith Keeler unwittingly allowed the Nazis to win the war, and the universe in which Spock died in a secretly self-initiated "practice Kahs-Wan," and Thelin was Kirk's science officer, both coexist alongside the Prime universe. And who said anything about another red-matter-induced time incursion (assuming the red matter had anything to do with the time incursion)? If the red-matter device aboard the Jellyfish had been deployed in time to save Romulus, then the time incursion creating the Abramsverse never would have happened.
Oh, and I almost forgot: Daniels would be involved because my scenario assumes that the "Hobus Event" was not naturally occurring, and that both it and the Vulcans' inexplicable and illogical delays in making the red-matter available to remedy it, were in fact a new front heating up in the Temporal Cold War.
Ha, that's really cool, I never knew all that! Thank you!
I vaguely remember Orci saying on TrekMovie that Harrison was originally gonna be called "Ericssen," but then they changed it because fans would get it too easily. (Which is sort of crazy [in a cool way] when you think about it.) My understanding was that they changed it at the writing stage, not the post-production stage. But my memory of this is very vague.
Oh, yes, certainly. And I definitely agree with you about how to reconcile the two actors from an in-universe perspective.
Right, as I said earlier (and looking back now, I screwed up the quote blocks, making it look a bit like you said it; will try to fix it now), I only think it might have been the filmmakers' intention to have the Neutral Zone be visible from the Oort Cloud, strictly for dramatic purposes. Obviously the planet would not be visible from a real Oort Cloud.
Ooh, that would make sense. Hmm. I had felt that it was the filmmakers' intention for it to be Kronos off in the distance, because it felt like the simplest explanation at the time. But I had forgotten about the apparently M-class planetoid. If I watch the film at the movies again, I'll have to keep an eye out. Otherwise, I'll see what I can figure out on the DVD in the fall.
I assume nothing. I merely report what the comics said. Whether you choose to believe it is up to you; I simply made the information available.
Yes, of course it does. That's what the filmmakers have always intended, and I see no reason to believe otherwise. Nobody wants the Prime timeline to have been wiped out of existence, so I see no reason to entertain the notion, particularly since we know for a definitive fact that it goes against the intent of the work. There are times when it's useful or desirable to choose an interpretation that differs from the original intent, but I see no reason why this should be such an instance.
Indeed -- "Yesteryear" had dialogue strongly implying that Spock expected Thelin's timeline to continue even after Spock "restored" his own. The Keeler timeline is a more ambiguous case; the episode indicated that it had overwritten the Prime timeline, but Crucible: McCoy pretty much went with the coexistence assumption, I think. But one thing I established in Watching the Clock is that both situations -- "overwriting" and stable coexistence -- can arise, depending on the conditions of the time travel.
As for the Abramsverse, indeed, the fact that Spock Prime has made no effort to "restore" the original history is the clearest evidence that he doesn't believe the original history has been jeopardized or unmade.
You're forgetting the specifics of the movie. Spock arrived too late to save Romulus, yes, but he did deploy the Red Matter to stop the supernova so that other worlds wouldn't be destroyed (according to the film's rather muddled claims about astrophysics). When Nero attacked Spock, both their ships fell into the black hole created by the Red Matter, and that's how they went back in time in the first place.
Well, first off, surely Daniels isn't the only Temporal Agent in the entire 29th century. There's no way one guy could be responsible for monitoring all of history. In WTC, I assumed he was responsible specifically for monitoring events in local space in the era preceding the founding of the Federation. I created a different Temporal Agent, Jena Noi, to be the one in charge of monitoring the late 24th-century Federation and its surroundings.
Second, all any observer in the Prime timeline knows is that Spock and Nero fell into a black hole and disappeared. Since it was a black hole rather than a wormhole, the travel of matter or information would've presumably been one-way; so nobody in Prime would even necessarily be aware that another timeline had been created.
As for the rest, your interpretations of Hobus are strictly your own. Even if there were some anomalous circumstances surrounding it, that doesn't prove that time travelers were the responsible parties.
Um, no, it's been around for the audience since TNG's "Parallels".
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